Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Near Djúpivogur, Iceland


















peterbaker's photostream

via Drive-By Blogging

Prison Art


















by Tenola Gamble

Felonious Ramblings: Prison Arts & Crafts

Roman Loranc














Private Road with Clouds

Roman Loranc: dreaming in daylight, Photographs 1993-2008

Roman Loranc - Black and White Photographer

more at wood s lot

stray bullets

Pirates die strangely after taking Iranian ship A tense standoff has developed in waters off Somalia over an Iranian merchant ship laden with a mysterious cargo that was hijacked by pirates. Somali pirates suffered skin burns, lost hair and fell gravely ill “within days” of boarding the MV Iran Deyanat. Some of them died. Andrew Mwangura, the director of the East African Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, told the Sunday Times: “We don’t know exactly how many, but the information that I am getting is that some of them had died. There is something very wrong about that ship.” (via)

also:
Interview: Matthew Herbert (via)
The International Dialects of English Archive (via)
Carny Lingo (via)

viddy:
Ken Adam talking about the war room set he designed for Dr. Strangelove (via)
Knots - How To Tie A Monkey’s Fist And Heave A Line
Global Air Traffic Simulation (.wmv download; very cool, much better than the YouTube version)
Fridge Monster

blog of the moment: Great Map (always a fun and fascinating journey)

Storm


















from the archive of John H. McNulty

Portrait of Vic (?) Willis, baseball player


















photograph by William M. Vander Weyde

George Eastman House's photostream

Femmes à barbe


















Clémentine Delait

Femmes à barbe

via everlasting blört

Orson Whales



Alex Itin:

It is more a less a birthday gift to myself. I've been drawing it on every page of Moby Dick (using two books to get both sides of each page) for months. The soundtrack is built from searching "moby dick" on You Tube (I was looking for Orson's Preacher from the the John Huston film)... you find tons of Led Zep and drummers doing Bonzo and a little Orson... makes for a nice Melville in the end.

hail to the everlasting blört (presently, our cheese is thrice the fencepost)

This is what the two copies of Moby Dick looked like when he was done:


















image via if:book

check out IT IN place and his animation of Ulysses

Kaki King - Air and Kilometers


kakiking

animation by Ingrid K. Brooker

Kaki King

via bagger

Monday, September 29, 2008

What's up with Kerouac lately?


















Jack Kerouac and Joyce Johnson in New York City in the late 1950s

Always inspiring and A rare, rare find... What's up with Kerouac lately?

Seminal Image #866












Barry Lyndon
(Stanley Kubrick; 1975)


American Cinematographer: Photographing Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon - John Alcott

Kobayashi Kiyochika


















Graphic Arts:

This is a selection of satirical portraits by the Meiji printmaker Kobayashi Kiyochika (1847-1916)...

Paracelsus


















Presumed portrait of Paracelsus, attributed to the school of Quentin Matsys

Paracelsus gained a reputation for being arrogant, and soon garnered the anger of other physicians in Europe. He held the chair of medicine at the University of Basel for less than a year; while there his colleagues became angered by allegations that he had publicly burned traditional medical books....

He then wandered Europe, Africa and Asia Minor, in the pursuit of hidden knowledge....

For a long time Beach Boys fan














from pep-pep-peptide

Marcel Flisiuk
















Following the train

Years back, I ran an art supply store in New Orleans. It was an interesting phase of my life. We had a number of memorable customers. Marcel was one of our favorites. I was always amazed at the amount of stuff he would ride off with on his bicycle. I like his art, too.

Marcel Flisiuk

Starskee - My Way


starskee music

Starskee

via Discobelle

Groove Armada - At the River


(video link)

Groove Armada

Neotropic - Inch Inch


rizmaslen

Neotropic

Sunday, September 28, 2008

closed












(via)

I needed some me time, so I'll be back Monday morning. A couple of notes, in passing:

R.I.P., my man.















