Born To Be Nervous

watch | mary ellen mark

2012-01-09T11:11:00.015-05:00

streetwise is a story of despicable teenagers whose bafflingly advanced instincts for slang and shitty fashion and mostly for survival make me feel like the worst, even though honestly these kids suck so bad and break your heart and gross it out awful before they really get in. not their fault, who knows who cares too late. they are sure something to watch anyway.

today they're mostly dead. get a taste upstairs and click below to watch the whole thing through.

WATCH STREETWISE

read | cass mccombs

2011-12-06T11:11:00.003-05:00

went half gray for this guy. click the story for more.

+ DOWNLOAD: CASS MCCOMBS - ALWAYS IN TRANSIT [MP3] +

2011-11-11T11:11:00.001-05:00

∆

∆ big wish ∆

read | jack london

2011-10-21T05:55:00.000-04:00

look | mike brodie

2011-10-12T11:11:00.001-04:00

via FADER 76, photo issue

look | upstate next summer

2011-09-21T01:11:00.016-04:00

Candlelit slicks of indigo and alien skin hung against green and grey, with understated art projects strung between, announce that Astrid and Kalen's Bed Stuy bathtub side job (Upstate) has hit a whole new kind of stride. Big business for good buddies, hard earned and very well deserved. Blame the visuals in the surrounding shibori forest on photographers Paola Ambrosi De Magistris + Murray Hall (PAMU), wardrobe stylist Julie Brooke Williams, set designer Angharad Bailey, hair + makeup master Erin Green and models Holland Brown + Angela Pham. Watch for more at Upstate HQ.

listen | townes van zandt

2011-09-18T21:09:00.005-04:00

please press play.

watch | devon williams

2011-09-02T11:11:00.001-04:00

obsessed.

look | aura photography

2011-08-30T15:33:00.002-04:00

via fader, unedited and uncut!

To begin with, my interest in auras was purely photographical. I had traced a friend's tripped out Facebook photo to a set of images created by Carlo Van De Roer, a photographer with a modified Polaroid machine that used long exposures and heat sensors to capture extra-dimensional color. I started doing a lot of research and placing the occasional eBay bid that I couldn't dream of backing up (search Kirlian Aura Camera -- I'm pretty sure it's still there if anybody wants to go halvsies), but I didn't get too far.

Anyway, in addition to a stack of paranormal photos and auction listings, my tangent turned up an improbable address down in Chinatown. I went to Magic Jewelry straight away, but found it closed on my first two tries. It's a tiny carpeted thing you could walk past a thousand times, buried in a cell phone strip mall with vendors crowding the front door to near invisibility.

When I finally did get inside, I was underwhelmed by fluorescent light, mall-grade crystal displays and loads of unnecessary lamination. I was with two friends who took their turns on the aura throne first and I had one eyebrow up so high it almost touched my damn hair. That first wave of skepticism got vibrated out of me as I waited my turn in a rejuvenating crystal chamber. It was a thrown together joke at first glance -- a lawn chair under a kind of chuppah, hung and flanked with oversized quartz -- and I sat down smirking. But the undeniable energy that rattled my scalp seconds later, straightened my face out real quick.

My turn came to be photographed and I sat in front of a velvet curtain with my hands spread out across two metal sensors. I held very still, stared down the camera and waited for my results. Fifteen minutes later, the attendant turned over a turquoise-ghosted polaroid and told me that I needed some rest. She continued with a spot-on reading, calling out everything from very real physical ailments to totally abstract character flaws (bitch!).

Now anybody could tell you with half a squinting look that I need a nap. And I'm really not a particularly new agey guy, despite what the horsie sweater above may lead you to believe. I don't eat much quinoa and, aside from the fact that we are some 75% water and the moon controls the tides, I think most horoscopes belong wrapped around a Bazooka gum piece. I also have a big heap of doubt that you can tweak a Polaroid camera to tell you the future. But I'll tell you what. One $15 trip to Magic Jewelry and I was a true believer. In what, I'm still not sure. But I will definitely be back often to try and figure it out.

