Madame Lamb

daniel johnston

2009-12-27T16:43:00.002-05:00

here's a guy that i heard about on the good old radio...daniel johnston has been around for a while now and has been recording and putting out material since the early 80's. he's suffered from mental issues throughout his recording career, and his output has apparently been a bit erratic as a result, but the stuff i've heard really rocks. from what i can tell, this man is the forefather of lo-fi dudes like ariel pink and kurt vile - a lot of his early recordings are one man affairs laid down on 8-track cassette, and share a similar off the cuff quality. so if you like music like that, and have a soft spot for a neil young "outsider" type persona, you should check this guy out.

here's a cut off of his most recent album, Is and Always Was, and a couple from his mid-90's album, Fun.

daniel johnston - "freedom"

daniel johnston - "foxy girl"
daniel johnston - "psycho nightmare"

master of none

2009-12-27T15:44:00.006-05:00

art adds to the city

2009-12-27T03:04:00.003-05:00

show media is improving the aesthetics of your daily bustle. the vegas based company that owns half the ad spaces atop new york taxis commissioned shirin neshat, alex katz, and yoko ono to create art pieces that will be displayed on 500 taxis through january. yoko ono's piece incorporates the phrase she and lennon coined during their anti-war movement, "the war is over". “It’s almost like a dance,” Yoko says, “the way the message is always in motion.” of the $100,000 gift, show media owner john amato says, “I thought it was time to take a step back. January’s a slow month. I could have cut my rates but instead I decided to hit the mute button and give something back to the city.”

read more at the new york times. thanks for the tip, pj.

new year new lamb

2009-12-26T08:55:00.000-05:00

it's time to start thinking positive for 2010. 2009 marked the year of me quitting smoking so, after four years, that can retire from new years resolutions. here are my resolutions for the new decade:

hop back on the yoga train (i've fallen off since october).
reduce blackberry use (and other radioactive habits).
omit cusswords from my vocabulary. replace phrases like "fucking kick ass" with words like "swell".
read the new yorker in it's entirety each week.
learn how to knit.
learn to cook from julia child.
memorize flora varieties.
paint more.
read more biographies.
print more photos.

what are your new year's resolutions? please post them in the comments section.

well maybe just a half a drink more

2009-12-25T01:32:00.001-05:00

This charming rendition of "Baby it's cold outside" sung by Zooey Deschanel and Will Ferrell in the movie Elf is ideal for ringing in the holidays. The piece won an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1950 when Ester Williams and Ricardo Montalban performed it in the film Neptune's Daughter. "Baby it's cold outside" was written by Frank Loesser (Guys and Dolls, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying) in 1944. Loesser premiered the song with his wife at one of their cocktail parties.

jacquelyn jablonski versus crystal renn

2009-12-23T10:56:00.000-05:00

in next month's v magazine, terry richardson captures the walk-off between 17-year-old calvin klein and proenza schouler model jacquelyn jablonski and plus size model crystal renn (a size 16). renn, a former conventionally thin catwalk model, recently published a book about her battle with eating disorders called "Hungry: A Young Model’s Story of Appetite, Ambition and the Ultimate Embrace of Curves." renn told dailymail: "I’d love to see [the fashion industry] open their eyes to the variety of women. That variety is what’s beautiful." at first glance, i couldn't help but notice how much more "slutty" renn looked in the same clothing but a friend called to my attention that renn seems to exude more confidence (save for photo three where jablonski's skirt appears to be much longer than renn's). what are your thoughts?

art comparison: funeral at ornans v. accident on u.s. route 66

2009-12-23T10:00:00.005-05:00

exercise your brain: what are some similarities between Courbet's Funeral at Ornans (1849) and Robert Frank's Accident on U.S. Route 66 (1956):

Courbet's painting depicts a small town funeral. Robert Frank photographed the aftermath of a roadside accident. The natural placement of the people coping with the accident mirrors those gathering in Courbet's piece. Both the painting and photograph, stunningly capture the somber and ghostly mood.

a new video from washed out

2009-12-22T20:25:00.005-05:00

i've already blogged how much i'm loving the mellifluous and lo-fi sound of washed out (and their perfectly trimming video for "feel it all around"). here's their new video for "belong", directed by blake salzman. i like the aesthetic of the intro and the magic dance floor ride that commences around 2:22. they need some tour dates.

Washed Out - Belong (Music Video) from Blake Salzman on Vimeo.

isn't there anyone who knows what christmas is all about?

