look | bat for lashes, jason nocito

pretty sure these sleepy shots of bat for lashes out in joshua tree national park with the sun just rising are jason nocito's, although somehow they're uncredited* so who can really say? reason i think so's that a british or south african gal in a loose oaxacan blouse with tangled hair to her waist, a friend of natasha khan's and looking every bit the part, surfaced in big sur and reminisced with jason there about the coldness of the mornings and scorching dusty days in the california desert where they'd been shooting a few days back. later on they wandered separately out of focus in the yellow green backdrop of long afternoon grass and chaparral on the mountains while members of the entrance band told us tall tales of intersecting energy coils that could alter your consciousness and/or drain your car battery in that same park with its funny trees all looking like petrified camels and arthritis. in case i haven't already made it perfectly clear, that was easily one of my favorite times.
* unless you bother to actually read...

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look | neil krug

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look | wild yaks at glasslands

wild yaks are the truth, my friend.











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watch | henrique prince

i would play songs for them on autoharp and guitar and they would uh give me coca-colas.

listen | suckers

this is plain old fantastic to listen to. triumphant! definitely make it your own.

DOWNLOAD: Suckers - It Gets Your Body Moving [mp3]



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watch | staff benda bilili

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make | headdress

listen | headdress

i will say more, i will.

DOWNLOAD: Headdress - Blanket Of Golden Fields [mp3]
+ more headdress @ culture warrior

look | sandy kim

when you're a young person it's hard to decide where to live. here's a little help from the photographer sandy kim.

portland, oregon:



new york city:


los angeles:



san francisco:



china:


space:


thanks, sandy.

listen | the black lips

or is it neil young?? weiiiiird.

DOWNLOAD: The Black Lips - Short Fuse [mp3]

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watch | space

gina tells me that "magic fly" is the inspiration for animal collective's "my girls" video. it's also more or less the look of my dreams since my downstairs neighbor left for the country with hot 97 on blast. mellow times.

r.i.p. | john updike

john updike (1932-2009), who you no doubt knew in some grade or other as that dreamer up of idiot pumps blinking e and o at old flick webb with rubber elbows hanging loose and low, is dead today. here's a poem he wrote one time.

Burning Trash
At night—the light turned off, the filament
Unburdened of its atom-eating charge,
His wife asleep, her breathing dipping low
To touch a swampy source—he thought of death.
Her father's hilltop home allowed him time
To sense the nothing standing like a sheet
Of speckless glass behind his human future.
He had two comforts he could see, just two.

One was the cheerful fullness of most things:
Plump stones and clouds, expectant pods, the soil
Offering up pressure to his knees and hands.
The other was burning the trash each day.
He liked the heat, the imitation danger,
And the way, as he tossed in used-up news,
String, napkins, envelopes, and paper cups,
Hypnotic tongues of order intervened.

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look | anne hall & sophie mörner

found my way into the known world by anne hall and sophie mörner, a story of two women in love so deep they wanted to become a new species and almost did. horses, from the look of it, although they don't explicitly say so. anyhow, if you find yourself passing the bookstore spoonbill & sugartown on bedford and north fifth, get in and get your hands on the book, which is something like a softer, more heartfelt and meaningful ryan mcginley, if you need a concrete point of reference. but honestly it's not really like that at all. you'll see...

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read | benny arnold

look | devendra banhart

recent photos of the band in devendra's laurel canyon home studio by lauren dukoff.

+ for brian walbergh

look | saul steinberg

saw a program on the famous caricaturist al hirschfeld once, who went on about his life's mission to identify and imitate the distinguishing factor in a face that makes it recognizable yards out. the science of his art was to seize upon, recreate and then embellish around the unmissable familiarities of everyday reality, working almost exclusively in simple, single lines. saul steinberg was a lineman, too, but with a darker purpose. where hirschfeld acknowledged the familiar -- danced with it -- steinberg masked and subverted it. instead of finding laughter in reality, steinberg made it. he laughed at it. at least that's my hack, knee-jerk take on the five or six of his drawings i've seen. who in hell am i to say? look:

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look | errol morris

documentarian errol morris and a team of associated press photographers sum up george w. bush's presidency by poring over its photographic record, while simultaneously discussing the state and significance of presidential photography at large.

ERROL MORRIS: Yes. You know, one thing I wanted to talk to you about before we go through the photographs. This press conference, the last press conference. What fascinates me is that George W. Bush often references photographs. What disturbs him most is the photographs that make him look bad. So, for example, there’ll be “Mission Accomplished,” and he’ll say, “Well, you know, that was a bad idea to put up Mission Accomplished.” But he doesn’t say, for example, it might have been a bad idea to go to war for fraudulent reasons. Or it might have been a bad idea to destabilize an entire country or to immiserate an entire population.

read on...