Fuck you in advance for crowding up my favorite place.

listen | 2:54

2011-08-29T17:55:00.005-04:00

* Photo by Stephen JB Kelly, story by me

These days, the inseparable Thurlow sisters mostly do their moody dirges in an upstairs East London flat for a row of undecorated windows and all the neighborhood to see. At any given moment their Dalston hood, a notoriously Turkish hipster drag, can see them losing it on the bed, jumping up and down in socks with only their guitars to distinguish them from giddy kid siblings on a sugar binge. They are Hannah and Colette, 26 and 28, and although they stomp their sheets and giggle through their interviews, London is taking them very damn seriously... FULL STORY

watch | jay adams

2011-08-18T14:22:00.003-04:00

look | marissa textor

2011-08-10T11:11:00.001-04:00

look | katy grannan

2011-07-25T11:11:00.009-04:00

katy grannan's appropriately washed out portraits of otherwise invisible hollywood walkers are so soft and surreal that at times they look like paintings. the whole collection is compiled in an oversized paperback called boulevard, that amounts to a bleak transport into the depths of your own picturesque insignificance.

listen | cowboy & indian

2011-06-27T11:11:00.002-04:00

i guess i shouldn't be surprised to find out how bad landry rules in real life?

watch | gena rowlands

2011-06-24T14:22:00.000-04:00

watch | panda bear

2011-06-15T15:33:00.000-04:00

watch | ka xiong

2011-06-03T15:33:00.003-04:00

look | olafur sigurjonsson

2011-05-24T17:05:00.003-04:00

end times.

listen | chorovaya akademia

2011-05-02T22:01:00.013-04:00

please press play.

DOWNLOAD: ALEXANDER SEDOV & CHOROVAYA AKADEMIA - RETCHE GOSPOD GOSPODEVI MOYEMU [MP3]

+ support the sequel
*

watch | sam macon

2011-05-02T11:11:00.002-04:00

cave singers redo califone as van rock and director sam gives spielberg a.d.d., see?

look | my aura

2011-04-29T15:33:00.006-04:00

(i mentioned magic jewelry once and later went)

bookmark | high fives & all

2011-04-26T11:11:00.003-04:00

SEE: HIGH FIVES & ALL

look | phases

2011-04-25T15:33:00.004-04:00

listen | charles bukowski

2011-04-22T11:11:00.000-04:00

please press play.

watch | claude lelouch

2011-04-15T10:01:00.001-04:00

c'etait un rende-vous

look | samantha casolari

2011-03-28T11:11:00.000-04:00

click.

watch | tim barber & jonny ollsin

2011-03-21T11:11:00.003-04:00

storm footage by tim barber, soundtrack by jonny ollsin.

read | italo calvino

2011-03-11T15:33:00.014-05:00

from Cosmicomics: The Distance Of The Moon (slightly altered, definitely read the whole story - it's a heartbreaker)

"The spot where the Moon was lowest, as she went by, was off the Zinc Cliffs. We used to go out with those little rowboats they had in those days, round and flat, made of cork. They held quite a few of us: me, Captain Vhd Vhd, his wife, my deaf cousin, and sometimes little Xlthlx — she was twelve or so at that time. On those nights the water was very calm, so silvery it looked like mercury, and the fish in it, violet-colored, unable to resist the Moon’s attraction, rose to the surface, all of them, and so did the octopuses and the saffron medusas. There was always a flight of tiny creatures — little crabs, squid, and even some weeds, light and filmy, and coral plants — that broke from the sea and ended up on the Moon, hanging down from that lime-white ceiling, or else they stayed in midair, a phosphorescent swarm we had to drive off, waving banana leaves at them.

This is how we did the job: in the boat we had a ladder: one of us held it, another climbed to the top, and a third, at the oars, rowed until we were right under the Moon; that’s why there had to be so many of us (I only mentioned the main ones). The man at the top of the ladder, as the boat approached the Moon, would become scared and start shouting: “Stop! Stop! I’m going to bang my head!” That was the impression you had, seeing her on top of you, immense, and all rough with sharp spikes and jagged, saw-tooth edges. It may be different now, but then the Moon, or rather the bottom, the underbelly of the Moon, the part that passed closest to the Earth and almost scraped it, was covered with a crust of sharp scales. It had come to resemble the belly of a fish, and the smell too, as I recall, if not downright fishy, was faintly similar, like smoked salmon.

Now, you will ask me what in the world we went up on the Moon for; I’ll explain it to you. We went to collect the milk, with a big spoon and a bucket. Moon-milk was very thick, like a kind of cream cheese. It formed in the crevices between one scale and the next, through the fermentation of various bodies and substances of terrestrial origin which had flown up from the prairies and forests and lakes, as the Moon sailed over them. It was composed chiefly of vegetal juices, tadpoles, bitumen, lentils, honey, starch crystals, sturgeon eggs, molds, pollens, gelatinous matter, worms, resins, pepper, mineral salts, combustion residue. You had only to dip the spoon under the scales that covered the Moon’s scabby terrain, and you brought it out filled with that precious muck. Not in the pure state, obviously; there was a lot of refuse. In the fermentation (which took place as the Moon passed over the expanses of hot air above the deserts) not all the bodies melted; some remained stuck in it: fingernails and cartilage, bolts, sea horses, nuts and peduncles, shards of crockery, fishhooks, at times even a comb. So this paste, after it was collected, had to be refined, filtered. But that wasn’t the difficulty: the hard part was transporting it down to the Earth."

