Best Foot Forward

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In tan, s.v.p.

Lanvin Sandale Clous et Strass,
$1595 (in black) at Nordstrom.

Boom & Bust

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Forty years ago today Congress cancelled government funding for the Boeing 2707 (aka the SST – Supersonic Transport).

The company almost immediately laid off more than 50% of its workforce, temporarily crippling the economy of the Pacific Northwest (though I know it didn't feel temporary). Real estate agents Bob McDonald and Jim Youngren erected this sign near the aiport on Highway 99 and it became a Seattle icon:

KUOW aired an interesting show on the Boeing Bust this morning – click here to listen – and click here to watch a Braniff promotional video promoting supersonic travel: "You don't have to carry a passport, because a friendly computer already knows more about you than you do."

Frequency

Real Estate "Out of Tune" from the 7" pictured above
(b/w "Reservoir," 2010, True Panther Sounds)

I love how heavy and light this sounds at the same time – it satisfies my sometimes competing needs for a wall of sound and something quieter, possibly from Emily's parents' record collection.

Real Estate plays next Wednesday at Knitting Factory Brooklyn and hopefully mid-April in Seattle? In the mean time [Oops, I was wrong. The internet is so confusing.] Download their four-song Daytrotter session from last Summer here.

( Another band I never knew courtesy of Charles Leo Gebhardt IV. More on him soon.)

Elizabeth Taylor

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Elizabeth Taylor, 1964, photographed by Richard Avedon

Trees

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YSL SS2011 – model Arizona Muse shot in Marrakech by Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin, with music ("Mushrooms and Roses") by Janelle Monae

Keep On Doing Whatcha Do

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Sweet Bulbs "Kissing Clouds"
from Sweet Bulbs (2011, Blackburn Recordings)

(photo: The Space Needle, February 2011)

Image of the Day

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One of my all-time favorite photos of Emily, in front of the Piet Blom-designed Cube Houses in Rotterdam.

Image of the Day

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Uta Barth. Untitled (05.3), 2005 (Chromogenic color prints. Henry Art Gallery, gift of Burt and Jane Berman, 2009.38 A) from a selection of Barth's photos curated by Sara Krajewski at the Henry through May 8th. Info at henryart.org.

Mr. Littlejeans

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March 21 is Mr. Littlejeans' birthday. It has been almost four months since we lost him and we still miss him every day. In December I commissioned Seattle artist Shannon Perry to paint this portrait of Jeans. We had picked the box up from a Chinese restaurant on Smith Street in Brooklyn (SMILE FACE 12 + 7 x 23 = we had to have it) and he immediately adopted it as his own – like, the second we put it on the floor. The painting now hangs in our bedroom, under a photo and invitation from our wedding. Littlejeans had a great life and packed more personality and experience into it than most of the higher mammals I have known. We will love you forever, little buddy.

Get Up Ninja, Do Something

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Umshini Wam, a 16-minute film by Harmony Korine starring Die Antwoord as "wheelchair-bound gangsters...in a tale of love and the struggle for survival."

via VBS.tv

Image of the Day

. Well, two of them, both Polaroids by Helmut Newton: Untitled (Girl Smoking a Cigar), and Blumarine Fashion, 1993 – from Helmut Newton: Selected Works, on display at Hamiltons Gallery in London through May 15th. Click here for more.

It's Just Us Having A Conversation

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Old but poignant, and I've never posted it before, and I kind of like to end the week with a video:


Brian Unger interviews Seth Galifianakis – from the DVD Zach Galifianakis: Live at the Purple Onion, which I've been meaning to watch again.

Back Rooms of the World

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Destroyer "Kaputt" from Kaputt (2011, Merge Records). Destroyer plays at the Crocodile tonight (Seattle) but the show is SOLD OUT, sucka.*

*Emily and I aren't going either, we have to get up too early tomorrow.

