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• Let Them Eat Cake (And Other Flippant Remarks Of The Upper Crust)

  In a time where our Republican candidate elect fumbles with the press on how many multi-million dollar homes he owns, Christopher Hitchens introduces some shamefully relevant vocabulary: a tumbrel remark (a phrase originally coined by Irish writer Joyce Cary) is "an unguarded comment by an uncontrollably rich person, of such crass insensitivity that it makes the workers and peasants think of lampposts and guillotines." Keep an ear out. Via kottke Image: The Duke of Devonshire, who said of the London Times after it had published some criticism of him, that he would no longer have the newspaper "in any of my houses."
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  • Date: Sep 05 2008
  • Posted by alexandra_m

• Wish You Were Here!

  As summer comes to a close, we find ourselves politely enduring stacks of other people's vacation photos. Or, what's the word for "stack of photos" if it's being thumbed through on an iPhone? Either way. These are refreshing: Images from an architectural history professor who toured through the catacombs below a little Baroque church Oratorio di San Lorenzo in Palermo, also known as The Museum of the Dead. The author's descryption: "Like the sanatorium in The Magic Mountain, this is one of those places where every casual visitor ends up a patient at the moment when the nervous joking stops and the infection sets in." Would that make a great postcard or what.
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  • Date: Sep 03 2008
  • Posted by alexandra_m

• FYI: Silver Jews

  Good news. Nashville-based band Silver Jews has just commenced a national tour. While this is only their second tour ever, they've been around the block; they've released six full-length albums in the past two decades including the seminal American Water, a Pitchfork 9.9. (Trivia: On-again-off-again collaborator and Silver Jews founding member Steve Malkmus went on to start a little band called Pavement.) And indie rock aside, Berman is a poet of note. His book, Actual Air, published in 1999 and lauded by the likes of James Tate and Billy Collins, is a maddeningly eloquent exploration of the ins and outs of existence, and in the past decade, it hasn't strayed far from the most accessible spot on our bookshelves. In a recent backstage chat, he told us we could look forward to an upcoming book of drawings, The Portable February, to be released next spring, and possibly a screenplay commissioned by his pal Harmony Korine (Kids, Gummo). We highly recommend you sample some of Berman's poetry here while you enjoy this mp3: "Suffering Jukebox" Photo David Berman at the Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland, Ohio; by Alex
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  • Date: Sep 02 2008
  • Posted by alexandra_m

• Strange Fruit

  Last Wednesday was Spain's over-ripe tomato food-fight festival, Tomatino. Sad, you missed it, but you can still look at photos, which are somewhere between slapstick and cultural phenomemon. In the meantime, plan ahead, and maybe you can catch a different but equally fascinating and incredibly bizarre festival—for example, El Colacho, the baby-jumping festival, where people (can you guess?) jump over babies. Or Up Helly-Aa, which revolves around annually incinerating a 32-foot Viking longship replica. Or the most aesthetically pleasing, Holi, Hindu festival of colors, where people spend a day dousing each other with colored powders and water... far easier on the eyes than a bunch of Spaniards rolling in vegetable juice. Via WebEcoist; photo via Espacioblog
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  • Date: Sep 01 2008
  • Posted by alexandra_m

• Agitprop And The Flip Side Of Anger

  As North Korea threatens to recommence nuclear activity, we thought this photo essay of their state-sponsored propaganda posters was a valuable window in the country's (or at least the country's government's) psyche. It’s fascinating to see our ideological differences from the other side, inked into lapidary, us-versus-U.S. slogans and stout, self-sufficient patriots.
  
