THE VISCERAL ABSURDIST

Justice- Audio Video Disco

2011-10-06T13:56:00.002-04:00

The Blue Dress

2011-09-27T16:41:00.002-04:00

A young man sat beneath the pale humid sky and thought of girl.

This girl wore a blue dress and smelled of a pale melancholy he could not place. He knew her to be tender; this he tasted himself — but it was her eyes, her vigilant, half swollen eyes that spoke of her fear to love.

It had been not a fortnight before her sleep was robbed. Cherubim masked thieves of mental reprieve danced upon her brow as the tiny blonde hairs between her lips, and her lips, stood at attention through night's end.

A yearning had consumed her. She wanted more than to fuck him; fucking was for lesser men, and she fancied herself a worthy woman.

quote of the day:

2011-09-19T10:44:00.001-04:00

My ideas are my whores.
Denis Diderot

The Art of Fiction No. 213 Dennis Cooper

2011-09-15T13:38:00.002-04:00

“I think pornography is a very rich medium, and I’ve studied it closely and learned quite a lot as a writer from it. Porn charges and narrows the reader’s attention in a swift, no-nonsense way, and it creates an anxious, intimate, and secretive atmosphere that I find very helpful as a way to erase the context around my characters and foreground their feelings, their psychological depths, their tastes. But I’m also always interested in subverting and counteracting porn’s effect, and the sex in my books is never merely hot.”

Catherine Millet

2011-09-08T13:48:00.000-04:00

Catherine Millet: Madame Sex comes clean

She was the respected, frumpy French intellectual who scandalised the world with her explicit sexual memoir. Now Catherine Millet is revealing more intimacies. Portraits by Bettina Reimes

John Follain

The woman known as “Madame Sex” crunches her way elegantly through a large radish as she compares the pleasures of orgies and masturbation. An art critic and sex-memoir author extraordinaire, Catherine Millet talks of “pleasure in the solitary act” and “distractions” in orgies as smoothly as she does of the weather during her last summer holiday. The waiter at the Left Bank restaurant near her Parisian publisher doesn’t even raise an eyebrow.

This is Millet as 1.2m readers of her 2001 sensation, The Sexual Life of Catherine M, and countless French chat-show viewers know her: a confident, unflappable defender of the unbridled exercise of what she calls her “right to sexual freedom”, and by extension an authority on sex in general. A youthful, tanned 60-year-old in smart grey trousers, a floral-print blouse and a checked jacket, she is demure, petite and bird-like, speaking quickly and gesticulating often.

In her bestseller, published worldwide in close to 40 languages, she wrote of the “incalculable number” of her sex partners, the myriad backdrops to her orgiastic assignments – offices, storerooms in exhibition venues, swingers’ clubs, underground car parks, the Bois de Boulogne forest west of Paris, deserted stadiums, cemeteries, railway stations. Today the ultimate modern-day libertine has a new memoir, Jour de Souffrance (Day of Suffering), in which she shines a disconcerting light on a part of her private life she previously swept under the carpet – the debilitating jealousy that she paradoxically suffered from as her then lover, now her husband, exercised his own right to sexual freedom. Millet being Millet, the new book also gives pride of place to the masturbation fantasies she says she suffered from as a result of her jealousy. There was little hint of such personal anguish in her first book, which was billed as an unprecedentedly frank account and widely criticised for its absence of feeling or emotion. So how much of a facade is the “Madame Sex” persona, and what other aspects of her personality, if any, has she kept hidden?

) ) ) ) )

When asked about her childhood, the first memory Millet comes up with is that of raiding her mother and grandmother’s library at their flat in the western Paris suburb of Bois-Colombes. Nobody told her what she could or couldn’t read, and as a teenager she devoured children’s books alongside classics by Balzac and Zola. Her father, a driving instructor, called her “Catherine Millet of the Académie Française”. Nobody told her about the birds and the bees either.

“The first time I had my period, nobody explained anything to me. A doctor came, and that was it. I remember my dad joking, ‘You’ve got a nosebleed.’ I was very naive; I learnt everything on my own,” she says. But her parents did give her a Catholic education, complete with catechism and first communion.

Millet’s voice, usually steady and strong, slows down as she recalls her mother’s mental illness. “She always had difficulty living, if I can put it like that. I remember fits that I won’t call fits of madness – they were terrible anxiety attacks. She had obsessions, like household appliances not working. She’d get into a terrible state because the fridge didn’t work. I remember seeing her putting a leg over the window sill and being caught at the last minute by my father.”

Did she witness other suicide attempts?

“I wouldn’t call it a suicide attempt. It was a moment of distraction, of great confusion. And it happened while we were there – suicide is pretty much a solitary act usually.” Her mother and father were both unfaithful, and she once saw her mother kissing her lover outside their flat.

The editor of Art Press, a highbrow magazine on contemporary art, Millet wrote books on art including Dalí and Me, and oversaw exhibitions in France and at the Venice Biennale, but it is The Sexual Life that made her a household name. In it, she describes in laconic, graphic detail and with mind-numbing thoroughness how she took part in her first orgy – she uses the slang French word partouse – a few weeks after losing her virginity at 18, and many of those that followed. Such as at a club called Chez Aimé: “I was sometimes set upon so violently that I had to hold on to the ends of the table with both my hands, and for a long time I bore the scar of a little gash above my coccyx, where my spine had rubbed against the rough wood.” She approvingly quotes an acquaintance’s remark that “Elle baise comme elle respire” (She f***s like she breathes). Up to 150 people were present at the biggest orgies she took part in, and she would have sex of one form or another with “about a quarter or a fifth of them”.

Millet has said that if she could find pleasure in such numbers it was because her love life was “very stable” and the couples she formed a part of were “very solid”. She has had only two lovers in her life. The first, Daniel Templon, heads an art gallery and founded Art Press with her in 1972. The second is her husband, Jacques Henric, then a communist schoolteacher nine years her senior she met in the early 1970s, who is now a writer and photographer. She was with both men for six years before breaking with Templon. At the time The Sexual Life came out, Henric published a book of 32 nude photographs of her.

Millet doesn’t believe that the dark side of her youth – including her younger brother dying in a car accident – explains her sex life.

