The World from On High

Stephan Zirwes takes incredible photographs from 10,000 feet.

The world is a gorgeous, bustling geography.

See the "Zones and Fields" series in its entirety here.

Take a break from the everyday — and see the world from 10,000 feet — with Stephan Zirwes’s hypnotic series of aerial photographs, “Zones and Fields.”

You’ll see stunning shots of industrial areas, ski races, beaches, construction sites, and airfields — all of them taken from vertigo-inducing angles. Zirwes’s soccer fields look like foosball tables; his tropical islands resemble jellyfish; his world is full of striking patterns and beautiful geometries. We suggest that you view the series in full screen, that you turn the volume up — and enjoy your flight.

from 21 May 09 Very Short List.

New Regina!

This album's gonna make my summer when it drops on 06/23/09.

You wait and see.

Preorder here.

Video for "Laughing With"

Cassette Tape Wallets!

Wants it!

These cassette tape wallets from designboom are wallets made out of old cassette tapes. Pretty clever, but they cost $43. 

from today's Geekologie Blog

This is going to keep me from getting smushed by a car, you wait and see.

Totally downloaded the Email 'n Walk app for my iPhone this morning.

I even paid $0.99 for it, because I need this.

You can shut up.

Email 'n Walk (free for a limited time) is frankly kind of a silly iPhone application, but I couldn't resist talking about it here. The idea is simple: start up Email 'n Walk, type in your subject, and start typing a message. While you write, Email 'n Walk uses your iPhone camera to show you what's in front of you so you don't run into anyone. I took it for a test run outside our offices here in San Francisco and even though it felt a little silly, the app works as advertised. When you're done, hit send and you'll be transferred to the iPhone mail app to add recipients and send your e-mail.

On the edge of a meltdown.

If I don't soon own this $400 Nannette Lepore dress, I feel I will surely die of disappointment and dismay.

That is all for now.

Pulp Art Photography

The cheeky photographs of Thomas Allen are my new favorite thing.

I want to own them all all all.

ALL FOR ME!

Viewfinder, 2006 - 20 x 24 inches chromogenic Print

American photographer Thomas Allen constructs witty and clever dioramas using figures cut from the covers of old pulp paperbacks. Using salacious pulp art drawing’s of the ’40s and ’50s that covered books such as ” I Married a Dead Man” and ” Marihuana Girl’, Allen constructs one set of pictures up close while obscuring another, and in the process creates a different context. Each piece is given a brand new storyline, though never quite strays from their cheeky origins.

Uncovered, 2006, 20 x 24 inches - chromogenic Print

This is what I'll be using my tax refund for

Ceci

et

cela

Merci beaucoup, Nonc Sam!

Wants It :: Lit Alert

I read about Craig Taylor in this month's INTERVIEW.

He's only 32 and looks like a cute accountant.

I want his book.

Big time.

As seen in the Guardian, these short, evocative works based on overheard conversations in cities and towns across the country, Craig Taylor captures the state we’re in with humour and pathos and perfect timing.

A lonely pensioner desperately tries to communicate with a young immigrant; a funeral director’s love of Manchester United proves unhelpful when negotiating with the bereaved; two overly-vigilant mothers wrestle with their paranoia in the queue for Santa’s Grotto; a widow recounts her disastrous return to the world of dating and a father realises his son is growing away from him as he helps him tie his football boots.

Sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking, these tiny plays in which every one of us could have a starring role are windows into other people’s lives that reveal the triumphs, disasters, prejudices, horrors and joys of twenty-first-century life in Britain.

(review is here)

Here's one tiny play in a bookshop.

Here's one tiny play starring bankers. 

They make excellent studies in dialogue construction and are by turns hilarious and poignant.  

Gimme!

Well Phrased, You

I don't know who wrote this.

I found it after I clicked through a handful of blogs, linking blogroll-to-blogroll, Choose Your Own Adventure!-style.

Fauxhawk and I are going to his cousin's wedding in a few weeks, and I'd like to say, for the record, that it is extremely inconsiderate of his relatives to plan a wedding during the Uglies. For those of you who live in California, Florida or any of the warm countries, the Uglies consist of the second half of December, all of January, February, and March and most of April, when office workers from the Northeastern United States transform into pale, disgruntled, elephantine creatures...So you see, if Fauxhawk's family had chosen to celebrate their nuptials in July, or even September, I might have had a fighting chance. I might have had something cute to wear. Instead, I will have to fashion some sort of tarp around my naked form and be vigilant about revealing back fat. 

And I like the featured jewelry.

Read the whole post here.

Anyway, it's amazingly well-put.

True-ché, Persephone. True-ché.

