sundance

David Lynch’s INTERVIEW PROJECT: the inner life of small towns

David Lynch has a penchant for small cities and towns and the people in them, and he has set a lot of his films in such places. Towns like Deer Meadow (from TWIN PEAKS, not to mention Twin Peaks itself), Lumberton (BLUE VELVET) and Laurens (THE STRAIGHT STORY) come to mind. His bios seem to always remind us that he grew up in Missoula, Montana and was an Eagle Scout. So… in what seems like an ode to this world, David Lynch has embarked on INTERVIEW PROJECT with filmmaker team Austin Lynch (his son) and Jason S. This 121 part documentary series premieres on his website on June 1st and will continue unleashing its short (3-5 min.) episodes for a year, each episode featuring a person from a new place in the country. What exactly is INTERVIEW PROJECT? Watch David Lynch explain this “20,000 mile road trip” here….

Knocked-up and nerdy?

Then this is the shirt for you! Thinkgeek is pushing this $23 T with the following promotional copy that’s so geeky even we’re not sure what most of it means:

Photographs by blind photographers

Photograph by Gerardo Nigenda Currently showing at University of California Riverside, “Sight Unseen” is an exhibit of works by accomplished blind photographers. TIME has a photo gallery of this exhibit accompanied by brief commentary that makes for a very interesting read. The artists utilizes their other senses to help frame the photo, but for many [...]

Toxic Hudson river sediment could poison Texas aquifer

FORT EDWARD, New York, May 19, 2009 (ENS) – The long awaited dredging of the Upper Hudson River to remove sediment contaminated by PCBs from a General Electric factory began Friday near Roger’s Island in Fort Edward.

The six-year dredging project will be conducted by General Electric under the terms of a November 2006 consent decree. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will oversee all aspects of the work; dredging will continue through October 2009, weather permitting.

This first phase of the dredging project will be conducted 24 hours a day, six days a week and aims to remove 265,000 cubic yards of sediment and 20,300 kilograms of PCBs from a six-mile stretch of the river between Roger’s Island and Thompson Island.

Twenty social enterprises tackling sustainability in the developing world

Can business save the world? Those who answer “Yes” don’t just include industry trade groups and chambers of commerce: the SEED Initiative, a joint project of the United Nations’ Environmental Programme and Development Programme, along with the International Union for Conservation of Nature, “identifies, profiles and supports promising, locally-driven, start-up enterprises” in the developing world that are focused on alleviating poverty and managing natural resources more sustainably.

BabeLicious: A flavored lube we’d actually like to lick.

Everyone knows that wetter is better–but when you have to put your mouth to the moisture, well, most commercial lubes leave more than a little to be desired. Even flavored lubes aren’t particularly appealing: not only are they limited to a rather unimaginative selection of flavors–they’re also incapable of even moderately mimicking the taste they claim to offer up (last we checked, bananas didn’t taste like chemicals).

T-shirts to make you laugh, cry and think

What I love about a t-shirt is its quality as a blank canvas for artists and designers. The Internet has facilitated the dissemination and introduction of these fantastic and creative pieces of wearable art to a wider audience. And I think that is a good thing. Here’s a round up of t-shirts that are topical, humorous, or just flat out awesome.

I agree with the message on this shirt from Comme des Garcons.

Cruel and Unusual: the art of American slapstick

Starting tomorrow, for ten days only, the MoMA will screen a collection of uproarious, irreverent, silent, American slapstick comedies, all accompanied by live piano. First up are five short films united by a general cross-dressing theme with silent favorites Stan Laurel, Buster Keaton, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, and Wallace Beery.

Alvy Singer forever and ever? Welcome to transmedia

Transwhat? Transfat? Transgender? No, transmedia. Have you heard of it? It’s one of the latest buzzwords from media guru, Director of MIT’s Comparative Media Studies Program, and Convergence Culture author Henry Jenkins. Jenkins has strong opinions on the future of screen-based storytelling.

In his 2007 article “Transmedia Storytelling101,” he outlines this theory:

Cannes loves Campion

Australian director Jane Campion is back in the spotlight at the 62nd Annual Cannes Film Festival where her new film, BRIGHT STAR, premiered Friday. The film centers on the last two years of poet John Keats’s short life (he died of tuberculosis at the age of 25) as seen through the eyes of his young [...]

A day in a life told in logos

Pondering the influence and impact of brands on her life, this blogger created a visual representation, a timeline portrait displaying only the brands she interacts with on a typical Friday. The fact that with minimal context aside from time stamps and logos, the viewer can still deduce and relate to the blogger’s day is an [...]

Obama wins wide support to boost fuel efficiency standards

WASHINGTON, DC, May 19, 2009 (ENS) – President Barack Obama is proposing on Tuesday the highest auto fuel efficiency standards ever attempted in the United States. Burning less fuel also will reduce greenhouse gas emissions from tailpipes, saving energy and forestalling climate change at the same time. A senior administration official told reporters Monday night [...]

Sustainable design: Nature Conservancy launches Design for a Living World

Uttering the phrase “green design” can evoke images of mud-plastered huts and clothes that just scream “itchy”… all bathed in a faint whiff of patchouli. A new project from the Nature Conservancy attempts to banish such sensations, and demonstrate that beauty and function can exist hand-in-hand with sustainability.