(via)


and remember:













from (via)

I leave you with a song (bonjour, Marilyn!):



Amadou & Mariam - Je pense a toi

hat tip: Prancehall

Friday, September 26, 2008

sisters


















101 uses for gaffers tape

sisters on jwlphotography's photostream

via Design You Trust

Incredible Stunts
















Incredible Stunts: pictures by Jeffrey R Werner:

Daredevil escape artist Rick Meisel has been performing the world's cleanest escape act for years for TV shows and audiences around the world. For this stunt the escape artist risks drowning and a battering as he works his way out of six pairs of handcuffs and two leg irons while spinning in a suds-filled washing machine. Meisel admitted to having surgery in order to fit into the machine. Photograph: Incredible Features/Barcroft Media

In the trenches of the brain as an artist-lilliputian













Photo Journal:

A work by Belgian artist Jan Fabre titled “In the trenches of the brain as an artist-lilliputian” was photographed Thursday at Austria’s Kunsthaus Bregenz museum.
Mr. Fabre’s exhibit, “From the Cellar to the Attic, From the Feet to the Brain,” runs from Sept. 27 to Jan. 25. (Miro Kuzmanovic/Reuters)

stray bullets

Antiquities smuggling: Growing problem at US ports Three years ago, an elderly Italian man pulled his van into a South Florida park to sell some rare, 2,500-year-old emeralds plundered from a South American tomb. But Ugo Bagnato, an archaeologist, didn't know his potential customer was a federal agent. (via)

Tourist who found Stone Age axes rewarded £20,000 A British tourist who unearthed four Stone Age axes on a beach in Brittany has been put forward for a prize worth more than £20,000 by the Ministry of Culture for not keeping the treasure. (via)

CEO murdered by mob of sacked Indian workers Corporate India is in shock after a mob of workers bludgeoned to death the chief executive who sacked them from a factory in a suburb of Delhi. (via)

also:
Cheap Chinese lederhosen anger Germans
a couple of good lists this week: Top 10 Things That Are Surprisingly Good For You & 10 Odd Discontinued Olympic Sports (and don't forget drawing and watercolors)
Flashback: The One Elevator Trick Every Traveler Should Know
Neil Armstrong makes rare speech as NASA turns 50
Erase Cell Phone Data: Free Data Eraser (via)

viddy:
The Mike Wallace Interview: Frank Lloyd Wright (via)
The arty farty show
Sati Audiovisual (excellent VJ performance)

Portrait of Hanns Hoerbiger (1860-1931), Engineer and Astronomer


















Hans Hörbiger

Smithsonian Institution's photostream

James Joyce (1926)


















James Joyce, Paris, 1926

photographed by Berenice Abbott


via Ordinary finds

Rough sea and Pier












The Hollidays. "It seems so long ago... we were happy then..."
















Dear Sir; --
You are hereby notified that Richard Holiday eloped from this institution April 30 1903.


















The unfortunate therapy.
















As to the escape of Richard Holliday, from the Columbus State Hospital for the Insane.


















State Hospital, a memento; mixed media by Juliana Peloso

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Windmills in Eastern Germany
















Wulferstedt 2 (Bördekreis), Sachsen-Anhalt, 25.02.1995

Windmills in Eastern Germany: Photos by Reinhard Krause

via Conscientious

1000 Frames of Hitchcock











Alfred Hitchcock Wiki - 1000 Frames of Hitchcock

That's 1000 frames from each of over 50 Hitchcock films.

hat tip: KERLAMES

chilies













Chinese farmers dried chilies under the sun on the outskirts of Kurla, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, Tuesday (Reuters)

Photo Journal: Pictures of the Day

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Mogwai - The Sun Smells Too Loud (unofficial)


(video link)

from their newly released album The Hawk Is Howling

Bummer that they had to postpone the remainder of their North American tour:

We are sad to announce that we have had to cancel our remaining American and Canadian shows due to ill health. Our other dates in Europe and Japan will be going ahead as planned. We will re-schedule the shows in 2009.

Martin explains what happened

"I was taken into hospital last night almost immediately after the show at ATP. I've been having some problems with my pacemaker for the duration of the tour and it unfortunately culminated in me being sent to the emergency room. The doctors there initially thought i would have to have corrective surgery at a larger hospital nearer NYC but i have been given the all clear to travel home on the understanding that i go straight to my cardiologist on arrival back in Scotland.

"Tbh, i'm really bummed about having to go home and feel for the folk who had bought tickets for our upcoming shows but i can honestly say it would be almost impossible for me to carry on at this point as my pacemaker has broken skin and the surrounding area has become infected."

