A video glimpse into a street gun kiosk in Mogadishu hawking M-16s, AKs, and RPGs any of which you can purchase for less than $200. As the two breathless journas in the report note the proliferation of small arms, not WMDs is what's responsible for the instability and killing in many countries around the world.
The Dodgers manage zero hits against the Angels, and yet still somehow win the game by a score of 1-0. Strange night.
I love this drawing:
Thanks Ashley for reminding me how one painting could solve mine and a couple of my friends' troubles with some leftover for an around the world dance party.
This dance off featuring characters from the Star Wars universe at some theme park made me chuckle but also gave me a huge headache. Either way, in the amount of time it took me to post this, George Lucas just made 20 million dollars. Supposedly Lucas looked to classic hero's quest stories for guidance when he was writing Star Wars. This may be true. I just have a hard time making the leap from Gilgamesh to Darth Vader and his storm troopers dancing in synch to Thriller. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkTQwP2gFxU]
B-Boy battles between a Japanese and a Korean crew. At times it resembles rhythmic gymnastics or tumbling set to a beat rather than an actual dance, but they are still dope. Here's another one between a Korean group versus a Russian one (wow, talk about the global appropriation of localized culture...) at a big competition: Part 1 [youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=EyJMUxJcYnw]
Part 2 [youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=aIZBdrMc2T4]
I was clued into this world by Angry Asian Man who alerted his readers to an interesting Salon article written by Jeff Chang (author of Can't Stop, Won't Stop) who pretty much knows his shit when it comes to this topic. Chang explores why the Koreans are pretty much dominating the hip-hop dance and b-boy battle scene around the world.
B-boy Robin, Russia's assassin in a brown Yankees hat, oversize polo shirt and cargo slacks, circles the floor and then taunts the Koreans by pulling back his eyes. Some in the crowd gasp at Robin's slanted-eye dis. But his subsequent solo, featuring a Tony Hawk-style hand plant and surging rolls broken up with one-armed freezes, is flawless. In what b-boys call a "commando" attack -- a routine in which a run is begun by one or more b-boys but finished by another, named for the post-gang-era Bronx dancers who invented it as a tactic to prevent the other crew from immediately responding -- C4 dives through two Rivers members and leaps straight at Robin, pulling his own eyes back, then miming a castration of Robin. The crowd roars.
Read more here.
Here's a segment on Koreans from the recent documentary Planet B-Boys which looks at this dance and lifestyle as its impacted youths around the world on nearly every continent. I haven't seen this movie yet but I've heard great things about it.
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=gNh6qpsuo58]
And this video titled "Run DMZ" featuring a dance off between North and South Korean guards at the DMZ zone is pretty much the best b-boy "music video" I've seen from concept to creation. It's spot on:
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=zKoXG0RjC7E]
I can do exactly .1 percent of the moves shown in any of the aforementioned videos.
I thought this was the most hilarious thing I've seen all day, but that was before I was reminded of this article:
Approaching the Rachel Marie on its starboard side was a small motorboat, affixed to which was a replica of one of the saffron-colored gates created by Christo and Jeanne-Claude that dotted Central Park last winter. Captain Henry remembered "The Gates" and, putting two and two together, he worried that maybe the man in the motorboat was planning on boarding his little version of Central Park and planting a gate somewhere among the trees.
Ah, so funny. Read more and see picture here.
Street performance "art" in Soho.
[Thanks Mun]
I'm just glad he's on top of the cow and not behind the cow. Big diff.
I looked up "tourist" in the dictionary and found the following visual definition:
Roberta Smith reviews Olafur Eliasson's waterfall installation, officially titled "The New York City Waterfalls," (previously blogged here) for the New York Times Arts Review and gives it some TLC or tender, loving, care.
Smith states that despite its arguable status as "also one of the largest works of art, public or otherwise, of our modern era," "they are also actually relatively unobtrusive and brilliantly insidious." Indeed, on the first "official" opening, if you will, which was yesterday, I noticed that only a few people on my train noticed these artificial waterfalls. I had to point it out to my fellow strap hanger.
Sometimes Mr. Eliasson’s falls are almost miragelike, especially after dark, when unobtrusive lighting makes them shimmer white against the muffled cityscape. It is at night that you have the greatest chance of hearing them from a distance, otherwise the rush of water is drowned out by the city. But their quiet heightens their strangeness, day or night. It is as if they were in their own movie, a silent one. And in a way they are.
Even from the train's elevated point of view and distance, Eliasson's public art installation is amazing. I have yet to see it at night and am looking forward to doing so.
Perhaps the artist was inspired by this brilliant passage written by Bertrand Russell:
But in London or New York, where people are many and rabbits are few, some other means must be found to gratify primitive impulse. I think every big town should contain artificial water falls that people could descend in very fragile canoes, and they should contain bathing-pools full of mechanical sharks. Any person advocating a preventive war should be condemned to two hours a day with these ingenious monsters. More seriously, pains should be taken to provide constructive outlets for the love of excitement.
It appears that the leggy car-import models used to lure the male Neanderthal buyers have now moved from the convention centers to finance centers where instead of bikinis, "blonds in Theory trousers (the rule being figure-hugging is a go, Roberto Cavalli a no)" roam the marketing departments at various hedge funds.
Much like the army of attractive pharmaceutical reps who make pitches to doctors on behalf of drug companies, these perky twentysomethings have taken over the task of luring clients for their wonky portfolio manager bosses. “Guys who have a load of money [invested] in these big funds are often pigheaded, type A male personalities,” says one male marketer by way of explaining the estrogen predominance in his field. “They want a hot chick with a nice ass and nice boobs who is going to come in and sell the fund to them. I have a friend in the industry who is drop-dead gorgeous, and even she knows that’s the only reason she has her job.”
“You meet these bimbos and they say, ‘Oh, I work at a hedge fund,’ and you think, What?!?” says one head of an investment bank who pals around with high net worth investors. “And then you realize, Oh, this is, like, the PR girl. And it’s a wildly successful strategy. The influential rich people who put money into these things like to be titillated by pretty girls.”
Why is this a big surprise? You don't need an MBA or a degree in communications or PR to know the following formula:
- Hot chicks.
- Product.
- Male customers.
- "Business meeting."
- Profit!
Read more here.
[Thanks Ashleigh]
HR: It just seems so wrong to say. Me: It's Cracker Barrel. Not Cracka Barrel.
I'm pretty excited about seeing this movie. And now more so after finding out that there are subtle references and nods to Apple fanboys. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aja2JwdkfI0]
Starting at 2 pm today go to your nearest Au Bon Pain for free iced coffee. Yum.
[Via]
CK: She set me up with one of her friends last night Me: Ohhh snap. So what happened?
CK: The girl is amazing. I was totally taken. Completely cute.
CK: Half sudanese, half mexican
CK: Community clinic doctor
Me: She sounds awesome.
CK: Yeah. I was pleasantly surprised. I was expecting another ugly desperate girl like the ones i've been faced with lately
Me: Okay....So, did you make a move at the end?
CK: I couldn't, because she gave me a ride to my bike...lol.
Me: LOL
CK: Fuck you.