| Ariel Pink T-Shirts! |
It probably seems like I’ve gone t-shirt crazy, but I couldn’t resist posting about the brand new t-shirt (pictured above, text not included) that Ariel Pink is selling. Entitled ‘Bring me the head of Ariel Pink!’, this “Decapitated Pink t-shirt” is for “lovers and haters alike.” It’s designed by Jason Yates, who makes amazing hand-drawn fliers for shows, like this one for an Animal Collective/Ariel Pink show. Each shirt in the very limited run is unique, with a different hand-drawn hair color. Sequins, beads, and buttons are sewn on by hand to create the blood droplets. You can buy it on Pink’s myspace page (for $40) before they disappear. |
I don’t care how fugly he is– I think Teki Latex is a total fox. Most known for his work with French hip-hop/electronic group TTC, Teki just released his own album, Party De Plaisir. The song from the above video, “Les Matins de Paris” is so catchy, you might just buy the 7″, and then not even file it under “Eurotrash” (don’t try to front– you know you’ve still got those Vengaboys, Alice Deejay, and Aqua records filed away somewhere). The song features vocals from Lio, the Belgian pop icon of the 1980s (and occasional Chantal Akerman muse). Another track on the album includes hardcore French rap from Feist’s alter-ego– Bitch Lap Lap.  Teki’s got some jacked-up teeth and kind of a downs-y looking face, but that doesn’t stop him from being pretty sexy. Plus, he even helps designs t-shirts! The nifty-looking t-shirt pictured above fits with the art concept of his whole album– namely, very bright colors. Check out this weird video in which a bubbly, borderline abrasive Teki discusses the album, and reveals the dimly lit attic in which an “army” of zoned-out teenagers promote his music on Myspace and Facebook. |
Everyone knows that the Japanese are more advanced than Americans in many ways, including (but not limited to) technology, animation, cleanliness, television and fashion. These are indisputable facts that you can look up in the Guinness Book of World Records. So now that you understand that much, you can start to covet their mad style. My buddy Bob’s blog, Kitsune Noir, turned my attention towards the Japanese online shop Beams T. Their collection of T-Shirts is vast and highly refined. If I had a ridiculous amount of money, I would throw down Â¥5,800 one of these rad t-shirts. But I don’t, so let’s do some make-believe shopping. Check them out my new wardrobe after the jump! |
 While I was looking around on their label’s confusing website, I came across the video for Taken By Trees‘ “Lost And Found”. Taken By Trees is the new solo project by Victoria Bergsman, the former lead singer of The Concretes, perhaps better known as the chick who sang on the ubiquitous 2006 indie pop hit, “Young Folks” by Peter Bjorn & John. Reviews for Taken By Trees’ first release, Open Fields, have been only so-so– but “Lost and Found” is lulling and dreamy, and the video is hypnotically charming. Check it out after the jump! |
One of my favorite sites, Fecal Face, turned me on to the work of Michael C. Hsiung, a Los Angeles-based aritst who draws sketches both melancholy and hilarious of mermen, sailors, birds and beasts. Fecal Face conducted a highly amusing interview with him recently, covering everything from his noble beginnings in a nude figure drawing class with a fat, sweaty male model, to the influence of Dungeons & Dragons on his work, to the mysterious origins of his stately moustache.  Maybe it’s just because I love Victorian stylings, nautical themes, and husky, bearded mermen, but I find Hsiung’s drawings irresistible. He manages to evoke unfamiliar emotions out of simple, familiar images, without losing a sense of humor. His over-the-top artist statement is dripping in hyperbole: “My work addresses gender roles/gender assignment given to mermen, the fragility of unicorn/panda dynamics, domestic violence between centaurs and unitaurs and the underlying threads of violence and danger that underpin all other-worldly societies.” Nice. Michael C. Hisung has a show up right now at Gallery Revisited in Silver Lake, so check it out before it closes on July 28th! |
The Miss Rockaway Armada is essentially the coolest project ever. It’s a group of several dozen artists and vagrants from distant corners of the continent, who have converged upon the mid-west in order to create art and seek out the wild adventures ingrained in the soil and water of the American wilderness. Mostly, they’re a collective of beautiful kids buildings elaborate rafts to float down the Mississippi River. What more could you ask for? The amazing photographer Tod Seelie has done a fantastic job of documenting the mayhem this summer, posting a slew of jaw-droppingly beautiful images on his blog, Sucka Pants. Another participant in the project is the enormously talented Polaroid Kidd, who is no stranger to wandering around the country as a vagabond, documenting the hidden glories of a wayfaring life. Here’s a picture of him (on the top left) in one of Seelie’s photos, exploring an abandoned monastery:
It’s thrilling to see a group of artists leaving their respective urban enclaves and getting together to make something amazing happen in an ordinarily quiet, oft-ignored place. Take the time to read their mission statement. I wish I could drop everything and join them! Check out the Miss Rockaway Armada Flickr pool for more views of life on the river. |
