Educate and excite, inform and infuriate.

The recession is affecting all of us, for sure. Leave it to reduced baller Slim Thug and Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, though, to uncover the ways that rappers are, purportedly, most being affected: With fewer platinum front purchases, dinners at strip clubs, and a diminished quality in “video hos.”

I wasn’t a big ThunderCats fan. They raised their leonine heads in 1985, long after I’d stopped watching violent, action-packed, Saturdaymorningesque animation. In fact, the only reason I probably know anything at all about this profoundly ugly pride of superheroes is that my youngest brother, Louis, couldn’t stop talking about them.

Well, Lou, knock yourself out: Early next year, Hard Hero Enterprises, makers of collectible fantasy and comic book statuary, will release a limited-edition, cold-cast porcelain statue of Lion-O, leader of the T-Cats, above.

Sculpted by master artist Paul Bennett, the fully-painted piece is a whopping 14 inches high from its rugged, stone outcropping base to the tip of Lion-O’s gleaming sword. Packed with detail, as you can see in this 360-degree QuickTime movie, the work comes with a “color collector box,” whatever that is, and retails for $199.00, $215.00 for one with Bennett’s John Hancock ‘pon, thus. Hey: Since Lou just had a birthday, maybe his wife will jump in with one more present. Cue intro.

[via tomopop.com]

That, above, is the final resting place of chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer, arguably the greatest person to ever play the game.

It’s on panopticist, an intriguing blog run by Vanity Fair contributing editor Andrew Hearst. As well as being a man of letters, Hearst is the son of chess royalty. His dad, Eliot, grew up in New York City, and

was one of the top players in the United States in the 1950s and early 1960s, eventually earning the title of Life Senior Master. Both he and Fischer spent time at the Marshall Chess Club, which is still located on West 10th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues, as it was back then.

Hearst the Younger admits he’d always fantasized about going to Iceland and introducing himself to Fischer, who lived there during the last years of his life.

Fischer is buried in Selfoss, a small town about 40 miles from Reyjavik. I have an Internet pal in Reykjavik named Halldor, and he passed along these photos of Bobby’s grave. They were taken by an American friend of his named Judith Gans, a singer and Icelandic music expert.

Game over, man.

[via panopticist.com]

Calicut, India-based, MIT-educated industrial designer Vipin George takes agricultural automotion seriously. That’s why, for a recent style exercise, he created the COSMICtrac, “a tractor for the international market for the future.”

As reviewed on YankoDesign, COSMICtrac’s features include:

a single sheet hood. Fibre-reinforced plastic head light housings – which, by the way, are housed rather than mounted, which is a fabulous idea because tractor lights that are mounted break off basically every five minutes.

Projected grill up front, exposed engine parts, partly covered fender for driver safety. The future is the basic super-simplification of all machines based on the knowledge we’ve gleaned from the past few decades of trial and error.

Yee-haw!

[via yankodesign.com]

When 19-year-old computer geek Shawn Fanning created and released Napster, his internet file-sharing application, 10 years ago, he had no idea that his little experiment would completely overturn the massive, multi-billion music business. He just wanted a way to share digital music with friends. But what started as an experiment by a bored college student quickly became the loose bolt that would yank the industry from its rapidly rotating axle.

Fanning and Napster were quickly lambasted by many, hailed as heroes by many more. But their story is only a small part of what Chicago Tribune music critic Greg Kot, in his new book, Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music, above, calls “the laptop generation”:

An uprising led by bands and fans networking on the Internet. Ripped tells the story of how the laptop generation created a new grassroots music industry, with the fans and bands rather than the corporations in charge.

Those businesses fell apart not only because the technology made change irresistible, but also because, for years, the business refused to come to grips with what was happening to their field. That’s the subject of Rolling Stone contributing editor Steve Knopper‘s text, Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Rise and Fall of the Record Industry in the Digital Age, above middle. In Knopper’s opinion,

after the incredible wealth and excess of the ’80s and ’90s, Sony,
Warner, and the other big players brought about their own downfall
through years of denial and bad decisions in the face of dramatic
advances in technology.

Greg Kot and Steve Knopper are guests today on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, October 2, at 2 pm ET.

But they’re talking about how we got here. What should an artist do, in today’s realm, to manage a career in the digital age? Attorney Steve Gordon‘s book, The Future of the Music Business: How to Succeed with the New Digital Technologies, above top, is designed as a guide for the artist / entrepreneur who wants to take control of their career. It

provides a legal and business roadmap to artists, music industry professionals, entrepreneurs and attorneys. It focuses on the rules pertaining to the music business and the new digital music industry, how artists and entrepreneurs can use the new technologies to succeed, new business models, plus interviews with artists and entrepreneurs who are inventing the future of the music business.

You can hear Kot’s, Knopper’s, and Gordon’s ideas 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.

You know how women with babies, or ones who really want them, go absolutely open-mouthed ga-ga anytime they even see a picture of a cute infant?

Know any ladies like that? Well, keep ’em away from Evian’s “Roller Babies” commercial, below. Better yet, just go get a mop, now, to wipe up their covetous drool. (Plus, when you’re done, take a look at the bottled water manufacturer’s brief “making of” doc, below bottom.)

Scottish knitter Anne-Marie Dunbar‘s designs border on the utterly bizarre. They range from webbed claw gloves to a knitted model of the acrylonitrile molecule and beyond.

“Beyond” is probably where this ram’s head balaclava, above, goes, or, as she calls it, a “baalaclava.” For those of you who swing needles like a samurai’s katana, the pattern, which she sells via the web,

is entirely seamless – the ears are worked by picking up stitches, and there’s a little grafting at the front – instructions for which are given in the pattern.

As per my previous mask patterns, I’ve used an aran weight yarn with 4mm needles. The pattern gives two sizes – standard (19″ to 23″) and extra large (24″ and up).

Plus, I just had this thought: Though Dunbar has strived for a…er…naturalistic appearance in the piece, this being yarn, you can color yours in any hues you want. Orange face with teal horns and nose, Dolphins fans?

So, sign up to Ravelry.com, order the pattern for $5, pay via Paypal, and knit one up for the Aries in your life. Just remind ’em not to wear it on their next SWAT call.

B3TA’s mashup movie poster contest resulted in a gang of inspired entries, like this fusion between Star Wars and A Clockwork Orange, above, or this melding of Das Boot and Yellow Submarine, below. Plus, there’s a lot more where that came from, too, on the site. Hooray for Hollywood! Hooray for Photoshop!

[via digg]

A boo-boo: My NONFICTION conversation with Women in Boxes‘ filmmakers Blaire Baron Larsen, Harry Pallenberg, and Phil Noyes has been pre-empted by WBAI fundraising. That interview, as well as my conversation with writer/blogger Geoff Manaugh, will air on a future date.

Women in Boxes will still air tonight, on Documentary Channel, at 9:10 PM ET, however. Please do check it out. It’s a remarkable film.

After Anthony Williams’, aka D.J. Roc Raida’s, funeral today in Harlem, D.J. Premier gave out T-shirts with this balletic image, above, of the late, great master of steel wheels.

May he rest in peace.