The Mondo Project

Ah the internet, that great decimator of social awkwardness, always on hand to topple the shy walls of social integration. Nowadays a friend met on the webby digitalia is afforded equal validity to the sort of miscreant you might encounter down at the local newsagents, or the hackneyed senses of some philanthropist who works for the civil service. The playing field is even; tis a soaring plain rich in the budding of buddies.

The Mondo Project is a new web-based, collaboratory blog, initiated by those who hitherto have been labelled the Mondo Group, a faction of bloggers who became united under the auspices of The Duke’s Mondo Irlando Yahoo Group. Following much interaction, discussion and reflection, it was decided that a mighty collective website was required. And here it is, birthed and unleashed to the world at large.

The Mondo Project is the mental coalescence of eight individuals, banded together under the banner of sublimity. Firstly, the administrative genius and architect of the venture is one DJRadiohead, a musical connoisseur of much music I know little about (Guster, for instance), a man who deserves a wealth of praise and seductive laments for his hard graft in assembling a working domain for us all to bounce about in. His majestic labour can be gifted nothing beyond a first mention.

Then we have The Duke, virtuosic cultural critic, whose idiosyncratic style is all shinny beacons and apostrophes. Mat Brewster is a patron of the musical and the filmic, whose vibrant analysis is matched only by an award-winning penchant for profanity. Mark Saleski is an enthusiast of the most obscure of jazz meandering, whose reviews are littered with the concision and professionalism of an expert in rapture. Greg Smith is a music-centric writer, springing forth into journalistic reality with his dalliances with the magazine NME. Eric Berlin is a heaving behemoth of new media promotion, whose Mafioso-exterior hides a soft, Long Island core (full of bunnies and cotton blankets). Mary K. Williams is the female input in this environment of maleness; she mixes observant psychoanalysis with a tender predilection for children and karate. Then, finally, myself, who feels no need at this moment to self-eulogise.

So there you are, go and visit The Mondo Project right now. And marvel at the force of the internet, for it has brought together all these disparate individuals who otherwise would not have known of such peers (barring The Duke and I). The Mondo Project - now open for glances and gawks.