Tron love

I hear they’re remaking Tron. Let’s hope they don’t screw it up.
(Image via Ffff!)

GOB!

Springfield Punx takes on Arrested Development! It’s like cultural galaxies colliding!

Tiny universes

I’ve had this sensation looking back into the kitchen or the home office as I’ve walked away for the night: little lights everywhere. I’ve always wanted to photograph it, but have never bothered, because we’re talking the end of the night, after all. I just want to go to sleep.

Having said that, I could totally beat this video in terms of power lights shining in a dark room, if I had to. We’ve got so many devices here that about five years ago, we had to get a USB hub for the USB hub. Printers, scanners, card readers, outside speakers. It all adds up. These days, it’s mostly wi-fi. Can’t argue with that.

Shamelessly exciting

Good heavens, I feel so alive after viewing this epic low-res funk Viking cut-and-paste celebration!
(I won’t deny that I first saw this in a Smashing Magazine piece about the 29 most brilliant music videos, which I intend to steal from again in the very near future.)

Porcelain

This was about the fourth or fifth song I stole off the Internet, back when it was still mostly dial-up and downloading a song was a time-consuming process. (I have since done right by Moby by buying the album.) It took me until tonight to realize that there might actually be a video for Porcelain, as well. That is just how quick I am on the uptake. Eight or nine years to think that one through, is all I’m saying.

A series of commercials I don’t actually hate

Say, these Best Buy ads are pretty good! The one above actually made me laugh out loud, which is a pretty rare thing for an ad to do. Even though I’m an oldster, I have in fact heard of Drake Bell, because my six-year-old watches his show, and he’s a pretty funny guy. So, well played, Best Buy; you’ve actually prompted me to proactively seek out your advertising. And that really is saying something.
(via Darryl at Brand Flakes.)

Great overlooked Canadian bands, part 3 or 4

I’ve lost track! Bootsauce were an amazing band out of Montreal in 1990. Their blend of funk and metal was easily on a par with the Chili Peppers and Faith No More, but they more or less disappeared after one album. What a shame. They had lots of great original songs, but will be best remembered for this killer re-make of Hot Chocolate’s disco classic, “Everyone’s a Winner.”

Good old Jim

Tonight was the department Christmas party. I rolled with Jim, pictured above, who is a walking cliche but such a nice guy. Former pro footballer (Canadian, but still), Jimmy! is the kind of guy whom we all know and love, unless we’re utterly humorless prudes.

He’s the office prankster, who likes nothing more than to hang out and shoot the shit. He’s always forwarding inappropriate e-mails and making salacious remarks about females in the general vicinity. (Don’t get me wrong; he’s a great salesman, but this is all part of his schtick.)

And despite all his inappropriate remarks, everybody loves him in an “Oh, that Jim!” sort of way. It takes a certain kind of larger-than-life sense of one’s self to pull that off. I certainly don’t have it, and I look upon those who do with a fevered envy.

If I went around mouthing off to the boss and being all pervy on the skirts, I’d be outta there like 29 Skidoo. Not Jim. It also doesn’t hurt that his jokes, even when entirely non-PC, are also utterly hilarious. The guy is a natural-born comedian.

(He’s also a lot more handsome than my shitty iPhone picture would have you believe.)

Whoever thought of this is either brilliant or insane

I first caught wind of this pretty much as it happened, thanks to Wired’s GeekDad blog, which was first to post it. I didn’t plan to write anything about it, except that I noticed the video just kept getting better as the day went on.

So, while all my bloggy friends have been posting it all day, I have held back and now I have this high-res version to offer:


That’s pretty good quality streaming video for YouTube, I have to say. Has anyone else noticed that YouTube is getting even better, just in marginal ways? Little details just keep getting easier and faster; that's how Google stays on top.

About RickRolls: by this point, you either love them or hate them. And this little performance plays to both audiences. I’ve never heard of the show that sponsors this float, but if its theme song truly is that godawful “My Best Friend” from “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father,” then even for a hater, Rick Astley is a vast improvement, believe you me.

My current desktop

On a 24" monitor, it’s quite a sight. My other two are wondering why I haven’t put them up there, so I tell them to seek out an ideal spot where the light smoothly transitions into darkness, then stand there until I notice them.

Good old Tony Franciosa!

Co-starring Gene Evans as the skeptical boss who smokes a pipe skeptically!

I’m actually nostalgic for the totally non-CGI peril Matt Helms gets into, like falling, loosely bound, off a gravel quarry conveyor belt. That is some low-rent American network attempt at James Bond-style action, I have to say.

But still, hard not to love Tony Franciosa.

Insanely great jug band music

I rarely link to BoingBoing, because millions already visit there, so why should I echo them? Plus, all the stuff they find tends to go viral because that’s the nature of the Internet.

But I maintain this blog for my own amusement, and I just love this jug band and their old-timey song. Any time a musician (in this case, on a kazoo!) is having the most fun possible, you will get good music.

And I love realizing that the jug was the bass guitar of its genre. Hah! Jug, jug, jug…

David Bowie threatens to dissolve

I went looking for something much later in his career, and up popped this stunner from 1973. When we talk about the origins of music videos, why are we arguing over Michael Nesmith or whoever else, when it’s clear that Bowie did it almost a decade earlier?

Watching this, I realized that Bowie’s greatest vocal performances are the ones where he really lets loose and howls. Like also on Rock and Roll Suicide. I’m not sure he’s done that since before Let’s Dance. Now he’s just a crooooooner.

(That’s probably unfair. Plus, he’s older, and you just can’t make that kind of noise your entire life. Ask Roger Daltrey.)

TGV speed record

Man, I’m starting to wonder if YouTube (and, by extension, Google) are getting to know me a little too well. This was one of my recommended YouTube videos tonight, and I totally watched it. It’s hard to get a sense of just how fast it’s going because it’s being shot, for the most part, from long-distance by a helicopter, but it’s doing a mile in about 10 seconds. (Don’t know if that’s average speed or peak speed, probably the latter.)

But I also suspect that we, as mammals, have no way of processing the kind of visual information that enters our optic nerves at 374 miles an hour, so we just filter most of it out.

