Vader Sessions!

I’m a big fan of audio/video mashups so today instead of boring you with my ramblings I’m just gonna pass on this little gem I came across…James Earl Jones dialogue from his films other than Star Wars slapped on footage from ‘Episode IV: A New Hope’…Damn Darth’s got soul!

Nylon Magazine Online!

You know you love Nylon Magazine, Nylon for Guys, O.G. Nylon, it’s all gold and now it’s available for viewing online…Nylon’s always been great because for some reason it’s always been the girls magazine that’s completely acceptable for guys to read. Not that I care, I’d roll up to Starbucks with a French Vogue in the hip pocket if it would fit. Anyways, for those in the U.S. you can sign up for a couple of free print issues as well via their MySpace page. You can only link to the online versions with a U.S. address OR low and behold–here’s the links right here: Nylon – Nylon for Guys. Anyways, it’s a pretty good interface and makes reading on the computer tolerable. Don’t know if this digital version is a one time deal but as of last night when I was at Chapters the new denim issue with Mary-Kate wasn’t on newsstands yet so I guess this is your chance to get on point early.

//Tags//Magazines, Fashion, Denim, Celebrity

Sell your momma’s cross-stitch on Etsy!

So you like making stuff but can’t wait for next year’s hospital auxilary craft fair to sell it all? Okay, in all fairness to Etsy they seem to carry some cool stuff in the way of handmade jewellery, clothing, art, furniture, and just about anything else any aspiring fashionistas or Martha Stewart wannabes can think of, you just have to weed it out from a lot of crap. That being said, Etsy is a great forum for people to sell items at a minimal commission but what’s great about Etsy is some of the other more original aspects to this site, first and foremost its cataloguing system. Using fun and interactive pages and drop down menus you can search for items by date and sales, but perhaps the funnest and no doubt most tedious form of cataloguing is by color in which you can run the mouse across the spectrum and select items by their dominant color. Very original and unlike anything I’ve seen before. Another very useful part of the Etsy site is the Alchemy section in which you can commission pieces from any users of the site and offer a price (among those there was someone trying to get a Gabriel Urist knockoff HaHa!). Very well done site, check it out.

//Tags//Art, Crafts, Fashion, Design

Jeff Koons makes you notice the things you love

I’ve been putting off this Jeff Koons post off for a few weeks now because I didn’t really know how I wanted to approach it and now it’s probably too late because I wanted it to coincide with his feature in the June issue of Modern Painters which is on its way off newsstands already. Sacre bleu! I’m doing it anyways though because there’s an old ‘PoMo’ textbook sitting on my nightstand with Koons’ Pink Panther on the cover and I feel like it’s taunting me to write this. That being said…Where do you begin with Jeff Koons? The word kitsch and Jeff Koons are often found in the same sentence. Why? Well, Koons for me is about taking kitsch and fusing the myriad of definitions that the word carries–popular culture, art in bad taste, the mundane…Put it in the hands of Jeff Koons and he’ll make you smile. Daring objectification like hardcore porn shoots with his ex-wife Cicciolina to daring simplicity like Spalding basketballs suspended in water and unaltered framed Nike posters. For what? To revel in the things we take for granted–the accessability of seeing two strangers having sex, the pop culture idols we hold up high in today’s society–Is it to make you think? Yes. To question? Maybe. For me, the work of Jeff Koons is all about making us realize that abstraction can be as simple as merely abstaining from the mundane. He’s done so much great work and it’s all fantastically different so you’re bound to fall in love with something if not all of it. Read this article on Koons by Douglas Coupland and then check out his work via Google images. Go, get outta here.

//Tags//Jeff Koons, Artists, Nike, Post Modernism, Art

Footworkin’, Krumpin’, Skatin’

When David LaChappelle’s critically acclaimed documentary ‘Rize’, about the krumping scene in suburban L.A. came out a couple years ago it only backed up the fact that no underground movement within the black community is safe these days from appropriation by the masses. It just doesn’t matter where it comes from, people eat it up. A friend and I rented ‘ATL’ last night and to our surprise it ended up more or less being a movie about the rollerskate scene in Atlanta. Who thinks rollerskating is cool? Not me and not my homey but he just said, “Man, they just don’t give a f**k in the south”. Funny thing is that he was right. Fast-forward to today and Yahoo! had a front page video piece on footworkin’…How does Yahoo! find out about footworkin’? Gettin’ viral on the street scene that’s how. Big ups Yahoo! Anyways, footworkin’ started in Chicago a couple years back and is pretty much just a bunch of kids gettin’ buck to house tracks with a hip hop tinge and battling with some of the fastest footwork you’ve ever seen. House music, what? This is why people are all over hip-hop culture either urban or suburban–innovation and not giving a shit about what’s hot at that moment. Footworkin’, Krumpin’, Skatin’…It’s all wild as hell and I-N-N-O-V-A-T-I-V-E. Check out the madness at Footwurk.com

//Tags//Hip-hop, Dancing, Dance, Krumping, Footwork, Urban, Entertainment

Michel Gondry might be the most interesting artist on the planet today.

