Who else from the US is long-toothed enough to remember those bunged up old Sterling Educational Film reels that lazy or under-prepped public school teachers often showed in place of real lessons? They were short, vaguely informative features on anything from personal hygiene, to parameciums, to overviews of friggin’ dairy production in Wisconsin. And of course, there was plenty of morbidly fascinating “duck and cover” fare:
I’d all but forgotten watching Tommy and the Atom one morning in my 1st grade homeroom class (this would have been early in Reagan’s first term) until now. But the minute that electrified fox showed up, it all came flooding back: the Rasputinian magician with his beard of lightning, the impassive narrator’s description of good versus bad atoms, the malignant black atom thrashing inside of a bomb, intimation of worldwide destruction at the hands of evildoers… This is one beautifully creepy, potent little slice of cold war propaganda.
It’s a little sad, how the advent of CGI rendered much of the animatronics industry obsolete just when cinematic robotics were starting to get so intricate, so lifelike. But the technology retains its place, and under certain circumstances, there’s still a definite advantage to using animatronics instead of CGI or stop motion. Some truly badass robotic FX artists have continued to find plenty of work. Take British wunderkind John Nolan, for instance:
Squeee! Although a relative newcomer, Nolan’s already worked on everything from Hellboy to Where the Wild Things to Doctor Who to Harry Potter. You have to check out his entire show reel. Incredible stuff.
Hey, guess who else was born on Jan 8th? World-renowned theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking. He turns 68 today. Here’s a small assortment of reverent (and not so reverent) clips and quotes concerning a brilliant and resilient man whose mind is arguably Teh Sexiest human organ on this entire planet:
The Coilhouse crew makes no bones about being paper fetishists. (Mmm… the texture of pulp against thumb, the perfume of ink and fresh card stock, the printed tome as art object. Purr.) Because of this bias, I’m skeptical when discussing the ability of e-tablet technology to bridge more tactile, primal gaps between my print and digital reading experiences. However. The London-based BERG design consultancy is blowing my puny mind with their Mag+ prototype:
This could be a readable art object in its own right.
Unlike previous e-tablets I’ve seen, the Mag+ technology would run articles in scrolls rather than as “flipped” pages (an abhorrent digital gimmick, if you ask me), and placed side-to-side in what BERG is calling “mountain range” format. It’s a far less literal translation. More organic. Readers page through by shifting focus, tapping pictures on the left of the screen to peruse content, then tapping text on the right to hone in. Magazines are still presented as compartmentalized issues, without that sense of incompleteness created by an infinite webfeed. It’s… cozy, somehow. BERG says:
It is, we hope, like stepping into a space for quiet reading. It’s pleasant to have an uncluttered space. Let the Web be the Web. But you can heat up the words and pics to share, comment, and to dig into supplementary material.
The design has an eye to how paper magazines can re-use their editorial work without having to drastically change their workflow or add new teams. Maybe if the form is clear enough, then every mag, no matter how niche, can look gorgeous [and] be super easy to understand.
Watch the demo; it’s fascinating. I’m eager to see where they go with this. There’s a discussion board over at Bonnier R&D Beta Lab, if you want to give them direct feedback.
Student team’s CG “Wall of Knowledge” design proposal for the Stockholm Library. (via)
On a related note, the press is saying 2010 will be “The Year of the E-Reader”. We’ve never really discussed e-books here, have we? What has your experience been –if any– with portable tablets like Kindle, Nook or the Sony Reader? So far, bibliophiles I know have had really strong and varied reactions to them. My more tech savvy (also, dare I say, somewhat more jet-setty and affluent) friends have embraced the digital format as a new and freeing medium. Other, more traditional bookworms reel in horror from the concept of spending yet more time staring at a pixelated screen. [edit: although, as Mark Cook just pointed out in comments, ideally, an e-book screen does not look pixelated.]
It could be said that women have, perhaps, not had a great time of it fashion-wise. Throughout the centuries the industry of clothing the second sex has produced bizarre and painful contraptions to push, pinch, and bind women into various, and oftentimes decidedly unnatural, shapes. Whether it be the lotus foot or high heals, corsets or neck rings there is a strange and morbid thread woven through mankind’s history.
Intermixed with this sadistic molding of flesh there is, of course, a fair share of positively ridiculous inventions designed to make all of this that much easier on the modern woman. Nowhere is this better evidenced that in the Frederick’s of Hollywood ad from 1960. Designed to accentuate the all important Bust, it proposes a simple inflation device; meaning that it supposes that women would take to inflating their bras like life rafts or water wings every morning, devoting precious time to shaping their already heaving bosoms into keen edged, yet pillowy, missiles. Of course the side effect of this is looking like the young lady in the upper left corner; surprised and chagrined when her lactation fetishist husband discovers and misinterprets her morning routine.
OK, it’s official. For the first time since relocating my base of operations to the southern hemisphere, I’m homesick:
Right now just about all of my talented fabricator/maker/builder chums back in California are gearing up (hurr hurr) for the second annual Santa Rosa Handcar Regatta, which takes place Sept 27th. That’s exactly a week from now. From the Handcar Regatta’s “Philosophy” page:
The railcar races at the center of the Regatta highlights Innovation and Human-Powered Ingenuity to devise cheaper, viable, and hitherto undreamed of methods for bizarre transport beyond the standard notions of today. Additionally, commuter rail transport is highlighted in our era of rising fuel costs. Together with an emphasis on biking, the Regatta provides a platform for playfulness and sustainable concerns within the realm of human-powered alternative transportation.
