sundance

Let’s Talk About Sex (a documentary)

Its title may be tired, but the documentary LET’S TALK ABOUT SEX is as relevant and necessary as ever: LET’S TALK ABOUT SEX takes a revealing look at how American attitudes towards adolescent sexuality affect today’s teenagers. We live in a society that uses sex to sell everything from lipstick to laptops. Yet fear and silence [...]

Famous authors and artists with their typewriters

Sylvia Plath This is a great photo compilation (many from LIFE) of famous authors and poets along with the occasional director, actor, and musician with their respective typewriter from a bygone analog era. To date myself a bit, my first ever “term paper” was an assignment in 3rd grade and I typed it all out [...]

MY SO-CALLED LIFE – Coming to Sundance Channel!

SUNDANCE CHANNEL ACQUIRES CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED FAN FAVORITE ‘MY SO-CALLED LIFE’ New York, April 7, 2011 – Sundance Channel has announced that it has acquired the iconic series MY SO-CALLED LIFE from Disney-ABC Domestic Television, premiering on April 25 at 11PM ET/PT.  The one-hour series broke new ground when it launched in 1994 by following a group [...]

Remembering the Whole Earth Catalog

In 1968 Stewart Brand founded the singular publication the Whole Earth Catalog, a compendium of useful resources for designing and building with the ‘whole earth’ in mind. Heavily influenced by the work of Buckminster Fuller, the catalog “developed into an extensive reference tool for designing the environment, living spaces and new media practices.” Far from being just a collection of products and prices, the Whole Earth Catalog is the only catalog to win a National Book Award for its eschewing of politics and a move towards grassroots change. “At a time when New Age hippies were deploring the intellectual world of arid abstractions, Whole Earth pushed science, intellectual endeavor and new technology as well as old.”

Green tech finds (4/7/11)

T-BOX-2010_liteonaward from jiangqian on Vimeo.

We’ve got mushroom materials this week… plus another upgrade in ENERGY STAR standards, and algae’s potential for cleaning up nuclear wastes…

• Dell piloting mushroom packaging: I mentioned this development last year… this week, Dell packaging guru Oliver Campbell announced that the company will be piloting use of a mushroom-based packaging materials for shipping products. (Note: Spent a few days in Austin to attend a Dell CAP Day last week… they paid for my trip).
  
  
• Ford’s looking at mushroom-based foam insulation: Yep… a mushroom twofer — Ford’s also considering using Ecovative’s material to replace petroleum-based foams used as insulating material in its cars interior elements.
  
  

The 10 types of sex dreams

Freud, Schmroid. If you’re looking for a good book on the interpretation of dreams, check out the brand new one by our friend Lauri Loewenberg, the nicest dream interpreter you’ll ever meet! Dream On It: Unlock Your Dreams, Change Your Life (published by St. Martin’s Press) features hundreds of real dream interpretations and a comprehensive dream symbol dictionary to help you understand and make the most of your nocturnal visions, especially the sexy ones. There’s an entire chapter dedicated to sex dreams, which Lauri says are often “not about a physical union you want, but rather a psychological union you need!” There are 10 kinds of sex dreams; below are 5 of them; check out Dream On It for the other five archetypes (The Friend, The Same Gender, Oral Sex, Family Members, and Masturbation):

1. The Mystery Lover – This is the most common of all sex dreams. Many of us wonder if this dream is actually a glimpse of our soul mate who might be out there somewhere waiting for us. Alas, t’is not so. But what is so is that the unknown, faceless man or woman that often appears in our dreams does indeed hold significance….Our dreams have a cool way of showing us the different parts of our personality in the form of a person so we can gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and what makes us tick. That being said, the mystery lover in your dreams is the embodiment, the personification of the qualities we tend to associate with that gender….Throughout life we struggle to incorporate the right balance of each [gender] into our personalities and behavior. A man wants to be caring and understanding, yet he doesn’t want to be a sissy. A woman wants to assert herself, yet she doesn’t want to be labeled the B word! Our mystery lover dreams are guiding us towards that perfect balance of firm and gentle, bold and caring, yin and yang.
   
