Music of the Future, Music of the Past

.

[via DJ Stef]

Image of the Day

.

Me and my brother, I'm guessing 1982?
From a disc of family photos my dad gave me for my birthday.

Cuuuuuuute

.

Your Weekly Mr. Littlejeans

.

"Mine's Bigger"

.

The five-ton ball of rubber bands groaned and swayed as the crane lifted it from the driveway. A small frog hopped out from underneath.

“Let’s cross our fingers and hope we don’t see if it bounces,” said Edward Meyer, who bought the ball for an undisclosed sum for Ripley’s Believe It or Not!

Then he called to Joel Waul, the ball’s creator [pictured above]. “Pretty exciting, right?” Mr. Meyer said.

“Yeah,” said Mr. Waul, 28, the soft-spoken son of a surgical administrator and Jamaican musician. “Cool.”

Read the rest of it at nytimes.com.
See also: Steinski on his books and the nature of collecting.

Photo Alan Diaz/AP via NYT

Hell, Yes

.


"Director Ti West cares less about plot and gore than establishing a rigorously naturalistic mood, which he details with the precision and care of the early films of Roman Polanski." –Jason Zinoman, Vanity Fair

Audio slide show with director Ti West at nytimes.com.
Featurette here.

Image of the Day

.
Tom Marioni Free Beer – an installation made from the detritus of his beer party salon as it was exhibited/hosted at SFMOMA in 1979, under the title The Act of Drinking Beer With Friends is the Highest Form of Art.

Watch a 2-minute video about it at SFMOMA.org.
More Tom Marioni here.

The Songs That We Sing

.
Since I'm finishing up design work on a record her parents made in the '60s, I thought I'd post something about the upcoming Charlotte Gainsbourg album, produced by Beck. You can download the title song "IRM" for free by visiting her website and entering your email address. It's short and sweet with a Liquid Liquid kind of feel to it that I really like, and quite different from the stuff on her previous record (also very good), produced by Air, Jarvis Cocker, Neil Hannon (Divine Comedy), and Nigel Godrich. Here Gainsbourg talks a little about the making of IRM:



Charlotte Gainsbourg's IRM will be out in the US this coming January and there's another single on the way between now and then, a duet with Beck called "Heaven Can Wait."

[via Wonting]

Image of the Day

.

Emily at Bus Stop for the Dumb Eyes party earlier this month. Pacific Standard wants its best girl back but alas she's stuck in school.

Motion and Notation

.
Brooklyn-born icon of modern landscape architecture Lawrence Halprin died this past Sunday at the age of 93. Halprin co-designed Seattle's Freeway Park (pictured above), among many other well-known projects. From the New York Times' obituary:

“He almost single-handedly reclaimed the city as the purview of the landscape architect,” said Charles Birnbaum, founder and president of the Cultural Landscape Foundation.... He claimed little interest in decoration or prettiness, but cared deeply how people would move through a created space.

Halprin had a really interesting life – read about it here.

A Camera is a Tool for Learning How to SeeWithout a Camera

.

[ click images to enlarge / click here to view all ]

"A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera" –Dorothea Lange

Flight to Mars

.

I have no idea what the story is with this, but I do
enjoy dance rap with dyno-bass, and found this mildly distracting/enjoyable.

[via Raindrop Hustla]

Image of the Day

Chili, jalapeño cornbread... camouflaged Hi-Life... ladies and gentleman, it's fall

One of my biggest clients is based in Miami, and apparently they're having a heat wave down there, but up here in the Northwest the fall weather is definitely upon us. I actually prefer to be a little cold (it wakes me up), and I don't even mind the rain too much, though the mile walk to the office can be a little daunting when it's really coming down (Emily was sweet and drove me yesterday). When I get home at the end of the day, all I want to do is eat chili. Here's how I make it – adapted from the classic Toni Smith recipe.

Bison Chili
Put the following things in a big pot in order, over medium-to-high heat, and let each thing you mix in sit for maybe 3-5 minutes before adding the next thing.
Approx 2 tbsp olive oil
4 cloves minced garlic
1 medium yellow onion and 1 medium red onion, diced
1 pound ground bison (chop into smallish chunks)
Approx 8 oz. champagne of beers
Approx 3 tbsp chili powder
Approx 1 tbsp cayenne pepper
Approx 1/2 tbsp black pepper
Several dashes cumin
[Mix everything you've put in so far really well]
28 oz. diced tomatoes [mix together everything and let it sit for 5-10 minutes]
2 cans pinto beans, preferably Goya brand, liquid drained
1 can small read beans, ditto
[Mix everything together really thoroughly. After 5 minutes, reduce heat to low. Put the lid on it and let it go for 45 minutes or an hour, stirring occasionally just so it doesn't stick to the bottom.]
While it's cooking, dice 3 large tomatoes and a bunch of scallions, and grate some cheddy.
[When the chili's done, turn off the stove and take the lid off. Mix it up.]
Add half the tomatoes or so and mix them in.
Put half the scallions on top, don't mix them in.
Serve the rest along with the cheese on the side.
Put some sour cream on it if you want.
If you like your chili lazerbeam hot, I think you know what to add.

Find a football game on TV and wait for spring.

This Lady Will Tear Your Heart Out.

.
.
.
NPR did a quick feature on the Betty Davis album Nasty Gal today – click here to listen.

[In case anyone can't get enough of me talking about myself, I posted about the designs of Betty's two newly issued CDs here and here. Both Nasty Gal and Is It Love Or Desire are available in stores or directly from Light in the Attic Records. The image at left is a life-size stand-up poster I designed for placement in select retail stores – click to enlarge.]

Image of the Day

.

A postcard that my great grandmother Gigi sent to her mother in Seattle (addressed to "Mrs. Strathdee" – that's where my name came from, it's Scottish), on a trip to the Olympic Peninsula in August, 1922. The first line she wrote was "Dear Ma, This is to let you know that we're this far."

Digging In Your Own Crates

Above: Corset by the Warner Brothers Corset Company, ca. 1952-1960, and E.V. Day's Cherry Bomb Vortex (red sequin dress with monofilament and turnbuckles and stainless steel base, 2002) – both on view in Vortexhibition Polyphonica, a rotating exhibition of work from the Henry Art Gallery's permanent collection. Emily and I ran through the show this past Friday night and are looking forward to going back, especially since it will be changing a lot between now and when it closes in early 2011. I always love it when MoMA does this – devotes space to curating shows that make connections between works in their own holdings – and the show at the Henry is no less engaging. Go to henryart.org for more info.

The corset image above is from the Textiles and Costumes section of the Henry's digital archive. Makes me wonder what else they have in there, waiting to be catalogued.