Best Foot Forward (Bonus Leprechaun Edition)

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(Just in case our favorite Irish lass has forgotten her green and needs to make a pit stop at Bergdorf.)

YSL Tribtoo green suede pump,
$795 at Bergdorf Goodman

Sláinte

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Image of the Day

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John Wood, Gun in Landscape: Daisies, 1965 (Collage mounted to board, 5 x 5 3/4 inches) via Bruce Silverstein Gallery, exhibiting at the AIPAD (Association of International Photography Art Dealers) show at the Armory in New York, March 17–20.

Best Foot Forward

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Chic, non?

Giambattista Valli metal-cuffed leather and twill sandals,
$900 at net-a-porter.

Image of the Day

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Lemons on my windowsill, sent from sunny Los Angeles California by my friend and client Matt Sullivan of Light in the Attic Records.

Healthy

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Witch Gardens "I Wanna Get Sick" from a split cassette with Stephanie. $7 via Paypal to poorstephanie [at] gmail.com. Trading card artwork by Casey Catherwood and Derek Charm.

Image of the Day

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Jonah Samson: Elizabeth's mother warned her not to befriend the crows, but she didn't see any danger in it, 2010 (Gouache on vintage photograph, framed, 6.5 x 4.25 inches), from the show Jonah Samson: Paintings from the Archives of the Pleasantville Historical Society at G. Gibson Gallery, Seattle, through April 16. Definitely one of my favorite Seattle gallery shows in recent memory. Click here for more.

私たちの心は日本とされ

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Odetta "Sakura" from Odetta In Japan (1966, RCA)

Via the Japan-America Society of the State of Washington: Pacific Software Publishing (based in Bellevue) will match 100% of your donation to the American Red Cross:
1. Make a donation online at American Red Cross (choose "JAPAN EARTHQUAKE AND PACIFIC TSUNAMI").
2. Keep your confirmation email and forward it to JapanRelief@pspinc.com.
3. PSP will match 100 percent of your donation up to $10,000.

Photo: Cherry blossoms (sakura no hana) in Brooklyn

Image of the Day

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Today is the birthday of photographer Diane Arbus (1923–1971). It's pretty impossible to pick a favorite Arbus photo, but the photo above is one of them, and one of her most well-known: Teenage Couple on Hudson Street, NYC, 1963.

Arbus led an extraordinarily interesting life before committing suicide at the age of 48; to this day she is considered one of the most controversial photographers of all time. The Nicole Kidman movie based on her life is actually worth watching, but I recommend starting with this Masters of Photography documentary, produced in 1972:



There are a number of good books of Diane Arbus' work; I recommend one that Emily bought me for Christmas several years ago: Diane Arbus: Revelations, and I've also heard that this biography is good.

Need vs. Want

Olivetti Valentine typewriter (designed by Ettore Sottsass, 1969) – $450 via 1st Dibs. Very tempting. Want.

(via)

Push the Button

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Playbutton is a self-contained, rechargeable device that holds music or other pre-recorded sounds inside a wearable button. There's a headphone jack at the bottom, and sound control buttons on the back. The recording is unalterable, which is an aspect of it I like, as it forces you to deliberately choose an album to listen to, not unlike putting on a record and playing the whole thing.

Wind's Poem by Mount Eerie is an album that lends itself particularly well to that kind of listening; I was lucky enough to receive a copy of the Playbutton version (above) from my friend Chad and I have to say that the sound quality and packaging – including copper foil, as on the original LP – are top notch. Two other Playbuttons are currently available, one from Bubbles and a 10-song compilation from Opening Ceremony (below) featuring Girls, Björk, How To Dress Well, Matthew Dear, Coconut Records and others. Proceeds from that one go to Musicians On Call, a non-profit that brings live and recorded music to the bedsides of hospital patients.

Playbuttons are forthcoming from The XX, Pains of Being Pure At Heart, Javelin, Mark Borthwick, and more. Visit Opening Ceremony to purchase for $25 each.

