10.12.2009
9.30.2009
WILD
Vice set up another outlet for Wild Things Mania. They commissioned a bundle of amazing artists to interpret the story/movie/fantasy collaboration. Furie! Millionaire! Skinner!
I am fired up.
9.28.2009
DIRTY QUEST
So Dirty Projectors walk into The Roots studio and this happens.
Via @questlove on Twitter.
9.25.2009
9.22.2009
WOW
"Film critic Roger Ebert gave Apple's VoiceOver technology two thumbs up in allowing him to communicate after losing his voice to cancer surgery, but said his health insurance would only offer to cover an $8,000 device that didn't work nearly as well."
9.15.2009
GREAT SENTENCE
Great sentence: "Even more distressing, he was wearing Crocs."
From the GQ article by a Bush speechwriter, Me Talk Presidential One Day.
9.14.2009
THIS GUY GETS IT
Anthony Weiner on Bill Maher. I don't know much about his record, but what he's saying is just right.
9.11.2009
NEW SPECIES
I love when scientists discover new species of things. It gives me hope that someday someone might discover me.
Ha ha, etc. These animals are from a volcano crater in Papua New Guinea.
TOP THREE
Top Three things that don't make sense from New Scientist's list of 13 More Things That Don't Make Sense:
1. Dark Flow
2. The Lithium Problem
3. Noise from the Edge of the Universe
9.10.2009
9.09.2009
SPEECH
After reading Matt Taibbi's doomsday assessment of the congressional health care reform bills (a must read!), I came home to find my dad "depressed" by how out of control our country has become. Obama's speech on the subject was excellent, which I found slightly consoling. I felt obligated to try to lift my dad's spirits, if temporarily, with the below email.
Dad:
The Dish corrals a lot of excited blogging about the prospects of the Obama speech. I don't expect a blog to make anyone feel much better, especially since I have Taibbi open in another tab pointing out ten trillion other ways my tax dollar is being criminally misappropriated, but I think we should appreciate the thought and effort Obama puts into ringleading the circus - a circus he neither created nor choreographed. He doesn't need to be any more thoughtful than the scoundrels on the congressional floor who are so removed from anything real going on in this country, just scampering towards money clips of lobbyists (and their corporate overlords) that should really all be in "for profit" private jails. (There would be plenty of room for real bad guys if the government stop prosecuting - and started regulating/taxing - non violent pot dealers!)
My favorite part of the speech was when he explained the public option in terms of public universities. This was not only easy to understand - there can be public healthcare (UC Davis) without the private sector (Harvard; bad example!) suffering - it was a correction of Obama's less-sound earlier analogy from June or July (when he compared a public option to the Post Office, private to Fed Ex). People need multiple easy-to-understand examples before they can even begin to understand actual issues. We are used to good/evil politics: countries without democracy, bad; surge, good. Everything was black and white in the Bush years, and the country is dumber because of it. For Obama to give everything the color needed to attract the interest of our fat, spoiled, disinterested country will probably take more time than he has.
All I'm saying is separate from the actual change he affects (which we should be critical of) he should also be judged on his effort and patience, because basically we're very lucky that even a single person in Washington cares.
SOLAR
Yes, those little dots equal the space required to power the world with solar panels alone. From Evan.
9.07.2009
9.04.2009
9.03.2009
DESIRABLE CAREER
"Jonze was an executive producer for “Jackass: The Movie,” a desultory collection of stunts and pranks that was made for just $5 million and became an unexpected hit, ultimately grossing more than $79 million at the box office."
SJ in the NYP. Fascinating!
9.02.2009
DAVE SMALLEN
Between hearing this song strummed in bedrooms to listening to the orchestral studio version, this song made the biggest leap (for me). There are a lot of ideas at work here, is what I'm saying. Just listen.
I WANT THESE
These modular shelves are made of paper: "Our patented, environmentally sound manufacturing process turns post-consumer recycled paper into superbly strong boards that weigh 62% less than particle board." Seen on Design Milk because of Way Basics.
9.01.2009
8.30.2009
8.27.2009
MINOTAUR SHOCK
The minimal electro band Minotaur Shock make for one of the best Pandora stations I've yet to discover.
Apparently you get a free EP for becoming a fan on Facebook.
SPOILER ALERT
At the end of Sicko, Michael Moore anonymously sends a $12,000 check to the guy that runs the largest anti-Michael Moore website so that guy can afford health care for his sick wife without shutting down the anti-Michael Moore site!
Un-fucking-believable!
8.26.2009
LOS ANGELES
It's not important to me, but think I understand the confusion: the greater Los Angeles area is a series of facades, chaotic and garish, unorganized and unchecked. Anonymous developments inside arbitrary spaces. I find this exciting, as adventure is always behind the facade.
