in search of memory

Please come to a theater near me.

Please.

btw: Eric Kandel's book, In Search of Memory? Brilliant and a pleasure to read.

proceed & be bold

Illus: Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.

I learned of the letterpress work of Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. in the tired hours of the late afternoon yesterday, as the result of a random conversation with @lzinger at the grocery store about how rutabagas are a little like turnips and a little sweet potatoes. And how they are not. By the end we were talking about Twitter, which is how the acquaintance led to this.

Come to find out she made a movie about the man, whose kinetic letterforms absorbed the better part of my evening.

Proceed. Be bold.

Update: Proceed and Be Bold will screen at the San Francisco Documentary Film Festival on October 24th & 26th »

this is a perfect photograph

Video: Visual Acoustics trailer, a documentary about the architectural photographer Julius Shulman

a found poem

this is a perfect photograph
and if I went back
with an eight by ten
or a four by five
view
camera

I could never have done it as well
as I did then.

It's not the camera
(I remember exclaiming)
it's the composition.

I pointed out how the windswept tree
the tip of the tree
the most remote area of the tree

was hanging down
close to the ground

but it seemed to be pointing
to a curved row of trees
in an orchard
way in the distance

it made a perfect "S" curve
in the composition

(and I said)

There's nothing you could change about this picture.

What Julius Shulman said to "the man in charge, the host on the Groucho Marx show. I always forget his name, but it's not important now." when the host looked at a Shulman photo from 1933 (sometime after that) and asked him: "If you went back there today, could you do it better, since this was taken apparently with your Vest Pocket Kodak?"

As recounted to Taina Rikala De Noreiga at Shulman's home in Hollywood Hills in 1990 and cited in Julius Shulman interview, 1990 Jan. 12 - Feb. 3, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

More Julius Shulman at:
The Getty »
The Fisher Gallery, USC »

the day the music died

That is Dr. King's briefcase, just as it was. His brush. His pajamas. That's a can of shaving cream there on top. And you can see his book, 'Strength to Love,' peeping from the pocket.

Life Magazine writer Mike Silva commenting on Henry Groskinsky's photograph of the luggage Martin Luther King left behind the day he was assassinated.

Life Magazine has published -- for the first time -- the photographs that Henry Groskinsky took at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis the day the music died »

via @minorjive and @adamserwer

diagnosis

There is a huge problem with being in love with a public object. The issue of intimacy – or rather lack of it – is forever present.

Erika La Tour Eiffel, as cited by The Independent, who last May married the Eiffel Tower, and is featured in the documentary Married to the Eiffel Tower: Strangelove (also shown as: Landmark Sex: Married to the Eiffel Tower), which also features ardent relationships with the Berlin Wall, The Golden Gate Bridge, and the Empire State Building.

Erika is also a "world champion in archery – propelled to success, she believes, by her love for Lance, a bow," and she was "discharged from the Armed Forces for refusing to stop sleeping with a ceremonial sword." (From The Times Online)

Many thanks to Flickr contact worldwide.projects who brought my attention to the documentary -- perhaps in an effort to provide a diagnosis for my condition.

Frankly, I find the love for highly public structures like the Eiffel Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge a little like crushing on an overplayed movie star like Tom Cruise.

But that's not to say that I wouldn't take an hour alone with the Inland Steel Building, so long as the Chagall mosaic across the street agreed to join us for a three-way.


p.s. I'M KIDDING.

twisted

Video: Twisted Trailer

There's a whole debate over whether you should pump-inflate or use your mouth. We decided to leave that out.

Documentary filmmaker Sara Taksler quoted this morning in the New York Times on the controversy surrounding Twisted, a "balloonamentary" that she co-directed with Naomi Greenfield about folks who twist balloons.

The controversy surrounds "the rift between the 'gospel twisters,' who use their craft as a way to teach Bible lessons, and the 'adult' twisters, who use balloons for more prurient entertainment."

like Mark Spitz

Clearly Dr. Bronner was crazy in that wonderful way that only America makes possible. An endearing elder uncle, shilling product and philosophy with the best billboard available to him -- the label of his soap bottle -- squeezing every little ounce out of that sacred marketing real estate with statements like these:

1st: If I'm not for me, who am I? Nobody! 2nd: yes, if I'm only for me, what am I? Nothing! 3rd: If not now, when? Once more: Unless constructive-selfish I work hard, like Mark Spitz, perfecting first me, absolute nothing can help perfect me!! 4th...

Yes, there's more. Getcher self a bottle to read it all. Or just check out the label blow up here »

You may notice a not altogether faint resemblance to the cover of John Hodgman's book, Areas of My Expertise »



We used Dr. Bronner's soap when I was growing up as a hippie kid, and I got turned on to it again when we stayed at the uber-hip Hotel San Jose in Austin this last spring, and the bath was stocked with it. I've been back on the bottle ever since and, truthfully, it does the job right.

But if you take up the cause you'll want to be sure not to tote it with you when you're driving your girlfriend to an AA meeting in Orange County wearing a furry Russian hat -- as Dan Bolles of the Germs found out the hard way »



Video: Trailer for the recently released documentary, Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox »

calling all crafty girls

Coming soon: Handmade Nation, a documentary about the rise of D.I.Y., art, craft and design »

MySpace page here »

It kinda feels like the world is coming around to our way of thinking.

— Crafty girl Jill Bliss of blissen.com, as quoted in the sneak preview