Thursday, December 8, 2011

John Lennon shot dead by cuckoo holding Catcher in the Rye



Thirty-one years ago today, Yoko Ono watched a smiling gunman fire five bullets into John Lennon's body. Armed with a .38 revolver, the gunman proceeded to eerily leaf through J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye". 

The doorman of John and Yoko's 72 St and Central Park West home asked the killer if he knew what he had done. The killer responded: "I just shot John Lennon". 

stranger than fiction. 


This photograph by Annie Liebovitz was taken on the day of Lennon's death




Tuesday, September 20, 2011

writer's block

http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lkmp8os1n01qz7lxdo1_400.jpghttp://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lqan4aZp6n1qcg9eno1_500.jpg 


Sunday, July 31, 2011

this motor protein's got swag




interesting simulation (or is this microscopic imaging?) of a motor protein. you can take the protein out of the hood but you can't take the hood out of the protein. 

Friday, July 8, 2011

tgif





 hope your summer weekend is as vibrant and impish as this music video from delicate steve. tonight, i'll be at george clinton's 70th birthday funkbration at yoshi's on fillmore. 
peace love and funky carrot mango juice,
ML

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

adrien de bontin, photographer

adrien de bontin, my dear friend, photog, and aesthetic illuminator, has a new website. adi, as we fondly call him, is a global citizen currently situated in buenos aires. like most talented creative minds, he's always on the go. follow his camera lens around the world at adriendebontin.tumblr.com. and, enjoy some tastes of his eyes:
  @title@title@title@title
@title@title@title@title

Friday, June 17, 2011

i'm wrestling with an octopus by j prelutsky


I'm wrestling with an octopus

and faring less than well,
one peek at my predicament
should be enough to tell.
It held me in a hammerlock,
then swept me off my feet,
I'm getting the impression
that I simply can't compete.

I'd hoped that I could hold my own,

but after just a while,
I ascertained I couldn't match
an octopus's style.
It flipped me by a shoulder,
and it latched onto a hip,
essentially that octopus
has got me in its grip.

I tried assorted armlocks,

but invariably missed,
and now I'm in a headlock,
and it's clinging to my wrist.
It's wound around my ankles,
and it's wrapped around my chest—
when grappling with an octopus,
I come out second best.



Jack Prelutsky, A Pizza the Size of the Sun



Thursday, June 16, 2011

WWOZ New Orleans Radio


If you are a lover of New Orleans jazz, add WWOZ 90.7 FM, New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Station, to your iTunes playlist. My friend Ross turned me onto this station a while back, and it's takes me to NoLA each and every time I listen...a great Pandora alternative.
Here are the instructions to add a station to your itunes (which I find to be the easiest way to access the stream):


In iTunes, Choose Open Audio Stream from the Advanced menu to add the station to your library. Paste or enter the station’s URL (http://wwoz-sc.streamguys.com:80/wwoz-hi.mp3) in the dialog that appears and click OK.
You can also stream the station in your browser, or get the app by jumping over to this page: 
http://www.wwoz.org/programs/streams

samuel l. jackson reading "go the fuck to sleep"

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/04/26/go-the-fuck-to-sleep.jpg 
Listen to f-bomb-dropper-extraordinaire Samuel l. Jackson read the highly acclaimed children's book parody,"Go the Fuck to Sleep" by Adam Mansbach. Takes me back to my days as a nanny. Follow @thebadnanny on Twitter for related humor.



when technology bypasses artistry

plots and paintings will be derived from algorithms

 http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmpi7vIL7L1qzfguyo1_500.jpg
http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_leaybuOtBO1qe0eclo1_r5_500.gif

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

hump day: thumbs up, everybody, for rock and roll!


after learning how to ride a bike, this little boy offers up an epic speech. dig this kid's charisma! and hearing his dad cheese out in the background is priceless.

via our friends at BuzzFeed

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

how cool clothing is v. how easy it is to wear

i disagree with a lot of what's going on in this graph, but i think it's a clever use of the scatterplot so i'm posting it. 


here are some of my thoughts: 1) the "zero" here is the baseball cap and should be underwear 2) wearing a scarf is easy 

what are your thoughts?

v

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

a new one from david lynch

here's a new advertisement from david lynch for his organic, fair-trade coffee. buy it here and let the nightmares ensue.


