The love life of this .tiff has been up and down the past few months to say the least. In a flurry of romantic frustration I jokingly admitted to my friend Dre that I would no longer be dating anyone from the human species ever again. Alternatively, I would choose to find my respective beaus in the largely diverse populace of mythical creatures: the likes of elusive Sirens, brawny Centaurs, and bashful Minotaurs. This works out ideally in a variety of ways but is a most successful goal as mythical creatures don't exist, thus freeing my personal torment from all relationship related drama. Furthermore, I choose not to engage with the likes of the Second Life crowd which automatically prevents me from acting inappropriately about said decision.
Dre thought this concept was rather hilarious, and being the dastardly clever friend he is, sent me the following list titled "Signs your unicorn is cheating on you". The following is an excerpt from the book Mountain Man Dance Moves: The McSweeney's Book of Lists which also includes helpful lists such as "Things This City Was Built On, Besides Rock 'n' Roll", "Future Winners of the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest", and the helpful "Adjectives Rarely Used by Wine Tasters". The list was too good to not repost it here, and I am a wiser soul after reading it as I am about to embark on my magical love life of sorts:
Signs your unicorn is cheating on you
- Seems emotionally distant and uninterested
- Wears fancier tail ribbons
- Starts working out at the gym
- Quickly closes its laptop when you walk into its enchanted den
- Credit card bill full of charges to area elf lodges
- The "three Cs": confrontation, criticismand complaints
- Every time you say the word "magic," it sighs forlornly
- Is making a movie with Angelina Jolie
As the trickling flux of beta invites have made their way to a wider user base, FFFFound has gradually exposed itself to the public eye with both praise and criticism. The novice user is breached with a beautifully designed interface that upon first entry visually excites in a way that's rare in this age of proliferated images online. While this mediated effect retains its luster at a surface level upon each revisit and refresh of content, it eventually fades to a twinkle when authorship and credibility of the chosen works disappear in a sudden rush to 'fffind' any instance of an interesting image. In the case of the web this instance could both fortuitously be the artist's personal site, or in most cases a link four times removed from any artistic origin.
I'd like to wait and see what becomes of FFFFound in the next year before I make any particular decisions about it's success as a system; whether new features will be added (maybe a feature that allows users to correct the image's link to the appropriate origins?), and how the expansion of its user base affects its content and quality.
There is no doubt however that the visual collective on FFFFound is loaded with unique patterns that denote a very specific design-savvy, pop-cultured user, who may indulge in the occasional soft porn polaroid of a doey hipster nude. Today's post however will not be about the throes of helvetica tricks, the vintage photos of Japanese humanities, or the impressively rendered moleskine sketchbooks. I would like to bring attention to the copious amounts of Star Wars inspired pop art that instantaneously appears at least once every other page on FFFFound. At least, in my feed.
The following photos are only a slice of what ranges between public Chewbacca sightings, various interpretations of the Dark Lord's headpiece, and clever footnotes on the forbidden love between Princess Leia and every other character in the Star Wars series. Vader's mask becomes a richly limited canvas that evokes both it's cinematic history and its topical interpretation to modern day culture, an accessible kitsch equivalent of the Art world's cube. Meanwhile the galaxy far far away manages to find it's double life in every instance of common existence, from the family portrait to the nudie mag pull-out.
A lot went on this weekend, but the weather and the worst parts of it have left me particularly grumpy and displeased this Sunday afternoon. To battle this disquietude, I fondly pull from my memory the moments of the movie Wild Zero that I loved best. The film, starring the Japanese Rock and Roll band Guitar Wolf, is an all encompassing testament to some of the best things you can find in a movie: gangsters, rock and roll, scooters, cute rockabilly Japanese boys, zombies, weapon dealer mullets, aliens, and transsexual love affairs. In other words, it's a must see.
Since I can't find any photos of the hotty weapons dealer chick in a high cut jumpsuit, I'll just swoon a bit over this precious screen shot of Ace:
UPDATE: Francz V kindly snapped a few more memorable shots from the film... including one of my favorite moments. Ace questions the nature of his newfound love, but Guitar Wolf appears quickly to remind him that Love has no borders, nationalities or genders!!!
Rather than assigning music to a particular person, place, or event, I have a more frequent tendency to seasonally associate my favorite songs. Beloved lyrics and harmonies pull together a resounding memento of particular atmospheric quality at their best moments, and despite how 'favorite' a song can be sometimes it just doesn't sound as good when played in the wrong season.
My growing collective of what I'd consider winter songs are tracks that are the most important to me. Winter is by far one of my most favorite times of year and the songs of the season I enjoy the most are ones that manage to color the quietude of stormy grays and snowy shadows outside. Here's just a sampling of songs I've managed to upload to my Vox, some new and some old.
The Repudiated Immortals - Of Montreal
Teardrop (Massive Attack Cover) - José González
20 Years of Snow - Regina Spektor
Wolves in the Garden - The Deadly Syndrome
In Space - Royksopp
On a Neck On a Spit - Grizzly Bear
Elephant Gun - Beirut
What are your winter songs?
Dinner!
A much better, non-razor photo of our meats and veggies can be found here on Sarah's blog. Thanks Sarah for cooking the steak!
I love working at Six Apart
Stumbling over show ads that pertain to my interest rarely happens on the Internet (especially when I'm on MySpace), but thankfully I was prompted by the following photo to order tickets to see the SF Sketchfest show @ the Mezzanine this Sunday:
The performance had many more performers than expected, which ranged from the headline comedians, a screening of comedic shorts (a couple good, a couple not so good), a 2-song acoustic performance, and some other acts thrown in here in there. This made each individuals performance relatively short and in effect each act got shorter and shorter as the headliners started to perform.
As expected, Showalter and Odenkirk were great (and admittedly I got all schoolgirl when I saw Showalter... I've had a thing for him since Wet Hot...), especially when Showalter delightfully managed to surface an awkward tension of a thousand wolfcats in the room when he reported his disappointment in a show-goer's comment that he was 'wider in person'. I was pleasantly surprised by host Eugene Mirman's act, particularly when he displayed a line of controversial pop-up ads that would drive traffic to his website.
Tim and Eric went on last and were incredible as well but unfortunately their act was the shortest of the bunch. They showed more videos than actually spoke in person but perhaps that's their specialty. I can't say that I wasn't a bit heartbroken by their small time on stage, but regardless I'd likely still go to another live performance of theirs in the future.
I was, however, really hoping for an Uncle Muscles performance.
In a cubicle corner only 10 ft. away I suddenly caught the mellifluous sounds of the Final Fantasy 6 fight soundtrack. Ignoring my instincts to shoot over to the source immediately, I remained rooted in my seat to continue working hard. This resistance was but temporary however, and once I noticed the four co-workers excitedly huddled around Nick's computer I knew something was up.
In other words, I'm totally L-O-L'ing in R-L right now.