“At the orgies I went to I must have come across people who hadn’t suffered such tragedies in their families. And at the same time I think that everyone has the memory of a tragedy in their life, like an accident cutting short the life of a loved one.”

Yet she talks of her sex life as “a refuge”. From what? “This kind of sex life was a good way of negotiating my entry into the world. I was shy, I was a bit afraid, and I had the impression that establishing a sexual relationship very quickly and easily made things easier for me.” She could have taken up stamp-collecting and met people that way, I say. She just laughs.

Wasn’t it a form of addiction? “I don’t think I’m an addict. I lived in an environment where sexual relationships could be established pretty easily, and I simply welcomed this. But I didn’t seek it out. I don’t think I am or was a nymphomaniac. A nymphomaniac is a woman who jumps on all the men she meets. That really wasn’t my case.”

She stopped going to orgies when she realised she felt increasingly detached: “I felt more and more like a spectator.” Her professional success made her feel more sure of herself, so she had less need of the gratification orgies brought her.

Several critics have slated The Sexual Life for its coldness. The Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa slammed it as a “carnal gymnasium, devoid of any sentiment or emotion”. Millet grimaces when I read that out. “Yes, I remember it. But the lack of feeling was deliberate. My project was to write a very factual book on sexual activity. I didn’t want to tell the story of my life.”

She acknowledges that one of the rare feelings that does feature in the book is her pride at being the most available woman at orgies, and skilled at oral sex. “That wouldn’t be the case today! I mean, I have other reasons to be proud of myself,” she laughs. “But that was one of the reasons for going to orgies – being appreciated.”

What of the charge that the book was repetitive, even sad? Millet bristles only slightly. The Marquis de Sade is repetitive too, she says: “Sexual activity is pretty repetitive, however imaginative you try to be.”

A mixed critical reception didn’t stop The Sexual Life gaining Millet instant notoriety and sizable wealth – she says she spent the latter on refurbishing her flat in eastern Paris and on “a more comfortable life day to day”.

Did her colleagues in the art world treat her differently, even try to pick her up? “No! If I’d wanted to discourage that kind of thing, I couldn’t have found a better way. Writing about your sex life makes people you know scared of you.” But she received plenty of interest from titillated readers. One English train driver wrote to tell her about passengers he had surprised having sex on his train. He even telephoned the art newspaper she edits, but she didn’t take the call. Did he want more than a chat? “Practically all those who wrote to me wanted to meet me. I was invited to various places in the world, even with my partner,” she says with a grin. She always turned the invitations down.

She was gratified, however, by women readers coming up to her and thanking her for writing explicitly about masturbation and the pleasure women take in it. “They said to me it was no longer taboo, that people would stop thinking they were frigid simply because they enjoyed masturbation.” Millet proceeds to compare the merits of masturbation and group sex. “You have greater control in masturbation. In an orgy, the very fact that there are many people makes access to pleasure more uncertain; you’ve got more distractions and you’re playing a role a bit – and that can put a brake on pleasure.”

) ) ) ) )

Her new book, Day of Suffering, fills in part of the picture left blank in her bestseller. It focuses on her obsessive jealousy towards her husband, Henric, whom she lived with for 10 years – during the orgy period – before marrying him in 1991. Millet has written that she was attracted by Henric’s voice. What else made her fall in love with him? She seems momentarily thrown by the question. “What attracted me?” she repeats. Pause. “A stability which is reflected in his physical appearance. He’s the Mediterranean type, not very tall, a pretty square build and very calm. Um, voilà,” she concludes.

The three-year “crise de jalousie” saw her rifle through Henric’s correspondence and diaries, and suffer from nightmares and fits of rage and tearful anxiety – so much so that she had problems breathing and her heartbeat would go haywire. She took tranquillisers.

She explains that she started therapy after her brother died in a car accident. “I wasn’t a happy person. I suffered enormously from the loss of my brother and my mother in my thirties. But those losses didn’t have as devastating an impact as the jealousy, which made me half mad.”

Did she think of suicide during her fits of jealousy? “I don’t think I have a suicidal nature, but when I felt trapped, I’d escape by imagining I was killing myself. Yet the very next minute I’d have been incapable of actually doing it. The image comforted me a bit, but it was only an image.” Did she think of her mother when she felt half mad? “Yes, it was more my moments of hysteria that made me think of her, because I saw her throwing herself against the walls headfirst. I didn’t think of the suicide.”

At the root of her desperation was feeling trapped. “I was conscious from the outset that I was living a terrible contradiction. I couldn’t get angry with Jacques and reproach him for his infidelity, because that would have been absurd, given my own sex life. I felt there was no way out, I couldn’t turn my pain into reprimands.”

One of the things she suffered from the most was being unable to have any erotic fantasies other than imagining Henric with other women. She writes of the “exasperating vision of Jacques’ sex organ penetrating that of one of his girlfriends”, a vision she always “saw” as if she was behind him. One scene has the beautiful Blandine, a “rival”, having sex with Henric in their bed, in a position he and Millet are fond of.

She had no problems writing up her fantasies, which feature prominently in the new book. “That was the easiest part. The hardest episodes were in Jacques’ study, going through his letters, because it didn’t make me look very good, to say the least.” Often, the events she described were still so painful that she wrote agonisingly slowly, managing only two or three sentences in three hours. She has said she had only a few sexual relations with two or three partners in the three years her crise de jalousie lasted. “Jacques would make love to me to calm my hysteria.”

I ask her why she made only a few passing references to her jealousy in The Sexual Life.

“I was worried that if I went into more detail, readers would interpret this jealousy as a sort of punishment from heaven against the libertine. That would make the book a confession of someone who had paid for their so-called sin, and I really didn’t want that.” Odd, that. Millet doesn’t mind about readers seeing her having sex with countless partners, but she doesn’t want to be seen as being punished for it.

“The other thing I didn’t put in either book, because it would have dragged me into complex things psychologically, is the abortions. After all, becoming pregnant and choosing to have an abortion is part of a sex life.” It is the first time Millet speaks of having abortions. I ask her how many times. “Three times, I think.” Was she pregnant by the two loves of her life, or her casual partners? “No, no, you see! Immediately this leads to complex things.”

Later, I ask her whether she ever wanted children. She says she did, in her mid-thirties, because she saw her friends were having kids, and that made her want one of her own. “But that desire passed very quickly. I think I was too focused on my life; probably I was selfish. I didn’t want to give up certain things, like being free to do things and to work as much as possible.”