Mogwai

via Matablog

Alex Webb, US/Mexico Border (San Yisidro, CA)












Alex Webb, “US/Mexico Border (San Yisidro, CA),” c-print, 1979

Alex Webb

via THAT'S A NEGATIVE

Michel de Broin, Dead Star, 2008













image: thanks to the artist and Eyebeam


Michel de Broin

Eyebeam

via hyde or die

stray bullets

Lift could take passengers straight into space Japanese scientists are attempting to build a lift (elevator for us Americans) that will take passengers 62,000 miles into space.

MI6 agent's cover slips during BBC interview In his dangerous job the MI6 spy's identity needs to remain a closely guarded secret. So you can imagine his surprise when, during an interview with the national broadcaster, his carefully chosen disguise of a fake moustache failed him spectacularly.

Blogging about blogging What do young people think about blogging? Let’s have a look; here’s what one 18 year old has to say. This one happens to be my son, but I don’t think that prevents him from representing his generation: ‘People no longer are just able to blog, but blogging is increasingly becoming accepted as a legitimate medium of information; albeit quite different to others. At the cost of the credibility associated with major news services and other more traditional ways of getting our information, a whole new world is opened up- of personal opinion, a perspective into the lives and experiences of others and original creativity. When subjective experience and opinion is sought over objective fact, blogging becomes a medium very difficult to beat.’ Blogging is passé? I suspect that many of the old-timers have become a bit tired and unimaginative-- it's just getting started. (Let's encourage young bloggers instead of greeting them with statements like "Blogging is dead")

Ike Really Tore Up Louisville You will find a collection of pictures I took after the storm here. Unfortunately, some streets still look like this a week later. Though we got electricity back about 12 hours after it went out, most houses and businesses around us are still dark. LG&E, our local utility, has been saying it may be another week before all power is restored.

Au revoir to cool hand Luc Besson Luc Besson is in denial. The 49-year-old French film potentate and master of pop cinema (see Nikita, Léon, The Big Blue) has made yet another peerless action classic in the Paris-set kidnap drama Taken. Written and produced by Besson, it stars Liam Neeson as a semi-retired CIA hatchet man who will stop at nothing to bring his missing daughter back home, and send her captors to hell. It is directed by Besson’s former Steadicam operator Pierre Morel, but with its luxurious mix of slick style, emotional melodrama and bone-crunching thrills, it’s got Besson’s fingerprints all over it.

Art and Science, Virtual and Real, Under One Big Roof On a hillside overlooking this college town on the banks of the Hudson, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has erected a technological pleasure dome for the mind and senses. Eight years and $200 million in the making, the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, or Empac, resembles an enormous 1950s-era television set. But inside are not old-fashioned vacuum tubes but the stuff of 21st-century high-tech dreams dedicated to the marriage of art and science as it has never been done before, its creators say — 220,000 square feet of theaters, studios and work spaces hooked to supercomputers.

TinEye is an image search engine. Search the web for images using an image. Finally! It's still getting its legs-- a lot of images are still not indexed and it's difficult to find an original source, but this is certainly a start. (via)

John Cage playing chess

with Joan La Barbara














Joan La Barbara and John Cage in pre-rehearsal chess game, 1976 Photo by Michael McKenzie

hat tip: MIXTUUR

with Marcel Duchamp














Duchamp, Teeny, and Cage playing chess and making music in a performance, Sightssoundsystems, a festival of art and technology in Toronto, 1968














Cage and Duchamp in Toronto


backstory:

Actually, Cage hadn't lost every single match with Duchamp. There was one that he definitely won, after a fashion. It happened in Toronto, in 1968. Cage had invited Duchamp and Teeny to be with him on the stage. All they had to do was play chess as usual, but the chessboard was wired and each move activated or cut off the sound coming live from several musicians (David Tudor was one of them). They played until the room emptied. Without a word said, Cage had managed to turn the chess game (Duchamp's ostensive refusal to work) into a working performance. And the performance was a musical piece. In pataphysical terms, Cage had provided an imaginary solution to a nonexistent problem: whether life was superior to art. Playing chess that night extended life into art – or vice versa. All it took was plugging in their brains to a set of instruments, converting nerve signals into sounds. Eyes became ears, moves music. Reunion was the name of the piece. It happened to be their endgame.

images found on john e > THE CAGE COLLECTION

and show your work...














