Music | High Contrast | "Everything's Different"

Those of you who know me know of my ardent love for drum & bass, probably my all-time favourite sound. So I was super excited when I got the latest podcast from Hospitality a to find this video for "Everything's Different" from High Contrast whose High Society and FABRICLIVE albums are two of my favourites from the past couple years. Great song, great video, great way to kick off 2007.



Heck, while you're at it, check out this video for "Racing Green," off the High Society album. So good I need to take a break from work.



Now if only I could figure out under what rock the drum & bass scene in NY is hiding. In the meantime obsessing over the dubplates at Hopsital will have to do. Why am I not a deejay?

Comedy | Stand-up | Outclassed by the audience

We all know a guy just like this one :)

Music | C-mon & Kypski

I'm at work on a Sunday, so I've decided to declare it an official C-mon & Kypski Sunday and post some of the best videos from this Dutch hip hop group. Enjoy!


Video for "Shitty Bum".


Video for "Bumpy Road."


Video of Kypski scratching.

Art | Paper Cut | Peter Callesen

And to think all I did during art class was eat the glue. Paper cut art by Peter Callesen.

Video | Minilogue | "Hitchhikers Choice"

Very cool video made for Swedish group Minilogue by Swedish design/animation/awesome/musical group Ljudbilden & Piloten.
via Conversational Capital

Art | Sculpture | Ron Mueck

Last Saturday I headed off to the Brooklyn Museum of Art to catch two exhibitions, the first a retrospective of Annie Liebowitz and the second some sculptures by sculptor Ron Mueck. Ever read Paul Arden's "Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite"? This is the sculptor mentioned by Arden who was formally trained as a model maker for TV and film but found his calling as a true artist. I was excited for the Liebowitz work, but the BMA was so unbelievably crowded that it was hard to much face time with her photographs, many of which were postcard-sized. The Mueck stuff, on the other hand, is large and imposing, and absolutely mind-blowing. It's larger-than-life sculptures in totally realistic poses, with expressions so realistic it looks as though they'll blink in any minute. Or small sculptures that look like little human dolls, replete with little fingernails and body hair. The sculptures are very impressive, especially upon realising that Mueck and a team of assistants go through a process that combines photography, drawing, sculpture, and model-making, every stage of the process a unique art form in and of itself. The exhibition prompts questions about the nature of 'realism' in today's art world, and whether you chose to dwell on such matters or leave such questions to the art pros, Mueck's sculptures are fascinating, right down to the last hair.

Photography | Soviet Bus Shelters | Christopher Herwig

I started my new job this week and have found myself buried under a deluge of work that has not ceased until this minute, today. I have exactly one hour til my next meeting, and thought, since I have been typing pretty much nonstop since Day One of Full-Time Employment, that I'd relax by spending a little time on ye olde blogge.

Anyways, I was browsing one of my favourite sites, BoingBoing, and came across a link to this super cool collection of oft-decaying Soviet-era bus shelters on Polar Inertia, a journal of nomadic and popular culture, which can only be described as looking as though they belong on in an ancient Mongol planet of the future (wrap your brain around that one!). Here's one such photo, for more check out the collection on photographer Christopher Herwig's site.

Music | Canadiana | Semprini Records

I tracked this label down thanks to a lead from a friend who gave me a copy of the soundtrack to Regular or Super, a Canadian documentary on the life and work of influential architect Mies van der Rohe.

Semprini Records is a Canadian based label with a small but diverse catalogue, and there is an excellent selection of music to listen to from each of the three groups that the label publishes - a little something for every musical palate.

Art | Photography | Ramette & Frapiccini

The Maison Européenne de la Photographie (European House of Photography)is showing an exposition on the revolutionary photo news magazine Vu that ran from 1928 to 1940. I went to check it out and while it was well done, what really caught my eye was some modern work outside of the exhibit. Parisian photographer Philippe Ramette's work humourously features gravity defying businessmen. Italian Eva Frapiccini is another photographer whose work on display is unique with its original focus points. If you're in Paris, stop by for some visionary indulgence. If you're not in Paris,(sigh) the links will have to do...

Art | Direction | Juan Gatti

I saw Pedro Almodovar's Volver a few weeks ago, and was awed at the film's end when the title credits rolled, incorporating elements of the characters' clothing patterns into the funky graphic array of flowery imagery. A little research led me to this interesting article in the International Herald Tribune about the title credit's art director, Juan Gatti. In addition to collaborating with Almodovar on several of his films, Gatti has led a very vibrant career as an art director of both editorial and commercial work. Check out his engaging, eclectic portfolio here.

Advertising | Blog | Scary Ideas

Just discovered Scary Ideas, a blog/site dedicated to weird and funny advertisements and video clips. Lots of funny, clever ads, many of them actually real, although disappointingly, no agencies or creatives are cited for the work. Although, maybe that's for the best -- the emphasis here is on the weird and out-there, not on ego stroking. While I'm on the subject, frequent visits to Joe La Pompe are great for reminding one's self what has been done, over and over and over again (and a reminder why the visual pun/metaphor is so darn trite).

Art | Illustration | Saul Steinberg

When I was growing up, there weren't a lot of art books in our house. Don't get me wrong -- my parents are both smart people and there were tons of books around, it's just they were heavy on words and short on pictures. Besides feasting my eyes on the photos in National Geographic, I spent long hours sifting through the books on our shelves looking for the ones that had pictures, not just big, complicated words. (The abundance of books-with-words probably does account for why I was reading Slaughterhouse Five and The Communist Manifesto in seventh grade. But, I digress.) Anyway, one of the few books we had that contained almost only pictures and no words was a big, fat collection of the drawings of Saul Steinberg, the legendary illustrator for the New Yorker amongst countless other publications. When I discovered the book at age 7 or 8, I remember considering it as no different than any other picture books aimed at children, and just enjoying the whimsy and imagination of all his illustrations.

