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I'm not even being funny. I love, and have always loved this track. Embedding is disabled for the video on YouTube, but you really ought to check it out.
]]>I also gave into peer pressure and reactivated my long-defunct Facebook profile, even though the whole tign still kinda gets on my nerves. Between that and The Apprentice, I think it's time for me to completely abandon any kind of indie cred I've been clinging to.
Special note: Let's all pretend that I decided to ignore this site for the entire month on purpose, like some kind of summer vacation, OK?
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See that Sex Pistols flyer above? It's being auctioned by Christie's with a starting bid of $2,000-$3,000. The thing is, though, it's totally a fake. You know how you can tell? Typeface analysis. And the gratuitous use of Comic Sans isn't the only clue.
Update: Thanks for the link, BoingBoing! Hello people of the internet!
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Related:
Subway Smackdown: the written version of the clip above
Mix It Up and Do the Do: from November 2005's show, "I'm With the Band"
I'm So Gay: from June 2004's show, "That's So Gay! Tales of Extremely Gay Gayness"
Travel has always been particularly challenging, or at least traveling with other people. Travel on its own is pretty tiring, what with all the new things to take in and explore at every turn, but it's really tough when I can't get a chance to just be alone and let my brain settle down for a spell. I really like traveling on my own, actually, just so I can follow my nose and take things at my own pace and decide for myself how much I feel like diving into my surroundings. It's also wonderful to see someplace new with people you can talk to and enjoy it with, but it only really works if they're happy to go off on their own and leave me to myself now and then.
It was lovely, then, to come across "Confessions of an Introverted Traveler" and "Six Tips for Introverted Travelers", a pair of articles that finally acknowledge how introverts handle trips and vacations differently than their more gregarious friends, families, and colleagues. This little bit is perhaps the best summary of my whole attitude about such things:
]]>I'm not opposed to traveling with others — a good travel companion is a joy and an extroverted companion can make connections for you on the road. But I'm also not shy about eking out time to myself as necessary. An hour walking alone, some solo time in a museum, an hour in a hotel garden with a book can provide a very refreshing break from interaction. Anyone who doesn't respect your need for downtime is probably not the right travel companion for you.
I like the shout-out to I Love Typography in that one.
]]>Faced with complaints from photographers and tourists alike, the NYPD has issued a department order reminding cops that the right to take pictures in the Big Apple is as American as apple pie.
"Photography and the videotaping of public places, buildings and structures are common activities within New York City . . . and is rarely unlawful," the NYPD operations order begins. [From the New York Post]
[Click the image above to enlarge and print for yourself to carry around, if you're so inclined.]
Let's hope they finally drop the anti-photography here in the UK one of these days.
]]>I throw up my hands in defeat. I've finally had to shut down the comments on this entry about Sodachrome. Although some very lovely and flattering authentic comments were made (for which Ian and I are deeply grateful), I have been drowning in an onslaught of spam ever since someone thought it would be nice to add that page to StumbleUpon. Note: It was not nice. It led to a fucking awful, endless torrent of spam that has overwhelmed my ability to check for any real comments amidst the spam.
]]>I am in love with this installation/cluster of shelves shaped liked letters. (I may also have a bit of a crush on the guy who made them, but that's a different matter entirely.) Check out his other stuff, too: the work's filled with whimsy and ingenuity.
]]>Beardyman. Dreamyman.
]]>I used to make stuff — actual, physical stuff, like zines and mixtapes and paper and postcards — a lot, and the tactile aspect of that was a huge part of wht I liked. I don't make so much stuff anymore, and I miss the way I enjoyed the making and the sharing of it. I stumbled into the web because I was curious about this new thing that was emerging, and it was easy enough to tinker with it and feel it out. Throwing up a web page built with Mosaic was also a cheap alternative to putting out the slightly ambitious zine I had been making, so the first pages I made were supposed to be a staging ground for what I'd publish the next time I had a little extra scratch lying around. Then they became a repository for stuff I was posting on discussion groups, and then a repository for what I'd published in my zine, and then Blogger happened and then GreyMatter and then Movable Type and then Flickr and then Twitter and other stuff and it became more and more and now here we are. Now, I find myself constantly expanding and contracting in the online world — testing new things, leaving them when they don't give me something I like. I don't really like the endless networks that can spin out in all directions. I like a smaller net with edges that are just blurry enough to leave room for serendipity. I like a bit more community and a bit less...well, a bit less onslaught of everything, I guess.
]]> This isn't a new thing. The WYSIWYG Talent Show started because it felt like blogging was an activity that was getting a bit less intimate and a bit less personal than it was when we stumbled into it early on. The glimpse at the person, and that person as a filter of the world around them, was the bit that I miss. As much as I appreciate that there are people out there who have the focus to maintain a repository of targeted content, I still bristle at the idea of blogs as necessities, marketing tools, or places that have to be about just one thing. When I read someone saying that they have six blogs about different topics, I wonder why they don't just have one that's mostly about the six things that interest them so much, and anything else they throw in. It's still the person that's the point for me. Just the other day, FPO — a great blog about print design projects, but yet another precisely targeted project within a cluster of sites — appeared, and they say flat out:Through different venues — some in conversation, other in interviews — we have expressed our theory that niche and highly targeted blogs are the ones enjoying the most success, as they hold the assurance that no matter what day of the week you log on, you will get exactly the kind of content you expected to find.
And as it gets easier and easier for me to find web sites about the endless things that interest me, I find it harder and harder to hear voices within the chorus, even my own.
So I've been paying more attention to the stuff that people are making. People (including me, now and then) have been making stuff all along, but there's been this slow build about the joys of stuff, and making stuff that's deeply imbued with the quirks and the presence of the maker. I've been to a few small-press and zine fairs in the last year — they've been having zine fairs again for the last couple of years, and they're packed — and I see things swinging around for another pass. More people are making stuff — stuff with smaller scale, smaller audiences, and a bit more magic. Even when the topic at hand is just as targeted as any blog, something like a zine or an independent comic usually ends up being about the maker than anything else, and I like the way the person blends with the point so easily.
And yeah, it is just another thing that's swinging around. In the 90s my buddies and I were wondering if better tools and more polished zines were pushing the personal toward the commercial too easily. And yeah, they did, and we let market forces do what they do while we did other stuff and then that stuff is everything I just wrote about above and I feel like the zine field has lain fallow long enough that it's fertile enough to bloom into another generation of glorious immature mess.
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