   

Julianne Moore as Hillary Clinton

THE SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP aired last year on HBO and it portrayed the relationship between former President Bill Clinton (played by Dennis Quaid) and his then UK counterpart across the Atlantic Tony Blair (Michael Sheen). Hope Davis played the role of Hillary Clinton. However, originally Julianne Moore was cast as the First Lady before backing out [...]

What THE KILLING has going on

Executive Producer Veena Sud’s THE KILLING premiered on AMC last weekend, and it’s got a lot going on. First of all, in concept, it proves the brilliance of European storytellers. Based on the Danish series Forbrydelsen, the premise is one episode per narrative day – so one 13-episode season equals 13 days on a murder investigation. Three stories surrounding the murder of a Seattle teen intertwine: the police, the grieving family and the suspects. Now why couldn’t an American think of that? It subverts the entire cop procedural formula, allows for a type of storytelling that is practically non-existent in the States, and pairs a crime story with serious character investigation — a joy.

The Nudie Artist: Burlesque Revived

Situated on a very sexy Manhattan corner on Fifth Avenue in the 20s, the Museum of Sex is a handy one-stop-shopping place for libidinal learning, as I found out last year when I was able to pose there in front of a giant slide of bears copulating, as opening night guests were graciously allowed to do. (I still have the photo! I’m gonna make it my screensaver!)

This is my kind of museum—one where eroticism, art, and commerce collide to make for some of the city’s most entertaining and informative displays. And the other night, it was a whole new opening with all new poses available. The exhibit “The Nudie Artist: Burlesque Revived” premiered to a glittery group of multigender ambisexuals, all dolled up in their finery to look at other people taking theirs off.

Dalton Ghetti, microminiaturist

With a sculpting knife, a sewing needle and a razor blade, Dalton Ghetti creates unbelievably precise miniature sculptures on the tips of old, artfully weather-beaten pencils. Ghetti works the graphite slowly, carving away at it until the pencil becomes the base for his microscopic sculptures made from the pencil’s lead. The precision and level of detail Ghetti is able to achieve on such a small scale is something he’s spent the past 25 years perfecting.

Urban gardening meets wall art: Urbio

Urbio Urban Vertical Garden from Enlisted Design on Vimeo.

Urbanites with no yard space can get pretty creative in finding places to start a garden: from fire escapes to vacant lots. A new concept, Urbio, allows you to stop searching for space and start gardening: if you’ve got a wall, you’re good to go.

Our lives are spent trying to pixellate a fractal planet

I love the caption one Tumblr wrote to accompany this picture from a breathtaking Guardian series of NASA satellite images that “reveal the diversity of agricultural patterns as seen from space.” It’ll be your moment of meaningfulness today. As this photograph of a Dubai golf course being reclaimed by the dessert demonstrates: despite or in [...]

Attention Seekers

I love this New York Magazine slideshow of NYC apartments from over the years. Documenting the scariest, the noisiest, and even the gaudiest, the slideshow shows a broad array of apartments in New York. I love the smallest, a 55 square foot studio! And the noisiest, seen above, nestled against a roller coaster, would be [...]

Episode Recap – Kara Janx – Don’t Just Say It. Do It.

What I Hoped She Learned: “Don’t just say it. Do it.” That was the thought that was running through my head as Kara and I prepped on the morning of our presentation with Neiman Marcus. Kara had promised me that she would re-cut a dress in a size 8 to show the Neimans buying team [...]

Can you do nothing for 2 minutes?

Do Nothing for 2 Minutes is a website challenges you to do nothing-at least nothing on your computer-for two (excruciating) minutes. The site creator Alex Tew explains: I had been thinking how we spend every waking minute of the day with access to an unlimited supply of information, to the point of information overload. i [...]

Skeletor in New York

The charity art show I am curating, Skeletor Saves, is this Thursday in NYC from 6-10. What started off as a crazy little idea has ballooned into an event of monstrous size! We could not be more thrilled. We took an 80s cartoon icon, He-Man, and built a star-studded celebrity art show around him and his Masters of the Universe.

Some heavy hitters are involved. Designer Marc Jacobs has sketched some characters for the show. Helmut Lang’s submission is modern and the opposite of He-Man’s over-the-top imagery. Porn stars Francois Sagat and Buck Angel turned artists for the event. Add other notable gays to the mix-Casey Spooner, Joey Arias, Raja from RuPaul’s Drag Race- and you have a show that NY Magazine calls “Brilliant/Highbrow.”

