The Friday Afternoon Movie: The Weather Underground

Hulu had the only embeddable copy of this. For readers in territories that cannot view Hulu, however, you can watch the whole thing here, on the distributor’s official YouTube channel.

It’s Friday again and you are sick and tired of this damn job! Stupid job. Stupid boss, with his/her stupid shirt and his/her stupid face. It’s time to rise up! Time to flip over your desk and set it on fire. Then go punch your boss in the face. FUCK THE MAN!

Ok, well, maybe it’s not time for that but it is time for The FAM, and today we’re showing The Weather Underground, Sam Green and Bill Siegel’s 2002 documentary about the Weathermen, the radical leftist organization responsible for a number of bombings of government buildings during the 1970s as well as breaking Timothy Leary out of jail. Featuring interviews with key members of the movement, it manages to stay objective while giving an inside look into the machinations of the violent side of the New Left that grew out of the protests of the Vietnam War.

Catherine Hyland’s Images From China

Some stunning images by photographer Catherine Hyland from her China Series and Wonderland. Located outside Bejing, Wonderland was designed to be the largest theme park in Asia. Construction began in 1998, but was halted because its developers and the local farmers could not come to an agreement on the proposed 120 acres of land required to fulfill such a grandiose vision. What’s left is one of those seemingly post apocalyptic landscapes that photograph so well.

Her other photographs from China are equally as impressive, featuring stark, urban lanscapes. The images of giant, towering apartment blocks and crowded alleys, cast in the perpetual daylight of a vast metropolis, have an otherworldly quality to them. You can see more from both series after the jump.

Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared

Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared, by London-based art collective This Is It, at first seems like a bizarro children’s television from an alternate dimension. Looking at the modern, television landscape, however, it would seem that much of the programming for neonates is comprised of educational material wrapped in visuals that would make the Surrealists weep with joy. If anything, this is just taking the concept to its logical, if unsettling, conclusion.

BTC: Panda Dance

Some weeks, thumb you just gotta throw your hands up in the air, cry “Tempus FUGGIT”, and do the Panda Dance.


Song by Jonathan Mann.

Fashioning the Sublime: Alexander McQueen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

CONTRIBUTOR’S NOTE: This week marks the final chance to see Savage Beauty before it closes on Sunday, August 7th. Due to the exhibit’s overwhelming popularity, the Metropolitan Museum has scheduled special viewing times for the upcoming weekend. Do not miss the opportunity to witness this one-of-a-kind show honoring one of the most spectacular talents to ever grace the fashion world.


Alexander McQueen’s “The Horn of Plenty”,  autumn/winter 2009-10. Black duck feathers. (via)

“When I am dead and gone, people will know that the twenty-first century was started by Alexander McQueen.” -Alexander McQueen (1969-2010)

The death of the Scottish designer Lee Alexander McQueen in February of 2010 sent shockwaves throughout the fashion industry that rippled steadily outward, pervading the worlds of fine art, music, theatre and design. Suddenly, one of the bravest, boldest and incredibly imaginative forces in fashion was gone. McQueen’s suicide took place just a week after his beloved mother, Joyce, died from cancer, and with little more than a month to go before he was to debut a new collection in Paris. The international outpouring of grief was palpable, as everyone, from socialites, celebrities and fashion students from countless walks of life remembered the designer in extensive magazine features, blog posts, Twitter updates, and Tumblr tributes. McQueen’s strong features and piercing stare appeared on the cover of most major newspapers.


(via)

McQueen’s influence was undeniable; he had unleashed, with collection after collection, a romantic assault on the senses and invited his viewers to look with their minds, not merely their bodies, when deciding what to wear and how to wear it.

Never had a designer injected so much personal anguish and cerebral delight in his creations, and the materials he used, from pony skin, ostrich feathers, medical slides, hammered silver, balsa wood and tulle, became fashioning for the soul. For the past several months, devotees have streamed through the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City to personally experience many of his most iconic creations up close, presented in the Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty retrospective. Curated by Andrew Bolton of The Costume Institute, the exhibit shows more than one hundred designs in tailor-made galleries befitting each of McQueen’s influences.

Friday Afternoon Apathy

No Friday Afternoon Movie today. Instead, we present Jon Lajoie’s hip hop tribute to not giving a fuck. It is absolutely vital that you watch this right now (with headphones if you’re at work as it’s full of dirty, work-inappropriate language). The FAM will return next week. Promise.

Hello! I’m Shelley Duvall.

When the internet was created, those involved most likely imagined a vast network where ideas could be shared across great expanses. Where great minds could come together to work on the most fundamental questions of human existence. Instead, here’s a video of Shelley Duvall, star of The Shining, introducing herself in almost the exact same way twenty four times. It is both maddening and hypnotic. Gaze upon its banal majesty and weep for what might have been.

(Also, let me just say, that this is, perhaps, the most terrifying thing one could hear upon entering a graveyard.)

Dial-up Modem Sound Slowed Down 700% Using Paulstretch

Dial-up modem sound slowed 700% by Darkfalky, ampoule using PaulStretch. Eerie, sinister, incredibly beautiful.


via Ariana Osborne

Also see:

Porcelain Unicorn

The winner of 2010’s Tell It Your Way competition, sponsored by Philips. The contest’s rules were that the film could be no longer than three minutes and contain no more than six lines of dialog. Written, directed, and edited by Keegan Wilcox, Porcelain Unicorn tells the story of an encounter between two children in the midst of WWII.

Via Cynical-C

Wren Britton and PUREVILE Are Coming to San Francisco!

Designer Wren Britton revels in creating one-of-a-kind “Post Apocalyptic Victorian accessories” and “clothing for Time-Traveling Dandies and Femme Fatales of all ages {and genders!!!} and all those in-between.” Both the gentleman and his wares exude a winsome air of elegance, playfulness, and feral sensuality. Ooo la la!

Britton elliptically describes his aesthetic, and the PUREVILE line of accessories:

I have a background in fashion but I have always had a love for accessories…They really can make a simple outfit POP…or make an extreme outfit topple over with GLAMOUR….I think CoCo Chanel said something like “When you leave your house always turn around and look in the mirror and take off the first thing you see… {chuckle} …Me??? I turn around and the first SPACE I see I pin on something else!!!!!

All items are handmade…{With love}…All one of a kind…Made from antiques… Heirlooms… Bones… Doll parts… Keys… Lace… Oddities and Curiosities of all shapes and sizes….Things found in an attic…Things forgotten in a basement… Things behind glass in a museum… This is PUREVILE.

The New York-based bon-vivant will be holding a trunk sale of his gorgeously anachronistic finery at Five and Diamond in San Francisco this Thursday, the 28th of July, from 6-9pm. I’m definitely gonna be there, and a little bird told me Nadya might show up as well. If you’re in the neighborhood, please do drop in and say hello!

Also see: