It's no secret that urban planning is probably considered one of the unsexiest professions in existence, right up there with engineering or social work. All that talk about mixed-use development, electric cars, or bike-sharing isn't texactly going to get anybody sprung...
Thankfully, our friend Emily at Irish Breakfast has developed a helpful guide for how to pick up a city planner at your local zoning meeting, design charette, or organic microbrewery. Hint...we're not a tough crowd! I encourage you to practice any one of these one-liners at your earliest convenience :)
Here's a funny take on bike lanes, from our friends up north in Vancouver, BC. It's a scene from the incredible film Downfall, which chronicles the last days of Hitler in his bunker, with a bit of bicycle Nazism thrown in the mix for ya. If only our politicians were this crazy about bike lanes, then we might actually get some real transportation improvements, jaaaa!
In earlier posts I've talked about the infamous "Seattle freeze" that every transplant to the area seems to experience and then starts bitching about to anyone who'll listen. You've heard the mantra before: Seattleites are tirelessly "polite" and "nice" to new people on the surface level, but instantly shut down and reject social advances the second you try to actually "befriend" one of us. We're a collection of people who move here to escape wherever it is that we're from, so we isolate ourselves from genuine social interaction as much as possible. Seattle is a place full of awkward only-children, who don't quite get how to branch out and meet new people in non-ironic ways. We're a city of the mind, a city of nerdy blogger-types who sit in Starbucks silently plugging away because we're just...that....edgy, man :)
Well, in celebration of our city's reputation for bitchy cold-shoulderness, I dedicate this post to a very funny, very spot-on op-ed from Crosscut. I think this manifesto just about covers it!
Since I believe one good manifesto deserves another, I hereby offer my own: David Guterson and other figures on Bainbridge Island like to talk about the countryside as being the only real place to live. We know better. These are our values:
We value diverse workplaces and gatherings. Upscale white men alongside upscale white women — and even upscale white gays.
Yet we also admire African-Americans, preferably if they are both musical and dead.
We champion the institution of public education, as long as our own kids can get into a private school.
We celebrate people's expressions of sexuality, provided they're not too, you know, sexual.
We strive toward progressive, inclusive laws and policies except when they would inconvenience business.
We take pride in our urban identity, as we build more huge edifices and monuments to desperately prove how world class we are.
We support the arts, particularly when that support doesn't stick us in the same room with unkempt artists.
We value regional planning and cooperation, even with those mouth-breathing hicks out there.
We protect and enhance the environment, particularly those environments we drive 40 miles or more to hike in.
We love a strong, vital music scene that's in someone else's neighborhood.
We appreciate our heritage. We moan about how everything in this town sucks; then, years later, we claim it was great back then but all sucks now.
We value a strong, independent news media, regularly alerting us to the city's 103 Best Podiatrists.
We admire innovation and original ideas, especially if they're just like something from New York or San Francisco.
We support locally based businesses, until they get too big.
President Barack Obama has advocated "the fierce urgency of now." Mr. President, the people of Seattle will get around to it once they've finished playing "Halo: Reach."
Have you ever wondered, perhaps during your high school English class, why certain authors and publishers didn't make more of an effort with titles that really get to the point!They'd stop hemorrhaging profits to SparkNotes and save you the effort of having to actually read such drech as Beowulf (vomit), The Epic of Gilgamesh, Wuthering Heights, or Jane Austen (sorry folks).
With this in mind, the folks at Better Book Titleshave graciously been retooling the literary classics with straight-shooting titles that really get to the heart of the subject. They were named one of the best new blogs of 2010. Here's to their success and more hilarious book titles like these:
The influence of drugs, especially psychedelic drugs, on art has always fascinated me.
Drugs have been the catalyst, if not the inspiration, for countless works of art over the centuries that have captured the masses. Without the element of this specific type of debauchery, so much of our artistic canon could never have come into being.
How else, for instance, do you think of this album cover for Santana's Supernatural?
Or this music video by the French band Justice, a chaotic ode to the city of Paris?
It's easy to see the influence that drugs in all their permutations have influenced art, but which drugs? What doses? What circumstances? My inner geek justs begs for a control group to test out the drug spectrum and see what parts of the brain each ingredient sticks to. A single artist, painting an identical self-portrait dozens of times to illustrate the effects of each....What's that, Good magazine? You read my mind perfectly.
Since March 30, 1995, multimedia artist Bryan Lewis Saunders has done one self-portrait per day, every day. When that started to get boring, Saunders began taking drugs of all types to liven up the work, a process he says has left him with brain damage.
Saunders is still doing his self-portraits today, though he'll now only take drugs if they are administered by medical professionals for valid health issues. Regardless, the results of his endeavor are a fascinating glimpse into how different chemicals shape our perceptions of self.
The artist's idea was to test the environment's effects on the subconscious and use his brain like a canvas. You can only be soberific so long when you're painting nearly 8,000 (!!!) self-portraits over the course of a decade. Here are some of my favorite of his artistic ahem..."experiments":
Ambien - looks like it's not working...
Hydrocodone, Oxycodone, and Xanax - this is what art looks like when you can't feel your face...
