sundance

The Vader Project

Who says you cannot be a Star Wars geek and a serious art collector? This Saturday, The Vader Project is coming to Freeman’s Auctions. The exhibit features reimagined Darth Vader helmets “by some of today’s hottest underground and pop surrealist painters, artists and designers.” Included is my pal, LA-based Kii Arens. With some estimated to [...]

Warm Up at P.S.1

The rendering

The real thing

Remember back in January when P.S.1 MoMA announced the Brooklyn-based husband and wife duo SO-IL winner of this year’s Young Architects Program? If you got excited about the renderings for their winning design, the cheekily titled Pole Dance, get even more excited now that the actual space is up and ready for you to play in all summer long. As a refresher: Pole Dance is made of 100 free-moving poles, centrally anchored in a shallow pool and held together by a net that’s only ‘taut enough.’ The interactive structure encourages visitors to engage with the poles, to yank them around and tug on the net that holds up lots of big, bright rubber balls, creating and playing a kind of ‘rule-less’ game.

Senator and artist Al Franken multitasking during Kagan hearing

Last year I blogged about Al Franken’s (talented) ability to free hand draw an accurate map of the United States from memory. During the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, the AP snapped this photo of Senator Franken multitasking and demonstrating that his illustration abilities extends beyond cartography with his sharp sketch of [...]

Perverse “Twilight” merch

From the “why didn’t we think of that?” department: Salon recently put together a slide show of the strangest “Twilight Saga” merchandise out there — most of it disturbingly sexual, especially considering how little sex there is in the series (and what sex there is, as you probably know, is utterly disappointing). There are condoms [...]

Five services that make compost for you

Composting is one of those green activities that may still scare you a little: after all, don’t decomposing yard waste, food scraps, and other organic materials attract bugs and smell badly? Done right, you can compost just about anywhere with minimal problems. But if you’re not interested in a worm bin in the apartment or basement, or shelling out relatively big bucks for an electric kitchen composter, the trash can isn’t the only option left.

Where have all my trannies gone?

Tell ‘em. (Photo by Ben Hider/Getty Images) Oh lordy. Am still dying — went to Gay Pride Parade the other day and am still reeling from the amount of sequins, Lady Gaga, bare boobs, hot pants, no pants, assless jeans and feathers! I wore my GIRLS WHO LIKE BOYS WHO LIKE BOYS tee (gotta support! [...]

TED: Lessons from a viral video on how to start a movement

Using a popular viral video (over 3 million YouTube views) of an enthusiastic dancing guy who gets a mass dance party started at the 2009 Sasquatch Music Festival as a guide, Derek Sivers gave this humorous and brief TED talk titled “How to start a movement.” Watch and you’ll get some tips for that cult [...]

Dubious sex studies of the week

Okay, we know we’ve been guilty in the past of drumming up sex research into juicy, slightly misleading headlines. But we’re trying to be better people, we promise! (In our defense, who can possibly resist reporting on a study claiming that wearing socks leads to better sex?) In the meantime, here are some recent “scientific” headlines that gave us pause…

1. The headline: “Women Freeze Eggs to Wait for ‘Mr Right.’” The reality: This story is based on a study of fifteen women. Can you even call that a “study”? Sounds more like a girls’ night out gossip session to us.
   
   
2. The headline: “Shopping Is Bad for Men’s Fertility.” The reality: Trace amounts of BPA have been found in cash register receipts — and BPA is known to suppress male hormones in the body. Okay, yes, BPA is bad. But it’s bad for all of us — men, women, and especially children and babies. But “Licking Cash Register Receipts Bad for Babies” isn’t nearly as catching.
   
   

Lenny Kravitz crashes church choir’s performance

Your feel-good video of today that is going rapidly viral was uploaded a few days ago by Lenny Kravitz himself. As he explains, he was having a drink at a terrace in New Orleans when he heard a choir, the First Baptist Church’s Voice of Praise choir from Lewisville to be exact, sing a song [...]

The state fair goes green

Rickety carnival rides. Animal and agricultural exhibits. And fried… well, just about anything. State fair season is coming up, and future farmers, midway operators, and bands past their prime are ready to roll. At a few fairs around the country, you can add renewable energy vendors, green builders, and organic foodies to the mix: the greening of the state fair is slowly but surely underway.

Fun theory: the slide

I previously mentioned in these pages an ad campaign from Volkswagen centered around the “fun theory” which hacks urban environments to inject a youthful sense of fun. Their latest (awesome) effort borrows an idea from the playground and gives commuters an alternative and faster means of getting down the subway stairs.

