"The craziest science fiction movie ever made."

Liquid Sky (1982)

Invisible aliens in a tiny flying saucer come to Earth looking for heroin. They land on top of a New York apartment inhabited by a drug dealer and her female, androgynous, bisexual nymphomaniac lover, a fashion model. The aliens soon find the human pheromones created in the brain during orgasm preferable to heroin, and the model's casual sex partners begin to disappear. This increasingly bizarre scenario is observed by a lonely woman in the building across the street, a German scientist who is following the aliens, and an equally androgynous, drug-addicted male model. (Both models are played by Anne Carlisle, in a dual role.) Darkly funny and thoroughly weird.

SOURCE: IMDB

Thank you, Brooklyn Vegan

In the spirit of keeping it cheery

"BrooklynVegan is a NYC-centric mostly-music blog that focuses on reporting international music news, live show reviews, pictures, tour dates, gossip, tips, MP3's, videos, and just about anything else a music fan could want. Non-music news finds it's way on to our pages as well, and every post comes with an open exchange of ideas via the public commenting system."

For a perfect example, check out their wonderfully dynamic listing
of FREE shows, movies and other events here.

SOURCE: Brooklyn Vegan

New Year's Eve!

Blonde Redhead
Islands / Elvis Perkins

at Terminal 5
[More Info]

Pelican — Lost in the Headlights

SOURCE: HydraHead

It's AntiPop time again!

November 13-16, 2008
Foundation Presents and Fighting of Orlando, Florida has put together a nice little line-up for Antipop. The most notable acts to me include Conor Oberst, Summerbirds In The Cellar, Black Lips, Pelican, Phosphorescent, The Aquabats, Mike Doughty, plus much more. This is one of those fests that takes place across different venues all in the downtown Orlando area, and you can get a pass that gets you into every show of the 4 days for $45.

SOURCES: Antipop, OhmPark

Little Joy and a whole lotta love…

SOURCE: PitchforkTV

President Barack Obama

SOURCE: CNN

Political Intolerance and Lemonade

Producer Katie Ball visits a child's lemonade stand in her Orlando neighborhood. After a cool drink and good-hearted conversation with the family, Ball notices that they had deliberately removed and/or covered their McCain campaign signs so as not to risk offending any would-be customers.

SOURCE: Public Radio Exchange (PRX.org)

SURROUNDED by Bold Hype

Friday November 14th is the
opening for

the next show at
Bold Hype,
entitled
"SURROUNDED"
and will feature
an all-local line-up of
the following artists:
Cake
Dolla
Patrick Fatica
Dennis Hansbury
David Hoskins
Charles Marklin
Phil Noto
Johannah O'Donnell
Dustin Orlando
Scott Scheidly
Andrew Spear
Pam Treadwell


Friday, November 14, 2008
6:00pm - 11:00pm
Bold Hype
1844 East Winter Park Rd.
Orlando, FL
407.629.2965
info@boldhype.com

SOURCE: BoldHype

You mean that Andrew Spear?

SOURCE: DewUnderground/FuelTV

Catching up with Adam Maeroff…

A Stranger in

Pennsylvania

Adam Maeroff was born in America.
He had what you'd call a fairly rough
childhood and adolescence during
which time he became interested in Graffiti,
spent a short time in the Marines and
decided to move to Israel.
Once there, he became a citizen,
worked at various jobs, served in
the military and most importantly, he painted.
Now back in America, with an Indian-Israeli wife, Maeroff reconstructs his memories of far-away places in painterly terms.
[READ MORE]

ABOVE:
"Strip District Study"
by Adam Maeroff
(2008, mixed media)

SOURCE: Adam Maeroff

El Guincho released in the U.S.…

I mean, really… Notice of this release was back in
February, and we had it here back in April…What gives? The question will be
if all the hype was justified…
Count me in for "maybe" and grab the
Absinthe!

SOURCE: YoungTurks

Film as revolution

The Woodstock Film Festival awards ceremony reflects a heightened political sensitivity

The Festival terms itself "fiercely independent," one of its most popular awards is the Maverick, and the times being what they are, the tenor of the awards ceremony Saturday, October 4, was fiercely political with references to a variety of mavericks, honorary, honorable and...well, we know about that other one. Nearly all the honorees mentioned Barack Obama and the event's Maverick Award winner Kevin Smith brought it home when he bounded onstage and shouted "Boycott CVS!" MC Ron Nsywaner, screenwriter (Philadelphia, The Painted Veil, Soldier's Girl) and Woodstock resident, quipped that Smith is now "qualified to be a heartbeat away from being the leader of the free world."

