Friday, February 5, 2010

Image of the Day

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Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone with SprintSpeed

Your Weekly Mr. Littlejeans

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Don't take my picture dad, we're studying.

Take Two Steps Back

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St. Vincent tonight at Neumo's.
Not going, too tired. You go, tell me how it was.
Or, just watch these videos, they're funny.



St. Vincent "Laughing With A Mouth Of Blood" video with THUNDERANT (Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen). See also:


[I think I might have posted that before, I can't remember.]




More at THUNDERANT.
More St. Vincent at ilovestvincent.com.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Image of the Day

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From the Architecture and Design department at The Museum of Modern Art: Pininfarina (Battista "Pinin" Farina). Cisitalia 202 GT Car. 1946. Aluminum body. Manufactured by S.p.A. Carrozzeria Pininfarina, Torino, Italy. Gift to MoMA by the manufacturer.

I'm posting this as image of the day because it appeared at the top of MoMA's email newsletter today, and it reminded me that one of my favorite places in the museum is the part of the design department where they display a car from their collection. More at MoMA.org

Counting the Old Days, It Always Equals One

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A long overdue update from J. Ralph Phillips! It's been too long.



While we're at it, one of my all-time favorite J. Ralph Phillips cuts:
J. Ralph Phillips Breaks Like Broke mp3

More at jralphphillips.com.

One person’s helpful mood improver is another’s worryingly effective stimulant

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An article in this morning's Times details Scotland's problems with Buckfast, a popular barleywine brewed by Benedictine monks and containing 15% alcohol and caffeine equivalent to eight Cokes per bottle. "The police in the depressed industrial district of Strathclyde," it notes in particular, "recently told a BBC program that the drink had been mentioned in 5,638 crime reports between 2006 and 2009 (the bottle was used as a weapon in 114 of them)." Nationally, the Scottish government "estimates that alcohol misuse costs Scotland $3.6 billion annually in health and social problems and loss of productivity."


Moreover,
"It’ll blow your head off,” said James Grimson, smoking a cigarette outside a pub near the center of Coatbridge recently, speaking of Buckfast.
...
"It goes straight to your head,” [said Martin Rooney, 48
,] “but it’s not my cup of tea.” (Mr. Rooney noted that his cup of tea is half a bottle of vodka a night.)
...
"It’s always wise to remember that Jesus turned water into wine,” [Buckfast PR spokesman] Jim Wilson said in an interview.
...
"Have you ever tried Benalyn cough syrup?” asked Sharon Macauley, a sales assistant at G & B’s Newsbox general store.
No, m'am.
Click here for the whole story.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Image of the Day

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Theodore Roosevelt in deer skin hunting suit, 1885, by photographer George Grantham Bain. Read some cool and/or interesting stuff about Roosevelt here.

See also: Our trip to Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Image of the Day

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I don't know what this is
but I think I need it.

Make It Work Etc.

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A lot of people say that Haute Couture is a relic of the past, but the inspiration, the references, the search for something new – in addition to the more surface-level beauty of the colors, the shapes, and the culture itself – keeps me interested in coverage of the shows every season.

Givenchy Spring 2010 Haute Couture, by Riccardo Tisci.

That being said, compared with some past seasons, the Spring 2010 shows last week seemed a bit lackluster (Cathy Horyn asked, "How many couture collections really proposed a new style, or showed you something that was the result of amazing techniques?").

Jean Paul Gaultier. Some nice details.

I thought the return of former Balenciaga designer Josephus Thimister was the most interesting thing that came out of it, but I'll do a separate post about that. For now, here are some of the things that caught my eye in the main shows. (And yes, this is clearly Emily's territory on the blog... but since she is buried in schoolwork, I thought I would attempt to pinch-hit. I mean, hey, I bought my mom a subscription to Vogue when I was 8. Let's do this.)

