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16 Oct 21:45

The 15 Best Classic Stores In Chicago

by Staff
The 15 Best Classic Stores In Chicago Here are 15 shops we feel make Chicago the City That Works and will continue to do so as Macy's and other stores feel the need to chase profits. Frequent them this holiday season. [ more › ]
    


06 Sep 19:32

Once upon a time in 1978 on the Tonight Show, Steve Martin...



Once upon a time in 1978 on the Tonight Show, Steve Martin filled in for Johnny Carson, and Burt Reynolds shaved off half of his mustache.  The fun starts around the 2 minute mark.

03 Sep 19:16

Barbed wire frames view of children on the beach and mountains...



Barbed wire frames view of children on the beach and mountains beyond in Aqaba, Jordan, August 1965.Photograph by Frank and Helen Schreider, National Geographic

29 Aug 20:53

Josef Albers’ The Interraction of Color: Art School In Your Hands

by Maxwell Tielman

josefalbers_app_1

If you have ever attended art school, you may have come across Color-Aid Paper. And if you have, it was likely the bane of your entire existence. Used for exercises pertaining to color theory, Color-Aid is essentially a packet of glorified paint chips, each a separate gradation of color along an entire spectrum. These piece of paper could be torn, cut, and collaged into designs that, depending upon their complexity, could result in sleepless nights, glue-covered fingers, and one too many X-Acto blade cuts. During one’s first semester of art school, it’s not  uncommon to witness fellow Freshman cursing the existence of such abominable “paper” and wondering who was responsible for its necessity in foundation art courses. To answer that question, however, one must venture decades back to Germany’s Bauhaus school and Josef Albers’ preliminary courses in color theory.

Considered the preeminent mind in color theory and one of the founding fathers of modern art education, Josef Albers’ work with color has created an indelible impact on the way art is taught today. Rather than asking students to create finished works of art, Albers forced them to examine color and its interactions almost scientifically, through studies and exercises that elucidated the oftentimes vexing language of the visual world. Many of these exercises were outlined in his 1963 book, The Interaction of Color, a volume that is considered the definitive text on color.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the book’s original publication and to celebrate (and bring the book into the twenty-first century),  Yale University Press has unveiled the book in iPad app form. Almost a work of art in itself, the Interaction of Color app is a beauty to behold. One is able to, for the first time, actually interact with Albers’ previously static imagery, moving elements around and crafting one’s own takes on Albersian color exercises. Whether you’re using the tool educationally or simply as a relaxing diversion, the app provides a vivid, timeless, and fully-immersive experience. And for those who would rather not ever have to deal with the dreaded Color-Aid paper, it allows your hands to stay wonderfully glue and paper cut-free. —Max

josefalbers_app_2

CohenAlbersYale_1955-6_0101


    






22 Aug 20:09

1925 photo of a Tibetan skeleton dancer

by Mark Frauenfelder

A remarkable photo by Joseph Rock, from 1925. (Via Magic Transistor)


    






19 Aug 19:18

Artist René Magritte (via)



Artist René Magritte (via)

16 Aug 20:15

How the Strand sells print books to ebook readers

by Cory Doctorow


Avi Solomon snapped this pic of the window display at NYC bookstore The Strand lauding the virtues of their "Real books priced lower than ebooks," including the fact that you can read them during take-off and landing.

Real Books... (via Boing Boing Flickr Pool)

    






31 Jul 20:10

23 Dogs Who Are Too Adorably Stupid For Their Own Good

You big, beautiful idiots.

18 Jul 21:24

"A wind so mild this afternoon it touches our faces as we lie in the shade like little children going to sleep"

by Jia Tolentino
by Jia Tolentino

At the New York Review of Books, the bewilderingly original Pulitzer-winning poet Charles Simic puts up a remarkable prose poem and the best summertime read of 2013:

What kind of birdie are you? Whistling outside my window as if a pretty girl was passing by?

A wind so mild this afternoon it touches our faces as we lie in the shade like little children going to sleep.

Summer, here, is a quixotic, voluptuous lulling, whose escapist dreaminess begins to fade with age. "To my great regret, I no longer know how to be lazy, and summer is no fun without sloth," Simic writes, and then remembers his childhood:

As soon as the weather got hot, I looked for a shady place to lie down. When I got bored with daydreaming, I took a nap. One time I dozed off on the Oak Street Beach in Chicago and didn’t wake till it was almost evening, surprised to see the empty beach, the tall buildings along the lake already in shadow, and feel my back hurting from the sun and my head not knowing for a moment how I got there. After getting up and stretching, yawning, and scratching for a while, I sat down once again and thought to myself, How wonderful all this is.

Two dogs, one jumping from the dock into the lake to retrieve the sticks his owner keeps throwing, and the other one looking on in disgust.

“A spiritual nymphomaniac,” I overheard someone say on the beach while I lay in the sun covered with newspapers. A woman, I assume, ready to jump into bed with a saint.

Emerson’s journals, 1844–1845: “As we read the newspapers, and we see the effrontery with which money & power carry their ends, and ride over honesty &good-meaning, morals & religion seem to become mere shrieking & impotence.” It could have been written today.

As always, Simic moves fluently between dissociated images with a warm, easy authority, turning the ordinary eclectic and then doing the reverse. "I remember a fellow standing on a sea cliff one summer, swaying and waving his arms as if defending the sunset before some high court hidden among the evening clouds against the charge of imitating bad art." The end of the piece:

In the country, night lets itself into our homes and makes itself quickly comfortable, acting like it owns the place.

I read somewhere that Napoleon, who feared neither the sword nor the bullet, was afraid of a dark room.

“An old fashioned gentleman,” people used to say about my father. Like me, I imagine, he waited for the leaves outside his window to fall asleep first before he himself did.

Tonight, it looks like they are celebrating someone’s golden wedding anniversary in one of the constellations in the sky. I can tell because the ladies up there are wearing a lot of expensive jewelry.

Photo via Clapagare/flickr.

1 Comments
18 Jul 21:15

Once upon a time in the 1960s, Mr. Potato Head was just a kit of...



Once upon a time in the 1960s, Mr. Potato Head was just a kit of facial features you stuck in real vegetables.  And they were TERRIFYING.  (via)

18 Jul 20:57

This Is The Most '80s Intro To The News Ever

If we all watched this when we were kids then we all would have been TV journalists on this station by now. No question.

PARP PARP PARP PARP PARP PARP PARP PARP PARP PARP
*ZOOM IN ZOOM IN ZOOM IN ZOOM IN ZOOM IN ZOOM IN ZOOM IN*