SOURCE: TheWoodstockTimes

TVOTR's Tunde Adebimpe covers Neil Young

"…and here's TV On The Radio's singer Tunde Adebimpe covering Neil Young's "Unknown Legend." Tunde's cover comes from Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married, which stars a smiling Adebimpe. The spare, lonesome take on the Harvest Moon song's less cheerful, running in sharp contrast to the more mile-a-minute energy of TV On The Radio's current Dear Science focus "Dancing Choose." Pretty stuff."



Movie still via IMDB and Sony Pictures Classics
SOURCE: Stereogum

In Praise of the Hype Machine

Thrills and irritation about NYC’s music scene

"Most bands—even those with actual records and fans and local radio play and whatnot—seem resigned to (or find far more preferable) mere local fame, with no big tours, no Internet-ether buzz, no Making It Big. Which is, of course, in some ways, preferable to the insanity, the vapidity, the fickle schizophrenia of the hype machine, a deranged monolith that can declare the Black Kids sex on toast one week and an affront to all mankind the next." — Rob Harvilla

Photo of Brooklyn's Vivian Girls by Stefano Giovannini
SOURCE: VillageVoice

"Soaked in the sponge of hip-hop visual culture"

Brent Rollins is a one-man design explosion. He’s also a core member of the Ego Trip collective who have been responsible for publishing Ego Trip magazine, The Book of Rap Lists and The Big Book of Racism. He designed the logo for the movie Boyz In the Hood, and album covers for Black Star and Spank Rock just to name a few. You name it, he’s done it, and with such deft and style that his handiwork is soaked in the sponge of hip-hop visual culture.

SOURCE: LitMob

The return of Muxtape

On September 25, Muxtape founder Justin Ouellette announced that he'll be relaunching the streaming playlist site as a alternative to MySpace Music, using the simple flash player he created for Muxtape 1.0. But we now know Muxtape will never go back to giving people a dead-simple way to create playlists online and share them with friends, a bummer for a surprising number of people.

SOURCE: Sound of the City/Village Voice

Kurt Cobain's ashes 'to be smoked in spliff'

Australian artist Natascha Stellmach is claiming that she will smoke the ashes of the late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain in a spliff as part of an art exhibition.

SOURCE: NME

David Foster Wallace dead at 46

David Foster Wallace, the author of "Infinite Jest," was found dead in his
home in Claremont, Ca. on Friday night. The 46-year-old author apparently committed suicide.


SOURCE: LATimes

Crystal Antlers are high above NYC

Crystal Antlers perform high above mid-town Manhattan. Frontman Jonny Bell summons the chimney sweep inside, and scales the ledge during the first song, with a 25-story drop below.

SOURCE: Don't Look Down series

Henry Rollins to play Guthrie/Steinbeck Tribute

Just on the surface, Woody Guthrie and
John Steinbeck have plenty in common. Guthrie was an Okie; Steinbeck wrote about them. Both filled their work with rural people and descriptions of the natural world, and in the process, both became spokesmen of sorts for the disenchanted.

SOURCES: Pitchfork, LiveNation

Tricky, Tricky, Tricky!

Knowle West Boy is the album that sums up everything that Tricky has accomplished since his 1995 Maxinquaye debut. From the sardonic bar-room blues of Puppy Toy to the haunting quasi-classicism of Joseph; from the twisted Specials-worshipping punk of Council Estate to the bereft torchery of Past Mistake; from the Roxy Music’s The Bogus Man-at-the-dancehall art-stomp of Bacative to the poignant autobiographical tale of teen pregnancy that is School Gates, Knowle West Boy sees our misunderstood hero reaching into the post-punk, Two-Tone, reggae, hip hop and pure pop he grew up adoring, twisting it all into surreal Tricky shapes using his astonishingly accomplished band and a host of great undiscovered singers, and ending up with the most varied and accessible set of his career.

SOURCE: KWB

Thomas Wynn & The Believers

One of the joys of
living and playing music in and around Orlando is the local talent. It might seem like I'm playing favorites and…you'd be right! After the goldrush of the 90s and the 7M3 craze, not to mention the dreaded (and thankfully dead) boy-band era, comes a band that brings the rock and the roll. I'm talking about Thomas Wynn and the Believers, brothers and sisters. If you've seen them live then you know what I'm talking about. They bring it back, alive! They passionately carry the torch of Florida musicians in name and spirit.
Check them out!