The Hammer ups its contemporary collection

“Pentheus” (2010) by Elliot Hundley

Ever since 2005 the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles has made it their mission to acquire a contemporary collection of art from WWII to the present with a focus on work made in Southern California; In only 5 years they’ve amassed nearly 1,500 works in a wide range of mediums from drawing and sculpture to film and video.

Green tech finds (7/2/10)

Summer’s here, it’s hot, and so, naturally, we’ve got lots of solar news in this week’s green tech finds…

• Fuel-efficient driving on your iPhone: Consumer Reports‘ new listing of smart phone apps for drivers includes Greenmeter, an iPhone app that “…monitors your driving and displays your car’s mpg, fuel cost, and carbon emissions.”
  
  
• Is that a secret for more efficient solar cells in your pants…? No, not a really bad, geeky joke: researchers at Cornell have discovered a specific molecule “in blue jeans and some ink dyes” that could be used to build frameworks for cheaper solar cells. (via Treehugger)
  
  

FULL FRONTAL FASHION highlights

Dublin Cycle Chic fashion show As the cycling movement gains momentum around the world (and especially here in New York City), the eternal question of what to wear takes on a new meaning. Enter Dublin Cycle Chic, the Irish city’s first fashion show devoted to looking great on a bicycle. The infectiously rambunctious fashion- and [...]

Tiffany and Debbie Gibson Together at Last

In a headline ripped from the “WTF?” file, I was just told about a pair of 1980 teen pop tarts, Debbie Gibson and Tiffany, and their upcoming movie for the Syfy Channel. Yes, Tiffany and Debbie Gibson are starring in a science fiction movie decades after their fame has sputtered out.

I AM LOVE – Now in Theaters

I AM LOVE starts out with a set up Shakespeare would approve The Recchi family: Emma (Tilda Swinton), her husband and their three grown children as well as various other family members host a birthday dinner for the Recchi patriarch, Edoardo. During his toast, Edoardo announces that the successor to the Recchi textile factory is not only Tancredi, Emma’s husband, but also their eldest son Edoardo Jr. Aside from a slight raise of his eyebrows, Tancredi’s surprise is never expressed. Edoardo Jr. seems to have other things in mind his future (something about a construction contract in relation to the Tate Gallery) but this too is overlooked. In fact, the father-son feud that introduces the film is never brought up again and neither is the family business until it’s casually sold off after Edoardo’ s death.

Sketches for original Pac-Man

Remember when the digitally plugged in world freaked out over the playable Pac-Man game on the Google home page? Well, Japanese Toru Iwatani is the man responsible for the original version of Pac Man and he recently showed a few of his concept sketches and blueprints for this legendary game.

10 sexy reasons to love Iceland

Okay, okay, we know that Iceland really screwed up air travel with that volcano incident. And the collapse of their financial system was a major international bummer. But they deserve to be forgiven — check it out:

1. Icelandic Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir just married her long-term partner, making her the world’s first national leader with a same-sex spouse. The wedding took place the day a new law took effect, which defines marriage as a union between two consenting adults, regardless of sex.
   
   
2. Before she got married, her claim to fame was that she was the world’s only openly gay prime minister. But it was never a big deal in Iceland. Because, you know, it isn’t. Iceland has long been progressive in LGBT matters. All the way back in 1996, they passed a law creating registered partnerships for same-sex couples, which covered nearly all the rights and benefits of marriage.
   
   

John Baldessari at LACMA

John Baldessari’s work can be seen as a steady progression, starting simply and building upwards. His first works, which he produced in the late 60s, were cocky, tongue-in-cheek, text-based conceptual pieces in the style of Lawrence Weiner, but with less poetry and graphic flair. These pieces relied heavily on funny, ironic phrases like his first [...]

Sandrine Estrade Boulet’s street art

Sandrine Estrade Boulet creates witty visual puns using the urban environment around her. They remind me of the quick and fun doodling exercises I used to do with friends when I was younger where someone would draw a shape or object and each of us would take turns adding onto it to transform it into [...]

Girls Just Wanna Sing the Blues

Cyndi Lauper‘s an icon known for reinvention. Not in that chameleon-like way Madonna’s done it over the years. She’s reinvented herself musically: downtown punk pop turned into adult contemporary into disco diva into standard interpreter to her current incarnation, full-throated blues singer. The squeaky-voiced woman with many octaves went to Memphis and caught up with [...]