For well over a month I have been trying to find a source or explanation for this photo. Here is the best so far:

Tacky Raccoons:

I can’t make anything out of this, except for two typos in the 14th line in the top board about a foot from the right. Otherwise the proof is correct. Here is the problem:

if”n”is a whole number that is more than 3.
The value of”x,y,z”in the equation
“x^n+y^n=z^n”will not be a whole number.
write an equation to prove it.

The man is/was a mathematician of Czech Republic, Pilsen, Westbohemian University, Department of Mathematics, RNDr. Jiří Čížek, CSc.

(their source wasn't much help)

Thanks to Uncertain Timer airport_whiskey, we have a source:

"Mathalysis" / "Matalýza" (c) 1998 Milan Kollinger

and this:

http://www.kma.zcu.cz/main.php

Thanks again, M. Whiskey!

Yousuf Karsh


















TIME:

Peter Lorre, 1946
"The large sign on the driveway outside of his home read 'Beware of Ferocious Dogs.' They turned out to be two frisky Pekingese. His screen role as the sensitive deviant "M" had launched his European career as a serious actor. The American movie legend of Peter Lorre was that of the timorous, sometimes menacing, sometimes bumbling sidekick of the arch villain. He turned out to be a gemütlich Viennese gentlemen of wit and culture."

Yousuf Karsh at the MFA in Boston, September 23, 2008 thru January 19, 2009

E.O. Hoppé: Photographer


















Medicine man with mask and costume, Palm Island, Queensland, 1930

E.O. Hoppé: Photographer, Edwardian Modernist (1878-1972)

image from The Fifth Continent - 1931

hat tip:

Another take on the Straw-Boys


















STRAW-BOYS: An Ancient Custon still Observed in IRELAND, THE GRAFIC, JULY 8, 1911 "From time immemorial a strange wedding custom has been observed in the West of Ireland, young men- known as the Straw-Boys- who have not been invited to the ceremony, and who care to present themselves in the disguise shown in our picture, being allowed to join in the festivities and control all the arrangements for a couple of hours."
illustration by E. A. Morrow

Print collection of Maggie Land Blanck - Customs in Ireland:

Straw-boys activity occurred mostly in the west of Ireland. Groups of revelers wearing pointed top hats, masks, and skirts of straw arrived uninvited at wakes and weddings where they sang, danced, played music and games and generally performed acts of buffoonery often of a risque sexual nature. They were welcomed because it was believe that they brought good luck to the families involved. The entertainment value was probably considerable. The masks and outlandish attire was supposed to hide the identity of the individual and allow complete freedom from his inhibitions. However, I would imagine that in the small rural environments where these festivities were most popular everyone would have pretty much known everyone else and this was a case of who was kidding whom.

In the Fantastic Dress of the Notorious Straw Boys


















The Secret Museum of Mankind:

During the early years of the nineteenth century sections of Ireland were overrun by one of the many terrorist gangs that have from time to time existed there, known, from their peculiar but effective grass masks, as the Straw Boys. Through these masks they could see without being recognized, and their habit of dressing as women added to their grotesque appearance

via Drive-By Blogging

William Illingworth


















Archives of the West:

George Armstrong Custer poses with his Indian scouts during the Black Hills expedition of 1874. The man pointing to the map was named "Bloody Knife," a member of the Cree tribe. Photograph by William Illingworth.

William H. Illingworth

hat tip: Ordinary finds

Links













(found postcard, 1910)

thanks Jules!

Monday, September 22, 2008

Bohemian Grove














Ronald Reagan, Glenn T. Seaborg and Richard Nixon at the Bohemian Grove
(image: Wikipedia)

Is Tricky Dick sporting a 'stache-n-dash?

Bohemian Grove

hat tip: vintagephoto

Graham Miller, Photographer












Suburban Splendour:

These characters are troubled, but not irretrievably lost; they carry a dignified endurance and a sense of bruised optimism. These people are survivors. They have a desire, as we all do, to be transported from darkness into light.

hat tip: Flak Photo

Visual Music - Amon Tobin music video



A perfect video for your Monday morning!

