guest post by mikl-em

A last minute benefit show has been arranged tonight (Saturday, 4/25/09) for The DNA Lounge featuring pianist Eric Lewis.

The show starts at 5:30 (doors at 5) and goes until 7:30. Admission is free, but you can make a donation to support The DNA Lounge (and buy drinks, too) in their fight to stay open. More details are on Oren Michels’ blog. Oren’s company Mashery is sponsoring the show along with Zivity.

I had the pleasure and honor of attending a private performance by Eric as part of the launch party for startup Adventive.com at Harry Denton’s Starlight Room off Union Square this past week.

I put up a Flickr set with photos and videos that I shot at this intimate performance in an incredible venue.

While Eric is trained and honored in classical and jazz music circles, he loves to perform solo piano interpretations of popular and alternative bands like The Killers, Evanescence and The Knife. He is an incredibly passionate performer who is awesome (in the grandest of senses) to see live. I cannot recommend this highly enough.

DNA Lounge has been battling to stay open due to aggressive practices by The California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control that seem to target all ages venues and that also focused on nights when DNA featured LGBT events (as Violet Blue has covered).

Eric’s performance at TED2009 is how many people around the world first heard of this singular performer.

It’s an early show, so if you are going out tonight (like to the How to Destroy the Universe show at NIMBY), you can easily catch this, too.

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Pianist Eric Lewis Performs at DNA Lounge Benefit Tonight

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“Noteboek” is a wonderfully series of animated shorts by Dutch artist Evelien Lohbeck.

Noteboek (English title: Notebook) consists of 4 short experimental films where I try to confuse the reality. In these films, illusions and expectations are challenged.

via Neatorama

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Noteboek by Evelien Lohbeck

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According to When Did You Join Twitter? the Twitter epoch is March 21st, 2006, the date that founders @jack, @ev and @biz all first created their accounts.

I joined a few months later on July 18th, 2006. Find out when you signed-up.

Back then it was called Twttr until September 2006 when they added in the vowels.

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The Twitter Epoch - March 21st, 2006

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The Honda Insight television ad for “Let It Shine” is pretty cool on it’s own, but for the full experience watch it on Vimeo. This takes online advertising to a whole new level.

Here’s how the commercial was made, using hundreds of headlights to create one of the world’s largest LED displays.

via Chris Glass

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Let It Shine, Honda Insight Ad Turns Headlights Into Giant LED Display

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guest post by Jackson West

“I’m surprised it took this long,” Mike Gold declares in his ComicMix review of legendary illustrator Spain Rodriguez and his decision to ink a graphic biography of revolutionary socialist Che Guevara. While the ubiquitous tees silk-screened with Alberto Korda’s iconic photograph of Guevara are often derided as a facile display of misplaced idealism, by deposing U.S.-backed military despot Fulgencio Batista, Che’s historical legacy serves as a continually relevant counterpoint to the imperial ambitions of American leaders in Latin America and beyond. “Che: A Graphic Biography” is available through Last Gasp.

Spain Rodriguez’s powerful artwork illuminates Che’s life and the experiences that shaped him, from his motorcycle journey through Latin America, his rise to prominence as a leader in Fidel Castro’s revolutionary movement, his travels in Africa, his involvement in the insurgency that led to his death in Bolivia, and his extraordinary legacy.

Editor Paul Buhle has also contributed to graphic histories of Emma Goldman, the Wobblies and the SDS.

Revel in New York posted an interview with Spain where he talks about Che.

via Last Gasp

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Che Guevara Graphic Novel by Spain Rodriguez a Timely History

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photo by Marc Johns

Marc Johns has a new book out “Serious Drawings” published by teNeues, which features some of his wonderful not-so-serious drawings.

This offbeat collection of whimsical illustrations gently plays with our preconceptions. As we browse this selection of illustrated jests, we enter the artist’s absurd and childlike world. Seemingly simple, these spare images are complex in their implications. Odd juxtapositions make us laugh and then think. As Marc Johns himself remarks “finding the humor in things often means finding the truth.”

illustration by Marc Johns

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Serious Drawings by Marc Johns

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photo by unknown

Look At This Fucking Hipster is another unjustified attack on defenseless hipsters.

Speaking of hipsters, during the recent American Apparel on Valencia “crisis”, we asked you guys to tell us What’s Your Definition of a Hipster? and got some great responses.

via Daring Fireball

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Hipsters Under Attack Once Again, What’s Wrong With Cool Conformity?

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“Free Robot Sex”, a new t-shirt by Karl Long who runs the awesome t-shirt blog Tcritic.

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Free Robot Sex T-Shirt by Karl Long

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Don’t worry Kitteh, Caturday is right around the corner.

via Fark

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Halp! Serious Cat Sends SOS

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guest post by Burstein!

“Thinking Saves Lives” is the tagline for the new Traffic Department of the Warsaw Metropolitan Police campaign by McCann Erickson Polska to encourage bicyclists to wear helmets (either that or think fluffy thoughts while riding). I personally dig it because the message is clear, the art is engaging and it is just lovely execution far beyond what I would expect from any municipal public service campaign. Bravo, Warsaw!

via Ads of the World

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Thinking Saves Lives, A Pro Bike Helmet Campaign In Warsaw

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guest post by Kevin Evans

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Japanese Macaque Monkeys Waterskiing & Driving Speed Boats

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guest post by Burstein!