I live in a city that is seven miles square, and in my first 48 hours in LA I drove 200 miles. I see (but did not experience) the potential culture shock. San Francisco is tighter, more careful. The air is replenished by fog. LA can seem like an endless, graying surface. The following isn't a defense, but a description of a journey anyone can take if they look past LA's wilty mask.
We'll start randomly: The picture above is the intro to the meal I ate on my third night in town. In Koreatown, not far from where Biggie Smalls was shot, there's a micro chain of restaurants called "BCD Soft Tofu." BCD has four locations in about ten square blocks. Much of the food above (and the delicious fish below) is brought before you order.
This is my kind of treasure hunting: pulling into indiscernible parking lots and walking into strange lands of food and culture. The bigger the city, the more territory to hunt. For this reason, I feel SF loses points to everywhere south of Santa Barbara.
Culinary treasure isn't only the cement that fastens my love of southern California to the small, heart-shaped lump of bedrock in my chest. It's more of a seasoning, in fact. I'll case study this using Thursday, August 13 as source material.
The day began with astonishing Vietnamese food, the kind with fresh, bright ingredients that burn your dulled-by-the-outside-world-eyeballs. Remembering what was ordered or where I was doesn't seem important, though mint and fresh lemonade were involved. After, we moved to Laguna Beach, population: zero cares in the world. The town is it's own bubble, like a never ending fun-employment blog entry. We found Victoria beach, a "private" beach accessible via "public stairway" (also a good band name/you're welcome). I recommend it, as it's way less crowded than the real thing. Also, there's this mini-lighthouse on the north side (look above). It seems pretty useless, like it should have been built on the twice-as-tall cliff right behind it. But I'm probably misjudging its purpose. It's probably just some primitive symbol of ostentation.
On the south side of the beach we found an apartment complex and this boy's head. Reminds me of that scene in Arrested Development where Gob is looking for his son. Then I went shopping at Fashion Island, which looks funny from space.
Which came first: the chicken or this egg-shaped embryo of capitalism? LA is so enormous that the please-buy-anything-from-us-at-any-price sales haven't stopped, even though it's been more than a year of depressed recession. I bought some Asics Tigers for $35 from Bloomingdales. They were the last pair and didn't come with a box! Sign of the times...
After shopping I ate a vegan dinner on the above blanket. Turns out bananas are a great thickener for brownies. Then shit got interesting.
We parked in the midst of the downtown LA artwalk, a once-a-month clusterfuck of people livening up the high-rise-laden Garment District (or Fashion District?). Oakland has the same thing: a thousand people come to drink, mingle, and get their senses tingled. LA's artwalk is predictably ten times the size of Oakland's. Very exciting.
We start at the "soft-opening" of a bar decorated with hundreds of celebrity mugshots, where I had my second drink in 35 days. I also ate a piece of chocolate. Throughout the night, we would guess who belongs to what mug. This one was controversial:
The controversy was that I knew it was Andy Dick and no one believed me for three hours. (By the way, he was arrested at a Sam's Club in Riverside "on suspicion of sexual battery and marijuana possession after... [he] allegedly grabbed a 17-year-old girl’s tank top and exposed her breasts at a Murrieta bar/restaurant." Now you know!)
Like the artwalk, which brings in thousands of people that can afford to live someplace nicer than downtown, this bar is clearly a seed in an extensive gentrification garden. It lives in the ground floor of the once-glamorous Alexandria Hotel. By once-glamorous I mean that this was the spot in the first part of the 20th century. From Wiki:
In the Alexandria's heyday, movie stars and other celebrities, including Valentino, Mary Miles Minter, Sarah Bernhardt, Enrico Caruso and Jack Dempsey were guests. Charlie Chaplin reportedly kept a suite at the Alexandria and did improvisations in the lobby, and western star Tom Mix reportedly rode his horse through the lobby.[8][8] It was there that D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks met in 1919 to form United Artists. U.S. Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson,[8] and many foreign dignitaries, also stayed at the hotel while visiting Los Angeles.Translation: the hotel has a seedy underbelly/dark nether-history. This was actually the subject of our tour-guide's thesis. The grad student leading us around was earning a criminology PHD from Irvine. She is focusing on crime in residential hotels. She is particularly curious about crime myth. She lived in the Alexandria for a spell and knew many generations of residents, from the white-haired schizophrenic 50-something looking lost at the new bar to the goony rich-kid royalty living "high" up in the penthouse. Our guide is, apparently, an excellent lock pick.
