Free Design

In the neverending search for good podcasts (I have a hard time listening to music while I work sometimes – I end up focusing on it too closely, it distracts me), I almost can't believe I never knew about Design Matters, Debbie Millman's long-running series of interviews with notable designers. Particularly good, of the ones I've listened to so far, are interviews with hometown heroes Modern Dog and Art Chantry, and the series of interviews on art direction with the venerable Stephen Heller. Stefan Sagmeister, Luke Hayman, Michael Bierut, Milton Glaser, and many more await.

Check it out here or at Debbie Millman's blog.

And because I don't really have any images to go with this post, and I'm in a hurry, here are ten random images plucked from my hard drive:

Phone camera photo my dad took of Mt. Rainier

Anne Demeulemeester in the 3rd floor office of Le Corbusier's house

Twen magazine

Photograph by David Bailey. I always think this picture is like me and Emily, like an illustration of our personalities or something, except obviously that dude is way chicer than me.

Old poster

Another old poster

Absinthe ad

Edward Gorey

Lucky Lager

Hooded bandits

Department of Eagles Department

A little warm-up for tonight's show at Neumo's:



More on Department of Eagles here.

…
Update, the day after: I think maybe I'm over this band. A little noodly and boring. Cave Singers killed it though, as per usual.

Cut, Copy

This is making the blog rounds but I still think it's worth posting here. I remember an interview in RapPages magazine with Jim Jarmusch and the RZA, together, right after Ghost Dog came out. Jarmusch said he was drawn to the RZA's production because of his imperfect samples – timing off (i.e. beats not quantized), little pieces of voices getting chopped off at the end of the loop, speeding up/slowing down, etc. This poster reminded me of that interview for whatever reason. That is all. Fuck, I have never been so busy in all my life, why am I writing a blog
…

A Giant in the Mental

Yesterday was my Grandpa Don's birthday. He died in 2004 but it doesn't seem long ago – I think of him very often. Here's his obituary from the Whidbey News Times, written by my Uncle Perry:

Woodfin, Donald Wednesday, 08 Sep 2004

Donald A. Woodfin, 84, with his family by his side, died peacefully at his home in Rolling Hills Sept. 8, 2004.

He was born Jan. 26, 1920 in Palouse where the Woodfin family had homesteaded when Washington was still a territory. Don’s mother died when he was eight and his father passed away when he was 13. Orphaned during the Depression, he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps and at 15, lied about his age and joined the Marines. Stationed in Shanghai, China, in 1936, Don became an American Embassy guard and was the first American to sight and report the Japanese invasion of China. He was also a distinguished and decorated rifle and pistol marksman.

Out of the Marines, Don traveled to Sitka, Alaska, and worked on a halibut boat, and as an apprentice carpenter. He married Jeanne Perry and with the need for expert carpenter skills during World War II, joined the Navy SeaBees and helped build air runways at Sitka and Whidbey Island Naval Air Station.

Moving to Vashon Island, and with a growing family, Don purchased a berry and fruit farm. With his interest in agriculture broadening, he eventually built up the largest chicken farm in the Greater Seattle area. During this time he met and became a good friend of Betty McDonald. She wrote the famous novel “The Egg and I” that produced the lovable characters, Ma and Pa Kettle. Betty paid tribute to Don in her book Onions In the Stew as “...the unforgettable Marine.” The barn, chicken house, and caretaker house he built Betty and her family are now recognized National Historical Landmarks and Don is well known to the Betty McDonald International Fan Club.

Divorced in 1954, Don moved to Moses Lake, which was experiencing a boom. He married Jananne (Nan) Goltz and began a long and successful career as a custom builder. But his interest in agriculture did not leave him, and in the early 1960s he moved his family to Ellensburg and began ranching in addition to building. The Limousin breed of cattle captured his attention and by the 1970s he had earned a respected niche in the cattle industry throughout the Pacific Northwest, when in 1976, his wife Nan unexpectedly died.

In 1978 Don married Joyce Hofelter and they moved to Whidbey Island and began what was to be a 26-year marriage. Together, Don and Joyce became a major force in Limousin cattle with Don becoming known as “the Grandfather of Limousin” across the western United States. He became the president of both the NW and Washington Limousin Associations and with Joyce, started and developed the Limousin Bull Test. Many ranchers in the West attribute their start in Limousin cattle to Don.