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watch | sir ken robinson

how to turn schools of the future into promoters and nourishers of creativity...

listen | cameron hull

DOWNLOAD: Cameron Hull - Sweet Misery [mp3]

listen | excepter

let's make a movie that uses this song brilliantly.

DOWNLOAD: Excepter - Kill People [mp3]

listen | newvillager

i would like to add to the growing din that our man ben bromley has a speaking voice like sweet gargled buttermilk. and that's just speaking. can you even imagine? this is better literally every time.

DOWNLOAD: NewVillager - Rich Doors [mp3]

watch | animal collective

yeah, you already seen it, i don't care. not tryna get in any book of records.

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watch | melissa dixson

the box was soaked in blood and smelled like death. luckily it was winter...
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watch | viking moses

listen | exuma

got put on to exuma by that great good faythe and did some research of my own to uncover the self-titled debut from back about 1970 on mercury records. holy moises rojas alouette je te plumerai. basically a junkanoo jiving dr. john the night tripper stomping haiti voodoo bahamania. richie havens screaming street parade blues, all silver whistles and eyes rolled back. this particular track is love's "everybody's gotta live," chicken-fried in shoestrings on rubberband jukebox blast. but the real jam, "the obeah man," is over at cold splinters and you'd be a tallheaded fool to miss either.

DOWNLOAD: Exuma - You Don't Know What's Going On [mp3]
DOWNLOAD: Exuma - The Obeah Man [on CS]

make | dreamcatcher

with help from red hawk, swamp rat and our brothers and sisters the trees, the bird people and mother earth.

+ part 2/7
+ more help from native tech

watch | aretha franklin

you know how, even after fifty years of everything getting better all the time, they somehow still can't make musical equipment like they used to? how we can talk across a thousand miles in real time with crystal video but can't for the life of us recreate that muscle shoals soul? well, in the same way that a garage sale vibro champ hums warmer than any guitar center solid state i've heard -- how the same diamond ring sparkles just as bossy on your miniskirt fiancée as it did on the chubby thumb of louis xiv -- aretha's still got it and every bad-loving bit of it, too. sweet holy god damn.

DOWNLOAD: George Jackson - Aretha Sing One For Me [mp3] (via)

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look | ruben & isabel toledo

as you must know by now, ruben and isabel toledo -- although both majorly accomplished artists in their own rights -- are very rarely mentioned as individuals. the sculptor/clothing designer couple, who are said to be bound so cosmically that they evoke mythology, exist in a midtown terrarium of creative symbiosis, each urging the other's imagination ever forward. today isabel is thrust into the inaugural limelight as the designer of michelle obama's lemon yogurt yellow dress of swiss wool lace and french silk. i first learned of the toledos from sea lorraine, but have since found them far and wide. sniff around. they're better than movies.

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read | elizabeth alexander

Preliminary Sketches: Philadelphia

“I saw a friend from growing up who’s been
living in L.A. for about twenty years, and I
heard him say, ‘I’m from L.A.,’ and I said,
‘No, man, you from Philly. We don’t give
nobody up.’”

—Khan Jamal
jazz vibraphonist

Fish-man comes with trout and fresh crabs:
“Live! They live crabs! They live crabs!”
Bars called “Watutsi.” “Pony-Tail.”

A dark green suit, a banded hat.
The gentleman buys pig’s feet and
papaya juice. He looks like church.

Another man, down Spruce Street, says,
“Yeah, California’s beautiful,
but I ain’t got no people there,

so I came back. I raised a racehorse.
Trainer says he’s mean, but I say
naw, naw. That horse just alive.”

Which way to walk down these tree streets
and find home cooking, boundless love?
Double-dutching on front porches,

men in sleeveless undershirts.
I’m listening for the Philly sound—
Brother            brother            brotherly love.

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spirits rejoice!

DOWNLOAD: Albert Ayler - Our Prayer / Spirits Rejoice! [mp3]

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listen | martin luther king jr

the speech linked in the photo above is a re-post of a re-post that i cannot possibly ever offer up enough times, especially as historical context elevates it ever higher. happiest martin luther king day to you. i am so excited for tomorrow!

r.i.p. | andrew wyeth

aside from a bare-breasted redbook ad that somehow slipped by the american censors circa 1987, my parents' andrew wyeth book was where i got my first good long look at that naked female form that's inspired all the skyscrapers and motorcycles, high-speed air travel, the discovery of silk and chocolate and so on. today andrew wyeth is dead.

READ: About his life.