Wednesday, May 4, 2011

ode to broken things

http://www.morethings.com/music/who-pete_townshend/smothers_brothers_images/who-my_generation-1967-smothers_brothers084.jpg

last night i had a dream that my apartment was smashed to pieces. it was like pete townshend had been spent the night, and everything was broken; lampshades, hairbrushes, jewelry, plates, cups, silverware, walls, frames. it was strangely beautiful, though, and in my dream i didn't seem to mind it much at all. it brought me back to a poem by pablo neruda i read in professor maraniss's class at amherst. the poem is titled "ode to broken things" and is from neruda's 1956 compilation of odes to commonplace things called odas elementales. i especially enjoy the last line, "tantas cosas inĂștiles/que nadie rompe/pero se rompieron." the poem resonates much better in spanish, so those of you blessed with bilinguality jump here. enjoy.

Ode to broken things by Pablo Neruda

Things get broken
at home
like they were pushed
by an invisible, deliberate smasher.
It's not my hands
or yours
It wasn't the girls
with their hard fingernails
or the motion of the planet.
It wasn't anything or anybody
It wasn't the wind
It wasn't the orange-colored noontime
Or night over the earth
It wasn't even the nose or the elbow
Or the hips getting bigger
or the ankle
or the air.
The plate broke, the lamp fell
All the flower pots tumbled over
one by one. That pot
which overflowed with scarlet
in the middle of October,
it got tired from all the violets
and another empty one
rolled round and round and round
all through winter
until it was only the powder
of a flowerpot,
a broken memory, shining dust.

And that clock
whose sound
was
the voice of our lives,
the secret
thread of our weeks,
which released
one by one, so many hours
for honey and silence
for so many births and jobs,
that clock also
fell
and its delicate blue guts
vibrated
among the broken glass
its wide heart
unsprung.

Life goes on grinding up
glass, wearing out clothes
making fragments
breaking down
forms
and what lasts through time
is like an island on a ship in the sea,
perishable
surrounded by dangerous fragility
by merciless waters and threats.

Let's put all our treasures together
-- the clocks, plates, cups cracked by the cold --
into a sack and carry them
to the sea
and let our possessions sink
into one alarming breaker
that sounds like a river.
May whatever breaks
be reconstructed by the sea
with the long labor of its tides.
So many useless things
which nobody broke
but which got broken anyway.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

the mall: 1989


stumbled across this project on good ole GOOD magazine...from the photographer, michael galinsky:

"In 1989, following in the footsteps of Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand, and William Eggleston, I drove across the country and documented malls across America. I had a cheap Nikon FG-20 and an even cheaper lens - but I had a lot of passion.

I shot about 30 rolls of slide film in malls from Long Island to North Dakota to Seattle. It was hard to tell from the images where they were taken, and that was kind of the point. I was interested in the creeping loss of regional differences. I thought a lot about Frank's "The Americans" as we drove from place to place without any sense of place."

talk about a time capsule...i like his last remark about the homogenous look and feel of these places. same shitty tiled-over, fake topiary, neon-light schtick goin on everywhere.

he's apparently trying to publish a book...thus explaining the kickstarter piece of it. if you've got some extra change lying around (perhaps that tax return...?), head on over and donate.

also, spent too much time looking up the song not to mention that 1: it's great, and 2: it's sleepyhead - "punk rock city usa"...good luck finding it.

the grateful dead movie event

http://jacobull.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/11femk107_gd_432x288_v3.jpg 

"the grateful dead movie" will be showing on over 500 big screens nationwide for one night only...tonight. the film, which hasn't been played at a movie theater 1977, will be coupled with never-before-seen jerry and bob interviews taken during the production of the film. for those of you (like me) who never saw this epic rock and roll moving picture, it includes live performances "u.s. blues", "one more saturday night", "casey jones", "playing in the band" and "sugar magnolia" (and more) at winterland arena. seems like a nice wednesday evening sf event, think i'll check it out.

tickets are available through Fathom Events

Sunday, April 17, 2011

16 lines of spring

leads the flock away, one ribbon at a time.