Henric has called Millet “prudish” – although she posed naked for him and disclosed so much about her sex life in her books. She has said one of the reasons she had no qualms about writing her bestseller was that she considered the protagonist to be another person. But Millet is still holding back on much of what she sees as part of her make-up. The Sexual Life was touted as a full account, yet the fits of jealousy were only briefly described. In both her books and her interviews, her references to her youth and its traumas are rare and short.

She does let drop, though, that pain can find relief in sex. “When people’s lives are hit by a tragedy, it’s possible they want to forget and they look for physical love. It gives them a pleasure which can be very violent, very intense, and it heals the wound a bit.” I can’t help thinking this applies to her to some extent.

She candidly admits that she expects Day of Suffering to do less well than her earlier book. Her latest offering doesn’t have the same “whiff of scandal”. She doesn’t mind if it’s not a big success. What’s more important to her is some critics insinuating that she has had to pay for her life as a libertine, as if it was a sin to be punished. She says: “I can’t stop people thinking that. Perhaps it allows them to satisfy their morality. But I never regretted anything I did, even when I was feeling the most wretched. What I suffered never made me question my philosophy of life.”

That philosophy has softened. She says she wants to tell Henric: “Let’s take it easy – time is beginning to count.” She explains: “I’ve reached an age in which you no longer want hassle.” So you are faithful to each other? “I can speak only for myself… The answer in my case is yes.”

She still defends the idea of sexual freedom as “the right of everyone”, but she strikes a warning note: “Sexual freedom suited me for a time but it isn’t the key to happiness. There are other things that come before sex. Your work or family can also be the centre of your life.

“Andy Warhol once said we should show kids the sexual act very early because they would understand it isn’t that big a deal. He is saying that we give sex too much importance.”

Which takes the biscuit, coming from “Madame Sex” herself. Then again, she stopped taking part in chat shows which cast her in that role a year or two ago. It’s clear that the label has become a tight fit for Millet; she wants to be known and praised not as a writer on sex, but as a writer tout court. And there’s no doubt she has plenty of as-yet-undisclosed memories to draw on, be they sexual, happy or sad.

exactly.

2011-08-30T17:30:00.002-04:00

elegance.

2011-08-30T17:23:00.002-04:00

The Zone (Drake verse)

2011-08-25T12:30:00.000-04:00

[Drake]
Woah, all these broken hearts on that pole
Man if pole dancing's an art you know how many fuckin’ artists I know
Got some new bills in the mail, got some big favours I owe
Got some good things ahead of me when these bad bitches let go
Well girl let's.. go, walk your broken heart through that door
Sit yo sexy ass on that couch
Wipe that lipstick off of your mouth
I take it slow
She in love with my crew
She said make enough so I can try some
I thought taking drugs just ain't you, be you
Yeah girl, just be you
And I do this shit for my hometown, it been going down, it ain't new
That’s that north north, that up top
That OVO and that XO
Your girlfriend at our next show
But its all good, don’t stress though
First night fuck, never really planned it
Take a deep breath, no one need to panic
Lips so French, ass so Spanish
You don’t really like attention, I don’t know if she gon' manage out here
But she got me all up in my zone
Said she like the view I got in this place, shit I did all of that on my own
Aw yeah

longing for your reflection

2011-08-24T10:31:00.002-04:00

The Weeknd ft. Sunday

2011-08-23T17:32:00.001-04:00

Rip It..Forever

2011-08-17T14:07:00.001-04:00

Fear

2011-08-15T12:53:00.000-04:00

Swag sucks

2011-08-15T12:47:00.001-04:00

I'll have a double please.

2011-08-15T12:09:00.001-04:00

It can be said of many artistic luminaries that both narcissism and eccentricity are misinterpreted watermarks of creative genius. We turn veiled alcoholism into charming coping mechanisms, selfishness into mystical depths of introspection, sexual tendencies into triumphant phallic metaphysical conquests over the emasculation of modern man.

Are these postulations foolish, archaic or contemptibly absurd? Maybe. But only to those for whom such grand personality flaws would fall harmlessly from the sloped shoulders of mediocrity. This is not to say the author counts himself amongst this pantheon of the distinguished insolent; but shit, it damn sure seems like more fun.

Larry Clark

2011-08-04T12:21:00.002-04:00

The conformity that saturated American society in the postwar 1950s created unreal expectations among the population due to the media's use of advertisements and television shows to portray an orderly lifestyle full of hope and promise within the growing strength of capitalism. Beginning in 1963, Larry Clark carved out a niche in photography that reflected the consequences of adolescent dysfunction. By striking a chord with the riddles that ran beneath mainstream society, these images successfully captured the emptiness of the American Dream. However it was not until 1971 that Clark shocked the nation with the publication of "Tulsa" (1963-71)--a photographic series that depicts young men shooting up drugs, driving cars, playing with guns and engaging in violence. The same year Hunter Thompson published his own search for the American Dream titled Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971), but unlike Clark who was demystified by the midwest from the start. Thompson came back from his venture empty-handed, having experienced nothing extraordinary beyond the dull, erratic subculture that was visually narrated by Clark. The retrospective of Clark's work at the International Center of Photography in New York City features an array of photographs that were taken over the course of 35 years and bear witness to the evolution of alternative youth within our society.

CREEP

2011-08-02T10:21:00.001-04:00

CREEP - You (feat Nina Sky) from OFFICIAL CREEP on Vimeo.

Softness Also....

2011-08-01T09:43:00.001-04:00

Chuck Klosterman on Boxing

2011-07-26T17:22:00.001-04:00

It is impossible to deny that the culture is coarsening. Everyone concedes this -- even the people who are happy about it. It is now acceptable to say almost anything, about almost anyone, in a public space, and for no reason whatsoever. There is no line to step over, because such lines no longer exist. And I think those boundaries disappeared the moment people really, truly lost the fear of getting punched in the face. Americans have understood this intellectually for decades, but I don't think we accepted it in totality until now. Adults are now so insulated by technology (and so protected by modernity) that the possibility of a physical consequence for any action is a psychological nonfactor. We have removed interpersonal fear from day-to-day behavior. Today, boxers are the only people who get hit for fucking up.

