Russian Sledges

In the Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower in downtown Baltimore, a big, brusque guy runs a pop-up sign-painting studio with a few partners, known collectively as ICY Signs. You can call and call the phone number listed for the shop, but no one ever seems to pick up. "It's open when we're there. And we're not there," explains Stephen Powers, brusquely. It's probably easier to head out and try to find the work of ICY Signs and Powers—still known to some as ESPO, the tag Powers used to write graffiti for 15 years—on your own.

Over the past several months, Powers and his crew have worked in several East and Southwest Baltimore neighborhoods, on blocks that have seen decades of blight and neglect. There are abandoned houses, drug activity, violence. There are also people who love these communities, who've lived in these parts of the city for their entire lives.

"I liken what we do to being a visual sound system. We engage and we learn, and ultimately we head out to a wall and figure out what fits—in every way. Painting is the easy part."

Powers, a former Fulbright scholar and author of 2014's A Love Letter to the City—which chronicles citywide public-art projects he and his team did in eight cities worldwide over 11 years—was tapped by the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts to bring his trademark retro-modern murals to Baltimore.

Powers is clear that his work is public art, not graffiti. "Graffiti is the illegal application of paint to a surface, so it's not that at all," he says. "It's public art in the way it should be—working with the public." The crew has done murals in 14 cities total since 2003, with officials generally approaching ICY with funding, public support, and political backing. All members are trained in the nearly lost art of sign painting and even belong to a trade guild.

Before picking up a paintbrush or roller, Powers and his associates held a year's worth of community meetings in Baltimore, asking residents what they loved and disliked about their city.

"I have to go to a city first and talk to people," Powers explains. "Then, I try to make those conversations into visual communication. I liken what we do to being a visual sound system. We engage and we learn, and ultimately we head out to a wall and figure out what fits—in every way. Then we paint it. Painting is the easy part."

At Eager Street and Milton Avenue in East Baltimore, an entire block of empty row houses were biding time, slated to be knocked down by the city to make way for a park. Powers spent days in the neighborhood talking to residents about the history of the street and why they chose to live there.

"The takeaway we got was that, as much as they love their neighborhood, they wished there was more unity," Powers says. That sentiment spurred two pieces, completed in just over three days: The wall at the end of the block now reads, in giant purple-and-white type, "I AM HERE BECAUSE IT IS HOME." The facades of the houses spell out "FOREVER TOGETHER." Taken together, the slogans encompass the endurance of the neighborhood—as well as a long wait for improvements.

"People were a little confused as to why we'd want to do that when it is going to get knocked down. But everything I've ever painted has been temporary, so it didn't matter to me that it wasn't going to last long," says Powers. "What was important to me was that we'd have this moment, and that would last forever." "Yeah, I'm a romantic! Duh!"

Powers and his team have painted at least 10 sites in Baltimore so far. Funding has long since run out, and now the team is traveling from its home base in New York City to Baltimore whenever possible to keep doing work—on ICY's dime.

"The project is ongoing," says Powers. "[Baltimore] is just far enough away from us to make it hard to be there every day. But as long as we've got walls, we'll be there. We need to pick and choose where we work very carefully. Everything [needs] clearance and insurance. But really, we're looking for areas where we can have the most significant impact—we're looking to go where people want us to be."

He says he hopes that people will be inspired by the work and make their own love letters to their cities. Sounds pretty romantic for a big ol' paint-covered tradesman.

"Yeah, I'm a romantic! Duh!," he says. "I'm jealous of musicians, jealous of how music is a medium people integrate into their lives in a way they rarely do with art. I like to think of myself as a visual blues musician—I'm painting love songs. When you pick up a guitar, what else would you want to play?

"Everything is for love," he concludes. "It's the original motivation for everything. Exclamation point."

Tippi Hedren, who turns 85 today, on the set of The Birds with Alfred Hitchcock.

An original casting call flyer for Larry Clark's Kids, written by Harmony Korine.

Paulinskill River Photography has added a photo to the pool:

A Barred Owl Eating a vole. The owl was on a telephone line looking down for about 10 minutes, and then it dropped down, picked the vole up and ate it in under a minute. We were truly blessed to witness this. Truly at the right place at the right time. series here at www.facebook.com/paulinskillriverphotography

More original Twin Peaks cast mates are joining Special Agent Dale Cooper and co-creators David Lynch and Mark Frost for the 25th anniversary series return of Twin Peaks. This is awesome.

