July 8, 2013
Monster Smash
“What I wanted was for kids to see a movie where they don’t need to aspire to be in an army to aspire for an adventure. And I used very deliberate language that is a reference to westerns. I don’t have captains, majors, generals. I have a marshal, rangers . . . it has the language of an adventure movie. I want kids to come out of the movie and say, I want to be a Jaeger pilot! I really think that would be my dream come true.” - Guillermo del Toro on being a monster loving pacifist. Designer Wayne Barlowe talks about Pacific Rim's creatures. But has maneuvering at Legendary doomed the film before it has even opened?
Gothic American folk music from Glasgow's Sparrow & The Workshop
The first thing you notice about Glasgow trio Sparrow & The Workshop is how unGlaswegian they sound. That's mostly down to lead singer Jill O'Sullivan, [Belfast-born, Chicago-raised] with a Joni Mitchell-via-Nashville voice, a stunning instrument that often justifies the price of admission on its own. When she sings about the devil, darkness and violence, fever, rapture and fear, it's the old American west she evokes, not Glasgow's West End. Behind the voice is a rhythm section that's not afraid to step forward: baritone harmony vocals; pounding drums, clicks and whips; pained, plaintive and passionate folk-rock melodies. That's from the Clash Music review of Crystals Fall (Grooveshark stream), the debut from the trio. [more inside]
Six Months at Sea in the Merchant Marine
Martin Machado's short and serene documentary about his experiences working on a container ship. [more inside]
"This one time, at band camp..."
In case of emergency please contact the Senate Appropriations Committee
This week the US government began furloughs of over half a million employees, reducing their pay and work hours by 20%. Members of a corresponding Facebook group who will be out of work one day a week had some ideas regarding how to set up out-of-office email auto-replies.
Banana Wisconsin
Bulletproof Security is a paramilitary security company. They have provided security to Habitat for Humanity and Empire CAT among others. [more inside]
The Hut Where the Internet Began
When Douglas Engelbart (previously) read a Vannevar Bush essay on a Philippine island in the aftermath of World War II, he found the conceptual space to imagine what would become our Internet...
Disaster in Lac-Mégantic
Last Saturday morning, a town in Quebec exploded. A runaway train carrying roughly 100,000 liters of crude oil derailed and subsequently exploded in the small Quebec town of Lac-Mégantic in the early hours of Saturday morning. A significant amount of the downtown is burnt or leveled, and as the search for survivors continues, residents are beginning to realize the scope of the destruction [more inside]
Liquid City
"For 400 years, New York has embraced, spurned, ignored, harnessed, and feared the water that made its greatness possible. Now our relationship must get even more complex." [more inside]
Five Essays on Literature by Novelist Adam Thirlwell
Adam Thirlwell has written five essays in as many years for The New Republic. They all concern themselves with literature, especially French, though the first one was about Charles Dickens and how he was the most avant-garde writer of the 19th Century. The second was about Roland Barthes' plans to write a novel which came to nothing when he died. In Visionary Materialism, Thirlwell explores Rimbaud's Illuminations from several angles. Genocide and the Fine Arts is about Claude Lanzmann, the director of Shoah, and his complicated relationship with his famous work. The latest one, Baudelaire's Humiliation as a Way of Life, is about Baudelaire's place at the crux of the 19th Century revolution in letters.
Beauty (and title) only go so deep.
Having your phone taken away and using a bucket for a bathroom for even a single day might sound like a nightmare to the average teenager, but for Eleana Frangedis, winner of Miss Teen America 2012, it turns out to be a much needed respite. Miss Teen America finds freedom, for a day.
#newrules
"For the record, I think Tattoo You is a much better album than Magna Carta … Holy Grail, and that Samsung makes a much better product than Jovan." (Steven Hyden for Grantland)
Beyond the Finish Line
The NYTimes tracks the recovery of Jeff Bauman, one of the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing
I spy Party Planning Committee, Finer Things Club, & Here Comes Treble!
Immersion is a tool from the MIT Media Lab that analyzes the metadata from your Gmail account, displaying a beautiful visualization of the networks of people you contact most frequently. [more inside]
When Facebook posts lead to prison
In February, 18-year-old Just Carter was talking about League of Legends on Facebook. “Someone had said something to the effect of 'Oh you're insane, you're crazy, you're messed up in the head,’ to which he replied 'Oh yeah, I'm real messed up in the head, I'm going to go shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still, beating hearts,’ and the next two lines were lol and jk.," said Carter.