Don had a passionate love of life which included golf (even a few holes-in-one), the stock market, and family. He fought a courageous battle with cancer for over 30 years. This battle defied odds and statistics due to his love of life, in addition to his excellent physical conditioning. He lifted weights and exercised every morning of his life, even up to one week before he passed away. On occasion, when in hospitals, he would be performing push-ups on his bed when nurses would enter his room and be startled by his unusual vigor. This zest for life included story-telling, and as everyone knew, he loved to tell a good joke.

Don is survived by his wife, Joyce Woodfin; his son, Perry Scott Woodfin of San de Fuca and his daughters, Donna Woodfin Stahl and Margaret Lee Woodfin of Seattle; his stepson, Gary Lyle Goltz and wife Bernatta of Coupeville; his stepdaughter, Roxanne Cole and partner Jim Anderson of Snohomish; his stepsons, Bill Hofelter and wife Cheryl of Phoenix, and Rex Hofelter and wife Jacqueline of Orange County, California. There are 12 grandchildren, six great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandson.

To his family, he was not a particularly tall man, but he was a giant.

I think I mentioned awhile back that I was going to start posting some photos of my Grandpa, as there are a lot of great ones (he was kind of a show-off). They're all packed away though, so this is that rare thing on Pacific Standard, a post with no images. My Grandpa Don was a great person – he had so many stories, we would beg to hear them all the time – and they were all things he had lived or seen…crazy stuff you don't hear anymore. I'm really proud to have known him.

Industrial Spy

I don't know what Charles Mudede is talking about half the time, but in a recent post he linked to these photos of abandoned amusement parks in Japan. Something I do understand: the international language of beautiful decay.

Mikey Dread Industrial Spy mp3


Click here for more
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Take that to the bank

A couple random things, a little hodgepodge, if you will, before the weekend:

Luke Burbank and Jennifer Andrews at Too Beautiful To Live have been doing a series of interviews with a seemingly regular guy and fan of the show who used to be a bank robber. A very successful bank robber. From Bellevue. It is fascinating – catch up on the podcasts here starting with the Monday, January 19th episode. I have been somewhat obsessively listening to this radio show, TBTL, since it started last January. The Stranger's article on Burbank and the show is highly informative, and you can catch up on old episodes at toobeautifultolive.com. (Stranger photo by Curt Doughty.)

Chad put me up on a blog I've been enjoying called Archival Clothing. Today's post is on re-purposed Filson gear, using fabric acquired by dumpster diving outside the company's Seattle headquarters. Interesting.

I got the new Andrew Bird record. I like it a lot and I'm sure I'll get more into it, but I'm not flipping over it like I did the last one. I tend to like his warmer-sounding stuff (Plasticities, Lull) and the new record strikes me as purposely tinny-sounding. I also got the new A.C. Newman record. It's basically a collection of variations on the same themes and sounds he always hits (both on his own and with New Pornographers), and honestly that is just fine with me.
A.C. Newman Submarines of Stockholm (edit) MP3 via Matador

Agent Provocateur just issued Love Me Tender…Or Else, an extremely high-gloss short video reminding its customers not to forget Valentine's Day. Fashion films generally suck, and this one has a lot of annoying things about it, but hey…what, I'm a red-blooded American, what can I say. I believe I have encapsulated the plot fairly well with the photos above, or if you want to perv out, perv, watch it here.

The Times has a pretty fascinating story this morning about surf gangs of the North Coast. Approached by Pacific Standard for comment, Hawaii native SK Honda had this to say: "dude, it's gangsta up there." Read here. (Times photo by Marco Garcia.)

I like this salsa. It's only $1 a can. I'm not sure what the duck has to do with it but it's good.

Secret Meeting

This promises to be interesting, as anything affiliated with the Anne Bonny always is:

What We Do Is Also Secret: A needle-felted world
Installation by Coco Howard and Spencer Moody

At Vain, 2018 1st Avenue at Virginia, Seattle WA

Opening Saturday January 24th, 4pm–9pm

More info:
Vain
Soft Life Industry
The ol' Anne B.