SOURCE: TW&B

Your brain needs a Dad

Right now: What are you doing?
"I’ve started to become a lot pickier about where my attention goes as I observe what it means to my work when it drifts. But, I still have a long way to go. Long way."

— MerlinMan

E.L.L.A

A Musical Celebration of the Florida Female Artist

“E.L.L.A, A Musical Celebration of the Florida Female Artist,” is here to showcase to the people of Orlando the wonderful and extremely talented women that grace our fine city and state. We believe that Florida has some of the strongest and most talented women in the world, and they deserve to be heard, viewed, and celebrated. By creating this festival, we want to make sure that they are."

— Robert Johnson,
promoter/founder of E.L.L.A.
Elevate.Listen.Love.Appreciate

Blog Action Day 2008 is October 15

Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty from
Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

Poverty is affecting society, the enormous hole left by possibilities that go unrealized becomes even greater with our discomfort in acknowledging the gap. The rapid aging of the population in the Western hemisphere and the failing of public systems contribute to increasing demands on individuals. Many of us are called upon to assist our families in two directions for the future — children and parents.

"I believe a determined group of people can change the conversation for the better. Our first action step is awareness — talking about it. Your voice counts and so do actions. Go sign up now and join the conversation on poverty, October 15. You can make a difference."

— Valeria Maltoni, Conversation Agent

SOURCE: ConversationAgent

Kayo Dot streams new music

SOURCE: Kayo Dot

Que hora es?

The Second Annual Orlando Hispanic Film Festival (OHFF) comes to the heart of Orlando, Florida, during Hispanic Heritage Month
Oct. 10th — Oct. 12th, 2008.

It is a competitive independent film festival and a platform that recognizes independent filmmakers from around the world who integrate the Hispanic culture in their work and exposes the talent of Hispanic actors, directors, producers, screenwriters and cinematographers.

SOURCE: OHFilmFestival

George Carlin just knew…

SOURCE: GoGreenTube

Introducing Seun Kuti & Egypt 80…

Seun Kuti & Egypt 80
West Africa
Nigeria

Seun Kuti is Fela Anikulapo Kuti 's last son. Seun's father, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, was Nigeria's most beloved popular musician and most acerbic social critic until his death in 1997.
[READ MORE]

From a recent interview:
Is the Nigerian government still trying to suppress Afrobeat music?
Yeah, because you can’t support something that is against you. They know what Afrobeat stands for, so it receives no support from the government or police. They support all these Nigerian hip-hop bands. It’s very cheap low-quality pop.

SOURCES: AfroPop.org, L.A. Record

Introducing Rachel Goodrich…

"hello. i'm rachel goodrich. i am a songwriter. i write songs. i sing..... and play guitar and other instruments ........like....... keys, uke,kazoo,harm oni ca,ja wharp,recorder,xyl ophone, ban jo,man dolin,spoons, pots,pans .........and with that......... i make music."

Rachel is a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, performer from Miami Beach. Her music is a wonderful mix of folk, Django Reinhart-drenched, acoustic ragtime-ish psychobilly and moxy. She's a dynamic performer with just enough attitude to give her a punkish edge. She's personable, humble and going to become yr new favorite performer. I'm biased because she's good. Rachel is working on her new record with co-producer George Martinez. She says "'Tinker Toys' is coming along wonderfully." Highlights include new songs 'Light Bulb' and 'The Black Hole.' The new record will be self-released very soon. Stay tuned.

SOURCE: Rachel Goodrich

Byrne/Eno collaboration, record

"Brian Eno and I recently finished our first collaboration in about 30 years. For the most part, Brian did the music and I wrote some tunes, words and sang. It's familiar but completely new as well. We're pretty excited. In August the music will be available via this Web site, free for streaming and available for purchase in a variety of options that allow you to download immediately and receive physical formats when they become available later in the Fall. One of the songs will be available free of charge.
In September I will begin a tour, on which I will be playing music from the new album as well as music from our previous collaborations — 3 Talking Heads albums, Bush of Ghosts, etc. If you'd like to be updated as this story unfolds, please add your email address via the box below (we will not contact you for any reason other than to tell you about this David Byrne and Brian Eno project and the tour and we promise not to give or sell your contact to anyone else or even to the government).
The name of the new record is Everything That Happens Will Happen Today."