Fly

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Prada Spring/Summer 2011

Image of the Day

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Glenn Ligon: Rückenfigur, 2009. (Neon and paint, 24 × 145 inches) from Ligon's solo show of the same name at the Whitney through June 5th. Holland Cotter's review in this morning's New York Times was scintillating. Here's an excerpt:

The shift back and forth between reading and looking, object and idea, is the basic dynamic emphasized by the show.... And it represents an effort, very much of the current, formalist, post-'90s moment, to position Mr. Ligon as being as much a craft-conscious painter as a social commentator.
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In several paintings beginning in 1990 Mr. Ligon covered wooden doors or door-shaped canvases with stenciled sentences pulled from different sources: an autobiographical essay by Zora Neale Hurston (“I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background”); Genet’s play “The Blacks” (“I’m Turning Into a Specter Before Your Very Eyes and I’m Going to Haunt You”); a poem by Jesse Jackson (“I Am Somebody”). In each painting the single line is repeated over and over, continuously, in black letters on a gessoed background, with a few paintings white on white, or ivory on ivory. As the words wind down from the top, the stencil becomes increasingly clogged with pigment so that individual characters turn smudgy, and words grow progressively less legible and the bottom of the painting is a kind of miasma.

Cotter later connects Ligon's use of stencils to Jasper Johns, and it strikes me that these paintings also have something in common with Richard Prince's typographical paintings of a jokes – this one for example – which evoke a certain era and archetype of American male. I'm not a knowledgeable critic, it's just a thought, but it seems like Ligon's repeated words could be read as a response or added perspective to the America of Richard Prince and Jasper Johns (his distressed flags as much as his stencils); I'd like to see paintings by all three side by side. More Cotter:

The effect is most extreme in pictures that quote from James Baldwin’s 1953 essay “Stranger in the Village,” an account of his stay in a tiny Alpine hamlet where, he claimed, no one had ever seen a person with black skin. His tale of enforced visibility and vulnerability ends with a vision of social transformation, specifically in America: “The world is white no longer, and will never be white again.” But Mr. Ligon makes Baldwin’s words all but unreadably dark, by stenciling them with a mixture of black paint and coal dust that cakes and clots on the canvas surfaces like epidermal growth and gives off a spooky sheen.

Head over to nytimes.com to read the rest and watch an audio slideshow with curator Scott Rothkopf; visit whitney.org for more info on the exhibition.

Image credit: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the Paint and Sculpture Committee T.2010.71

Issues

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Three new ones:

A. Emanuelle Alt's first cover as Editor of French Vogue, succeeding Editrix Carine Roitfeld. Gisele by Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin.

B. The third issue of The Gentlewoman – Adele shot by Alasdair McLellan. I'm not really on board with this whole Adele thing (so much singing...) but it's a good photo and the minty color is winning. Seven women I would have rather seen on the cover:
1. Emily Shepard Smith
2. An editor from another magazine, someone like Giovanna Battaglia or Cecilia Dean or Suzy Menkes. There are certain editors at fashion magazines who are more complex than you'd expect, and make for interesting interviews. Maybe it's kind of weird to put someone from another magazine on your own cover but who cares.
3. PJ Harvey? New album, and seems cool.
4. Sarah from Colette in Paris. Possibly too obscure but I guarantee she would be a great interview.
5. Sofia Coppola. Maybe too obvious, but the truth is, she always has interesting things to say.
6. Miranda July.
7. Lauren Hutton or someone else who has been chic since before I was born.

Feel free to chime in with your own suggestions, all 11 of you, if you feel like it.

C. Self Service no.34. Just a great cover shot (also by Alasdair McLellan), and gold foil to boot. Still my favorite magazine, maybe of all time.

Things That We Need

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M.O.P. [Mash Out Posse] "Ante Up"
from Warriorz (2000, Loud Records)

Pacific Standard is having a hard time focusing today.

