“Beer goggles”—sexual judgement impaired by booze—is the excuse millions will be pushing this weekend, in order to explain why the eager hottie they eagerly shagged the night before looks like blechh in the golden morning’s light.
While this juxtaposition of Yanni’s 1992 Dare To Dream and Ween’s 1994 Chocolate and Cheese CD covers, above, encourages a freaky moment of sexual ambiguity—due, depending on your orientation, to Mr. Chryssomallis’s striking ‘stache or model Ashley Savage’s bodacious ta-tas—it’s got nothing on this catalog of 15 unfortunately placed ads.
The lineup includes billboards for a juicer and a fitness center that should have got someone fired, and a subtle computer error jab. But, mostly, they appear to be combinations of content and advertising created by web-based optimizing software; the kind that, based on keywords, sticks a relevant advertisement on the page one is reading. Of course, as this coffee ad shows, sometimes the placement is just a little bit too relevant.
It should have aired last week, but, due to technical difficulties, didn’t. It’s a great talk, so I’m eager for you all to hear it. Hopefully, there’ll be no more boo-boos this time.
Tune in at 2 pm. If you’re outside of the New York tri-state, check out our stream on the web. If you miss the live show, dig into our archives for up to 90 days after broadcast.
UPDATE: NONFICTION was pre-empted on Friday for a five-hor, “May Day special.” I was not made aware of this until I arrived at the station to do my show.
I’ll keep you abreast of when I air this, and other, programming.
They’re not being hostile, with their loud noises and passionate facial expressions. They’re excited about inviting you over! That’s what I realized after looking at Greenpoint, Brooklyn-based Cosmic Arts Enterprises‘ Penis NYC Subway Map. It imagines one of the world’s biggest rail mass transit systems as an even bigger male sex organ. (Go ahead: Click on the image to to, um, enlarge it.) Not only does the graphic rudely, though perhaps poetically, cast the most populous borough as the meaty scrotum of our great metropolis. Do you think I’ll see going from Harlem to Wall St., down the city’s flaccid shaft, to get to WBAI quite the same way ever again? Fuggedaboutit!
The do-it-yourself movement in arts and crafts—accelerated by the wide availability of sophisticated digital technology, as well as access to information, and people, through the internet— is creating a boon in one very key area: Self-publishing. “Once referred to derisively as ‘vanity publishing,’ self-published books are finally taking their place alongside more accepted indie categories such as music, film, and theater.”
So says Ellen Lupton, director of the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore, and author of the new book, Indie Publishing: How to Design and Produce Your Own Book, a step-by-step guide to being your own publisher.
Ellen Lupton is a guest today on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, April 24, at 2 pm ET.
As well, composer Jeff Snyder’s band, Scattershot, has remix credits with Public Enemy, among others, and they created and performed the opening and closing themes for NONFICTION. Today, he’s stopping by to discuss his latest passion: Inventing his own musical instruments. He’ll be showing and playing two of them, the Manta and the Countervielles.
You can hear Ellen Lupton and Jeff Snyder’s ideas—and Jeff’s music!—by tuning in at 2 pm. If you’re outside of the New York tri-state, check out our stream on the web. If you miss the live show, dig into our archives for up to 90 days after broadcast.
It’s common knowledge that, after masterpieces like Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Fantasia, and other features, Disney animated films kinda went into the toilet. This was particularly true in the 1960s and ’70s, as the studio turned out uninspired crap like The Fox and the Hound,The Aristocats, and more.
The (apparently French) editor of this short YouTube clip, above, has clipped shots from a number of Disney animated works, like The Jungle Book. Comparing them, he shows that animators of that era were not inspired by their past works, but merely sampling them: Literally redoing their cues with new characters.
Blecch. Thankfully, Disney Animation has since been taken over by Pixar, a company which it owns, and whose track record for storytelling and image quality are pretty much unchallenged. (Reportedly, they also treat their talent well. Disney had a reputation for mismanaging their work staff that, even into this century, was widely known.)
But what the Mouse’s House has made clear is that their problem was never a “2-D vs. 3-D” one. Their problem was imagination, and creating an environment in which it thrived. Sadly, the skills it takes to make that flourish can’t be copied from a movie, literally or otherwise.
That’s designer Ryan Waller‘s smart-behind entry, right, to the New York Times’ “Help Put A New Face on Freedom,” One World Trade Center logo design contest. Asked what it meant, the artist cryptically replied, “The design says everything (and it should say multiple things at the same time).”
So, I’ll take a stab at it: Stores in the 7-11 convenience chain are often run by Middle Eastern people, of the variety many Americans broadly hold responsible for the September 2001 catastrophe, hence the allusive smear. As well, the opening within the “9” portrays the abstracted shape of a banking jetliner, rushing toward the viewer head-on, a la United Airlines Flight 175’s widely videotaped crash into the Center’s South Tower. All of which faintly suggest that Waller, and possibly someone at The New York Times, is an absurdist, a racist, or both.
Now, that’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout. You’d think with all the increasing hubub about the coming zombie apocalypse, more folks would be getting geared for the dawn of the dead. Leave it to blogger Zack Danger to pick up the gore-soaked slack with his official Danger Zombie Survival Kit.
The emergency wall case, above, comes done up with a blood red mat in a black frame under glass. Inside, it’s power-packed with a stockless tactical shotgun, two cartons of 12-gauge shells, and safety glasses, to protect your eyes from flying metal or bone fragments. Rollin’ up like that, zombies stand less of a chance than roaches swimming in Raid. Like I said, after catching a glimpse of Left 4 Dead‘s corpse-ridden hell, lemme at ’em.
That, above, is the startling cover for colleague Ray Winbush’s new book, Belinda’s Petition: A Concise History of Reparations for the Transatlantic Slave Trade. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I wrote a blurb for the book.) Jerome Thompson, a staff artist at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, fashioned the kiloword-saving graphic, no doubt inspired by this famed photo of a Maryland slave, below right.
Belinda was an 18th century African woman, kept captive as a slave on the Ten Hills Plantation in Medford, Massachusetts. In 1782, explains Winbush, she
Well, if that’s your steez, why not just do you? “Beergoggles” are by Chicago-based custom eyeglasses maker Scott Urban of Urban Spectacles. They’re crafted out of spent containers of actual ale. That’s them to the right, and perched delicately on the suds-sucking lovely, above.
