Playing with Toys

I love this poster. My good buddy Joe Newton produced it earlier this summer—it's hand-carved letterpress with old metal and/or wood type, and was printed at Woodside Press, near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. If you click to enlarge you can see the texture in the printing. The imperfection is really nice.

Working on Leaving

Over at Monitor Mix Carrie Brownstein has been writing about moving (and more specifically about moving her music collection). This is of interest to me because I have less than six weeks to get my shite together and do the same. I remember when I was a kid my mom had some Goethe quote on the bulletin board (I will not attempt to paraphrase it here) about life, errr whatever, being the process of figuring out what to let go of and what to hold on to. It's easy to get rid of everything in one fell swoop, or to get rid of nothing at all, but how do you decide what has lasting value and gets to stay in that middle part of the venn diagram that is you?

I'm not just talking about records. The shit is complicated.

Brownstein writes that "Memory is as good of a storage space as anything." I'm going to repeat that to myself a bunch over the next couple weeks and then I'm going to get to work on re-curating my life.

Want My Compost?

In case you never saw it:

A Closed Mouth Gathers No Foot

That was the message on a church sign Emily and I drove past in southern Missouri, making our way across the country several years ago. We still laugh about it. Good church signs, whether intentionally funny or not, are some of the brightest gems of the road. Via SLOG, there's a website that has started to collect them in one place, under the headline Church Signs That Won't Make You Go To Church.

Click here for many more.

Shadowboxing

The Sunshine & Shadow Spring/Summer 2009 lookbook shoot was yesterday, some of it on a Bushwick rooftop with a beautiful blue sky and clouds overhead. Definitely my favorite collection yet and a great shoot. You'll have to wait to see the clothes till next Spring (it's a secret, never teach the Wu-Tang), but check out current and past seasons at sunshineandshadow.com.

This Charming Man

This morning I woke up to find an email waiting for me from my old buddy Pierre Consorti. We worked together at Visionaire for three years or so, until he took a job in Paris as art director at Work in Progress (now known as Petronio Associates). Founded by Ezra Petronio and Suzanne Koller, the firm produces possibly the best fashion magazine in the world, Self Service, as well as campaigns and identity for Chloé, Miu Miu, Prada, YSL, Bottega Veneta, Emilio Pucci, Colette, and many others. Pierre has a preternatural understanding of typography, and it would be difficult to overstate how much I learned from him. He is also one of the funniest people I have ever met.

Click here to check out some pictures and videos on Self Service and WIP's other work.

Look at it, Chuck

I know I contradicted myselfLook, I don't need that now

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The Blue Angels. I really don't get why people hate on them so much. Yeah, it's loud—that's kind of the point. When I was a kid, before they passed laws about how you can't hit the speed of sound above residential areas, the Blue Angels came so close to buzzing the top of our house (we were sitting on the roof, I think I was about 3) that a big branch just snapped off of the gigantic evergreen tree in our yard. I get that they are a symbol of our military might, which has inspired only complex, conflicted feelings in smart people since [arguably] Dien Bien Phu. But pardon our noise, motherfuckers, it's the sound of freedom.

Really amazing photo by Winners Circle, which is apparently some store next to the old Anne B.

Oh yeah, one other thing. I used to work at Martha Stewart, in the Starrett-Lehigh building on 26th at the Hudson River. In the days right after 9/11 there were F-18s flying routines down the river, so close that the building – a beautiful, strong old building by the same architect that did the Empire State building – would shake. Right at that point, I don't mind saying, I was glad for it. It's really complicated, the admiration you feel for these things, and the hope that we'll never have to (or decide to) use them again.

Say hello to my leetle friend:

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Just picked this baby up on eBay. It is clear I am regressing. Soon I will be 11 years old, taking my new steed off sweet jumps in the terrain park under I-5, four minutes' ride from our apartment.

Don't Front:

I've been sleeping on Don't Front for a minute—but it's a cold world out there, and the frontery never seems to cease, so I'm bringing it on back. Welcome once again to Don't Front, the series in which I tell you about something that you may think sucks, but it's actually one-hundred bucks, sucka.

Previously:
#1: Billy Ocean "The Love Zone"
#2: Beef Jerky
#3: Phone Cameras

This week:
#4 The movie Tombstone

Yes, it's historically inaccurate, ultra-Hollywood, and filled to the brim with over-acting by Kurt Russell and company—but the story moves along nicely and it's a very satisfying Western that fits comfortably somewhere between the Johns (Ford, Wayne) and The Unforgiven. Val Kilmer is thoroughly entertaining as Doc Holliday, Billy Bob Thornton has a funny cameo, and there are great lines galore, one of my favorites being "Law don't go around here, lawdog." Comes in handy when your wife is an attorney.

More than anything though, it's a good movie about friendship and camaraderie in this crazy, mixed-up, front-happy world. Cases in point:

1. A riverside post-mortem after a big gunfight in which Wyatt Earp (Kurt Russell) charges out into a hail of gunfire, taking out all of his would-be killers and walking away miraculously unscathed. Doc Holliday, who should be housebound on account of all the consumption and bourbon-fortified blood he's been coughing up, stands strong in helping Wyatt avenge the murder of his brothers.



2. Many years later, Wyatt is broke and aimless, and pays Doc one last visit on his deathbed.



It ain't a documentary, and nothing tops Deadwood, but for my money, Tombstone is one of the better westerns out there. Don't Front.

Cowgirl in the Sand

.Gisele in the desert with Mert & Marcus and Alex White, W, August 2008.

Veruschka in the desert with Francesco Rubartelli and Giorgio di Sant'angelo, Vogue, July 1968.

Travelin' Man

Some random images from my travels through Brooklyn yesterday.

Listen while you look:
Stanley Cowell Travelin' Man mp3

Fort Greene

Fort Greene

Brooklyn Heights

Read God's word, the Holy Bible, daily.
Read God's word: The Holy Bible Daily

I had the random thought walking past this empty lot that parts of Seattle are a little like Williamsburg, but without the dead-rat smell.

Chad & Lily at the biergarten. If you know a female that's down with the Lench Mob, watch your step 'cause the gat is kept in the purse like my homegirl YoYo.

Max Bill, Chadrobot, J.Ralph Phillips

And finally, the cat at Duff's in one of its less-violent moments.

A billboard grows in Brooklyn

Spotted in Dumbo this afternoon on a trip to Wax Poetics.
[click to enlarge]

Fresh Air

The Bronx-based band Air released only one album in its short tenure, a self-titled collection produced by Herbie Mann and released on his own Embryo label in 1971. The music is hard to categorize, occupying a space somewhere between jazz and folk (Other Music's Duane Harriott put it well: "If you can imagine Soft Machine jammin' with Weldon Irvine, you're almost there"), but the real draw is the unique soul in the voice of frontwoman Googie Coppola. There are definitely some more upbeat jams, but here's the one I always go back to:

Air Jail Cell mp3

The vinyl is tough to find (I traded for mine at Sound Library several years ago and I think the price tag was $45.00). Luckily you can snap up the CD, re-issued this week by DBK, for a cool soundtrack to the last few months of summer.