Monthly Archives

May 2010

The trees will have their victory

artist interpretation

I surrender to your mighty pollen, trees of Chestertown.  You win.  I cannot think today.  I cannot breathe.  I have a headache that starts directly behind my eyes, thunders across my entire skull and rampages down into the middle of my back via a brittle spine.  My eyes water and burn.  And I give up.

Name your terms and you can have my surrender.  I shall never again attempt to breathe your rightfully owned oxygen.  I will avoid standing in the shaded areas near you because I clearly deserve to be scorched by the Maryland sun.

And if I go berserk and come up with Mouse Trap-like ways to kill myself, don’t be surprised.  I mean, you have seen The Happening, right?  (I know, Zooey Deschanel again.)

Just don’t say I didn’t warn you when the trees are your new overlords.

Great idea/hate it

Sometimes a creative endeavor falls entirely flat for me – all of the checkboxes for being something I’d like are filled in, but the end result just does not work. Oddly, nearly all of Radiohead’s work falls into this category. A more recent example is Tomorrow, In a Year.

This album, an opera based on Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species, should be spectacular given that fact alone. Add to the list of things going for it the collaboration between The Knife and Planningtorock – both huge favorites – and I really did expect to be in love.

And then I listened once while in the bath and have never gone anywhere near it again. That being the case, it’s a bit of a stretch to remember exactly what the offensive aspects were but I’m pretty sure it was a shrieky, warbly mess of weirdness (in itself something I’d be just fine with on a good day.)

Thanks anyway, Tomorrow, In a Year.

Re-imagining Apple’s website

Want to learn about the hot Newton MessagePad that Apple just released?  Or order a pack of System 7 installation floppies (High Density!) for your LC II+?  Well, friend, Cult of Mac has created an Apple website circa 1993 just for you.

And if you are feeling even more archaic, be sure to check out their 1983 mockup as well.  Project Macintosh sure does look promising…

Making a magazine in 48 hours

Gizmodo has tipped me off to the upcoming 48 Hour Magazine project.  To say that this looks like perhaps the best idea I’ve seen in a long time would be a gross (in all senses of the word) understatement.  Basically, a bunch of passionate magazine and publishing people are getting together for a weekend and hammering out a creative, insightful, current collection of submissions from writers, photographers, etc around the world.  No bullshit, no un-fun pieces – just a magazine for the sake of making one.

Like a beautiful summer day in the Pacific Northwest that you can carry around in your heart through the dreary-ass winter. Or maybe a hip flask is a better metaphor.

(Alex Madrigal on what this project is like for those in the business of magazines)

With all the talk of digital texts and magazines I’ve been rifling through as a result of the iPad’s launch, it’s refreshing to see a new take on producing a print product come together.  As a lover of the magazine, especially in its most experimental forms, this will be exceptional.  As one project founder, Mat Honan, basically pulls from my own childhood:

I grew up reading Rolling Stone, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Spy, and Spin. Magazines let me drop into a world without rednecks, and then hang out there for hours on end. While the Internet has largely taken over that cultural delivery vehicle role, I still find the experience of immersion you get from a paper magazine unequaled.

You can get involved, watch it live via UStream and, theoretically, buy the finished product when it’s all done.  I know I’m excited for this to kick off in two days!