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/features/chuck-klostermans-america/chuck-klosterman-0208#ixzz1TFUFstRq

Woodkid-Iron

2011-04-08T10:54:00.001-04:00

Woodkid - Iron from WOODKID on Vimeo.

Today's Thought

2011-02-07T23:15:00.001-05:00

It should be considered President Obama will be a relatively young man when his presidency ends.

Perhaps his greatest moments as a statesman will come after office. It could be argued what America lost most after JFK was his post presidential influence and leadership. Clinton is the closest living model.

Beardyman

2011-01-23T16:38:00.001-05:00

Beardyman - Dolbyman from Reserve17 on Vimeo.

Doubts

2011-01-19T00:51:00.002-05:00

Francis Bacon: If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainty.

The Entrance

2011-01-18T10:11:00.001-05:00

Perrier

2011-01-16T18:01:00.000-05:00

Sherwin Williams - Paint Chips

2011-01-16T17:43:00.000-05:00

Ai Weiwei

2011-01-16T17:41:00.002-05:00

3-DD

2011-01-12T11:35:00.000-05:00

THREE -DD

Imagery

2011-01-12T08:43:00.003-05:00

Kate Moss for Balmain

2011-01-09T12:40:00.000-05:00

My puppy Vladamir Anthony McMichael the 1st

2011-01-05T10:50:00.001-05:00

Rooftop Films: NEW YORK- Ace Hotel - Sunday Jan. 9th

2011-01-04T13:49:00.002-05:00

January 9

COLD WEATHER AT ACE HOTEL

Venue: ACE HOTEL
Address: 20 WEST 29TH STREET, NEW YORK
Directions: N, R to 28th Street or the B, D, F, M, Q to Herald Square
8:00 PM: Doors open
8:30 PM: Film begin
Admission: No charge for admission

Rooftop Films heads to Chelsea for our first ever screening in Ace Hotel's Liberty Hall, and we kick off our monthly screenings there with Aaron Katz's intelligent and exhilarating new indie mystery, Cold Weather.

There is no charge for admission and the screening is open to all.

Cold Weather will be released in theaters in February by IFC Films. Check www.ifcfilms.com for details.

COLD WEATHER (Aaron Katz | Portland | 90 min.)
Filmmaker Aaron Katz is best know for the charming and deeply sensitive dramas Dance Party, USA and Quiet City (which we screened in 2008), and his latest film, Cold Weather, starts with a very simple, patient premise and a languid pace that seems very much of a piece with his earlier work. But in this film Katz has a few new tricks up his sleeve, and when the second act kicks in, it becomes very clear that Cold Weather will not be mistaken for a sedate mumblecore drama.

Doug (Lankenau) has just moved back to his hometown of Portland, Oregon, to move in with his sister (Dunn), hoping for another chance at jumpstarting their grown up lives. When Doug's ex-girlfriend comes to town unexpectedly, only to disappear shortly after, Doug, Gail, and their new friend Carlos (Castillo) appoint themselves as detectives in what they see as a real life Sherlock Holmes situation.

Like Katz's previous work, Cold Weather is a very personal film about the fear of growing up and about young people struggling to communicate and find their way in the world. But it is also a classic mystery, a love letter to the city of Portland, a beautifully composed work of cinema, and a bold and exciting step forward for one of independent cinema's most thoughtful young directors.

TOP TV OF 2010

2011-01-03T22:51:00.001-05:00

Television:

Yet again AMC dominates in 2010, showing that cable television continues to successfully lasso the beast that is critically acclaimed, profitable, dramatic television, that doesn't isn't about crime (read: CSI and the lot).

The period piece commercials and comedic interludes for shampoo, mayo and mountain dew were spot on media placements. They actually gave Mad Men a seamless narrative quality rivaled only by real cinema.

Perhaps too many American men find reflexive qualities in themselves and the brooding boozy hero, Don Draper. As he wails rudderless through a mississipi of whiskey and vagina. Basically the abyss and back; struggling as much with the anxiety of "being poor again" as he does with his formerly faustavian libido.

The Walking Dead was a zombie movie with heart, turned into a great television series because of: smart writing, even better casting, and an Atlanta backdrop just unfamiliar enough to the average viewer, to give a little backnecktickle when the blackberryredish goosh of blood and guts interrupts a rather quizzical Freudian exchange between characters illuminated as persons in te face of nothingness. Cool show.

Pillars of the Earth is yet another dazzling character vehicle that was poorly marketed as a pseudo historical Lord of the Rings. It should turn a few of it's great cast into longtime fixtures on network television. However it's Ian McShane's baby and we all know it by the end of the first episode. He's television's Daniel Day Lewis and an actor's actor. Olivier didn't have his range, or tongue.

80s Video Dating Montage

2010-12-30T11:41:00.000-05:00

Mitch Alfus, Leather King. A Selby Film

2010-12-30T11:26:00.000-05:00

Devil in a New Dress- Rick Ross Verse

2010-12-29T15:04:00.002-05:00

[Rick Ross - Verse 3]

Lookin’ at my bitch I bet she give your ass a bone
Lookin’ at my wrist it’ll turn your ass to stone
Stretch limousine, sippin’ Rosé all along
Double-headed monster with a mind of his own
Cherry red chariot, excess is just my character
All black tux, nigga the shoes lavender
I never needed acceptance from all you outsiders
Had cyphers with Yeezy before his mouth wired
Before his jaw shattered climbin’ up the Lord’s ladder
We still speedin’ runnin’ signs like they don’t matter
Uh, hater talkin’ never made me mad
Never that when I’m in my favorite papertag
Therefore G4s at the Clearport
When it come to tools fool I’m a Pep Boy
When it came to dope I was quick to export
Never tired of ballin’ so it’s on to the next sport
New Mercedes sedan, they’ll export
So many cars DMV though it was mail fraud
Different traps, I was gettin’ mail from
Polk County, Jacksonville, rep Melbourne
Whole clique’s appetite had tapeworms
Spinnin’ Teddy Pendergrass vinyl as my jay burns
I shed a tear before the nights over
God bless the man I put this ice over
Gettin’ 2Pac money twice over
Still a real nigga, red Coogi sweater, dice roller
I’m makin’ love to the angel of death
Catchin’ feelings never stumble retracin’ my steps
[End]

