Beautiful new music video for one of my favorite musicians Mia Doi Todd. Her new album is coming out I guess and is produced by Jon Brion. The video was directed by Michel Gondry. I love the rawness, kinda like a plain man’s Busby Berkeley.
Colorful writing – The Mex Files the fine art of "notas rojas" (red notes). Mex Files details the "purple prose typical of the yellow journalism" of police reports in local mexican newspapers: "While sometimes the author — to stretch out the word count — has to resort to low tricks like referring to a police car as a “blue and white 2008 Dodge Neon, with plate number… “, the nota rota writer strives for variation in his or her craft. The banality of criminal activity sometimes reduces even the most creative of nota roja writers to clichés (there are a plethora of ways to say “corpse” — the center of attention but least interesting character in any murder story – all of which have been use to death), but the best are true artists. They still manage to surprise us, enlighten us and delight us with their mastery of the language."
Jessica Hische / Humble Pied. great newish video + ichat based site about creatives sharing advice. and the best quote I've heard all week: "“The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.” – Jessica Hirsche
I Gave My 3 Year Old an iPhone: Have I Created a Monster? awesome piece on young children using the iphone to learn. some of you are already cringing (yes you, in the back), but I think it's great. this kind of thing is gonna be so standard in 20 years. I thin it's kind of scary to think that the jobs your kids will have when they grow up, won't be invented til they're in high school. and your kids will learn two to four times as much as you have, in your whole lifetime, by the time they get out of college. [via Stevey]
Polaroid PIC 1000 mock-ups of the new film-based under-$100 Polaroid cameras that are coming out. These are the result of The Impossible Project that I linked to a while back. They bought the rights to produce Polaroid cameras and film stock. Freakin' awesome. I'll have the wood grain one, thank you!
Official Google Blog: A new approach to China must read press release from SVP at Google, about China's censoring authorities' organized and highly sophisticated hack attacks on Google's infrastructure as well as 20 other large companies, in various sectors as part of a plan to uncover information on human rights activists in China. This is no joke.
I repeat, this is a google press release, not conjecture. [via DF]
A Torturous Interview: John Yoo Does The Daily Show (VIDEO) | TPM LiveWire John Yoo is the legal scholar behind the total crap that Bush/Cheney used to justify torture. this guy is insane. must not miss episode of the Daily Show. In part two Yoo admits that he never met Bush, the guy who he essentially gave Imperial powers too, simply because Cheney asked him to.
Robert Hodgin | Portfolio generative computational art, you may know him as Flight404. awesome. [via surfstation]
Bodhi Oser's new portfolio site run. don't walk. to check out Oser's new portfolio site. one word: fuckingimpressive. Oser (working under Tom Adler's Art-Direction), is responsible for almost single-handedly changing the face of how surf culture is marketed. The singular design aesthetic and definitive photo editing used for Quicksilver/Roxy and mostly all of your favorite surf books, Oser's influence in surf culture can not be underestimated or oversold.
Surfstation – Joe Klein "Over the past 30 years, Republicans fed the delusions that you can have low taxes and world-class public services, and Democrats acquiesced in it. It would be nice if we had an honest national conversation about revenues–and the sun-setting of many of the Bush tax cuts this year provides the perfect arena for it–but don't count on that taking place."
- Joe Klein
James Cameron's Avatar Movie Performance Capture Featurette amazing behind the scenes featurette on the wholly new capture tech behind the movie. James Cameron is a genius. He really does get across the "uncanny valley". I loved Avatar.
artist spotlight: Tony Larson rad interview with Calarts homie / Girl Skateboards designer / fine artist Tony Larson. I've never seen his board graphics. They are impressive. intimidatingly impressive. love them
kanYe West : Blog : HECUBA "THE MAGIC" My homie Isaiah Seret gets the nod from Kanye on a new video he co-directed with Jon Beasley for Hecuba. and the video is amazing. as usual. really nicely done. filmed on RED with wicked production design and costuming.
Milton Glaser on drawing, while drawing « Drawn! "I'm convinced that it is only through drawing that I look at things carefully and the act of drawing makes me conscious of what I'm looking at…" – amazing, hypnotic, insightful, revolutionary, subversive.
The Agave Lab Method « Agave Lab awesome article on pair programming related working method by Agave Lab, a "nearsourcing" company in Guadalajara. the method involves pairing programmers in teams of two and having them share and switch off on projects, very cool.
