| Vashti Bunyan |
The Silent Movie Theatre is hosting a series called “F is For Folk” on Thursdays this month, and last night was Vashti Bunyan night. An exceprt of The Family Jams was shown along with the amazingly beautiful new feature length documentary Vashti Bunyan: From Here To Before, which traces the legendary horse-and-buggy journey traveled by Vashti and her compatriots in 1968. Last night’s screening also included the 2-minute theatrical premiere of Same But Different, a short film I shot at a Mean photo shoot with Vashti. And now, for the cyberspace premiere! Enjoy: |
I’m curating an outdoor video screening that will occur this Friday, May 29th from 6-10 pm. It’s called BEWITCH and it’s a 20 minute loop of video art pieces from from Ben Aqua, New Jedi Order, Mike Kitchell, and Tommy Blackburn. BEWITCH is part of a bigger group show, called BLOCK PARTY, that will take place at three different houses in Highland Park.
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Once upon a time in Montreal in 2003, an indie pop band called The Unicorns emerged out of nowhere and released the type of album that has the power to change people’s lives. That lo-fi masterpiece, Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone?, would sadly be the band’s one and only full-length release, as The Unicorns were destined to disband before most of their die-hard fans had even discovered them. Two of the three Unicorns members went on to form the so-so but generally overrated group Islands, but for a long time the world was remiss of any work from the true heart and soul behind The Unicorns, gay musician Alden Penner, who had been only 21 at the height of The Unicorns’ fame. Six years later, Penner’s all grown up, continuing the Unicorns legacy through the sonically stimulating band Clues alongside former Arcade Fire instrumentalist Brendan Reed. Check out a live performance of the track “Remember Severed Head” below:
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Seriously, this is the best show on TV. Jill Scott stars as a humble, empathetic and endlessly clever detective– a Botswana-based feminist Sherlock Holmes– with indubitable moral character. What else do you want? A bookish yet intrepid secretary? A gay hairdresser? A shy middle-aged mechanic who’s somehow the perfect man? You’ve got it. It’s all here. All I want in life is an endless supply of No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency. Please, HBO, let there be a Season 2! |
It might seem like the above-pictured comic strip is an excerpt of a longer tale, but I’m presenting this jarringly surreal strip here in its entirety. Most Danny Dutch stories are like this: they throw the reader into the middle of an exchange teetering on the verge of incoherence with little context and no real closure when it’s over. Without concern for narrative continuity, cartoonist David King’s world feels like a cardboard movie set peopled by a cast of characters lacking stable identities. Recycling like shifting ciphers in each strip, these mysterious figures act out melancholy moments of seemingly little consequence that somehow still pierce your soul like a splinter. At turns devastating, profound, navel-gazing, hilarious and juvenile, Danny Dutch is an unpredictable but always amusing ride through King’s delirious sub-conscious mind.
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Charles Irvin’s paintings and videos are simultaneously disturbing and juvenile, uprooting traditional approaches to themes of abuse, hysteria, sexuality and power dynamics. Currently displaying work at the Hammer Museum as part of “Nine Lives,” an exhibit showcasing work from nine Los Angeles artists, Irvin is one of the least-known artists in the show (”He’s more of an artist’s artist,” noted a bored, Ugg-booted tour guide), but his work is certainly the most fascinating. Surrounded by awesomely grotesque paintings of lynching victims ejaculating into anthropomorphized flowers’ thirsty mouths and loving odes to E.T., the centerpiece of Irvin’s work at the Hammer is an amazing 30-minute video piece entitled Membrane Lane. Deconstructing the sinister False Memory Syndrome Foundation– an organization devoted to discrediting the victims of child abuse– Membrane Lane shouldn’t be fun and entertaining, but it is. While he establishes thematic links from the revisionist ethos of his subject matter to larger trends in government and the media, Irvin soliloquies between a barrage of found footage, sitting by a fake campfire accompanied by a distraught kitten encapsulated in an egg. The effect is unsettling and persuasive, conjuring both the fourth-wall-breaking “edutainment” style of Bill Nye The Science Guy and the wide-eyed self-assuredness of a conspiracy theorist. Check out Furbee Luv below, a “critique of consumer culture”-cum-furbee abuse porn from 2000, and don’t miss Irvin’s Babyscapes, a rumination on “childhood anxieties that shape adult behavior” fleshed out by evil elves and singing skeletons. |
