sundance

Reused t-shirt entrepreneur goes on tour

If you’re looking for green t-shirts, you’ve got lots of choices: organic cotton, recycled materials, or even bamboo and hemp. To my knowledge, though, Alex Eaves’ Stay Vocal is the only company out there selling reused t-shirts. That’s right… buy one of his products, and it may be a shirt someone’s worn before… though it’s just as likely to be a shirt that a vendor would’ve have otherwise tossed if Stay Vocal hadn’t purchased it. The company puts its own marks on these shirts through a variety of means: patches that go over existing printing, printing on top of printing, or even turning the shirt inside out and adding design.

CATFISH and “The Facebook Generation”

Some members of an older, disapproving generation have dubbed the young, tech-savvy, internet-reliant, social network-loving population ‘The Facebook Generation’. But if CATFISH teaches us anything it’s that the phenomenon of virtual relationships can’t be isolated to any one age group; it’s a multi-generation sensation. In fact, Facebook’s fastest growing demographic is the 65+ club, with waves of grandmas, grandpas and retirees joining up to stay in touch.

Bristol Palin’s Dancing With the Stars “Striptease”

Kultur Kritik can’t get enough of “Dancing with the Stars.”  It especially broke his heart when sextuplemom Kate Gosselin was voted off last season (when she was bad, which was every week, she was especially good).  Something tells me the Sarah Palin haters are hoping Bristol will carry the Gosselin torch this season. Check out [...]

Naked News: World record kissing and Lady Gaga on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

• Lady Gaga PSA’s her way into politics with a video about the importance of repealing the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.
  
  
• Two men from the College of New Jersey kissed for thirty-three hours, putting them in the Guiness Book of World Records for world’s longest kiss.
  
  

Cheat

I looked up “cheat” in the dictionary and found this photo. As the crowd at Reddit pointed out, on top of all that ridiculous pro-gear, he’s OVER THE START LINE. I think it’s safe to say that we’ve officially crossed the “friendly competition where everyone gets a trophy for finishing” line. His parents must be [...]

Woody Allen Meets A Tall Dark Stranger

Woody Allen Talks About His Latest Film Photo Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics Woody Allen’s latest film “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger,” starring an ensemble that includes Gemma Jones, Anthony Hopkins, Naomi Watts, and Josh Brolin, opens in U.S. theaters tomorrow,  September 22nd. On September 8th,  Kultur Kritic excitedly attended a press screening [...]

This Painting is Not Available in Your Country

Hungarian-born artist Paul Mutant’s painting “This Painting is Not Available in Your Country.” PRO TIP: Sometimes using “https” in the URL gets you around firewalls. DISCLAIMER: YMMV with this tip. [Via]

Goggles Project: Canadian universities get short course in “Rethink 101″

North American universities have become hubs for everything from recycling competitions to renewable energy installations, so you’d have good reason to believe that our higher educational institutions are leading the way towards a more sustainable future.

Yazoo Reconnected

Vince Clarke‘s record label sent me the new Yazoo cd, Reconnected, last week. Clarke, the iconic songsmith of Depeche Mode, Yaz, and Erasure, has been featured here on SUNfiltered before. When he and partner Alison Moyet reformed Yaz/Yazoo in 2008 for a world tour it was as if the gay gods had answered many a [...]

JACK GOES BOATING

When JACK GOES BOATING debuted at Sundance earlier this year, the audience gave it a standing ovation. It’s easy to see why. As a story that’s really three stories in one, JACK GOES BOATING lifts you up and sends you way back down again with its sweeping narrative of two friends and two sets of lovers, one old and doomed and one fresh and new. It starts with Jack, played by Philip Seymour-Hoffman, who also makes his directorial debut with a script based on Robert Gloudini’s play of the same name, which Hoffman also starred in. Jack’s friend Clyde (John Ortiz) sets him up with Connie (Amy Ryan), his wife’s co-worker. Connie is a timid, delicate, mouse of a woman, with insecurities so obvious they make her the victim of multiple instances of sexual harassment, even assault. She’s one of those women, coming upon middle-age, still unsure of who they are, making her an eligible candidate for Jack, who drives a limo and lives in his uncle’s basement.

