August 11, 2010

1LOVE: Brooklyn

Not sure why there’s so much Williamsburg because he lives in Fort Greene…

August 9, 2010

Images

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

Read the rest of this entry »

August 2, 2010

Fort Tilden

August 1, 2010

High Fidelity

This is a week old, but amazing nonetheless: Atlanta-based prop designer Harrison Krix spent 17 months crafting the helmet that Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo dons to become one half of Daft Punk.

Truly brilliant.

Core77 / HB

Homem-Christo also recorded as Le Knight Club in the late 90’s:
» Le Knight Club – Mirage (7:08) – 8.2MB mp3 @ 160kbps

July 31, 2010

Continued

• Nice interview with Raf Simons (WWD via HB)
• Lengthy inverview with David Andrew Sitek (BV)
• Awesome interview with Bill Murray (GQ)
• Telling interview with Penn & Teller (Telegraph)
• Decent interview with Ari Marcopoulos (Dossier)
• Hip interview with Pedro Winter (Busy P of Ed Banger) (OC)
• Strange interview with Spike Lee (Gothamist)
• Passable interview with Rafael de Cardenas (S×H)
• Brief interview with Tara McPherson (PSFK)

China:

• Urban China, ever the work in progress (NYT)
• China’s Banks: Great Wall Street (The Economist)
• Bad PR for the nouveau riche in the PRC (WSJ via Gawker)
• The other oil spill (NYT / Salon)
• A green movement grows in China (The Economist)
• The Economist also draws an ophidian metaphor for China’s growth / lack thereof.

Music:

• That’s Cool But Can You Make It More Shit?—short James Murphy interview (Nowness)
• The Antlers were amazing at Pier 54 last week (pics / video / new song @ BV)
• Why Music Is Good for You (via 3qd))
• Lil’ Wayne on a typical day in the clink.
• (More on) the Gaga Effect (NYT)
• Trent Reznor scores David Fincher’s The Social Network (NIN via Pitchfork; trailer)
• Inception, musically (NYT)

Media & Technology:

• When cars fly: Wired / n+1 / Bits (Recommended)
• Pure CSS Fail Whale
• Meta-commentary on Old Spice’s post-racial social media marketing.
• Paywall doesn’t pay (The Guardian)
• Apple’s Antenna(e)gate (The Economist / Daring Fireball)
• AWAD items: Frenemies by tongue (NYT); Tech-neology (NPR)… also, autocorrect in theory and in practice.

Food:

• 101 quick grilling recipes. (NYT; Bittman also talks watermelon)
• From table (or kitchen, at least) back to farm; also, a pig in a blanket, six feet under, etc.
• Salon asserts that Top Chef is in top form this season, though I find that the casting and challenges for D.C. have been less-than-inspired.
• Um. (AdFreak)

NYC:

• The High Line, continued (Revs!) (Highly[ne] recommended)
• Diller Scofido + Renfro’s Culture Shed (PSFK)
• The Economist marks George Steinbrenner’s passing with a rough analogy between the man and the city he came to represent.
• The Times wants to know how we do in Brooklyn.
• Hotels host Manhattan’s nouveau nightlife (NYMag); compare and contrast to : “It is part of the legend of New York, real or imagined, that vastly different cultures can thrive quite separately on the same block.”

Random:

• An older article on Messi. (Wired)
• Do Typefaces Really Matter? (BBC News) (Yes; highly recommended)
• Um. (NYT)
• Yoko D is back (Racked)
• Galen Strawson on moral dilemmas; it’s another version the ‘Original Choice’ (which is not chosen but embraced, or ‘owned’) in Sartrean ontology… (The Stone)
• Moral dilemmas, again (3qd), which (sort of) leads to…
• Lebronicles: He got game theory; the China factor; Cavs owner Dan Gilbert is tragic sans his two-time MVP (is the original online anywhere?), but perhaps not as bad as some outspoken critics might suggest.
• What Caravaggio means to me (The Guardian)
• Where America Really Came From (via 3qd)
• 52 architects choose the 21 most important buildings from the past 30 years. (VF)
• Denzel Washington on Wesley Snipes (who is going to jail): “Wesley is like a mighty oak tree… Many who know him have witnessed the fruit of his labours. I have sat in his shade and even been protected by his presence.”

