December 4, 2012
Dolly Parton, Cher and Fee Waybill walk into a bar.
Leon Borensztein's American Portraits: a generic backdrop, a camera, simple and spare
More often than not, some of the best observers of places are those not originally from there. Leon Borensztein was born in Poland, settled in Israel and emigrated only later in life to the U.S. in 1977. But unlike de Tocqueville and other aristocratic travelers of old, he had to make ends meet and stumbled into taking commercial pictures of average, normal Americans as a fly-by-night job to pay the bills. Borensztein’s portraits—comprised in his new book, American Portraits, 1979–1989, published this month by Nazraeli Press—took place on the sidelines of commercial gigs. His tools and techniques were dictated by his means: a generic backdrop, a camera, simple and spare. -- TIME Lightbox
Good grief.
IT'S MY LIFE.
Caveat Emptor?
After several failed attempts against other schools, a lawsuit against Thomas Jefferson School of Law for providing misleading employment data to prospective students is moving forward.
Joseph McElroy's "Women and Men"
[Joseph] McElroy's sense of original and authentic contemporaneity makes him the most important novelist now writing in America, the artist who has most consistently combined the mastering capabilities of systems perspectives and an art of excess. Women and Men is the capstone of his career and, I believe, the most significant American novel published since Gravity's Rainbow. - Tom LeClair [more inside]
Before There Was Star Wars There Was High School
Denis Medri (original source) envisions the original trilogy Star Wars characters as high school students and faculty.
The Federal Budget Revue
Tired of cranky commentary about U.S. government spending? Maybe it needs more sequins. Or a ballet. Or Ray Bradbury. Ladies and gentlemen, Stan Freberg presents "The Federal Budget Revue" (part 1; part 2; part 3). [more inside]
two dead, one orphaned
Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher shot his girlfriend to death at their home Saturday morning, then drove to Arrowhead Stadium and committed suicide in front of the team's coach and general manager. [more inside]
Its' a Boat! Its a Plane! Its a Surfboard!
If you've ever been to Hawaii, chances are that you've passed through the John Rodgers Terminal at Honolulu International Airport without giving it a second thought. The great-grandson of distinguished American Commodores John Rodgers and Matthew Perry; John Rodgers was the second American naval officer to fly for the United States Navy and a submarine commander in WW1; but what earned him the honour of having the airport named for him was the amazing and inspiring first open-ocean flight to Hawaii. [more inside]
How and Why We Read
"Reading is always an act of empathy" - John Green of Crash Course (previously) explains "How and Why We Read" (... and recommends his favorite books). [more inside]
Watertown
This ain't your daddy's TSR (but his name's on the cover)
Luke Gygax and E. Gary Gygax Jr, sons of Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax have announced they have formed TSR Games. The company's first, brave, foray into the market will be a print publication: Gygax Magazine with a very familiar logo.
Apparently D&D owner Wizards of the Coast (and its owners, Hasbro) the last trademarked “TSR” for a game company in 2003, opening the door for the Brothers Gygax to scoop up the name for their company Hexagonist Publishing LLC on May 25, 2011. [more inside]
The Stupid and Evil Magazine
In 1960 humorist Georges Bernier, author François Cavanna and comic artist (and artistic director) Fred Aristidès began publishing the satirical magazine Hara Kiri, which attacked the French establishment, including politicians, the government and Catholic Church. In 1961 and 1966 it was temporarily banned by the French Government. The magazine's covers were often tasteless, NSFW, "famously perverted, bizarre and highly creative and at the time, and in fact even by today's standards in a league of their own." [more inside]
I was born with a disfigurement
Shane Carruth has released a trailer for Upstream Color, his long awaited follow up to Primer.
The film's synopsis is given as:
A man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the lifecycle of an ageless organism. Identity becomes an illusion as they struggle to assemble the loose fragments of wrecked lives.It premiers at Sundance (via)
I Think I've Finally Had Enough
Daniel Kim is back again this year with the Pop Danthology 2012, a mega mash-up of 55 pop songs from 2012 (SLYT).
Decontaminating Halabja
Halabja chemical weapons: A chance to find the men who armed Saddam?
"Nearly 25 years ago, Iraqi forces killed thousands of their own civilians using chemical weapons on the Kurdish town of Halabja. Now steps are about to be taken to discover which country - and possibly which factory - supplied some of the chemicals."
Via BBC
Old Spice Red
Dikembe Mutombo's 4 1/2 Weeks to Save the World is the tale of the struggle of Dikembe Mutombo to prevent the end of the world due to the Mayan calendar running out of time. You have to stop people from dancing Gangnam style and persuade Ohio to vote; you have to destroy cheap Black Friday toys; you have to destroy the Powerball winning numbers to prevent a literal Hollywood fatcat from producing another Vampire romance. And the game is an ad for a product that appears once in the loading screen. [more inside]
Next year it will start around Halloween.
i figured maybe like a horse only taller
Any parent of a young child will have experienced the ignominy of reaching a page in a picture-book featuring a giraffe and being ignorant of the appropriate sound with which to impersonate said animal. Here is that sound
The Woolworths Choir of 1979
The 2012 Turner Prize for modern art has been awarded to video artist Elizabeth Price for her work The Woolworths Choir of 1979 (excerpt). Price beat a number of contenders, including visual artist Paul Noble (nominated for a series of pencil drawings of a fantastic metropolis named Nobson Newtown), Luke Fowler (with a film titled All Divided Selves, about the controversial Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing) and the splendidly named performance artist Spartacus Chetwynd. Before winning the Turner Prize, Price was best known as a member of 1980s indiepop band Talulah Gosh, though is by no means the only former member to have a notable post-band career.