Is Africa creating the model for a green economy?

When you think of international leadership towards a green economy, countries in Europe and Asia probably first come to mind: Germany’s leading the pack in terms of implementing clean technology, and China’s right there in terms of manufacturing it (even though it has a ways to go with its own environmental challenges). You might have a tough time thinking of an African nation contributing to the concept of economic growth through environmentally benign practices… and yet, according to a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme, nations such as South Africa and Kenya are creating green economic models that could serve as templates for other countries, both developing and developed.

Logos without the logo

UK creative agency Dorthy created a series titled “You Took My Name” of paintings “that strip famous logos back to their basic graphic forms.” Their instant familiarity speaks to the marketing muscle of these companies in propagating and distributing their brand, as well as the importance of strong design.

Wave of (female genital) mutilation

ActivistResource.org apprised us of a 2009 documentary being screened in our neck of the woods (Hudson Valley) tonight called Mrs. Goundo’s Daughter, so we checked out the trailer. It’s the story of one woman’s quest to save her young daughter from the horrors of the African tradition of female genital cutting. In her native Mali, up to 85% of women and girls undergo clitoral excision, which can result in lifelong pain, infection, infertility and even death. After watching the trailer, you’ll think “This is crazy! How can people still think this is a good idea? Thank goodness I live in a Westernized country.” But then we’d point you to this report on the increase in labiaplasty by Hungry Beast (a television show in Australia where they can show a lot more — warning: this is NSFW).

KARA JANX – REALITY STAR, REDISCOVERED – Tonight at 10p EST!

I could lie and say there were many abstract reasons that led me to wanting to work with Kara Janx but I will be upfront and honest with you. I wanted to meet this Season 2 Project Runway alum, one who had no problem speaking her mind or dealing with confrontation. I wanted to meet the woman who infamously said “she would snip off a contestant’s pee-pee if he got in her way”. Ouch! She is, in short, the one designer I worked with this season, whom I would not want to encounter in a dark alley with those castrating scissors. But of course, I did also want to work with Kara because I realized her true potential while watching her on Project Runway.

The video game that lets you destroy Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons Must Die!!! The Video Game from Hunter Jonakin on Vimeo. Hunter Jonakin programmed and designed this brilliant, cheeky, subversive FPS (first person shooter) video game that allows the player to roam a museum filled with pop artist Jeff Koons’ installations and art pieces…and destroy them with a BFG while dodging guards. The playable [...]

Simplifying Earth Day 2011: Picnic for the Planet

The first Earth Day in 1970 centered on political activism. In recent years, the event often mirrors something closer to a combination of a state fair and a trade show. Nothing wrong with that: these events likely bring out a much more diverse mix of people than the earliest gatherings. At the same time, current Earth Day celebrations tend to focus on the celebration… even if directly connecting with the natural world gets moved down the list of priorities.

Vimeo of the Week: Nova the film

NOVA the film from ROJO on Vimeo.

The 75 minute documentary “Nova the film,” is a movie on new art and the artists, many new, young, and excited, who make these works. It was directed by Isaac Niemand and produced by ROJO® in collaboration with BossaNovaFilms.

Wim Crouwel, a revolution in design

There’s been a lot of buzz around the design blogs lately about the Wim Crouwel exhibition that just opened at the Design Museum in London. “A Graphic Odyssey” spans over sixty years of the venerable designer’s career and includes his sketches, iconic posters and magazine covers. Known for his grid-based layouts, nowhere is his nickname “Gridnik” more obvious than in his innovative “New Alphabet.” Designed in 1967, the font is based on Cathode Ray Tube technology and contains only vertical and horizontal strokes. As such, it’s almost unreadable. Crouwel said as much himself, describing “New Alphabet” as “over-the-top and never meant to be used.”

Worldwide penis and bra sizes, in map form

Average penis size by country: Average breast cup size by country: We’re not going to dignify this post with any more writing. MORE FROM EM & LO: How to Bench a Boyfriend or Girlfriend Wise Guys: Do Most Men Consider Themselves Feminists? 15 Steps to Stop Faking