Thomas & Friends, producers of delightful chocolate-covered biscuit sticks
You Can Get With This, or You Can Can Get With That
The Corpus Christi PD and TxDOT got together with this campaign to raise awareness on the dangers of drinking and driving. Of course, this being Texas, there is obviously no ‘public transportation’ or ‘tipsily walk home’ option—it’s either shell out for a cab or go straight to the hoosegow!
Adobe Sweet!
Cali’ Dreamin’
In addition to being the subject of a big retrospective in his native Sacramento, Bay Area Figurative artist Wayne Thiebaud is also the hand behind Cali’s genuinely-cool vanity plate. Which makes me wonder why NY’s throwback plates are so damn ugly.
Graff Ed
The NY Times did an article on a group of thirtysomething ex-graffiti writers recreating famous pieces from the ’80s as teaching tools. In this brave new graffiti world Dondi becomes ‘Gandhi’ and Sin is reconfigured as ‘Spinoza.’ It’s telling that painted trains are now ancient enough to warrant their own open-air museum. As far as mural projects go Steve Powers and the folks at the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program have still got us beat.
Swag Stopper
The Memphis Commercial Appeal reported that a 45-year-old man shot a teen in the buttocks after he refused to pull up his pants. He wasn’t the first to take aim at low-riding trousers; Obama spoke on it in the 2008 election, and New York State Senator Eric Adams even produced a “Stop the Sag” video campaign.
Joys of Meat
Last week Lady Gaga got some praise from an unlikely source. Speaking at the New School, performance artist Carolee Schneemann big-uped Gaga for her stance on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and for her much-talked-about meat dress. Schneemann made sure to point out that using raw meat as a costume isn’t exactly cutting edge (pun intended). In fact, she first used it over 45 years ago in her Judson Memorial Church performance Meat Joy, a meeting of naked bodies and animal parts that she describes as an ”excessive, indulgent… celebration of flesh as material.”
Rupeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Recently Indian officials rolled out a new symbol for their currency in an attempt to differentiate their rupee (Indian rupee) from the rupees of Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan, Mauritius, and Indonesia. The move signals India’s aspiration to enter the world economic ‘big boys’ club which currently includes only the $, £, €, and ¥. While India claims that it will be one in just five currencies with symbols, other denominations have logos too (they just won’t appear on the monitor). The Azerbaijani Manat and the weirdly art deco/fascist looking Israeli New Shekel being two good examples.
The new symbol, which combines the Devanagri (ra) and Roman ‘R’, was the product of a national design competition. It is both boring and clunky but it beats the old ‘R’ and ‘Rs’ and it has the potential to spur a more (and potentially cooler typographic symbols) as Pakistan, China, Brazil and other emerging economies will, no doubt, want to come up with their own distinctive marks.
Night at the Museum
Last night was the second night that Michael Asher has kept the Whitney up past its 6.00 o’clock bedtime. His contribution to the 2010 Biennial (extending museum hours for a 72 hour marathon) was actually more interesting than a lot of the art featured this time around. The work/event made for lots of hilarity as woozy art patrons yawned, hiccuped, pawed walls, and said some generally bizarre shit. My personal favorites:
1:19 AM “Did I eat asparagus? No…” (two men at urinals in conversation)
2.07 AM “What you say about being driven…that’s like me. I am so into my entrepreneurial vision.” (fraty guy to gf? date?)
2:41 AM “I just love that this is the next generation…” (twentysomething guy)
3:47 AM “He’s got no reason for those big ass glasses! There’s no sun!” (two teenagers walking by bugeye sunglasses-wearing art dude)
A Tale of Two Escobars
This week The Two Escobars opened at the Tribeca Film festival. The documentary traces the rise of narco-football (high stakes soccer financed by coke cartel money) and focuses on the parallel lives of two (unrelated) Escobars from Medellín: Pablo, the infamous drug kingpin and football fanatic, and Andrés, the promising young player who scored on his own team in the 1994 World Cup and was murdered as a result.
about the Benjamins
The new c-note set to hit the streets in 2011 has 3D safety ribbon and watermarks galore, but the design is so ridiculous that our bon vivant vegetarian turkey-lovin’ founding father is surely rolling in his grave at the thought of having to share space with a giant orange inkwell.
Ash Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday
The smoke belching out of Mt. Eyjafjallajokull has finally subsided and airports are opening back up across Europe. This might be a good time to meditate on our fragile interconnectedness as the Estonian president did on his four day bus trip back from Istanbul or to do some heavy science research and learn more about how subglacial volcanoes work and why their ash makes jet engines go crazy. It’s more likely that the volcano will be proceeded by an eruption of lawsuits: airlines will demand compensation from EU governments to recoup their loses, passengers will do the same for their hotel bills, train tickets, and exorbitantly overpriced airport meals, and air freight companies will be looking for a way to unload lbs of spoiled mahi-mahi.
Shoe Thieves of Seoul
South Korean police found an ex-con with over 1,700 shoes he’d stolen from mourners at funerals. In their front page article even the dowdy NY Times couldn’t resist a little crack, noting that for the perpetrator it “was a case of if the shoe fits, take it.”
Greek Style
Venice has its canals, London’s got red double-deckers, and New York? We’ve got our idiosyncratic ‘Greek’ coffee cups. However, in recent years the blue ‘Greek’ cup has been taking a hit at the hands of the green Starbucks cup, the orange ‘n fuchsia Dunkin’ Donuts cup, and the monkey-shit-brown (sometimes referred to as ‘tan’) McCafé ‘premium’ cup.
Like all things that are on their way out the ‘Greek,’ or Anthora, cup has experienced a revival just as it was definitively leaving the scene, and while it’s rarely found at the local java spot it has a new life emblazoned on t-shirts, cuff links, and purses. All of this merchandizing isn’t exactly a coincidence, the design was recently bought by a subsidiary of the Solo Cup Co. (world famous for their 16 oz red ‘party’ cup). While Solo is fully invested in preserving the iconic quality of the Anthora, they also turn out heat-resistant cups for Starbucks, Così, and Whole Foods.
