Thanksgiving Verse Appreciation

I give thanks for not being on Crooked I's bad side:

When fans picture my interviews, they think I'm in a swimming pool
With women who've been abused, so they turn into strippers, makin' they livin' in the nude
One in the middle blowin' my innertube while the interviewers gettin' ridiculed
Is this your vision? Cool
Let me give you a little news
Any dude who wanna sit in my tennis shoes must be missin' screws
Don't get it misconstrued
Don't get the shit confused
I'm 2 seconds from prison food, I'm a different dude
Pistol in my reach man
Still in long beach man
Hopin if my grind don't help me get out my speech can...

Slaughterhouse- Move On (Remix)

Herzog's Nightmare

You might think that dinosaurs are extinct. Well, you're right. But some really stellar reporting from 60 minutes blows this case WIDE OPEN!!






how many times did they say dinochicken?

Honestly...

I just watched this "classic" Hitchcock the other day:

And I thought it sucked balls. IMDb, while not exactly a legitimate source for film scholarship and criticism, lists Rope as one of the top 250 films. Ever. OK, so Hitchcock hardly cuts. But when he does it nearly always during a stupid and obvious dolly-in to a character's back. Ooo I hardly noticed that one, Alfred. Might as well have just had an obvious cut. Or turned the fricking lights off for a second.

That aside, I thought the scenario was a half-baked, incredibly contrived take on Crime and Punishment. Stewart was about the only actor who didn't annoy the hell out of me with over-the-top theatrical acting. The dialogue was generally just plain silly and melodramatic. Examples of Hitchcockian ingenuity were limited: a great moment where a character reveals the murder weapon just as a door swings open; the incredible 'real time' studio backdrop in which a sun goes down as the lights of "Manhatan" come on; the great blinking sign out the window that comes on just as the film hits its climax. But these were few and far between. Did any of y'all like this movie? I would love for someone to explain to me how this film could even compare to other Hitchcock classics (Rear Window is one of my favorite films ever) much less be considered a decent movie.

new technologies of lazer

Indescribably Conceptually Problematic Yet Possibly Well Intentioned Video of the Month:

Skin Deep

Leandro Erlich

Lately I've been turning over a relationship in my mind: how does the spatial dimension of a work of art change the way in which the idea behind it is expressed? The most interesting pieces (for me) fall somewhere in between the dimensions in some way, either through the experience of the work, or the work's direct affront to the spatial dimension it inhabits. This is not about time being the 4th dimension or some shit, though I'm sure you're science teacher in high school told you that. He was right, according to most scientific theory, but I'm talking about something else: spatial dimensions and our perceptions of such.

--Of course, every thing is in the third dimension, namely because it's impossible to see a 2D object at all. But let's assume that paper/drawings represent 2D, and speak within conventions for a moment.---

To battle the perceptions of a given dimension and make strides into the adjacent is an incredibly interesting one for me, as most artistic conventions divide the dimensions relatively strictly. Drawing is representative, Sculpture is plastic. But when a work falls between the two definitions, what do you call it?


The piece here is by Chris Duncan, and to me represents the first step towards the third dimension in the way it implies a depth to the drawing itself, without being a representation of any thing that has depth to it. The page itself is pushed beyond a surface. And beyond the skills used here, other implications of the physical world - like gravity - can shove a canvas into the space.
I love the distinct shift from taught (almost invisible) canvas at the top of the frame to the heavy, drooping materiality at the bottom. This work, unfortunately, is unknown to me (found at threedot). It only focuses on the subject matter of exhibition itself - no "content" on the page, no title, the viewer's usual spot taken up by the necessary broom. Is this sculpture? or some assisted painting, or something like that?


Materiality can play a huge role in this as well. The piece above, by Jen Stark, deals with our most 2-D material in our 3D world and unfolds the layers hidden under it, almost pointing out what we're ignoring all the time. The flower-like result is not without it's sharp edges, and I think they're the best part of it. The edges of dimension are what define our perceptions of it, and are impossible to see. We can't see the edges of the 2nd dimension, because that's the 1st dimension. In a similar way, we can't see the edges of the 3rd dimension, and so on. Sometimes we look for edges in worst places - like edges. But really, the edge is in a new direction, let's say outward.

Travess Smalley

The edge of a dimension is really where we can get caught between them. And in a more practical sense, the edge of a piece is what we most usually ignore to suspend out disbelief in the very agreeable silence and calm of flatness. To deal with the substance of a page is almost too much, it distracts from the content. But there can be another content which over-runs the border and edge of the page into space.

