Weekend Won

On Thursday I started to feel shitty. On Friday the feeling got worse. It was the flu - AKA, the 'Chinese Flu', AKA - "welcome to China - you're sick".... FUCK... Really???

On Friday night it hits like a ton of bricks; sweats, aches, cough, congestion... being sicks sucks. Being sick in another country sucks even more.

A few lessons learned however (CHINA FACT):
1) Get a VPN so you can watch netflix
2) There is a delivery food service called Sherpa.com - CRITICAL!
3) Stock up US cold and cough products, they just don't have them here... So i'm toughing it out with some advil i brought...

Four movies (Buy the ticket, take the ride; a Hunter T. bio, Full Metal Jacket, Bronson and Trainspotting) and 12 hours of sleep later, its Sunday morning..... Still feeling under the weather, but its a beautiful day and I can't bring myself to stay cocooned in my room for another 24hrs. Did I really travel half way around the world to sit in bed and watch movies???

So its off to lunch with the only two people I know (who I don't work with); American couple from Cali who are old friends with one of my best college buds.... Lunch is good and then off to to do what all folks do on Sunday - hit up the knock off video store!!

In NYC, you occasionally see guys hawking $5 DVD's on the street. Well let me tell you - in China they have elevated this to an entirely new level. I swear, it looks like a legit store, until you go to pay and its 10RMB (~$1.50) per DVD (which I was told was expensive)... unbelievable.. Anyway, still haven't tried em out, so will report back on the quality.. But thought I'd catch up on some classics.

After lunch, I went to check out the Shanghai art fair - I thought, "this will be a great way to see all the gallery's in the city without having to schlepp around"...

Well - I was wrong. It was 99% crap, so i took the business card for the only gallery that looked at all credible (Shanghart) and headed to their actual gallery...

CHINA FACT: All stores are typically bundled together on the same street. For example, there is an entire street of guitar stores... Just like there is entire area of gallery's.

Anyway - Shanghart is located in the M50, which is somewhere between an artist colony and gallery village. Kinda like Brooklyn, but more concentrated and in China... The road is completely covered in Graffiti, and its basically open studios all the time. Unfortunately, the art quality left something to be desired, but I will keep looking.

So thats Sunday. Gonna pop in a movie and kick back till another work day rolls around....

Eastern Days

I recently moved to Shanghai for work on a temporary basis. I'll be here through the end of the year. In the spirit of sharing, which is the purpose of this blog, I thought i'd shift gears from random cultural internet items of note, and focus my attention on random and interesting Chinese items of note....

So... My first observation.... The below images represent one aspect of Shanghai and China... Over the next few months I hope to show you others....

Mashed Up Album Art

Randomly typed this into Google and ran across this site... Thought it was worth sharing...


here is the artists story:

A little while ago I put a bunch of Wu-Tang (both group and solo) albums on my computer. 21 of them, in fact. I inherited some mild OCD from my mom, and as anyone who has seen my iTunes can attest to, it manifests itself in weird ways. I need to have decent-quality album art for every album on my computer, which currently equals over 90 gigs. The problem was that almost all of the Wu-Tang album art was horrible (ODB's two albums being the only real exceptions) -- no offense to the original designers, but as iconic as they might be they're looking pretty dated these days. So, armed with inspiration from what Olly Moss and others are doing (as written about by me here, and later by Kottke here) and a book of Blue Note Records covers, I set out to remake all 21. The first seven are here (click for full-view):

Murakami @ Versailles

Just got back from France, but with over 2,500 pics taken, I'm still sorting through everything. However, here are some highlights from Versailles!

www.flickr.com cebo2hot's Murakami @ Versaille photoset

The Vader Project

Check it out - 100 custom vader helmets by some of todays top urban artists.... Here's the link: The Vader Project

Artists include: Gary Baseman, Tim Biskup, Paul Frank, Ron English, Jeff Soto, Frank Kozik, Buffmaster and more...

Fashionable Star Wars????

You have to be kidding! Images from John Woo, a designer and illustrator from Hong Kong. Original link.

Obey This - Last Show @ Deitch

www.flickr.com

'Exit Through The Gift Shop' - nice work

A great commentary about how art tries to brainwash us into believing the hype. Nice job bringing us back down to earth Banksy.... Funny, honest and interesting. A great art film, even if you hate Graffiti.

The Huf Haus (can modular building be cool?)

A Green house, well designed, under $500K..... Now available in the US! From inhabit.com....