Why the West Rules—For Now

2010-12-28T10:16:00.000-05:00

Why the West Rules—For Now

1 Billion Hungry

2010-12-27T23:40:00.000-05:00

Filmography 2010

2010-12-27T12:34:00.000-05:00

Roger Ebert's Journal

2010-12-24T19:23:00.000-05:00

Roger Ebert's Journal

60 TIPS FOR A STUNNINGLY GREAT LIFE

2010-12-24T10:53:00.000-05:00

60 TIPS FOR A STUNNINGLY GREAT LIFE

Listen to TravisMcMichaels Playlist

2010-12-22T16:39:00.001-05:00

Vulture: Jerry Saltz's Favorite Paintings

2010-12-22T16:02:00.000-05:00

Vulture: Jerry Saltz's Favorite Paintings

TRAILER: "You are uniQue!" - QUE FILM

2010-12-22T15:54:00.000-05:00

ESPN Alabama Roll Tide Commercial

2010-12-19T22:13:00.000-05:00

American Sports, especially collegiate American sports will always be one the most profound manifestations of what could be called post-modern federalism. Whereas regional alliances, public, social and aesthetic, trump the national zeitgeist in all forms.

Roll Tide.

The History of the Tea Party in Four Minutes

2010-12-19T21:16:00.000-05:00

From the NYC Open Blog: Hool play convent of St. Cecilia on 12.19

2010-12-18T13:15:00.000-05:00

From the NYC Open Blog: Hool play convent of St. Cecilia on 12.19

HOOL has played in office parking garages, shipping containers, hospital rooms, industrial lofts, haylofts, storm drains, in the quiet canyons of California, under the autumn leaves of western New York, and on sheep farms in the green heart of Holland. This Sunday December 19, they play in the abandoned convent of St. Cecilia in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Doors at 7p, Walker Lukens opens at 8p, and HOOL starts at 9p. 21 Monitor Street, Brooklyn.

The End of Men - Magazine - The Atlantic

2010-12-16T21:25:00.000-05:00

The End of Men - Magazine - The Atlantic

The End of Men

Earlier this year, women became the majority of the workforce for the first time in U.S. history. Most managers are now women too. And for every two men who get a college degree this year, three women will do the same. For years, women’s progress has been cast as a struggle for equality. But what if equality isn’t the end point? What if modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to women? A report on the unprecedented role reversal now under way— and its vast cultural consequences

By Hanna Rosin

Image credit: John Ritter

In the 1970s the biologist Ronald Ericsson came up with a way to separate sperm carrying the male-producing Y chromosome from those carrying the X. He sent the two kinds of sperm swimming down a glass tube through ever-thicker albumin barriers. The sperm with the X chromosome had a larger head and a longer tail, and so, he figured, they would get bogged down in the viscous liquid. The sperm with the Y chromosome were leaner and faster and could swim down to the bottom of the tube more efficiently. Ericsson had grown up on a ranch in South Dakota, where he’d developed an Old West, cowboy swagger. The process, he said, was like “cutting out cattle at the gate.” The cattle left flailing behind the gate were of course the X’s, which seemed to please him. He would sometimes demonstrate the process using cartilage from a bull’s penis as a pointer.

The End of Men - Magazine - The Atlantic

Moonwalker - Michael Jackson (PART 3)

2010-12-16T20:45:00.002-05:00

Moonwalker(pt.2)

2010-12-16T20:45:00.001-05:00

Michael Jackson's Moonwalker-Part 1

2010-12-16T20:45:00.000-05:00

SHOWstudio - Tribute to Alexander McQueen by Nick Knight, music by Björk

2010-12-14T14:50:00.000-05:00

TRON Armchair

2010-12-14T14:02:00.000-05:00

Cappellini and Walt Disney Created

Louis Vuitton Men's Spring/Summer ft. Scott Campbell (Part 1)

2010-12-14T13:47:00.000-05:00

WikiWecaps Episode 1: Inside Wikileaks "Cablegate"

2010-12-13T13:25:00.000-05:00

Tony Porter: A call to men | Video on TED.com

2010-12-13T13:22:00.000-05:00

Tony Porter: A call to men | Video on TED.com

Fitz and the Tantrums (News 4 U)

2010-12-13T09:50:00.000-05:00

Artaksiniya: design, illustrator, artist

2010-12-13T00:12:00.000-05:00

http://artaksiniya.com/

Planet Monocle

2010-12-12T12:59:00.000-05:00

Planet Monocle

Tyler Brûlé ushered in a design revolution with Wallpaper magazine. His new global media strategy is equally rarefied, and only occasionally ridiculous. Listen to him for a while, and the world seems positively aglow with possibility.

(Photo: Roger Deckker)

Tyler Brûlé—editor, tastemaker, mini media mogul—is sitting in the bar at the Crosby Street Hotel drinking from a pretty bottle of bubbly water. There is nothing in his appearance or his demeanor, both of which call to mind an exceptionally relaxed Clark Kent, to suggest that he is merely between long-haul flights to places like Rio and Seoul. Everything about him communicates health and ease, with himself and with his surroundings. He can, after all, claim a certain amount of credit for the environment he finds himself in. Brûlé is the man who created Wallpaper magazine, back in 1996, and with it a generation of urban designophiles in clever glasses who know their Jean Nouvel from their Andrée Putman and who like their hotels exactly like this one. The manager waves across the room: Is there any better endorsement than Tyler Brûlé?

In the morning Brûlé (as in crème) will be off again—he’ll check in someplace else similarly well-lit—but for the moment, he is focused as can be on the topic at hand: old media. He loves it. Can’t get enough. “I don’t want to sound like a Luddite about it,” he says, “but …” But Brûlé sort of is. Not a Luddite, exactly, but a hard-core devotee of old-fashioned media: of magazines that are printed on paper, of news programs that dedicate hours to single topics, and of well-modulated, unhysterical coverage of things other than, as he puts it, missing white women. As the media conglomerates of the world attempt to figure out their plans for the future, Brûlé is hatching a tiny and very specific media empire from a lovely part of Central London called Marylebone.

