sundance

JimmyJane’s Form 2: a rabbit unlike any other.

LELO’s not the only one reinventing the rabbit vibe: JimmyJane’s Form 2 is a simplified–and beefed up–version of the Rabbit that’s sure to please. Stripping away the shaft, and leaving just the “rabbit” behind, the Form 2 is two wiggly ears of pleasure. Above, a video from JimmyJane that demonstrates just how good it gets. [...]

Give a little bit…

A match made in heaven.

..of a heifer, llama or sheep to a family in need. Heifer International is non-profit organization with nearly 900 ongoing projects in over 50 countries. They teach “environmentally sound agricultural techniques,” help people build and expand small businesses, provide HIV/AIDS education and, instead of just giving money to small communities, they give gifts in the form of livestock. There are several organizations that do this, but Heifer is one of the few that doesn’t just airlift a water buffalo into a village and leave it with a family that’s not equipped to care for it.

United States and India Embark on a Green Partnership

President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh today reaffirmed the global strategic partnership between the United States and India and launched a new and greener phase in their relationship.

Mass Roundup of Nevada Wild Horses Illegal, Lawsuit Alleges

Plans for a massive roundup and removal of more than 2,700 wild horses from public lands in Nevada were challenged today in federal court in Washington, DC.

Student film documents Haitian sustainability projects

Hope can be a precious commodity in developing countries like Haiti. With 80% of the population living below the poverty level, residents will likely welcome any economic opportunity, regardless of social or environmental consequences. The documentary film BLOOMING HOPE: HARVESTING SMILES IN PORT-DE-PAIX documents efforts by a few Haitian citizens, community leaders, and aid workers to build financially, socially and environmentally sustainable business models in one of the country’s poorest region.

Keep it getting weirder

Major Lazer “Keep it Going Louder” from Eric Wareheim on Vimeo. My obsession with music video director Eric Wareheim continues with yet another disturbing, yet fantastic video. Once again the band Major Lazer gets Wareheim’s freakish video treatment. The song is called “Keep it Going Louder” and it features your usual rap video girls shaking [...]

NPR’s top songs of each year of the 2000s

It’s not even 2010 yet and people are starting to sign off on the 00′s with Best Of lists and rankings. NPR’s “Song of the Day” segment “will survey the past decade, one year (and one song) at a time, with an emphasis on America’s most popular music. These picks don’t exactly qualify as musical [...]

Tennessee Reinforces Dams Against Extreme Weather

The Tennessee Valley Authority, TVA, is raising the elevation of four of its dams to help reduce the risk of flooding in the event of precipitation more extreme than any ever recorded in eastern Tennessee.

Organic Soup Kitchen feeds homeless well this Thanksgiving

If you’ve done any volunteering in homeless shelters or soup kitchens, you know that these institutions have to focus on stretching their dollars to feed as many people as possible… so organic and/or local produce may be out of the question. Santa Barbara’s Organic Soup Kitchen, a “relatively new non-profit,” takes a different approach to feeding the hungry: their mission statement proclaims that “…no person regardless of financial status shall compromise the quality of food they feed themselves or their family.”

Naked News: Adam Lambert’s impromptu on-air make-out sesh

• Adam Lambert calls the west coast feed editing of his American Music Awards performance this past Sunday (which included simulating receiving oral sex and tonguing a dude) “discrimination.”
  
  
• A new study analyzed 914 films released widely between 2001 and 2005 and concluded that “sex and nudity do not, on the average, boost box office performance, earn critical acclaim, or win major awards.”

What if earth had a ring?

Roy Prol animates an answer to the the what-if question, “What if Earth had a ring?” For one, Saturn could step off its high horse with its fancy rings. Second, the earthling view of the sky would be fantastic. Incorporating a bit of real science for some level of believability, Prol shows how the rings [...]

Up and comer: Gabriela Trueba

Gabriela Trueba is what you would call an unknown. In fact, the native Ecuadorian is still an undergrad at NYU’s Steinhardt School. However, and I’m going to risk sentimentality here, the young artist’s work is mature beyond her years. Trueba’s is a new brand of portraiture. The figures she paints are mysterious, dark and haunting. They seem to appear right out of the surface of the canvas itself, a result of what looks like a long process of addition and subtraction reminiscent of Giacometti’s drawings. They evoke an immediate, visceral reaction that will, no doubt, only grow stronger with time.

She’s having what I believe is her very first show at Mosquito Hawk Gallery on Shelter Island until December 30th.

Procrastination

An amusing animated short about a tendency we are all guilty of at times: procrastination. Creator Johnny Kelly describes the different ways we spend our time doing things to avoid doing what we should be doing.

Alejandro Diaz, “World’s Largest Cardboard Sign” and more!

The star attraction of New York-based artist Alejandro Diaz’s latest exhibit of his new works on display at LA’s The Happy Lion is “the ‘World’s Largest Cardboard Sign,’ a freestanding, 10-by-12 foot exercise in simple, self-declarative humor.” His art which purports to “critique cultural stereotypes, socio-political economies and the contemporary art world” has a sardonic [...]

Britain’s Bad Sex Award pits Philip Roth against Nick Cave

photo via the Los Angeles Times

If there’s one thing the Brits are good at, it’s laughing about sex, whether it’s lowbrow, bum-pinching humor — paging Benny Hill — or the highbrow upper echelons of London’s literary society. The cool kids in the latter category are definitely at the Literary Review magazine, with their annual Bad Sex Awards. The announcement of the selections each year leads to a flurry of bad-pun headlines in the British press — “stiff competition” being a favorite phrase (Benny Hill would be proud!). Past nominees have included such heavy hitters as Gabriel García Márquez, Norman Mailer and Salman Rushdie. This year’s shortlist is no different, including John Banville, Paul Theroux, singer-turned-writer Nick Cave, and Philip Roth. The only surprise with Roth is that it took him this long to make the cut.

Census of Ocean Depths Reveals Hundreds of New Species

“The deep sea is the Earth’s largest continuous ecosystem and largest habitat for life. It is also the least studied,” says Dr. Chris German of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, one of 344 scientists from 34 nations working to identify deep sea creatures for the Census of Marine Life.

Illuminated manuscript: R. Crumb’s Bible

Just in time to make your Christmas shopping list is R. Crumb’s “The Book of Genesis,” now on display at the Hammer Museum. Display is really the wrong word; It’s more of an interactive exhibition. Every page, all 200 of them, is framed and hung and yes, people really do start “in the beginning” and read their way along the wall to the end. Why, you might ask, wouldn’t you just buy the book and read it sitting down? What’s presented at the museum are Crumb’s original drawings, including all his corrections and whiteout marks. The pages “become incredibly alive when you see the hand of the artist in the work,” says Crumb’s gallerist, Paul Morris. In fact, while Crumb was perusing the exhibit, he noticed one last mistake and took the page out of its frame to fix it.