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Google says it will halt sales of its Glass eyewear, a move that could frustrate fans who bought the quirky head-mounted computer but which the company pitched as a "graduation" of the technology from a research experiment to a product that could be used in factories, hospitals and other workplace environments. Monday will be the last day anyone can buy the $US1500 ($A1823) gadgets, which arrived on the consumer market less than a year ago but seemed to appeal to a very small demographic of early adopters. Google Glass will continue to be led by Ivy Ross, a former jewellery designer, but the operation will move out of the secretive Google X research lab where it was developed and fall under the direction of Tony Fadell, co-founder and chief executive officer of the home automation company, Nest Labs, which Google acquired a year ago for $US3.2 billion.

space inspired looks for valentino pre-fall 2015

While most common obscenities are a single barked word or set phrase, a number of them allow for user creativity, and ad-hoc formation that suits the moment. These are noteworthy in that they permit a linguistic dialing-up or dialing down of the desired force.

Jesus H. Christ

The insertion of “h” into “Jesus Christ” is a mild intensifier, and has a long history. The etymology is contested, but likely stems from the Christian symbol representing the first three characters of Christ’s name, iota-eta-sigma, which looks like IHS:

Suggestions that the “h” stands for “Harold,” ‘Henry,” or “holy” can be summarily discarded. So far, this results in a standard epithet, but the fun starts when one adds “on a” to the pattern, e.g.: “Jesus H. Christ on the cross,” “Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick”  or “Jesus H. Christ in a chicken basket.”  or from the Blues Brothers movie, “Jesus H. tap-dancing Christ.” Also: “Jesus H. Christ on a cracker,” “Jesus H. Christ on a rubber crutch,” and “Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick.”

In these forms, the user can append virtually any prosaic phrase that comes to mind.

Furthermore, the “h” can be included or discarded, in such forms as “Christ on a raft,” “Christ on a crutch,” “Christ on a bike,” and others.

It’s queer

In a similar vein, we have a wealth of epithets beginning with “queer as a …” in which the user can insert any phrase that springs to mind, e.g.:

• Queer as a 3-dollar bill
• Queer as a plaid rabbit
• Queer as a football bat
• Queer as a clockwork orange
• Queer as a nine-bob note
• Queer as a 3-speed walking stick

None of the above play off of “queer” in the sense of gay, but some forms like “gayer than a two-dollar bill” have been coined to that end  in addition to the now-popular “queer as folk.”

Tmesis thesis

Then we have the interpolation of epithets into a word, .e.g, “far-fucking-out”, “fan-fucking-tastic”, “abso-fucking-lutely, in which “fucking” is threaded into an expression of surprise, amazement, or agreement, but “goddamn” or “motherfucking” are routinely seen.

Ok, fine

Playing off the sense of “fine” as meaning “in good spirits,” we have “fine as frog’s hair,” “as slippery as frog hair,” and phrases indicating the unusual, e.g., “as rare as rocking-horse shit” and “as small as the hairs on a gnat’s bollock.”

Go crazy

And in the simile department, “crazy” generates a fair number of off-the-cuff expressions like:

• Crazy as a shit-house rat
• Crazy as a loon
• Crazy as a soup sandwich
• Crazy as Larrabee’s calf

This is not intended to be a listing of popular folk expressions as much as it notes the type of phrasing that allows the speaker to insert a word or term selected on the fly. There is no limit to the number of variants that can be created as needed, and these reflect on the wit and inventiveness of the speaker.

Okay. You guys had a blast with last week's street grid quiz, so how about a variation on that theme? This time I've taken the official subway/train/metro system maps of 10 cities and stripped them of all identifying information. These maps include metropolitan rail transit only -- no bus lines, no roads and no Amtrak.

These should be a little harder to identify than last week's maps -- rather than a dense network of roads all you get is a stylized skeleton of a region's transit system. But you do have one thing going for you this time: there's no commuter rail in Benghazi.

sixpenceee:

Chinese farmer Hao Xianzhang has perfected the process of growing pears inside Buddha shaped plastic molds.