I’m truly excited for this post because Michel Gondry to me is the epitome of artistic genius. I learned about him through the Directors Label DVDs that came out a few years back (as I did with Chris Cunningham below) and immediately fell in love with the simplicity and child-like vision exhibited in his works. Most people know him from his feature directorial work such as ‘Dave Chappelle’s Block Party’ and ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ which earned him an Oscar nomination, but he was creating exemplary works long before that. Perhaps now we will get to see Michel Gondry in all his glory with his upcoming film ‘The Science of Sleep’. He has been writing it for years and immediately I could tell it was semi-autobiographical from the trailer. The best part of his past interviews is when he explains how much of his childhood is reflected in his work. Among those childhood memories is a recurring nightmare he had of waking up with jumbo inflammed hands which make an appearance in the Foo Fighters video for ‘Everlong’ and again seem to make an appearance in ‘The Science of Sleep’ along with other elements I’ve heard him mention before. I CANNOT wait to see this film. The man really is the one of the most interesting individuals I’ve ever heard speak so get his Director’s Label disc if you can find it. Check out the trailer for ‘The Science of Sleep’ in the meantime. Enjoy!

//Tags//Michel Gondry, Film, Movies, Filmmaker, Entertainment

Chris Cunningham is back with more Horrors!

So when Chris Cunningham’s not off eating baby fetuses in German industrial clubs (I’m assuming that’s what he does while on vacation??) he’s making some of the most brilliant music videos of the past ten years…Problem is he’s been absent on the music video front for the past seven of those ten. If you didn’t shudder from all those freaky Aphex Twin videos or wonder at the beauty of his Bjork video for ‘All Is Full of Love’ then most likely you didn’t even see them. He’s a brilliant lad and he’s back with a new video for The Horrors’ latest single ‘Sheena is a Parasite’. Great look to the video and I can’t make out which is creepier, Sheena or the bass player…Very reminiscent of another young bloke who was also a big fan of the ol’ ultraviolence. Check out the video on YouTube. via stereogum.

//Tags//Cunningham, Music Video, Music, Goth

Claude Maus–Goth done right…

The new Fall ’06 line from Australia’s Claude Maus really couldn’t have come at a better time…Tapered jeans have now been embraced by the streetwear scene and the music inspired streetwear on the hip hop front seems more brother and sister with it’s rocker equivalent than the distant cousins they once were. With the hipster rocker look becoming about as mundane as Clash remixes and High tops it’s been needing to be done right for awhile now. Big Fashion’s interpretation has usually been comprised of bad prints on skinny tees and useless 80s try-hards and don’t even get me started on the street level goth look…Buckles have no place above a pair of ugly boots. So that being said, when I came across Claude Maus and their denim line I got really excited, this stuff is authentic and hot as hell. From great tops and the hottest (p)leather jackets with zip-off hoods? What? These are on fiyyaaa! Stuff kinda looks like a blue-collar version of this year’s Balenciaga for Men gear and I mean that in the nicest way. Anyways, that’s just the tip of the iceberg because their denim is the best part, simple, great looking washes, they look like they got it right. The bad news is that they’ve informed us they have no North American distribution yet. Ouch. I hope it’s just a matter of time before someone gets wise. Drool all over the Claude Maus website in the meantime…

//Tags//Goth, Denim, Fashion, Clothing

The Format is just about right…

The Format is a band that seems to have taken that pop rock sound we’ve all come to love and borrowed elements from all the greats within that ‘now’ sound and then smashed it and rebuilt it from the remnants. That being the most vague description of what may become one of the top albums of 2006 it really is fitting given the broad range of hooks and melodies that ‘Dog Problems’ has to offer. It reminds me of the first time I heard Of Montreal’s ‘Satanic Panic in the Attic’–Oh it sounds like that? Yeah but what does that album remind you of? About 10 other albums, ten very different albums. They don’t transcend moods but rather create 13 tracks that explicate what a fun rock ‘n roll summer cd sounds like. ‘Dog Problems’ is in stores now and you can preview tracks via their myspace page.

//Tags//Music, Indie, Rock, Pop, Entertainment

Parkour is nuts!!

So everyone’s seen the whole Parkour/freerunning thing done on commercials and such but seriously–I had no idea the kinda stuff people were pulling down these days. I’m not one to be jumping all over the city and making like the fuzz is running me down, yes I said fuzz, but I have to give full respect to these guys because they are amazing at what they do. It looks pretty sick when it’s done well…So anyways, found this video of the Dvinsk Clan from Latvia and it’s really amazing…The old abandoned buildings of this ex-Soviet state make an incredibly eerie background for it all too. It’s great stuff and seems to get better and better as it goes along. Check out the video on YouTube.