At about the 3:15 mark, it passes under a camera on a bridge, and you get a brief sense of just how fast the damn thing is going. The reporter on the bridge is beside himself, and the phrase “extrêmement spectaculaire” is uttered at top volume several times.

Damn, Marc Bolan had a TV show?

That must have been a broadcast spectacular! Here he is introducing “Jam,” otherwise known to us mere mortals as “The Jam.”
(Thanks, LondonLee!)

That’ll teach him to be a wanker

(via O!MSE!)

I love found verse

The premise of That was epic is simplicity itself: moronic viewer comments from sites such as YouTube, when take out of context, become a sort of beautiful poetry of stupidity. This one, from today, made me giggle all damn day.

Adding it to my RSS feed, right now.
(via Coudal.)

Ever vigilant, ever true

Looking for a lair? Want a new invisible jet plane? It’s the Brooklyn Superhero Supply store! Gotta love that! I was wondering if this was in any way a Dave Eggers joint, when I noticed the “826” above the door, which pretty much confirms it.
(via Ffffound!, and here’s a larger version, where you can make out a little bit more of the fine print.)

Best weather report ever

Oh sure, it’s for Los Angeles and not for your town, but it’s David Lynch! David Lynch doing a daily weather report! I’m going to make this my home page!
(via Super Punch.)

The Queen and a Mini

I guess we’re on a bit of a design beat to start the night, because here’s a beautiful minimalist stamp from the Royal Mail.
(via Monoscope.)

I’m liking this logo

It’s allegedly a great Canadian tradition to hate Toronto and everything about it (if you’re not from Toronto, that is). I’ve never bought into that, and I am certainly not hating this excellent logo for the Toronto Marlboroughs Athletic Club. It’s a nice blend of traditional and modern, if you ask me. And double-blue is kind of a must for T.O. sports teams, so there you go.
(via the CDR.)

some variations at depth 2

catalog of some variations at depth 2 using only linear scaling rules (ie, excluding geometric progressions) including 0's and/or 1's (producing those here that would appear to be depth 0 or 1 forms, they're "degenerate" depth 2 forms)

Sweet! This guy Dave Bollinger is pumping out gorgeous mathematical models.

(Now that I’ve looked a little more at his portfolio, I’d say he’s making art that’s based in math? Hmmm…)

I have no idea what the hell I am talking about, but this ties in nicely with the Variations of Incomplete Open Cubes that I posted a while back… (Holy cow, I only posted that on October 1st, but it seems like six months ago.)

It also proves that I am a sucker for a beautiful graph or mathematical model. And variations! Hurray!
(via Ffffound!)

The giant rubber duck

A yellow spot on the horizon slowly approaches the coast. People have gatherd and watch in amazement as a giant yellow Rubber Duck approaches. The spectators are greeted by the duck, which slowly nods its head. The Rubber Duck knows no frontiers, it doesn't discriminate people and doesn't have a political connotation. The friendly, floating Rubber Duck has healing properties: it can relieve mondial tensions as well as define them. The rubber duck is soft, friendly and suitable for all ages!

I’ve seen the odd pic of the giant rubber duck floating around on the web for a while and I’m not sure whether they were unattributed or I just hadn’t cared at the time about what the deal was with the giant rubber duck.

But today, Dinosaurs and Robots had a credible link to the artist, Florentijn Hofman. I’m checking out his site as I write this and it’s pretty damn cool landscape art, so far. Here’s a direct link to the rubber duck: Canard de Bain, (from which the quote above was taken). (The first picture is the best, in my opinion.)

The Internet has everything, part one billion

Here’s an ad for Anafranil, from the amazing Gallery of Japanese Psychiatric Art. What an incredible find by Your Monkey Called.

Do they have service dogs for that?

(via Why, That’s Delightful!)

Good old Albert

This popped up at the Canadian Design Resource today and I was astonished to realize that it was produced 20 years ago. Man, does that make me feel old.

In its heyday, this commercial was a bit of a Canadian cultural touchstone and crowds at hockey games were known to break into sarcastic cries of “Albert!” whenever the home team was performing poorly. Which is to say, a lot in Vancouver.

Tilt-shift stop-action monster trucks!

This may be the best one that Keith Loutit has done yet. The guy’s a real master at these.
(via today and tomorrow.)

Who’s laughing now?

This was on BoingBoing and several other sites today, but it bears re-posting: Here’s this poor guy Peter Schiff, on various financial news programs over the last couple of years, correctly predicting the current financial meltdown, and all the other “experts” are not just contradicting him, they are smirking, laughing, mocking him!

What a bunch of buffoons. Ben Stein in particular comes off as the self-important gasbag that he truly is. His segment is the most delicious, as he and the other “pundits” tell viewers to invest heavily in Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs and Washington Mutual. Great fucking advice, guys!

Relatedly, I just got around to reading the Saturday piece by self-inflated columnist Margaret Wente of the Globe and Mail, wherein she says that only “eccentric cranks” predicted this monstrous financial debacle. Excuse me, Ms. Wente, but if they were right, how eccentric or cranky were they, actually? It seems that they were more like Cassandras, fated to have their true prophecies ignored…

Until recently, I’ve been feeling relatively smug about this whole crisis, because our household debt position is so low as to be non-existent, with the exception of our mortgage, which is itself in pretty good shape. But if everything goes off a cliff and I lose my job, that changes fairly rapidly.

Today, my company cancelled its Christmas party and the sales reps were told that they can no longer expense anything, not even a cup of coffee. A second e-mail went around, soliciting employees who might be interested in taking a buy-out and walking away. That’s the second such offer in about six months. People in their thirties and forties are accepting, as they sense that their future with the company may be limited, so they may as well take a chunk of cash and get out while they can.

Meanwhile, I am at the mercy of the fates, having joined the company two years ago and still being in a “temporary” position. And I am not in my thirties; in fact, almost done with my forties, so now is not the time for big career changes.

My boss has told me that my department is one of the few that turns a profit, so my job is not targeted for elimination, but to that I have to mentally add “yet,” because things could get a lot, lot worse before they get better. And that’s if they ever get better.

If it was just me and my wife, I’d say if disaster hit, we could tough it out. Sell the house if we have to and live off that. It’s still worth more than what we paid for it, even if it’s no longer worth twice what we paid for it. But we’ve got three little boys now, and they have no clue as to what’s probably about to happen, and I have this instinct to protect them at all costs.