READ: ITALO CALVINO - COSMICOMICS: THE DISTANCE FROM THE MOON
SEE: SUPERMOON APPROACHING EARTH ON MARCH 19

read | dr. dre

2011-03-10T15:33:00.008-05:00

think of all the sweetness that went out the world when the internet came in.

dr. dre married nicole in 1996. they have two children, truth and truly.

visit | magic jewelry

2011-03-10T11:11:00.004-05:00

"MAGIC JEWELRY CRYSTALS BALANCES YOUR MIND, BODY AND SPIRIT"
238 Canal Street

listen | david berman

2011-03-09T11:11:00.000-05:00

watch | joel garber

2011-03-08T11:11:00.001-05:00

a new incarnation of joel's dream team is toiling away on a milenko/tetra undertaking that started as a play with an old-timey talking rat gangster making the action happen. perverted virtue. how far it has come... i want to lie down in this trailer and stay. more details are here.

look | death

2011-03-07T23:11:00.002-05:00

watch | old regular baptist church

2011-03-05T03:33:00.002-05:00

DOWNLOAD: OLD REGULAR BAPTISTS - I AM A POOR PILGRIM OF SORROW [MP3]

look | nurit yeshurun

2011-03-04T11:11:00.019-05:00

for a white girl with an ima, nurit yeshurun is mexican as hell. hannukah calexicatholic. got a black magic hand on her too. puts the full lips and cheekbones, the spooky peyote vertigo, on skull dance and rosary scenes, whispering love of mary take me sinning home to see mi madre en el cielo. her work is only now starting to find its way online, but for now you'll find more drawings here and an ever-rising well of unholy inspiration here. so rad, right?

look | lou fourcher

2011-03-03T11:11:00.004-05:00

A message from Flickr member Mike Fourcher: These photos of Chicago's Tri-Taylor neighborhood were taken by my father as a graduate student. He was participating in the University of Illinois-Chicago's Valley Project, which included a health clinic.

Most of the area photographed here was demolished in the mid-1970's and designated as part of the Illinois Medical District.

My father, who is still alive, but lost to Alzheimer's, never provided much detail about this project. If you know something, please contact me.

watch | holton rower

2011-02-24T15:33:00.008-05:00

light on talk, i know. got not much to say these days. but watch anyway. PRETTY INSPIRING. how it moves. AND!

look | ann buchanan

2011-02-22T23:11:00.001-05:00

watch | ben bromley & ben dickinson

2011-02-18T14:22:00.003-05:00

also, ross simonini. this is the new new villager. see them live tomorrow night at tip top with our favorite, ocotillo, for an opener.

happening | family band

2011-02-17T17:55:00.001-05:00

tonight: mercury lounge (sold out)
3/30: brooklyn bowl
3/31: bowery ballroom

watch | sulban

2011-02-15T09:09:00.001-05:00

happening | subject to change

2011-02-11T12:21:00.013-05:00

(click images for more info)

(Joe Jagos)

CURATED BY FRANCESCA TALLONE

read | brian steinhoff

2011-02-10T15:33:00.003-05:00

I had been relegated to the smoking section of the casino to babysit the Pai Gow Tiles game. Just my luck, it couldn't be the table that faced the television. 1000 Ways to Die, one of those rare shows that didn't necessitate audio in order to enjoy the slapstick humor of seemingly ordinary people's demise, was playing directly behind me. Before the game began I was fortunate enough to catch a clip of the peeping Tom who had been crushed by his upstairs neighbor's bathtub due to structural damage he had caused from mis-drilling so many peep holes in his bathroom ceiling. The neighbor, naked and lathered... MORE.

also...

"You know what I'm really gonna do if you make this look like two thousand dollars?" Rhonda went on, as if I had any control over who wins and loses at this game. "I'm gonna get up tomorrow mornin', and I'm gonna go get me a Hyundai Sonata." MORE.

look | if we don't, remember me

2011-02-05T22:01:00.008-05:00

this rules.

via joel

look | peter callesen

2011-01-29T17:55:00.003-05:00

dream | willie nelson

2011-01-27T14:22:00.016-05:00

please press play.

willie played this one real quiet and slow last night, like he was only practicing, to an audience of four or eight in a seaside church where passengers would sit and wait for their boats to go sailing. it was summer and time didn't seem to mean much but rotten fruit was in the hands and wet on the faces of fancy sunday kids walking on water. the rest i don't remember.