SOURCE: David Byrne

The future sound of London

In Gibson's Neuromancer, when Case & Molly meet the two surviving founders of Zion, there is talk of hearing a "mighty dub" in the Babel of tongues signaling the "final days". If indeed we're living in these 'end times', as many predict, then there can be no more of an appropriate soundtrack for the coming apocalypse than The Bug's "London Zoo".



SOURCE: NinjaTune

Grizzly Bear on Letterman

Grizzly Bear performed the new cut "Two Weeks" on Letterman this past Wednesday. Signature harmonies? Check. So much sunshine? Check. Another silly good look at what's shaping up to be the Grizzly pop album everybody's hoping for? Check, please.


SOURCE: Stereogum

Documentally speaking…

Sweat hard. on 12seconds.tv

SOURCE: Documentally

Helvetica the movie

Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which celebrated its 50th birthday in 2007) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. The film is an exploration of urban spaces in major cities and the type that inhabits them, and a fluid discussion with renowned designers about their work, the creative process, and the choices
and aesthetics behind their use of type.

SOURCE: Helveticafilm.com

10
TELL THE TRUTH.

The rabbit joke is relevant because it occurred to me that looking for a cabbage in a butcher’s shop might be like looking for ethics in the design field. It may not be the most obvious place to find either. It’s interesting to observe that in the new AIGA’s code of ethics there is a significant amount of useful information about appropriate behaviour towards clients and other designers, but not a word about a designer’s relationship to the public. We expect a butcher to sell us eatable meat and that he doesn’t misrepresent his wares. I remember reading that during the Stalin years in Russia that everything labelled veal was actually chicken. I can’t imagine what everything labelled chicken was. We can accept certain kinds of misrepresentation, such as fudging about the amount of fat in his hamburger but once a butcher knowingly sells us spoiled meat we go elsewhere. As a designer, do we have less responsibility to our public than a butcher? Everyone interested in licensing our field might note that the reason licensing has been invented is to protect the public not designers or clients. ‘Do no harm’ is an admonition to doctors concerning their relationship to their patients, not to their fellow practitioners or the drug companies. If we were licensed, telling the truth might become more central to what we do.

— Milton Glaser,
Ten Things I Have Learned
Part of AIGA Talk in London
November 22, 2001

Who's watching the watchers?

SOURCE: Paramount Pictures

Milton Glaser's 10 things…

9
ON AGING.

Last year someone gave me a charming book by Roger Rosenblatt called ‘Ageing Gracefully’ I got it on my birthday. I did not appreciate the title at the time but it contains a series of rules for ageing gracefully. The first rule is the best. Rule number one is that ‘it doesn’t matter.’ ‘It doesn’t matter that what you think. Follow this rule and it will add decades to your life. It does not matter if you are late or early, if you are here or there, if you said it or didn’t say it, if you are clever or if you were stupid. If you were having a bad hair day or a no hair day or if your boss looks at you cockeyed or your boyfriend or girlfriend looks at you cockeyed, if you are cockeyed. If you don’t get that promotion or prize or house or if you do – it doesn’t matter.’ Wisdom at last. Then I heard a marvellous joke that seemed related to rule number 10. A butcher was opening his market one morning and as he did a rabbit popped his head through the door. The butcher was surprised when the rabbit inquired ‘Got any cabbage?’ The butcher said ‘This is a meat market – we sell meat, not vegetables.’ The rabbit hopped off. The next day the butcher is opening the shop and sure enough the rabbit pops his head round and says ‘You got any cabbage?’ The butcher now irritated says ‘Listen you little rodent I told you yesterday we sell meat, we do not sell vegetables and the next time you come here I am going to grab you by the throat and nail those floppy ears to the floor.’ The rabbit disappeared hastily and nothing happened for a week. Then one morning the rabbit popped his head around the corner and said ‘Got any nails?’ The butcher said ‘No.’ The rabbit said ‘Ok. Got any cabbage?’

— Milton Glaser,
Ten Things I Have Learned
Part of AIGA Talk in London
November 22, 2001

Flatstock 17 Poster Convention

Flatstock 17, presented by Pitchfork Music Festival and The American Poster Institute, will be held for two days, July 19th and 20th, 2008 at Union Park on the grounds of the Picthfork Music Festival in Chicago, IL. This event will take place RAIN OR SHINE and takes place OUTDOORS. You must have a Pitchfork Music Fest Pass to get access to the Flatstock show. Pitchfork has sold out every year so far so don't hesitate to get your tickets.