  Photo: The Korean text above translates to a finger-pointing reversal—“The US is truly an Axis of Evil.”
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  • Date: Aug 26 2008
  • Posted by Jason Jude Chan

• Jackson 5-0

  With a long-awaited long weekend just a few hours away, we’re sure a few of you will hear some Michael Jackson smash hits at a BBQ soon. Today also happens be his 50th birthday. Though the King of Pop’s career is near kaput (we said it), his brush with a different five-oh still warrants our undivided attention. It's been 40 successful and scandalous years since the afroed wunderkind and his brothers signed with Motown. Today, the BBC charts his moonwalk into pop culture superstardom, and subsequent collapse. The folks over at Gawker commemorate his birth with a link to a hypothetical, plastic surgery-free Michael Jackson — though we think this other-Jacksons composite is irresistible as well.
  
  Regardless of what the future holds for Jacko, we’ll always remember him as a smooth-moving zombie.
  
  Photo via General Rubbish.
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  • Date: Aug 29 2008
  • Posted by Jason Jude Chan

• Indie-pendant Party

  Another good thing about Obama: the music. Last night in Denver, Mayor Gavin Newsom reminded us he was really really cool by organizing a legendary indie-rock bash for "young democrats," with a line-up featuring Nada Surf, Cold War Kids, Silversun Pickups and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and climaxing with a superband consisting of Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard, Zooey Deschanel (performing as She & Him minus M. Ward), Jonathan Rice, and Jenny Lewis (of Rilo Kiley, the Watson Twins, and in her younger days, The Wizard) playing subtly political or hopeful recycled material. Comedienne Sarah Silverman was also present, to open the event with some no-doubt insightful ruminations on the convention. Any guesses as to whom will rock the RNC? As McCain is such an Usher fan, we'll be interested to see. Via Stereogum
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  • Date: Aug 29 2008
  • Posted by alexandra_m

• Nuclear Warhead + Paper Clip = Problem Solved By MacGyver

  We were bowled over by a wave of shameless nostalgia mixed with a renewed sense of awe when we came across this very extensive (but not yet entirely comprehensive) List of Problems Solved by MacGyver. You likely remember the show—or its re-runs, sandwiched between "The Brady Bunch" and "Saved By the Bell" on afternoon TV in the early to mid-90s—"24" meets "How Stuff Works" but with more outstanding hairdo... And the above wiki link lets us relive the magic (ahem, science) without the 22 minutes of plot-driven drama per episode: "MacGyver plugs a sulfuric acid leak with chocolate." "MacGyver fixes a broken fuel line with a ball point pen." "MacGyver attaches the torso of a suit of armor onto the top of a food trolley, and then attaches a makeshift motor with a battery pack and an electric whisk." All with details as to precisely how, and whether it would actually work. Riveting and practical. If you don't have time for the wiki, just enjoy this one-minute twelve-second theme-songed montage. Image: Richard Dean Anderson doing something remarkable and likely proven possible by Mythbusters. Via kottke
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  • Date: Aug 27 2008
  • Posted by alexandra_m

• God Fetish

  "You really think all nuns are old, stunted and sad? This isn't the case anymore," says one Italian Father Antonio Rungi. And to prove this to the world, he's organizing a nuns-only beauty pageant. The sure-to-be-controversial "Miss Sister Italy" online contest will commence on this priest's blog next month. This is an even better marketing idea than the summer's inflatable confession booths on beaches. Though the marriage of beach mass and hot nuns (despite that Rungi specifically said, "We are not going to parade nuns in bathing suits") does sound like the answer to a lot of repressed Catholics' prayers... Via Neatorama UPDATE: Canceled! Apparently the guys at the top weren't into the Sister Italy idea. Nuns will have to find some other way to showcase their hotness for now.
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  • Date: Aug 26 2008
  • Posted by alexandra_m

• Slanguage 101

  Apparently it's linguistic Friday. The folks over at Boing Boing have exhumed Slim Gaillard’s Vout-O-Reenee Dictionary to help us all shed (learning) some retro me-lee-see (lingo). The promotional pamphlet is a lexicon of the jazzman's awesome and humorous patois. It’s a perfect, hyphen-filled index for instant '30s street cred and affected incomprehensibility.
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  • Date: Aug 22 2008
  • Posted by Jason Jude Chan