//Tags//Parkour, Latvia, Free Running, Gymnastics

Married to the MOB sits down with Coutorture…

I’m a fan of girls getting into the streetwear scene just because it’s been a giant sausage party for the most part. Married to the MOB have doing it right and their cred is right up there with the quality of the product. Leah McSweeney of MOB sits down with Julie Fredrickson of Coutorture and dishes it out on the ludicrousness of the sneaker/streetwear game (while Julie shops for new AF1’s at AlifeNYC, ahhh the irony) and the snobbery that exists in the fashion world as a whole. I loved finding out that Chanel was on her jock about using their logo a while back, you’d think they’d have bigger fish to fry…funny. Anyways, just an interesting little shit talk about the biz…Check the video here.

Yacht Rock R.I.P.

One of my favorite online shows has finally come to an end after a short 10-episode run…If you’ve heard the term ‘Yacht Rock’ you likely have a penchant for smooth music, yes those effervecent little melodies that make you contemplate kareoke as a full time job. Taking a look back at a fictional (maybe not so, you be the judge) retelling of the lives of musicians like Micheal McDonald from the Doobie Brothers and other yacht rockers such as Kenny Loggins and Jim Messina, ‘Yacht Rock’ has been a hilarious trip. If you haven’t already watched it you should probably go back and experience all the great episodes like when they helped Micheal Jackson get his ‘smooth’ back or when Micheal McDonald helped Warren G regulate…Check out Channel101 to see all the episodes or you can watch any of them on YouTube, either way, get your smooth on. R.I.P. Yacht Rock.

Kevin Sites: War Chaser

If you’re a news junky like myself you probably find war journalism to be rather depressing and more often than not it gets spun and loses all credibility. Enter Kevin Sites. Yahoo! has created a sub-site and blog based around Kevin Sites’ travels throughout war ravedged areas around the world, from Nepal to Haiti and Iran to Somalia. You might remember him as Sites was embedded with a group of Marines in Iraq last November when he caught a Marine killing a wounded insurgent on video, at the time he received numerous death threats for showing the Marines in a negative light. His reporting is brutally honest and if take the time to read some of his enteries you might just learn something, it’s really great stuff. He also has a blog although it lacks the video and extensive flickr photo galleries. Take a look through this stuff, he’s a pretty brave guy to be travelling into some of these areas…He doesn’t seem to see a whole lot of the scary action on this particular site but it does expose the people who have succumbed to their homes and villages becoming a backdrop for war. Class dismissed.

The Hype Machine goes boom-chicka what?!

Okay so the blogosphere is blowin’ up and if you remember back a couple months ago I was writing about the brilliance behind the Coutorture fashion blog and how blog amalgamations were the future, soooo for all you highfalutin music nerds out there that don’t get enough after your NME and Mojo time there’s the new hotness–The Hype Machine. This is a great music blog amalgamation site that links you to all the other music links out there and has its own built-in player or, if you prefer, a link to Amazon or iTunes to purchase the music straight away…Tried the Podcast link to hear the music via an RSS type set-up but it wasn’t working for me, might still be kinda buggy, this site’s fairly young. There’s also a pretty decent blog that goes along with the site as well. Anyways, find that next elusive track here before you find it anywhere…Boom-chicka, I’m out.

Charlotte Ronson is Made.

So my friend and I were talking about the Ronson’s again yesterday (They seem to keep popping into conversation) and while everyone wants to be a rock star’s kid, Charlotte Ronson really is killing it in the fashion department. She keeps a theme and goes with it, each piece borrowing elements from the next. Her fall line for girls looks great and covers everything from girls at the office to girls at their parents Aspen hideout. Lots of great knits and I wanna see more long in the body low neck sweaters on the females this fall ‘cuz those just look flat out hot. I’m not a huge leggings fan anymore but I have to say that her cotton leggings actually look really good, looks like the spandex has been toned down (don’t correct me with the whole Lycra defense on this one). This whole 70’s thing being modernized is a good thing and one to watch for on your bedroom floor. Anyways, go check out her site for the Fall ’06 line.

Borat the movie!!!!!!

Everyone knows and loves Ali G and well, if you’re an Ali G fan you most likely know Sasha Cohen’s other character and my personal favorite, Borat. Now Borat got in a little trouble last year with the Kazakstani government for well you know, insulting the entire nation and making them all look like imbreds, but now to make things better Mr. Cohen has decided to be a goodwill ambassador of sorts and make ‘Borat: The Movie’…Sure to be a surefire hit in the ex soviet state, Borat makes nice and things and make happy story of pretty place. Oh my we’re in for a treat. Check out the trailer to make laugh.