I think we’re in a better position than many, but there are still hard times ahead. And doesn’t that just bite the big one?

AGO FTW

After several years of bickering before constructing, and then bickering while constructing, the Frank Gehry-designed addition to the Art Gallery of Ontario is complete, and I think it’s a winner.
(awesome pic by topleftpixel. Click for bigger.)

Lightfoot!

Damn, that is some crazy typography, and the rectangle over the boots just adds to the mid-’60s esthetic. Beautiful.
(via CDR.)

Deals gone bad

My Internet pal The Subtle Rudder is concerned that kids these days are no longer exposed to the stolen-goods-dealer innuendo typical of this Sesame Street bit, and I understand what she's saying, but believe me, kids pick up this stuff from the air around them. I could lock my 3-year-old in a room for the next four years and he would still come out all “Whatever, Dad!”

But I do worry that my kids will be as clueless as me Ernie when they venture downtown for that first big number purchase. I remember mine: My buddies and I all chipped in to buy a nine, and then when we got home it turned out to be a six. Damn it.

The unseen Los Angeles

Eric Grigorian, New York Times

Wonderful travel article today about the “real” Los Angeles as envisioned by Ry Cooder and Mister Jalopy. If you don’t know, Cooder’s last three albums have been a trilogy about the undercurrents and subcultures of Los Angeles. I only have the first because if I was to buy every Ry Cooder album, my children would not have shoes. But the first is a doozy. (I understand the second was “meh” but the third is a return to form.)

It’s called Chavez Ravine, which is the name of the small Mexican-American neighbourhood that was bulldozed to make way for the construction of Dodgers Stadium. Cooder’s album has a striking image of the bulldozers coming over the hill, which I couldn’t find in Google images, though I did find this and many others:
In addition to the evictees and the Dodgers, the album references commies, aliens and horndogs. It’s quite something.

But the article also features Mister Jalopy, who is a character in his own right. Here’s his take on what he was trying to impart in the Times story:

Then, there is the Los Angeles that I know. Aerospace surplus hardware stores, smoky and ashtray-less Koreatown English hunt club bars in crumbling hotel basements, perfect beer buzz lunches at the Farmer's Market in filtered sunlight, the wild dogs of Pacoima, sprawling thrift stores, trolling junkyards for old diaries and Polaroids, the drag races at Pomona, chrome plating shops, backyards stacked with 300 bicycles, gold miners eager to show their biggest nuggets, fishing for carp in the Los Angeles River, optimists taking over art museums, the nicad battery selection at Electronic City, the metal patination case at Industrial Metal Supply, Kit Kraft Hobby, the gem vault at the Natural History Museum, the szechuan peppercorns of Alhambra, the churlish bartenders at Hop Louie, the sneaker shops of Little Tokyo, the imported coldcuts at Monte Carlo Deli, the Japanese garden on the roof of the New Otani Hotel, the bicycle swap at the Encino Velodrome, the DDR kids at the Santa Monica Pier, the mustard at Philipes, the dimsum carts of Monterey Park, the carnitas at Carrillos, the buffalo at Hart Park, the Kris Special at the Waystation, the netsuke room at LACMA, the Remington Rolling Block at the Backwoods Inn, the coffee shop at the LA Police Academy, the abandoned restaurant with leather walls at Union Station, the yardage of the Garment District, the abandoned fire station in the Toy District with the quartersawn oak lockers viewable through the crack in the door, the first two rows of lowrider history at the Pomona Auto Swap, Abe Lincoln's hat at the Huntington Library, the camillia forest of Descanso Garden, the bolt room of Roscoe Hardware that is hidden in a kitchen remodeling home center, the genius at the Museum of Jurassic Technology, the chile pepper booth at the Grand Central Market, sneaking to the top balcony of the Bradbury Building, the threadbare and dented Variety Arts Center, the orange groves of the 126 and secret utility salvage yard in the northeast San Fernando Valley.

Ooof. Makes me want to visit L.A.

Teller & Penn

Here’s Teller demonstrating some sleight of hand, and it’s quite cool. He’s so good that he’s misdirecting you even as he clues you in, I’m sure. I got this link from Super Punch, who passes on the report that Teller has perfected the David P. Abbott ball trick, which is allegedly a legendarily difficult ball trick. So, make of that what you will.

(Oh wait, the red ball trick is apparently amazing, as is Teller, if you would care to read about it, and him.)

The Lives They Left Behind

Incredibly powerful site about the Willard Psychiatric Centre in New York state. When it closed, hundreds of suitcases were discovered in the attic, most unopened, preserved as they had been when they arrived with the future patients of the insane asylum.

It’s just heartbreaking stuff. A man ends up spending 30 years in an insane asylum because he complained about a chipped plate at a diner; a former nun was committed because they thought she was fantasizing about being a former nun (nobody bothered to check), a woman who was guilty of nothing more than being difficult to deal with ends up spending the final 47 years of her life protesting the fact that she has been arbitrarily locked away.

Such a gorgeous website. Such a litany of human cruelty.
(via Coudal.)

Without any context, I am adrift

I don’t understand: is this an actual ad or some sort of joke? Because I can actually see it being the first, although I’m pretty sure it’s the second. Either way, I love it.
(Via Monkey Disaster.)

A bit too literal

Ha! Foolin’ around on Google Life today, searching on random words. I tried “railway,” and look what popped up on the first page! Excellent!

Stage design of the year forever

Given that I am an old punk rocker who now has a day job and three kids, I don’t keep up with the music as much as I used to. Therefore, I’ve heard of The Killers - British band out of Las Vegas, right? - but I’ve never heard anything by them. This song is pretty good. Maybe I will have to check out some more of The Killers.

In any event, the main reason I’m posting this video is not that I’m suddenly a huge Killers fan but that this is one of the most amazing stage sets I have ever seen. Wow.

This is from the MTV Europe Music Awards, which means it’s a bit of a cheat; I doubt they’re actually touring with this set, but still. Wow.
(via Denver Egotist.)

“That’s a shank”

Wow, I gotta get laid off so I can stay home and watch daytime TV. Here’s Snoop Dogg making mashed potatoes on Martha Stewart’s show, and it is “off the hook,” as my 42-year-old white Canadian brother likes to say.