2009-12-22T08:06:00.001-05:00

i overdosed on christmas cheer shortly after halloween. i can't even stand listening to xmas music while i wait for my coffee at starbucks but shopping for five hours yesterday really pushed me over the edge. i decided the only other person who felt as nonplussed as myself was good ole' charlie brown. so i turned on charles schulz's the 1965 christmas classic "a charlie brown christmas" this afternoon to remind me that the true spirit of christmas is clinical depression! in the spirit of the holidays, here's charlie brown & the gang rocking out to vince guaraldi's jam "linus and lucy". i always had an affinity to pigpen, the stinky kid. check out at all that dust!

syn emergence

2009-12-21T20:25:00.012-05:00

This is simply amazing. Rich Bevan explains his work:

"Syn Emergence is a project which examines my own associative relationships between sound, form and space. The project is constructed according to a range of specific sonic and spatial scale rule sets (micro, component, meso and macro) which I designed as part of a cross-disciplinary notation/cartographic system. The film was conceived as part of my Masters at the Bartlett School of Architecture."

via COÛTE QUE COÛTE

the coca cola santa

2009-12-21T09:46:00.005-05:00

coca cola recognized the power of advertising early on, and leveraged celebrity talent like no other before or after them...behold the coca-cola santa. you'd be hard-pressed to find a figure more universally loved than this man, and coca-cola has reaped the benefits for generations...and they don't have to pay him. wonder why nobody has ever considered jesus...

from the annals of coca-cola lore:

"For inspiration, [illustrator] Sundblom turned to Clement Clark Moore's 1822 poem "A Visit From St. Nicholas" (commonly called "'Twas the Night Before Christmas"). Moore's description of St. Nick led to an image of Santa that was warm, friendly, pleasantly plump and human. For the next 33 years, Sundblom painted portraits of Santa that helped to create the modern image of Santa -- an interpretation that today lives on in the minds of people of all ages, all over the world."

read more here.

santa's debut appearance in 1931

santa with "sprite boy" in 1949

santa and his elves in 1953

1964 - the dog featured here is based on the gray poodle that belonged to the florist in the illustrator's neighborhood...he changed it to black to have it stand out

"and my buns, they don't feel nothin' like steel"

2009-12-21T08:31:00.003-05:00

tai, you taught us that it is okay to fall in love with the pothead skater boys.
r.i.p. brittany murphy.

winter solstice

2009-12-20T18:06:00.002-05:00

the shortest day of the year has come. today marks the day that the position of the earth's telluris axis is 23° 26' (tilting away from the sun). from here on out earth's steering toward the sun. everything's up hill from here, kids!

sunday

2009-12-20T17:54:00.001-05:00

lovely sentence for a lovely snow-filled sunday (beginning with "A book of poems..."). read the article in it's entirety at the new york times: Kathryn Harrison: Was that you, Santa?

A book of poems the size of a postage stamp, with real, printed pages; a rare seashell, pink and fluted; a little bear carved from teak — every year a stocking stuffed so perfectly as to suggest my distractible, elusive young mother had secretly been paying me attention all along, closely enough to know my desires.

art comparison: st. theresa in ecstasy v. phenomena of ecstasy

2009-12-16T02:31:00.003-05:00

Find the similarities between Bernini's St. Theresa in Ecstasy (1647) and Salvador Dali's Phenomena of Ecstasy (1933):

Bernini's St. Theresa has experienced a religious ecstasy, demonstrated by her languid, limp arm. Dali's repetition of female faces in a state which he considers ecstasy resemble that of Bernini's sculpture. Dali also includes a snapshot of a woman lying listlessly on a bed, mirroring Bernini's work and implying that the ecstasy resulted from an orgasm.

the earth as saturn

2009-12-15T18:08:00.001-05:00

jason kottke recently blogged a video that showed what the earth would look like if it had saturnine rings. at night, the rings would dazzle in the sky like rainbow road in mariokart. here are some photo mock-ups that blew my mind. the mockups were created according to the orientation of the photograph and the location's longitude/latitude. they also adhere to the the roche limit for the earth.

lord knows you've got to change

2009-12-15T14:55:00.002-05:00

a fresh-faced santana playing "evil ways", a song written by clarence 'frogman' henry, at woodstock in 1969. wait for carlos to rip it at the end there:

smooth talkin'