Pictured:Casey Burns
SOURCE: AmericaPosterInstitute

Milton Glaser's 10 things…

8
DOUBT IS BETTER THAN CERTAINTY.

Everyone always talks about confidence in believing what you do. I remember once going to a class in yoga where the teacher said that, spirituality speaking, if you believed that you had achieved enlightenment you have merely arrived at your limitation. I think that is also true in a practical sense. Deeply held beliefs of any kind prevent you from being open to experience, which is why I find all firmly held ideological positions questionable. It makes me nervous when someone believes too deeply or too much. I think that being sceptical and questioning all deeply held beliefs is essential. Of course we must know the difference between scepticism and cynicism because cynicism is as much a restriction of one’s openness to the world as passionate belief is. They are sort of twins. And then in a very real way, solving any problem is more important than being right. There is a significant sense of self-righteousness in both the art and design world. Perhaps it begins at school. Art school often begins with the Ayn Rand model of the single personality resisting the ideas of the surrounding culture. The theory of the avant garde is that as an individual you can transform the world, which is true up to a point. One of the signs of a damaged ego is absolute certainty.
Schools encourage the idea of not compromising and defending your work at all costs. Well, the issue at work is usually all about the nature of compromise. You just have to know what to compromise. Blind pursuit of your own ends which excludes the possibility that others may be right does not allow for the fact that in design we are always dealing with a triad – the client, the audience and you.
Ideally, making everyone win through acts of accommodation is desirable. But self-righteousness is often the enemy. Self-righteousness and narcissism generally come out of some sort of childhood trauma, which we do not have to go into. It is a consistently difficult thing in human affairs. Some years ago I read a most remarkable thing about love, that also applies to the nature of co-existing with others. It was a quotation from Iris Murdoch in her obituary. It read ‘ Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.’ Isn’t that fantastic! The best insight on the subject of love that one can imagine.

— Milton Glaser,
Ten Things I Have Learned
Part of AIGA Talk in London
November 22, 2001

Milton Glaser's 10 things…

7
HOW YOU LIVE CHANGES YOUR BRAIN.

The brain is the most responsive organ of the body. Actually it is the organ that is most susceptible to change and regeneration of all the organs in the body. I have a friend named Gerald Edelman who was a great scholar of brain studies and he says that the analogy of the brain to a computer is pathetic. The brain is actually more like an overgrown garden that is constantly growing and throwing off seeds, regenerating and so on. And he believes that the brain is susceptible, in a way that we are not fully conscious of, to almost every experience of our life and every encounter we have. I was fascinated by a story in a newspaper a few years ago about the search for perfect pitch. A group of scientists decided that they were going to find out why certain people have perfect pitch. You know certain people hear a note precisely and are able to replicate it at exactly the right pitch. Some people have relevant pitch; perfect pitch is rare even among musicians. The scientists discovered – I don’t know how - that among people with perfect pitch the brain was different. Certain lobes of the brain had undergone some change or deformation that was always present with those who had perfect pitch. This was interesting enough in itself. But then they discovered something even more fascinating. If you took a bunch of kids and taught them to play the violin at the age of 4 or 5 after a couple of years some of them developed perfect pitch, and in all of those cases their brain structure had changed. Well what could that mean for the rest of us? We tend to believe that the mind affects the body and the body affects the mind, although we do not generally believe that everything we do affects the brain. I am convinced that if someone was to yell at me from across the street my brain could be affected and my life might changed. That is why your mother always said, ‘Don’t hang out with those bad kids.’ Mama was right. Thought changes our life and our behaviour. I also believe that drawing works in the same way. I am a great advocate of drawing, not in order to become an illustrator, but because I believe drawing changes the brain in the same way as the search to create the right note changes the brain of a violinist. Drawing also makes you attentive. It makes you pay attention to what you are looking at, which is not so easy.

— Milton Glaser,
Ten Things I Have Learned
Part of AIGA Talk in London
November 22, 2001

Old news is good news

Blender Magazine Welcomes New Senior Editor

Blender magazine has hired well-known Radar magazine senior editor, Tyler Gray. Gray is also an upcoming author of the highly anticipated Harper Collins book The Hit Charade: Lou Pearlman, Boy Bands, and the Biggest Ponzi Scheme in U.S. History. The book hits shelves on November 11, 2008.

