Work by Ryan Sanchez:

Mischief, Matchbooks, and Missing Fingers

Minor Adjustment

Lord of the Flies

Born in the Philippines but brought up in Southern California, Sanchez holds degrees in Fine Art from USC and the Art Center College of Design. Currently he lives in Brooklyn.

On the music front, click here to listen to a recent Thom Yorke interview on Fresh Air.

And also, do yourself a giant favor and go purchase the new issue of The Believer - I think it's the best music issue they've put out to date. It's all live stuff, melodic and gentle.

In the realm of political arts, you may remember that I posted a link to a 9/11 documentary a few months back called Loose Change. Now my buddy A.H. in Lincoln has sent me the link to a newer video, which I think everybody in the world should most definitely check out. Here is what A.H. has to say about this provocative new video:

"It's comprised purely of mainstream media footage and lectures given by theologians, philosophers and physicists. It focuses exclusively on the science of the WTC collapses and involves no speculation. While I love Loose Change, one of its weaknesses is that it speculates a little when it doesn't have to. This video cannot be accused of that. It's the first in the "Connect the Dots" series, and the next one will be about the NORAD standdown and the 9/11 wargames. This is powerful stuff and has contributed to the continual growth of the movement, growth which perhaps can be measured by the recent Zogby poll that indicated 42% of Americans don't believe the gov't's ridiculous story."

Click here to watch it.

Yesterday I went to the Columbus Museum of Art to see the Richard Avedon exhibit called In the American West: Portraits by Richard Avedon.

As well as doing the photos for The White Album, you’ll remember Avedon as the psychedelic photographer behind this Beatles photo:

(1967)

Also as a longtime fashion photographer, as well as the legendary camera behind the uncovering of Andy Warhol’s scar:

August 20, 1969

But this show focused on his portraits of people in the American West.

People like:

Distant Voice

by
K. Louise Judd

(2004)

Judd received her B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2002. She still lives in Kansas City, where she works in her studio full time. See more here.

So, for those of you who are into the whole MySpace thing, here is a link to MyDeathSpace: an archival site that lists the MySpace members who have died. It includes a link to the person’s original MySpace page, a newspaper article substantiating the death, and a few words about the person. It’s not so much tributary as it is fetishistic in its morbidity, but interesting nonetheless.

Ladies & Gents,

Without further adieu, please allow me
to proudly present:


Cityscape Junction


A new photographic collaborative between myself and three very talented friends living in different cities:
Las Vegas, New York, and Seattle.

Last year the artist Gregory Colbert put on an exhibition of his photography and films (Ashes and Snow), which documented "the wondrous interactions between human beings and animals.” He spent ten years traveling the world, collecting the material for this show. Then he went back around the world to display the work in what he calls his "nomadic museum," constructed out of shipping containers:


You can see a slideshow of the exhibit here.

Here are four by NYC artist Jonathan Viner:

Nine to Fiver

Pollination

Puncture Wound

Looks Like Trouble

Today I went and purchased the recently released Collected Stories of Amy Hempel. I’ve really been looking forward to getting this one, especially because I’m in dire need of some inspiration right now and I know that if anyone can help reboot my prose fingers it’s her. This handsome collection includes all four of her previous volumes, hardbound, with an introduction by Rick Moody. If you’re not already a Hempel devotee, here’s how Moody sums up her work:

“It’s all about the sentences. It’s about the way the sentences move in the paragraphs. It’s about rhythm. It’s about ambiguity. It’s about the way emotion, in difficult circumstances, gets captured in language.”

To me, that sums up what I am most interested in doing with my own work. Not storytelling - anybody who can speak or move their fingers can tell a story, it’s simple - but crafting language, that’s why I write. And that’s why I’m thrilled to begin reading this book: because Amy Hempel is an unparalleled master at constructing language.

Find out more about her here.

Today I'll leave you with a video. It's a live acoustic version of Dido singing "White Flag."

Three Undated and Untitled pieces by a lovesick, Magritte-inspired artist/illustrator named Rafal Olbinski:








I’ve been listening to a particular song on repeat. It’s an older tune, but stellar nonetheless. For years I’ve listened to it with a certain understanding, a certain set of experiences; but recently I’ve come to appreciate a whole other level of relevant emotional underpinnings embedded in this song.

If you have a copy of the Doves album Lost Souls, why don’t you pop it in and give this song a listen. If you don’t have the album, I highly recommend getting it.

Like American Analog Set’s Know By Heart, Radiohead’s Kid A, or Dianogah’s Millions of Brazilians, it’s one of those discs you can listen to from beginning to end, over and over with pleasure. This song especially stands out, if not for the drums or the hand clapping or even the complex dramatic structure, but more basically for the way in which the lead singer (Jimi Goodwin) croons the words, “I tried to sleep alone/but I couldn’t do it.”

Gets under your skin and pushes the goosebumps up.