Space can also be flattened, made into a sensory experience devoid of depth, or made so gargantuan that is renders itself into a background. This might be why I'm so fascinated with the sky - It looks at once full of forms and a flat surface inside a curved bowl. But in fact it's a nebulous space that we simply can't experience with any other sense but our eyes. We're so far from it that all we see is a flatness that belies it's depth and almost immateriality.

Ryoji Ikeda

Once something is within the purview of space, it can either become an object within that space or an environment of some kind. These environments are where I'm interested in living, the ones that point to the immateriality of the third dimension, the pathetic roundness that we cling to as our save-all and our larger world. It's not there, in a way. Or, the environment we think we're in is really an object in a larger environment. I'm thinking Men in Black as I write this.

The immaterial aspects of what we're living in is what's truly amazing, the things that are outside our sensory perceptions and our conceptions of dimension at all. The piece by Richard Box, below, is a tool to see what we can't.
These fluorescent bulbs are powered by the ambient electrical fields surrounding the power lines in the background. But all we can see are the bulbs themselves. In a way, this is the perfect representation of what I'm talking about: a completely invisible but powerful thing that both makes art and talks about it's medium at the time.

This is all we ever do anymore

Shakira's record label won't let me embed the video but you best follow the link. Maybe we're a little behind on "pop culture" but this video is ridiculous I don't care who you are or if you've seen it or not. Even better sexier in Spanish.

DO IT:

LOBA

the best fucking baseball player I've ever seen

Hong Kong, I Love You, But You're Freaking Me Out

I'm way into Johnnie To right now - the man who effectively holds the crown that John Woo no longer deserves to wear upon his dome. Those with access to Netflix - peep game on the watch instantly feature and check out Exiled, The Mission, and/or Election for his best stuff - triad films.

WHY?

I mean,

It don't necessarily come across in the trailer, but the man's got style like whoa. Spaghetti western in Macau with crazy dope visuals and camera movement. If I had more time I'd give you a proper geek out on this film, but this'll have to do. Now go forth and watch movies.

Addendum

We are not the same, I am a martian.

I used to be just like all the haters, but at least I knew it:

The flow chart above was an attempt to understand why an upper middle class kid might simultaneously disdain popular hip hop for being "inauthentic" and "capitalist," fetishize popular music, and embrace underground hip hop or "backpacker rap." Starting from the foundations of rap as black counterculture, and moving down, I tracked an internal divide in hip hop music, and how both sects have been appropriated by white audiences. As the legend goes, mainstream hip hop's primary audience is white kids in the midwest. Think about all those Souljah Boy videos of girls in white tees and Clemson sweatpants. On the other hand, underground music has also been appropriated by a white audience, as a music that has some sort of power- in its perceived authenticity, and its anti-capitalist tendencies. Stop a random kid at an elite private college in the Northeast, ask him who his favorite rapper is, and you're as likely to hear the name Brother Ali as you are Biggie. The word "backpacker" has been thrown out in reference to this music, a term that resonates doubly, alluding to the purported "intellect" of underground music (backpacks), while also its appropriation into whiteness (backpacking, as in, rich kids hiking the Appalachian Trail). Listening to backpacker rap becomes a way for white kids to somehow gain a type of cultural "authenticity."

This is where I was at on 12/15/08.

I've moved in my position since then. For one thing, I have less criticism for mainstream hip hop as an entity. Simply put, Hot 97 made this summer for me. I've been all about Throw it in the Bag, Who's Real, and that Hurricane Chris song about Halle Berry. For me, mainstream music has become so fascinated with an American construction of materialism that this very philosophy is no longer its purported downfall. In fact, it's one of the most outstanding, self-aware critiques of capitalism I know. We've seen sculptor Damien Hirst's diamond skull, we know this Marxist critique of capitalism, it's old hat. Mainstream hip hop raises it one: critical acts from within capitalism's very framework. Fabolous bragging of his diamond-studded watch is an act of resistance, suggesting that the oppressive system isn't as far-reaching as it wants to be, and that some of the very people (young black males) who weren't suppose to acquire power, did. This is relevant in a way that a comfortable upper-middle class white guy calling out capitalism is not. It's also as powerful as any critique coming from backpack rap.

Thus, this post is dedicated to anyone who has off-handedly thrown out the terms "pop music" or "gangsta rap" or "popular rap" as an example of crappy music, or as a reference to the decline of American society. HI HATERS.

PS

There has been a rise of hybrid rappers lately, who question the boundary between mainstream and underground. This is a beautiful thing.

(More on that here, shamelessly)