Planet Monocle

American Hustlers

2010-12-08T18:52:00.000-05:00

Illustration by Gluekit

(Photo: Patrick McMullan (Jay-Z); Roger Viollet Collection/Getty Images (Washington))

This holiday season, as a special gift to American readers, the publishing industry has had a magical spasm of biographical synchronicity: Jay-Z’s buzzy new memoir, Decoded, has been released right on the heels of Ron Chernow’s mammoth new George Washington biography, Washington. The coincidence enables us (obligates us, really) to compare the two: to consider how these mythic lives from opposite ends of the American experiment—the eighteenth-century father of our country and the 21st-century hustler-tycoon; the author of the song “Dead Presidents” and our most famous actual dead president—might speak to each other. It turns out that their stories, placed side by side, resonate more deeply than one might expect—they rhyme, existentially, in all kinds of surprising ways. Together they suggest a certain coherence in the unfolding variety show of American history.

The similarities between George Washington and Jay-Z begin right at the beginning. Both men were born on the neglected fringe of the world’s reigning superpower: Washington in colonial Virginia, a backwoods satellite of imperial England, and Jay-Z in late-sixties outer Brooklyn, a blighted world unto itself, perched right on the edge of the American continent. (“Bed-Stuy was my country,” he writes, “Brooklyn my planet.”) Both grew up without fathers—Jay-Z’s left, Washington’s died—and were raised by largely unavailable mothers: Jay-Z’s was busy working, and Washington’s was cold, selfish, and hypercritical. (She never praised him, even when he was off winning the Revolutionary War.) As a result, both George and Jay were forced to adopt, as boys, the burdens of adult responsibility. They were ambitious, scrappy, and self-educated—a liability in some settings (John Adams called Washington “illiterate, unlearned, unread”) but also often an advantage. As Jay-Z puts it in Decoded, describing the power of street wisdom in the larger world: “We came at shit from a different angle, snuck up on people, surprised them. We turned the thing that made us outcasts into our advantage.” This also happens to describe, pretty much perfectly, Washington’s unorthodox methods on the battlefield: the way his army co-opted the American Indians’ guerrilla fighting techniques—darting around, hiding behind trees—in order to flummox the British, who insisted on marching in orderly lines.

Read the rest by Clicking Here: American Hustlers

Conscience

2010-12-07T15:10:00.001-05:00

Conscience is, in most men, an anticipation of the opinions of others.

Henry Taylor-

Diamond Rings - Something Else

2010-12-06T14:48:00.000-05:00

Queen Fat Bottom Girls

2010-12-06T12:00:00.001-05:00

ART INFO: Top 10 of Basel

2010-12-05T08:52:00.000-05:00

1. Mexico City's power gallery Kurimanzutto: for its Gabriel Kuri sculptural pieces, including the concrete-tipped umbrellas — "a great way to prevent guests from stealing them at a party," as one attendee quipped — and for Abraham Cruzvillegas's hanging coconuts.

2. Harris Lieberman Gallery of NYC: for its wonderfully creepy Thomas Zipp installation.
3. Lisson, London: if only for Haroon Miroza's bizarre sound sculpture, which buzzes while causing little metal pins to bounce on its sub-woofer.

4. Bogotá's Valenzuela Klenner Galeria: Edwin Sanchez's photographic installation poignantly recalls the recent violent struggles in Colombia, and Jose Alejandro Restrepo's eyeball-sized video projections inspire wonder.

5. NYC's Lombard Freid: for the installation of tapestry-covered skateboards by Tala Madani.
6. Switzerland's Galerie Gmurzynska: because if you're going to show Modern masters at a fair that has come to be dominated by contemporary up-and-comers, you might as well do it in a booth designed by Zaha Hadid.

7. Scotland's Modern Institute: We thrilled to the variety and depth here, from Eva Rothschild's polyurethane rug to the Richard Hughes room to Cathy Wilkes's paintings, to name only a few treasures.
8. Galleria Franco Noero of Torino, Italy: Shaped wall openings by Pablo Bronstein lead you into a corridor-like space with tubular sculptures by Lars Favaretto on the floor, while scraped paintings by Andrew Dadson lean against the wall.

9. ZieherSmith of NYC: Eddie Martinez's exuberant and enormous booth-filling mural helped make up for the relative dearth of painting at the fair this year.

10. New York's Nyehaus and Franklin Parrasch galleries: a joint selection celebrating the legendary Nicholas Wilder Gallery of Los Angeles, with pieces by John McCracken, Billy Al Bengston, Robert Graham, Bruce Nauman, Jo Baer, and others.

Flag Art Foundation

2010-12-03T16:04:00.003-05:00

CARY KWOK

OBSESSION

New Drawings and a Historical Survey

Curated by PRABAL GURUNG

November 18, 2010 - January 29, 2011

Cary Kwok, Audrey Hepburn, ink on paper, 11 ¾ X 8 ¼ inches

The FLAG Art Foundation

545 WEST 25TH STREET, 9TH FLOOR
NEW YORK, NY 10001
email: info@flagartfoundation.org

Julian Assange: Byronic Hero?

2010-12-02T17:34:00.001-05:00

The Secret Diary of Julian Assange

The Most Wanted Man in the World on Anarchy, Atheism, Eros, and Himself

Who is Julian Assange? Tantalizing clues may be found in what appears to be his "Selected Correspondence," which were posted on a now defunct site, IQ.org. OpenTopic dug through the writings in web archives, and discovered diary entries that paint a revealing portrait of the WikiLeaks founder. Starting in June 2006, the year WikiLeaks was created, the posts unveil a cult-like, idealistic, romantic, intellectual hacker—a male Lisbeth Salander if you like—who theorizes about diplomacy, computer coding, consumerism, the corporate state, even urination, and reveres Kurt Vonnegut, Philip K. Dick, and Che Guevara. Click the articles box below to see 20 excerpts we've culled into a fascinating profile of a man transforming from an obscure ideologue into the head of of "the first global Samizdat movement."

Cassius - I Love You So

2010-11-29T18:55:00.000-05:00

8 Great Free Twitter Analytic Tools

2010-11-29T12:13:00.002-05:00

1. Twitalyzer
2. TwInfluence

3. TweetVolume- tells you how often a specific word or phrase appears on Twitter.

4. TweetReach

5. Klout

6. TweetBeep- Get emailed when someone is twittering about you, your company, your product, or your website.

7. TweetStats
Graph the Twitter statistics of any Twitter user, including their average tweets per day over time, who they retweet most, etc.

