my milk toof, by inhae

Thanks to my friend Jen for passing along quite possibly the cutest website I've ever been to. MY MILK TOOF, by artist Inhae, is a photographic journey of two teeth, Ickle and Lardee, on various adventures (from bathing to playing to going out for a walk). Below is one of the sweeter stories, and the photography is really quite stunning (once you look past the subject matter -- although, in my opinion, the "teef" only elevate the photographs). Look, for example, at Ickle and Lardee with dandelions, Ickle and Lardee looking at the world through 3D-colored glasses, or Lardee's hesitation to bathe. Another particularly well photographed story is of a mellow afternoon; the colors are absolutely beautiful.


"Awww, Planty looks sad."


"Be right back."



"Okay Planty, here's Lardee's prescription for feeling down..."


"One:"


"A warm milk tea with lots of sugar, just the way Lardee like."


"Two:"


"A warm snuggle with Lardee's soft blanket."


"And three:"


"Fa-la-la-la-la-la...
Lardee sings for you."


"Feel better, Planty."

springfieldpunx: pop culture awesomeness

Dean Fraser, artist of the Springfield Punx series, enjoys taking pop culture characters (and real people) and turning them into Simpsons-style characters. When you go to his website, you'll find that he has a healthy obsession with all things related to Batman (he has at least four different variations on The Joker and three on The Penguin), and he's currently doing a series of Lost characters (Ben Linus, Charlie, and Hurley). I really enjoy and appreciate the work he does, and I hope you do too. His Arrested Development series (including some secondary characters!) is especially entertaining.


Update, May 30th: Here are some Lost characters. (l-r) John Locke, Ben Linus (he does get beat up a lot), and Sawyer (aka Jim LeFleur)


(l-r) Rorschach from Watchmen, Marty McFly and Doc Brown from Back to the Future


(l-r) Dwight from The Office, Captain Freakin' Planet, Dr. Greg House from House


Late Night Gods: (l-r) Steven Colbert, Craig Ferguson (complete with yodeling monkey!), and Conan O'Brien


Arrested Development alert! (l-r) Tobias "I Think I Just Blue Myself" Fünke, Steve "Steve Holt!" Holt, and Buster "I'm a Monster!" Bluth

website: film in the blanks

At Film the Blanks, this artist, John Taylor, has created these abstract movie poster homages. I will post the film titles in a couple of days, but in the meantime, see if you can figure out which film they belong to. It's surprising how you can still recognize an image even as abstract as these are. Eventually, there will be a shop where you can purchase limited edition, signed screen prints of selected "blanks." My fingers are crossed for some of the Kubrick prints!

Thanks to Mattson Tomlin for the heads up!

intense public guerrilla marketing posters

Thanks to Carrie for these intense public guerrilla marketing posters. See the others at the Web Urbanist website.


Witness Against Torture Elevator Ad
An otherwise blank set of elevator doors features two sets of fingers peeking out from the seam, as if someone inside is trying to escape. Once you’re inside the elevator you see the owner of those fingers: a man in a prison jumpsuit and leg-cuffs. Witness Against Torture, a human rights group, used this ad to campaign for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention center.


Feed SA Shopping Cart Posters
You’d have to have a heart of stone to avoid being affected by the images of poor, starving children sitting in the bottom of your shopping cart. Any food placed in the shopping cart appear to be delivered right into the needy child’s hands. Feed SA, a South African charity dedicated to feeding disadvantaged people, put these decals in shopping carts and saw a marked increase in donations and a significant boost in website traffic.


Anti-Smoking Stick-Ons
Tailpipe smoke is gross… and the same goes for the carcinogen-loaded clouds that erupt from the mouth of a cigarette smoker. An anti-smoking group equated the two by placing posters of people’s faces with the cut-out mouths strategically placed at the end of tailpipes.

glamour's tribute to female icons

On MSN.com, Glamour magazine looks to past female style icons in a photographic tribute to women in history. They write: "You can do anything! That’s the message of the seven decades of female risk takers, rule breakers and style makers here. We celebrate them with the help of some very-2009 young talents."


