sundance

The Earth Angel hand-powered vibe

It’s kind of ironic: women turn to vibrators so their hands don’t have to do the work, but with the new Earth Angel vibe you have to hand-crank it to get it to work. Of course, it’s for a good cause: renewable, sustainable energy! And we suppose if you crank using both hands equally, you [...]

Art exhibit: COBRA-lalilulelo

Our Bradford Shellhammer’s GI Joe entry reminds me of “COBRA-lalilulelo,” an art exhibit bowing to evildoers and “visually explor[ing] the trend of villain popularity in our culture and how it relates to play.” Hurry! This exhibit at The Show Room ends on August 14th. Also, check out artist Caleb Beyers’s series “Half the Battle” which [...]

Post your rent window display

Candy Chang’s slightly voyeuristic interactive installation “I’ve Lived: Post-it Notes for Neighbors” featured fill-in-the-blank Post-It notes which covered the storefront window of Brooklyn vintage furniture shop,Yesterday’s News, and focused on one of the most obsessed topics in New York City: How much are my neighbors paying for their apartments? Locals were encouraged to participate by sharing this information and at the end of the project, she compiled the results into neat graphs and charts.

At Risk of Rising Seas, Pacific Nations Demand Global Climate Action

With rising sea levels encircling Pacific Island nations, heads of state and government across the Pacific Thursday adopted a climate change declaration advocating a strong global agreement to limit warming to two degrees Celsius or less.

Chemical Safety Board Probes ExxonMobil Refinery Toxic Gas Leak

A four-member investigative team from the U.S. Chemical Safety Board is traveling to the ExxonMobil refinery in Joliet, Illinois, the site of a release of propane and toxic hydrogen fluoride Thursday.

Cash for Clunkers Gets a $2 Billion Fill Up

The wildly popular Cash for Clunkers program now has $2 billion more cash in its coffers. Today, President Barack signed into law a bill providing emergency supplemental funding for the program after the original $1 billion in funding was expended in its first two weeks.

Asia Extreme – Grifters on a Train: A WORLD WITHOUT THIEVES

The grifter has been a cinematic staple since the early days of the medium, and there probably isn’t a national cinema that doesn’t have at least a handful of con man/woman films in their celluloid archives. Much like gangsters, the con man is often a romanticized figure – we wouldn’t want to cross paths with one in real life, but we love seeing them succeed on the silver screen. And whether dashing (Redford and Newman in THE STING) or downright devilish (Angelica Huston in THE GRIFTERS) the allure of the scam artist will never fade.

G.I. Joe characters brought out of the closet

Many thirtysomething men are anxiously awaiting today’s release of GI JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA. We grew up in the 80s, obsessed with the action figures, and the film offers another chance to feel young again. While GI JOE is a macho Hollywood film, the toys themselves were always a bit homo. Think about it. Action figures? [...]

New product: Trojan Ecstasy condoms

Since we were extolling the virtues of condoms the other day (in light of all the withdrawal hub-bub), we wanted to talk about a new brand on the market. While we often automatically dismiss Trojans as your basic, quintessential (i.e. unexciting) condom, they’ve actually been making real efforts to compete with some of the more revolutionary fits, textures and shapes available today. So we asked Condomania’s CEO, Adam Glickman, what was up with their most recent make, Trojan Ecstasy (read on for a special discount link):

When did the Trojan Ecstasy line hit the market?
Just in the past few months.

Is it designed to feel better for him or for her, or both?
They are designed to feel better for both men and women, although the big benefit really does come for the guys.

Bruce Weber: Gone Fishing online exhibition

Last night Sundance Channel launched the first online exhibition from acclaimed filmmaker and photographer Bruce Weber entitled GONE FISHING – A LITTLE JOURNEY IN MY BACKYARD. The exhibition includes more than 70 photos, video from many of his films, and a wealth of information on Weber himself. You can even watch his short film YOU [...]

Thousand Cankers Disease Kills Black Walnut Trees Across the West

Thousand cankers, a newly recognized and devastating disease that attacks black walnut trees, has killed a large number of trees across the western states and has now moved eastward into several communities along Colorado’s Front Range, including Boulder and Colorado Springs and the Denver area.

Ohio is a piano

Photo by Edebell.

Andy Woodruff, a cartographer-slash-programmer was driving recently through Ohio when he realized that there are 88 counties in this state and 88 keys on a piano. Combining this coincidence with his programming abilities, the result is the greatest thing I’ve seen all week: the Ohio piano, an interactive flash map of the state with each county assigned a key. He explains:

Remembering Hiroshima

On a somber note, 64 years ago on this date, a US bomber named “Enola Gay” flew over the city of Hiroshima and its approximate 250,000 residents and dropped the world’s first atomic bomb. An estimated 70,000 people were immediately killed with another 70,000 killed in the aftermath due to radiation exposure and resulting injuries. [...]