magical frijoles


RE>>

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

how to make a crappy ad

the ole 'finishing each others sentences construct'...been saying how tired/annoying this is for a while now and portlandia skewers it awesomely.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

sunday

it's still sunday in california

Monday, April 4, 2011

bicycle coffee co

if you're in the bay, check out bicycle coffee co. they make organic, fair-trade coffee and deliver it via bicycle to offices and shops around they bay. i like knowing that a rugged man climbed many a hill just so i could enjoy these peruvian-grown, san francisco-roasted beans. yum.

meet brad, co-founder of bicycle coffee co:




Friday, April 1, 2011

tgif

http://www.booooooom.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/jeremy_r_jansen_02.jpg 

this weekend, take a few moments to douse yourself in record store aromas. 
-ML



barbie as patrick bateman

mariel clayton, a photographer with a subversive sense of humor, cleverly portrays barbie as a psychotic narcissist... a la american psycho. these are funny, and kind of the opposite of cindy sherman's series of women in vulnerable settings.

http://www.designboom.com/cms/images/erica/-----barbie/barbie03.jpg


http://www.glamkiller.com/wp-content/gallery/barbie-dolls/barbie-mariel_clayton-26.jpg
"group shot everyone! i want a picture for the website!"

ironic traps


hipster-trap

 artists jeff greenspan and hunter fine installed a series of "hipster traps" (see above) throughout new york city. the bait includes sunglasses, a yellow bicycle chain, a holga camera, a can of PBR and a pack of american spirits. fyi, greenspan is the same artist who pulled last summer's “tourist lane” prank. i like this guy.   next up, "bridge and tunnel traps" (see below).


bridge-tunnel-trap


Wednesday, March 30, 2011

gellyvision

my kicky and enterprising friend from minneapolis, @bahertz, has a blog called "gellyvision" (his nickname) where he publishes picture narratives. below, an open letter he wrote me last week. this guy has a very keen eye. subscribe to his blog for more visual confections.

Hey Blanca

how are you
Sienna_-_le_fashion
how is SFO
Hellsangelswheeliecalifornia
do you have a job
how are your room mates
Tumblr_lhyj77zdxo1qz6f9yo1_500
do you still have a boyfriend
Pahwahho8gzc5wuzz9id1lfuo1_400
what does he do
Arnold
are you coming here to visit
Love
Tumblr_li46qaxtij1qz6f9yo1_500
BAH

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

tom, bill, and mary

i remember when i first saw nashville i searched endlessly for this tune and couldn't turn it up...not sure what made me think of it, but this song's great and i'm glad it's now out there.

christina raines is beautiful here...and believe it or not, she'd never sang before. i was reading the comments on the vid, and someone called attention to how closely she resembles emmylou harris here...spot on.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

tgis

Katherine Hepburn skateboarding

happy sunday. roll, unwind, split open and melt.
-ml

[image: katharine hepburn skateboarding]

Friday, March 25, 2011

earthquake density map

benjamin d. henning from the university of sheffield created this here map...designed to display the relationship between population density and historical earthquake activity, this map gives you a good idea of the places in the world where serious disaster looms. those areas of the map that appear swollen represent areas of high population density, red represents high earthquake activity, so red, swollen areas are the ones to look for...

click through to blow up:



via GOOD magazine

craft spells

with a tip of the hat to stereogum (..and a lamely titled post), i'll say you should all check out craft spells. with a style similar to label mates wild nothing, these guys draw on the sounds of early 80's new wave and jangle...nothing new here, but fans of radio dept. and twin shadow will no doubt enjoy.

have to say their label, captured tracks, is up to some good things. look out for their debut idle labor out March, 29.

album highlight "after the moment" below...

Thursday, March 17, 2011

in love with oblivion


crystal stilts' new album, in love with oblivion, is due for release april 22nd, and below is one hell of a song that'll be on it. this one's been kicking around for a while...i first came across it on a daytrotter set they did a while back, but this studio recorded version is fleshed out and trudges along with a burnin 'waiting for the man'-style piano plink.


Wednesday, March 16, 2011

nevada

http://www.altmanphoto.com/new_mexico.jpg

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