SOURCE: JJ's Dirt

Milton Glaser's 10 things…

6
STYLE IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED.

I think this idea first occurred to me when I was looking at a marvellous etching of a bull by Picasso. It was an illustration for a story by Balzac called The Hidden Masterpiece. I am sure that you all know it. It is a bull that is expressed in 12 different styles going from very naturalistic version of a bull to an absolutely reductive single line abstraction and everything else along the way. What is clear just from looking at this single print is that style is irrelevant. In every one of these cases, from extreme abstraction to acute naturalism they are extraordinary regardless of the style. It’s absurd to be loyal to a style. It does not deserve your loyalty. I must say that for old design professionals it is a problem because the field is driven by economic consideration more than anything else. Style change is usually linked to economic factors, as all of you know who have read Marx. Also fatigue occurs when people see too much of the same thing too often. So every ten years or so there is a stylistic shift and things are made to look different. Typefaces go in and out of style and the visual system shifts a little bit. If you are around for a long time as a designer, you have an essential problem of what to do. I mean, after all, you have developed a vocabulary, a form that is your own. It is one of the ways that you distinguish yourself from your peers, and establish your identity in the field. How you maintain your own belief system and preferences becomes a real balancing act. The question of whether you pursue change or whether you maintain your own distinct form becomes difficult. We have all seen the work of illustrious practitioners that suddenly look old-fashioned or, more precisely, belonging to another moment in time. And there are sad stories such as the one about Cassandre, arguably the greatest graphic designer of the twentieth century, who couldn’t make a living at the end of his life and committed suicide.
But the point is that anybody who is in this for the long haul has to decide how to respond to change in the zeitgeist. What is it that people now expect that they formerly didn’t want? And how to respond to that desire in a way that doesn’t change your sense of integrity and purpose.

— Milton Glaser,
Ten Things I Have Learned
Part of AIGA Talk in London
November 22, 2001

Milton Glaser's 10 things…

5
LESS IS NOT NECESSARILY MORE.

Being a child of modernism I have heard this mantra all my life. Less is more. One morning upon awakening I realised that it was total nonsense, it is an absurd proposition and also fairly meaningless. But it sounds great because it contains within it a paradox that is resistant to understanding. But it simply does not obtain when you think about the visual of the history of the world. If you look at a Persian rug, you cannot say that less is more because you realise that every part of that rug, every change of colour, every shift in form is absolutely essential for its aesthetic success. You cannot prove to me that a solid blue rug is in any way superior. That also goes for the work of Gaudi, Persian miniatures, art nouveau and everything else. However, I have an alternative to the proposition that I believe is more appropriate. ‘Just enough is more.’

— Milton Glaser,
Ten Things I Have Learned
Part of AIGA Talk in London
November 22, 2001

What do you like in your serial drama?

Nea Polis 003: The Darkness — Episode 13
A serial drama by Vittorio Adinolfi


Find more videos like this on Sabet TV


SOURCE: Sabet.tv

Milton Glaser's 10 things…

4
PROFESSIONALISM IS NOT ENOUGH or THE GOOD IS THE ENEMY OF THE GREAT.

Early in my career I wanted to be professional, that was my complete aspiration in my early life because professionals seemed to know everything - not to mention they got paid for it. Later I discovered after working for a while that professionalism itself was a limitation. After all, what professionalism means in most cases is diminishing risks. So if you want to get your car fixed you go to a mechanic who knows how to deal with transmission problems in the same way each time. I suppose if you needed brain surgery you wouldn’t want the doctor to fool around and invent a new way of connecting your nerve endings. Please do it in the way that has worked in the past.
Unfortunately in our field, in the so-called creative – I hate that word because it is misused so often. I also hate the fact that it is used as a noun. Can you imagine calling someone a creative? Anyhow, when you are doing something in a recurring way to diminish risk or doing it in the same way as you have done it before, it is clear why professionalism is not enough. After all, what is required in our field, more than anything else, is the continuous transgression. Professionalism does not allow for that because transgression has to encompass the possibility of failure and if you are professional your instinct is not to fail, it is to repeat success. So professionalism as a lifetime aspiration is a limited goal.