Free Energy show tonight

Rather, that’s a show put on by Free Energy tonight at the Mercury Lounge. Free Energy, formerly Hockey Night, is finally stepping out of their basement where they have spent the last year recording to release their upcoming electro/rock/pop album produced by DFA labelmate James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem.  8pm at Mercury Lounge with Awesome [...]

Naked News (05-19-09)

photo by epicbeer

• Apparently British women don’t drink beer because it’s “too manly” and will make them fat. Ah, feminism.
  
  
• New polls from Pew and Gallup seem to show that the anti-abortion camp is gaining support. Fortunately, the good folks at stat site FiveThirtyEight.com explain the so-called “shift” (for example, in the Bush era, people feared their rights would be taken away from them, but now that Obama is in town, they are constantly being told they have the most pro-abortion president in history). Still, not exactly good news in our book.

Work to upgrade Texas water quality pays off

AUSTIN, Texas, May 18, 2009 (ENS) – The water quality in Texas improved somewhat in 2007 over the previous year, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, TCEQ, in its 2008 annual report on managing nonpoint source pollution issued Thursday.

Of the 925 water bodies tested in 2007, 386 were included on the 2008 303(d) List, an annual list of impaired waters that all states are required to submit to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the federal Clean Water Act.

This was a slight decrease from the 2006 303(d) List, which included 399 water bodies.

Harlan Ellison: Who is He and Why Should We Care?

Harlan Ellison is easily agitated. You can’t really be sure of what will set him off on a tirade – but you can be sure that his reasoning will be sound.

So we will introduce him as a writer/author – and occasional hell raiser. Hopefully that cautious and broad intro will not incite a verbal attack from him. To the literati, Harlan Ellison is the author and/or editor of countless, much lauded short stories, novels, novellas and anthologies. To the couch-potato clickers of the world, Harlan Ellison matters to you because he served as creative consultant for the 1980′s version of The Twilight Zone, as conceptual consultant for Babylon 5 in the 1990′s and wrote one of the most popular episodes of Star Trek (The City on the Edge of Forever) among his vast body of television credits.

Amazing Tokyo time-lapse

In this gorgeous ad for the watch company Citizen, buildings implode and explode, lights dance in complex arrays, and shadows engulf entire parks. The ad was created by the Japanese agency WOW for a watch- and jewelry-industry trade show called Baselworld.

Nike SB sketches

Nike SB footwear designer James Arizumi shared some of his sketches in an interview with Cool Hunting, which helps convey the evolution of a design of a shoe–this one for professional skateboarder Stefan Janoski. It’s a nice treat and read for any sneakerhead.

Jayhawk engineering students transforming Volkswagen Bug into eco car

A 1974 Volkswagen Super Beetle is probably not your idea of a dream car. At 25 mpg, it’s probably also not your idea of a green car. But a group of mechanical engineering students at the University of Kansas have completed a year-long project aimed at making a Bug much more eco-friendly… with an eventual goal of creating a 500 mpg vehicle.

Coca-Cola introduces plant-based plastic bottles

ATLANTA, Georgia, May 18, 2009 (ENS) – For some of its beverages, The Coca-Cola Company is introducing a new type of plastic bottle made partially from plants.

The world’s largest beverage company says its new PlantBottle™ is recyclable, has a lower reliance on a non-renewable resource, and reduces carbon emissions compared with petroleum-based PET plastic bottles.

PET plastic bottles are made from petroleum, a non-renewable resource. The new bottle is made from a blend of petroleum-based materials and up to 30 percent plant-based materials such as sugar cane and molasses.

The Merchant of Venice at BAM

I’m not sure that a depressing play about money lending is the most appropriate choice for the times, and though the adept and talented Propeller company did not manage to make The Merchant Venice the comedy it is forever miscategorized as, they did do many things right. Merchant is one of my least favorite of Shakespeare’s plays, which is maybe why I’m always so keen to see it performed. This time it’s set not in Venice but in a prison with a sort of come-and-go-as-you-please attitude.

And you thought your family was bad

“Happy Mother’s Day!” photo from Awkward Family Photos

Just in case one of your friends hasn’t forwarded you this new website yet, check out AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com. In the awesome tradition of FAILblog and The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks, Awkward Family Photos aims to “spread the awkwardness,” in their case by collecting some of the most horrendous displays of familial unity — and hilariously captioning them.

Meredith Andrews, Sleep/Wake project

Meredith Andrews‘ photo project Sleep/Wake involves waking people up from their sleep and then cruelly snapping a photo of them. No glamour headshots to be found here. [Via]

Scouting Partners and Spade

What if Pop Art held a garage sale? The answer of what that would look like can be found tucked away on quiet Great Jones Street in Manhattan. Andy Spade (of Jack Spade fame) opened a shop, a hybrid really between an art gallery and a retail store, earlier this year. I finally stopped by the shop, Partners & Spade and walked away greatly amused by its offerings: an eccentric and often humorous collection of obscure bric-a-brac tucked away in drawers (scorpion lollipops) to relevant artifacts of our crazy times (Lehman Brothers branded onesies titled “Vulture Tchotchkes”).

I took some photos of a few items there that amused me.