What happened next has been the subject of a recent spate of stories from, among others, the Huffington Post, National Review, the World Socialist Web Site, and NPR. A woman in Canada saw the post and called the police in the Austin area. Carter, who lives a few miles from a school, was arrested, charged with a 3rd degree felony of making terroristic threats, and put under $500,000 bail. He has been in jail since March. [more inside]
What happened next has been the subject of a recent spate of stories from, among others, the Huffington Post, National Review, the World Socialist Web Site, and NPR. A woman in Canada saw the post and called the police in the Austin area. Carter, who lives a few miles from a school, was arrested, charged with a 3rd degree felony of making terroristic threats, and put under $500,000 bail. He has been in jail since March. [more inside]
Ryan Davis, 1979-2013
Ryan Davis, co-founder of gaming website Giantbomb, passed away on July 3rd. He was 34 years old. He had been married less than a week and was on his honeymoon. [more inside]
When Good Dogs Do Bad Things
"I threw up 40 times and was put in the hospital. I felt like I was dying. Our producer's back totally went out completely. He couldn't even move. The whole recording he was on pills and steroids and anything he could do to get through it. On our first day of recording, the engineer's assistant's car got broken into outside the studio, and everything inside it, including, for some reason, every CD he owned, got stolen." While heavy metal comes with a host of occupational hazards, from excessive consumption to accidents on tour, the physical toll that being in the Dillinger Escape Plan has exacted on members sets the band apart. [more inside]
How does it feel to be 100?
A New York woman turned 100 recently and she only has one thing on her mind. (NSFW)
Don’t Say Goodbye. Just ghost.
"Ghosting—aka the Irish goodbye, the French exit, and any number of other vaguely ethnophobic terms—refers to leaving a social gathering without saying your farewells. One moment you’re at the bar, or the house party, or the Sunday morning wedding brunch. The next moment you’re gone. In the manner of a ghost. “Where’d he go?” your friends might wonder. But—and this is key—they probably won’t even notice that you’ve left."
Hobby Beekeepers destroying the honey industry in the U.S.?
Your farmers market honey, you have no idea. '“Those universes are so separate,” Barry continued, “that you could go to a hobby bee-keeping meeting and mention commercial bee-keeping, and they’ll say, well, we just don’t have any commercial bee-keeping in North Carolina. They don’t even know those guys exist. They’re completely different worlds.” He paused. Then he added, “And they hate each other.”' [more inside]
"And tell me, how long have you been combin' your hair with a wrench?"
Though it became an epic flop and forced Francis Ford Coppola to declare bankruptcy, the 1982 musical One From the Heart (previously) did produce one hell of a soundtrack featuring the unlikely collaboration between Tom Waits and Crystal Gayle. Here's the story of how it all came together. [more inside]
What if Disney Princes were in a Boy Band?
What if Disney Princes were in a Boy Band? Appearances by:
Ariel and Eric;
Beauty and Beast;
Cinderella and Prince Charming;
Jasmine and Aladdin;
Mulan and Li Shang
They're Hip. They're Young. They're 32 years Old!
While it's widely known that US television likes to hire actors in thier 20s to play characters in thier teens, have you ever wondered what actors playing teenagers actually looked like as teenagers? Actual Teen Vs Adult Teen has you covered.
Ovaries! Time MAchines!
British comedian Josie Long explores All the Planet's Wonders in a very short series on BBC radio: Collecting. Animals. Astronomy. Plants.
The Past is a Different Color
Helping to put to rest the "Are Video Games Art?" debate
Animation artist Dan the Ad Man created this very cool visualization of video game characters as moving paths of abstract art in his piece Street Fighter Motion Sculptures. [via]
Doodle the alien home
Google Doodles Roswell A minigame for your Monday morning alien exile pleasure.
Whaling in the Antarctic (Australia v. Japan: New Zealand intervening)
A case currently before the International Court of Justice has Australia (supported by New Zealand) seeking to either stop the flagrant abuse of a loophole in the International Whaling Commission's rules by Japan, or a nasty cultural imperialist "moral crusade" attempt to suppress a sustainable, ancient tradition of killing whales with factory ships around Antarctica.
You can watch Court arguments here.
Some viewers may find these images distressing
As Ramadan begins, more than 100 hunger-strikers in Guantánamo Bay continue their protest. More than 40 of them are being force-fed. A leaked document sets out the military instructions, or standard operating procedure, for force-feeding detainees. In this four-minute film made by Human Rights organisation Reprieve and Bafta award-winning director Asif Kapadia, US actor and rapper Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def), experiences the procedure.
The powdered ashes of Susan B. Anthony
Portishead at Glastonbury 2013
The enduring appeal of an act with such a relatively small oeuvre is understandable based on their 2013 Glastonbury set. Fantastic live act cinematography. [SLYT]
Eight Years and Counting
The Girls Who Haven’t Come Home (NYT) The last time they took Vernice Hill’s children away, the time they didn’t give them all back, was the afternoon she went to see her neighbor. Ms. Hill lives in a hulking building on East 188th Street, in a frayed neighborhood in the Bronx. It was May 1, 2005. [more inside]
What's in a name?
Sometimes the way you live your life is going to make a name for you, and sometimes your name is going to shape your life. Especially if your name is Harley Rider.
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