Thursday, July 26, 2007

...art is dead....

....my grandma made me take calligraphy lessons as a kid..... and I still have awful handwriting... I cannot think of any situation where I would not print... I still even refer to it as cursive writing... and the mere sound of those words coming out of my mouth makes me sound like a kid pretending to be a grrown up....

...Grammy, on the other hand, has beautiful penmanship.... and still owns many quills, fountian pens, bottles of ink, sheets of parchment, nibs, nubs and all that crap used to make the aesthetics of words live up to the potential of their meaning...

that's why I think she would love Betsy Dunlap. A caliigraphic artist, she puts a modern age in a classic art, that both me and grammy can enjoy....

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

...masterstroke...





...last nite i went out for a couple of drinks with Jason Miller...


...He's in town for the opening of Ministry of the Interior (whose official site isn't up yet, so I am posting a link to a review in sweetspot.ca)... MotI is a new concept store opening this week at 80 Ossington (just north of Queen, right near where the Sparrow was til recently). The space is set up as part-store, part-gallery, and all awesome. Jason MacIsaac has been working on it since earlier this year, gutting what was once an auto-body shop to prepare the now-raw space for peculiar and intrigueing home design accesories for the urban hipster set.....


...What results is a space that sells really cool home accessories... lamps, furniture, plates, wallpaper, bedding, etc.... but also serves as a show space for new, fresh, creative and forward-thinking designers that are making there mark on the world of interiors... He set up a "designer in residence" program that will allow him to host a rotating roster of wunderkind.... selling these higher pricetag pieces to those that can afford, and letting the rest of us simply admire and drool (although try not to stand to close to the pieces if you choose to actually salivate)


.... And in the grand tradition of Opening Soon... I got a call late monday night to come down and help assemble lamps and wipe down plates in preparation for the Tuesday soft launch... my thumb is still sore from the "easy to assemble" David Trubridge lamps....



They are simple enough... but I wouldn't advise putting together more than one without the aid of a thimble (who knew those still had a use in the modern world)... they are well worth it though, as they throw playful shadows around the room and have the appeal of appearing to be caught in their birthday suits....


When I got to the store, amidst the chaotic painting, assembling, cleaning and stress was one installed piece of work... the centre piece of the back room and the first exhibit in the residency program that MacIsaac was running was Jason Miller's Antler Chandelier...



...Wallpaper named him as one of the best breakthrough designers of 2007... but he has been around for a while now, being pointed out (by those ahead of the curve...ahem, ahem) since at least 2005... (i'm just saying...c'mon Wallpaper)


The photo at the right is actually a smaller version of what is hanging in the store, but it looked so familiar to me that (several hours, countless blisters and two lamps) later I went back through the archives of the long since deleted former blog of mine "Masterstroke" (which, by the way, means "feat of genius" and besides being completely narcissistic as a blog title, also seemed appropriate as a name of this post, both in reference to Miller's work, and the newly opened Ministry of the Interior) and found an entry that I had written in early 2005 about the Canadian design collective Motherbrand. Apparently I had been quite taken with their Cabin show, which re-analyzed the traditional canadian cottage items for a new millenium, and had gone trolling for other reconstituted Canadiana..... and found this.....


The chandelier, as he told us yesterday over beers at Sweaty Betty's, has become the staple of Miller's collection... as he put it so eloquently, "it pays the bills."


...He also assured me that only one deer has ever been harmed in the creation of these lamps....

But Miller is no oneder... (for all of you who don't immediately jump to your late 20th century film reference library and mentally scroll to That Thing You Do, that is one-der.... or, one hit wonder... had to get a pun in here)...



His body of work has only been getting better, and everything is just as quirky, imaginative and fun.


A couple of my favourites:


The tea sets are reconstituted and given new patterns... the piece is called "seconds" and the text from Miller's website actually made me laugh out loud... so I am quoting it here:


"Products that are "seconds" are products that are not quite right. They are imperfect and somehow of lesser value. But who made the rules? Who says a flower can't grow down? Who says a whole bird is any better than half a bird?


conventions are for suckers "


The Duct tape Chair was, apparently, according the Ministry of the Interior manager Julie, what drew them to Miller's work in the first place... and was, according to her, how MotI ended up with a residence programme at all..... She told me that her and MacIsaac saw this chair and "just had to have it", but it was way too expensive for the start-up to stock right away.... So Julie emailed Miller, who was just finishing up a string of shows, and ruined, his quiet, lazy summer, roping him into being the shining star of this kickass stores premiere.....

