B-Sides and Breakaways

Dancing in the streets, digital Dickens, time retold, LEGO on Times Square, 34841003122 reasons we’re devolving, what Etruscan vases have to do with skin rashes, and how to out-BlackBerry the BlackBerry.

SING IT LIKE IT IS

Independent music is an art all its own, but when you add phenomenal cinematography to it, it becomes a cultural masterpiece. And that’s what French filmmaker Vincent Moon is doing in La Blogotheque: “take-away” impromptu live shows by some of the most iconic indie artists, shot beautifully in some of the world’s most breathtaking cities.

No crowds. No stages. No equipment. Just the musicians and their talent, in the raw.

The project’s About page has nothing but Greek copy — we suspect because the films speak so strongly for themselves, no explanation is necessary. And if you parlez français, you can indulge in even richer content by way of articles, exclusive interviews and other artist- centric digressions. Still, the films themselves are the real indulgence.

Some of our favorites: The Shins on a street corner in Paris, José González outside a torn-down house in Marfa, TX, and Dappled Cities on a San Francisco sidewalk.

But, really, they’re all absolutely brilliant — so do indulge.

UNMAPPED TERRITORY

Down with the old book smell. Penguin, in a brilliant bout of innovation, is fully embracing new media and social collaboration.

As part of the “We Tell Stories” mantra, Penguin is collaborating with 6 authors who tell 6 stories in 6 days, each inspired by a timeless classic.The first one, The 21 Steps (inspired by The 39 Steps), is told entirely on Google Maps, following the main character around the world.

In week 2, Slice (inspired by The Haunted Dolls’ House) was told via tweets. (That’s Twitter messages, for the media geezers.) Next we have the mad-libs-like custom Fairy Tales, a take on the classic genre where readers fill in parts of the story. This week, a married couple of authors live-blogs the story of a relationship: Your Place and Mine, inspired by Émile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin.

Weeks 5 and 6 are yet to happen, but we know the upcoming stories, authored by a DJ-ing media whiz and a Pakistan-born London-based Harvard Law grad, will be inspired by Dickens’ Hard Times and 1001 Nights.

So what’s it gonna be? A Facebook group? Flickr? A YouTube channel? Time shall tell.

NEXT TIME AROUND

Time-keepers. While their price tags can be exorbitant enough to push any budget, there’s an overwhelmingly underwhelming cross-industry sameness that hardly ever pushes the design envelope. Well, no more.

A finalist in the Signity Watch Design Competition 2008, the Orb bracelet watch is the work of young Serbian designer Djordje “Djo:Djo” Zivanovic. It displays time on the ends of three lines of different thickness representing time-size: hours, minutes and seconds.

Watch-averse? The Verbarius clock tells time like no other — literally. It tells it the way people do: with words. It comes pre-loaded with five languages (English, German, Spanish, French and Russian) and has a USB port, which you can use to upload additional languages from your computer.

Available June 15, but you can pre-order now for the ironically down-to-the-digits amount of $184.92.

HISTORICALLY ENLIGHTENED

What are the great classics for if not for great reinterpretations? British photographer Mike Stimson does just that: he takes on the classics…in LEGO.

Henri Cartier-Bresson’s “Behind the Gare Saint Lazare”? He’s got it. Alfred Eisenstaedt’s “V.J. Day Times Square”? Done. And he doesn’t stop at classic photography. Hollywood’s fair game, too — Indiana Jones, Dart Vader, Stormtrooper. Even Rembrandt portraits.

And while we dig the sheer novelty of this concept, we must also admit Stimson’s mastery of lighting is a whole separate art form.

UNTRIVIA

Plastic. What a love-hate relationship we have with it. And while the recent badmouthing of plastic bottles has done a bit to raise awareness, it hasn’t done nearly enough. How many bottles have been landfilled in the US so far this year?

34,841,003,122.

Only a fifth of those get recycled, down from a third in 1996. Progress? Not so much. Watching the real-time counter is even more chilling.

And while other materials are doing a bit better, recycling is still declining: 54% of aluminum cans get recycled, down from 59% in 1996. Glass is at 20%, down from 30% in ’96. Let’s hope the new (pseudo) green mass movement results in some face-saving numbers at the next data collection.

The point here? Get with it, son: go ahead and buy that Sigg already.

ITCHING FOR ART

Here’s to taking life’s lemons and making lemonade. Artist Ariana Page Russell has done that, and then some: she has a rare skin condition called dermatographia that causes red, raised lines to appear on skin whenever it’s lightly scratched. Basically, hyper-hypersensitivity with bells and whistles.

So Page Russell is using this unusual condition as a tool in her body-as-canvas art: she draws on her body and takes pictures of the patterns once her skin’s hypersensitivity embosses the artwork. Thirty minutes later, it’s all gone — the body has “[become] an index of passing time.” Her patterns are inspired by anything from Greek and Etruscan vases, to Medieval wall coverings, to Renaissance pottery, to contemporary clothing and wallpaper.

And although the rest of the artist’s body of work is also quite stunning, we can’t deny the sheer category-creating brilliance of her skin art.

SPEAK TO THE HAND

You’re curt. Brusque. Terse. Hell, you’re even rude. At least if you have a BlackBerry. At least that’s how people perceive your one- liner emails. And now there’s a fix.

Remember Jott? The nifty speech transcriber service now has a BlackBerry platform that lets you reply to emails with your voice. The download is seamlessly integrated with the email app you use on your BB. Best of all, it ups the ultimate BlackBerry ante: using your voice is 3-5 times more time-saving than thumbing your way through that Re:. And it’s still free.

So go ahead and be a better person.

