I don’t know about you all, but I spent MY last Saturday biking around Red Hook, getting selectively sunburnt and looking for weird scenes that I could make a little weirder. Mid-afternoon (after a stop for some amazing pulled pork and root beer on tap at Brooklyn Ice House), I happened upon an abandoned baby stroller between a couple of warehouses and went to work with the colored tape. Here is the result:
For me, looking at these retouched photos from Ashkan Honarvar’s fifth “Faces” series is like choking on a really tasty hot fudge sundae. The pleasure centers and the gag reflex are both firing at about equal rates. (More images after the jump.)
For this month’s Hotsy Totsy Burlesque, Brad, my Co-producer Joe the Shark and I have combined two things we love:
Dr Who and Burlesque.
I love our show. Each month we write a new script in sort of an on-going burlesque soap-opera.
For those of you in NYC, here is the info:
HOTSY TOTSY BURLESQUE
Tuesday, August 17th, 9:30pm
@ The Delancey Lounge 168 Delancey, — just two blocks from the F/J train stop. 9:30, $8.
Cherry Pitz and Joe Shark are unaware – but something weird is going on at the Home for Wayward Girls and Fallen Women. Something that only one person can understand. Dr Who. Whatever you do … don’t blink! You’ll miss the boobies!
Cherry Pitz is your host and the show features RunAround Sue, Clams Casino, Apathy Angel, Misty Lux and Billy the Id & Special Guest Candy Cory!
Times Square. I started crafting my own adjective-laden metaphor for that nexus of sensory overload, but then I realized that it might work just as well to list a few results of a web search for the phrase “Times Square is like”. So… “Times Square is like Las Vegas times 10!”
“Times Square is like Disneyland. Really!”
“Times Square is like some great cosmic porch light, and we’re all moths to the flame.”
“Times Square is like getting a root canal.”
And my favorite pair, which came up in direct succession: “Times Square is like no other place in the world!”
followed immediately by: “Times Square is like Piccadilly Circus in London.”
But I was surprised that it took until the fifth page of search results for someone to say something like “Times Square is like the holy grail of promotion”. ‘Cause hot damn is it ever true.
But a gentleman from The Netherlands by the name of Justus Bruns has decided to make it his mission to turn as many of the Times Square ad spaces as he can, for however long he can, into places to display art. He’s calling the project “Times Square to Art Square”, or TS2AS, and this is his pitch:
This week’s Moth podcast is really exciting for me. It features two people that are not only great storytellers but great friends of mine: Brad Lawrence and Juliet Wayne.
Brad’s way too modest to say so, but he is tearing UP the NYC storytelling scene right now. He won two Moth GrandSlams back to back, which is not unlike Ian MacKaye starting both Minor Threat and Fugazi — except tinier and more fleeting. He and Cyndi Freeman have a new storytelling show out in Brooklyn called The Standard Issues, and he’s blogging here AND his personal blog, too – you’ve heard me mention that ad infinitum.
Juliet Wayne has been a great friend to me since the night we met. She’s a hilarious storyteller and a caring soul who once painted me a picture of a pink cockroach with one testicle while I was recovering from surgery. She lives in Philadelphia and occasionally creeps up here on a Chinese bus, lays waste to a roomful of people and then goes back home and hides in her attic until next time.
And this is a video of Juliet Wayne doing what she does best. She actually performed this story the night that we met for the first time. It was my first Moth event, and it felt like pulling a sword from a stone. I’d been looking for something to do and some cool weird art form to dive right into, and that lightbulb went on during Juliet’s story. I ran up to her after, trying really hard not to be a creepy fan guy. Turns out she was just as stunned as I was. She’s helped me shape a lot of my stuff and is always there to freak out with over the telephone.
Being friends with Juliet reminds me of being in high school, where we talk on the phone late at night and say outrageous stuff to each other and are both way too sensitive and passionate. We got in a fight once like a couple of teenagers and it felt like one of my legs got cut off until we made up.
I saw this on the streets of Philadelphia in the Fall of 2008. I think. It’s pretty much a lot of my favorite things in one place: bright pink, comic book imagery, a worn and weathered texture.
Look – when we go into a place of business, sometimes things just happen, that’s all. Whether it’s a coffee shop or a fried chicken joint, events have conspired to provide us with some experiences that we have been moved to share with you, our lovely readers. Experiences that many of you have then chosen to share with others in turn. The internet is a bigger, crazier, more tricked-out vehicle for sharing consumer feedback than Al Gore could ever have imagined back when he invented it, and the right (or wrong) kind review on the web can conceivably launch a place or shut it right down.
But while some of us run to Yelp to post a review and tell all of the other consumerist nerds to check this place out or stay the hell away from that place, some folks still like to keep it analog. And I respect that. Here are a few ad-hoc, word-on-the-street* “reviews” that I’ve personally stumbled across:
*Clearly, the word is not the only thing on the street. This was one block away from the Dallas BBQ… and if that substance on the paper is what I think it is… well, that had to be some mighty fast Sharpie work to draft part A of the review before part B asserted itself. To me, this is almost like a quick & dirty sort of voodoo ceremony.
In an on-camera interview for the 2007 documentary Helvetica, famed graphic designer Massimo Vignelli said:
“The life of a designer is a life of fight. Fight against the ugliness. Just like a doctor fights against disease. For us, the visual disease is what we have around, and what we try to do is cure it somehow with design.”
A little over the top, maybe… but the man DID design one of my favorite maps of all time, so I’m gonna cut him some slack for the hyperbole.
Anyway, to whatever extent a given graphic designer attempts to innoculate us against any particular outbreak of unattractive information, it’s usually because someone has ASKED them to do it. Which is one of the reasons that Cardon Webb’s “Cardon Copy” project stands out.
Designer Cardon Webb hijacked posters from public spaces — mostly fliers of lost pets, and “for rent” or “for sale” signs — took them home, designed fresh posters using the same information, and then posted the new designs back in the places where he found the originals. Read the rest of this entry »