Read Rouge
Red Rogue is "a side-scrolling roguelike-like" available standalone on multiple platforms and on the web, free! [more inside]
Instagotham
NYCbaton is a blog that gives a different Instagram-using New Yorker the chance to post a photo and story of their life in NYC each day. Every day, there's something different from someone else, but it's an interesting view of the city from so many contributors. It is reminiscent of Sweden's national Twitter account, and how a different resident posts each day to that feed.
Spin out of control
Executive editor Karen Berger will be leaving DC Comics' Vertigo imprint in 2013 Reactions from the comics industry.
You're gonna need a bigger boat.
Got round about a hundred thousand dollars going spare? Then you'll be wanting a custom built shark/dolphin/killer whale sub/boat Seabreacher
I wasn’t so much interested in wedding photography as I was in wedding anthropology
Remains of the Day. "Wedding photographers tend to assume we have the best clients—impervious to things like divorce and disease. But despite the unending blog posts by photographers about the “honor” of shooting so-and-so’s nuptials, we know about as much about our clients as they do about us... Which is another way of saying not much."
defective yeti's good gift games guides
Matthew Baldwin (MeFi's Own* Defective Yeti*): " ...That’s why I come armed to every social engagement with board games, to help facilitate that whole human interaction thing that people thought was important before smartphones gave us an excuse to avoid eye contact with others. It’s also why I give games as gifts—and why, for more than a decade, I have been helping others do likewise. And so, my annual Good Gift Game guide, showcasing those board and card games from the last year or so that are easy to learn and teach, fun and engrossing to play, and that can be completed in 90 minutes or less." (additional notes & more games for the 2012 guide) [more inside]
A truly meta Cosby sweater
In a video shot at World Maker Faire in 2011, artist Andrew Salamone is shown demonstrating the knitting machine he's adapated and programmed to knit images, and displaying some of the amazing work he's produced with it: a ski mask with an image of his face on the front, a "break beat" scarf, and a sweater featuring a picture of Bill Cosby wearing a sweater with a picture of Bill Cosby on it. Salamone hopes to someday get Cosby to accept and wear the sweater he's designed. God knows Cosby can't reject this sweater on the grounds that it's in any way inferior to the sweaters he's worn in the past. Check out more of Andrew Salamone's knitted art on his web site. In my favourite piece, Salamone recreates a still from "The Muppet Bohemian Rhapsody".
Inked by favstar
"Asking where a fairy tale came from is like asking who invented the meatball."
By the rote mastery of this art, your firing efficiency will rise by no less than 120%.
With a 45-point spread between critics and audience, this ten-year-old action film was a box-office failure. It features an actor whose characters die so often on screen that there is a YouTube tribute to his many cinematic demises. The fictional fighting style featured in the film was also used in another film written by the same chap.
The lead actor has a body of work that ranges from the sublime to the straight-up surreal. At age 13, he found the media attention so intense that he would run away during press conferences.
A Scary Christmas to All and to All a Good Fright
Horror movies aren't just for Halloween: Silent Night, Bloody Night, Black Christmas, To All A Good Night, Christmas Evil (starring Fiona Apple's dad as a homicidal Santa), Gremlins (in which Phoebe Cates learns there is no Santa Claus), Silent Night, Deadly Night (which inspired Parts 2, 3, 4, and 5 despite--or perhaps because of--denunciations by Siskel & Ebert and parents' groups), Elves, and Jack Frost
"A clam for supper? a cold clam; is that what you mean, Mrs. Hussey?
"New Englanders learn quickly to dismiss the chowder where tomato ruins its gorgeous broth, where references to New York tarnish its name...However, few know how such distinctions came about in the first place, what processes were involved that resulted in one person's disgust of another's beloved creation, and why, to this day, do we stand by such convictions?" The New England Chowder Compendium, from the McIntosh Cookery Collection at the UMass Amherst library. [more inside]
no more condom odour on your hands
"The condom was invented almost 100 years ago and very little has been done to make its use easier or more pleasant. " No longer. "Two engineers from Delft, Paul Breur and Adnan Tunović, have finally solved decades of issues that men have had with using condoms. " A handy demonstration video is available at the link.
Cats and an 80's Themed Party
Fuck This Jam "is a jam centered around the theme of making a game in a genre you hate." Some of the highlights include Dear Esteban, which will "blow an existential hole in the player's perception of their own realities" (walkthrough); Totally Accurate Toilet Simulator; Crystal Crashers, a "match-one" Flash game; T.Y.P.O., Teletype Protocol Operation; GolfXTRM; The Message, an interactive story about space; and Fuck This Dungeon, an orc/goblin murder simulator. [via]
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