— Milton Glaser,
Ten Things I Have Learned
Part of AIGA Talk in London
November 22, 2001

Milton Glaser's 10 things…

3
SOME PEOPLE ARE TOXIC AVOID THEM.

This is a subtext of number one. There was in the sixties a man named Fritz Perls who was a gestalt therapist. Gestalt therapy derives from art history, it proposes you must understand the ‘whole’ before you can understand the details. What you have to look at is the entire culture, the entire family and community and so on. Perls proposed that in all relationships people could be either toxic or nourishing towards one another. It is not necessarily true that the same person will be toxic or nourishing in every relationship, but the combination of any two people in a relationship produces toxic or nourishing consequences. And the important thing that I can tell you is that there is a test to determine whether someone is toxic or nourishing in your relationship with them. Here is the test: You have spent some time with this person, either you have a drink or go for dinner or you go to a ball game. It doesn’t matter very much but at the end of that time you observe whether you are more energised or less energised. Whether you are tired or whether you are exhilarated. If you are more tired then you have been poisoned. If you have more energy you have been nourished. The test is almost infallible and I suggest that you use it for the rest of your life.

— Milton Glaser,
Ten Things I Have Learned
Part of AIGA Talk in London
November 22, 2001

Milton Glaser's 10 things…

2
IF YOU HAVE A CHOICE NEVER HAVE A JOB.

One night I was sitting in my car outside Columbia University where my wife Shirley was studying Anthropology. While I was waiting I was listening to the radio and heard an interviewer ask ‘Now that you have reached 75 have you any advice for our audience about how to prepare for your old age?’ An irritated voice said ‘Why is everyone asking me about old age these days?’ I recognised the voice as John Cage. I am sure that many of you know who he was – the composer and philosopher who influenced people like Jasper Johns and Merce Cunningham as well as the music world in general. I knew him slightly and admired his contribution to our times. ‘You know, I do know how to prepare for old age’ he said. ‘Never have a job, because if you have a job someday someone will take it away from you and then you will be unprepared for your old age. For me, it has always been the same every since the age of 12. I wake up in the morning and I try to figure out how am I going to put bread on the table today? It is the same at 75, I wake up every morning and I think how am I going to put bread on the table today? I am exceedingly well prepared for my old age’ he said.

— Milton Glaser,
Ten Things I Have Learned
Part of AIGA Talk in London
November 22, 2001

"BoonEx is not a company. BoonEx is a community."

SOURCE: Boonex via SpringNet

Milton Glaser's 10 things…

1
YOU CAN ONLY WORK FOR PEOPLE THAT YOU LIKE.

This is a curious rule and it took me a long time to learn because in fact at the beginning of my practice I felt the opposite. Professionalism required that you didn’t particularly like the people that you worked for or at least maintained an arms length relationship to them, which meant that I never had lunch with a client or saw them socially. Then some years ago I realised that the opposite was true. I discovered that all the work I had done that was meaningful and significant came out of an affectionate relationship with a client. And I am not talking about professionalism; I am talking about affection. I am talking about a client and you sharing some common ground. That in fact your view of life is someway congruent with the client, otherwise it is a bitter and hopeless struggle.

— Milton Glaser,
Ten Things I Have Learned
Part of AIGA Talk in London
November 22, 2001

"Buying handmade helps us reconnect"

The ascendancy of chain store culture and global manufacturing has left us dressing, furnishing, and decorating alike. We are encouraged to be consumers, not producers, of our own culture. Our ties to the local and human sources of our goods have been lost. Buying handmade helps us reconnect.

SOURCE: BuyHandmade

Documentally speaking…

SOURCE: Documentally

Future Buzz needs a makeover…

…but has some interesting content:

Lists:

• Are scan-able
• Provide easy to read and consume content
• Have the novelty factor
• Are many times “must-share” content
• Engage people
• Are at times humorous, entertaining or incredible
• Are a strong social web meme
• Get strong traffic

There are 58+ pages of top 10 lists that have made page one of Digg. And that’s just for “top 10” lists!

SOURCE: TheFutureBuzz

Buy a t-shirt, save the world

Africa Aid provides the foundation for innovative partnerships and intimate community-based relationships between developing African communities and their more established American counterparts. To create a sustainable and mutually beneficial community partnership, Africa Aid characterizes the problems of an African community and then integrates foreign aid projects into American university curriculum, allowing university students and faculty experts to design solutions to extreme poverty. Africa Aid implements the resulting university designed solutions in Africa, working alongside African communities to establish basic levels of Education, Health, Water, and Economic Empowerment.

