sundance

$1.25 per day food budget

LIFE published this info-photograph of what a $1.25 per day food budget would get a hungry person in 1952. My bag of soy chips cost me 2 bucks today. [Via]

New Austin grocery store will be packaging-free

On our kitchen counter, my wife has a set of glass jars designed for storing staples: flour, sugar, coffee, tea, etc. Of course, we have to buy the products that go into those jars at the store, empty them from their packaging, and then either recycle or trash whatever they came in.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could just take those jars to the store and fill them?

Naked News: Why we sext

Why teens and adults are compelled to send X-rated texts. Is women’s intuition a myth or reality? Do men experience menopause, or rather, manopause? Passionate responses to Erica Jong’s recent co-sleeping-kills-sex comments. Gender-based femicide is still prominent in India. More scientific support for the idea that people are born this gay. MORE FROM EMandLO.com: When [...]

Artist creates touristy NYC statue

Selected for this year’s Art In Odd Places festival on Oct 1-10, 2011 in New York City, artist Leon Reid IV is planning on adorning the statue of George Washington in Union Square with “large scale props such as an “I Love NY” hat, camera, NYC subway map, and local shopping bags” in a piece [...]

Vintage clips of Louis C.K.

Louis C.K. shared on his blog some vintage clips of him doing stand-up during the late 1980s and ’90s. In the clip above he’s performing at Caroline’s in New York. He’s like the opposite of Samson: he became funnier the more hair he lost! [Via]

Renewable energy as art: the Bakken Museum’s Green Energy Art Garden

The Sonic Articulation of Sunbeams from Ben Moren on Vimeo.

A solar array, or a wind farm, can certainly have aesthetic appeal… but the visual interplay between the technology and its surroundings, or the beauty inherent in those panels and turbines themselves, usually isn’t high on the priority list of installers. The Bakken Museum in Minneapolis, which is dedicated to “exploring the mysteries of our electric world,” thought that beauty needed further exploration… and commissioned local artists to create works that “demonstrate a new, creative approach to using alternative energy sources.”

Roald Dahl and Ernest Hemingway hanging out

The previously mentioned blog Awesome People Hanging Out Together, which highlights unlikely notables and the famous photographed with each other, recently posted this picture snapped in 1944 of a uniformed Roald Dahl and Ernest Hemingway walking the streets of London. With a little Internet sleuthing, the back story behind this photograph is fascinating: At the start of the second World War and prior to the bombing in Pearl Harbor, in their effort to recruit the US and the influential members of society into supporting and joining the war, the British government sent spies to the US. Roald Dahl was sent to the States in this campaign. Under the guise of being a RAF British pilot, Dahl worked glamorous DC parties:

The Museum of Broken Relationships

The Museum of Broken Relationships sounds like a catchy name for a blog or something Carrie Bradshaw might muse about in one of her deep, metaphor-heavy voice-overs. But it’s way more awesome than that: It’s an actual museum. In Croatia. See? Totally awesome. We wrote about the concept a few years back when it was just a traveling collection of items, but now the permanent collection is set up in a sleek white exhibition space in Zagreb. And this year the museum won an award for most innovative museum in Europe (and that’s saying something, given that Europe also boasts the world’s only Phallological Museum).

I have seen THE FUTURE

On Wednesday night I saw an early screening of Miranda July’s second film, THE FUTURE, an event I’ve been anticipating for months. Let it be known that I’m a true and unabashed fan, and while I don’t align myself with the brand of fangirl that accosted July after the screening armed with happy smiles and cute haircuts, I did indeed sign up for her biweekly life forecasts, which arrived in my inbox with the subject, “Your Future.” Though one prediction was actually dead on, mostly the emails were charmingly inaccurate, like yesterday’s, which read: “You become aroused in a new way. I don’t mean poetically – it will happen in the genital area. But not how it usually does. Good luck, Miranda.”

Blue Heaven

As a professional gay, um, hello, I write the gay column here, I have to say I like to pride myself on knowing that I am a wealth of gay knowledge. Oscar Wilde? Check. Cher and all her chart toppers? Check. Rock Hudson movies? Check. My pop culture references are gay, gay, gay: from Paris is Burning to France Joli to John Waters. I felt like I knew all homoculture.