...it's a tough life for the talented.... really... my heart goes out to the talented and jet-set young Miller, who must spend his life being creative and playing with conventions.....

....He is a great guy though, and cute too (that's him staring dreamily into the mirror in the photo below). With his laid-back smile and an aura of mischief about him...
I can see how people are attracted to the objects that spill out of his head... he is returning the playfulness of the things you had in your room as a kid to the adult-lescents of today.... adding aesthetics to games....

I for one, could not be more excited to finally get a chance to gaze my way into his daydream mirrors, which I haven't gotten a chance to see yet in person....





But I will, the store is open now at 80 Ossington (at the corner of Humbert), and Miller's work will be there for a while... get there and check it out.....

Monday, July 23, 2007

...infinite jest....

... have you ever read this?....

...I have a theory no one ever has... i think it's in one of my notes, somewhere a while back....

...Myself, I have tried it at least a dozen times, make that a baker's dozen... i think it's great, but i always take too long a break before coming back to the middle of it and feel the need to start again... i simply cannot accept that i am SUPPOSED to be that confused....

I did, however, collect, in my experience with this book, that THIS aspect of it was a negative thing....

...do you really want to live in a world that David Foster Wallace's sick imagination created.... especially if no one has read to the end to findd out how it all ends?

Sunday, July 22, 2007

...if anyone wants to buy me a present....

... i would definitely put out for this....

...i mean, maybe just first base.... it is only a book after all... but i am a pretty good kisser.....

...if you really loved me you'd just get it for me....


Manhattan Oases: New York's 1932 Speak-Easies, with a Gentleman's Guide to Bars and Beverages by Gordon Kahn
by Al Hirschfeld; With An Introduction By Heywood Broun

By 1932, with a feeling that Prohibition was ending, Al Hirschfeld decided to use his artistic skill to document the various speakeasies around Manhattan. This is a first edition of Manhattan Oases, featuring thirty-six drawings of bartenders by Hirschfeld and a witty guide to "bars and beverages" by Gordan Kahn.

...coolest job of the day!....

... I am tempted to restart this whole"working world" thing in order to try and get on a path that would lead me to this job...

How awesome would it be to simply create libraries for people with insane amounts of money and enough interest in books (or at least an interest in looking like they are interested in books) to hire someone to find you good ones......

God, I think i am going to bed tonight dreaming about having a life in which I would pick up my morning starbucks, head into my cool office at the Strand and try and continue my search for the original Boccioni "Manifesto of Futurist Painters" for Beck.... and then start to introduce him to some new street artists that I think he would like....

Fuck, and I thought I already liked my job.... now I have career envy..... Damn you New York Magazine....

Thursday, July 19, 2007

...virtual//reality....

NowNow Gallery has been created as a simple and accessible platform for the presentation of photography both Australian and International.



The online gallery, based out of Australia aims to give exposure to contemporary photographers who are committed to documenting the way they live. As these photographers' galleries evolve, it will inevitably become kaleidoscopic. At the very least, giving an alternative view of what we know. And at best, giving us a whole new way of looking.


The site is pretty incredible in general And the blog is superfun


But right now I am totally obsessed with a series of entries that they entitled desktop//desktop. The entries asked each photographer who contributes to the gallery to send a screengrab of their computer desktop, that appears on their monitor, and also to send a photo of the desk the computer is on so that we can see what the actual "desk top" is like.... I love it we are virtually ale to consume the actual reality as well as the now (twice) removed virtual reality of a human we have never even met (or heard of in most cases).... It's more intense than the Hills or Big Brother, and best not to think to hard about....


i will post mine once i remember to bring my camera to work... but here's the screen shot for now:

Thursday, July 12, 2007

...if you have kids....

...or know kids, or can get your hands on any kids....


GO TO THIS!!!!!!




Demolition Art House.... insanity... there is a boarded up house that is slotted for demo in the fall... well, the neighbours are letting kids (under the guidance of resident artists) create.... whatever.... and apply it to the exterior of the house, creating a huge, cooperative living piece of art..... kickass...

how fucking cool..... Any kid that does this is guaranteed to grow up cooler than if it had been missing from their lives

.... god i love the british....

Most anyone who knows me knows that I despise Michael Moore, which is especially difficult since I actually agree with his politics... but by the very nature of what he does to his audiences, how he excites them, turns them into an angry ohm, you barely get out the words "I hate him but...." before people are caling you a dirty fascist and asking you to send your dirst born off to iraq......

