Updating soon.
It will be quiet around here for the next week or two as I prepare for a major overhaul of this site.
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Doom returns!
Just the other day, I thought to myself, “wow, I really haven’t listened to a new hip-hop album all the way through since Q-Tip’s last one.” And then, Shazaam!, Doom returns (without the MF, allegedly thanks to some Marvel comics lawyers)! And after a nice little hiatus, he sounds refreshed and refreshing… and makes me miss the early 2000’s. Weird.
That’s that.
No commentsDirty Projectors at SXSW
I found this NPR podcast of Dirty Projectors performing all new material from their upcoming Bitte Orca album at SXSW last week. This entire set is a good example of why Dave Longstreth’s Projectors have been my favorite band for the past five years - Always so incredibly inventive and original.
The set gets better and better as it progresses. The closer “Stillness Is The Move” is a mind blowing addition to the bands ever changing sound (reminiscent of only a couple of other Projectors tracks i can think of - Part 2 of “Katy At the Mall” and “Two Young Sheeps” from the New Attitude EP - At least on the whole neo-soul vibe they have going on).
Enjoy - And thanks to the mighty NPR for recording this.
No commentsCharles Burns artwork for Fever Ray
Charles Burns did the artwork for Karin Dreijer Andersson’s (of the Knife) solo project, Fever Ray, it looks and sounds really good.
No commentsThe Subconcious Art of Graffiti Removal
“The Subconcious Art of Graffiti Removal” is a short film that humorously explores the accidental, abstract art left behind when graffiti is painted over. The film was produced by Matt McCormick who has a lot of other interesting Music and Film projects on his Rodeo Film Co. site (his blog is also worth checking out.)
McCormack compares the art of graffiti removal to the work of artists like Mark Rothko and Kazimir Malevich… reminding me of Negativland’s Over the Edge segment on “Domestic Art” in which Crosley Bendix compares domestic wallpaper art to the work of Clyfford Still. Funny stuff.
Thanks to my friend Aaron, who is a great filmmaker in his own right, for showing me this.
No commentsLife Archives + Google Images
Life Magazine and Google have teamed up to bring you a searchable database of mostly unpublished Life Magazine images spanning from 1750 - Present day. It’s a pretty fun browse, and it works right inside the regular Google Images interface. Not sure how long this has been around, I just discovered it on Swatch’s flickr stream - Elswatchoboracho - which happens to be one of the best classic NYC, graffiti photostreams i’ve seen.
No commentsCNN - A daily source of comedy.
I really like the comedic direction CNN has been slowly headed over the past couple of years. I was reminded of this with some of today’s headline gems:
“Mom with 2 wombs gets pregnant twice”
“Miss America backs ‘fat’ Jessica Simpson”
and of course, my favorite:
“Very ugly cat has only chest hair”
Oh, what’s that you say? This humor is unintentional, and in fact just a way to generate clicks??? Well to that I will refer you to the screenshot above as evidence. Notice the banner-ad to the right of said headlines, in which users can purchase their very own bit of CNN absurdity on a nice (hopefully silk screened, though I can see how iron-ons might be more cost effective in these tough times) t-shirt.
Needless to say, I will still be going to places like the BBC for actual news.
No commentsMy Birthday Present
My Birthday is coming up in a couple of days, and I wanted to get myself a present. I had been eyeing some original Jack Kirby artwork online, but the cheapest page I could find was just under $1000, and I don’t like myself that much…
I came across a page from a Thor comic a few years back when a friend was shopping for some comic art, and recognized the panels instantly as one of my favorite slug-fests as a kid. The comic, which was from a pretty good run of The Mighty Thor (at least in my 13 year old opinion), is sort of a non-sequitor story penciled by Erik Larsen, in which Thor and the Hulk fight for pretty much the entire 20+ pages. I was fan of Erik Larsen, specifically in his Spider-Man days with Marvel… By the time he had moved on to Image Comics and Savage Dragon, I had moved on to other things as well. In looking around online recently, I noticed the page was still available, so I bought it thanks to Anthony’s Collectibles.
Another thing that drew me (no pun intended) to this page were the controversial inks by Vince Colletta - the infamous, corner-cutting, inker - who achieved much of his fame by butchering Jack Kirby’s work. In the page I bought, Larsen’s pencils are definitely over-simplified by Colletta’s inks, and although you might think this would be a negative factor, I thought it was kind of cool to have page inked by such an infamous guy (plus, I didn’t really know about any of this when I was a kid… I thought the artwork looked fine!). Coincidentally, I found an article written by Erik Larsen in which he sort of bashed and praises Colletta at the same time.
Anyway, I now have two of my favorite Marvel characters, drawn by two people who left indelible marks on superhero comics, hanging on my wall.
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