That's how we eventually got into this "secret" red room, where Chaplin would hang out. This was attached to the old (now abandoned) lobby space scene two pictures up (above Andy Dick). I'm getting ahead of myself. It's still exciting to remember.
We took a short break from the hotel to enjoy "the last bar on Skid Row" (where Bukowski spent his days; also home to 1/2 beers for a buck). We came back and went straight to the roof of the Alexandria, where there was a two person photo shoot going on. Another thing I like about LA is that once you breech that surface, it is even more itself then you suspected it might be. I think in a lot of cities, you can see what you're getting on the surface, and the further you look the more you feel like there's nothing left to learn.
Anyway, we may all have been living on the edge, but only George was sitting on it, too:
I had to go to the bathroom. So our guide took us to "the abandoned lobby," a massive, empty, corroding second floor. There were huge bay windows, two bars, the original check-in desk, and an elaborate ceiling with fancy moldings and textures.
When I came out, everyone else was gone. I started taking pictures until a security guard appeared and told me to leave. I went downstairs and outside. I called the one sober member of the group asking where everyone went.
"Oh we're in this secret room and they are tearing these pictures off the wall."
By the time I got to the room, our guide had filled an elevator with giant old photos. Some were of old movie stars and many were signed. We took these up to the penthouse, where the rich kids were vaguely enthusiastic to receive us/them. With the photos stashed, we retreated to a few other bars in the area.
Eventually we made it back to our guides new apartment. The buildings were still mostly garment factories, but some had been converted to residential hotels, and some of those were being converted into lofts and condos. She was in at the ground level of this mutation, and for $1600 she had more space than I could imagine, as though the walls of four residential rooms had been knocked down to create a giant live/work space. There was another spectacular view of the greater downtown area. LA is uniquely stunning at night; it seems to never end. Many of the buildings are labeled by the company that owns them, Blade Runner style.
Down her street past the Orpheum was the official after party for the art walk. There was a password needed to get in, and the one we were given ("small balls") didn't work. We waited long enough and were let in, up thirty stairs to a bizarre art space that seemed elaborately decorated and otherwise uninhabitable. The wire art (above) was a real highlight, as was the ATM machine basked in green light. The party seemed to be slowing down when we arrived, but still satisfying to find hiding on a ghostly street with an old theater and homeless men who could harmonize beautifully.
At 3:30 we were in Thai town, sitting down for some electrifying panang curry. At 4 a.m. we were winding our way back to Long Beach, taking the 710 for it's surreal loop through the massive port. Wondering what was arriving in those thousands of shipping containers was a perfect dessert. It was safe to assume they were full of awesome, important, incredible, and utterly twisted items that would outfit the worlds inside the universe that is LA.
ESSENTIAL READING
"The fact that taking a faux drug can powerfully improve some people's health—the so-called placebo effect—has long been considered an embarrassment to the serious practice of pharmacology."
Wired on why "Placebos are getting more effective."
8.23.2009
8.22.2009
PINK FLOYD
The History Channel has "The Making of Dark Side of the Moon" up on Youtube. This clip shows how they made the 7/8 loop on "Money." Via Evan.
8.21.2009
REAL TIME
Bill Maher brought Brad Pitt onto Real Time to discuss the following: creating 150 architecturally progressive, environmentally sustainable homes in New Orleans, and to discuss a comment Pitt made on the Today Show about his hypothetical campaign for Mayor, which would involve a platform of legalized and taxed pot, legal gay marriage, and "no religion." Essential viewing!
8.19.2009
GREAT SENTENCE
Great sentence:
"Let us drink the blood of the earth and gargle it with great aplomb!"
Excerpted from Dave Eggers' Wild Things in The New Yorker
CAPTION CONTEST
"You'd never know it, but the last time I wore this suit I committed the most hysterical suite of felonies."PERSONAS
If you type your name (or a name) into this search box, it visualizes the search and colorizes your persona. Highly recommended (and seen on ycombinator).
8.18.2009
OP-ED
Good attribution, NYT. But what's a "president?"Obama's op-ed in the Times is well-written, as one might expect from a man who is literate and interested in reality.
"There’s no reason that we shouldn’t be catching diseases like breast cancer and prostate cancer on the front end. It makes sense, it saves lives and it can also save money."
8.16.2009
8.15.2009
MICHIEL SCHUURMAN
Sometimes, I have so many tabs open for so many days on end that I can't remember how I came across the thing I'm rediscovering. So it goes with Michiel Schuurman, a great designer with an unrelenting blog of fascinating shit.
BONBONKAKKU
From We Love You So, aka the best blog out there: BonBonKakku! Custom fabrics, all of which look scrumptious.
8.14.2009
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