DOWNLOAD: WILLIE NELSON - TIME OF THE PREACHER [MP3]

r.i.p. | charlie louvin

2011-01-26T13:11:00.002-05:00

first time i heard these boys it was satan is real in the record store on a slow night cranked loud and i just about lost my mind. ran home with a copy for me and one for my dad and all he had to say about it was "i know" with his eyes big. charlie's dead today, which for me is more amazing than sad, considering how the old songs sound like they came from the beginning of time.

+ obituary

happening | take me to the water

2011-01-18T15:33:00.001-05:00

"Pick one area and collect it relentlessly!"

watch | andrew wonder / matt kliegman

2011-01-02T16:44:00.002-05:00

an old pal and a new one blow up (the) underground:

We bide time at the Nancy Whiskey Pub. A woman watches us walk in. We are filthy, carrying backpacks. She approaches. “Where are you guys coming from?” she asks. Steve says, "The sewers." The woman says, "Yeah, right." >>FULL STORY

watch | clara rockmore

2010-12-30T11:11:00.004-05:00

electricity comes from other planets!

"Rockmore was a child prodigy on the violin and entered the Imperial conservatory of Saint Petersburg at the age of five. She studied violin under the virtuoso Leopold Auer, and remains to this day the youngest student ever to be admitted to the institution. Unfortunately, bone problems due to childhood malnutrition forced her to abandon violin performance past her teen years. That however led her to discover the newborn electronic instrument and become the most renowned female player of the theremin."

DOWNLOAD: CLARA ROCKMORE - THE SWAN [MP3]

+ Interview

look | vivian maier

2010-12-29T11:11:00.008-05:00

to look at her photos, you'd think vivian maier had the world on strings and could conduct all of its hazardous swinging, hollering parts into calm and silent little squares. you'd at least think she had some training. neither is true. vivian maier was a half-french nanny living in chicago, who tooled around the city between shifts, directing her rolleiflex at casually complex arrangements of hats, limbs and lines for a hobby. she shot constantly but never showed. not to anybody. she died, of course, and 100,000 unseen negatives went to auction, packed in crates. in fact they went shortly before she did when she stopped paying rent on her storage locker. her secret life's work was bought by a 26 year old real estate agent looking for old stock images of his beat. he paid $400. since the first set of negatives hit the scanner, vivian maier's photos (and their great american backstory) have been infecting everyone who gets their hands on them. our real estate agent, for example, is now a photographer with a powerhouse book deal and he's already collected $15,000 of funding for his vivian maier documentary. an award-winning danish film-maker signed on to the project without hesitation. galleries from northbrook to norway are scrambling to assemble exhibitions. the internet is all abuzz, as usual. and then there's you and me, who are new, but have already started to look at things differently. see more.

2010-12-28T02:22:00.002-05:00

snowed like crazy and i took some nothing pictures of people walking around. shocker, i know.

happening | winter solstice lunar eclipse

2010-12-20T11:11:00.008-05:00

the first in almost 500 years! see it tonight around 3am EST. i regret not having put half a damn word down here worth reading in months and am banking on this impossible coincidence of moon voodoo pulling me back around right. i take the cats acting funny, pulling never-before-seen ricochet jump moves off the bedsheets and bugging their eyes out at me nervous and suggestive like look out behind you, as proof of possible magic happening. now to the roof and see.

+ photo credit
+ winter solstice

look | alison scarpulla

2010-12-13T21:33:00.011-05:00

it's about time somebody threw alison scarpulla a proper show of giant prints and got the girl rich already.

* buy it on Etsy

look | devi arnold / patrick buckley

2010-12-12T14:22:00.004-05:00

look | randy isely

2010-12-06T16:44:00.000-05:00

watch | the strange rebirth of andre weil

2010-12-02T11:11:00.017-05:00

yes! joel finally broke down and made the strange rebirth of andre weil public! you remember hearing about this, no? nine days in san francisco? brain damage and seizures? love and polaroids? the camera adds twenty pounds? joel also secretly started a rad new blog that i highly recommend you check every day, because it already has 98% of other blogs beat to hell. see if you can memorize this url: joelgarber.tumblr.com/

DOWNLOAD: APHRODITE'S CHILD - IT'S FIVE O'CLOCK [MP3]

2010-12-01T11:11:00.004-05:00

please press play.

watch & listen | family band

2010-11-30T11:11:00.009-05:00

"The Yard," directed by Luke Meyer, shot at Bentley Anderson's rooftop bubble show.

should i just rename this website family band? family born to be bandvous? oh no. terrible name. what you need today is exactly what family band has. five dead winter stares sung and put to video by such talented extended family as tim barber, marty hyers, william mebane, luke meyer, ethan palmer, corey adams and kim & jonny themselves. man, i know i bring it up too much, but i just love the way these guys operate. such hard, wholesome, visionary workers. and dude! "the deal*" takes place at annie's parents' house! haverstraw! crazy! no need for fancy language here. watch the videos and download the cold songs ep for a measly five bucks. you'd be a straight up idiot not to do this.