Nope. Not all of it. For Wine/Bound, my monthly book club where we drink wine, we read the glorious gay novel Blue Heaven by Joe Keenan. Had I not only never heard of the book, but neither of its author. My book club mates were aghast! Simply aghast!

The book was published in 1988 and it’s light reading. It follows two Manhattan homos and a few other female and female-impersonating friends through a madcap comedy of drinking, fashion, weddings, and the mafia. It’s the kind of book that reads like a TV show, effortless, light-hearted, camp, fun. It is perfect Fire Island beach reading material.

Jennifer Aniston, bikinis and couture fashion week

Soul Brother/GettyImages See “Horrible Bosses” star Jennifer Aniston’s style evolution from fresh faced frumpy Hollywood newcomer to sleek and chic all American starlet. Let columnist Indigo Clarke show you how to choose a bangin’ bikini. Sit front row at the Couture Fall 2011 fashion shows with Lynn Yaeger. Check out FFF’s top picks of Summer’s [...]

The chili line stops here

An epic green chili-slathered burrito from The Shed in Santa Fe, NM

LUDO BITES AMERICA premieres Tuesday, July 19, 9P.

When I first moved to Santa Fe, NM for college I thought a big city kid like me would have the diminutive Southwestern hamlet under my thumb and virtually at my command. In fact, the day I rolled into town a tumbleweed blew lazily across my path. What hot, dry sleepy hollow had I just signed away the next four years of my life to, I thought. I was from LA – what could these small town hicks possibly have that I hadn’t seen already in my long, nineteen years? But my cockiness soon evaporated. Not only did no one give a hoot how happening I thought my hometown was, but they had their own thing going on. For starters, Santa Fe is the second largest art market in the country, right after NYC, but I’m not talking about art. I’m certainly not referring to the fashion. The abundance of “leather cowboy hats, designer buckskin jackets and turquoise and conch belts clanking like cheap radiators down the Whole Foods aisles” just put Santa Fe at #16 on GQ’s “Worst Dressed Cities” list. No, I’m talking about the food. After living in LA, NY and even Paris for a spell, the food I ate in Santa Fe still ranks at the top of my list of best things I ever ate.

Porn for women (must love dogs)

Don’t worry, no pets were harmed (or diddled) in the making of this porn. The Men and Their Dogs blog is exactly what it sounds like: photos of men with their dogs — making kissy faces, taking bubble baths together, or just being emo-artsy. Kind of like those Porn for Women and Porn for New [...]

More remixed music from Pogo

Previously mentioned artist Pogo née Nick Bertke is back with another in his popular series of remixed ambient songs created by incorporating sounds from Disney and Pixar films. His latest, “Bloom” is made from various Disney films with the chord sampled from “A.I: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE” and the harp sound from SLEEPING BEAUTY.

Coffee cup design a day

Bernat Cuni took the basic coffee mug and designed thirty different concepts for his One Coffee Cup a Day project. Most of the designs remind me of the flawed function product project that I previously blogged about here.

Glamour of the Gods

Back before tabloid photography played such a major role in shaping the reputations of the Hollywood set, actors relied on real photography (i.e. the posed, carefully lit, artfully angled, softly focused studio portrait) to promote themselves. Far more than just a headshot, these portraits had a major impact on an actor’s career. Take Jean Harlow. She went from being an uncredited bit plater to a stunning leading lady opposite James Cagney in THE PUBLIC ENEMY – virtually overnight – as the result of a particularly good portrait. Harlow was just 20-years-old and fresh off the bus from Kansas City, but under the lens of master photographers like George Hurrell and Clarence Sinclair Bull, she was transformed into the blonde bombshell we know her as today.

Six Episode Series, Brings Ordinary People’s Million Dollar Ideas to Life. Premiering Tuesday, August 30 at 10 PM ET/PT

Even before Benjamin Franklin tied a key to his kite, being an inventor has been a hard gig to crack. Now, everyone can participate in an invention revolution. Sundance Channel’s new non-fiction series QUIRKY- premiering on Tuesday, August 30th at 10pm ET/PT, chronicles Quirky.com, a product development company founded by 24-year-old visionary Ben Kaufman that gives everyone the freedom to turn their creative idea into a business reality. Every week, scores of people from a worldwide online community submit concepts to Quirky.com. The ideas range from simply genius to totally bizarre, yet each shares the same goal: to create innovative solutions to everyday problems. Like never before, a great idea is all that cou

Green tech finds (7/14/11)

“Brown” hybrids, super-efficient wind turbines, and a solar-powered golf bag… your green tech finds for the week.

