October 11, 2007
What does it feel like to die.
Sigur Rós interview goes badly, very, very badly.
Sigur Rós have been doing publicity for a documentary about the band called Heima (trailer). They went on NPR's The Bryant Park Project and did an interview which went achingly wrong. On the show's website, interviewer Luke Burbank describes it as "possibly the worst interview in the history of electronic media." [more inside]
They Kick Ass for the Lord
Crazy.
You've never heard a box of Stoned Wheat Thins, a big tub of Necco, a little wooden frog, a Tupperware bucket, an empty jar and a theremin sound this good. It's Crazy. No, really, it's Crazy. [more inside]
The Fever Dream of Comrade Koolhaas
Delirious Moscow: a survey on stellar and interstellar Soviet constructivist architecture, or, buildings in the time before Stalin (with pictures).
Portal Clones Already
2D Flash Portal A competent 2-d scroller featuring mechanics from the new Valve game Portal.
Once upon a time almost everyone was a biogenic robot.
Marquee anagrams / aqua ear man germs
After the Flatbush Pavilion theater in Brooklyn closed down, people started rearranging the letters on the marquee to spell their own messages. [more inside]
Your Grandmother's Vibrator.
A Slide-show History of the Vibrator. [NSFW] A timeline of important milestones. [NSFW image] The vibrator museum. [safe] More history, more pictures [safe] Hysterical: A Short History of the Vibrator [safe]
Favela Rising
Favela Rising is a recent documentary exploring the AfroReggae (in Portuguese) movement and the amazing story of one of its founders, Anderson Sa. AfroReggae (MySpace page has music on) was born in the Vigário Geral favela as a way to give the community an alternative to the drug trade and to fight police oppression. [more inside]
Connecticut and New York's Wandering Hobo
"Since 1862, many have heard the tale of a wandering vagrant who traveled in an endless 365-mile circle between the Connecticut and Hudson rivers. The strange man only spoke with grunts or gestures and dressed in crudely stitched leather from his hat to his shoes." [more inside]
me parece bonita
First she was a dancer but after an injury she had to sing to make a living. She still dances a little during her songs (a rare feat among flamenco cantaoras). I first heard about her when she made a whole record (cd) of Edith Piaf's songs in spanish. You can get a taste here. She talks about it here (spanish + french, excerpts). She sang les feuilles mortes too. But nothing equals seeing her, I think : so here she is with two covers from a recent documentary : a song by Edith Piaf, a song by Lola Flores. Btw, If you get into french songs in the flamenco idiom, try this.
Hawkes' Eye View
Fiddler on the Prairie
Fiddler on the prairie. The story of a 1970s high school production of Fiddler on the Roof. The school was in Billings, Montana.
You Can't Always Get What You Want
Ask any one-time resident of Excelsior, MN about Jimmy "the bum" Hutmaker and you are sure to hear a tale about their experiences with a treasured local character. Some of those tales are the stuff of the best urban legends. In fact, many wrongly believed that the man who walked Main Street with a cigar invariably clenched in his teeth was homeless. Perhaps the most remarkable story about this beloved man was the tale about a day back in the 60s when Mr. Jimmy met a man named Jagger in the old Bacon's drug store. Excelsior lost a piece of history last week when Jimmy died. Since hearing the news, I am finding myself saddened by the loss of a character from my youth. RIP Mr. Jimmy.
Not your father's Christian comics
It's the Oil
It’s the Oil (Stupid)
Epicurean Delights of the State Fair
John Stilgoe wants you to go outside and look at things a little differently.
John Stilgoe is a professor at Harvard who teaches his students how to, among other things, mindfully observe the urban and suburban environments they inhabit. [more inside]
Crusty Row, Thompkins Square Park, Lower East Side and Me
Nobel Prize in literature 2007
Mind the Gap
Mind the Gap: an essay by Paul Graham on wealth, riches, poverty, and why income inequality might not be so bad. [more inside]
In the hollow of an unarmorial age
“Iraq War Memorial: Death of Prince Harry" features the in fact hale and hearty royal scion "laid out before the Union Jack with pennies placed over his eyes and head rested on the Bible...Prone with his unfired gun still holstered, Prince Harry is represented clutching a bloodied flag of Wales, and holding to his heart a cameo locket of his late mother, Princess Diana, while a desert vulture perches on his boot...a bronze casting of Prince Harry’s 'severed ears' also set for display at the Trafalgar Hotel will be offered on eBay." Via.
"Put your boob in my scotch. Come on, put your tit in my drink."
Bob Log III plays distorted trash grimey blues slide guitar with his hands, he drawls through a telephone attached to the bubble face of the motorcycle helmet he wears, and he drums with his feet. He is known to ask women to stir his scotch on stage with their breasts, which is sadly Not currently Safe for Work. Sometimes he asks them to sit on his knee, bouncing up and down on the blue glittery jump suit he wears whenever he plays. [more inside]
ethnomapping in Brazil
Brazilian Ethnomapping: Inside a thatched-roof schoolhouse in a village deep in Brazil's Amazon rain forest, Surui Indians and former military cartographers huddle over the newest weapons in the tribe's fight for survival: laptop computers, satellite maps and hand-held global positioning systems. Some of the resulting maps.
Ballmer's Been Busy
Steve Ballmers's been busy. Whether it's attacking Google and Linux (or being attacked back), berating the moms of 13-year-old girls who hate Vista, or just being called an alcoholic, the perennial Microsoft CEO been everywhere these days.
What happened to the good old days when he just yelled a lot?
What happened to the good old days when he just yelled a lot?
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