GO: COLD SONGS
RELATED: Download the sparse demo version of "The Deal"

* some context for "the deal"

happening | silent noise

2010-11-16T23:11:00.005-05:00

got some photos up for sale in this show thursday. maybe you'll come by. i don't know.

listen | loretta lynn and conway twitty

2010-11-15T15:33:00.016-05:00

i been tryna come up with an excuse to post this perfectly bucktoothed honky bar(n) burner i been hearing nonstop nowadays, give a little context, but i been failing up and down. there's pearl river, the muddy flooder that runs the louisiana mississippi divide line, and the poet pearl rivers who borrowed its name, but all that's too heavy on the potpourri. then there's the murdering mississippi kidnapper tom steven sanders who faked his death and did his nasty thing for sixteen years until hunters found what was left of little lexis roberts in some louisiana woods and dragged him down-- was what he was in the end and paid, but who needs the darkness. all you need's the song.

DOWNLOAD: LORETTA LYNN & CONWAY TWITTY - LOUISIANA WOMAN, MISSISSIPPI MAN [MP3]

+ photo credit: jennifer aschoff

watch | casteller

2010-11-12T11:11:00.000-05:00

look | bob bonis & the rolling stones

2010-11-09T15:33:00.005-05:00

Excerpts from The Lost Rolling Stones Photographs, out next week from Harper Collins

listen | mmoss

2010-11-08T11:11:00.001-05:00

look | kalen kaminski

2010-11-07T17:55:00.004-05:00

look | jeff henrikson

2010-11-05T15:33:00.000-04:00

jeff's got a new book selling in the art fair this weekend at PS1. mac huelster and lenard smith, plenty of others too i'm sure. let's definitely be there to buy what's cheap at the very least. see you.

watch | cold splinters & fjallraven

2010-11-03T14:22:00.000-04:00

watch | nicholas kendall

2010-11-03T11:11:00.002-04:00

look | nick dewolf's south dakota circa 1972

2010-10-29T15:33:00.008-04:00

[SEE MORE]

look | grant cornett

2010-10-26T11:11:00.019-04:00

grant cornett has such a seductive, painterly mastery of grotesque saturation and lurid contrast that he has legitimately changed the way that my colorblind eyes see the world. this is particularly true of the world inside of my refrigerator. i could look all day.

[SEE MORE]

watch | jay carroll

2010-10-22T08:08:00.008-04:00

jay carroll has the coolest job i ever heard of, tramping up and down the west coast by car (or actually airstream), trolling every bum dive thrift store along the way with an eye out for american artifacts to keep levi's ancient blood true blue. last i heard they bankroll him anyway -- gq, the ny times and the ace hotel are among his other benefactors -- and it's money well spent. up above's his hypnotic look at the everyday thrum of a pendleton mill. click here for factory photos, coherent backstory and more vignettes of yankee sophisticates reverse robin hooding all the tea party people's best trash.

+ NY Times covers the caravan

happening | cmj30

2010-10-20T11:11:00.006-04:00

man, i just hate cmj, but i got some photos in this cmj photo show opening tomorrow night all the same. if you're around west fourteenth street, come by for a look and a beer and roll your eyes at my bad attitude.

[more info]

listen | family band

2010-10-19T11:11:00.018-04:00

In anticipation of the follow-up to the coolest show I ever saw, I am so so psyched to tell you that Family Band have leaked an exclusive demo track into my pocket and on to your sweet ears. Definitely definitely skip CMJ & catch Family Band, back in the bubble this Friday (details), before they hit the road with Warpaint. It is an incomparable strangeness in there and a thing to remember always. But before you fall into all that, here is "The Deal."

I will tell you straight that it's a demo of a track on Family Band's soon-to-be-yours Cold Songs EP. Kim recorded it the night she wrote it, alone in the handmade one-room cabin she shares upstate with Jonny and whoever wants to camp on the lawn. "It's a weird version," she told me, "Super slow. Just me and the sound of the bugs. You can hear something buzzing." To my ears there is wild and reckless under the zoned out calm. Listen.

DOWNLOAD: FAMILY BAND - THE DEAL [MP3]

brainstorm | halloween

2010-10-18T15:33:00.007-04:00

look | barack obama

2010-10-14T11:11:00.001-04:00

President Barack Obama discusses the situation in Sudan with actor George Clooney during a meeting outside the Oval Office, Oct. 12, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

read | nonsense

2010-10-13T16:44:00.003-04:00

my friend the fader indulged me today and posted a couple pages of psychobabble, which i have excerpted enticingly as follows:

When I was 14 I went to high school and saw my first green-haired teenager, which was Josh Shindell in hot pink corduroy pants, asleep on the Biology table to the horror of his lab partner, who was maybe Chad Zazem, who, from what I had heard, was best friends with his older sister. That must have been nice. If it wasn’t him it was this other kid, this meek kid I saw in court one time after my brother and I broke some eggs on a Russian girl who fought our sister, and this meek kid from Bio, he was ahead of us apologizing to the judge for shoplifting tools from Sears. We were in Sunday School together also.

