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A brilliantly unlikely assortment of type.

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 23:11:00 -0400

A brilliantly unlikely assortment of type.

Jalapeño Lemonade. You’re welcome.

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 23:10:48 -0400

"…Hence most of his writings exhibit the sluttish magnificence of a Russian noble, all vermin..."

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 17:08:31 -0400

“…Hence most of his writings exhibit the sluttish magnificence of a Russian noble, all vermin and diamonds, dirty linen and inestimable sables.”

- Thomas Babington Macaulay, on John Dryden. From Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1854) Taken from Poisoned Pens, a collection of literary invective edited by Gary Dexter.

Something very important and very weird is happening to the...

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 16:26:00 -0400

Something very important and very weird is happening to the book right now: It’s shedding its papery corpus and transmigrating into a bodiless digital form, right before our eyes. We’re witnessing the bibliographical equivalent of the rapture. If anything we may be lowballing the weirdness of it all.

Fascinating article in the Book Review about the implication of the migration of books to digital form on browsing. It is part of the growing realization that one of the profound casualties of the digital form is the disruption of visual and tactile free association. Think of staring at a wall in your local video store, thumbing through record bins, or in this case flipping through a book or magazine. Digital media is frantically constructing gizmos meant to mimic these dynamics - recommended links, bookmarking, etc… but none yet come close to the same degree of effectiveness. Further proof that in many ways, the past was faster…

AT ALMOST ONE 0’CLOCK I entered the lobby of the building where I worked and turned toward the...

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 01:39:40 -0400

AT ALMOST ONE 0’CLOCK I entered the lobby of the building where I worked and turned toward the escalators, carrying a black Penguin paperback and a small white CVS bag, its receipt stapled over the top. The escalators rose toward the mezzanine, where my ofﬁce was. They were the free-standing kind: a pair of integral signs swooping upward between the two floors they served without struts or piers to bear any intermediate weight. On sunny days like this one, a temporary, steeper escalator of daylight, formed by intersections of the lobby’s towering volumes of marble and glass, met the real escalators just above their middle point, spreading into a needly area of shine where it fell against their brushed-steel side-panels, and adding long glossy highlights to each of the black rubber handrails which wavered slightly as the handrails slid on their tracks, like the radians of black luster that ride the undulating outer edge of an LP.

When I drew close to the up escalator, I involuntarily transferred my paperback and CVS bag to my left hand, so that I could take the handrail with my right, according to habit. The bag made a little paper rattling sound, and when I looked down at it, I discovered that I was unable for a second to remember what was inside, my recollection snagged on the stapled receipt. But of course that was one of the principal reasons you needed little bags, I thought: they kept your purchases private, while signaling to the world that you led a busy, rich life, full of pressing errands run. Earlier that lunch hour, I had visited a Papa Gino’s, a chain I rarely ate at, to buy a half-pint of milk to go along with a cookie I had bought unexpectedly from a failing franchise, attracted by the notion of spending a few minutes in the plaza in front of my building eating a dessert I should have outgrown and reading my paperback. I paid for the carton of milk, and then the girl (her name tag said “Donna”) hesitated, sensing that some component of the transaction was missing: she said, “Do you want a straw?” I hesitated in tum—did I? My interest in straws for drinking anything besides milkshakes had fallen off some years before, probably peaking out the year that all the major straw vendors switched from paper to plastic straws, and we entered that uncomfortable era of the ﬂoating straw; although I did still like plastic elbow straws, whose pleated necks resisted bending in a way that was very similar to the tiny seizeups your ﬁnger joints will undergo if you hold them in the same position for a little while.

- Nicholson Baker’s intro to his 1986 debut novel, the Mezzanine. Easily the best book ever written about an escalator ride back to work after purchasing shoe laces on your lunch break… Wanted to mark the close of summer proper as we head back up our escalators; it’s also an ace reminder of the enduring joys of a well examined moment.

"[She was] a woman who erred and aspired with a certain magnificence. She brought to everything the..."

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 01:38:29 -0400

“[She was] a woman who erred and aspired with a certain magnificence. She brought to everything the quality of the superlative. When she was worldly, it was on a grand scale. When she was mercenary, she challenged the richest fortunes. When she loved, it was in the highest quarters. When she admitted ambition, it was for the highest power.”

- Vita Sackville-West, The Edwardians

DADA: Age of Confusion, 12” (1987) - some bleeps and...

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 02:52:00 -0400

DADA: Age of Confusion, 12” (1987) - some bleeps and bloops while we rev up the transmitter over here in preparation for regular broadcasts…

Julie Newmar as as April Conquest on an episode of The Monkees....

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 00:25:00 -0400

Julie Newmar as as April Conquest on an episode of The Monkees. More here, and a hypnotic animated gif, here. Ah, culture!

Photo

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 01:24:57 -0400

Gorgeous & smart, smart, smart. (enlarge it to get the full...

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 01:51:00 -0400

Gorgeous & smart, smart, smart. (enlarge it to get the full effect…) Reminds me of this Lictenstein, here. Via This Isn’t Happiness, by way of Full Stop Comma White. Visit both…

Photo

Sun, 12 Jun 2011 23:56:50 -0400

If you find yourself traveling through the Philadelphia International Airport, spare some time for...