From Bauhaus to HUF HAUS: Energy Efficient Prefab Homes

by Cameron Scott, 04/09/10

German company HUF HAUS is offering gorgeous green houses to the masses by bringing Bauhaus style to factory-made green homes. The company’s signature post-and-beam construction allows for big open spaces, and they serve them up with solar panels and even an optional geothermal heating system.

Tripe-glazed glass walls open the houses onto the landscape while also providing maximum insulation. Sure, there’s a healthy dose of (responsibly forested) wood involved along with the more conventional concrete, but here’s something nifty: HUF HAUS’s factory uses its wood offcuts to generate some of the electricity it uses.

HUF HAUS has just opened an office in the United States — based in Cleveland, but serving the whole country — and the company insists that its houses are only pre-fab in the strictest sense of the word: the modular system is designed to be versatile, and, as you can see, every house is different.

+ HUF HAUS

Smashing Watermelons

Mashup of Stephan Hawking and crazy lucho libre type slow-mo video... Interesting combination - maybe......



Thanks SDL for the spot.

Model Building - Sometimes Cool

Is it the retro cars? The detailed craftsmanship? The detailed lighting or snappy photography? Perhaps its the combination, but either way, they're a ton of fun... See the full range of photo's here.

The awesomeness of randomness

Two interesting sites about randomness..

The first is a site of static photographs trolled from throughout the internet (here).

The second is random video chatting site called ChatRoullet - interesting article about it here.

What is it about watching strangers that keeps us so captivated?

Wrap it up!

Those damn French! So clever and so up front about sex...


from TBWA Paris

Enter The Magical Mystery Chambers - Really Good

Super nice mix. Some parts are less Beatles than others, but it all works together and compliment the Wu very well...

From the NYTimes Interview with the artist: “Uzi (Pinky Ring)” has got a lot of samples on it. There’s “Glass Onion,” then it went to an Arif Mardin version of “Glass Onion,” then when Ghostface comes in it goes to “Getting Better,” then RZA comes in and it’s a Ramsey Lewis version of “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey.” Then Inspectah Deck comes in and it’s a cover version of “Hey, Jude.” Then Method Man comes in and that’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” And then GZA’s at the end, and that’s “Why Don’t We Do It In the Road.” I’ve seen on blogs, somebody say something like, I’ve only heard two Beatles samples that I recognized in here. And to me that’s quite a good thing – you have to listen extra hard to hear them. I was purposeful not to take “Love Me Do” and put Wu-Tang with it

Top 10 Bullship Professsions

1. Career Counselors: If they knew anything they'd find themselves better jobs.
2. Clergymen: God-bothering bullies masquerading as holy men.
3. Psychotherapists: Practitioners of the world's most advanced form of pseudoscience.
4. Politicians: Insufferable egotists pretending to be "public servants."
5. Branding Consultants: Why didn't I think of this scam?
6. Art Critics: Thankfully, no one pays attention except rich twits.
7. Actors: We tell them where to stand. We tell them what to say. They win awards.
8. Ad Executives: You can build a career by memorizing 10 cliches.
9. Financial Advisors: Monkeys throwing darts.
10. Third Base Umpires: One call a game if you're lucky.

From: The Ad Contrarian

Stormtroopers on vacation

A very fun collection of Photo's from Stefan(?) - I guess he's French??? Anyway - really fun, especially if you're into star wars... kind of surreal - some are better than others. But overall, a nice trip through the imagination of a stormtroopers. see all of them here....

The Complex Soundboard: Click On It!

Thanks to Matty P, an old high school friend for pointing this out ...

My own polaroid!

The NYTimes story regarding instant photo's and the evolution of cell phone photography continues. And this time, yours truly is part of the story.... Of over 1,500 photo's submitted, one of mine was chosen to be featured on NYTimes.com - see it here.

Needless, to say - I'm very excited.... My first published image! Excited but not about to quit the day job yet......

From Polaroids to Iphones

This next installment in a series on photography the New York Times is exploring - cell phone photography appears to be today's Polaroid. While the photo's lack the grainy almost hazy color, their candid nature and off-beat locale's make for an interesting comparison.

The Times highlighted the images of "Shawn Rocco, 37, is a professional photographer. He shoots a Motorola E815."

Check back later to see other user submitted art.

Po, po, po, Polaroid Pictures - world wide!

Awesome article from the NYTimes where they spotlight some great Polaroid's from the around the globe.

We love the Polaroid and can't wait till new film becomes available again. There's just something to that soft, grainy color that reminds me of simpler times.... And the magic of watching the image miraculously appear!

See some old posts about other creative ways Polaroids have been used.