God, I wonder how much they spent on shampoo and conditioner as a household. Probably at least as much as this guy spent on mousse and hairspray.

That photo up there comes from a fantastic post (via Metafilter) of spectacularly crappy vintage portraits from Olan Mills Studios. Like one of the comments says, “hilarious in an oddly painful way.”

For a bonus treat, check out this lovely lady.

Happy New Year, everyone. Drive safe and don’t resolve too much all at once.

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A few months ago, I saw David Levy give a presentation based on his new book “Love + Sex With Robots” at the Museum of Sex in Manhattan. While the presentation had a pretty interesting premise, I had so many questions afterwards and could’ve run roughshod over the Q&A session.

I bought the book and read it for myself, and just like the presentation it left me wanting so much more. Levy lays his belief that one day, people will have sex with robots, out like a master’s thesis that drops every idea down brick by thudding brick, cementing with precedent and detail in a way that makes you believe him while thinking “alright already, I get it. Where’s the fun stuff?” I have no problem buying the fact that pleasure robots are on the horizon … what I want to know is how they’re going to fit in, how society will change.

The book’s been talked about in a number of places online since Levy’s presentation. Wired, MSNBC, and The Globe and Mail have all done pieces on the book and its premise. I tend to agree the most with Joel Achenbach’s recent review in the Washington Post’s book section, but in all of this chatter, something’s been missing.

David Levy was kind enough to grant me an e-mail interview for this blog in an attempt to scratch my itching curiosity. The interview follows, after the jump …

Read the rest of this entry »

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My friend Steve forwarded me an incredible found letter the other day. Here’s a clip, click here or on the photo for a link to the entire thing:

This letter’s writer has a life so far removed from my own that I can’t believe we both speak English. I am not sure that I ever wrote love letters like this to girls when I was this young Crip’s age, and I’m sure that if I had, I wouldn’t have threatened an other “niggas.”

Underneath the smitten Crip’s bravado and posturing, and not far underneath it, either, he is lonely, desperate, wanting someone who is in all likelihood out of his grasp. His looks won’t catch his girl’s eye, so he’s turned to the creative arts, the romantic refuge for everyone whose physical charms are exceeded by their creativity.

However, if that’s the case here, my man must have a JACKED up face — his prose clinks like bullet casings on wet concrete. With nerve and bravery like this, though, he’s sure to have found someone to share his corner of the Crip kingdom with by now, as long as he hasn’t been shot yet.

It saddens me to think that love letters are a dying art form — that e-mail sent the penned missive the way of the dodo bird and now e-mail’s heading out, too. Soon lovelorn Crips and geeky kids will have to confess their passion in strage gluts of emoticons and beeping sounds, leaving me and Cyrano and this ugly little Crip to sit around in the museum case of the mind, slowly collecting dust.

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My glasses are broken and it’s time to get new ones.

I don’t give things up very easily — never really bought into the “get the next and newest” craze that’s swept the nation. I use things ’til I just can’t anymore, and also have the unfortunate habit of developing an emotional attachment to inanimate objects.

My glasses have been there for me, right there on my face for three years, and I’ve seen a lot with them. And they were pretty tough, too. I only take them off when I’m sleeping or showering.

I was hiking to Uluwatu, a temple in Bali located on the edge of a cliff high above the ocean when a monkey leapt from the trees and ran laps around my face and shoulders. He knocked my glasses off and onto the crumbling, moss-covered pathway. They teetered over the edge, flirting with a dive down into the churning blue ocean as I threw the monkey deep into the forest like a furry soccer ball. I put them back on, unharmed.

I swam with stingrays in the cloudy surf where the Southern and Indian Oceans collide, my glasses folded carefully against my palm with one stiff, cramping thumb.

I used that same thumb to hold the same glasses against my palm when leaping from a giant boulder into a deliciously freezing swimming hole in the mountains near West Virginia, jamming the glasses back onto my face as I dog-paddled to the rocky shore. I gulped hot, humid air through suddenly stiff white lips, smelling trees, tobacco and Budweiser as my body heat fogged my newly cooled lenses.

I biked 30 miles each way to and from work for a while. While the rest of co-workers saw traffic jams and Support The Troops stickers on the back of SUVs in Ashburn traffic, I saw hawks, deer and the occasional blacksnake.

I was in the hot room at the Russian-Turkish Baths last March — it was 180 degrees in there and the metal arms of my specs stung my face. I left the room when I couldn’t take it anymore and dove into a 40 degree pool, crinkling the coating on my lenses and covering them with hairline fractures. I still wore them for months.

I took a hit or two in the face at my completely candy-assed boxing class in DC. This wasn’t even supposed to happen, though — the puncher was daydreaming about the instructor, I think, and I was thinking about pummeling the puncher.

The glasses gave it up completely last week in the lamest glasses-breaking story ever: I accidentally walked right into the edge of my bedroom door, totally sober. Then it was really like getting punched in the face. The frames shattered, lenses went spiralling across the floor. Now my eyes are limping around, frames scotch-taped together. the new ones should be ready tomorrow. I look weird, no getting around that.

Sometimes I get really bored and angsty. I think that my life’s being wasted, just plopped in front of a screen while everything drains out of me one pixel at a time. But just now, right this minute, when I use my smashed, taped glasses to look back at that life … parts of it look really, really good.

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My sister sent me this photo from her cell phone this afternoon. She saw it in a strip mall in the Denbigh part of Newport News, Virginia.

Without divulging too too much here, I will say that I never have thought of ass games as relaxing, or as a welcome escape from holiday stress. If anyone has any idea what this is actually referring to, please let me know in the comments. I double-DOG dare somebody to call that number up and inquire directly, then let me know in the comments.

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Transgendered models in knockoff Chanel lingerie made from taxidermied rats. That link is really, really unsafe for work, unless your boss is John Waters.

I just love these photos. LOVE. They’re terrifying and weird and I so do not get the idea behind them … and really, I don’t need to. These are like Altoids of insanity, a quick, sharp dose that clears away everything that came before and makes everything after seem a little flavorless.

If you happen to be in Belgium in the next month or so (and have not yet clawed out your eyes), check out many more original prints in the group exhibition “Status Questionis” at Annie Gentils Gallery in
Antwerp, Belgium from December 19th - January 19th 2008. There’s an opening on Thursday, December 6th from 6 to 9 PM. If any models are present, especially in costume, please do send pics.

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I got on the wrong subway last night and it turned out so right — while navigating through the Times Square catacombs I heard this incredible clanking funk like a groovy factory or Tom Waits in the late ’90s. Turns out it was a spectacular pots-and-buckets drummer, the godfather of all buskers knocking out rhythms simultaneously organic and industrial.

I broke out my camera to take some video and the drumemr stopped the beat to point at me with a stick and shout “Five dollars for the video!” at the top of his lungs. I didn’t get it at first, and he had to shout a number of times, to the terrific enjoyment of the crowd. Then I got it and gave the guy ten bucks. He was that good by himself, but his dancer was amazing.

You can see the drummer and dancer in my video, below. The dancer is cold stole by the rhythm at first and it is giving him a sickness that is gonna turn real good. Like how a flu shot wears you out a little but toughens you right up — this man goes from a twitching rhythmic allergy into an incredible, fluid poet.

Again, I can only shoot 30 seconds at a time, so this is cut together from a number of smaller pieces.

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