8. TwitGraph-used to graph Twitterer’s usage: top links, replies, etc.

Visual Literacy

2010-11-26T15:53:00.000-05:00

Exley, Frederick (A Fan's Notes)

2010-11-26T02:29:00.002-05:00

That my lunacy had been recognized was chastening enough, but the judge's gratuitous "fatuous" carried with it intimations that I was in a blubbering, nose-picking state; an I had visions of arriving at my mother's door, garbed not in the "attractive," melancholic dementia of the poet but in the drooling, masturbatory, moony-eyed condition of the Mongoloid."
— Frederick Exley (A Fan's Notes)

100 Legendary Trunks Video

2010-11-26T02:18:00.000-05:00

Men's Pop Up Flea Shop in NYC

2010-11-19T12:12:00.000-05:00

The Pop-Up Flea Rides Again

The vendors are….
Oak Street Bootmakers
J.W Hulme
Levi’s Vintage Clothing
L.L. Bean Signature
Smith + Butler
Tellason
Billykirk
Aether
Tanner Goods
Scout Original
Wooden Sleepers
Riviera Club
Alexander Olch
Gant
Oliver Spencer
The Hill-Side / Hickoree’s Hard Goods
Grown & Sewn
Stanley & Sons
J.Crew
Gitman Brothers Vintage
Schott NYC
Digby & Iona
Alexander West
Leather Head / Lemon Ball
Mark McNairy
Warby Parker
Archival Clothing
The ACL Shop

…and a few others they’re keeping under wraps for now.

The Society Presents: THE RITUAL

2010-11-12T14:36:00.000-05:00

The Society Living Room Concert Series from The Society Global on Vimeo.

The Society Toronto Presents: CHLOE LOVE.

2010-11-12T14:26:00.000-05:00

The Society - Chloe Love from The Society Global on Vimeo.

The Society NYC loves Adam Aleksander

2010-11-10T12:50:00.000-05:00

Adam Aleksander Presents:

The Society Supper Salon at Rabbit in the Moon

2010-11-05T12:55:00.001-04:00

On Monday, October 18th, The Society NYC hosted a Supper Salon in the private dining room of the exclusive, much-hyped new Greenwich Village gastropub Rabbit in the Moon. Members experienced a custom-crafted chef’s tasting menu showcasing the restaurant’s updated riffs on English comfort foods and fresh seasonal fare.

To wash it all down, the Chefs du Bar churned out some signature Zacapa Rum cocktails to complement the menu. After dinner, a surprise musical performance by a Brooklyn-based band (currently without a name but still being courted by major labels) capped off our exceptional evening. The night was magical – The Society Dines Supper Salon Series happens to be a favorite of ours – and the food, ambiance and crowd combined to make it a slam-dunk event.

We would be remiss if we did not call out the fact that the other reason this particular event was so unique was because it was the first event spearheaded by our new Managing Director in NYC. And – gasp – he’s our first male team member!

(that part was in reference to me actually)

Read more: http://www.sweetspot.ca/SweetLife/the_society_syndicate/26024/the_suite_life/#ixzz14QY0sTyE

Record Makers Promo

2010-10-29T12:38:00.002-04:00

Record Makers Promo from CreativeApplications.Net on Vimeo.

Neil Krug: Pulp Art Book Commercial

2010-10-23T14:28:00.000-04:00

PULP ART BOOK COMMERCIAL from Neil Krug on Vimeo.

Black Swan Poster Designs: La Boca - Illustrators & Artists Agents – Debut Art

2010-10-15T13:09:00.000-04:00

Aloe Blacc & The Grand Scheme

2010-10-09T22:34:00.002-04:00

The DutchMayhem Project

2010-10-06T13:43:00.000-04:00

This was choreographed by the Visceral Absurdist's little sister FYI.

Antique Color Wheels

2010-10-06T12:29:00.000-04:00

JACQUES MAGAZINE: The Short Flims

2010-10-05T19:06:00.000-04:00

There are very few things in this world, that even almighty capitalism cannot impede. Liquor of course, might be the most obvious of theoretical assumptions. The second you ask? Pornography.

Lord knows when times are tough, there is little more satisfying, or cognitively distracting if that suits you better, then naked human beings.

Enter stage right; Jacques Magazine. Erotic revisionists (husband and wife duo no less) reviving the lost art of amative exhibition.

JACQUES: The Sports Issue, Trailer 2. from Jacques Magazine on Vimeo.

Jacques: The Sports Issue Trailer, 'Squash' from Jacques Magazine on Vimeo.

Jacques Magazine presents Tori from Jacques Magazine on Vimeo.

Jacques Magazine presents Tori from Jacques Magazine on Vimeo.

Elize from Jacques Magazine on Vimeo.

Sandy from Jacques Magazine on Vimeo.

Mark Twain speaks of the missing link

2010-10-03T15:47:00.000-04:00

Nov. 20. 1905

J. H. Todd
1212 Webster St.
San Francisco, Cal.

Dear Sir,

Your letter is an insoluble puzzle to me. The handwriting is good and exhibits considerable character, and there are even traces of intelligence in what you say, yet the letter and the accompanying advertisements profess to be the work of the same hand. The person who wrote the advertisements is without doubt the most ignorant person now alive on the planet; also without doubt he is an idiot, an idiot of the 33rd degree, and scion of an ancestral procession of idiots stretching back to the Missing Link.

It puzzles me to make out how the same hand could have constructed your letter and your advertisements. Puzzles fret me, puzzles annoy me, puzzles exasperate me; and always, for a moment, they arouse in me an unkind state of mind toward the person who has puzzled me.

A few moments from now my resentment will have faded and passed and I shall probably even be praying for you; but while there is yet time I hasten to wish that you may take a dose of your own poison by mistake, and enter swiftly into the damnation which you and all other patent medicine assassins have so remorselessly earned and do so richly deserve.

Adieu, adieu, adieu!

Mark Twain

Urban Roots Project: YOZMIT-the intergalactic geisha*

2010-10-02T14:12:00.000-04:00

Gisele video for MUSE Magazine, Director Nino Munoz

2010-09-29T12:28:00.000-04:00

A paradigm shift has begun in fashion advertisement. No longer constrained by the two dimensional peevishness of glossy pages; movement, images. What is fashion but tangible symbolism, manifested in allegorical hymns draped over shoulders legs and breasts.

