sundance

An inconvenient font

I absolutely loved this blog post over at Typotheque on Al Gore and fonts. Turns out that when Mr. Gore was working on his follow-up to An Inconvenient Truth, titled Our Choice, he and his team decided to us the font Brioni created by the NYC-based designers mgmtdesign. Everything was fine except for one thing: [...]

THE WHITE RIBBON

When the townspeople of a rural village in Northern Germany cannot find the culprit responsible for the fall that injured their doctor and killed his horse, they let it go. And when a farmer’s wife is killed in a seemingly work-related accident, they again look the other way. But once the Baron’s son is found beaten and hung upside down and the midwife’s son has been dragged into the forest to have his eyes gauged out, people start to talk. When this last victim is discovered he has a note pinned to his chest that recounts the Old Testament adage, “For the sins of the father, you, though guiltless, must suffer.” Is it God punishing this staunch, repressed Protestant town, or is there someone amongst them who is to blame?

Edible crayons

Using a variety of natural ingredients including crushed nuts, seeds, dried fruit, melted marshmallows, AND fruity pebbles (for sweetness instead of sugar), Luxirare made these edible crayons that read and look quite delicious. Be sure to check out the website for fantastic photos of the entire process. [Via]

Obama Awards Clean-Tech Manufacturing Tax Credits Worth $2.3 Billion

President Barack Obama today announced the award of $2.3 billion in Recovery Act Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credits for 183 clean energy manufacturing projects across the United States.

UK Wind Power Blasts Off With Nine New Offshore Wind Farms

The development of European offshore wind power accelerated today as the British government announced approval for offshore wind farm development areas with a capacity 10 times greater than Europe’s entire existing offshore wind energy capacity.

Porcelain clothing

Chinese artist Li Xiaofeng recycles shards and pieces of porcelain from various Chinese dynasties and uses them like an armor to create contemporary clothing including gowns and a jacket, shirt, and tie. The effect is quite shattering.

BUTT TV

I have written here about my love of the Ace Hotel. It is casual yet polished. It can be a wild time, but also peaceful. And it is the hotel with the hottest visitors. Don’t trust me? Check out the Palm Springs pool or the NYC lobby for proof. It is also the gayest hotel [...]

Wallpaper* City Guides, best new iPhone app

It’s not as if the brightly colored, compact Wallpaper* City Guides are a lot to carry around when traveling, but now the tightly edited little package is more discreet and convenient than ever, thanks to the latest iPhone app. While I’m not an advocate for the ongoing move from print to screen, the advantages of [...]

Anger release venting machine

Artists Katja Kublitz and Ronnie Yarisal created this outlet for one’s pent up anger and frustrations. Subverting the ubiquitous snack vending machine (especially in Japan, home of the highest number of vending machines per capita FYI), which incidentally sustained me all through junior high school, the artists filled this vending machine with fragile glassware and china. Anyone having a tough day can insert a coin, select their preferred item and watch it fall and land with a satisfying smash.

FULL FRONTAL FASHION highlights

Chanel by Karl Lagerfeld as seen in HABILLÉES POUR L’ÉTÉ 2010 bonus material Think of this as your FULL FRONTAL FASHION cliff notes. It’s a new year so we’re giving you new treats! Check out the 10 minute mash-up of deleted scenes from FULL FRONTAL FASHION’S web series HABILLÉES POUR L’ÉTÉ 2010 (DRESSED UP FOR [...]

Global Passions for Football and Biodiversity Harnessed for Life

The world of international championship football and the world of biodiversity conservation are coming together this year in a partnership announced Wednesday by the German sport lifestyle shoe and clothing company PUMA and the United Nations Environment Programme.

Katie Roiphe vs. Steve Almond

Last Sunday, in a big NYTimes think piece, sexual mores writer Katie Roiphe accused Dave Eggers and his fellow male American literary contemporaries of being too into cuddling (like that’s a bad thing):

The younger writers are so self-­conscious, so steeped in a certain kind of liberal education, that their characters can’t condone even their own sexual impulses; they are, in short, too cool for sex. Even the mildest display of male aggression is a sign of being overly hopeful, overly earnest or politically un­toward. For a character to feel himself, even fleetingly, a conquering hero is somehow passé. More precisely, for a character to attach too much importance to sex, or aspiration to it, to believe that it might be a force that could change things, and possibly for the better, would be hopelessly retrograde. Passivity, a paralyzed sweetness, a deep ambivalence about sexual appetite, are somehow taken as signs of a complex and admirable inner life. These are writers in love with irony, with the literary possibility of self-consciousness so extreme it almost precludes the minimal abandon necessary for the sexual act itself, and in direct rebellion against the Roth, Updike and Bellow their college girlfriends denounced. (Recounting one such denunciation, David Foster Wallace says a friend called Updike “just a penis with a thesaurus”).

U.S. Auto Fleet Shrinks as Youth Lose Interest in Cars

“America’s century-old love affair with the automobile may be coming to an end,” says Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, a nonprofit environmental research organization.