There’s something really likeable about Snoop, despite his reputation. And Martha is clearly having a blast. His parenting tips are pretty cool, too.


(via The Subtle Rudder.)

Stroller with an attitude

What a bitchin’ stroller! It almost makes me wish I had another kid.

(Not really.)
(Gizmodo via Monoscope.)

Chicken Head Tracking

It really made my morning to sit down and see this.
(via secretsquirrel.)

Ginger vamps it and Mary-Anne is oddly over-excited

I’ve got an idea! Ginger Grant for Prexy in ’12!

…and she’s back!

What can I say. Governor Palin set against the scenic backdrop of turkeys being beheaded.

She is just the comedic gift that keeps on giving. How anyone can see her as a viable candidate for president in 2012 totally escapes me.
(via YBNBY.)

Someone stole Bernard Sumner’s trousers

New Order doing Temptation, and it’s utterly awesome, except that Bernie Sumner is in a terribly distracting pair of shorts. Damn, the ’80s really were one big fashion disaster.
(via kung fu grippe.)

Closing in

Here’s another impressive shot from Life on Google:

American twin-jet F-4C Phantom heading toward tiny riverside village known to be an important Vietcong site to bomb it during Vietnam War.

You just know this is going to turn out badly for someone, and it ain’t the pilot. Shit.

(I’ve written about the F4 fighter-bomber previously.)

World’s deadliest ad

A lot of the sites I visit are seriously hating on this Toyota ad featuring the song “Saved by Zero” by The Fixx. Given that I have the luxury of a DVR, I see maybe one or two TV commercials in a week, so I have no idea whether it even plays in Canada.

So I watched the ad on YouTube, and while it’s bad, I don’t think it’s anywhere near the worst commercial ever made. (I’m still trying to find footage from the ’60s of the two dudes whose apartment shared a medical cabinet, so the one guy was stealing the other’s Right Guard every day. Even back then , it was less funny than creepy. Just to make it more offensive, the deodorant-stealing neighbor was vamping it to just this side of RuPaul.)

So I was telling an office friend about this, because I know he watches a lot of American channels (to see that there NFL football thing they play down there), and I told him I didn’t understand why this ad was earning so much hate, so he explained to me: it’s not the quality, it’s the frequency. Apparently they are rotating the hell out of it. It is on like a continuous roll.

In which case, I get the hate. I remember a few decades ago, when a local department store ran a radio ad campaign several years longer than they should have. It got to the point where the DJs would warn listeners that the ad was coming up and apologize afterwards.

But I digress. Darryl at Plaid has discovered a Ring/Toyota mash-up, which is an inspired idea, based on the bad PR.

And the moral of this story is: get a freakin’ DVR and skip through all the lousy ads. This would seem even more pertinent if I was going to watch NFL football, the last quarter of which is pretty much 1st down-2nd down-(commercial)-3rd down-(commercial)-4th-down-(commercial) ad infinitum (or at least until the game ends.)

Kim Jong not ill

I think we’ve settled any arguments now. Oh, by the way, I still love Murder Burger.

Google Life

The new Life magazine archive on Google Images is bloody amazing! I know I’m going to be wasting lot of hours in there…

(It’s also where I found the ancient Time magazine cover of Dick Cavett below.)

Earth, from the moon

“Pictured above is the first image ever taken of the Earth from the Moon. The image was taken in 1966 by Lunar Orbiter 1 and heralded by then-journalists as the Image of the Century. It was taken about two years before the Apollo 8 crew snapped its more famous color cousin. Recently, modern technology has allowed the recovery of higher resolution images from old data sources such as Lunar Orbiter tapes than ever before. Specifically, recovery of the above image was initiated 20 years ago by Nancy Evans, and completed recently by Dennis Wingo and Keith Cowing who lead the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project Images like that above carry more than aesthetic value -- comparison to recent high definition images of the Moon enables investigations into how the Moon has been changing.”

Almost all the big words above have links if you visit APOD’s homepage.

Bacon Hitler

Is this going to be a thing? I think it might be, therefore, I am re-posting it in a desperate effort to be ahead of the curve.
(but obviously, Tara Ariano beat me to it.)

Has anyone else noticed these bold new voices?

Dick Cavett’s going insane on his New York Times blog! And he has been doing so for quite some time. This guy has potential! Seriously, being so old that he no longer cares and having a treasure trove of amazing memories, he just lays out the dirt every time he blogs. I am lovin’ my regular dose of Dick Cavett. His story of his encounter with Richard Nixon is one of the most amazing things I have ever read, and if one single person reads it and enjoys it because of this link, I will die happier than I would have yesterday.

Meanwhile, in Chicago, Roger Ebert, having suddenly been denied the ability to speak, has discovered the joys of blogging, and wow, is he ever good. I’ve always enjoyed reading his film reviews but suddenly he is taking his writing to the next level. It is a thing of beauty. Often about being a film critic, but certainly not always.

Tonight he wrote about the disease that has claimed his jaw, except that he wrote about it in the context of how he used to be perceived as “the fat one” of Siskel & Ebert, and it’s just amazingly well-written, and it wraps with some more of the legendarily cruel-but-hilarious out-takes of their show, and then their quasi-musical appearance on The Critic.” Both worth watching in their entirety.

The interesting thing about Ebert is that he himself has recognized that his writing has gone to new places. Definitely a blog worth checking out.

Songs for a cab ride

If you’re a fan of “music,” and you haven’t yet seen the Black Cab Sessions, are you in for a treat. Various alt heroes performing acoustically in the back of a London cab that seems to be wired for professional-quality sound.

I stumbled upon these a few months back, but then forgot about them again until today, when the sugar sheet linked to an incredible My Morning Jacket cab session.

I also really like the one by Badly Drawn Boy, in no small part because it features some gorgeous British scenery and ends with sheep getting loaded into a truck:

Trains at war

Here’s a cool gallery of (mostly) British trains in action and out of same during World War II. Fascinating if you’re into that sort of thing.

In the image above, “Nelson Class No 852 ‘Sir Walter Raleigh’ suffered a direct hit in Nine Elms shed on the night of 15/16 April, 1941.” Damn. I hope they re-built Sir Walter Raleigh. Looks like his boiler is okay.
(via things.)