Your Weekly Mr. Littlejeans

I had hoped to get a photo of Jeans in our new place, but he's still kind of freaked out – we decided to wait till last night to move him and Inez from my mom's house, since I left for New York the day after we moved in, and then we had a houseguest for a week. We thought it would just be too much new information for them to process. Now we have the place to ourselves and the cats are finally there, freaking the F out as they deal with their third house in 4 months.

Hey, buddy, right there with ya. A lotta that going around.

So instead, a photo from calmer times.
Herein, Fang surveys his former estate in Brooklyn:

Look at the power of those mousers, just waiting to strike when the sun goes down again. Soft and furry – yes – a truly handsome creature, and the picture of calm. But make no mistake: you are admiring the iron serenity of a deadly killer.

Anyway, there he is – pretty cute, right? I'm sure that soon he will love our new place as much as we do and the Seattle photoshoots will re-commence.

Read The Book That Wrote Itself

Last Thursday afternoon, my brother and I had a chance to cruise around the galleries in Chelsea for a couple hours.

My favorite show of the day, at Pace Wildenstein, was by Jim Dine (born 6/16/1935 in Cincinnati, moved to New York in 1957).

Hot Dream (52 Books) represents the content and ideas contained within a collection of books Dine put together, one for every week of the year.

To say the exhibition is densely layered would be to understate it a bit. I could have happily walked around in there for a day or more.

The actual books, all 52 of them, were published by Steidl in an edition of 500, and are available from the gallery for $480 (postage paid).

I opted instead for the smaller exhibition catalog – here are some spreads, click to enlarge:







More about Dine and the exhibition here and here.

Hot Dream (52 Books) is up at Pace Wildenstein (534 West 25th Street, NYC) through February 7th.
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President Obama

Emily and our friend Casey (visiting from Boston) and I celebrated Inauguration Day at Spitfire for the Seattle Weekly party. More party pics by the hostess with the mostest over at the bonks. It was a fun morning.

The speech was perfectly measured: pragmatism meets possibility. Everyone looked stunning and it felt like a great, momentous event in our history. My friend Jason was there in D.C. – I'm looking forward to hearing about it when he gets back.

Side note: I'm obsessed with trying to photograph the closed captioning at just the right moment so it becomes a description of what's depicted. It's always a little off but I find it hilarious.

Oh, indeed.

Time Brings On A Change

In celebration of both Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and tomorrow's history-making Inauguration Day, one of my favorite cuts of all time:
Leroy Hutson
Time Brings On A Change mp3 from Love Oh Love
(Curtom Records, 1973) buy here

More info on Curtis Mayfield protégé Leroy Hutson here.

And

I've just returned from a few days in ice-cold NYC for some client meetings, so most of this week's posts will be on the stuff I ran across during that brief whirlwind. Here are some photos to kick it off…

Marlene Dumas from her current show Measuring Your Own Grave at MoMA

Swoon in Chelsea

Birds in Bryant Park that reminded me of Littlejeans, both because they look like him, and because he used to stare at this particular fun-size species out the window and think murderous thoughts.

A little garbage rabbit, 22nd Street, Chelsea

53rd Street, Midtown

27th Street, Chelsea

People on 10th Avenue watching news of the crash landing in the Hudson.

My brother outside of Jones, where we had brunch before I left. They were playing the Cave Singers and Dead Moon as we sipped bloody marias and ate our sausage, eggs and grits at the counter. Seemed like a good way to end the trip.

…and here's what I came back to:


I will love and miss New York forever, but I'll be back a lot.
And Seattle? When it's sunny out? Absolutely stunning.

John Baldessari, Goya Series: And, 1997,
from Artist's Choice + Vik Muniz = Rebus at MoMA

Your Weekly Mr. Littlejeans

What's the Point?

Oops, I meant to post this last month as something I wanted for Christmas, but then I realized it was out of print. After that, the whole "what I want for Christmas" series got back-burnered (along with most of the other so-called "series," or "serieses," that I said I'd start).

In any case – I'm going to start looking around for an old VHS copy of Michelangelo Antonioni's beautiful and strange story of disaffected youth, Zabriskie Point. Check it:



I picked up the soundtrack at a flea market several years ago. Here's a sample:
Pink Floyd Heart Beat, Pig Meat mp3