Green tech finds (1/07/10)

Will 2010 be a good year for green tech? Looks like it from the first finds of the new year…

• Green tech at CES: It’s that time of year again… the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show opened today in Vegas, and CNET is keeping on top of green tech on display.
  
  
• The sun doesn’t shine all the time: That’s one of the criticisms of solar power… but start-up Sun Catalytix thinks it might have a solution to storing energy produced when the sun is shining: mimic photosynthesis.
  
  

Parkour motion reel

parkour motion reel from saggyarmpit on Vimeo. Serene Teh, a graphic design student in Singapore, created for one of her courses this super fresh flip book animation depicting the aggressive urban sport of Parkour aka Extreme Walking. I think it’s safe to assume she got good marks from the teacher for this effort.

The Lady Gaga doll collection

If you browse through this amazing Flickr photo album you’ll see true talent on display. You’ll also see that some queen has way, way too much time on her hands. But I am thankful for the recession for reasons like this.

Paper is the new plastic

The idea is so simple you have to wonder why no one thought of it before. The simplicity, of course, is part of the genius behind these two design proposals for boxing water instead of bottling it. The depressing reality of the post consumer waste that plastic bottles generate is staggering: of the 60 million plastic bottles thrown away each day in the US alone, only 14% get recycled, meaning 86% lay in a land fill for up to 1,000 years. That’s nearly 19 billion bottles a year. Finally, someone is doing something about it.

Eiffel Tower blueprints

Bookending my recent entry about Ferris wheels, which I wrote was partly inspired by the magnificence of the Eiffel Tower when it was unveiled at the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris, here are some scanned images of the blueprints of the Eiffel Tower. [Via]

Hollywood 2010: slimmer and healthier?

Was 2009 the best of times or the worst of times for Hollywood? That probably depends on whom you ask: the scads of people who lost their jobs at studios, networks and production companies over the last year or the audiences who hightailed it to the movies in increasing number, looking for a fantasy escape from bleak economic realities.

SPECTACLE REPORT: ELVIS COSTELLO WITH…
Elvis Costello, Musical Historian

Elvis Costello takes center stage.

With two seasons of SPECTACLE now in the can, it’s worth taking a longer look at just how Elvis Costello is able to pull off such a series. In the course of these episodes, Elvis has hosted musicians young and old, male and female, representing genres from jazz to country to soul and beyond. And not only does he need to lead a conversation with each artist, he also took it upon himself to perform with everybody.

Reports of the G-spot’s nonexistence are vastly exaggerated…

photo by liz_noise

If you believe the screaming headlines this week, it turns out that after all these years — drumroll please — the G-spot does not exist! That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, the hunt is off! According to the U.K. Daily Telegraph, “Researchers at King’s College London claim there is no evidence for the existence of the G-spot – supposedly a cluster of internal nerve endings – beyond a woman’s imagination.” In other words, please put down your G-spotters and go home.

Except. Except. Except. Where to start?

Sundance Film Festival’s Top 10 Oddest Couples

To count down to the Sundance Film Festival, we’re blogging about some of our favorite movie moments in the festival’s history. Back in December we wrote about the Top 10 Lessons in Love from Sundance flicks, then last week we covered the Top 10 Lessons in Young Love. This week, it’s odd couples! Romeo and Juliet, Louis and Clark, Donny and Marie these couples are not:

1. Crazy Love: An ambulance-chasing attorney with a wife and disabled child hires a thug to throw lye in the face of his ex-mistress. She’s disfigured and half blinded, he goes to jail. Fifteen years later they marry. True story. WTF?!
   
   
2. The Last Word: A woman falls for a man she doesn’t realize writes suicide notes for a living, including the note left by her dead brother.
   
   

Pogo goes “Up”

Pogo (previously discussed), noted for his previous remixes of classic movies into electronic music, is back and this time applies his talent to one of my favorite movies of 2009, UP. I particularly liked what happens at around the 1:30 mark. Speaking of UP, the Internet collectively lost its mind over this amazing Russell costume. [...]

A Tim Burton ancestor: the hugable somnambulist

As part of the Tim Burton show at the MOMA (showing through April 26^th), they are exhibiting a series of films called “Tim Burton and the Lurid Beauty of Monsters.” These are films that according to the MOMA staff have “… influenced, inspired, and intrigued Burton, and which reflect the motifs, themes, and sensibilities of his work.” Just scanning the list of monsters, mummies and evil villains, one of them caught my eye. THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, a landmark German Expressionist film directed by Robert Wiene in 1920. One of my favorite early films, it’s a visual journey into a bold and hyper non-realistic world, with geometrical and striking high contrast sets. The backgrounds are often absurd and light and shadows are painted on walls and floors. It’s as if we’ve stepped into an insane but brilliant artist’s point of view. No wonder Burton was inspired by this film.

Lost and FOUND

FOUND Magazine is yet another example of why print will never go out of style. FOUND began when creator/editor Davy Rothbart went out to his car one night and found a note meant for someone else. It read, “Mario, I fucking hate you. You said you had to work then whys your car HERE at HER place?? You’re a fucking LIAR. I hate you. I fucking hate you. -Amber PS. Page me later.” The car, of course, was actually Davy’s and the rest is history.