Isn’t this how Maude Flanders died?

This strikes me as a dangerous escalation in the firing-things-into-the-stands wars. I imagine taking a high-speed hot dog to the head would hurt something fierce.
(via AdFreak.)

Dialing zeros… what a pain

I’ve no idea who Louis CK is, but this piece is hilarious. Matthew Good had this video a month or so ago, but now it appears to be going viral, so I thought I’d jump on the bandwagon.
(via the Egotist and a bunch of other places.)

Kate Moss Remix

Poster Boy is a New York City artist who makes collages out of movie posters and other advertising to ironic, and often hilarious effect. (Gawker and Copyranter love him.)

This quasi-pixellated image of Kate Moss really caught my eye.
(via today and tomorrow.)

Best logo ever

Logo for the Potash Corporation. My mind is blown.
(via Canadian Design Resource.)

My new mantra

(designvagabond via swissmiss. No uppercase letters were used in the making of these links.)

Heartbreak

I enjoy mocking the subtitles on TV news. Some can be hilarious, some can be poignant, but it seems that most are written by semi-literates who don’t know how to spell.

Every now and then you get something like this one, which makes you wonder if the subtitle-writer was just blurting out his or her inner thoughts. Or worse, what they thought the appropriate response should be.

In any event, “Heartbreak,” does not do it for me in the same way that “7 Dead in Plane Crash” would. Although seven people dying in a plane crash is, in fact, heartbreaking.

I hope I’m not being insensitive, but I just want to hear the news with no editorializing, even if it is the most positive and uplifting kind, or the most somber or sympathetic.

This is an extreme and horrific example, but it’s like objectivity is gone forever. Bring back objectivity!

I’ve just revealed myself to be horrible misanthrope, haven’t I?

Maybe I should switch to Fox News. I hear they’re fair and balanced.

Harry Wappler totally pranked by JP Patches

And unless you live in a particular part of the continent, that will mean nothing to you. But if you do, freakin’ awesome!

Automatic ball machine

I never posted Jerry the Daschhund and his automatic ball machine the first time it went around, but it seems to be going around again, so I’m going to get ahead of the curve this time.

Good old Jerry.

That’s advertising!

This is the best thing I have seen all night, or, indeed, for quite some time.

(via Murderburger, who have suddenly emerged to become the new contender for dry commentary in the vein of  The New Shelton Wet/Dry. Hurray. I love that stuff.)

This is why I joined the Internet

I’m really sorry for the owner of this pickup, but isn’t this still kind of a hilarious karmic joke?
(Murderburger via Super Punch.)

Funny Faces

Wow, an image sure can trigger a flood of memories.

Delicious Industries found this amazing gallery of vintage food packaging, and posted a sampling of some of the more delightful examples. What really caught my eye were the images of Funny Face drink mixes, which I haven’t even thought about for over 40 years. Man, those take me back.

I put Jolly Olly at the top, because that was my favorite flavor. But the ones that really resonated with me visually on this return visit were Goofy Grape and Lefty Lemon. What great packaging.



What would “Pre-sweetened without sugar” have meant in the 1960s? Some sort of DDT/asbestos sugar substitute, I’m going to guess. The ’60s really are the decade that keeps on giving.

Welcome back

I love Improv Everywhere. I was thinking about why I love them so much, and I think that it’s because so many of their pranks are actually of a positive nature. Or they’re at least neutral; nothing’s malicious or mean-spirited.

I have to admit that the premise for their latest prank seemed a little thin: welcoming back complete strangers at the airport arrival gate. But watching it almost brought a tear to my eye. The “victims” are blessed by an unexpected, happy event. Beautiful.
(via BB, but I don’t care.)

You are not crazy, my friend

My first e-mail from my first-born son. My heart swells with pride. And now we wait, with bated breath, for the digital onslaught.

Big Bob Special

Many of you who check in here will know that Jetpacks already posted this, but I have to spread the awesomeness around as much as possible. This is just hilarious from start to finish.

Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion

I’m embarrassed to admit that tonight is the first time I have fully understood what Rutger Hauer says here. It’s the shoulder of Orion! Okay, I finally get it! I always thought it was the “shores” of Orion, which makes a lot less sense.
But hey, any excuse to watch it again. One of the best farewell speeches in movie history…

Power Box!

I often see (and re-link to) beautiful things over at the Canadian Design Resource.

Recently they posted this electrical utility box and implied that it was part of a larger series. But I live here and I’ve never seen it before. I’m pretty sure it’s a one-off by local merchants or possibly even a clever graffiti. Regardless, I love it.

Thanks, Canadian Design Resource! What Todd says about this picture is insightful, particularly the part about craving the color blue in a notably cloudy city.

I wish BC Hydro would come do this to the power box on my block.

Second Life divorce… it ain’t pretty

Woke up this morning to find my Twitter friend Dirk referencing this article, in which a woman is divorcing her husband after finding him having sex with a hooker in Second Life. Seeing as they met in Second Life, then got married in Second Life, I’m surprised she’s so naive as to be shocked that he’s cheating on her in Second Life, as well.

But what the hell do I know? I briefly considered checking out Second Life a couple of years ago, and now I’m glad that my trademark inertia prevented that from ever happening. I’d hate to have an abandoned avatar on there, bravely defending himself from flying penis attacks or whatever the hell goes on.

What struck me as funny is the avatars these folks were using. Here’s the picture of their on-line wedding:
Aaaw! That’s almost beautiful, in a shitty-avatar sort of way!

And here’s the formerly-happy couple in real life:
To judge by the corsages on the people behind them, this was taken at their real-world wedding, in which case, (and I have to spell it out here) What The Fuck?

Breaking!

I have nothing to add.
(via Glark on Tw.)

Maybe they’d been trying the product

This is an ad for 42 Below Vodka. AdFreak doesn’t get it. Neither do I, frankly, but I still think it’s kinda cool, in an arty-prank sort of way.

The AdFreak article would seem to indicate this was all done by Glue Society, which wouldn’t surprise me at all, as they can be pretty crazy.

He’s a Loser

Courtesy of Bill Green, a pretty damn comprehensive list of fictional musical groups. I’m pleased to see they have my favorite teenybopper band, Boys Who Cry, but I couldn’t find any images, so here’s The Mosquitoes from Gilligan’s Island instead.