• Not all hybrids are created equal: Yep, the Prius, the Honda Civic Hybrid, and the Ford Fusion Hybrid all deliver on the value promised by this vehicle platform. But, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, there are also a number hybrid models that just aren’t worth the cost, and do very little in terms of fuel efficiency… check out the video from CNET above to see the top five “brownest” hybrids.
  
  
• Enterprise, Fed Ex love them some EVs: Yesterday at the National Summit on Energy Security, Andy Taylor, CEO of Enterprise Holdings (which owns Enterprise Rent-a-Car and others) and Fred Smith, CEO of Fed Ex, made impassioned arguments for ramping up vehicle electrification. Marc Gunther has the details…
  
  

The art of flawed functional products

For his art project titled “Err,” Jeremy Hutchison contacted various factories around the world manufacturing various products with a seemingly bizarre request: make him a non-functional version of their product. There’s obviously a deeper subtext here, as he explains below, but on surface I can’t get over how hilarious they look, such as these sunglasses [...]

Edgar Ramirez aka Emmy nominee for CARLOS

If you missed CARLOS, our “mesmerizing” 3-part miniseries that aired back in October, the one that “garnered some of the longest articles of praise in newspapers across the country,” (Yeah, we’re kind of patting ourselves on the back about that one) then you missed a knockout performance from Edgar Ramirez, who was just nominated for [...]

New summer reading: “Lola, California” (excerpt #2)

Last week, we gave you a first look at the new novel from Edie Meidav, “Lola, California,” called one of “the most anticipated novels of 2011″ by TheMillions.com. This week, a second excerpt: this one a glimpse into the world of stripping, as two female friends navigate that seedy terrain for the first time. To read Meidav is to enter a world of beauty, depth and detail; to hear her speak about her craft is to realize that world is not merely a concoction or a slight of hand — Meidave lives and breathes her art. So if her book tour happens to take her to your neck of the woods, go. (Her tour dates and locations are listed here and after the excerpt below):

LUDO BITES AMERICA: Atole Piñon Hotcakes

Hi, I’m Zach. Some genius, wildly attractive, nice smelling person from Sundance thought me talking about making some recipe from “Ludo Bites America” was a good idea, and I have a firm policy of not arguing with geniuses who are wildly attractive and smell fantastic. So let’s go on a journey where we test the boundaries of our newly found friendship, meet some wonderful mythical beasts, and most of all make Atole Piñon Hotcakes from Tecolote Café in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Denis Villeneuve’s INCENDIES

Like two other films I posted on in the past year, Jacques Audiard’s A PROPHET and David Michôd’s ANIMAL KINGDOM, Denis Villeneuvie’s INCENDIES is a film of epic proportions. The story follows a young French Canadian woman (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) and her twin brother (Maxim Gaudette) as they investigate the past of their now-deceased Lebanese mother (Lubna Azabal), who turns out to have lived a life far more dramatic — and traumatic — than her children ever imagined.

Bradley Cooper on Inside the Actor’s Studio before he became famous

Long before THE HANGOVER and his various magazine covers, Bradley Cooper was just another aspiring actor in New York City sitting in the audience of Inside the Actor’s Studio asking questions to Sean Penn and Robert De Niro about their craft: Bradley: How you doing Mr De Niro, my name is Bradley Cooper and my [...]

Landfill gas powers craft studios in North Carolina

Many crafters have discovered greener ways to create their wares: reused and/or upcycled materials, for instance, have become very popular among the crafty set. But if your medium is something like glass or ceramics, heavy energy use is just a part of the process: it takes a lot of heat to melt glass for blowing or to fire up a kiln. A craft incubator program in North Carolina, the EnergyXchange, has figured out a way to lower the footprint of these artistic endeavors: landfill gas.