D E S I G N /// ck

High speed rail lines in America: read more here.

...are awesome. I use one everyday. And they make even more sense in the third world as a sustainable solution to transport.


That's a nice lookin' cargo bike. Very cool!

World Bike is helping get intelligently designed solutions to people that need it. Check it out

This thing is the coolest! I love the way it makes landscapes look like tiny models. And you know I love [building] models.

This trailer has been out for a while, but I thought I'd post it here. What Sambo says at the end is true- once you've experienced it, you can't get away from Architecture's duty to the poor people of this earth.

See here.

I don't know if this will be as good. I don't know if I'll cry silent tears in a movie theater seat the way I cried in bed at 3:00 in the morning while I was reading it. I'm not sure how I like this "action" style trailer, but the little bit of the Coke scene makes me hope the movie exceeds this marketing. What I see here makes me realize that I'll be seeing this movie, for better or worse. Early review here.

p.s. No matter however the way the movie portrays it, I'll always see the father and son walking across the Henley Street Bridge in the ash, finding the mummified remains of the dead on the streets of Knoxville.

p.p.s. After watching it a half dozen times, I realize that this will definitely set Appalachia in a post-apocalyptic Deliverance light. But let's face it- when the world falls apart, it probably will be only West Virginians and East Tennesseeans left, eating each other.

I'm more excited than I should be about the new Star Trek movie. I should know better. Last time I got excited about a movie all I got was a blue glowing penis.

...is not like the others.


click to see the larger image, it's worth it

I like how this illustration shows a monumental event without cramming HOPE and CHANGE down our throats. It merely uses contrast and juxtaposing to get its point across. I also like the dot eyes and Obama's sheepish grin at the end.

Also, you can clearly see a trend in the mid to late 1800s from clean shaven to funky facial hair and then back again. Here's hoping the cycle repeats soon. I could really get behind a president with a fu manchu or an Amish beard.

[source]

A film for people like me that are obsessed with the design of things. These guys did a good job with Helvetica, which Alice can tell you started a somewhat annoying (to her) habit of analyzing fonts everwhere.

I can't wait for this one!

I just finished up my reread of Blood Meridian, and wanted to share some thoughts about it. I'm going to try and write something here from time to time when I finish reading a book:

I started reading Cormac McCarthy with The Road, then backtracked and started reading his earlier books. He's quickly become one of my one of my favorite authors (if not the favorite), but I felt that these other books (like the Border Trilogy) were just his "practice" books leading up to his eventual masterpiece.

I was wrong.

McCarthy has another equally masterful book that marks (as I believe The Road does) a transition in his writing career. Blood Meridian is equal to The Road, and now I think perhaps even better. Whereas the latter portrays evil through secondary characters and the landscape itself, Blood Meridian has the edge because it gives shows us evil personified: Judge Holden. In my opinion, he may be the number one literary villain of all time. And Holden isn't just a passing presence. We get to study him throughout the entire book.

Three scenes have burned themselves in my memory like I've watched them in a movie: the massacre of the filibuster army, the Glanton Gang furiously making gunpowder on the hill top as the Indians approach to scalp them, and The Kid hiding from the Judge in a dead animal carcass at the desert waterhole. Stuff like that sticks with you.

This is a must read for anyone who can stomach it. In my opinion, it's the best novel of the best modern American writer.

...doesn't mean you shouldn't be prepared for a zombie apocalypse.


Zombies in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

News from a world with Dr. Manhattan. I love the attention to detail in fake archival footage, like the bad tracking on the bottom of the screen.

here it is:

Sorry Will, it says "US only" so yer Korean IP address may block the video. Just another reason to get back stateside as soon as possible!

Reaction: Pretty good. Not Great. I built it up a lot in my mind, so maybe I set myself up for disappointment. They pick up where Season One left off: Maury is managing Crazy Doggz and the Conchords fire him because he isn't paying any attention to them. Is this the start of a new story arc? Not really. By the end, everything is status quo ante and we're back to the old formula, which is what we really want anyways. The banter and story are right on. The scene when they conduct their own band meeting (and keep the role call) and go over their "merchandise" is priceless. What seems like a glaring hole here is the lack of a great new song- there's nothing like "Beautiful Girl" that got Season One started. Which may mean exactly what Bret and Jermaine have said: Season One used up most of their stand-up songs, so now they have to write on the fly for the show. Let's hope they're just getting warmed up. They've said that Season Two is it for the series, so if this is all we're going to get, let's hope they've got some killer new songs up their sleeves.

The flower one is genius.

[A preview of the first episode will be in Funny or Die on Dec. 17]

This is from one of my favorite shows. As we all know, nothing is as funny as puking.

Continuing the obsession:

Take the skyscraper grid motif of North By Northwest:



add the abstracted falling man from the movie poster for Vertigo:


and you get the Mad Men intro:



Thank you, Saul Bass!

also noteworthy, the above poster definitely influenced the poster for Burn After Reading:


And this is just fun:

Sitting comfortably on the bandwagon, I have a new favorite show. At first it was just out of interest with all the award buzz, then the characters that I empathize with (especially their dark secretive sides) hooked me. And this intro sequence that I LOVE:



The whole show could be summed up as "calm before the storm" and the above sequence sets that mood perfectly.

Apparently my favorite genre is called "Baroque Pop". I knew there was common thread through all this music, but I didn't know it was so defined. It's a style that "with clear indie-rock inclinations, uses additional members in the band to create a fuller-bodied, more orchestral sound. The writing style of the genre often has a distinct narrative quality to it and often makes references to history, literature, philosophy, and folklore." It's interesting they've revived the word "baroque", a term I'm more used to seeing in architectural descriptions. But if you've ever seen a jumbled, multi-layered, self-referential baroque palace, then you know that this is an apt term. It seems that architecture and music often swap references.

Look at the list in the Wikipedia article; it's a who's who of all the stuff that I've been obsessed with the past few years, plus old stuff like The Association that I've always loved.

Check out some "Baroque Pop":

Sufjan Stevens

Andrew Bird

Vampire Weekend

Panda Bear

Beruit

and of course, Of Montreal

[Disclaimer: this post is aimed at everyone but Jason, who manages to stay light years ahead of me in music awareness. Go ahead and laugh that I'm still catching up with 2007, you hipster scumbag]

...Rorschach is my favorite character in Watchmen.


I love the part when he gets thrown in prison with all the criminals he's caught over the years: they all keep trying to kill him, but he calmly survives and beats all of them to bloody (sometimes dead) pulp. He's the only character (besides the Comedian) who does whatever it takes to get the job done. I respect that.

Well, it's been about a week since I got it, and I still love it. The interface is so intuitive and fluid, exactly what I've been wanting after dealing with Verizon's clumsy software for 5 years. It's just the right size and looks great. All in all, this is the best designed phone I ever seen.

Now I'm hyper connected at all times, which is a blessing and a curse. I think I'm going to turn off the email alert. But it is cool to be able to stay connected to everyone, especially friends who live far away. The only flaw is that all this connection takes a lot of juice. Whereas I might charge my Razr every other day, I have to be diligent about charging the iPhone because it sucks up battery power like it's going out of style.

Despite my heart's pitter-patter for the iPhone, all is not well in Apple Land. My MacBook Pro has decided it doesn't want to boot up. This just after syncing with the iPhone and updating the software- coincidence? I think not. Again, I love the industrial design of Apple's hardware, but I am becoming less and less impressed with their software. As they try to be all things to all men, their overall quality seems to have tanked. Back in the days of my Ti Powerbook, I had nary an issue. I hope they regroup soon and focus on getting everything back up to that level, before they become the next Microsoft.