King Salmon

I grew up fishing for salmon, so I know this is extreme: a Chinook male weighing 82 pounds is the salmon equivalent of a sumo wrestler living to be 100 years old, and still winning.

My uncle caught a 45-pound salmon once, and people were freaking out. That was the biggest one I’ve seen up close. 82 pounds is off the charts.

I love that the big guy never got caught, and that he died after spawning. May his mighty genes live on!
(via Neatorama.)

Holy crap, an ad I actually like

Thank you, RBC/Visa, for creating such a beautiful little ad promoting your services! As a client, I totally approve!
(Thanks to the Canadian Design Resource for pointing it out!)

Dear god, no…

Keith Moon embraces the two Lindas, Blair and Lovelace. The mind sort of boggles about the aftermath of this photo. Keith looks fairly determined to see it through to its logical conclusion. In which case, refer to the title of this post…
(via Gunslinger.)

Reconnez Cherie

The previous post about obscure British bands got me thinking, as it often does, about other Brit bands that should have caught on. And for some reason, the musical part of my brain kicked up Wreckless Eric, one of the least-likely (or was that likeliest? Hmmmm.) stars of the punk movement.

I picked the video above because despite being of crappy and meandering quality, it's one of Eric’s best songs, it’s from just last year and it shows that Eric, who was a modest, funny, friendly, happy! little punk rocker, has managed to hang on and to not get drugged out and to marry Amy Rigby, and to just seem to be having a great life. That makes me so pleased for him.

Legend has it that Stiff Records boss Jake Riviera (great name!) promised someone else in the office that he would make a star out of the next nobody who walked through the door, and in walked… Eric. I think we can pretty much discount that, but Eric had a real working-guy quality about him.

I was actually lucky enough to see him back in the day (and I’m a tiny bit younger than him) and it was just a great, great show. I actually caught a lot of those alt bands of that era on their first pass through Vancouver, when they only played for a couple of hundred people. I gotta write some of that shit down, before I forget it.

Holy cow, now that I think about it, I saw John Otway open for Pere Ubu in a 100-seat theatre! That’s gotta count for some sorta creaky-indy cred!
(Actually, the more I think of it, the more I accept that maybe there are about 100 people tops in the world who think that sounds like an awesome! concert.)

A coupl’a likely lads

That would be Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook, the geniuses (genii?) behind Squeeze, one of the best British punk/pop/new wave bands that never really caught on this side of the pond. And more’s the pity, if I may be allowed a Britishism. I myself was guilty of largely ignoring them, but everything I did hear by them was uniformly excellent.

(The cigar-chomping piano player in this vid is Jools Holland, and the band also hosted Paul Carrack for a while, but Difford/Tilbrook were the main event.)

So today at work, my cubicle neighbor starting singing “Cool for Cats” and I freaked out because I haven’t even thought about that song in almost 30 years. When I got home tonight I searched for it on YouTube and I found a really pixelly version from Universal Music with embedding disabled (bastards!) but underneath that was a much cleaner version from a fan with embedding allowed. So to hell with you, Universal Music.

Roads less travelled

Here’s a nice gallery of pictures of roads. I don’t think it’s a fetish site, but I’m not ruling it out. People do get turned on by the strangest things.
(via Coudal.)

Frauenzimmer

Stern magazine has a gallery of (mildly NSFW) pictures from a book about German brothels. Most of them are pretty utilitarian, but two or three are over the top - including this combination native American/jungle themed room. It’s like a bad acid trip.

The campfire on the left appears to feature actual flames.
(via Dinosaurs and Robots.)

The reigning queens of Yiddish swing

You see, until tonight, I didn’t even know there was such a genre as “Yiddish swing!” But now I know, thanks to And You Shall Know Us By the Trail of Our Vinyl, a book (and blog) devoted to cheesy Jewish pop music.

Found by Super Punch, who added this image, which I remember from my own wasted youth:

I still don’t know what is going on in that picture! Who the hell decided it would make a good album cover? It seems vaguely obscene.

It’s about love

I don’t link to Keith Olbermann very much, because heaven knows a million others do, but man, this special comment on Proposition 8 really bears repeating. It’s really powerful, and it puts into words a lot of my opinions about gay marriage that I haven’t been competent enough to articulate.
(via Why Advertising Sucks.)

Re-live the moment

It’s remarkable how similar all these videos are. Or maybe it’s not remarkable at all. The countdown, a big cheer, then the breaking news graphic and a massive uproar.
(via Coudal.)

Survival

I think I may scan these at work and re-post them, but how awesome!

While moving the computer and all that that entails (is it ever proper to have two ‘thats’ in a row?), I discovered this fantastic set of Royal Air Force survival pamphlets. My wife thinks they may have belonged to her father, who was in the Royal Air Force in the late ’50s and early ’60s. Whatever the provenance, they are friggin’ amazing.

I would totally keep my spare parts in this

This case is so cool. I join all the other bloggers and Twitterers in saluting our countries’ veterans this November 11th. We owe so much to them for beating back totalitarian regimes.
(via the good ol’ Canadian Design Resource.)

Don’t care who makes the nation’s laws

In which young, black Cab Calloway blows the doors off old, white Al Jolson. It‘s almost like one of those metaphors I’ve heard about. Which would make it a simile.
(via apelad on Tw.)

Miriam Makeba

Rest in peace, Miriam Makeba.

This video from 1966 is a brief NBC performance. In the short time allotted, she really nails it. Wow, that was all we really had for “world music” back in the day… but still so good!

(From my Internet pal The Subtle Rudder.)

Camera problems, again!

I hate, hate, hate it when those giant hands mess up the shot!
(via Gunslinger.)

Prime Cut

Perhaps because I posted about Point Blank, I had a dream the other night that someone was planning to re-make another Lee Marvin flick, Prime Cut. Even in my dream, this seemed like a spectacularly bad idea.

But the opening sequence of Prime Cut is oddly beautiful. The scenes at the slaughterhouse are slow-motion and stylized with a classical score, and the only hint of anything out of sorts is a person’s shoe that drops onto the conveyor belt just before we see the hamburger-making machine. Wow. THAT IS COLD.