Tinkerers, artists, and eccentrics both young and old are invited to participate in Artistic and Mechanical Innovation upon a playful and inspired mixture of fond remembrance for a stylized industrial railroad past remixed with progressive styles and technologies of today.
The elegantly feisty Hennepin Crawler, winner of the Erasmus P. Kitty Honorary Award at the 2008 Handcar Regatta.
If you live in the area and appreciate thoughtful, gonzo DIY fun on a massive scale, you will not want to miss this. Indie vendors, circus and dance performances, yummy foodstuffs, live music and multiple geekgasms await you. More info here. Have fun at the races, comrades.
Don’t let anybody steer you different; Andrew B’s x planesTumblr is straight-up anachro-airship porn. Andrew has been posting scores of “weird and wonderful aircraft pictures and stories found both on the web, and in print” over there for the better part of a year now. You can get lost in the archives for days:
Some more choice excerpts from x planes after the jump, but seriously, if you have a few minutes (or a few hours) to spare, just get over there and explore. Motherload.
Headed by Sam Easterson, the Museum of Animal Perspectives project involves the placement of tiny cameras atop various animals –everything from scorpions to frogs to lambs to wolves– and documenting short snippets of them going about their daily lives:
Be warned: it’s highly addictive fare.* You might very well lose hours watching footage of crocodiles blowing bubbles and moles scurrying through the earth. Here’s hoping there will soon be giraffes, platypuses and dolphins added to the mix!
*Speaking of addictive cam footage, remember Strange Days? The flannel-and-fanny-pack-sporting, mini disc-pimping, PJ Harvey song-ganking cyberpunk Neuromancer knockoff starring Angela Bassett and Ralph Fiennes? A humble request: can someone with more spare time and editing prowess puh-lease take this film preview and splice it together with various clips from the MAP archives? Comedy gold.
The three hairs on the tip of a kitteh’s tail are Teh Debbil’s hairs, driving cats to prowl the night when all Lard-fearing beasts should be abed. And while all of The Lard’s blessed wee lambs lie asleep and dreaming of teh baby Jebus, underworldly Seitanic dreck like THIS is holding a Sabutt in the depth of the night, dontcha know. Such unholiness is presided over by The Debbil Himself in the form of a Grand Black Kitteh. Filth! Unclean!
*and apparently, so is After Effects.
Once the host of witches and sorcerers swoop in on salve-anointed broomsticks, the infernal rituals begin. The coven pays homage to their enthroned Debbil Kitteh, making offerings to him of unbaptized children and reading particularly noxious passages from Teh Hairy Pooter seriez. Each minion of Seitan must renew an oath of fidelity and obedience, shuffling past the felonious feline in single file to kiss his dingleberry-ensconced bunghole (some witches claim that he keeps a second face under his tail that looks like THIS). They then celebrate Teh Black Mess, lighting black candles from a flickering torch balanced atop D0OM KITT3h’s head, and turning their backs to the altar. The Sabutt feast commences. The flesh of hanged men, hearts of unbaptized children, Twizzlers, and a variety of unclean animals (like THESE) are then consumed.**
**Text reiterated vaguely from SnikSnak’s entry on Cat Devilry.
(This post brought to you by muscle relaxants and the finest pipe-weed in all the Shire. Meow meow meow meow…)
HOLY SHIT. I just discovered the website Everything Is Terrible (which should really be called Bad Touch Central, or Kill It With Fire). JACKPOT. I kind of feel like a kid who’s just come downstairs on Christmas morning and discovered grandma giving Santa a hummer a living room filled to the brim with goodies.
Be warned: at about 1:45, this clip gets downright demonic.
After discovering stuff like RE/SEARCH, those Incredibly Strange Music comps, zine culture, and wandering the specialty video store booths at the (then much smaller, homegrown) San Diego Comic Convention, I realized there were entire fringe communities of weirdos compelled to do exactly the same thing! I was so excited! We were all trading these grainy, janky 4th generation bootlegs of our favorite oddball material. Pre internet, those communities were more localized. One the internet kicked in, it went global. Of course, now we have YouTube [and better yet, Vimeo]…
…and Everything Is Terrible –bless their black, festering hearts– has a channel chock full o’ madness. These are only a few of the more soul-rending clips they’ve culled from the etherstatic for our pleasure. If you’ve got an hour (or several) to kill (as violently and memorably as possible), you should probably head on over there. Or, if you quailed upon viewing these clips, click here instead.
More Everything Is Terrible curated gems after the jump.
EDIT 1 2009/08/04 1:50pm: Oh no! YouTube just suspended EIT’s account. “[You] won’t be able to watch most of our videos until we find a new home for them. We’re working hard to rebuild, but it’s going to take a little while. Sit down, breathe into a paper bag, and try to relax. We will keep you updated. Don’t worry, we will continue to post new videos.”