Here are the lyrics:


The Cedar Room

Stars leave the morning
Sleep clouds my view
Don't let them come round here
And call to you
I didn't notice
It's a crime too few
I didn't know it's
A crime to feel
And I tried to sleep alone
But I couldn't do it
You could be sitting next to me
And I wouldn't know it
If I told you you were wrong
I don't remember saying
I don't remember saying
I don't remember saying
I'll be a shadow
In the cedar room
And leave just a memory
Alone with you
I didn't see that
It's a call too soon
I couldn't see that
It's a call to you
And I tried to sleep alone
But I couldn't do it
You could be sitting next to me
And I wouldn't know it
If I told you you were wrong
I don't remember saying
I don't remember saying
I don't remember saying

British photographer Sam Taylor-Wood takes gorgeous self portraits, like these two of herself suspended:





But the work I absolutely love is from her collection called Crying Men, in which she captures 28 male film stars in the midst of honest sadness. Taylor-Wood asked the men to try and genuinely engage with some specific emotional pain or agony inside them, not just “act” it. I think the proof is in the pictures:

Robin Williams

Laurence Fishburne

You can find out more here, here, and here.

Sweet documentary about a few inner city kids from Baltimore who get the opportunity to spend a year at an experimental school in Kenya, East Africa. It was kinda like a reverse version of Lost Boys of Sudan. It also reminded me of Born into Brothels in the way it dealt with children and their futures. Poignant, compelling, engaging. Very, very sad, but then also hopeful. I dug it. Find out more here and here.

Guess I should wish the United States happy birthday.

To help celebrate our independence I’ve also rented the documentary The Corporation. Seems fitting.

How about a couple of Yakuza-style tattoos from the ink artist Tatsumi Takuya:





Thanks to my dad and my brother, I'm now set up in Ohio. It's truly the bee's knees, the cat's pajamas, the eel's ankle, the elephant's instep, you name it. Think milk and honey and then deep fry it.

In other news:

I'm proud and thrilled to say that my old buddy Clay Blackwell, who is a hard working stage and film actor based out of Las Vegas, landed a role in Wong Kar Wai's new film My Blueberry Nights.

Aside from the unbelievable coolness of working with a master auteur like WKW, Clay got the chance to work opposite Natalie Portman! How fantastic is that? And to think, he’s just a fella from Cheyenne, Wyoming, like me. Goes to show that with dedication, determination, and persistence you really can start to make your dreams come true. He’s gonna be big. If you haven’t seen or heard of him yet, trust me, you will.

Goodbye, Nebraska.

Chris Buzelli is an Illustrator from outside Chicago. He has so many cool pieces, it was hard to choose which ones to showcase. I settled on these five, but if you click his name you can visit his gallery and see more.

Partridge in a Pear Tree
Mascot Studio

Genetic Adjustments
Illumination Magazine

Big Mother
Boston Magazine

Solutions
Serbin Directory of Illustration no. 24 Promo

What Lies Beneath
Global Custodian Magazine

Check out this graffiti in Bogotá, Columbia. The artist is Stinkfi2h, member of the Excusado Printsystem Crew:

Oh boy, The Village Voice this week looks to push the envelope. Along similar lines, Oso Raro over at Slaves of Academe has a good article about Gay Pride Weekend.

Since we’re on the subject of Herr Bush, Geekette over at This & That, Ceci Et Cela uncovers these Mexican voodoo dolls:

"Game is Over"

installation by

Lars Nilsson

(2000)

And a quote for today, courtesy of CSP:

I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.

- Mitch Hedberg, from Mitch All Together

UPDATE: You must take the next 2 minutes and 43 seconds to watch AMP's reel. It is breathtaking:

Today I’m proud to present a sampling of work by my dear friend, AMP - the man who will be representing Las Vegas in our upcoming four city photoblog, a cinematographer and cameraman with a luscious touch:




Speaking of photoblogs, here is a great one called face hunter, with the premise being: "a man out and about in paris: eye candy for the style hungry."

If you're a hardcore fan of the tv show Lost, here is a blog of real interest: a space dedicated to sharing important clues about the show and about the Hanso Foundation.

PS - One week until I move to Ohio.

If you are someone who understands and appreciates cinema, who loves inventive, never-before-seen filmic experimentation, someone who drools over hyper-lavish cinematography and screams at the chance to be shocked by the creative moxy of a true auteur, you should stop whatever you're doing, close this window, turn off your computer, and go to the video store right this instant. If you are at work, tell your boss you’ve suddenly come down with the bird flu, if it’s too late or too early for the store to be open in your city, you owe it to yourself to go and stand outside and wait for them to open so you can rent this Russian film:



For the way in which the subtitles are integrated into the landscape of the film - something never done before, to my knowledge - this film is worth watching a dozen times. Not to mention camera-trickery beyond the Wachowski's wildest imagination. Granted, the resolution in Act III is somewhat dubious, but the kind of unbelievable creativity preceding the ending far outweighs whatever criticism one could muster. Seriously, this movie is not just pretty to look at or fun to watch or constantly surprising, it's downright groundbreaking, indisputably - that is, you cannot argue with the fact that this director did things in this film that no one has ever done before, that transcends genre, that elevates the art of filmmaking to a whole other level.

The bar has officially been raised. Click here for the Night Watch (Nochnoi Dozor) official site.

Let's begin today with a poem by one of my all-time favorite poets, Charles Bukowski, about one of my all-time favorite fiction writers:


Carson McCullers

she died of alcoholism
wrapped in a blanket
on a deck chair
on an ocean
steamer.

all her books of
terrified loneliness

all her books about
the cruelty
of loveless love

were all that was left
of her

as the strolling vacationer
discovered her body

notified the captain

and she was quickly dispatched
to somewhere else
on the ship

as everything
continued just
as
she had written it


And we can end today here, with some photos taken by filmmaker Mike Figgis at this year’s Cannes Film Festival:

Sarah Seguela

Li Xin