Alexis Bledel as Rosie the Riveter
In 1942 the U.S. government commissioned the “We Can Do It!” poster, which featured an image of a character who became known as Rosie the Riveter. Her biceps-revealing shirtsleeves and determined look were meant to motivate American women to step out of the kitchen and into the factory to replace the men who had been pressed into service during World War II. And millions did just that, paving the way for us to pull down paychecks more than 60 years later.

“She’s a symbol of women getting things done. It shows that strength is beautiful.” — Alexis Bledel, 27


Paula Patton as Billie Holiday
As an aspiring singer, Holiday suffered sexual abuse, struggled with a drug habit and encountered racism everywhere. But the late Lady Day—one of the first African American women to sing with an all-white orchestra—translated all of that pain into some of the most achingly personal songs ever recorded. (Download “Strange Fruit,” which she sang at her 1948 Carnegie Hall concert, and listen for yourself.)

“You can imagine that women at home hearing her songs on the radio felt her vocalizing their emotions and their struggles.” — Paula Patton, 33


Emma Roberts as Audrey Hepburn
OK, she was born in Belgium, but Hepburn became one of the most beloved American movie stars. Her sharp, sensitive turn as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s made the film a must-see for women of all ages, while the late actress’s elegant style continues to inspire women to this day.

“She was so simply beautiful. And she loved charity work, something even more beautiful about her.”—Emma Roberts, 18


Alicia Keys as First Lady Michelle Obama
Not only is Obama the first African American filling the position, but she’s already making best-dressed headlines for a style that ranges from couture to J.Crew. Raised in Chicago, Obama, 45, powered on to Princeton and Harvard Law School before beginning a career during which she met, mentored and married our current President. Hail to our newest smart, opinionated, chic First Lady!

“She has worked hard for everything she’s accomplished, and done so with grace and humility. So many women and girls can identify with her story.”—Alicia Keys, 28

if a church were made of legos, would you go? I would!

This church, made of over 75,000 legs, features a balcony, a Narthex, stairs to the balcony, restrooms, coat rooms, several mosaics, a nave, a baptistery, an altar, a crucifix, a pulpit and an elaborate pipe organ. Restrooms! Impressive, no? (Click on the images for a closer look.)

saturdays with ted: jonathan haidt and ursus wehrli

I have recently begun reading Jonathan Haidt's The Happy Hypothesis -- which I am finding to be quite engaging -- and I went online to discover this website YourMorals.org. After registering my name, I began to take a few psychology surveys, the first of which happened to relate to Haidt's Ted talk on conservative and liberal morals. (According to the study, liberals tend to value justice and have a higher openness to experience, whereas conservative value loyalty.) Here, Haidt opens with the following anecdote:

Suppose that two American friends are traveling together in Italy, and when they come face to face with Michelangelo's David, they both freeze dead in their tracks. The first guy -- let's call him Adam -- is transfixed by the beauty of the human form. The second guy -- we'll call him Bill -- is transfixed by embarrassment at staring at the thing in the middle. My question is, which of these men voted for George Bush and which voted for Al Gore?

Interestingly, Haidt makes the connection that most Tedsters are liberal, and this becomes a problem because all of these individual thinkers actually become a team working towards the same goal. We need to have diversity. And in speaking to this liberal audience, he consciously points out that people who think that the half of America who voted for Bush are either dumb or super religious are blinded by the trappings of their own close-mindedness. In an engaging lecture, he goes on to discuss the 'first draft' of the moral mind, the five moral foundations of psychology (harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity), and how these five foundations work.


And now for some humor... Ursus Wehrli "shares his vision for a cleaner, more organized, tidier form of art -- by deconstructing the paintings of modern masters into their component pieces, sorted by color and size." As someone who isn't the biggest fan of modern art, I find Wehrli to be very funny (on Jasper Jones: "He was practicing with his ruler.") and the images he uses are fantastic. His re-constructed works are actually aesthetically pleasing, mostly because -- as a person who values logic and reason -- I appreciate structure and order.