Anyway, Josh Shindell slept on the desk with green hair and his pants pink and he was the perfect human embodiment of what Green Day meant (to me) for that very short moment in time, which was danger born from total indifference. They had played a show in town not too long before and got shut down for all the bottles being thrown around and a hot girl from gym broke her head open moshing. She didn’t come to school for a few weeks or maybe even a month or two. Who can remember. That weekend was famous.

After it happened I spent a whole hour of Bio drawing...

watch | mikael kennedy & levi's

2010-10-13T14:22:00.005-04:00

* courtesy of our bud m blodgett

DOWNLOAD: BLIND WILLIE JOHNSON - DARK WAS THE NIGHT, COLD WAS THE GROUND [MP3]

watch | cold splinters & fjallraven

2010-10-13T09:09:00.008-04:00

visit | sallie ann glassman's island of salvation botanica

2010-10-12T11:11:00.011-04:00

The Vodou priestess Sallie Ann Glassman hung a sign of a clock with the words "Will Return" outside her door and locked us in. Liz, who was now wandering around the neighborhood outside, had brought us to Glassman's Island Of Salvation Botanica on the recommendation of a co-worker who'd visited twenty years before and had her life changed. Intriguing enough. The shop was closet-small, located on a dead block of nervous 9th Ward New Orleans, and stocked with potions, alligator feet and religious sacraments. Little beaded things were every which way and there was a desk fan blowing the crazy humidity around. We were alone here and she offered me a chair at a cafe table in a curtained booth, and the table had a crystal ball the size of a peach on it and an incense burner.

She asked if I minded the incense as she lit it and I told her that I didn't, although I'd only half heard the question to be honest, wrapped up as I was in the theatrics of the place and her easy crocodile smile and the slow mechanics of her giant, somber eyelids blinking. I had come to hear my fortune told, an act which in itself puts you under something of a spell, and I was ready to nod at just about anything.

"I'm going to go into a trance now," she told me. "It will be quiet for a while and then I will start talking. I suggest that you take notes, if you like. I won't remember anything when it's over." When I held up my phone and asked if she'd mind if I just taped our whole session, she told me "have at it," but warned that most people's recordings inexplicably failed. "Mmmhmmm, sure," I told her, and hit record.

She shut up for a few minutes here and let those enchanted coin purse eyelids of hers hang closed as she gripped her crystal ball and focused. I watched her breathing and let my mind space out, which was easy in the steamroom heat with the incense going. I felt in that silent time a sort of a magnetism about her, in a real physical way, like there was a wobbly involuntary sway happening in my waist, as my top half was pulled into a lazy orbit. I noticed that her skin had broken out in erratic patches of sweat. A lemon-shaped stretch of her right forearm glistened, and another spot over her eyebrow. Three minutes in her shoulders and face gave a twitch and a shudder like you see in hips during an orgasm, and she clicked on.

"You moved west in the time after the first settlers came," she monotoned with her eyes shut, "but before the gold rush. You were young and survival skills were uncommonly strong in you. In the years that followed, you honed those survival skills until they were unmatched. Exceptional. But you lost a part of yourself in the process. At your peak, you were a ruthless man. You did anything necessary to advance yourself, and nothing got in your way. You lead a life of great power and influence, but on your deathbed, you looked back on your life and at the shallow, ambitious materialism of the world with rancor. On your deathbed, you were disgusted."

"Every one of your subsequent lives has been lived in reaction to this disgust. Not only are you careful to surround yourself with people who keep your innocence and dreamy creativity intact, but you also guard yourself from ruthlessness so completely that your kindness and willingness to compromise can often be mistaken for weakness. But it's not. Your commitment to preserving the goodness in yourself is one of your greatest sources of strength. Now. Do you have any questions for me?"

I did have questions for her, and I asked them, and they were your usual garden variety fortune teller fare. Love, money, family, etc. She answered them all vaguely enough to keep the voodoo of her opening monologue intact, and we finished out our hour with our heads in a hum. I honestly don't remember much of what was said. Last of all I asked her, on my way out, if vibe-readings went by the same rules as birthday candle wishes, and would they all be null and void if I repeated them? "Yeah," she told me, "probably." Oh well.