July 29, 2010

Beyond the Pyramid

Also: What America Spends on Food and Drink & The 20 Most Caffeinated Cities in the U.S.

July 27, 2010

Backlog

…a.k.a. link dump / linkage /clickage from the past month; more to come…

• Very Bushwick and very fabulous (NYT)
• You know how we do in Brooklyn (Inc.)
• Pitchfork is Times-worthy.
• I managed to avoid reading any commentary on Inception until I actually saw it for myself yetserday, though at this point, I cannot possibly hope to catch up with all of the bandwidth that has been spilled (not to mention plot spoiled)—in theory and in practice, for example—over Nolan’s polarizing masterpiece. Also: A.O. Scott on film criticism in the digital age in theory and in practice; Dileep Rao (who plays Yusef) gives us the straight dope; Jonah Lehrer speculates on the neuroscience behind the film. Plus, Jonah Lehrer on LSD (in a manner of speaking)
• Am I guilty of “a breezy writing style”? (The Economist; related: China’s microblog macro-crackdown)
• Amid all the talk of his new book Imperial Bedrooms, Bret Easton Ellis also finds time to reflect on American Psycho (The Guardian)
• Sasha Frere-Jones endorses music in cloud form (The New Yorker)
• Tom Vanderbilt included a link to Dave Horton’s unabashedly self-righteous five-part essay on the fear of cycling in his own musings on bicycle highways for Slate. Definitely required reading for anyone who chooses to bike for transportation (as opposed to simply for leisure), with the caveat that it feels a bit too much like justification for my sense of entitlement that I feel when I tell pedestrians to get out of the bike lane. Still, the car culture of the US is easily worse than that of the UK (where Horton’s expertise lies; at least London has congestion pricing) and the essay actually affirmed my fear that cycling still has a long way to go.

• Deitch’s new projects (NYT)
• Brillo: from design to art (Print via BoingBoing)
• An amazing tale of art forensics (highly recommended) (New Yorker; cf.)
• Brion Gysin at the New Museum (NYT); interview with curator Laura Hoptman (AnOther)
• Graffiti prosecution in the Bronx vs. abroad
• Rhizome visits Babycastles.
• Wu Guanzhong, Chinese Artist, Dies at 90 (NYT)
• Why the Art World Hates “Work of Art” (Salon)
• Why Saltz kind of likes “Work of Art” (NYMag); he’s been recapping the show lately. (GQ, for their part, has been interviewing guest judges lately, but New York, not to be one-upped, has exit interviews, including why token outsider Erik kind of likes Jerry Saltz.
• Saltz on the Whitney as it should be (NYMag); Christian Marclay reviewed by his significant other (NYT); plus, the Whitney as it might be and Whitneys that never were; last but not least,  The Future Is Stupid: Jenny Holzer × Keds × Whitney = Bloomingdale’s Live Art

July 25, 2010

Periodic Update

I’ve recently come across several periodic table-style infographics lately, though none of them seem to do justice to the Periodic Table of Elements, which is organized, well, scientifically—by nuclear protons and valence electrons. Thus, the biggest problem with arranging curses, typefaces and Mad Men trivia in the iconic castle-shaped schematic is simply the fact that Mendeleev’s original diagram is organized by the realities of the physical world—where the empirical properties of the elements dictate their atomic numbers and layout—while none of the data tabulated in the following infographics has a similar logic flow.

One more for good measure (I guess this trend dates back to this March): The Periodic Table to End All Periodic Tables

July 21, 2010

The Fabled Chinese Hipster – Parts 2.1-2.3

See also: Part 1, One Point Five and 2: Reprise.

PBR: three letters that spell the beginning of the End for Eastern Civilization.

However, as with just about every Chinese variant, the adjective ‘bizarro’ prevails: Evan Osnos of the New Yorker applauds Danwei’s eye for PBR’s PRC rebranding as Blue Ribbon 1844 (蓝带啤酒), a premium craft beer.

That reliably blue-collar Milwaukee lager, later adopted by unbearable hipsters on the coasts, has turned up in China. And P.B.R., best known in the U.S. for being the cheapest beer on the grocery-store shelf, has—like so many expatriates before it—taken the move as an opportunity to change its image. For a beer, that appears to involve an elegant glass bottle and a fantastically ridiculous price tag. One bottle: forty-four dollars.