Comedian and cabaret artist Ursus Wehrli is the author of Tidying Up Art, a visionary manifesto that yearns toward a more rational, more organized and cleaner form of modern art. In deconstructing the work of Paul Klee, Jaspen Johns and other masters into its component parts, organized by color and size, Wehrli posits a more perfect art world.

After the talk, Wehrli notes that he will autograph his book for anyone "using the name of any artist." Ha, what wit. And if you don't want to stick around for the whole 15 minutes (though it goes by quickly, trust me), skip ahead to the 12:28 mark, where Wehrli reorganizes a Jackson Pollack work.

film news: february 2009

• Joaquin Pheonix was on The Late Show with David Letterman last night, and it's not a pretty sight. Whether he's under the influence of some substance (the glasses do not hide the fact that his eyes can't focus) or acting, it's extremely uncomfortable and in no way going to do anything for his career. I've always had a soft spot for Pheonix, so it's difficult to watch someone with so much talent on an obvious downward spiral.

• Woody Allen's latest muses? Josh Brolin and Anthony Hopkins.

• Been wondering what Michael Moore's next project will be? Following Sicko, his next documentary will take a look at the bailout.

• What? Someone outside of academia can analyze The Incredibles through a Nitzschean lens? The following is by Julian Shapiro over at Film School Rejects:

In order for class stratification and nobility to be properly instilled, the supers need to exploit the commoners for their own gain. On the flip side, however, it could be interpreted that instead of simply intending to save Metroville, the Incredibles aimed to cleverly thrust themselves back into the spotlight instead (in hopes of reclaiming superheroic greatness.) Thus, The Incredibles presents a very murky conclusion to the Nietzschean dichotomy that they had originally established in act one: it showed that it is possible to return to pseudo-greatness—or perhaps even Nietzschean greatness itself—after the birth of mediocrity, but it did not attempt to establish how permanent this form of greatness would be, nor how Nietzschean of a form it took; superheroic nobility was implied to once again be celebrated but there was no suggestion that the commoners had learned their lesson and accepted Nietzsche’s ideal of a “natural” society—one in which class stratification is strict and the growth of the noblemen is the outcome of a self-centered will to power. Hence, The Incredibles’ narrative coming full circle seems to suggest that the superhero is permanently compromised by the slave revolt.

• You can watch the first five minutes of the Clive Owen and Naomi Watts film The International over at Film School Rejects.

• Now, this is geek-tastic. The Vader Project, via Cinematical, "features 100 reimagined Darth Vader helmets created by some of today's most talked-about underground and pop surrealist painters, artists and designers." It's exhibiting at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Visit The Vader Project website.

• This is older news, but still worth noting because of the actress involved... Cate Blanchett has replaced Sienna Miller in Nottingham, the Robin Hood update with Russell Crowe. And despite my protests, Crowe will not be playing Maid Mariam.

• And lastly, for Valentine's Day, please give out these STD e-cards to your loved ones.

pics from luhrmann's australia

The following images are from Baz Luhrmann's upcoming film Australia, and the images are courtesy of Glam, which I can only assume is a fashion magazine.

Australia is an epic and romantic action adventure, set in that country on the explosive brink of World War II. In it, an English aristocrat (Nicole Kidman) travels to the faraway continent, where she meets a rough-hewn local (Hugh Jackman) and reluctantly agrees to join forces with him to save the land she inherited. Together, they embark upon a transforming journey across hundreds of miles of the world's most beautiful yet unforgiving terrain, only to still face the bombing of the city of Darwin by the Japanese forces that attacked Pearl Harbor. With his new film, Baz Luhrmann is painting on a vast canvas, creating a cinematic experience that brings together romance, drama, adventure and spectacle.

And from Film School Rejects, here are some more images -- but I have to wonder, is the cinematographer Steve McCurry? (Answer: No -- but the styles are certainly similar.)