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.
My buddy Tom is making a mexicocentric gnar gnar surf film called Dias Tranquilos. He’s got some insane footage in the can and over the past few swells we’ve been shooting at the same spots and sharing boats. He just put together a teaser reel from some of the amazing swell that rolled through our parts last month. Some of the footage was taken during the same session as the photo above, check it out.
Incidentally, on the afternoon the above photo was taken, Tom was shooting from the middle of the boat and I from the front. After a particularly large outside set, the boat barely made it over and landed a bit on it’s starboard side, me in the air. I landed in between the front of the boat and the first row of seats, on top of Chicharro’s board bag. A soft landing followed by the unmistakable sound of a stringer cracking in half. Big oops.
If there was one physical place that manifested my skating style as a kid, The Brooklyn Banks were it. The gold standard for east coast street skating. ‘88, ‘89, this was my temple. After a week of school, Friday night I’d make my way into the city and for two solid days straight you could find me here (or in Washington Sq. Park). Big piece of my teen years. gone.
Aaron Rose picks up where Beautiful Losers left off with D.I.Y. America, a new short series of films about DIY creativity from the worlds of skateboarding, punk rock and hip-hop. Above is the first in the six part series.
Good way to procrastinate this morning. oh and on my radio this morning?
I totally missed this one when it came out. Blame it on my lack of television viewing habit.
I really dig the style, editing, audio, etc… I usually cringe at any product that markets itself with surfing, but this is an exception. great spot, naturally by the very talented Jonathan Glazer (Director of the very badass Sexy Beast1). [via DMoyes]
You gonna do the job? Do the job. Do it. Yes Grovesnor. Yes Roundtree. Do the job! ↩
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!
Today the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. FEC. that corporations and unions can pour unprecedented amounts of money into elections. This from Lawrence Lessig and his project Change Congress:
Right now, special interests have more influence over our political system than regular folks because of our broken campaign finance laws. These special interests pump millions of dollars into congressional campaigns each cycle, and as a result, they block real change on issue after issue.
Here at Change Congress, we believe that politicians should work for the people, not special interests. But it’s not enough to push politicians to stay out of the system of corruption—we have to reform the system itself. That’s why we support a hybrid of small-dollar donations and public financing, to keep big money out of politics.
Lessig wrote that mission statement for Change Congress before the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC.
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.
More videos here, here and here. These come from Greg Liddle’s site. I’ve been mesmerized by these hull riding videos for months now. Watching them over and over, studying the subtle movements, foot placements, rail digs and bottom turns.
Definition of “Shuffler”: someone who shuffles up and down the surfboard instead of properly walking foot over foot. Considered improper surfboard manuevering ↩
Jamie's posterous – Home did you know that Jamie Watson (pineapple luv) has a photoblog as well? i didn't either. go now. soak up the luv and radiate back to the people around you.
How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room | Mark Lynas | Environment | The Guardian "Copenhagen was a disaster. That much is agreed. But the truth about what actually happened is in danger of being lost amid the spin and inevitable mutual recriminations. The truth is this: China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful "deal" so western leaders would walk away carrying the blame. How do I know this? Because I was in the room and saw it happen." – sheeeit.
70-Minute Video Review of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace | /Film the best critique on old star wars trilogy versus new star wars trilogy you will ever see. the guy's voice is a little "silence of the lambs" but that will come back around later on in the review (i.e. it's a joke). And his critique is dead on. He says it best, "for someone who is under the age of like 20 who says his least favorite film in the series is The Empire Strikes Back because it is the boringest one, then I suggest you shut this review off right now, before I carefully explain how much of a fucking idiot you are." – love the f-bomb. Despite the hokey, weird diversions, I'll bite.
Luca is now nine months old and you shall know his velocity.
Little man is starting to get the gist of the whole communication thing, he’s starting to use grunts for “put me down” and weird humming, mmm, hummmm, mmm sounds for “pick me up”, along with a range of arm and leg motions. He’s starting to eat more solidish food and yes, it’s been confirmed that he is indeed of Mexican origin. His favorite of the moment is black beans, that’s ma boy. This month has been all about the deepening of our bond. I’ve felt closer to him in the past couple of weeks than I have since he was born, or should I say that I feel that he is becoming more accustomed to having me around. Probably because he’s finally waking up to the fact that there are two of those adult things that change your diapers, feed you and give you rad hugs: the one with the boobies and the other one. The one with the scratchy-ass beard. We’re finally into the “falling on your head” stage, I don’t think I’ve heard Luca cry this much, ever. Constantly falling, hitting himself in the head or face. Just pick him right up and show him his “peekaboo kisses” book and it is all good.
For some reason the Canon G9 (which does HD btw?! – just figured that one out, smarty panties) had the video setting all messed up and these clips were the result. I think it got set on the “take a video frame every half a second” setting. Add some music and viola…
Craig Steely Architecture wicked new site full of yummy new architecture projects from my favorite San Fran/Hawaii based nice modernist architect and surfer Craig Steely. I love this guy's work! nice shiny new site.
Picture Show: The Harvest | GOOD Mathieu Young's photography documentation of a nor cal harvest. beautiful shots, interesting subject matter.
Big Spaceship | Labs Blog – A dash of Rosemary on your CSS "Rosemary is an open-source modular cascading filter-based modification system for CSS files; or commonly recognized as the acronym, OSMCFBMS4CSS." – for css coders this is rad!
Letters of Note: Onward! this is one classy rejection letter. if you ever need to write a rejection letter let this be your template and dont we all wish we could receive rejection letters with this much time, effort, wit and humility put into a standard form letter.
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.
Yesterday afternoon Hurricane Patricia snuck up our backdoor and threw some nice huge storm swell our way this morning. I spent most of the day chasing swell with Tzahui and taking a ton of pics. I had the video camera with me and shot a few clips before the battery went dead, so murphy’s law. I strung a few together but they don’t do justice to the size of the larger sets that were coming in. This is mostly the smaller sets and shore dump. I had one minute of battery life. The outside sets were bananas, at one spot, a friend remarked that the tubes could fit jeeps tucked inside, after escaping the wicked shore dump.
I manned the camera for most of the day, but did manage to get about an hour in the water, at the tail end, mid-day after the wind was up. I couldn’t sack up and kept having visions of the closeout at the end of the ride. I scored one wave and headed for shore.
This swell was big, thick and Gnarlsely. photos to come.
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.
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...
