Alex Stenweiss invented the album cover as we know it to create a new art form:
“I love music so much and I had such ambition that I was willing to go way beyond what the hell they paid me for. I wanted people to look at the artwork and hear the music.”
So:
In 1940, as Columbia Records’ young new art director, he pitched an idea: Why not replace the standard plain brown wrapper with an eye-catching illustration? The company took a chance, and within months record sales increased by over 800 per cent. His covers for Columbia — combining bold typography with modern, elegant illustrations — took the industry by storm and revolutionized the way records were sold. …. He launched the golden age of album cover design and influenced generations of designers to follow.His new book, Alex Steinweiss: Inventor of the Modern Album Cover, was recently honored.
[Image: Alex Steinweiss Bartok, Concerto 3]
See the music
The movie was written and directed by John Hughes, who also made last year’s “Sixteen Candles.” Two of the stars of that movie (Ringwald and Hall) are back again, and there’s another similarity: Both movies make an honest attempt to create teenagers who might seem, plausible to other teenagers. Most Hollywood teenage movies give us underage nymphos or nostalgia-drenched memories of the 1950s.
—
Roger Ebert, reviewing The Breakfast Club in 1985
I had no idea this film was rated R. Just for language?
Will is not, ultimately, what is referred to by the expression ‘will power’. Will is release, the positive expression of energy. You simply let go of what holds you back. Will is the natural result.
—
Genesis P-Orridge, Thee Psychick Bible, page 74
(via sheleavesmarks)
Gaberndorf II (1924) by Lyonel Feininger (via electronicalrattlebag/exclamationmark)
Is killing a drone operator a legitimate act of war?
Some of the people controlling drones are in the military. Some of them are civilian contractors, perhaps based in a different country to the army they’re fighting for (such as British commercial operators based in Surrey, flying surveillance drones for the Dutch in Afghanistan.) The programme raised the issue of whether software engineers might one day be tried for war crimes. Looking at things the other way, if the Taliban contrived a way to blow up one of these operators on their daily commute in Nevada or Surrey, would it be a terrorist murder of a non-combatant or a legitimate act of war?
Mexico’s homicide rate has fallen steadily from a high in 1997 of 17 per 100,000 people to 14 per 100,000 in 2009, a year marked by an unprecedented spate of drug slayings concentrated in a few states and cities, Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna said. The national rate hit a low of 10 per 100,000 people in 2007, according to government figures compiled by the independent Citizens’ Institute for Crime Studies.
By comparison, Venezuela, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala have homicide rates of between 40 and 60 per 100,000 people, according to recent government statistics. Colombia was close behind with a rate of 33 in 2008. Brazil’s was 24 in 2006, the last year when national figures were available.Mexico City’s rate was about 9 per 100,000 in 2008, while Washington, D.C. was more than 30 that year.
But these protests notwithstanding, we remain—and will throughout Obama’s presidency—an empire of military colonization, the goal for decades of neoconservatives and assorted liberal hawks. In anthropologist Hugh Gusterson’s wonderfully evocative words, “The U.S. is to military bases as Heinz is to ketchup.” American forces are stationed at approximately 1,000 military bases in 120 countries at a cost topping $100 billion annually. Diego Garcia, a remote island in the Indian Ocean midway between Africa and Indonesia, is apparently so essential a base that 5,000 locals were thrown out of their homes so the U.S. could have yet another top-secret facility from which to conduct its perpetual wars. Far from being a consensus-seeking peacenik, Obama would not even sign the Landmine Ban Treaty, which Bush also refused to endorse, thus leaving the U.S. the only NATO nation unwilling to participate.
After the dissolution of Poland, a Polish officer serving under Napoleon penned a song that eventually — after the country’s post-World War I resurrection — became the country’s national anthem. It begins, “Poland is not yet lost.”
Well, America is not yet lost. But the Senate is working on it.
Favorite ad of the superbowl by a long distance.
I’m not sure I have seen a Google ad before, but this one is great. Clean, simple and effective. And genuinely reflective of how people today use their product.
While the rest of the Super Bowl advertisers were happy to relive the past with Don Rickles, Abe Vigoda, Betty White, Stevie Wonder, Chevy Chase, Beverly D’Angelo, Charles Barkley, Cheap Trick, ELO, Kool and The Gang and aging Chicago Bears, Google rather elegantly talked to young people and addressed the future. Much like NBC did when they tossed out Conan in favor of more Leno, this is the old guard essentially giving up on “what’s next” and wrapping “what’s known” around them like a warm blanket.
It’s a rather violent mood swing from an industry that spent decades ignoring a huge demographic in favor of exclusively courting young people. Now they’re giving up on young people and focusing only on people old enough to remember the Super Bowl Shuffle.
Neil Young - Harvest Moon
this song. this song is perfection. slow dances on hardwood floors. starry skies.
you’re right….so dreamy
A beautiful recording that stands out even when crammed into an MP3.
Postal Truck Lodged Under Overpass - Gothamist
Oops @ 10th Ave & 30th Street
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