Directed by Adam Berg, “Carousel” is a stunning video by Stink Digital and Tribal DDB that shows off what Philips’s new Cinema 21:9 television can do. Part of the campaign included creating an interactive version of the video with behind the scenes info on filming.

Director Adam Berg responded with an idea for an epic frozen moment cops and robbers shootout sequence that included clowns, explosions, a decimated hospital, and plenty of broken glass and bullet casings.

This epic film is the centrepiece of the project. On its own, it clocks in at a (totally coincidental) two minutes and 19 seconds, but Berg conceived it to work as an endless loop. Visitors to the microsite therefore have the option to spin through the films single take shot repeatedly, to stop on a specific frame, or to watch it at the preordained speed. The film also contains embedded hotspots, which, when triggered, transport the viewer seamlessly from the heavily posted film to a behind-the-scenes version of the same shot. This constant moving between two layers of reality proved one of the projects biggest and most ambitious production challenges. Other details of the online execution play off the cinematic theme; the microsites loader doubles as a credit sequence, while rich media takeover banners drive traffic to the site by teasing viewers with an original Carousel trailer.

via Coudal Partners

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Carousel, A Shoot ‘Em Up Between Clowns & Cops Frozen In Time

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guest post by Burstein!

Mike Winkelmann (a.k.a. Beeple) has produced this beautiful animated short on the development and stall of the U.S. housing market. Visually and aurally engaging, it also has a clear message and theme that comes across elegantly and simply. Finally, for the lexiconically inclined, his definition of “Beeple” is worth noting as well:

Beeple (the animals) are soft, fuzzy, little creatures that are 100% real and not stuffed toys and they can tell you cool things if you listen very closely and you’re not an assfuck.

See, you learn something new every day here at Laughing Squid.

via The Art of the Prank

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Subprime, An Animated Short About The US Housing Market

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guest post by Burstein!

Although Joel Bauer might disagree, I truly think that Meat Cards, made using meat and lasers, are the ultimate business cards.

We start with 100% beef jerky, and SEAR your contact information into it with a 150 WATT CO2 LASER. Screw die-cutting. Forget about foil, popups, or UV spot lamination. THESE business cards have two ingredients: MEAT AND LASERS.

Unlike other business cards, MEAT CARDS will retain value after the econopocalypse. Hoard and barter your calorie-rich, life-sustaining cards. MEAT CARDS do not fit in a Rolodex, because their deliciousness CANNOT BE CONTAINED in a Rolodex.

The all caps are apparently necessary to contain all the awesome that is meat cards.

via Cal Henderson

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Meat Cards, Business Cards Made Using Meat & Lasers

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guest post by Burstein!

The Government of South Australia has released a PSA that features stunning slow motion shots of people sneezing with the money shot coming at the 57 second mark.

via Andrew Sullivan

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Ultra-Slow Motion Video of People Sneezing

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guest post by Burstein!

photo by unknown

Delving into the horrors merely skimmed by the Craftastrophe we did a while back, I present with scorched eyes Woolies (for lack of a better term). The good folks at Izismile have curated some interesting photos from a French wool fetishist site.

Ladies and gentlemen, Rule 34 strikes again!

via reddit

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Introducing Woolies, People With A Wool Clothing Fetish

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guest post by Burstein!

photo by Jeroen Wandemaker

Helmut Smits has created a lovely installation of a “dead pixel” in Google Earth by burning a 82cm x 82cm square in the ground, which happens to be the size of one pixel from an altitude of 1 km.

via Urban Prankster

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Dead Pixel in Google Earth

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guest post by Burstein!

In light of the awesomtastic bike trick video of Danny MacAskil currently making the rounds on the internet, it is worth reflecting on the storied and great history of bike tricks. There is a video of archival film featuring bicycle tricks whose description identifies the rider as Thomas A. Edison, however in fact, there is evidence that this is not the case.

The Edison Cataglog of Rutgers University have been organizing and publishing the 5 million pages of documents left behind by Edison. Within these documents are a series of kinetoscope films made by Edison Motion Pictures, and some (if not all) are documented on IMDB. According to the Edison Catalog and IMDB, the rider is not Edison but rather a certain “Neidert.” This has some corroboration as Eugene A. Neidert has been documented in the December 26th, 1893, edition of the New York Times [PDF] giving a “clever exhibition of trick riding.”

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Archival Film by Edison Motion Pictures of Early Bicycle Tricks

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Twitter Telepathy: Researchers Turn Thoughts Into Tweets | Wired Science from Wired.com

photo by Greg Peverill-Conti

In an effort to raise funds for his trip to Slovenia for Swimming Cities of Serenissima , Chicken John is offering people the chance to shoot a bottle rockets at him as he takes the stage in a sailor suit to sing “Come Sail Away” by Styx during the Art of Bleeding performance on Saturday that is part of How to Destroy the Universe Part 6 at NIMBY.

He has 400 bottle rockets that he’s selling for $10 each. Now’s your chance to get even.

Buy a bottle rocket. Or a few. Buy one for your friend, who I threw out of the bar that time. Buy one for that girl that I stood up. Buy one for Jim Mason. Actually, buy a dozen for ol Jimmy. Make me jump. Put welts on my arms. Catch whats left of my hair on fire. Hurt me. Make me sorry. For $10, youve never had it so easy…

More info on Facebook and Chicken’s blog.

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Shoot A Bottle Rocket at Chicken John as He Sings Come Sail Away

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