Avalanche Skier POV Helmet Cam Burial & Rescue in Haines, Alaska on Vimeo your inspirational video for the year! a guy gets caught in an avalanche and his crew find and rescue him in 4 minutes and 30 seconds. and the whole thing is captured on video. the vimeo page has a full account of the process. this guy is so lucky.
Werner Herzog Film School | Reel Guyz "Werner Herzog is either a freak, a god, or a figment of our collective imagination. Take a look at his track record." – click through to see the interview where Herzog gets shot during an interview by a sniper and continues the interview. I'm pretty sure Herzog has the voice of god.
Roc Raida (from the DJ crew X-Men) passed away this weekend after complications from a mixed martial accident in August.
Roc Raida helped bring physical showmanship to turntablism, cutting and fading like a Harlem Globetrotter, his body tricks are legendary: behind the back, around the bend and back again, with his tongue, nose and any other appendage that could move the crossfader. And it wasn’t just a gimmick, he could cut, scratch and beat jungle as well as any of the heavyweight turntablists and he could do it with his back to the tables with his arms wrapped around his body. Dude had serious physical presence.
YouTube – Red Fang "Prehistoric Dog" i'm not really into metal, but i can appreciate its sonic qualities. awesome video and i gotta say the song itself is pretty rad.
I AM T-PAIN iPhone app if they make a similar iphone app for Kanye West I'll buy an iphone just to use it.
Kooks | a short film by Guy Fiorita localism taken back to the city block. great explanation of just how wacked localism can be. [via Korduroy.tv's tweet]
No Impact Man great looking docu about a man who decides to practice what he preaches and gives up the good life of consumerism. awesome.
Beastie Boys – Doublecheck Your Head a mashup of Beastie Boy lyrics and music. Take the lyrics from Check Your Head and combine/mix/cut/match them with music from all their other albums. very refreshing and well done.
Just the fact that this moment in Jamaican music was caught on film is an amazing thing, but listen to Delroy’s voice, his inflections, his breathing is even melodic and hypnotic. This guy’s voice is charismatic. And a song this prolific, cut in one take in Prince Jammy’s bare-wall shed. classic.
New Kings of Convenience. Awesome! The first song is called “Mrs Cold” and it’s everything you hope to hear from these guys. There’s a radio rip floating around the internets. The album is coming shortly, StereoGum has the skinny. Erlend and Erik sent this postcard out to friends on their mailing list, I guess. love it. It’s nice to hear new music from them, it’s been toooooo long.
oh, there’s also a few live shows up on youtube where they play most of the new album. can’t wait.
Apple: Secrecy Does Not Scale – Anil Dash is Apple slowly self-immolating when it screws over iphone developers with all this secrecy garbage? maven indie iphone devs are fleeing the platform in packs. is the iphone's golden years over?
Custom Letter — LetterCult holy crapola. so much juicy good typography here. loving it. inspiration for days. [via @Nybe]
Scientists Are Concerned About Cancer in Animals new nasty, virulent forms of cancer are being discovered in wild animals, that are the result of heavy carcinogenic environmental contamination. are human beings really the top of the evolutionary chain? How did cheap crap from Wal Mart become the thing we collectively care about most? [via @jimmoriarty]
Isolator my new favorite app. when you need to concentrate on something your doing in a particular application (like writing a blog post in Safari or designing something out in photoshop) just hit the command keys for this app and it hides all your other app windows and the dock and presents your current working window on a black background. hit it again to return the windows. should be built into Mac OS X.
Minimal Mac one my new favorite blogs. tons of tips on reducing the visual clutter on your desktop (both the virtual and analog ones). less is more.
100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About | GeekDad | Wired.com my favorites:
- #18: Computers and Videogaming: Wires. OK, so they’re not gone yet, but it won’t be long
- #45: Not knowing exactly what all of your friends are doing and thinking at every moment.
- #81: Han shoots first.
YouTube – PS22 Chorus "JOGA" by Bjork inspirational. the kids go full emo on Bjork's track. this is passionate teaching and engaged students. Apparently this class does several popular songs. and this one the kids learned in one day. I'm sending Luca to this school, where is it? more on their blog
Dicks of the World | Arkitip Intel I'm really digging this new board graphic by my old school homie Michael Leon. The United Nations erm, um, Johnsons
"We Bring Fear" | Mother Jones understanding Mexico's drug war: "There are two Mexicos. There is the one reported by the US press, a place where the Mexican president is fighting a valiant war on drugs, aided by the Mexican Army and the Mérida Initiative, the $1.4 billion in aid the United States has committed to the cause. This Mexico has newspapers, courts, laws, and is seen by the United States government as a sister republic. It does not exist. There is a second Mexico where the war is for drugs, where the police and the military fight for their share of drug profits, where the press is restrained by the murder of reporters and feasts on a steady diet of bribes, and where the line between the government and the drug world has never existed. The reporter lives in this second Mexico." [via Intersections]
Some E-Books Are More Equal Than Others – Pogue’s Posts Blog – NYTimes.com This is why DRM is evil: Amazon intentionally deletes Kindle owner's copies of George Orwell's 1984: "This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned…. it’s like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we’ve been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table." – the biggest screw up in the history of digital distribution.