2009-12-13T19:45:00.010-05:00

i spent the better portion of my saturday recording and mixing this song i've been noodling around with for a while. check it out and lemme know what you think.

merkin and the muffleys - "smooth talkin'" (UPDATED)

tgif

2009-12-11T18:10:00.001-05:00

(private collection, boston johnson)

may your weekend bring you lips as fantastique as this creation of salvador dali's.
xoxo,
ML

some choice wares

2009-12-10T20:08:00.006-05:00

in the most recent issue of wsj magazine, "the artisan issue," the editors direct your attention to a $25,000 record player and an $80,000 motorcycle. ridiculous price tags aside, everything featured in the magazine is pretty unbelievable.

the issue, in addition to serving as a gift guide of sorts, highlights a resurgence of the artisan. from the introduction:

"A handcrafted good is also an antidote to the formulaic. Decisions must be made on the spot. Judgment is required. When a pressman is preparing a book page to be printed by letterpress, for instance, it’s his intuition that tells him that the page number might require a little less pressure than the body of the text. 'That’s not something you can tell someone,' explains Luke Pontifell, the owner of Thornwillow Press, which handmakes leather-bound limited-edition books in Newburgh, N.Y. 'That is something an artisan has a feel for.'"

read more.

start saving up:

a Wegener surfboard hewn from the australian hardwood, paulownia - the surfboard that God himself shreds with. handmade of course.

this is the record player mentioned above. vintage-inspired and hand assembled, it only plays first edition pressings of rare records. joking aside, this is one stunning piece of machinery. check out shindo labs for some pretty sweet looking tube amplifiers.

so i think this is the best costume for today

2009-12-10T12:07:00.007-05:00

in 1975, the maysles brothers ("gimme shelter") traveled to an actively crumbling east hampton mansion known as grey gardens to document the peculiar habits of it's dwellers, jackie onassis's estranged cousin and aunt both named edith beale. the documentary, called "grey gardens", captures the idiosyncrasies of the reclusive beales who interacted with hardly anyone on a regular basis save for the racoons that had taken to their home, and a boy named jerry whom they employed as a handyman. neighbors did everything in their power to kick the beale's out of the prominent georgica pond neighborhood, and finally succeeded in 1979. here's a clip of one of little edie's sagacious monologues where she discusses her costume choice for daily life at grey gardens. everyone could use a little edie in their life.

"...mother wanted me to come out in a kimono so we had quite a fight.."

i think i could love her

2009-12-09T23:53:00.000-05:00

was watching ed sullivan rock and roll classics on the treadmill today and a 1969 performance of "crimson and clover" by tommy james and the shondells blew my mind. the set and cinematography were progressive for the ed sullivan show, and a good move for the band. turning down the opportunity to play at woodstock, however, was not.

stickers for your keyboard

2009-12-09T05:37:00.001-05:00

for those running a das keyboard (todd) and/or trying to improve their typing skills, now you can dazzle up your machine with keyboard stickers by Chris de Lorenzo that include b for bowie, g for geisha, and y for yeti.

more information at buzzfeed.com.

lets all just take a moment....

2009-12-08T22:52:00.011-05:00

...and remember the death and posthumous generosity of one of the most iconic figures of the 20th century.

after his death on june 1st, 2008, the contents of the notorious (and notoriously fabulous) apartment yves saint laurent shared with lifelong partner pierre bergé on the rue de babylone were auctioned by christie's paris to the tune of 400 million euro.

the second sale this november of the contents of saint laurent's château in normandy raised an addtional 9 million euro. several items from the more recent sale:

a sculpture by césar: €157,000 a pair of empire armchairs: €241,000

the entirety of the proceeds from both auctions was donated by m. bergé to aids research in memory of m. saint laurent.

hitchcock's title sequences

2009-12-08T17:55:00.008-05:00

it's a shame that most movies no longer feature a title sequence - while i'll admit that most of the time they're pretty dull, when a title sequence is well thought out there's nothing better to set you in the mood for the movie you're about to watch.

hitchcock was a master of the witty and purposeful title sequence - take a look at a handful of his best below. i particularly like the one for rear window - hitchcock really establishes the meta-cinematic, "movie about watching movies" theme right from the get go!...as a side note, after watching the north by northwest one (below), i'm just about positive that mad men creator matt weiner must've had it in mind when dreaming up that recurring shot of the side of the sterling cooper building.

North by Northwest

Vertigo

Rear Window

Psycho

alfiehitchie MySpace Video