If pick up one issue of Vice this year, make it their reliably dazzling annual photo issue. It’s got so many great images crammed into one tiny package! The latest issue features new work from art star mainstays like the kinetically youthful Ryan McGinley, Tiny Vices curator Tim Barber, and identity politics documentarian Catherine Opie, amongst excitingly fresh talent like Dana Goldstein and Jamie Lee Curtis Taete. Grab a copy at some fancy store near your house, or save a tree and just look at all the pretty photos online, here.
One of the best parts of the Los Angeles summer is how the sweltering days make for perfect bike riding evenings. And what better way to spend those evenings than with a massive swarm of a few hundred bike enthusiasts dressed in costumes and jamming up the streets? Midnight Ridazz an all for one all for fun bike ride has been going down the second Friday of every month since 2004 and as anyone in LA on two wheels will tell you it’s the perfect place for you and your bike to make new friends, get some exercise, and scream at the top of your lungs. As if that weren’t enough, their upcoming Where The Wild Things Are themed ride will no doubt bring out the best Max costumes and wildest rumpus we’ve seen to date.
While we were in London finishing the effects at Framestore, I got to be in a pilot for David Cross created for Channel 4 in Britain. I am in just in a couple scenes in the first episode. I have no idea why David asked me to do it but I had the best role, I just get non-stop verbally abused by Will Arnett in the most scathing hilarious way. I spent the whole day cracking up at two of the funniest people I’ve hung out with. I felt like I had my own private Will and David comedy show. Also, it was directed by the the Russo brothers who directed a lot of Arrested Development. They have a great touch.
The Director’s Bureau is a commercial and music video house with a roster of talent responsible many of the sweetest things we’ve seen in recent years. Lana Kim is the wonderful person in charge of organizing the “music video” end of the operation.
In an attempt at making the most of her access to some really stellar bands, Lana began filming her own music video clip show out of a closet in the back of the Bureau and it became an internet smash. Once the closet got to small she took the act to streets – well hotels, and back yards and the rest is future music history.
Human Giant members Rob Heubel and Aziz Ansari (who’s been on his A-game lately with a series of hilarious in-character viral videos for the upcoming Judd Apatow flick Funny People) teamed up with Reno 911 duo/The State alumni Tom Lennon and Ben Garant to create a bizarrely comical tribute to Point Break for Mean magazine and Zune. Their ode to Busey, Keanu and Swayze is just one installment in a series of awesome clips entitled Cinemash.
So far, Cinemash has brought us Cheech and Chong in Tron and Zooey Deschanel reteaming with her 500 Days of Summer co-star Joseph Gordon Levitt for an homage to Sid & Nancy, with future installments promising more oddball pairings like Charlene Yi and Channing Tatum in Dirty Dancing, and Will Arnett facing off with Adult Swim’s Xavier in Carrie. Stay tuned for each week’s stupendous madness on Zune’s site!
Saw this good man last week. Among topics we covered were whales having more than one penis (he says three). I have never heard of this. Maybe he was pulling my leg? I haven’t looked it up because I kind of would rather just believe it.
We went for a walk with Herman, his german shepard who is named after one of his heroes, Herman Melville.
Also, it was his birthday last month as you can see from the birthday plate.
He also showed me a Max sailing sculpture he was sent from some art gallery in nyc that is going to make them.
He was feeling a little run down the day I saw him so if anyone wants to send him a message, please do so and we will send them over to him.
The highlight of the day was him telling me why people loved Shakespeare’s (another one of Maurice’s heroes) plays when Shakespeare was alive. He told me the whole story of Romeo and Juliet which I hadn’t thought of in a long time. By the time he got to the part where the parents found their dead children and realized what they had done, we both had runny eyes.
One nifty side effect of social networks is their ability to publicize (and therefore create) micro-trends– trends that wouldn’t otherwise spread beyond a group of real-life friends but, thanks to the internet, can blossom and mutate on a global scale.
Exhibit A in this vein is bumper stickers for shoes: a self-explanatory idea which is charmingly illustrated for the world to see on Laser Bread’sFlickr page.
The declaration that occurs to me whenever I pop in to the Lower East Side bookstore Bluestockings is always the same: ZINES LIVE!
Along with Nieves and a handful of indie bookstores scattered across the country, Bluestockings is one of the few outposts dedicated to circulating the little xerox-machine magazines and keeping zine culture alive.
There are attractions other than zines at Bluestockings, including regular events and author readings, shelves of well-curated volumes (sample sections: “Global Justice”, “Activist Strategies”, “Size Acceptance”), a café with tasty coffee and plenty of space to kick back and flip through the latest issue of Radical Teacher magazine.
In other words, Bluestockings is exactly the oasis that I dreamed about as a teenager. Better late than never, right?
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