Yo is it

tastefullyoffensive:

(image via arbin008)

Found in the book Werner Herzog – A Guide for the Perplexed. Read the rest

“I did not know that when I first met you, we would go on to tell such a story,” said Olivier Saillard, as he raised a glass to his star collaborator Tilda Swinton at a beautiful Tuscan dinner last night held in a 12th century former convent where Gallileo’s daughter once lived.  The story Saillard was referring to is trio of performances, which he and Swinton have now worked on – The Impossible Wardrobe, Eternity Dress and now Cloakroom – all based on sartorial thought or .  You’ve read me go on and on about the brilliant and ingenious ways in which Saillard compels us to think about our clothes – what do they mean and how do they connect between mind, body and thread.  One of the primary reasons for attending Pitti this season was to experience this affinity between Saillard and Swinton as they reprised their Cloakroom performance especially for this edition of Pitti Uomo (a video teaser can be seen here).

 

The significant thing about Saillard’s performances is their length.  Cloakroom was timed at about an hour long, and our performance in particular staged at the Teatro della Pergola yesterday was an hour and a half.  As fashion happenings go, there are few opportunities to take such a long length of time to really think.  To draw importance to the aspects of the fashion industry that we should be celebrating in order to elevate our field.  When Saillard performed Models Never Talk in New York, it raised questions about the modelling industry today.  When Saillard and Swinton first teamed up in Paris for The Impossible Wardrobe in 2012, they brought rare garments from the Palais Galliera to life, dusting dust off history for a new audience.  I didn’t see it but when they performed again in 2013, they brought attention to craftsmanship and process that goes into a garment.

My own expectations were especially high to witness and then process yet another Swinton/Saillard coup  Cloakroom was performed in Paris back in November as part of the Festival D’Automne but because of the audience participation aspect of the performance, it meant every one would be quite different.  The idea came about when Saillard thought about the cloakroom or coat checks of the theatre or a fancy restaurant.  They’re archives in themselves, full of stories and memories.  Tilda Swinton therefore was our cloakroom attendant.  And as we the audience volunteered ourselves and our chosen cloakroom item to Swinton, she would react, interpret and ultimately elevate that piece of clothing, augmenting it with a memory or adding a layer of emotion to what ostensibly looks like a very ordinary garment.

Only Swinton could enthral an audience whilst holding one of many (many!) black coats.  Her presence is thrilling to see in person as she gives herself so wholly to the performance, improvising without it looking disingenuous.  She’d humorously turn her back on a man, keeping him waiting whilst he waited for his stub.  A neoprene bulky jacket is gingerly stroked with curiosity.  She’d whisper to two ends of a scarf as though she were sharing secrets with friends.  She’d express fear of a corporate grey suit by ducking under the table.  One lady – head to toe in Prada and Miu Miu – hammed it up for the performance, flinging her blue mink coat on the table Devil Wears Prada style.  Swinton reacted demurely.

The climax moment was when Swinton assumed a blue jacket and together with Saillard would breathe in and out, puffing out the jacket as though they were lungs.  Quite literally a life jacket.  Finally Swinton began to leave little mementos – little witty phrases such as “Make a wish when you first wear a new garment”, a wheat stalk, a spritz of perfume or a piece of paper sealed with a kiss.  Those with physical mementos will undoubtedly never look at their coats and scarves in the same way again.

In Paris, luminaries like Charlotte Rampling, Stella Tennant, Haider Ackermann and Michel Gaubert handed over their expensive coats and jackets.  Here in Florence, the coats handed over were far more subtle and dare I say mundane.  Which only makes Swinton’s performance even more remarkable.  She held our attention for an hour and a half as she assumed and possessed every piece of clothing in a different way.  And she made me think about so many things in the process.  How you are perceived by what you wear.  How people react to you.  How I wear certain things for certain occasions because of what i’ve associated with that specific garment.  How a piece of clothing makes you feel once it’s on.  How memories are built with clothing.  How you can almost rely on something as though it were a trusty companion.  How the simple pleasures of pushing hands into pocket can feel comforting.

Too much thought on mere clothes, some would say.  Apparently we’ve got bigger and more important things to be thinking about.  But if we reduce our industry to pure surface, that’s a depressing thought.  I can only clutch on to a fantasy that there’s got to be meaning to what we wear and Swinton and Saillard emphatically demonstrated that.