12FRAMES (Jan Schönwiesner):

My graduation film. It´s a music video about a man trapped in a dream. His world, consisting of "plattenbauten" (buildings made with precast concrete slabs) begins to fall apart...

Outstanding work, Jan (ausgezeichnet!).

Making Of

Amon Tobin

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Thelonious Monk - Blue Monk


(video link)

Thelonious Monk - Blue Monk (Oslo, April 1966)

clip from the video Monk in Oslo

Thelonious Monk - Piano
Charlie Rouse - Saxophone
Larry Gates - Bass
Ben Riley - Drums

(prev - my Monk backstory)

Monk's Music


















image from the album cover for Monk's Music

from Ben Pearce's photostream
via this isn't happiness

Thurston Hopkins - A wet night in New Orleans (1953)


















Thurston Hopkins gallery
Thurston Hopkins at Photographer's Gallery

via vintagephoto

Gary Jules - Mad World (animated by Emil Goodman)



Animation by: Zero Hokum Fi_m (Emil Goodman)

Gary Jules

hat tip: Cartoon Brew

Fifty People, One Question



Mine: To be in good health, which includes not being addicted to nicotine, being able to see out of both eyes and having my teeth straightened.

by Benjamin Reece
his site/weblog

via Projectionist

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Saturday morning cute-attack












This photograph was taken in 1911 in Alaska. Is shows a man feeding a small bear cub
.

Old Picture of the Day: Bear Cub

Bowie mugshot















The Smoking Gun:

...photo of David Bowie, which was snapped in Rochester, New York following the singer's March 1976 arrest on a felony pot possession charge. Bowie, 29 at the time, was nabbed along with Iggy Pop and two other codefendants at a Rochester hotel following a Saturday concert. Bowie was held in the Monroe County jail for a few hours before being released. The Rochester Police Department mug shot was taken three days after Bowie's arrest, when the performer appeared at City Court for arraignment.

hat tip: hyde or die

Fellini


















Federico Fellini

I have looked everywhere for a source. Any ideas?

via Human Under Construction

stray bullets

If you tried to follow the link from the Mark Cuban item yesterday and got nothing, here is why.

Players You Don't Hear About The war here is described as "complicated," which is another way of saying that there are several different factions fighting, sometimes as allies and sometimes against each other. The major players are... (via)

Why So Serious? The modern classical-music performance, as audiences have come to know it and sometimes to love it, adheres to a fairly rigid format.... Most people are aware that this clockwork routine—reassuringly dependable or drearily predictable, depending on whom you ask—is of recent origin, and that before 1900 concerts assumed a quite different form. I've read about bloody sword-fights in the aisles and composers and musicians pulling crazy musical stunts to get the attention of the audience. (via)

Alan Moore on 'Watchmen' movie: 'I will be spitting venom all over it' "I find film in its modern form to be quite bullying," Moore told me during an hour-long phone call from his home in England. "It spoon-feeds us, which has the effect of watering down our collective cultural imagination. It is as if we are freshly hatched birds looking up with our mouths open waiting for Hollywood to feed us more regurgitated worms. (via)

Leningrad Cowboys with the Red Army Orchestra and Choir - Happy Together


The Leningrad Cowboys, in concert with the Red Army Orchestra and Choir, singing Happy Together in their legendary concert in Helsinki’s Senate Square at the end of the cold war in 1993. From the Aki Kaurismäki documentary Total Balalaika Show.

This is so freakin' awesome. What happened?

Big thanks to The Chawed Rosin for brightening my morning.

watch the original here
another favorite version here

Friday, September 19, 2008

The wooden hat

















Seen on top of mountain Batur, Bali

edwindejongh's photostream

via copula*

Joshua A. Norton, Emperor of these United States and Protector of Mexico
















image: Wikimedia

I missed this anniversary by a couple of days, but on the 17th of September 1859, Joshua A. Norton proclaimed himself "Emperor of these United States and Protector of Mexico." Funny thing is, many people went along with it. He made numerous decrees, issued his own currency, (that was accepted in the establishments he frequented) and when he died, nearly 30 thousand people packed the streets of San Francisco for his funeral.

Emperor Norton in popular culture

hat tip: LedgerGermane