Friday, May 16, 2008

This is pretty amazing.  It was done in Buenos Aires and Baden (Germany?) by a graffiti artist named Blu. You can read more about him and see more of his work here.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

From Time Out New York:

We all know that artists see things differently from the rest of us, but how many folks watch a grainy video of hooded captors shouting demands over a shuddering abductee and think, Ah! Romance! It turns out there are at least two: Clay McLeod Chapman and Kyle Jarrow. In their first collaboration, the rock musical Hostage Song, the playwright and lyricist-composer imagine a man and a woman—bound and blindfolded by an unnamed militia—who somehow manage to fall a little bit in love. At first blush, it may sound like an Eli Roth flick with jazz hands, but the result is a devastatingly poignant, strangely philosophical meditation on salvation that just happens to sport a sick downbeat.

Jazz hands jokes just never get old.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

The New Pornographers—“Myriad Harbour”

• Arnaud Rodrigues—Som Do Paulinho: If you like the Brazilian psych-groove of Tropicalia, you need this hard-to-find gem.
  
• My Dog Impersonating Orson Welles: Here’s your reference point, if you need one.
  
• Michel de Broin: Truly solid snark art. (via The Daily Dish)
  
• Steve Albini explains “Fake Italian”: The former frontman of Big Black stops short of saying “spicy meatball.”
  
• La Strada: Your New Favorite Indie Band: Brookyln’s La Strada gets a shout out from HuffPo.
  
• Pardoning, parsing “black truth”—A great post from the Black Snob about a lot of stuff white people, particularly Hillshills and the MSM, don’t “get.”
  

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

My first submission: “DOOF CENTER,” Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NY, 4/26/01

From my pal Elisa (via email):

The Brooklyn Museum is having an open call until 3/31 for a photography exhibition called “Click,” about the changing face of Brooklyn. Initial submissions are online, and there will be an exhibition at the Museum after the works have been selected. If you know someone who would be interested in participating, please forward this along to them.

“Brooklyn, like most of New York City, is in a constant state of change. Population growth and environmental causes have altered the borough’s terrain, transforming commercial and residential areas and impacting the borough’s residents and activity. Considering Brooklyn’s transformation over the years, its past and its present, please submit a photograph that captures the ‘changing face(s) of Brooklyn.’ We welcome a wide variety of visual interpretations of this topic.”

You can check it out Click! here.

Sunday, March 02, 2008

Mick Jagger—“Memo from Turner” (from the film Performance)

• BOBBY CHARLES: I got turned on to Bobby Charles while listening to Devendra Banhart guest DJing on WNYC’s “Spinning on Air.” It was a warm spring night, I had the radio on out in the garden, and Charles’ song “I Must Be in a Good Place Now” wrapped snuggly around my head like the most comforting cloth ever created.  An absolutely gorgeous moment.  Charles’ phenomenal debut album, recorded with most of the members of The Band and Dr. John, inexplicably swings in and out of print and The Heat Warps was kind enough to upload it recently for your listening pleasure.  Believe me, you need this.
  

• BOOT CAMP—THE END OF THE LINE: Robin completed her initial six-weeks of hell in boot camp and the whole series has been an entertaining, ahem, “reed.” Click and scroll around her blog (pretty much the closest thing I get to exercise these days) to see what she went through.
  

• STEELY DAN—THE LOST GAUCHO ALBUM: a) Yes, I know it’s totally uncool to like Steely Dan and b) I don’t really give a shit.
  

• STREETSY: Daily street art photography brought to you by the guy who created Gothamist. (via The Group News Blog)
  

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Monks—“Boys Are Boys and Girls Are Choice” (live—1965)

• NEXT UP FOR THE DEMOCRATS: CIVIL WAR: The NY Times‘ Frank Rich takes the Clinton Machine to task over their “thick deck of race cards.”
  
• TO MY GREAT CHAGRIN: The eagerly-awaited (in my house, at least) world premiere of the documentary To My Great Chagrin: The Unbelievable Story of Brother Theodore comes to MOMA this Wednesday, February 13th (also playing on March 1st). He was a complex, brilliant and vastly underrated performance artist and you can view some of his pitch-perfect and hysterical ravings in a video compilation we posted here back in September.
  
• OBAMA MESSIAH COMPLEX? OR INTENTIONAL IGNORANCE?: Thudfactor takes on the increasingly irrational Hillshill Larry Johnson and he drops to the ground with a loud “thud.”
  
• FUERZABRUTA: Friday I took my lovely wife Chris to see Fuerzabruta, the new spectacle from the creators of De La Guarda, for her birthday at the Daryl Roth Theatre and was totally blown away by it.  I enjoyed De La Guarda, but thought it was a little over-hyped and found myself wishing it would come to an end about 45-minutes into it.  Fuerzabruta, on the other hand, I never wanted to end, noticing at several points during the performance that my face was smeared with a thoroughly ridiculous shit-eating grin that only a child can accommodate without feeling like a complete tool. As an added bonus, I was selected by one of the Fuerzabruta “dancers” to join her on a metal platform and dance in front of hundreds of people before having an oversized, exploding paper cinderblock dropped on our heads. According to Chris the crowd was cheering me on (I inserted several of my death-defying robot maneuvers into my routine) and afterwards the dancer came over and gave me a big thumbs up when she found me back in the crowd. If you’re a New Yorker, I highly recommend checking this show out.  If the $72 price tag is too steep for you, they sell $25 rush tix at the box office two hours before each performance.
  