To be young, gifted and black…

…apparently means to be photoshopped by Elle magazine. Or at least, that’s the rumor that’s got ladies mag readers all abuzz. For their 25th anniversary issue, Elle just released 4 different covers featuring 4 different 25-year olds, “young women changing the world” they said, though they forgot to add “in Hollywood.” Let’s be clear, these [...]

Rolex presents THE YOUNG LAUREATES: Reese Fernandez

Reese holds a handwoven bag from the Rags2Riches program.

More than 12,000 families live among the hazards of Manila’s Payatas waste dump. When Reese Fernandez learned that women who earned a living there making rugs from scraps were being exploited by middlemen, she was provoked to act. In 2007 Fernandez co-founded Rags2Riches, which organized the women of Payatas and arranged for them to sell their products directly to retailers. More recently Fernandez and her team consulted designers and found methods of transforming the rugs into fashion handbags, eyeglass cases, wine bottle holders, and other products fit for sale in top end shops. Rags2Riches employs 300 women in Payatas, some of whom are now its partial owners. In addition to 40% of the retail price of each item, the women receive health insurance and training in personal finance and nutrition.

Rolex presents THE YOUNG LAUREATES

THE YOUNG LAUREATES
(L-R: Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu, Reese Fernandez, Jacob Colker, Bruktawit Tigabu, Piyush Tewari)

When Rolex established the Rolex Awards for Enterprise in 1976, the company wanted to reward remarkable people whose work deepened human knowledge and contributed to well-being. In 2009 Rolex expanded its commitment to reward those who strive for social change by launching its Young Laureates Programme, which provides funding to young leaders whose work demonstrates groundbreaking solutions to contemporary challenges in 5 fields: science and health, applied technology, exploration, the environment, and cultural preservation. Every round, five visionary young men and women are awarded $50,000, split over two years. The first year of funding gives the laureates time to deepen and focus their ideas; the second year is intended to promote the project and propel its work into the future. Rolex also provides the winners access to its international network of explorers, scientists, educators, and experts, who can act as mentors, guides, and vital contacts as the Young Laureates develop skills to make them the leaders of tomorrow.

Selection for the Rolex Young Laureate Program will alternate every two years with the original Rolex Awards for Excellence. It is open to anyone of any nationality between the ages of 18 and 31. The next round of Young Laureates will be chosen in 2012. Application details can be found on the Rolex Awards site.

Sundance Channel is proud to partner with Rolex Awards for Enterprise in their support of visionary young men and women tackling the world’s most pressing issues in five areas: science and health, applied technology, exploration, the environment and cultural preservation. Stay tuned for the announcement of the next Awards for Enterprise winner soon.

Watch this: Animated video of when Herzog rescued Phoenix

Werner Herzog narrates this short film, which utilizes papercraft animation with what looks like construction paper, about the time he randomly rescued Joaquin Phoenix from a car crash on January 26, 2006. Side note that only I will care about: January 26 is my birthday.

Rudely named foods and drinks

For your lunch time reading, I highly recommend Rude Food Names. It’s a website, as its name strongly implies, which is devoted to collecting pre-packaged snacks and drinks with NSFW and LOL names (from an Ameri-centric perspective). [Via]

Tough times for museums

As the Alfred Stieglitz Collection struggles to find a home and Chicago’s Field Museum announces plans to cut 50 jobs, it’s a bad time for museums. (This cut follows the museum’s initial layoff of 100 employees at the start of the economic collapse.) As Bradford first wrote about, the latest institution to meet its demise is the Liberace Museum in Las Vegas, which will officially close October 17th. After dipping into its endowment for several years to keep its doors open, the museum eventually came to terms with the fact that “dwindling visitor numbers” were due to “an increasing lack of awareness of the singer/songwriter’s music, career and personality.” Ouch. It’s sadly ironic, of course, that the foundation for the prince of decadence can’t afford to maintain 11,000 square-feet of his bling anymore, though the foundation itself will stay intact in the hopes of promoting traveling exhibitions of items like Liberace’s beloved mirror-plated grand piano, his 200-pound King Neptune costume and his collection of bedazzled shoes (below).