So, imagine my glee to discover he currently has not one, but two retrospectives currently here in New York. One, titled "Saul Steinberg: Illuminations," is at the Morgan Library through March 4, 2007, and features over one hundred drawings, collages, and sculptural assemblages; the other, titled "A City on Paper: Saul Steinberg's New York," is at the Museum of the City of New York, with a more New York-centric approach, through March 25, 2007. I won't be able to check either out til I return to New York in 2007, but I'm excited to see some of his stuff up close and original. In a world that's increasingly filled with so computer-generated work (from Photoshop to its impact in graphic design), it's really nice to get 'back to basics' and see what can be done with a piece of paper and ink.

Video | Hotel Kittyfornia

I was walking by Trocadero awhile back and saw a part of this being filmed and wondered what the hell was going on. Luckily, I just stumbled across the finished product online and my questions were answered. This clip, produced by and starring a fashion designer of all people, shows Hello Kitty as that girl you want to party with.

Design | Philosophy | Milton Glaser

Last Monday, I had the opportunity to see Milton Glaser, Chip Kidd and Dave Eggers speak at the 92nd Street Y on the art and evolution of book cover design. All three men are very different in their approach to cover design, but their presentations were illuminating on the kinds of processes they use to come up with their covers. Inspired, I checked out Milton Glaser's site and found this fantastic speech he made at an AIGA talk in London in 2001. So this isn't brand spanking new, but rather one of those classic pieces full of good advice for probably every working, thinking person out there. So, without further adieu, here are a few of my favourite excerpts from "Ten Things I Have Learned."

3. Some people are toxic. Avoid them.
...It is not necessarily true that the same person will be toxic or nourishing in every relationship, but the combination of any two people in a relationship produces toxic or nourishing consequences. And the important thing that I can tell you is that there is a test to determine whether someone is toxic or nourishing in your relationship with them. Here is the test: You have spent some time with this person, either you have a drink or go for dinner or you go to a ball game. It doesn’t matter very much but at the end of that time you observe whether you are more energised or less energised. Whether you are tired or whether you are exhilarated. If you are more tired then you have been poisoned. If you have more energy you have been nourished. The test is almost infallible and I suggest that you use it for the rest of your life.

4. Professionalism is not enough or The Good is The Enemy of The Great.
... I discovered after working for a while that professionalism itself was a limitation. After all, what professionalism means in most cases is diminishing risks. ... After all, what is required in our field, more than anything else, is the continuous transgression. Professionalism does not allow for that because transgression has to encompass the possibility of failure and if you are professional your instinct is not to fail, it is to repeat success.

7. How you live changes your brain.

8. Doubt is better than certainty.
... I remember once going to a class in yoga where the teacher said that, spirituality speaking, if you believed that you had achieved enlightenment you have merely arrived at your limitation. I think that is also true in a practical sense. Deeply held beliefs of any kind prevent you from being open to experience, which is why I find all firmly held ideological positions questionable. ...

His other essays are also full of a lot of very interesting insights which I strongly recommend as well.

Design | Blog | Print & Pattern

From GenArt's Pulse magazine, I followed a link to this very cool blog tracking all kinds of interesting design motifs, many of them charmingly retro.

Fashion | London | Cassette Playa

I thought I'd seen it all when I saw Jeremy Scott's collection that put a model in the show dressed like a snickers bar (or should I say Jeremy Bar?). Aside from the irony of associating a fashion model with sugar, how much further off the beaten runway can you get?

Then I got my answer. It came from London. It's called Cassette Playa. Its creator swears she doesn't do drugs. And as much as it boggles my mind that this line is so er ...original and successful, it somehow gives me peace to know we live in a world that embraces a designer who puts Sonic the Hedgehog on a runway.

Art | Philosophy | The Imaginary Foundation

Discovered a link to these folks on BoingBoing -- a Swiss group who's using streetwear as a way of getting out their message on the power of the imagination. Check the quote from their site:

A philosophy of research began to form: imagination as fundamental to all learning; artistic making as a model of integrating vision, materials, structure, and imagery.

The result is super cool t-shirts, hoodies, jackets, and art, all embracing their message in a really beautiful, inspiring way.

TV | Wonder Showzen

Whenever I need a pick-me-up or, at the very least, some fun procrastination time, I head over to youtube and watch clips from one of the funniest shows to grace TV screens in the last few years, Wonder Showzen. Sadly the show was cancelled after two seasons, but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy some of their finer moments, including the hysterically funny "Beat Kids" segments.





Now that they're out on DVDs, I'm adding them to my Christmas list, along with this, this, and this.

Photography | Kitsch | Lizard-Ville

I guess once you've been featured on David Letterman, you're not exactly underground, but there is something so weird and funny about these photographs of hypnotised lizards (by a 10-year-old Floridian girl, no less!) that I simply had to share. Available as images printed on T-shirts or greeting cards, they make the perfect Christmas gift for that reptile-obsessed relative or co-worker. It makes me think that I perhaps did not use my time wisely in Miami, and I could have tried a little harder to see the possible art potential in living in at Southgate in an apartment filled with cockroaches, centipedes, millipedes, silverfish, and geckos. I'd coulda been an insect-hypnotising-millionaire!

Cool Video | Justice vs. Simian | "We Are Your Friends"

Following Gina's post on très chic French boutique Collette, I followed their link to the video for Justice vs. Simian's "We Are Your Friends," a song that was played on really solid rotation this past year on BBC Radio One. thanks to some of their fabulous deejays, like Annie Nightingale and Annie Mac. (The video's not too bad either.)