Absinthe - monochrome (and cubist?)
Adderall - The artist is both literal and distracted :)
Cocaine is a helluva drug...
Two bottles of cough syrup later - wow, this guy had a bit of a death wish!
Sweet Jesus crystal meth...
Dilaudid and morphine - industrial grade gangsta...
Morphine meets Easter Island?
Huffed gasoline - this is probably what his brain cells feel like!
Mushrooms - wow, what do those bubbles mean? Cosmic...
Nitrous oxide - you know those little whip cream canisters that make you black out? I mean...
PCP - the one you should never, ever do
Pot brownies! Duhhhh
Pot resin hits - jeez, I wonder what he cleaned his bowl piece with...
Back in October, I posted a map of the 50 states with their most iconic movies that define the state's history and culture. How about a map of the states' dirtiest little secrets? I think so :) Thank you, Time!
A few of my favorites:
Washington - bestality? Unfortunately, this one's true and true. I'm going to quote the multiple sclerosis awareness industry here for a second, but: Is it the Trees?
North Dakota - ugliness? Maybe at the country fair.
A few weeks back I wrote about the new IFC series Portlandiathat pokes fun about the unique alternative and hipster subcultures of our cute small-town sister to the south.
The show stars SNL's Fred Armisen alongside former Sleater-Kinney lead singer Carrie Brownstein (remember them?). Produced by NBC's Lorne Michaels, there are many guest cameos, including Steve Buscemi (which hipster movie hasn't he been in?) and Jason Sudeikis. With the power of SNL and Portland combined....
After watching its debut episode, I was definitely entertained and in stitches (quietly, at work, I should say). The show hits right on the head every stereotype you could possibly have about the Rose City. There's the fanatical obsession with local, organic food, the feminist co-op bookstore divas, adult "hide and go seek" leagues at the public library, and the most hilarious, stifled romance I've ever seen.
The wait for this long-anticipated show is happily over. Check out the debut episode below!
I have to apologize for not posting as much as I should be lately. I do have a good excuse though!
For Christmas, I took home the new XBox Kinect and got the Dance Central game the next day. One word: HOOKED!
The game is beyond addictive. True, you could say the same thing about many video games. Somehow I had avoided the craze of video games for my entire life before this moment - never owned a console of any kind, never succumbed to this addiction. Ok, you got me, I was kind of a freak in junior high :)
It was a combination of factors that caused me to never catch the video game stupor like everyone fucking else on the planet. 1) the controllers - They are awkward to hold, I don't like using them. End of story. 2) Time committment - don't have it. I never understood how my friends could have "Halo parties" for 8 hours plus when we were 14, 15, 21??? Too much screen time, too much weed, too many crushed Cheeto stains on my carpet. No thanks. 3) Arcade games are more fun, and because you're dropping quarters on them each round, you get more of the thrill of gambling to get to the next level. It's like slot machines for kids. As a young whipper-snapper in downtown Kirkland, I loved going to Quarters every chance I could and blowing all my allowance there on Tekken 2 and Jones Soda. Like I said - freakkkkk :)
Kinect has totally changed my take on video games. For the first time, I don't feel guilty at all for playing them. I actually feel like I'm getting a workout (of sorts) just by playing them. If you really work at it, you can legitimately break a sweat. The Dance Central game has a great line up of dance, hip hop, and funk music that can keep you going for hours doing actual choregraphed routines. I have to admit that so far I suck at it for most songs - I can only get to "Easy" 3 or 4 stars most of the time, but I'm working on it.
So in case you were wondering, I've been plugging away trying my best to not look like these dorks:
I should concede that although I consider myself a born-and-raised Seattleite, technically I was born in SW Portland and lived there until I was a year and a half old. Still, I am sometimes guilty of the Seattle superiority complex, if there is such a thing, a.k.a. thinking that Seattle kicks Portland's ass at any and all things important. Regardless, Portland still manages to hit the very highest echelons of hipster cachet in ways even Seattle can't match. Portland is like Seattle's free-wheeling hipster little sister, a parallel universe where Belltown, Amazon and Microsoft never happened.
This is a promo video for the new IFC series Portlandia that hits the nail right on Portland's hipster, fixied head. Do you know anyone who gets the IFC channel? Fuck, I sure don't. Is that the one that comes with the HBO package? Either way, hopefully the episodes will be streamed online somewhere - if so, I'll be sure to post the link.
-"People grew up wanting to be clowns. You could go to clown school!"
-"I gave up clowning years ago."
-"Well, in Portland you don't have to."
Check out this new album called Maximum Balloon, the new funk-oriented project from TV On the Radio's producer Dave Sitek. Heard them first several weeks ago on KEXP, and now I'm hooked!
Some of the videos on here are predictable, others wildly unexpected.
1. Old Spice - who could resist?
2. Antoine Dodson - "Hide ya kids, hide ya wife..."
3. Double Rainbow - probably the most famous acid trip ever captured on camera.
Is this the reason why so many drivers hate bicyclists? Quite possibly. Especially, check out what the guy does at 1:34. He's lucky he didn't get shot!