Chanel by Karl Lagerfeld. The hair reminds me of the sorority girls in Animal House ("That boy is a p-i-g PIG"). On the surface it seems...I keep thinking of a young Pat Nixon or something, not that I have any idea what she looked like. The details are impressive though – one outfit had something like 13,000 satin flowers on it – and combined with those crazy road warrior accessories the contrast is interesting. "I don’t want vintage...and in a way I am vintage," Lagerfeld was quoted as saying. "Like a box of macaroons projected into cyberspace," said Suzy Menkes.

Christian Dior, by John Galliano. A little bit expected – it doesn't feel very relevant to me. I say that as a fan, and I guarantee that if you got close to these pieces your mind would be blown, but from afar I didn't find this collection very exciting. I would like to see Gaultier and Galliano do shows that are totally out of their own heads some time, as opposed to such heavily referential collections every season. I am a sucker for red and for riding gear, however. What.

Armani Privé Spring 2010 Haute Couture, by Giorgio Armani. The way the light hits that blue dress is cool. Otherwise...it was an Armani show.

Valentino – the first collection by Valentino protégés Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli. A little boring overall but the lightness and layering of the fabric is beautiful. Maybe this is because I'm a dude but I don't like the little bows – I understand that you sometimes have to do things to tie a look together (imagine that middle look without a bow – it would need something) but I might prefer a knot. Those fabric roses that Tom Ford did at Gucci – something more modern. I don't get the instinct to do a jacket like that one on the left, and then along comes a little bow.

So there you have it. Some day Emily will be done with school and coherent fashion coverage will return to the PS. As always, we thoroughly recommend Cathy Horyn's coverage of the shows (and she's Twitting now too, if you're into that kind of thing).

More images at Fashionologie.

Special Analog Set

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Via hot tip from my man DJ Suspence:


More info on Typeface, a film about the Hamilton Wood Type Museum of Two Rivers, Wisconsin,
here.

Movie poster by Dennis Ichiyama

Monday, February 1, 2010

When I Grow Up

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This madness compelled me to take another look at the work of Fever Ray. Thus far, I've been more a fan in theory than in practice (does anyone else make that designation? I make it a lot). Now that I pay closer attention, I'm liking Fever Ray more and more. The thing is, I think of what she does more as performance than as stand-alone music; it feels like without the visuals, you only get half the story.

Karin Dreijer Andersson, aka Fever Ray

In some cases, the visual elements are much more elaborate than the songs – the dirge "If I Had A Heart" feels like an electronically parsed version of Bonnie Prince Billy's "My Home Is The Sea," and the video makes it epic. (Incidentally, I can't help being reminded of the river scene in Night of the Hunter.)


Anyway, there you have it: slightly more into Fever Ray.
A
nd this concludes my dinner break.


Info and updates at feverray.com
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Image of the Day

I love the graphics on this piece by our homegirl Lily, from her Urban Outfitters line Yellow Is Gold by Sunshine & Shadow. Click here to buy and here for a lil' write-up at New York magazine.

You Have to Get a Little Detached,
and Then Come Back and Look At The World

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In Saturday's New York Times, Bob Herbert had a nice remembrance of historian Howard Zinn, who died last week at the age of 87:
I always wondered why Howard Zinn was considered a radical. (He called himself a radical.) He was an unbelievably decent man who felt obliged to challenge injustice and unfairness wherever he found it. What was so radical about believing that workers should get a fair shake on the job, that corporations have too much power over our lives and much too much influence with the government, that wars are so murderously destructive that alternatives to warfare should be found, that blacks and other racial and ethnic minorities should have the same rights as whites, that the interests of powerful political leaders and corporate elites are not the same as those of ordinary people who are struggling from week to week to make ends meet?
...
That he was considered radical says way more about this society than it does about him.
Read the rest here (the Times' original obit is here).

Here, Wallace Shawn reads an endlessly relevant November 1970 speech by Zinn on the topic of civil disobedience:

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Wow Me

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[via SLOG ]