Edward F. Boyd

2010-09-28T10:59:00.001-04:00

Edward Francis "Ed" Boyd (June 27, 1914 – April 30, 200

The man responsible for targeted marketing for African Americans. Substantially responsible for Pepsi overtaking Coca Cola's dominance over the market share in black communities.

19 Things All Successful Direct Marketing Companies Know By Lester Wunderman

2010-09-28T09:03:00.001-04:00

1. Direct Marketing Is a Strategy, Not a Tactic 

2. The Consumer, Not the Product, Must Be the Hero
3. Communicate with Each Customer as an Audience of One
4. Answer the Question “Why Should I?”
5. Advertising Must Change Behavior, Not Just Attitudes
6. The Next Step: Profitable Advertising
7. Build the “Brand Experience”
8. Create Relationships
9. Know and Invest in Each Customer’s Lifetime Value 10.“Suspects” Are Not Prospects
11. Media Is a Contact Strategy
12. Be Accessible to Your Customers
13. Encourage Interactive Dialogues
14. Learn the Missing “When?”
15. Create an Advertising Curriculum That Teaches as it Sells

16. Acquire Customers with the Intention to Loyalize Them
17. Loyalty Is A Continuity Program
18. Your Share of Loyal Customers, Not Your Share of Market Creates Profits
19. You Are What You Know

The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet

2010-09-26T15:27:00.000-04:00

The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet

Two decades after its birth, the World Wide Web is in decline, as simpler, sleeker services — think apps — are less about the searching and more about the getting. Chris Anderson explains how this new paradigm reflects the inevitable course of capitalism. And Michael Wolff explains why the new breed of media titan is forsaking the Web for more promising (and profitable) pastures.

Dior Homme: Un Rendez Vous

2010-09-26T14:24:00.000-04:00

The Lighter Side of Absurdity

2010-09-24T17:59:00.000-04:00

Peggy Wolf: Collages

2010-09-19T17:50:00.002-04:00

Peggy Wolf is a German born, London based artist who creates these brilliantly dynamic handmade illustrations and photo collages. I love her graphic style and soft palettes. Her work is available for purchase for an extremely accessible price right here.

FORTRESS: Miniature Tigers

2010-09-15T19:52:00.003-04:00

F O R T R E S S from Miniature Tigers on Vimeo.

Gaspar Noé's: Enter the Void (theatrical trailer)

2010-09-15T18:55:00.000-04:00

Walking Tour: “Mark Twain’s New York.”

2010-09-12T20:34:00.000-04:00

Walking Tour: “Mark Twain’s New York.”

Event Description:
A hundred years after his death, Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) is still our nation's best-known and most beloved author. But very few people, even among his admirers, realize that Mark Twain was also the most celebrated New Yorker of his day.

A dozen towns & villages (Hannibal, Hartford, Elmira, Buffalo, Virginia City, San Francisco and Keokuk among them) lay claim to Mark Twain & glorify the connection with markers and museums and souvenir shops. Only the Big Apple, to its shame, could care less that our greatest author lived, worked and (especially) talked here off and on over a span of more than fifty years.

Learn about the great humorist's decades-long, multi-faceted relationship with the metropolis, on this 2 1/2-hour walking tour of significant but little-known Mark Twain-related landmarks and sites in lower Manhattan. The tour will be offered every Saturday and Sunday through October 10.

Visit www.salwen.com/twain.pdf, call (917-620-5371) or write (MTNY@salwen.com) for more details.

Damien Hirst 2.0

2010-09-12T20:16:00.000-04:00

http://www.economist.com/node/16990811?story_id=16990811&fsrc=rss

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti

2010-09-09T22:14:00.002-04:00

http://www.arielpink.com/
http://www.myspace.com/arielpink

The Khan Academy

2010-09-09T16:33:00.000-04:00

The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) with the mission of providing a world-class education to anyone, anywhere. Despite being the work of one man, Salman Khan, this 1600+ video library is the most-used educational video resource as measured by YouTube video views per day and unique users per month. We are complementing this ever-growing library with user-paced exercises--developed as an open source project--allowing the Khan Academy to become the free classroom for the World.

Learn more about the Khan Academy and Salman Khan...

http://www.khanacademy.org/

The Writer's Sacred Utility

2010-09-07T16:26:00.000-04:00

Tis the writers edict, with all abnegation necessary of course, that the sacred utility of the writer be that he provoke: in his brother, lover or enemy. Reflexively.

"I'll play it first and tell you what it is later" Miles Davis

Panel: Extending energy services to the world’s poorest people through technology, enterprise and ownership.

2010-09-04T13:25:00.000-04:00

Panel: Extending energy services to the world’s poorest people through technology, enterprise and ownership.

When: Tuesday, September 7, 2010, 6:00 p.m.
Where: The Arsenal Gallery, Central Park, 64th Street and Fifth Avenue
Reception to follow.
R.S.V.P. required. Call 212.360.1324, or email rsvp@parks.nyc.gov

Access to energy for services such as lighting, cooking and communications is an essential precondition for eradicating poverty in the 21^st century. Yet today, 1.6 billion people currently have no access to electricity. Over 2.5 billion depend on traditional cooking fuel sources that exact to intolerably high costs for human health and the environment.

While scaled deployment of the energy infrastructure that is typical in the world’s advanced economies remains remote even in the long-term in many parts of the rural developing world, innovative technologies, companies and approaches to service are setting the stage for a new energy paradigm. In contrast to conventional aid-based models, such a paradigm is characterized by local enterprise and end user investment.

In this conversation, a distinguished panel of energy sector innovators will discuss their work and provide a firsthand account of today’s leading energy challenges and opportunities in the developing world.

Panel Participants:

Sarah Alexander, Innovations Manager, Solar Electric Light Company (SELCO)

Edwin Adkins, Research Coordinator, Millennium Village Project, Energy Program.

Jacob Winiecki, Co-Founder, Simpa Networks

Moderated by Christopher Neidl, Consultant, Arc Finance

Noted:

2010-09-03T13:44:00.002-04:00

"In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong."

-John Kenneth Galbraith, economist (1908-2006)