Williamsburg Eats
Oh hell yes. I just got linked up to Williamsburg Eats, and now I don’t have to scrounge through Yelp for new choices.
Flipping a sphere outside-in
Watch The Geometry Center’s 21 minute video breaking down the science behind flipping a sphere inside-out without bending it sharply.
Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours
This is like the Heartbeats anthem of the Spring for me right now. Cut Copy’s new album, In Ghost Colours, hits a relaxed pop tone that I can’t ignore. It’s really fucking perfect with the seasons shifting and graduation right around the corner.
mp3: knife - heartbeats
I remember last Fall I was in the car with Eric driving to Nonquitt out in Massachussets, Heartbeats was fluttering my ears for the entire duration. In the same way, I’m gonna enjoy listening to this while I’m traveling up and through Toronto and Montreal next month.
mp3: cut copy - lights and music
mp3: cut copy - hearts on fire
Go and brush ya shoulders off
Wait for this video to load and jump to 2:20. Seriously, Barack is getting that dirt of his shoulder… what a B.A.L.L.A.
Trapped in an elevator
A long but effective piece by The New Yorker about Nicholas White, a 34 year-old production manager at Business Week who was trapped in an elevator for 41 hours. What is most haunting is the time-lapse juxtaposition with the imagined mental state as he endured nearly two days trapped without any means of escape.
Helplessness may exacerbate claustrophobia. In the old system—board elevator, press button—you have an illusion of control; elevator manufacturers have sought to trick the passengers into thinking they’re driving the conveyance. In most elevators, at least in any built or installed since the early nineties, the door-close button doesn’t work. It is there mainly to make you think it works. (It does work if, say, a fireman needs to take control. But you need a key, and a fire, to do that.) Once you know this, it can be illuminating to watch people compulsively press the door-close button. That the door eventually closes reinforces their belief in the button’s power. It’s a little like prayer.
Oddly enough you can see this everyday at Tisch when students mash away at the close door button to get to class. I am guilty of it as well, though I’ve sometimes resorted to superstitious things like pressing the close door button and my eighth floor destination button together to “bypass” the other floors.
What is more awkward is the sudden shift in behavior when crammed to the oddly-shaped elongated elevators in Tisch. I tend to bat away or stare straight into the doors, pretending no one else exists.
Two strangers will gravitate to the back corners, a third will stand by the door, at an isosceles remove, until a fourth comes in, at which point passengers three and four will spread toward the front corners, making room, in the center, for a fifth, and so on, like the dots on a die.
One should face front. Look up, down, or, if you must, straight ahead. Mirrors compound the unease. Generally, no one should speak a word to anyone else in an elevator.
What’s trickier is that you enter through one door and exit the opposite. Often times I’ll be staring at a wall to deflect attention and realize everyone has already scuttled out of the elevator at the lobby. Sometimes I’ll think about crazy situations that might occur in some freak accident while I ride the elevator up to the eighth floor of my Photography department.
To the age-old half-serious question of whether a passenger barrelling earthward in a runaway elevator should jump in the air just before impact, Pulling responded, as vertical-transportation professionals ceaselessly must, that you can’t jump up fast enough to counteract the rate of descent. “And how are you supposed to know when to jump?” he said. As for an alternative strategy—lie flat on the floor?—he shrugged: “Dead’s dead.”
Yeah, it ain’t happening. Tisch’s elevators are so slow you could probably wedge open the door and jump to safety.
Ghost in the Shell remake
Dreamworks secures the rights to remake Ghost in the Shell into a live-action movie.
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. That is all.
Self Edge x Flat Head (SEXFH05) Jeans
Last week I had given a sneak peek at the upcoming collaboration jeans from the premier Japanese denim boutique Self Edge. The final details are out:
16 oz. indigo denim and 14.5 oz. black indigo denim, custom leather yo-yo themed patch, military grade olive herringbone pocket lining, Self Edge half-arcs with Flat Head’s signature forked tongue, copper rivets, hidden rivets, and… a custom limited edition Self Edge x Flat Head branded Duncan butterfly yo-yo.
A redesigned cut based off of the infamous Flat Head 3001 jean, this collaboration is by far the most anticipated jean Self Edge has created.
Official price is $335USD and will be sold on April 19th, 2008 in-store at 12:00 PST and online worldwide at 17:00 PST.
Check out the product page for the indigo and black versions.
Art of the Title Sequence
The Art of the Title Sequence is a fresh collection of creative and inspiring title sequences from well-known films and television series. One of my favorites on that list is Cowboy Bebop from 1998.
My other favorites include Se7en, Dexter, Catch Me If You Can, and Planet of the Apes, to name a few.