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

He’s money! He’s like cash, cold and hard. If you ain’t down with Rudy, take yo’broke vote home!!! 9/!!

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

From The Brooklyn Paper

Here’s a sneak peek at Olafur Eliasson’s “New York City Waterfalls,” which will send water cascading from under the Brooklyn Bridge and from three free-standing scaffolds in New York Harbor — including this view of Governors Island off Red Hook — from July through October.

In the spirit of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s “The Gates” project, Eliasson’s $15 million art project will consist of four waterfalls, towering between 90 and 120 feet, that will gush between 7 am and 10 pm every day.

You can view all of the waterfall images here. You can check out more of Eliasson’s work here.

MORE: From the Daily News.

Sunday, January 06, 2008

Jeffrey Lewis—“Anxiety Attack” (unauthorized fan video)

• The Hyena and Other Men: If you’re a New Yorker you’ve only got a few days left to immerse yourself in Pieter Hugo’s stunning exhibit at the Yossi Milo Gallery. It’s comprised of large-scale photographs of a band of Nigerian men who roam the country with a menagerie of animals and a six-year-old girl named Mummy. You can view most of the photos at the gallery (and many, many more) here (hint: view images separately—right-click), but the small JPGs are nowhere near as impactful as witnessing them blown up and surrounding you.
  

• Scratch a Bloomberg, Get a Democrat: There’s a joke in there somewhere, but unfortunately it’s not funny.
  

• Butter 08: Egg City Radio is giving away Butter 08’s way-fun and punk-funky (and out-of-print) selt-titled ‘96 release featuring Miho from Cibo Matto and Russell from the Blues Explosion. From Miho saying, “Thank you, daddy” to the last throbbing yelps of “Butterfucker,” this delivers great gifts to your needy assbone.
  

• Why I Believe Bush Must Go: George McGovern writes an editorial in The Washington Post calling for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney.  Yes, that sound you hear off in the distance is the howler monkeys of the right going batshit.
  

Sunday, December 23, 2007

“Frosty the Snowman”—Leon Redbone & Dr. John (from my favorite Christmas album of all-time, Christmas Island)

• THE MOM AND POP CULTURE SHOP: My old pal Anna, who I haven’t seen in ages, is running a great lil’ blog that spotlights her thrift store finds (outsider art, weird vinyl, etc.).  It’s a fun place to visit, her blurbs are a hoot, and it shoehorns nicely into the holidays.
  

• MATT BURLINGAME: Burlingame’s oddball sculptures and dioramas don’t shoehorn quite as nicely into the holidays (unless Christmas makes you think about zombies and robots), but if any of you would like to buy me some of his artwork I’d consider it to be THE.BEST.XMAS.PRESENT.EVER.
  

• BUZZWORDS OF 2007:  The New York Times says, “You didn’t hear them here first. But chances are that in 2007 you caught these phrases somewhere.” Ummm, actually, no, I hadn’t heard about a lot of these.  I would have thought “Nose bidet” was a really bad band name.
  

• IT’S THE MANDATE, STUPID: The New Republic‘s Noam Scheiber posted a good analysis of why Barack’s been creeping up on Hillary
  

Sunday, December 09, 2007

“Crazy Horses”—The Osmonds (via Missing the Moon)

• MORE FUN THAN IT SHOULD BE: If Jackson Pollack could have right-clicked to change paint colors, maybe he wouldn’t have drank himself to death. (via oh. you. again.)
  
• RUSSERT DOES GOOD: If you missed it this morning, Tim Russert was pretty aggressive with Rudy Guliani this morning.  Best Russert quote: “Using that reasoning, would it be appropriate for a president to provide Secret Service protection for his mistress?” “Best” Guiliani quote: “I don’t make many mistakes, but when I make them, they’re big ones.” You can watch it here. Transcript here.
  

(Please note: My internet connection was down nearly all day, so this is all I have for you.  It’s driving me absolutely crazy at the moment trying to get anywhere on the innertubes.  Yeeeeeaaaaaarrrgh!)

Monday, December 03, 2007

What’s even cooler than the buildings is that the design concept has been implemented in two different cities.  You really need to see this.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

If you want to get ahead of the curve when it comes to tracking the latest wingnut meltdown, look no further than this. I guarantee ”Our Lady of Perpetual Outrage” (and a bunch of other bloggers) will be all over it by the end of the day.

UPDATE: Well, the nuttersphere has let me down on this one.  I guess they’re too wound up about planting time at CNN to pay attention to this, but Doocy always delivers.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Leroy Troy singing “The Bible’s True”

• Frank Rich on Giuliani: “New Yorkers who remember Rudy Giuliani as the bullying New York mayor, not as the terminally cheerful ‘America’s Mayor’ cooing to babies in New Hampshire, have always banked on one certainty: his presidential candidacy was so preposterous it would implode before he got anywhere near the White House.”
  

• Waiter, there’s a paint chip in my soup: A close up (and amazing) look at the ”Last Supper.”
  

• The 6 Most Misguided Christian Video Games: “And thou shalt lift lots of animals over your head and carry them to Jerusalem.”
  

• Cale the Chief: Egg City radio has some pretty enticing John Cale boots for you, including one with Nico.
  

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Brilliant stuff at the Morning News.  Olivo Barbieri utilizes a technique called “selected focus” using a tilt-shift lens to make aerial photographs look like snaps of miniature models (scroll down for a brief interview with Barbieri). He currently has a show at the Yancey Richardson Gallery in Manhattan (address below the fold) that runs until December 22nd.

You can check out more of Barbieri’s work here, here, here, here, here, here and here.