Bum rush the show

I have no big statement to make about race in America today, though Chuck D’s line about how his heroes aren’t on any stamps foreshadows the past campaign’s references to Obama not looking like the old white dudes on the dollar bills.

But it does sort of seem like Do The Right Thing is now of another era. We can certainly hope.

Not that it still isn’t a great movie. And that song is as brilliant as ever.
(via New Shelton.)

I’ve only got 30 minutes!

Or, learning to enjoy your new McJob in the current economic climate.

Ever since the election of our new president, those burger slingers have certainly lightened up on the pissy attitude.
(via Ow! My Sweet Eyes!)

This is for my six year old

Yes!

She’s a pretty chick

From last night’s Eggleston extravaganza. WOW.

John Vernon was in everything, I tell you

The movie Point Blank is somewhat cool with the nostalgia set, but man, does this trailer suck!

It’s Lee Marvin paired with Angie Dickinson and this is the best you can do? But, hey… Keenan Wynn? Get Out of Jail Card forever for using him.

(I just watched it again and it’s growing on me.)
UPDATE: forgot to credit Super Punch.

McCain wins!

The Chicago Reader’s cover, in the event John McCain won. Super Punch has the actual cover that ran, as well as the Seattle Weekly’s in-case-McCain-wins cover. This is what the Internet was made for.

A Hoople, name of Mott

You know, I once saw a picture of Ian Hunter without sunglasses and I immediately understood why he always kept them on. He was actually a pretty weird-looking dude without the shades.
(via LondonLee.)

Photoshop Phun

This was all over the web today (I first saw it at SwissMiss), but if you haven’t seen it and you work with Photoshop, it’s worth a look: Photoshop rendered with real-life objects. (Click image for biggy goodness.)

Relatedly, I saw this image yesterday:

…and today it occurred to me that this might be an actual product for sale. So I did a bit of googling, and whaddayaknow! They’re on sale here. Totally going to order a set. My favorite? The clone tool.

Wiener dog

Wow, this was on someone's Facebook tonight and I couldn’t help stealing it. Far out!

Stranded in Canton

Apparently in response to his recent profile in the Times, William Eggleston puts up five incredible videos, all less than a minute long. Enjoy them here.

Never heard of William Eggleston…

…but his photography is amazing. Great article about him, or just check out the slide show (#7 is really nice).

Rocket man

This is so cool on so many levels: SwissMiss found this amazing video from 1955 of Dr. Werner von Braun explaining some principles of the space program. The clothes, the furniture, the models, the typefaces - it’s all so incredibly 1950s!

Dr. von Braun had his detractors - many characterized the early days of the space race as “our Nazi scientists versus their Nazi scientists” and that characterization was not without a grain of truth. Here’s what Tom Lehrer had to say about him:


Good old Tom Lehrer! What a genius. Plus, as I never tire of pointing out, he invented the Jell-O shot! That is major, people!

Teardrop

Sound familiar, House fans?

Hard to tell from the YouTube version, but the bass on this track is intense. First time I ever played it on my stereo, I blew out the woofers on my gigantic old Cerwin-Vega speakers. I had just got them out of several years’ storage and I guess the rubber had gone a little stiff from the long period of non-usage. Too bad - they were incredible speakers.

Jim & Tammy

Won’t you please support them? In this, their hour of need? No? Oh, then the Lord is gonna smite ya, you betcha there, young feller!
(ICPWAG,TBAWLODC.)

Free Peanuts

This is rather big news: United Features has just put its whole archives on-line, viewable by anybody. Including Charles Schulz’s Peanuts in its entirety!

I haven’t yet figured out the maddening interface, which can also deliver custom-ordered cartoons as an RSS feed, allegedly. That’s why I just right-clicked the Peanuts “toon” above for illustration.

I think the strip up here may well be the first ever Peanuts. Whether it was or not, it’s certainly ground zero for me in my appreciation of comic strips. Because it blew my little-kid’s mind when I first saw it, and I realized that comics didn’t always  have to be happy sanctuaries from reality.

(UPDATE: Did some research and it actually is the first Peanuts strip. If you don’t believe me, look it up your own damn self. And, no, I didn’t see it the first day it was published. I’m a little younger than that.)
(via Drawn!)

Can’t we all just get along?

But I love bacon and fries! Why must I be forced to choose? (Works best if you imagine me speaking like Homer J. Simpson.)
(via YesButNoButYes.)

Screw you, Amtrak

Just kidding! This is actually footage of some jihadists somewhere (no country is named) taking out a freight train with an IED. Yowza. But the soundtrack leaves a little something to be desired…
(via Danger Room.)

This is rich

You know, when I was in Grade 2, I thought Africa was a country. But my teacher set me straight pretty damn quick. And I wasn’t running for vice-president of the United States, either.

Apparently, we are due for a week of anonymous leaks about what a terrible person she is. I can hardly wait.

Exorcist! The Musical

I know Bollywood movies are often a mish-mash of genres, but this one seems especially over the top, including some truly bizarre horror movie sequences.
(via O!MSE!)

One amazing picture

Jim Coudal and most of his crew were at Grant Park last night, bless their souls.

When I went to their web page to reference the previous post, this picture was being used as the banner. Since they change banners frequently, I copped it to re-post. The headline reads “What a Time and Place To Be Alive.” Indeed.

Mankind is No Island

At first, I thought this was just somebody being clever with their camera-phone but then I discerned the underlying message and it’s quite heart-rending.

Every day on my way to work, I drive, then walk, through some of the most wretched scenes of human misery you can imagine. It’s hard not to look away because otherwise, you’d go mad with despair. Our two mayoral candidates have each vowed to address the problems, as has the provincial government, though I suspect the promises are driven largely by the desire to have the situation out of sight and out of mind by the time the international press arrives for the Olympic Games.

If so, then at least some good will have come from that horrible financial boondoggle.
(via Coudal.)

Work out fine

Something of a palate cleanser after all this election stuff, if you will.

As some of you know, I’m a big booster for Joel Plaskett and here is a video that I just discovered tonight whose theme is kind of pertinent and it features Joel Plaskett plus cuddly bunnies! So feel free to click on through! Bunnies!

Seriously, it does feel like we need a re-boot, so here is my cute bunnies link and I vow to be happier for the next four years.

