Back in the Day....

MTV used to play videos all the time.

Like this one:

The channel recently launched mtv music. A site that holds lots & lots & lots of videos. I'm not sure if this kind of thing is necessary given youtube & myspace video, but I have to say it strikes a nostalgic note.

Ooo lala

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Nom de Guerre - Fall Winter 08

Great military inspired look for men. Nice clean fit. No unnecessary bells and whistles.





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d.a.n.c.e - justice

I'm not very interested in watching two skinny white hipsters walk around, but I'm feeling the animation in this video for the song d.a.n.c.e by Justice

company motto

Whatever I write won't be 'new.'
It will simply be 'cra.'

PH + Inked Baby

I thought I was gonna pop a vessel holding this news in!

The first round of casting announcements hit the scene today so I can spill the beans, too.

We have some great talent:

LaChanze
Nikkole Salter
Angela Lewis
Nana Mensah

Very, very exciting....read more here.

Patrick Daughters

I discovered this director yesterday. He's awesome. Look at his stuff. He uses color, spectacle, and motion in interesting ways. He's also very focused, letting us look at the musicians, not too much editing or cutaways.

A few that I like:

"Gold Lion" - The Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs



"4 Kicks" - Kings of Leon



"Mushaboom" - Feist

Pump it up

Another radio sneaker.

This time from ADIDAS:



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The Four Tops

Mr Levi Stubbs, lead singer of the world famous, classic, soul-tastic Four Tops passed away this weekend. He was 72.

These guys performed with each other for over 40 years.

Wow.

Okay, marriages don't last that long, yo.

Wait.

Stubbs is survived by his wife of 48 years. Maybe marriages do last that long.

Here they are singing one of their Motown hits "Suga Pie Honey Bunch." Can we say "flower power"??

"If I were a boi?"

Beyonce's new video "If I were a Boy" is...interesting.

I hope it's making a bigger statement than what it is...

I hope it's stating how ridiculous and simplified gender roles are but I'm afraid it's just a love song about her man not treating her right

....sigh.



Yea, this video makes me think it's the latter:

Road trip!!!

A snazzy camper from Holland based manufacturer Tonke:



The interior is pretty lovely:



The English version of their site is under construction. Brush up on your Dutch to figure out how to get one of these babies. Buy me one, too! Tnks....

via coolhunting.com

Dude Theater, a manifesto

[prompted by the play Edmund written by David Mamet, 1983]

1. The dude will succumb to his destiny when hunting for physical satisfaction.

2. The person he desparately needs to “get” him is the person he ultimately has to destroy.

3. The person he dismisses is the person he’s latched to.

4. An agreement is a trap; a refusal is an opportunity.

5. The stage is shit. Where ever he stands, it’s on his shoes.

6. “Every fear hides a wish.” Every wish hides a fear.

7. People define the environment. If the people are violent, the space is dangerous. If the people feel trapped, the space is a cage. If the people feel threatened, the space is an attacker, and so on, and so on….

Oy....

Someone painted the balls blue on the wall street bull. Oy. I love this woman is so excited about it though.... [click the pic for more info]

"Art as Technique" Shklovsky

I just finished reading this 1917 essay by Russian Formalist critic Victor Shklovsky (that picture on wikipedia is the sweetest thing...).

Shklovsky coined the notion of "defamiliarization"in poetry and prose:

"The technique of art is to make objects 'unfamiliar,' to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important."

Whew. Alright Shklovsky.

What's awesome about this essay is it points out how art can make us stop and see something for the first time. It sounds a lil hippie-dippy, but it can make us take an accepted practice and see its absurdity, or see a pencil as a foreign and fascinating object.

Reading this, makes it click, for me, why a particular piece of work stays with me. Why I feel shifted when I walk away from a particularly powerful play, short story, film, etc. It made me take in the "stony-ness of the stone."

Okay.

So.

What does this mean for the work? How can this be applied to playwriting???

Well, an entire play can be an act of defamiliarization. It seems to me Shklovsky focuses on moments of the unfamiliar in fiction, but I think a whole play can exhibit this theory. Juxtaposition, pulling something out of its normal environment, collage, hybrid--all of these techniques can cause the audience to see it new. We can recognize the typical American living room, but what happens when we see two men gutting fish on the couch? (that's a poor example, but you know what I mean).

So.

I think this essay is useful in the sense that it reminds me to think about how to push something to the next level. And that kind of thinking is never a bad thing....not yet anyway.

Swagger Princess

Two women with swagger for days. Coincidentally both of them danced with Fred Astaire:

Ginger Rogers


And Eleanor Powell


These chicks are working it out. Grace, power, stamina, and a get-down-to-it presence.

Women Are Heroes - JR

Photographer JR traveled to Sierra Leon, Kenya, South Sudan, and Libera to capture the stories of women living under discrimination and turmoil. His portraits of these women were blown up billboard size and decorated the city.

He documented his project titled Women Are Heroes:

Radiohead - Reckoner

Animator Clement Picon submitted this video for a contest.

Pretty damn cool:

Oh la la

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