We Love You So – Where The Wild Things Are – Spike Jonze

What are you going to wear?

Photo credit: beaucolbern!

When we did a post on the tools of the trade a while back, some of you commented that your notebooks of choice were Field Notes. After investigating the matter, we agree that their products are a necessary addition to the notebook arsenal.

An honest memo book, worth fillin’ up with GOOD INFORMATION is what the company calls their notebook; inspirations include “the vanishing subgenre of agricultural memo books, ornate pocket ledgers and the simple, unassuming beauty of a well-crafted grocery list.”

Say no more! Well, maybe a little more. Field Notes are durable, naturally, but more importantly: they’re pocket-sized and flexible. In other words, they’re built for the road, and there’s no excuse not to carry yours around everywhere. Available in all the standard denominations––ruled paper, graph paper, plain––the books also include suggestions on how to use them, for those at a loss. Examples: Road Trip Mileage, Shady Transactions, Crop Predictions. You’ll find that you probably won’t need the suggestions; in these fast-paced modern days, there’s always something to write about.

New additions to the growing category of WTWTA desserts! The treats in the first row have some interesting photographic action going on, as well as a pleasingly generous amount of frosting.

Cupcakes on row #2 manage to recreate Sendak’s color palette with impressive fidelity.

Cookies on row #3 come courtesy of the appropriately-named Night Kitchen Bakery. Carol looks so sweet!

Bake on, bakers. And send us photos!

Our friends at The World’s Best Ever asked us to pick some songs for their “Sound Advice” column. We tried to make a playlist that everyone could enjoy. A little of this, a little of that… you know, just a bunch of songs we have been loving. Check it out here!

Picture a dream you’ve had that wasn’t a straight-up nightmare, but was terrifying. Now place that dream in the context of childhood’s special bewilderment– the type of uneasiness that hooks itself into our pre-adolescent lives like a parasite. I’m talking about weird foods and growling dogs, the uncertain authority of family friends and foreign cartoons swirling about in a sinister haze. Couple all that clammy awkwardness with the distinctly creepy fantasies of the Scandinavian sub-conscious, and you’ve got something close to what The Bun Field is.

Following a young girl through an interior world of rumbling chaos, Amanda Vahamaki’s concise comic book depicts the palpitating psyche of a worried child with breathtakingly naturalistic charm. For pondering all the pernicious phantasms that haunt our heroine’s world, we’re rewarded with flashes of tender humor, like a scene in which the young girl argues with a small bear about which of them is better qualified to operate a vehicle.

Check out a PDF preview of the book here. Oh, and Amazon is currently selling it for $1.94, so you would be foolish not to add a copy to your cart!

We spend a great deal of our childhoods– our whole lives, even– within the confines of a schoolhouse. What effect, if any, does the concrete presence of our school rooms have upon us? Do our physical, literal surroundings help shape the person that we become? How do schools instill us with ideas about class and mold our personal values? Photographer Lissa Rivera’s study in the territories of academia, Places of Education, raises these questions without providing any easy answers. Gazing into these eerily still images of empty school buildings is like stumbling upon a polaroid of an old dream. Rivera’s images reaches through the blur of primary education and pull out sharply detailed representations of our collective forgotten past.

via Good Magazine.

Awesome essay alert: Newsweek’s Andrew Romano discusses the wilderness of childhood, the importance of facing primal fears, and the need for films that challenge rather than coddle kids.

The greatest children’s stories are about what happens when we become untethered from authority, whether by disobedience, disaster, or disregard, and the twinned feelings of freedom and fear we experience as we grapple with an autonomy we’re not quite ready for. They are, in that sense, rehearsals for adulthood.

Romano’s piece is thoughtful and inspired–– a definite must-read.

Illustration via

Miss Manners, aka Judith Martin, began writing her syndicated column in 1978. Emily Post was penning etiquette advice as early as the 1920s. Both provided reliable guidelines on how to act politely in this complicated modern era––neither, unfortunately, had much of an interest in the contemporary art scene.

This is where I Like Your Work comes in. Art journal Paper Monument has produced a tiny (but information-dense) booklet with features from 38 artists, critics, curators and dealers on the “sometimes serious and sometimes ridiculous topic of manners in the art world.”

Tuck it in your own back pocket or slide it under the studio door of someone who really needs it.

We love YOU so!

Our best buds at McSweeneys are running a great contest/giveaway that involves dressing up a a fur-covered book in funny costumes. What more do you need to know? Go join the rumpus!