This man is clearly crazy, so I'd like to find and marry him.

Seriously, this Derek Erdman guy's art is fanatical and his descriptions of it are even better.

And it's so affordable!

Example: this $50 painting of Paul McCartney eating a banana:

Description

Here's a 18"x18" painting of Paul McCartney eating a banana. Paul McCartney is wild about non-meat food items. He also divorced a one-legged woman. With a love like that you know you should be glad. I can't wait for lunch! If you live in the Chicago area you are welcome to visit my studio to pick this item up after you buy it. I'll make tea and scones, NO JOKE. If you have questions, just ask. Also, I have an internet website: www.derekerdman.com. You can look at it for free.

I want to buy it, just so I can meet him and tell stories about it always.

And because I am also crazy about non-meat food items.

ahhhh. the walk of shame

Ladies! The Walk of Shame Kit!

The Walk of Shame kit is a novelty gift that has fun with the fact that we have allmade our way home the next morning in the heels and party dress we had on the night before. We just try to help out with the bed head hair and smudged make up,and all of the other essentials a woman may need for the unexpected (or expected) sleepover.The kit includes a clutch bag that can be either your overnight bag or a purse, sunglasses, mirror, lace 'boy short' panties, a walk of shame condom, toothbrush, hair tie, face towel, hairbrush, and a pen to leave your number (or someone else's).

hahahahahahaha. awesome.

NOOOOOO! I DIE!

Do you know how I ran across 

this article in The Cut

telling me I can't get that Rachel Zoe shirt I wanted?

I had finally decided to buy one!

Boooooooooooooo and thrice boo.

You may recall this brilliant, Rachel Zoe–inspired "Bananas" shirt designed by artist Christopher Sauvé. If you haven't gotten yours yet, it doesn't look like you're going to. Sauvé just received a cease-and-desist letter from Zoe's lawyer. It turns out "I die" and "Bananas" are trademarked. Oh, excuse us — that would be I DIE™ and BANANAS™. We don't want to get sued. That would be BANANAS™. WeI DIE™.

Sauvé had only made 25 shirts and was planning to sell them in very limited distribution online and at Seven boutique. "As a huge fan of Rachel Zoe I feel very sad that I couldn't express myself artistically with BANANAS™ and my fascination with reality television," Sauvé told us. I DIE™..."She uses celebrities every day to promote herself, and then she won't let a poor artist in the city do it in a huge recession with all these layoffs?"

*Le Groan.*

Let me at this business!

iCream Cafe

(from today's Thrillist)

Hatched as a class project by two UofC b-schoolers, iCream's futuristically fatty idea was to let customers direct a customized process involving ice cream made from scratch, on-the-spot, using blasts of liquid nitrogen; after a 2-day August opening, their equipment blew a gasket, forcing them to re-up with $80K in shiny, 2nd Gen gear. How it works: select one of six liquid bases (ice cream, low-fat yogurt, shake, etc) for the dessert-jockey to pour into a beaker, plus up to three of the 30+ flavors (burnt sugar, peanut butter, ginger snap, pomegranate...), which're dispensed precisely from syringes, ; then choose sweetener (liquid sugar cane, honey) and, optionally and oddly, dropper-dispensed, food-safe, non-flavored coloring -- so no matter the flavor, it'll match the shirt you plan to drip it on. The concoction's then poured into an industrial mixer, and a computerized system directs an overhead “phase separator tank” to drop -320degree liquid nitrogen through vacuumed-jacketed tubing into the liquid, turning it into smooth, creamy goodness in 35-55 seconds.  To pretty up your creation,opt for any of 25+ toppings & mixings, from Heath Bar to Nutella to gum balls -- resulting in an exhilarating minefield of desserts you should and shouldn't eat. 

This is in Wicker Park.

Check out the menu here.

Bananas.  I die.

Currently Topping My Alcohol-Themed Wish List

Nick Paul the Windy City Glassblower

Nick Paul "The Windy City Glassblower" crafts drinking glasses by taking various bottles (Red Stripe, Grey Goose, Rogue's Dead Guy, 7Up...), softening them in an 1100 degree oven, using a special tool to open up the bottleneck, then cooling them for 30 hours.

Neat!

So we can all be the Terminator

Geekologie Blog posted this item yesterday about a "Sixth Sense Device."

"The device...can turn any surface into a touch-screen for computing, controlled by simple hand gestures. The gadget can even take photographs if a user frames a scene with his or her hands, or project a watch face with the proper time on a wrist if the user makes a circle there with a finger. The device can recognize items on store shelves, retrieving and projecting information about products or even providing quick signals to let users know which choices suit their tastes."

Needless to say, I both fear and desire it.