After a legal dispute, Danger Mouse said ‘fuck you’ to his label and released his new album with all artwork and packaging intact, and with a blank recordable CD-R. (If he’s a bad ass it’ll also have a quick guide on using teh bittorrentz.) There is something very refreshing, logical, and even beautiful about this, much more so then the ‘pay what you like’ scheme I think. Update: Listen to the album on NPR. Worth it! Oh right — it’s a collaboration with Sparklehorse, with photos by David Lynch.
Author: Alesh Houdek
Weekendly clickables XI
- Your NPR name: insert your middle initial somewhere into your first name, then add the name of the smallest foreign town you’ve ever visited.
- Photo of the Space Shuttle Atlantis and the Hubble space telescope silhouetted against the sun.
- Here’s the list of singers on the Kidney Now! episode.
- Bald currency. (Everyone looks better bald!)
- How to pamper different types of batteries.
- The Beauty Of Rotting Fruit And A Taxidermied Crow.
- Audio recording of Marcel Duchamp talking about art. (The art stuff is via ArtFagCity, probably.)
- I wanted to write something about Sometimes Goals Backfire, but then I forgot.
- Cory Arcangel makes pretty things. (Gradients?)
- That’s right, folks, the Wolfram Alpha it are live, and the hills are dewy with things you can do with it.
- Remember the list of books that are good introductions to the recommender’s fields? Well, there’s a great alphabetical list by subject now.
- Here’s a smart and sassy totebag for all you clever types.
- Have I linked to Scanwiches before? These make great desktop background images (use ‘center’ and set the BG color to black). Here is a little more sandwich porn, but to all my pals outside Miami, you do NOT make a Cuban sandwich in a panini press. You use a plancha (or even a skillet with an aluminum-wrapped brick for a press (make sure the brick is hot)).
- Blue whales are returning to some historical hunting areas from which they were driven by whaling. So, we’ve got that going for us.
- Also, I apparently do not link to this often enough: Dance Dance Immolation, brought to you by the fine people at Survival Research Labs, makers of super-neat-o toys.
- I’ll send you off with a few casual covers: Radiohead v. Portishead, Of Montreal v. Gnarls Barkley, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy v. Dolly Parton, Blue Ribbon Glee Club v. David Bowie, Antony and the Johnsons v. Gloria Gaynor, Jens Lekman v. Paul Simon, Vampire Weekend v. Fleetwood Mac.
The tech-savvy at-risk youth
Stephen Colbert calls his studio audience “citizens” and his TV audience “nation.” Ze Frank called his The Show audience “sports racers.” Dan Savage calls his audience “the tech-savvy at-risk youth.” More?
The crash site of United Flight 93
Property owners around the crash site of United Flight 93 are soured that, despite their willingness to work out a deal or even donate it over the last 8 years, the government is going to use eminent domain to take their land for a memorial.
Sale Purchase and Steal Agreement
“Artist sells to Collector and Collector purchases from Artists this Sale Purchase and Steal Agreement … Artist guarantees that he — after having sold and delivered the Artwork — will steal the Artwork back from Collector, or have it stolen from the Collector by a third party to be assigned by the Artist (hereinafter: “the Theft”).” That’s IT, conceptual art is DONE.
May art walk, 2009
New Glexis Novoa wall drawing at Castillo. Bodies left hanging from the architecturally ambiguous tower!
In the project room, Pepe Mar’s installation.
Felice Grodin’s show at Diana Lowenstein, a must-see.
Detail.
Custom poetry composed while you wait! Seriously, the energy is a little weird around Wnywood. I guess part of it is the impending approach of Summer, but there’s more. The Prevailing Economic Climate is making sales of actual art increasingly unlikely. There’s the move of Twenty Twenty Projects to Hialeah(!) and the move of Locust Projects to the Design District (a location “secret and for the most part inaccessible to those not closely associated with the residents”). It’s hard to not believe that the PEC is not behind both relocations.
Peter LaBier’s gremlin painting at Gallery Diet!!
Sinisa Kukec’s installation in a new space across from the street from Kevin Bruk. (The space is a nice collection of staggered rooms which evokes the Margulies, and I’m looking forward to future shows there. Provided by Goldman Properties, it is one of the positive consequences of the PEC.)
At Dorsch, Ernesto Caivano’s spectacular dissolving knight series of etchings
Alyssa Phoebus’ Good Woman, which I believe is not a graphical presentation of Cat Power lyrics (but am prepared to accept evidence to the contrary. Seriously though, you should see this show too, if at least for the Patricia Smith pieces, which were beautiful but hard to photograph).
NYTimes blog-like display
The New York Times, one of the more tech/internet-savvy newspapers we have, finally, in 2009, has a reverse-chronological display of its articles. You know, kind of like blogs have had for over ten years. Certain other details of blog publishing (archives by date, archives by topic (clicking on the categories on that page takes you to the “regular” page for that topic, which is broken)) are still lacking. Maybe in another ten years. (via)
Ads?!
Why ads on this dinky little blog? While I acknowledge that they suck, in a way, for the reader, the ads do a few things that make them interesting for me: (1) At the other place, they actually brought in a little money (although a couple of orders of magnitude less then some experts would have predicted considering the readership). (2) It’s interesting to see what sort of ads Google serves up, and how it’s influenced by what’s been on the site recently. (3) It makes this technically a business, which might possibly allow me to write things off on my taxes, though I’ll have to research that a little more between now and next April. (4) It’s another way of measuring; e.g., at aforementioned Other Place, readership was growing long after ad revenue plateaued, and while I never figured out why that was, the puzzle was nagging in a good way.
In any case, it’s an experiment. If it goes nowhere, the ads will disappear just as quickly as they came, and you’ll probably be subjected to another navel-gazing post like this one. Meanwhile, I’m pretty sure that if you want to advertise specifically on this site (rather then just target search terms), you can do exactly that through Google Adwords.
Vaclav Havel on the United Nations Human Rights Council
Vaclav Havel in the New York Times: The United Nations Human Rights Council is a farce, and membership is based on political maneuvering, oblivious to people suffering under tyrannical oppression.
Daily Cocaine recipe for Summer rolls
Ginger, cilantro, mango, lime, shrimp, cucumber, and onion: Daily Cocaine recipe for Summer rolls, “the perfect cure for heat-stroke, and whining.” Seriously, I love it when Danny cooks, because he mixes the most random ingredients into obvious-seeming exoticalities.