I’ve been leading a secret double life! For the past couple of months, I’ve been writing for Spike Jonze’s We Love You So, a brand new blog that launches today! The blog is designed to give a glimpse at some of the influences and behind the scenes forces at work in Spike’s upcoming epic masterpiece, Where the Wild Things Are, as well as to share rad art and ephemera outside of the Wild Things orbit. I’ve been creating content alongside three of my all-time favorite bloggers: Dallas Clayton, Molly Young and Matt Rubin. I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve put together, and there’s plenty of material to look at in the archives already– so go dig in! |
POO is a monthly party that my friends Sarah Ball and David Toro put on at The Hose in New York. Wild decorations, totally outrageous performances, and glorious music all night long. When I went, Tim from Gang Gang Dance was DJing, the boys from Mirror Mirror fed me communion, and subway siren Rosateresa serenaded us with her beautiful voice and casio keyboard. Best of all, I witnessed an insanely fun orange gak-covered drone music goblin orgy/performance art blowout, or something. Pictures of POO after the jump! |
Is it cool to like Mark Kostabi’s work or not? I mean, the man and his work don’t exactly command respect– his paintings are bland enough to adorn any office building wall or Reader’s Digest article, and while once upon a time, he created Guns ‘N Roses and Ramones album covers, he now proudly boasts about the commemorative statue the Vatican commissioned him to make of Pope Benedict. Browsing through his defunct advice column for ArtNet, it’s telling to watch Kostabi’s defend himself against accusations of flagrant greed and tacky self-aggrandizement by noting:
So obviously this guy kinda sucks, generally. I mean, while Damien Hirst probably feels the same way, he at least does us the favor of not bragging about being a self-involved bourgeois asshole who thinks of himself on par with Caravaggio. Divorced of Kostabi’s lame personality, I can’t tell if I simply enjoy his paintings for their weird/funny outmoded ClipArt aesthetic, or if I’m genuinely enchanted by the stupid spectral beauty of a faceless figure serenading a Hammerhead shark on an underwater piano. I guess it really doesn’t matter. These paintings are kinda rad. |
Ninja Warrior is an incredible, impossible Japanese game show that requires its participants to run a series of increasingly difficult obstacle courses that would obliterate most Olympians, to say nothing of the average man. Anyone can try out to become a Ninja Warrior, but very few make it past the first stage. Some years, no one even makes it to the final stage of the competition, and they end the season without any winners. Don’t you wish they would do that on American Idol? This weekend in Santa Monica, the channel that runs Ninja Warrior stateside, G4, organized a mini-Ninja Warrior obstacle course by the beach (well, at the parking lot next to the beach). My friend Michelle trained for ten whole days, and tried her hand at the course. As for the results, well… check out the pictures from “Ninjafest 4″ after the jump. |
Michael Lucid and Amanda Barrett’s internet sketch comedy thingy is called Pretty Thingsss and it’s a barrel of laughs! These two recent clips are “street poems” comprised of random, spontaneously captured footage of daily life in Hollywood, supplanted with the free-associating madness of Michael’s voice over. So good. |
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Tastykake Butterscotch Krimpets are primo. There are few things better, in this life. The feeling of my mouth closing around that soft, spongy cake topped with divine butterscotch frosting is supremely satisfying. It might not be too much of a stretch to claim that Tastykake laid the foundation for my entire palette, my complete understanding of what is desirable and undesirable in the realm of edible enticements. Sadly, Tastykake is an East Coast Thing. Spending the early years of my life in the suburbs of Philadelphia, there was a long period of time when my goals in life were largely within reach. I would simply save up the requisite amount of nickels, dimes and quarters. Then, I would walk down to the 7-11 for a packet of these moist delicacies, perhaps supplanted by a 20-ounce bottle of Sprite and a copy of Mad Magazine—all essential elements of a balanced lifestyle. Upon the depletion of my funds, I would start back up again from scratch, collecting change until I could re-live the same delicious, yet fleeting, moment of happiness. It was all an ominous premonition of the places capitalism would take me— on a sinister hamster wheel of irrational desire, followed by wish fulfillment, surrounded by a void of utter emptiness. JK! Pass me a krimpet! |
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