Sun, 12 Jun 2011 23:00:00 -0400

If you find yourself traveling through the Philadelphia International Airport, spare some time for a wonderful, small exhibit in the walkway between Terminals C & D - The Children’s Book Illustrations of Charles Santore. Santore, a Philadelphia native, is a giant, giant personal favorite. (As an aside, the airport regularly mounts surprisingly smart, sharp little shows.)

Santore started 1956 as a freelance illustrator. For nearly 30 years, he worked for ad agencies & magazines. In 1986, Santore was offered the opportunity to illustrate his first children’s book, The Complete Tales of Peter Rabbit and Other Stories. Since then, he’s done Aesop’s Fables, The Wizard of Oz, The Little Mermaid, Snow White, and The Silk Princess. Art above is a detail from the Little Mermaid. More here, all amazing.

Find the midpoint between King Crimson, circa Red, and Jem and...

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 00:39:00 -0400

Find the midpoint between King Crimson, circa Red, and Jem and the Holograms. It happens to fall somewhere in North Wales. Down rains the mixed debris of a chance collision between Pixies and Siouxie and the Banshees. From this improbable mix you get a working model of the sound of The Joy Formidable. It’s gigantic, magnificent, girlish and intense. Their debut, the Big Roar, is just out now (gushing NME review here.) Fantastic. The song above, “The Last Drop,” is not on it. It’s on the preceding mini-album A Balloon Called Moaning. Also fantastic. Enjoy.

Pennsylvania Lottery design, circa 1976.

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 08:14:00 -0400

Pennsylvania Lottery design, circa 1976.

Ah voilà ‘la belle!, Oh, que le horreur!, Superbe de style,...

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 22:47:00 -0400

Ah voilà ‘la belle!, Oh, que le horreur!, Superbe de style, magnifique d’audace! – The Daily Beast has an exclusive excerpt from David McCullough’s new book The Greater Journey. In it he recounts of one of art history’s great melodramas - the story of John Singer Sargent’s obsession with the socialite Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, aka Madame X, and the scandal his painting of her caused in Paris when it was first exhibited. Never gets old, and the painting, of course, is a stunner.

To the dedicated trawler of yard sales & flea markets...

Sun, 29 May 2011 10:11:00 -0400

To the dedicated trawler of yard sales & flea markets and/or the Marilyn Monroe enthusiast, this reads like an impossible dream - 30 years ago, photographer Anton Fury found a folio of unpublished negatives of Marilyn and Jayne Mansfield at a garage sale in Parsippany, New Jersey. (I mean really? really? - and with Mansfield?!) More on the story and a small clutch of prints, here.

My notion of beauty is stuck with the idea that form – the...

Wed, 25 May 2011 12:35:00 -0400

My notion of beauty is stuck with the idea that form – the point of form – is the disclosure of new aspects.

- Art historian T.J. Clark in a severe, provocative, fascinating review of the recent exhibit Cult of Beauty - a survey of the Aesthetic Movement in England. The charms of the piece are well demonstrated by his depiction of the fevered works of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, where a “big-hair Astarte puffs her lips and stretches her serpent-in-the-garden neck, young ladies adjust their frocks, [while] tigers with roses purr beneath polystyrene skies.” (see above, Byam Shaw, Rising )

70年代後半の日本のテクノポップ音の出現の背後にある先駆的な力は、イエローマジックオーケストラは、現代の電子音楽の精の影響残る-...

Wed, 25 May 2011 01:10:00 -0400

70年代後半の日本のテクノポップ音の出現の背後にある先駆的な力は、イエローマジックオーケストラは、現代の電子音楽の精の影響残る-大人気の両方国内外で、シンセサイザー、シーケンサーやドラムマシンの彼らの先駆的な使用彼らは今日の電子文化の革新者としてクラフトに2番目に配置します。 Yellow Magic Orchestra のは、キーボード坂本龍一、1978年に東京で結成された.

There are indications that young people will continue to...

Wed, 25 May 2011 00:22:00 -0400

There are indications that young people will continue to withhold cooperation until they get some assurance that the future is being thought about in a constructive way. Reports show that young people are not content with “We are fighting for our lives.”

East Grinstead phlegmatic after bombs last night: “It is a pity no more damage was done, as people were left quite unperturbed and unaware of dangers ahead.”

Hostility expressed by West End staff towards new BBC announcer. “Too pompous and heavy; almost as if the Nazis had taken over already.

General satisfaction at rounding up of Fascists. Perturbation of rural community facing prospect of having to harbor evacuated sheep.

Daily reports on public opinion in Great Britain, between May and September 1940. From Listening to Britain, a collection of the reports edited by Paul Addison and Jeremy A. Crang, by Vintage U.K. (excerpted in Harpers)

Bouquet, Hill Studio, Paulsboro, New Jersey.

Thu, 19 May 2011 13:57:00 -0400

Bouquet, Hill Studio, Paulsboro, New Jersey.