George Clooney and THE AMERICAN

What’s immediately striking about the George Clooney vehicle, THE AMERICAN, is not, in fact, George Clooney but the bleak, frigid, snow-covered Swedish landscape, followed soon after by the also bleak, washed-out landscape of small town Italy. Clooney, who produced and stars, is as cute and scruffy as ever, even in the drabbest of wardrobes, but with little dialogue and even less character development the setting becomes the film’s major player.

Lady Gaga asks for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

In the clip, Gaga addresses several senators by name — including Republicans John McCain, Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell and Oklahoma’s James Inhofe — and asks them to vote in favor of the Defense Authorization Bill, which includes language that would repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” She says: “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” is a law that was [...]

Play with your own Google balls

Remember the Google homepage that featured their logo as interactive bouncy balls? Well you can create your own with your own message on this website, which utilizes code that was written by Rob Hawkes. [Hat tip: @tcarmody]

Not Waving But Drowning

When I sublet my apartment in the West Village last year to a woman wearing plastic boots and leopard prints, I thought nothing of it. New York is full of eccentrics. They’re par for the course. She called herself The Countess. I thought, don’t we all? She paid her rent on time and we chatted [...]

The REAL stuff white people like

StuffWhitePeopleLike (TED Conference? World Cup? Picking their own fruit? Genius!) is one of our favorite blogs in the universe — seriously, it ranks right up there with FAILblog, even if it’s a bit of a one-note joke (but every time we leave it be for a few months, we go back and are reminded of its utter brilliance). Anyway, the dating site OKCupid, on its surprisingly fascinating OKTrends blog, decided to throw caution (not to mention fears of pandering to racist stereotypes) to the wind and examine the real stuff white people like… as well as the stuff that Asians, blacks, and Latinos like. They did this simply by parsing the data on all the personal ads in their system. The concept is both clever as well as a little bit stomach-turning.

A pictoral guide to avoiding camera loss

Predating the (fake) “cute girl who quits job on a dry eraseboard” which hit a collective nerve and went rapidly viral earlier this summer is this funny “pictoral guide to avoiding camera loss” by Andrew McDonald, which he claims he keeps on his digital camera to ensure its proper return to the owner if it’s [...]

The story behind Kodak’s first digital camera in 1975

What you see above is Kodak’s first digital camera, that is a camera that didn’t require any film. Developed by talented people in their Apparatus Division Research Laboratory in Rochester and unveiled in December 1975, this Frankensteinian device utilized scavenged parts, such as the lens from a Super 8 movie camera.

Green tech finds (9/16/10)

Sell your e-waste, build your own e-bike, and get your Fritos from electric vehicles… your green tech finds for the week.

• Green tech patent information goes online: The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) launched its IPC Green Inventory today, which consolidates information on patents and patent applications involving “environmentally sound technology” into one database. (via eGov Monitor)
  
  
• Middle Eastern mud buildings: Arwa Aburawa at Green Prophet takes note of some of the phenomenal (and sustainable) mud buildings in the Middle East (like the one above).
  
  

A sad day for the gays

If you look at my Facebook account you’d think that the recession never hit us gays. One glimpse at my newsfeed and you’ll find many a fairy gallivanting around the globe like peacocks with charge cards and speedos. One good thing about being gay: no children to feed during harsh economic times. But then, this [...]