The love of Tan Hong Ming

Remember when being in love was simple? By internet standards, this video is prehistoric but too good and too cute not to share. Directed by acclaimed Malaysian director/writer/producer Yasmin Ahmad whose work is well-known for its humor, heart and love that crosses cultural barriers, this ad for Malaysian oil company Petronas was filmed for Malaysia’s [...]

Green tech finds (8/6/09)

Green tech galore… here are this week’s finds.

• Smart car charging comes to San Diego: If you envision freeloading friends trying to charge their cars up at your place in the future, fear not: as a part of its testing of car-charging stations, San Diego will have participants use a Plug Smart “intelligent charger” that makes sure the drivers get the bill for the electricity.
  
  
• Package delivery by UrbanMole: Both Fed-Ex and UPS (among others) are doing there best to green up their operations. Designer Phillip Hermes’ UrbanMole concept would take the trucks off of the street completely with a “capsule-like device … that travels through an underground pipe network that transports packages of all stripes.” (via Cleantechnica)
  
  

Hand shake

We are halfway through summer and many of us have dedicated countless hours in the gym in the hopes of having that perfect beach body. Now if only I’d found Shake Weight sooner! At first I thought this commercial was a joke from SNL. I kept looking for Kristen Wiig. But think again. The product [...]

In The Loop – Lost in translation

I have no doubt that the days before the US declared war on Afghanistan in 2001 were hectic and that accusations and insults were flung about prolifically amongst various government offices. Such is the setting of the political farce IN THE LOOP, which plays out during the final, clamorous days of a war-free United States – from the British perspective. Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) is a bumbling British Secretary of something-or-other who inadvertently gets involved in the war planning after a gaffe during an interview and spends the rest of the film trying to stay afloat amidst a sea of war-hungry American politicians.

Farhad Moshiri, Chocline

Currently on display at the Queens Museum of Art as part of the “Tarjama/Translation” exhibit which “features artists from the Middle East, Central Asia and its diasporas,” I’m amazed by Iranian Farhad Moshiri’s “Chocline” (pun!) where 130 delectable pastries are arranged in the shape of the familiar police chalk body outline. Farhad Moshiri’s Chocline…provoke reflection [...]

Books: The Impostor’s Daughter: A True Memoir

Laurie Sandell’s graphic memoir, The Impostor’s Daughter, just hit bookstores, and even if she wasn’t our good friend, we’d still tell you that it’s our number one pick for a beach read this summer. (By the way, “graphic memoir” = graphic novel-style memoir. The rest of the book is not nearly as dirty as the page we excerpted above. What can we say, we’re smut peddlers.) Anyway, the book chronicles Laurie’s search for the truth about her charming and brilliant con artist father — and how her relationship with him affected everything from her career as a celebrity journalist to her love life. (Paging unavailable men!) It’s hilarious, engrossing, honest, and smart — plus, look at all those pictures! You’ll race through it even if the wind is blowing sand in your face.

Julia Child, the original gear head

In 2001 Julia Child donated her kitchen to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and not only is the entire kitchen (walls and windows and all) on display, but so are a bevy of gadgets. Child was a confessed gadget freak, and it’s evident in the array of standard kitchen fare: mixers, ricers, blenders, processors, mallets, cleavers, saws and of course her beloved “fright knife.”

Original NAPOLEON DYNAMITE

As a film student at Brigham Young University, Jared Hess created the short PELUCA, shot in two days on a budget under $500 and screened at the 2003 Slamdance Film Festival. It should be familiar, because this film would later provide the foundation for NAPOLEON DYNAMITE. [Via]

Theatre: still putting asses in seats

The Public Theatre‘s website was impossible to access on Monday. Here’s why: Philip Seymour Hoffman, who plays Iago to John Oritz‘s Othello in an upcoming production. Perhaps the way to sell theatre tickets nowadays is to stud the cast with celebrities. When a BAM volunteer tried to sell me a membership over the phone recently, [...]

A tale of two book covers.

Above, the covers for two erotica anthologies. When MILF Fantasies was released as an ebook by Ravenous Romance earlier this year, it barely sold. Young Studs was made available shortly after, and shot into Ravenous Romance’s top ten. This would be nothing more than a curiosity of sales data, were it not for one essential [...]

Giving a hand – high design for prosthetics

Design challenges are not new. They’re all over television and exist on every design college’s campus. Recently, however, Manhattan’s School of Visual Arts produced a design challenge like none I’ve seen before. Titled, The Prosthetics Project , the 10-week project challenged 3-d design students to produce design work focused on upper limb prosthetics. Design fans [...]

Chicago gets Carrotmobbed

Carrotmobbed? WTF?

If you haven’t heard of it yet, Carrotmobbing is one of the newest forms of green activism. Rather than boycotting or protesting companies doing bad things, Carrotmobs offer (you guessed it) a “carrot” to businesses for doing the right thing. Local businesses commit to greening themselves in order to receive a mob of customers on a particular day and time. So far, the concept’s worked well in San Francisco, Kansas City, and Brooklyn.