My roommate Sarah has always held an interest in puppeteering, in the past working at the Bob Baker Marionette Theater, and now as a pupeteer at the Skirball Center’s brand new “Noah’s Ark” exhibition. This afternoon, I joined her boyfriend, Stuart, and our roommate, Liz, at a sneak preview of the exhibit. Sarah is one of several dozen puppeteers who will wander around the museum manning elaborate animal puppets made out of found objects, from fly swatters to tractor seats to hand-made parasols. Some of the puppets require two or more people to operate, including the eight-foot-tall (when standing) elephant puppet, for which four puppeteers have to act as legs. We showed up just as the last official visitors were leaving, just in time for a rad Indian dance performance in the amphitheater. After the kids left, we got a complete backstage tour of the museum. We even launched into a private drum circle, where three puppeteers danced to our ruckus with an unprepared but highly choreographed dance. A shy security guard even joined in the fun, slapping a drum in a distant corner of the room. Anyway, if you for some reason get a chance to check it out, definitely take advantage of it. It’s a ridiculously fun time! Check out the pictures after the jump. |
To escape the purgatory of background work on “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody”, I spent my free time yesterday reading Georges Bataille’s Story of the Eye. It’s this crazy scandalous story from the 1920s about a couple of French teenagers who start fooling around and discover the joys of sex. Their curiosity ultimately leads them on an unscrupulous sex-starved rampage involving all kinds of gleeful debauchery, from water sports to egg-adled masturbation to non-consensual erotic asphyxiation. It’s delightfully filthy, and perhaps the perfect remedy for anyone hoping to briefly escape the the subtle whitewashing of Disney Channel hegemony. The episode I was in yesterday was buried in layers of Disney Channel self-reference: Zack and Cody’s high school decides to put on a theatrical production of High School Musical, the Disney Channel musical TV-movie (and unfortunate cultural sensation) about a high school putting on a musical, which stars Ashley Tisdale, who also stars in “The Suite Life”. However, Ashley Tisdale’s character on “The Suite Life” is unable to land the role of Sharpay Evans (played by Tisdale in the TV movie), because no one seems to think she looks like Ashley Tisdale. So meta! Added to that, Mark Indelicato, the little gay boy from “Ugly Betty”, plays a musical theater-obsessed drama queen who lands the role of Ryan Evans, the musical theater-obsessed drama queen in High School Musical. Of course, because this is Disney– just as in the real High School Musical– any reference to homosexuality is relegated to the realm of not-so-subtle implications, where flamboyant hats and exaggerated dances stand in for character development. Not that I expect a serious gay storyline during a guest spot on one brief episode of “The Suite Life”, but the single-dimensional writing of his character recalled an incident which I experienced on the “Suite Life” set last summer: An obviously uninterested Dylan Sprouse was rehearsing a scene for the third or fourth time, when an A.D. became exasperated at his cardboard delivery. “Alright, let’s do this again. Why don’t we try acting this time?” he said. Dylan flipped around and shouted, “Why don’t you try not being so gay, Jeff.” The A.D. had no answer to that. |
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Rainer Werner Fassbinder was a gay German curmudgeon workaholic cinematic visionary. In the short span of 17 years, he made 43 films, before burning out at the age of 37, when he took a lethal overdose of cocaine and sleeping pills. He was allegedly found slumped over an unfinished draft of his latest screenplay. 1975’s Fox and His Friends is one of his best, most revered films. It’s the deceptively simple story of a proletariat gay carnival worker whose abrupt transition into a world of bourgeois assholes spells certain disaster. The normally rubenesque Fassbinder dropped an impressive amount of weight to takes on the role of Fox, our hapless love-blinded hero, conned into misery by his newfound friends. He portrays the character with such nuance and integrity that it’s hard to believe that Fox, with all of his faults and charms, could be the victim of Fassbinder’s own cruel design. The film is structured brilliantly, its shots composed in an alien, stacked aesthetic in which relationships are visually fragmented by mirrors, bodies, and a variety of stray set pieces. The enclosed, self-consciously stagey settings of this and other Fassbinder films would be drawn upon by Wong Kar Wai for his similarly constricted-feeling In the Mood for Love. It’s an amazing film and an often overlooked piece of gay history. So go rent it! Check out more pictures after the jump. |