SOURCE: AfricaAid

You remind me of something…

In times of need, brothers and sisters, it becomes the right time to sit down and ponder the true meaning of it all. Navigating a nadir, there's nothing that stirs the soul more than a good dose of the brother Bonnie "Prince" Billy. His latest release, 'Lie Down In The Light' (Drag City/2008) is the quintessential elixir that brightens the blessed day. Give a listen.

SOURCES: Drag City, Daytrotter

Playing the Building

Creative Time presents Playing the building, a sound installation in which the infrastructure, the physical plant of the building, is converted into a giant musical instrument. Devices are attached to the building structure — to the metal beams and pillars, the heating pipes, the water pipes — and are used to make these things produce sound. The activations are of three types: wind, vibration, striking. The devices do not produce sound themselves, but they cause the building elements to vibrate, resonate and oscillate so that the building itself becomes a very large musical instrument.

Playing the Building, Battery Maritime Building, New York, NY, 2008
SOURCE: CreativeTime

Twyla Tharp and creativity

“…it doesn’t necessarily fit neatly into the “self-help” box, which is already overstuffed with cookie-cutter books on making yourself a happy, healthy, sexually-satisfied, skilled overachiever. Tharp speaks to her reader in a language that any person, whether they are already creative or only desire to be, can understand and use for their own lives.”

SOURCE: Bookslut

A Brief History of JKrishnamurti

Jiddu Krishnamurti lived from 1895 to 1986, and is regarded as one of the greatest philosophical and spiritual figures of the twentieth century. Krishnamurti claimed no allegiance to any caste, nationality or religion and was bound by no tradition. His purpose was to set humankind unconditionally free from the destructive limitations of conditioned mind. For nearly sixty years he traveled the world and spoke spontaneously to large audiences until the end of his life in 1986 at the age of ninety. He had no permanent home, but when not traveling, he often stayed in Ojai, California, Brockwood Park, England, and in Cennai, India. In his talks, he pointed out to people the need to transform themselves through self knowledge, by being aware of the subtleties of their thoughts and feelings in daily life, and how this movement can be observed through the mirror of relationship.

SOURCE: Krishnamurti Foundation

Ghost Rock

Ghost Rock is the new album from the Michigan-based collective NOMO. The album, produced by Warn Defever, sheds light on the way forward for a band that has been forging its own vital sound. This is not the Afrobeat of Fela, nor the revivalist funk of a forgotten decade. This record owes as much to Can, Eno, and MIA as it does Kuti, Francis Bebey, and Funkadelic. On Ghost Rock, NOMO arrives in a new place. There’s no loss of steam as they incorporate new influences, instead NOMO breaks through with a matured and developed sound that is fully its own.

SOURCE: Ubiquity Records

Ice Cream Spiritual, indeed

Listening to Ponytail's second effort, Ice Cream Spiritual (We*Are*Free; 2008), John Cage's quote about poetry taken to its logical extreme comes to mind. Molly Siegel, Ken Seeno, Dustin Wong and Jeremy Hyman have nothing to say and they're saying it, loudly and with a sense of joy that's nothing short of infectious.

SOURCE: Pitchforkmedia

My Bloody Valentine: Live in London

My Bloody Valentine's show finale, at The Roundhouse in London on June 20, the white noise coda to "You Made Me Realise", has become as central to their legend as the bankrupt record label and the endlessly scrapped new material. Everyone in the Roundhouse was waiting for it, many had probably wondered how they might react, how extreme things could possibly get.

Photo of Kevin Shields by Shannon McClean

SOURCE: Pitchforkmedia

Etsy Watch

Three words: Eco Dog Toy

This dog toy will be hours of fun for your pet. It is made of upcycled items. The fabric was disgarded upholstery samples that were going to be thrown away. Inside is a plastic water bottle that makes a crunchy sound. There is a little poli-fil used for stuffing. It is machine sewn for extra durability.

SOURCE: LumpyStrawberry

David Lewis is Bang & Olufsen

The 69-year-old Mr. Lewis, a U.K. native, graduated from London's Central School of Art and Design in 1960. He had aspired to be a furniture designer, but when the class was full he turned to industrial design instead. Three of his B&O creations are part of the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection in New York.

SOURCE: WallStreetJournal, Beoworld.org