As someone who places the utmost importance on the importance of film, its capability of social change and, perhaps most importantly, the RESPONSIBILITY of the filmmaker to follow his representations with his own actions, I have to say, I wanted to actually walk up and knock the stupid baseball cap off the smug bastards head when i saw him, literally, hob-knobbing, at the 2006 TIFF.... He doesn't ever lie, or misrepresent the truth, but the fact is, the truth is NEVER as interesting or entertaining as Moore makes it out to be....

That's why no one goes to see documentaries.... the truth is boring.... Moore's flash-fest changes, alters, massages and selectively sees the truth in order to get the attention of rapt audiences.... it's the propaganda of the left....

Apparently a few people agree with me.

All the following are excerpts from an article about Michael Moore that was written by hiw biographer, Roger Rapaport, for the UK Daily, the Independent:



"[Michael Moore's] new dream appears to be turning out Frank-Capra-style features that deliver a high moral message along the lines of Mr Smith Goes to Washington.

"Are his films documentaries, or are they fictional comedies?" Since Moore gets the credit for making documentaries as popular as dramatic films, let's turn to the first cameraman Michael that ever hired, Kevin Rafferty, for the answer. This famed cinéma-vérité film-maker, who is also George W Bush's first cousin, gave Moore his film debut in Blood in the Face, an exposé of the "racialist right". The then Flint journalist Moore scored a major coup when he helped Rafferty's team film a Michigan Ku Klux Klan rally where two lovebirds said their marital vows in a ceremony illuminated by the glow of a burning cross.
Rafferty says that he was stunned when he arrived in Flint and Moore handed him a terrific shot-list for Roger & Me. This was simply not the way cinema verité documentaries were made: a director would create the storyline after shooting was finished. Two-and-a-half years later, Rafferty was even more astonished when he saw that the shot-list had become the movie. Instead of shooting first and editing afterwards, in the traditional manner of documentaries, Michael had scripted Roger & Me like a dramatic feature.

Even some of Moore's fans worry that he partially stages scenes, undercutting the value of his own work. I spoke about this recently with the cameraman Bruce Schermer, who was paid $5,000 for shooting about 60 per cent of Roger & Me (which was sold to Warner Brothers for $3m). He points out that, during the shooting of the film's famous Christmas Eve eviction of impoverished Flint tenants, Moore was apparently not getting what he wanted. Off camera, he discussed the problem with an unemotional mother. When Schermer turned his camera back on, this evictee amped-up the scene by screaming. Ironically, adds the cameraman, some of the auxiliary lighting power required to shoot this scene came from the evictee's electricity outlet.

Throughout his career, Moore has been the master of constructive failure"








................Michael Moore... I hate you

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

... RIP Honest Ed....

...The man who brought us the largest and most economical eyesore, at the corner of Bathurst and Bloor has left us today....

Ed Mirvish was an entrepreneur, a cultural enthusiast, a family man and a philanthroper....

A big Man with a big smile... a piece of toronto's history... he will be missed

... i spill a lot....

... the other night I told a friend of mine how brave she was for wearing a white dress....


...she gasped, eyes widening with bewilderment and asked me, tentatively..."why?"


It took me a minute to realize she thought I was calling her a big fat heifer.... I guess there is a certain connotation that white can make a girl look... extra jolly... but no, my natural gut always associates white with the patches of oddly-formed discolouration left behind after i spill a little bit of... whatever it is happens tyo be in my hand.... food, drink, a dropped pen... my clothes all bear the phantom badges left by my daily adventures.... and no more prominently than my white clothes...


Which is probably why THIS appealed to me straight away and so much....


a great and fashionable tool for the uber-klutz hostess... it's a wine tray that is basically two levels... the bottom flat and the top punched out... so that there is a round whole for a bottle of wine to nestle in , and a slot into which you can slide up to four wine glasses. Managing to carry everything without spilling a drop....


What a fantastic idea.... It's available exclusively online. I suggest buying it directly from the manufacturers... MuNiMulA. They are a small design firm in Michigan, and it's always good to support those indie hipster rockin designers...


Tuesday, July 10, 2007

...it's impossible....

....to have as much fun as a drag queen.... it just can't be done... they are living their fucking DREAM..... do your clothes make you that happy?

.... yeah, i didn't think so.....

...no harm in trying though..... always try....

Monday, July 9, 2007

...officially the best link I have ever been sent on a monday morning....

....sent to me by a friend who, arguably, has gotten me into more trouble than most anyone else.... and the only thing that could make me laugh on a swelteringly humid monday morning on a night after no sleep due to extreme heat, and a weekend where ... ahem.... outside forces... made me make probably a bit of a fool of myself in front of a boy i like....

....THIS is pure internet gold....