I paid for her services, and for a flossy corazon sagrado trinket and a string of beads, and found my way back out into the brutal Louisiana sun. In a daze, the first thing I did was pull out my phone to review all my mystical new insight. I hit play on the recording and it was nothing. Dead air. No kidding.

~Make an appointment with Sallie Ann Glassman~

look | steven brahms

2010-10-07T11:11:00.006-04:00

Steve Brahms (see above), Jason Nocito and Marty Hyers are among the friendlies featured in tonight's Tim Barber (Tiny Vices) photo show, hosted by the just loved Levi's®. The event, which is sounding pretty crucial to attend, celebrates the opening of The Levi's® Photo Workshop -- a pro studio and vintage camera rental spot at 18 Wooster -- with a set of NYC photos from some of its finest eyes. Isn't it just the greatest when marketing (see below) works out this well in our favor? I am psyched to find out what they're up to down in SoHo. See you there, and everybody else.

RSVP

happening | family band

2010-10-06T11:11:00.009-04:00

watch | jeff thrope

2010-10-05T17:55:00.004-04:00

As I mentioned the other day, Jeff is busy lately taking over the whole wide outdoor world. Here is another nail in Yvon Chouinard's coffin. Y'know, the one with the fox logo and the Good Ol' Cold Splinters sticker on it? Alright, alright, I hope he lives another 100 years, but all the same, here comes Jeff. On top of that, here's another place to read him everyday and keep up on more videos like the one above, shot on 8mm and pulled straight out of your 4:00 fantasies. Look at you. You love it. See you at Knitting Factory for Family Band at 8 tonight.

watch | steve powers

2010-10-02T11:11:00.010-04:00

sam & faythe are in the middle of a full-length documentary about hand-painted signs. cool! along the way they have created this short, "a love letter to syracuse," about the wall/fridge artist steve powers, whose style will henceforth be described by me as sesame street michael jackson. deal with it, steve powers. you are great. sam & faythe too.

look | upstate

2010-10-01T11:11:00.047-04:00

i want to tell you that the dream team of kalen, astrid and nicholas has a new line of homegrown wraps for your shoulders and neck. YES. that's kalen up there showing off their work so happily that you can barely recognize her face. and she should be that happy at least. for one thing, their products have been turning up all over, from refinery29 to fader, cool hunting, shiny squirrel and the new york times. also, this time around upstate is partnering with the likes of levi's, gravel & gold, mohawk general store, international playground, uncle pete's and tons more.

but honestly, who needs tons more when you got levi's?! no joke, that company started the same year as potato chips. there have literally been levi's bluejeans as long as there have been chips of any kind. period. that is how much they own all western life. and now that same levi's is about to carry shibori ponchos that were made a few weeks ago in a bathtub where i have secretly taken a few showers while people thought i was plain old using the bathroom. this (and this) is just how life should be.

anyway... me, kalen, astrid and this chick you haven't met yet sonja went to the beach a couple weeks ago and got tans and took a load of photos and there was this ornery band of crusty diy steampunk motorcycle gypsies there making fun of us, but we didn't mind because they looked so cool doing it. here are a few of the shots we we came out with. if you wanna see more, just ask. we are friends. i would do pretty much anything for you. >>> youreupstate.com

p.s. trend alert, jtk designed their lookbook & logo.

DOWNLOAD: DONOVAN - PALAIS GIRL (DEMO) [MP3]

read | swans

2010-09-30T15:33:00.011-04:00

photo by alex welsh

featured in jtk's outrageously handsome new edition of the fader, the photo issue

LISTEN
+ ANOTHER GIRA STORY

happening | jeff thrope

2010-09-30T11:11:00.004-04:00

i am so proud to say that my great, great friend and favorite blog topic jeff thrope has gone and got named creative director for fjallraven, that swedish outdoor underdog with the boxy kid backpacks. that they had the good sense and faith to hire jeff based only on the sniper-steady right-on-ness of his website, cold splinters, is (to me) their greatest credit. his first move was to re-imagine and redesign the brand's soho headquarters, and they're throwing a big ol' bash to celebrate his stubbly kodachrome vision. come party. i'll be there with all the regulars, hiding behind my camera and stashing free stuff. on another note, i feel really great about the fact that this blog's thousandth post advertises and celebrates jeff's best success yet. that's the whole reason this ol' thing got started anyway. really come out. it'll be the best time all october (at least).

p.s. justin kay designed that flyer.

revisit | jaime martinez

2010-09-27T15:33:00.001-04:00

watch | anna boden & ryan fleck

2010-09-24T11:11:00.008-04:00

aside from all the great obvious things to say about anna and ryan's new movie, like wow whoa!, how about i'll say this: i have just now noticed that it's kind of a funny story features jeremy davies, who aside from being character of the year daniel faraday is also ryan's exact clone in appearance, which must have been crazy and is likely kind of a funny story in its own right. wah wah. dumb paragraph. click play.