In the Studio

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Kyle Johnson, photographer

Leave the Light On

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MOTEL is a new purveyor of vintage home furnishings in Ballard, celebrating its opening with a party this Saturday evening. Stop by and browse what appears to be a phenomenal collection of mid-century furniture, lighting, and curiosities – and stay up-to-date at motelballard.blogspot.com.

Motel is located at 5009 Northwest 20th Avenue in beautiful Ballard Washington.

Best Foot Forward

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Ugh, I love these. I need these. (Well, not really, but I want them so much I might as well need them.) Limited quantities available.

Stella McCartney slingback (satin and elastic),
$428 at YOOX (incidentally, one of my long-time, go-to sites
– ya gotta dig, but you'll be rewarded).

City Planning

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International Fountain at Seattle Center, 1962 World's Fair, by photographer Max R. Jensen – via Vintage Seattle

Not to get all smug and Portlandic on everyone, but this article on the New York Times' Economix blog – "How Seattle Transformed Itself," by Harvard economics professor Edward L. Glaeser – caught my eye. His basic points:

Seattle is one of the few large cities outside the Sun Belt that is growing more quickly than the country as a whole.
...
A great paradox of our age is that despite the declining cost of connecting across space, more people are clustering together in cities. The explanation of that strange fact is that globalization and technological change have increased the returns on being smart, and humans get smart by being around other smart people. Dense, smart cities like Seattle succeed by attracting smart people who educate and employ one another.
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The Seattle model is particularly important, because the ideas created in skilled cities are likely to be the economic mainstay of America in the next century.

It has to be said that a lot of what Glaeser discusses (density, a great transportation system) feels more like Seattle's aspiration than its present-day reality, but this is a relatively new city, and now is the time for goals. It's good to know that someone thinks we're on the right track. Click here to read the whole post.

Image of the Day

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Ryan Molenkamp: The Visitor, 2009. (30 x 33 inches) from his show opening tonight at Vermillion. Also showing is Amanda Manitach, who has one of the greatest website names ever made.

Friends

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Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis

Image of the Day

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Cool-looking advertisement for Spoonbill Books, in the forthcoming 30th anniversary issue of BOMB Magazine. Spoonbill Books' website doesn't really match the ad but you can visit them in person at 218 Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn NY.

Chinoise

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Behind the scenes of Givenchy Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2011. Rumors are flying that Givenchy designer Riccardo Tisci has been picked to replace John Galliano at Dior but apparently no final decisions have been made.

Circle Game

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Philip Glass "Geometry of Circles" (1979) for Sesame Street

(hat-tip to Christa H.)

Guilty Pleasure

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It goes over the top and lands too far on the other side of the costume-y line – but it's fun and it fits with the glammy 70s moment I've been feeling lately. I can't lie, I love it.

Isabel Marant Fall 2011 [click to enlarge]

More at style.com.

Ego Trïp

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Covers of the Paris-based fashion magazine Egoïste – published intermittently since 1977 by founder and editor Nicole Wisniak.

Back issues, with photography by Helmut Newton, Richard Avedon, Paolo Roversi, to name a few, go for hundreds on eBay.

The first issue since 2007 is due out next month and I'm sure it will go quickly – I will definitely be on the hunt.

Read more about Egoïste in a recent article at nytimes.com.

Open Country

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Hussein Chalayan Fall 2011 [click to enlarge]

style.com

Lie On the Ground

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Memoryhouse "Heirloom" video, by Jamie Harley. From the "Caregiver" single (2010, Suicide Squeeze). The Toronto-based duo recently signed to Sub Pop. More Memoryhouse here.

Image of the Day

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Robert Sperry: Spirit of '76 (Ceramic, 1975) from the Henry's long-running show Vortexhibition Polyphonica, which (believe it or not) closes in one week (it seemed so far in the future when the show opened). Definitely check it out if you haven't seen this installment – info at henryart.org.