Wow

There you have it. Election night seemed to go remarkably smoothly, especially since I’ve been freaking out about it for a month or so now.

And I kind of lived in fear (and who doesn’t?) of Al-Qaeda attempting to swing the vote at the last minute, or skinheads in white tuxedos taking out a presidential candidate. Well, maybe not so much the latter.

My only beef with this Times headline is that it should have covered the width of the top of the page. 500-point, if that’s what it takes. History.

Chromophobia

ISO50 posts this image tonight from an album called “Chromophobia.” Looks like the opposite to me!

Revenge of your kindergarten ego

In which Roots Manuva goes back to preschool and wins the trophy in the egg and spoon race.
(via Why, That’s Delightful!)

Totem 64

Nice re-purposing of an icon with some other-culture imagery. Kind of like white plastic lawn chairs as a whale skeleton.

Tiny “Annie Hall” ninja tribute

I think this movie trailer is making some sort of remarks about the heterosexuality of Woody Allen at about the 1:31 mark. Otherwise, I can't imagine why they need to show a man fighting off his own dinner.
(via O!MSE!)

The fun cannot be halted!

Defender of the polyverse!

I’m not sure why I find this so funny, but a large part of it has to do with the way the announcer says “Cube!” I laugh like a moron every time he says it.
(via The Morning News.)

C’mon, c’mon… damn! Not this time…

While testing a new camera (I think), beloved technology pundit Andy Ihnatko fantasizes about being impaled in the eye socket by a metal pole. Live the dream, Andy!
(AI on Tw.)

I'm finding it hard to let this go

The atmosphere just seems electric. It’s like the calm before the storm. And I think it’s going to be a good storm.
(via Why Advertising Sucks.)

Holsapple & Stamey

I was reading the Popdose guide to legendary new-wave producer Don Dixon’s solo discography today, and it got me thinking about the dB's, who were among the finest purveyors of power pop of the early 1980s. And unlike, say, Let’s Active, their songs have stood up rather well, almost 30 years on.

Here’s Amplifier, which was decidedly the song of the summer for me and my buddies in 1981.

The Brits do American political porn

Classy! Here are Ricky Gervais and Thandie Newton, reciting the script from the latest Hustler vid, “Who’s Nailin’ Palin?” or whatever the hell it’s called.
(via Defamer.)

Frank Zappa cough-drop commercial

Gail Zappa has been pretty zealous about protecting her late husband’s intellectual property, and good for her.

But as this 1960s cough-drop ad shows, Frank wasn’t always averse to some commercial shilling, although, according to AdFreak, he parlayed the deal into some free filmage for Uncle Meat.

Two days until Nov. 4 and I finally find a political music video that’s not completely awful

(via Shepard Fairey.)

Depressing times call for depressing campaign songs

I think this is one of the most beautiful songs Paul Simon has ever done, both musically and lyrically, but I sure never thought of it as a campaign song until tonight, when Jetpacks pointed out its sudden pertinence. Wow. I’ve mentioned it before, and folks like Jetpacks have been more insightful than me in dissecting all this, but the Obama side has been just so much more inspired in terms of motivating the grassroots to create their own viral media. And honestly, most of the amateur stuff is better than the “Aw shucks, whaddaya mean don’t vote?” crap campaign that the celebrity-industrial complex is currently running.

Also? Mama, don’t take my Kodachrome™ away! Always loved that trademark sign in the song title!

Caboose

I grew up half a block from a rail line, so trains have been part of my life from an early age. At the end of the train, there was always a caboose, and it was a big deal for a little kid when the guy riding in the caboose waved as the end of the train went by.

Like most North American railroads, Canada’s rail companies have phased out the caboose in favor of some sort of sensing device that alerts the engineer if there’s any trouble with the train behind him. It’s cheaper, arguably more reliable, and it allows the companies to eliminate one job per train. It also took away a lot of the romance of trains, if you ask me, but if I was running a railroad, the bottom line would probably make a more compelling argument.

So these days, when you do see a caboose, it’s usually in rough shape, like this pathetic specimen spotted abandoned on a siding today while I was on a dump run. It almost made me sad.

But the reason I stopped the car and snapped a picture was that some latter-day Dorothy Parker had graffitied the phrase “I like a girl with a big caboose” on the side. Some days I still feel like a little boy.

Please vote for Obama

Three days left. I am dying up here in Canada!

I know the Powell endorsement is a couple of weeks old, but if you haven’t actually seen it, please do. Even if you already agree, it’s fantastic.

Bootsy

(via ICPWAG.)

Canadian rock trifecta

The Joel Plaskett Emergency, doing Love This Town with Gord Downie at the Horseshoe Tavern! True patriot love!

Thou shalt have no other mattress before me

Holy cow, check out this Shorpy pic at full size. I guess at one point mattress sales was a classy occupation.

Vampire Galaxy

Not actually a galaxy, but a nebula. Still, it offers up confirmation that our universe is so close to infinite that we can find pretty much anything we want out there, and just might do exactly that, if we are smart, play our cards right, and survive as a species for another 10,000 years.
(APOD.)

I love Google

And I love all the hidden features in Google. Just now, I needed to do a quick math problem, so I plugged it into my search bar. I wasn’t sure it was going to come up, but I was reasonably confident and, sure enough, there it was.

Google has so many secret, or semi-secret, services, such as translate, define and calculate. I love it when I discover a new one.

That number, by the way, is how many blog posts I averaged per day over the course of last month. Which is either impressive or frightening, depending on how you look at it.

Flickr by Colors

Here’s a nifty application.

Idée Labs has come up with Multicolr Search Lab, which catalogues over 10 million Creative Commons-licensed Flickr images according to the colors used in them. So you can be a professional and search them by color for usage in whatever project you've got going on, or you can be like me and mess around, plugging in different colors to see what comes up. So cool.
(via things.)

Spongebob mash-ups

Spongebob Squarepants is huge in our household, and I’m not just talking about the kids: My wife and I are also devotees of the absorbent yellow one.

So I was delighted to discover this site, where illustrator Roger Langridge re-imagines SB in the style of a number of famous cartoonists. I choose the one above to illustrate because I am also a huge fan of the psychedelic stylings of George Herriman.
(via Drawn!)