A daily weblog from Matt, a designer, writer and pop culture aficionado from Phoenix.
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Reading:
Word Freak
by Stefan Fatsis
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Vespertine by Bjork
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Ain't he cute? Christopher as a tot. Glendale, Arizona circa 1960. A tiny, square photo with scalloped edges. Glossy finish. The woman on the right is their neighbor and sometime babysitter. I'll bet the car was white on top and turquoise blue on the bottom. BTW, old family photos are not the same without having a tree coming out of the subject's back. You gotta have that.
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Via Metafilter comes news that The Onion will be on hiatus. Which is sad, but inevitable. I hope they come back soon. We all need silly diversions in times like these.
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Sunday, September 16
Posters from the 1976 remake of King Kong. You'll recall they had Kong scale the World Trade Center for this one, and indeed there he is - one foot on each tower.
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Saturday, September 15
Saw Ghost World today
Stellar comic; decent film
Hip outcasts - oh yeah
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Friday, September 14
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Thursday, September 13
The first page of this editorial expresses my mood at the moment better than anything else I've read recently. The age of frivolity is truly over. The other pages go into a more typical (yet still insightful) analysis of the events' media coverage.
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And this page, compiled by the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, does a great job of rounding up news stories of the tragedy from that particular angle.
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Much to my relief, NYC-area webloggers Jonny (Delicado) and Lisa (Quadra) are OK. Thanks to both of you for the reassuring emails.
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Wednesday, September 12
I need some intentional surrealism right about now.
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My heart is weeping. While TV assaults us with numbing repeats and the same talking heads yammering away, the personal reflections and first-hand accounts of various weblog keepers has been nothing less than mind blowing. World New York's continuing assemblage of these voices has been an incredible effort.
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Tuesday, September 11
As usual, Christopher woke me up this morning to tell me he's leaving for work. This time, however, he also relayed the news.
Since I could no longer sleep, I tuned in to CNN. Towers burning, then a cloud of smoke forming behind the foreground one as the first tower fell. Holy crap. It was as if Mount Rushmore crumbled, or the Disneyland castle blew up. I couldn't handle all the chaos and terror while it was still happening; I had to go somewhere else to clear my mind, then return once news gatherers were more lucid and collected
I switched channels to find A Letter to Three Wives playing. It's about a town tramp who writes a letter to three women (Jeanne Crain, Ann Southern and Linda Darnell), saying she ran off with one of their husbands. Only she won't reveal which one until the trio has returned from a daylong country outing. Watching B&W movies on TV is always comforting, but this particular one didn't soothe one bit. The helplessness of the characters mirrored my own mental state. I felt like I was moving in a thick gel, and not knowing what to do.
Downown Phoenix is oddly still and quiet. Employees at the tallest skyscraper in the city were told to go home. Vehicle and foot traffic is light. I suppose the world will soldier on as before. Until then, my thoughts are with those who died, their families and all the brave rescue workers.
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Monday, September 10
An odyssey - via Alt-Log I scanned this article on Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light™. Kinkade's painfully clichéd landscapes always remind me of this, which came from a study asking Americans what they liked and disliked in a painting. The project, conducted by avant garde-ists Komar and Melamid, was repeated all over the world. This page of the resulting paintings shows all the interestingly subtle differences between the various countries studied. In a nutshell, people prefer a good lanscape depicting deer sipping from a placid lake to hard edged abstractions in baby puke colors. (Whew.)
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Rudi Gernreich, Nostradamus of the Needle - all about the trend setting '60s designer, courtesy the chic online fashion mag Hint. Don't forget that Gernreich also did those groovy beige jumpsuits from Space:1999 - a notable accomplishment in itself. Gernreich's muse, the model Peggy Moffitt, is still rockin' in her trademark helmet hair and false eyelashes and recently became the cover subject of my autumn mix disc.
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Sunday, September 9
A new mix CD for a new season - Equinox: An Autumn Collection. Ambiguous, dreamy, contemplative, or just plain glum, these are songs that will put me in a relective mood when the leaves start fallling. A first - all of the songs came from CDs, no downloads here! Email me if you would like a trade.
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A neat gallery of vintage transistor radios. I was struck by how much this Sears model resembles the appliances they were churning out at the same time. It's like a miniaturized version of the circa 1962 Coldspot refrigerator which I once had, right down to the pseudo chrome accents. Via Living Proof.
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Friday, September 7
Recently I was lucky enough to get a cheap copy of Nick Tosches' new book Where Dead Voices Gather (you can read part of it here). Supposedly a biography of the obscure minstrel singer Emmett Miller, I suspect it's really an excuse for Tosches to spout off on everything. It looks fascinating. Trouser Press God Ira Robbins reviews it here.
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Illustrator Jonathon Rosen has a website. I idolized his hip, grungy drawings during my college years and beyond. Another illustrator I admired then was Mark Matcho, who did the early graphics on Feed magazine, among many other things. Once, I wrote him an email telling him how much I enjoyed his snappy, retro cartoon style. He was a bit flustered that he had a fan but nevertheless thanked me for the note.
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My new name from the U.S. Census Name Generator is - Jorge Fields! I'm a Capricorn, work in a restaurant in Florida. I learn English. I enjoy Rum and Cokes, gold jewelry and Julio Iglesias. Link comes via the wonderful Pop Culture Junk Mail.
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Thursday, September 6
Enjoyed this depressingly funny column about the perils of celebrity entourages in the aftermath of Aaliyah's fatal crash: "One of the sadder aspects of becoming a 'celebrity' -- in the Aaliyah sense -- is the certain knowledge that you'll be spending your life surrounded by awful, third-rate people." Via Arts & Letters Daily.
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Edna St. Vincent Millay, Studette - who knew?
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Wednesday, September 5
Received in the mail: the newest catalog from designer furniture retailer Design Within Reach. Holy God in heaven. For retro furniture lovers, this is like porn - only instead of airbrushed women named Kristi, there's $1,400 Alvar Aalto hanging lamps. If you can tear yourself away from all that modern beauty, check out the biography page - well written profiles of famous designers like my heroes Charles and Ray Eames. Fabboo.
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Lovely! A comprehensive guide to the Tromp l'Oeil Murals of Greg Brown in Palo Alto, CA. Thanks to Jimwich for putting it all together.
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Terrible news - the Beastie Boys' Grand Royal empire is closing. I'll remember it as one of the few entertainment companies that celebrated creativity and personal, quirky tastes. Via Boing Boing.
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Tuesday, September 4
Updating the archives: the dental floss of site management. At any rate, June, July, August (split in two - a busy month!), and all of the "Past Trips" sites are now updated and online.
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Lileks just updated his hilarious Gallery of Regrettable Food with new recipe pamphlets, including Party Cake Party Cake Baker's SHAME. Future archeologists might find this one and conclude the '50s were characterized by a race of obsessed house-shaped cake builders. But why? To appease the malevolent giant child's head on the horizon.
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Mark Jenkins coughs up another good What Goes ON column, this time about the music-themed issue of The New Yorker.
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Monday, September 3
Just as this page was being updated, I was saddened to learn that Pauline Kael died. Remember her by reading these lively quotes from her film reviews.
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Newest thrift find - this great Arabic hygeine poster made by a company called ARAMCO, probably from the early '60s. I found it at the American Leigon thrift in Payson, Arizona. It wasn't priced and shoved into a battered old frame which was removed. When I took the poster to the counter and asked how much, the lady was confused. It was as if I was buying a single grape at the corner Safeway. Finally she muttered "twenty five cents". I tossed her a quarter and it is now nicely reframed and hanging on my bedroom wall.
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