I saw Willy Porter play McGonigel’s Mucky Duck tonight. What a fabulous, fabulous show. Highly recommended if you’re into the guitar virtuoso cum singer/songwriter thing. Willy does a mind-blowing sequence with some sampling and looping effects on “Welcome to my neighborhood” and we, the audience, contributed “Francois” “Rodeo Traffic” “Safe and Clear” and “It Depends” for an improv tune. Willy is the man. Some of his live shows are available for (free) download on Archive.org
Buddy & Julie Miller seem like really cool people. I really like their music, of course, but then I saw this picture on their website and it raised them to a new level in my esteem. If you’ve never heard of Buddy or Julie Miller, I recommend you discover them like I did - listen to a bunch of your favorite country/americana records (I know, I hate labeling them too, but now you know what I mean) like Emmylou Harris, Dixie Chicks, Jim Lauderdale, Victoria Williams &tc. and look up your favorite song in the liner notes and see if it wasn’t written by one of them ("All My Tears” in my case from Red Dirt Girl).
UK artist Benedict Carpenter is taking submissions for his Drawing Description Game in which you describe a common object as accurately and completely without tipping him off as to what it is, then he draws it. Simple premise…. amazing results. Here is my own rather long-winded submission:
This object consists of a long cylindrical shaft, an inch in diameter. The lower half of the shaft is tightly wrapped in a sheath.
The upper half, above the sheath tapers slightly. The top 5% of the shaft is capped with a separate part of the object, made from a much harder material. This top part of the object, when viewed head on, appears to have a circular front 3/4″ in diameter, which recedes into a square body which is only slightly larger on all sides, at least from what is visible. When viewed in profile, however, it appears balanced on the head of the shaft, jutting out 2 inches on either side. The left side, originally described as the front when viewed head-on, is like cylinder viewed from the side, with the curvature aligned north-south.
This cylinder, which is 3/4″ high at the left-hand side begins to taper at a point 1.5 inches from the middle when travelling toward the center, to a cylinder only 1/2″ wide which then wides into the larger cap which fits over the shaft. On the other side of the top part of the object, the same material tapers sharply to a flattened cylinder which projects about 2″ from the cap at a 35 degree angle beneath the horizontal axis.
I’ll post the drawing if he gets around to it. Why don’t I think of things like this? Oh right, I can’t draw…..
is the Audrey Hepburn of my font collection. I keep going back to her over and over again for a touch of simple class and understated elegance. Like so many other love affairs, I suppose it’s bound to come to an end some day….
William Drenttel has an article on Design Observer about Chris Marker’s seminal film La Jetée. Mr. Drenttel is lucky enough to own the book version, which apparently was designed by Bruce Mau, unbeknownst to me. I am kicking myself for not snagging the copy I first read in the library at Emerson… thus depriving the next generation of film students the same enjoyment I experience…. so I guess it all worked out for the best.
It remains one of the best cinematic experience to be had. I first saw it at the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, I think, and remember sitting in stunned silence the entire T-ride back to the North End. I picked up a DVD version of La Jetee on Short 2 Dreams. Even several years after seeing it for the first time it still retains its tremendous emotional resonance. Oh yeah, and 12 Monkeys was based on it, but if you want the real thing, get the real thing.
For some reason, we seem to like to wait until people die to honor them for their lives and achievements. That’s how I discovered Jim Flora’s work, this weekend through an article in the NY Times (via Boing Boing). I think it’s silly, in general, to talk about images, but his are pretty amazing.