[subscribe to the podcast in iTunes] Right click and save to download Podcast #8 [34:05 | 39.0mb] It’s been a long journey and you’re traveling by foot. Night came sooner than you expected, and for miles all you can see are a few menacing trees waiting on endless plains. But a light up the road promises safety. It turns out to be an old Inn. “All of our rooms are vacant,” you’re told by the innkeeper. “Strange,” you say, “I’d expect at least a few travelers to come out this way.” The innkeeper shows almost no sign of interest as she shakes her weathered head. Sunlight floods your ancient room, as you lay down for two days, three days, reading a few books, always thinking of leaving. Someone checks into the room next door. He’s a runaway ranch hand, and he teaches you all the country dances. You dance until dawn in the cracked road behind the unlikely Inn. You wake up at 3pm by the rusted swimming pool. The sight of Ruffles bag from the preceding decade convinces you that it’s finally time to leave. You pack up your books and the wicker figurine souveniers that the innkeeper has guilted you into buying, and before you go, the ranch hand kisses you and slips an unmarked CD-R into your bag. Now take a listen. 1. Hiro Yanagida - The Legend of Zelda |
Brand Upon the Brain! is a new silent film by Canadian director Guy Maddin. It’s about a brother and sister living on a mysterious island under the tyranny of their unstable mother who runs an orphanage in the cellar of an old light house. A lesbian Nancy Drew, wireless two-way gramophones, and a horrible youth serum are just some of the absurd delights you’ll find in Brand’s unpredictable narrative. I just saw it this weekend with live accompaniment by a fourteen-piece orchestra, a castrato, three foley artists, and guest narration by Udo Kier. If you get the chance to see the live show, I implore you to take it. There’s nothing else quite like it. It’ll be presented tomorrow night in L.A. one final time before they start showing the standard version with a recorded soundtrack (narrated by Isabella Rosselini). |
Someone had posted a Myspace bulletin announcing an estate sale at The Carpenters‘ house in Downey, just south of L.A. So Saturday morning, Rudy and I joined our friend (and long-time Downey resident) Andrea for an excursion to their unassuming suburban home, a place that still carries the silent weight of so many long-forgotten memories and broken dreams. A Mexican-American family has been living there since the mid-90s, but many sad artifacts from the Carpenters legacy still haunt the house. Much of the estate is in shambles. The back yard, which was once a lush, landscaped paradise in the style of a Japanese garden, is now a dried-up wasteland. Several of the wooden bridges have collapsed, and the piles of wood planks were being sold for $500. The words “Superstar” and “Carpenters” were engraved on the wood in Japanese. The daughter of the current residents, who was running the whole show, gave us a tour of the main house– except for the room where Karen died. Her sister, she said, was sleeping in there. continue reading |
For the past twelve months, I’ve been working as a “background actor” (extra) on dozens of TV shows and movies. At the end of the 2005-06 school year, I needed a job if I wanted to stay in L.A., so I decided to put my SAG card (which I’d acquired at the ripe age of three as a result of this notorious Bounty commercial) to use for the first time in a decade, and become a professional extra. It’s got to be the easiest job imaginable– seriously, I can’t imagine a profession that requires less brain function– and I’ve been riding its cushy wave for almost twelve months. I finally decided I should take the next step and get an agent for commercials and print. So I had headshots made up, printed a resume at Kinko’s, and sent out a “mass mailing” to 25 different agencies. This week I had my first interview with an agency, and it happened to be a very appealing one: Dragon Talent. They’re an agency that deals in “non-mainstream” talent, requires a link to your myspace page as part of your application, and handles all of their business by e-mail. I honestly didn’t expect to be picked up by them: my looks are relatively mainstream and I have no substantial acting credits. But they jumped at the opportunity to sign me on, and even went so far as to call me “fierce”! Yes, in the words of Tyra Banks, I have the fire in my eyes. So now I have an agent, I’m getting a BlackBerry, and I’ll start going on auditions some time next week. Pretty fuckin’ crazy. Also, I got a part time job as the assistant of a Hollywood executive. So it’s been a pretty good week. |
Today I went to Skylight Books and picked up Sammy Harkham’s 2005 comic book Poor Sailor. It’s a beautiful story of a man who abandons the simple domesticity of his land-locked life for the perils and adventures of the uncharted sea. With sparse dialogue, minimalist style, and no unnecessary frills, the images alone evoke an overwhelming amount of emotion. Each page is adorned by a single square frame, almost like storyboards for a screenplay. Obviously, given the nautical connotation of this website’s title, I’m enchanted by tales of the sea. However, I find it frustratingly difficult to track down good sea stories– or at least relatable ones. Maybe I’ve developed literary diabetes from too much exposure to contemporary narratives, but I just find the prose of Robert Louis Stevenson, Herman Melville, and even Jack London too alien to wholeheartedly submerge myself in. So I absolutely appreciate the unassuming, relaxed approach towards a sea tale that Harkham takes in Poor Sailor. Harkham is also the editor of Kramer’s Ergot, a collection of comics that comes out every year or two. He also has a hand in running the amazing store Family on Fairfax Ave. + A quite thorough review of Poor Sailor. |