–Evan Osnos, Pardon Me, Would You Have Any Pabst Blue Ribbon
Letter from China blog on The New Yorker, July 19 2010

Osnos, ever duly diligent, also includes this link to PBR [advertising] through the ages. In fact, the story is so fascinating that he has just posted a follow-up post with a few choice quotes from PBR / BR1844 Brewmaster / Chief Representative – Asia Alan Kornhauser. Short of outright plagiarism, the relevant excerpt is reproduced below:

I formulated a special high-gravity ale called “1844.” It’s all malt, and we use caramel malts from Germany. The initial aging is dry-hopped rather heavily. Then we do a secondary aging in new uncharred American oak whiskey barrels. We bought 750 brand new barrels to the tune of $100,000. This is a very special beer; it’s retailing for about over $40 U.S. for a 720 ml bottle.

–Interview with Alan Kornhauser, All About Beer, July 2010

Indeed, Osnos’ colleague (New Yorker Beer Correspondent) Jesse Rodriguez notes that:

Traditional P.B.R. is light and fizzy with a distinct cloying malt profile, while the B.R. 1884 [sic] has a rounder mouthfeel with a notable hop presence on the front palate and finish. Is it worth the money? Probably not, but it’s definitely not a P.B.R.

–Jesse Rodriguez in Pabst in China, Continued,
Letter from China blog on The New Yorker, July 21 2010

The interview continues with a few more telling tidbits:

There’s an audience there for it?

There’s the nouveau riche, and in China, perception is everything—look at me, I’m rich. Then also, there is another group that may be part of our market, and that’s state banquet dinners. Normally, you’d drink brandy, and this beer kind of has the look of brandy—it’s a reddish-brown color, but it won’t hurt you as much.

The beer combines a new flavor and a Western status symbol. Apart from the prestige, how are you selling these new tastes?

It’s new on the market, so I’m not sure exactly how it’s going—I have very little to do with the sales side. There is a TV commercial that’s quite attractive, that uses old still photos of the early days of Pabst, back when they used wooden barrels there.

What’s Pabst’s story in China?

We were the first foreign brewery in China, since the liberation in 1949—as it’s called there. We’re doing about one and a half million barrels there. Our first brews were, I believe, 1993; I didn’t get there until 1998. At that time, the largest-selling foreign brand in China was Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Read all about it…

---- --- -- - -- --- ----

Possibly more related than one might think: the hipster fashion cycle.

I would hypothesize that Chinese fashion fundamentally differs from Western trends (to which the infographic applies) at the mainstream and conservative stages, where the former tends to correlate with (said) nouveau riche and the latter is either mainstream in the Western sense or more traditional Chinese. Nostalgia, then, would be informed by Western trickle-down imagery, while the ironic stage is virtually non-existent.

Though there are examples of ironic style on display in China—Mao’s face, red stars, military regalia are today worn with something less than earnestness—there is also more at stake in young people’s fashion choices.

–J. David Goodman, Are There Really No Hipsters in China?, Slate, April 21 2010

Flavorwire via PSFK

---- --- -- - -- --- ----

Why the FCH is still a rare breed: Smart, Young and Broke; insert bad pun about higher education not necessarily being hire education. (Thanks Eugene; cf.)

July 16, 2010

Guerilla vs Guetta

I finally got around to seeing Banksy’s Exit Through the Gift Shop at Brooklyn Heights Cinema today. Of course, I went into the theater expecting to enjoy the film and it fulfilled itself: the pseudo-doc was thoroughly entertaining indeed, in keeping with Banksy’s ever-contrarian perspective on contemporary art. My only criticism is that Guetta is a little too perfect a foil for Banksy and the plot, in turn, is a little too perfectly ironic.

Conversely, I just watched Sebastian Peiter’s Guerilla Art documentary, available in full on Babelgum, which forgoes the knowingness for the straight dope… including interviews with the late Rammellzee.

His name was derived from RAM, plus M for magnitude, Sigma (Σ), the first summation operator, L for longitude, L for latitude, Z for z-bar, plus a couple more summation operators (Σ) for good luck.

–Daryoush Hah-Nahafi, Rammellzee Fashion, Viceland Today, July 7 2010

More obits at NYT / The Guardian, among other places.

---- --- -- - -- --- ----

Also, a production worthy of Nowness:

---- --- -- - -- --- ----

Related: Invader Walk