DOWNLOAD: IDA MARIA - OH MY GOD [MP3] (via)

MORE

look | benny arnold

2010-09-21T11:11:00.002-04:00

look | tim & heidi

2010-09-20T11:11:00.003-04:00

watch | sam macon

2010-09-08T11:11:00.007-04:00

Crocodiles revamp the Coug here, ripping "I Fight Authority" and dipping it in snake adrenaline on a deathmatch Route One drag race with xylophones. Sam did the video, which features Purvis as a sort of Elijah figure, no wait, I mean Charles Manson. I'm gonna go jump off a bridge.

watch | bonnie prince billy

2010-09-07T11:11:00.035-04:00

I forgot to say how me and Liz took an eight hour road trip on a Wednesday after work maybe two weeks ago, to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on a whim for some secret music. We met Kim, Jonny, Scott and Tim in an easy-sloping Amish country field, at the top of which was a barn strung up Christmas-style with garlic stalks for holly drying through the rafters. There was an easy country opener with a lady singer we missed and a Civil War style banjo/fiddle act we saw from an unhitched hayride wagon. There were plenty of locals high on pig roast and beers, jawing away with the crickets over the music, and that was fine. We saw the goats in the dark and Nacho the pig around the corner, and the spot where they weighed the eggs, before finding a quiet patch of lawn to stretch out on for the main event, which was Will Oldham trying out a set of new songs for a crowd who mostly couldn't have cared less. The lead guitar guy was cranked a little loud but Meg Baird made it all soft, putting on the harmony. And such control Will Oldham has over his voice, you would hardly believe. Every bend and pitch is right on the money and we stayed through the R. Kelly encore before driving home until almost five, gladly sick on grease and Diet Coke caffeine from Taco Bell/McDonald's detours. Went to work on Thursday, too. Here's a couple things we saw there. Turn the volume on the videos loud. They got muted some by the grass.

+ SOMEBODY ELSE'S VIDEO HERE!

listen | swans

2010-09-02T15:33:00.014-04:00

Like Jeff said I flew to LA in August with my face against the fiberglass looking down for hours and watched the ground go blank then blue then red before chapping and busting up in cracks over Arizona especially. I know it's nothing new shooting shitty spacescapes out of airplane windows, but I am what I am and I couldn't resist or believe my eyes, even though I'd seen this one before, and the new Swans was playing all the way in headphones for work and also to drown out the camera clacking I imagined had my nearest co-passengers' faces in a scrunch. So what. Thanks for hyping me Jeff. You rule. Here are some bonus photos to round out the set you saw on ol' Cold Splinters.

look | maira kalman

2010-08-26T11:11:00.032-04:00

maira kalman, you are inspiring my brains out (with your illustrations of course, but even more so) with your don't worry, "why not?" posture. me the grump, the longface burnout, all lit up on blah embroidery and sloppy paint brocade. elaborate documentation of history's endearing no-name clutter. who'd've thought?! who'd've possibly ever guessed that days later i would lock up with a little paintbrush and a hotel needle kit and cover my walls and ceilings with waxy scribbled street scenes and calm canvas mementos of unworthy memories, until they carted me off to a padded place where a live quilter quilted my cell soft, prime for floss stenography, and her hands the size of mackerels working all the time until we lived inside a cram-packed pillow compartment forever together?!? who'd'a woulda coulda?!? what an eye tooth, new york times, and thank you for commissioning.

click the pics for a whole day whale to swallow and see.

listen | ty segall

2010-08-19T15:33:00.008-04:00

and go buy fader.

+ photo credit: ariel zambelich

happening | perseid meteor shower

2010-08-13T11:11:00.002-04:00

concluding tonight...

feel | lost

2010-08-11T10:01:00.007-04:00

DOWNLOAD: NEIL YOUNG - LOTTA LOVE [MP3]
DOWNLOAD: NICKY HOPKINS - SUNDOWN IN MEXICO [MP3]

listen | justin thomas kay & the fullhearts cantlose bar choir

2010-08-10T11:11:00.015-04:00

crank this.

visit | highlands natural pool

2010-08-03T11:11:00.035-04:00

DOWNLOAD: QUEEN - SOMEBODY TO LOVE [MP3]

watch | the mast brothers

2010-07-30T10:01:00.011-04:00

Here's a long winsome look at the lisping redbeard boys who've romanced hell outta Third Street with old wood, washed up nautica and salty sweets in Royal Tenenbaums wrapping paper (via The Scout).

DOWNLOAD: NEIL YOUNG - OLD COUNTRY WALTZ [MP3]