Our beds are empty two-thirds of the time. Our living rooms are empty seven-eighths of the time. Our office buildings are empty one-half of the time. It’s time we gave this some thought. — R. Buckminster Fuller
A Question Without Parameters, Designed to Make You Think Big and Abstractly
Given an unlimited supply of money, what would you buy?
Mr. Sims updates Justwatchthesky.
Channel 4 Creative Services has a brilliant one-take commercial from the director’s point of view on the (recreated) set of The Shining promoting a series of Stanley Kubrick films they’ll be showing. Details, details, details.
Henry Ford practiced an early form of upcycling when he had Model A trucks shipped in crates that became the vehicle’s floorboards when it reached its destination. — William McDonough and Michael Braungart, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
One-Man-Band Omnichord Cover of Back in Black
Things that might provide still yet more context for the complete and total awesomeness of the slightly NSFW video:
This is Matt Mahaffey using a drum kit, an old Suzuki electronic instrument called an Omnichord (here’s a PDF of the Omnichord84 user manual) and what I’m guessing is a Big Muff distortion pedal.
Matt plays in a band called sElf and, along with his brother, also wrote the Expedia.com theme jingle.
“We Are Curious about design, communications, people, storytelling, art, music, sensory experiences, delicious meals, customer service, craftspersonship, the internet, & everything in-between. We will join you on the internet soon.”
Basically the best wedding cake ever.
MacBook Pro + chalkboard paint = BlackBoard Pro. The negative comments are hysterical.
Bad, wasteful, hard-to-recycle-able food packaging annoys me, so this clever take on take-out food packaging is glorious. The chopsticks-as-handle move is classy and well-crafted (though not exactly sanitary (as if the paper sleeve really helps that much, Joshua)).
Iiro Rantala New Trio on YouTube
I found this video of the Iiro Rantala New Trio via some videos of the beatboxer Felix Zenger.
The guitar player, Marzi Nyman, is obviously completely insane (that first solo from 0:18-0:24 sounds like a digital squirrel dying in a blender.) And a trio consisting of multi-genre piano, avant garde electric guitar, and beatbox is decidedly odd. And the first 1:30 of the oddly-titled song seems extremely appropriately-titled. And then somehow, someway…
It mostly works for me (minus the guitar tone), especially from 4:00 onward. I’ve been whistling the melodies for most of the day. File under: not really my thing, but I’m sort of glad it exists.
I made a small fisheye-esque adaptor using part of the lens of my old Canon G5 Powershot, some wrapping paper cardboard, and athletic tape. It’s pretty much the most fun thing ever, especially at gatherings/parties. More bobblehead craziness in this Flickr set. I miss Michael Jordan. And I don’t even really like basketball.
The Utah Saints video for Something Good is the best thing ever (this week).
Improv Everywhere, those purveyors of seemingly random, though obviously-well-planned public improv awesomeness, showed up for a little league baseball game in Hermosa Beach, California armed with the names, numbers, and batting order of all of the players. And the Goodyear Blimp. And lots of stuff in-between. Watch the highlights or the post-game press conference.
Wilhelm Staehle’s Silhouette Masterpiece Theatre
Wilhelm Staehle’s Silhouette Masterpiece Theatre is flat out amazing. It’s hard to beat images like Hi, Bear, Bye, Bear and Mrs. Mix-A-Lot.
Also be sure to visit Staehle’s other site The Dollar Dreadful Family Library — a collection of exciting, thrilling, and ghastly short stories with exquisite vintage illustrations.
I’ll probably spend the next few weeks of guitar playing trying to figure out exactly what the heck Antoine Dufour is doing with his right hand technique in this video clip of 30 Minutes in London. Such beautiful music.
Fantastic video for Justice’s DVNO from motion graphics people Machine Molle. The end scene is perfection.
David Fincher & Spike Jonze present The Fall from Tarsem Singh
I’m interested in Tarsem Singh’s new film The Fall. According to the trailer, Fincher and Jonze have some sort of producer/presenter roles, and Tarsem’s previous film The Cell, while a clear case of style over substance, was a gorgeously odd bit of style.
The visuals for The Fall look stunning, and I’m a sucker for a good fantasy story, so I hope this doesn’t disappoint.