The Seasteaders

The Drone is the Message. It's not the laptop nor phone that best typifies our relationship to the internet. It's the drone.

Two sisters, two boyfriends, one simple birthday weekend getaway. Or it would have been, if not for the threesome, the love affair, the unexpected arrival of a fiancé, and the ensuing ridiculous dinner role play charade everyone is forced to participate in just to keep from getting caught.

Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman tells the story of the real and manufactured causes behind the fall of Chuck E. Cheese which epitomizes the rise of the leveraged buy-out in corporate America.

After soaring high and flaming out in Hollywood, Abe, a celebrated bodybuilder, returns home across the 405 to Venice Beach, where it all started. But Abe's beloved boardwalk feels different. There’s a nasty bite to the sea breeze, a slew of unexplained overdoses putting the gym rats on edge, strange supernatural sightings on the pier hinting at something primordial lurking beneath the surface of sun-dappled Venice. And Jay—his old lifting partner, his former roommate, the one person he truly abandoned in his pursuit of fame—has disappeared, leaving Alice, his ex, alone to take care of their infant son.

With music by Daniel Bachman & Humanherb, Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman traces the significance of the Newsfeed launch, from the initial rage it engendered to its precipitation of the algorithm-dominated status quo of current-day digital media.