I’m trying to figure out what influenced me more: the music or the graphic design behind The Specials, The Selector and a handful of other bands on 2 Tone Records. These bands were definitely on heavy, constant rotation for most of my teenage years. The sinister vibe of the piano/synth and chorus of The Specials’ ‘Ghost Town’ and the neo-70s soft-core basement pron film horns and bass of The Selector’s ‘The Selecter’ were permanent fixtures of my dj sets at art school. I still listen to their albums on a regular basis. And as influential as their music was on me, the graphic design and visual identity behind these bands was just as imprinted on my brain. Effective, cohesive and minimal.
In 1979, fresh from art college, David Storey joined the team that, under the creative direction of The Specials’ Jerry Dammers, created the graphic identity for the band and their label, Two Tone. While the fashion ‘look’ for Two Tone was already well established – shiny suits, thin ties, pork pie hats and penny loafers all topped-off with a pair of Rayban Wayfarers – Storey and his partner John ‘Teflon’ Sims, helped create the visuals to go with it. Now devoting his time to painting, David Storey talked to CR about his work.
Incidentally, Storey is also the graphic designer behind the look of The Housemartins, another early high school favorite of mine (‘London 0 Hull 4′) and has Housemartin posters for sale as well. WTF factoid of the day: Norman Cook aka Fatboy Slim was in The Housemartins! I didn’t know that until I linked over to their wiki page just now. weird, but true.
Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine Online – Video Interview with Ewok my old school Milwaukee homie Geo (ewok) gets a nice mini-interview on vimby. George is one of the sickest artists I have ever met, it just so happens that he's also one of the sickest graffiti artists.
IMBOYCRAZY Alexi Wasser is "I'm Boy Crazy" and she writes pretty good. I'd be nonplussed if her stories were fictional and I’d hate to be one of her ex-boyfriends
YouTube – iPhone 3GS dropped in the pool. Still works! if you only needed one reason why you should chuck your blackberry and get an iPhone, let this be it: "KhenaKara accidentally dropped his iPhone 3GS into a pool while video recording and amazingly it kept recording. Since he was recording you can watch the whole experience in the video below. Days after the event the phone still works fine."
YouTube – IPHONE 3GS UNBOXING steven frank's unboxing video for the iPhone 3GS. the only unboxing video you will ever need to see.
SHANE LAVALETTE / JOURNAL Lavalette is a wicked photographer and independent publisher of a fine-art photography zine called Lay Flat. His blog is mostly about photography, fine art and self-publishing. a great resource and seriously inspirational.
YouTube – BooneOakley.com – Home Page BooneOakley, a relatively small new ad agency, doesn't have a website. they put their whole site on YouTube. the whole site is in video, scribbled with a dry, hilarious, well-written voice-over. awesome!
mañanarama: luz del mundo awesome post on the atrocious church architecture of scientology-esque Mexican corporatocratic religion called "Luz del Mundo" or "Light of the World".
Urban Outfitters LSTN Urban Outfitters has a pretty cool music download thingy happening on their site. it's called "LSTN" and each volume has over 20 free tracks packaged individually (versus dl'ing as a mix). Tons of great artists and there are 5 volumes already. time to find some new music…. Incidentally, why iz everyone hatin' on vowels?
beck :: "sunday morning" (velvet underground & nico cover) Beck is insane! He has a new feature on his site called "Record Club". Where he and musician friends of his including Devendra Barnhart record covers of classic songs. The records are to be very minimal in production and done in under a day from start to finish with little to no rehearsal. Awesome idea! The first song to come out of Record Club is Beck's cover of "Sunday Morning (Velvet Underground & Nico). and I gotta say it's probably my most favorite VU cover ever. Beck kills it.
Hi, my name is Ed. I’m a graphic designer who lived in L.A. I quit my job, sold my car, rented out my house and moved to Mexico. Along the way, I learned how to surf and fell in love. This blog is my story. In these pages I write about and photograph my daily experience. I also post about things I find interesting: art, design, photography, music, tech, etc...
