Alan N. Shapiro, Hypermodernism, Hyperreality, Posthumanism

Blog and project archive about media theory, science fiction theory, and creative coding

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Winning at the Venice Lido Casino

July 31st, 2024 in the categories: Casino Gambling, Memoir

I had saved the $172.50 that I won in the casino in Atlantic City in a special envelope. I was going to use it for gambling the next time that I entered a casino. I took my “big winnings” with me for my next round of European wanderings. In Venice, the idea of going to the casino came up again.
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Cadillac to JFK Airport

July 31st, 2024 in the categories: Baseball, Memoir

It was two months after my twentieth birthday and my father was driving me in his Cadillac Coupe DeVille from my parents’ upper middle class split-level house in suburban Roslyn, Long Island to JFK Airport in Queens. I was going to begin my first attempt to create a life for myself on the other side of the pond. I had an open return ticket that cost four hundred dollars – that was a lot of bread – and was good for one year.
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Jets’ Playoff Chances

December 10th, 2012 in the categories: American Football

Let's see if anyone can tell me if my analysis here is wrong: In all this, I assume that the Jets win their last 3 games against weak opponents. Consider the scenario of the Bengals beating the Steelers then losing to the Ravens.
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Julian, California: The Museum of Reality

July 1st, 2011 in the categories: New American Studies

After seeing one town after the next that looks the same, after seeing all of this cloned hyper-non-reality, it was good to finally arrive in Julian, California, where the local HISTORICAL SOCIETY has preserved everything just as it was exactly 117 years ago.
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Where am I? In The Village

June 18th, 2011 in the categories: New American Studies, The Prisoner

In Phoenix, we ate dinner at an instance of The Village Inn restaurant chain. The interior décor, the atmosphere, and the "language semiotics" (the signs, the typography) of The Village Inn reminded me of one of my favorite TV shows of all time: "The Prisoner", starring and co-created by Patrick McGoohan.
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Cactus League Baseball: San Francisco Giants vs. Oakland Athletics

June 10th, 2011 in the categories: Baseball

It was early March on planet Earth. In any of the other places where I have hung out during my apparently long yet in fact rather brief life so far as coder and Richard Daystrom wannabe – Frankfurt, Berlin, New York, Boston, Ithaca, Bologna, Zurich – it would be freezing cold in the middle of winter.
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From Las Vegas (NV) to the Cactus League (AZ)

May 20th, 2011 in the categories: New American Studies, Photography

Leaving Las Vegas... Driving through the northern Arizona desert... To the Cactus League... In the Shadow of Jean Baudrillard and America... To arrive at nighttime March baseball in southern Arizona!
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Multimedia Real-Time Live In-Play Sports Gambling

April 21st, 2011 in the categories: Information Society, Sports Gambling

Sports gambling at the MGM Grand Casino-Hotel, Las Vegas
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Whiskey Pete’s Casino at the California/Nevada Border

March 24th, 2011 in the categories: Casino Gambling, Jean Baudrillard

From Dublin, Ireland I traveled on to New York City, then to southern California. The Baudrillard-America trip had begun. Moments after entering Nevada by car, we encountered Whiskey Pete's casino. Here an important Baudrillard conference had taken place in 1996.
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Today is a Sacred Day

January 23rd, 2011 in the categories: American Football

One of the most inspiring days of my life was January 12, 1969. Super Bowl III. My brother and I watched the game on a small black-and-white TV. We saw the Jets, who were 19 point underdogs, beat the mighty Baltimore Colts. David slew Goliath. It was possible for the most unbelievable of dreams to come true.
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My Hometown is Roslyn, Long Island, New York

October 15th, 2010 in the categories: New American Studies

Sometime around 1980, I sat inside my hometown library in the "haute bourgeoise" town of Roslyn and read all the books they had about the student-worker near-revolution in May-June 1968 in France: books like Alain Touraine's "The Movement of May" and Alfred Willener's "The Action-Image of Society."
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Play, Don’t Work at Bayville Adventure Park

October 14th, 2010 in the categories: New American Studies

Driving Game, NBA Hoops BONUS, WHEEL A WIN, BASKET FORTUNE, SKEE BALL - TOWER OF POWER, The Jewelry Box, MONOPOLY - coin game, BASKETBALL - mini dunxx, PHAROAH'S TREASURE, JUMPIN' JACKPOT, Pirate's Adventure, MAD WAVE MOTION THEATER, THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD by SEGA
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After Ebbets Field and Shea Stadium: CitiField

October 14th, 2010 in the categories: Baseball, New American Studies

I went to my first two games at CitiField in September 2010. The Mets won both games, beating up on a minor league team, the Pittsburgh Pirates. It was part of a four-game sweep.
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Around the Town (a Sports Gambling story), part 1 of 4

July 22nd, 2010 in the categories: American Slang, Creative Writing, Sports Gambling

As they went inside Grand Central Station, Moe and Siggy saw more hurried commuters moving ahead with tunnel vision. Nobody wanted to look at the homeless. The bag ladies and street people would just put a damper on one’s day.
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Consumer Culture and Naming the Animals, by Alan N. Shapiro

April 14th, 2010 in the categories: Consumer Culture, New American Studies, Roland Barthes

In his famous essay "Myth Today," published in 1957, Roland Barthes added a second dimension to the semiotic analysis of Ferdinand de Saussure, to the insight of the Swiss linguist that language is a social institution. Barthes added a social theory of culture to the social theory of language.
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