According to a survey using Yelp data, Marylanders and Virginians love Peruvian food, Ohioans love soup, Coloradans love gluten free, and West Virginians love hotdog. Other trends: Read the rest

image by Daniel Angione

emoji.ink is a new interactive site that allows users to use emojis as stamps to draw pictures. The interface has options to switch emojis and the size of each to create different shapes and colors. Pictures can be as elaborate or simple as users make them. Daniel Angione showed off how detailed drawings made with emojis can be when he posted an impressive drawing he made of Smaug, the fearsome dragon from The Hobbit, using emoji.ink.

Here is the proud logo of Laughing Squid drawn using three different emojis:

image by Rebecca Escamilla

via Daniel Angione

bittersiha:

ariverisariver:

This is genius.

wE BROKE THEM

unclefather:

"Did this person get drunk off of box wine one year and flip over the turkey pan with the turkey still inside it and then pass out with their underwear pulled down under the christmas tree?"

"Yes"

"It’s Grandma" 

Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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WE SEND GLITTER TO THE PEOPLE YOU HATE. Glitter as a Service: want to piss off someone you dislike for only $9.99? Let us send them some stupid fucking glitter that is guaranteed to go everywhere.

The San Francisco startup, which connects customers to personal shoppers through a mobile app, has been aggressively expanding beyond the Bay Area to cities across the country like Seattle, Washington, New York, Boston, Chicago, Austin and Atlanta. “Really for the first time in history a company like Instacart is actually possible, there’s all this pent up demand that’s existed,” said CEO Apoorva Mehta said in an interview. When customers order from a selection of grocery stores in their area from smartphones or computers, Instacart deploys a “personal shopper,” to purchase and deliver groceries. Personal shoppers, who are independent contractors, use their own cars to pick up orders from stores like Whole Foods, Safeway and Costco and, for a fee, deliver them to homes in as little as an hour. The new funding is part of a Series C round, led by Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, but also includes Comcast Ventures, Dragoneer Investment Group, Thrive Capital, Valiant Capital, and three firms that had previously invested in the company, Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures and Sequoia. Lending Club, a San Francisco peer-to-peer loan company that recently went public, had raised $52.8 million after its Series C round in 2010, according to CrunchBase.

The Green Mountain Project performed a de facto Charpentier Vespers at St. Joseph’s Church that blended the composer’s works with chants and sonatas.

Back in 2014 (oh so long ago!), The BBC published a piece on Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, which houses heaps and heaps of abandoned aircraft:

If you find yourself driving down South Kolb Road in the Arizona city of Tucson, you’ll find the houses give way to a much more unusual view; rows of military aircraft, still and silent, spread out under the baking desert sun. On and on, everything from enormous cargo lifters to lumbering bombers, Hercules freighters and the F-14 Tomcat fighters made famous in Top Gun.

This is Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, run by the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (309 AMARG). It’s home to some 4,400 aircraft, arranged over nearly 2,600 acres (10.5 sq km). Some look like they were parked only a few hours ago, others are swathed in protective coverings to keep out the sand and dust. Inside the facilities’ hangars, other planes have been reduced to crates of spare parts, waiting to be sent out to other bases in the US or across the world to help other aircraft take to the air again. To those who work here, Davis-Monthan is known by a far less prosaic name, one more in keeping with the Wild West folklore from Arizona’s earlier days. They call it The Boneyard.

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wiebkerost:

Pharmacy Museum Heidelberg, reportedly the world’s largest collection of originally preserved apothecaries and pharmacy paraphernalia

More photos, art and articles at my website www.wiebkerost.com

Metal Cats is Alexandra Crockett's collection of brutal dudes and their cute fluffy cats. As we learned watching Metalocalypse, metal musicians love their cats.

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The plight of the bitter nerd: Why so many awkward, shy guys end up hating feminism:

postcardsfromspace:

Really fantastic article trapped under an offputting and pretty frankly misleading headline:

To be blunt, Scott’s story is about Scott himself spending a lot of time by himself hating himself. When he eventually stops hating himself and, as an older, more mature nerd, asks women out, no women mace him, slap him or ritually humiliate him — instead he ends up with a girlfriend who ends up becoming a wife. So far, so typical.

Amy’s story is about being harassed and groped by men in the tech world and, eventually,being raped by a shy, nerdy guy she thought she trusted. So far, so also typical.

What’s the biggest difference between Scott’s and Amy’s stories? Scott’s story is about things that happened inside his brain. Amy’s story is about actual things that were done to her by other people against her will, without her control.

And Scott, and his commenters, are treating the two as worthy of equivalent degrees of scrutiny.

SCULLY FOREVER