All Things Hacked

Junkyard chic, 4.8oz of gawk, outsmugging Mac guy, Victorian computers, pre-electricity Internet, a museum of the future, how to get strangers to instantly trust you, what The Blue Man group and diaper changing tables have in common, why a missing comic book hero is the modern Nietzsche, and whose entire life you can buy on eBay.

JUNK HACKER

Alas, we may have just discovered something that outawesomes the super-awesome repurposed materials fare from a couple of weeks ago. Because reestore may recycle objects, but their furniture designs are 100% original. They say they “take everyday waste objects and cheekily turn them into charming yet functional pieces of furniture and accessories.” And they mean business.

Most of the pieces are pure design delight, all hip no hippie. And it seems like they’re all crafted with a lot of love: each product carries a “human” name and its description addresses it as a respective “he” or “she.”

reestore reminds us of childhood when imagination made common household objects into superhero attire and snow sleds and medieval castles. Except reestore makes stuff that helps adults be hip adults. Some of our favorites: Heather the waste tube lamp (right), Max the roll top bath loveseat (above right), Olivia the hanger folding chair (above left), Agnes the rear bumper sofa, and their most popular: Silvana, the washing machine drum lamp.

Pick your own faves — or, hey, make some of your own. All it takes is a design eye and a prolific dumpster.

BLING HACKER

And if doing unexpected things with useless old crap is exciting, it’s all that much more exciting when you do it with really, really expensive new crap. Which is why we dig the Conice 6×18 Zoom Attachment for iPhone.

Sure, it may weight almost as much as the iPhone itself (4.69 oz, vs. 4.8 oz), but it sure pimps the iPhone’s measly 2-megapixel fixed-lens camera with its 6x optical zoom. Only glitch we foresee: the iPhone has no image stabilization whatsoever, so those long-distance zooms would require bomb-squad-steady hands.

Still, at $14.77 with free shipping, it’s worth it even just for goofing around and making people gawk. Just like Steve Jobs here.

SCREEN HACKER

Okay, so maybe you’re not as fortunate as us to have OS X Leopard with its nifty screen share feature. (Which actually begs the question of why you’re depriving yourself of that ultimate license for smugness.) But smug as we may be, we’re also charitable: so we’ll turn you onto another way to share your computer screen with others, letting them see what you’re looking at and seeing what they are.

Enter YuuGuu, which does just that. Once you download and complete the super-simple registration, you can build your private network or invite your friends to also join so you can do remote screen-sharing.

Best part: soon you’ll even be able to share screens with people who don’t have YuuGuu, thanks to a new feature called Web Share. And even Leopard can’t claim that — your network is still confined to others who also have Leopard, not to mention it’s only within your system network (a.k.a. office, etc.) rather than all around the web.

Downloadable free for Mac or Windows.

RETRO HACKER

One of our favorite trends from the past decade — retro-futurism — has made a quiet but powerful return lately. Gadgets are being de-timed at rapid rates, producing sculptures of historical modernity.

You may recall our passing mention of the Modbook — a slate-style tablet Mac reminiscent of the now-ancient Newton, but sporting the latest and greatest of software and hardware: Leopard, Firewire, BlueTooth, AirPort, USB and more, topped with a 2.1GHz processor. And if you’re not a believer already, watching it in action will certainly make you one.

But that’s minor league retro-futurism. Because all the big boys are busy translating the Steampunk genre (you know, that speculative science fiction thing of the 80′s and 90′s) to today’s tech arena. And there are a handful of undisputed King Pins in that scene.

There’s Jake von Slatt (an alias, of course) whose Steampunk Workshop brings an Industrial Revolution life to modern objects. He decks out everything from Altoid Tins to keyboards to guitars in brassy, etched, Victorian goodness to really capture the notion that Steampunk is the intersection of science and romance.

Then we have the arguably even more hardcore Datamancer — there you’ll find stuff so elaborate it’ll make your head hotter than a steam locomotive’s boiler. As if the Steampunked Laptop isn’t wild enough, he’s cooking up something that’s a whole nother ball game: a Pixello-Dynamotronic Computational Engine. (If you’re having trouble saying it, try making it.)

And to put a twist on the already twisty, there’s Greg Brotherton of Brotron — he takes the design elements of Steampunk, putting the technology aside, and superimposes them on elements of pop culture and mythology, often to a stunning yet diabolical result. His aim, in his own words, is to “create heroic icons from our ever-evolving cultural saga.”

All in all, it’s a whole fascinating subculture that creates its own mythology through storytelling unlike anything else out there, a cultural time machine if there ever was one. Dig in some more with the guys at Wired.

INTERWEBS HACKER

Here’s a dose of Steampunk for our web generation: the Internet Archive’s WayBack Machine. It’s a catalog of 85 billion web pages archived from 1996 to today. (Yep, you read right: billion.) So you can check out what your favorite websites looked like way back before running water and electricity.

Mostly, we dig it because it’s fascinating how easily we adapt to and endorse new technology, taking it for granted before the developers’ motherboards have cooled from building it. Email? Puh-leez. RSS? Ha. Streaming video? Meh.

So feel free to dig back, point and laugh, but then when you snap back out, remember you’re doing it all on a blog…that you reached through your email or your RSS feed…that talks about iPhones and widgets…with embedded video…and a bit of Ajax…without ever hearing the brain-drilling sound of a dial-up modem.

And, suddenly, 1996 seems nothing like 2008.

HACKER HACKER

Here’s an antidote to the horrible flashbacks of pre-Gmail times past. Remember the London Design Museum’s Design Library from a couple of weeks ago? Now imagine the same thing, only instead of fashion, architecture and real-world technology, it’s about websites and apps and all those exciting online lovelies. Now stop imagining and just visit the Museum of Modern Betas, or MoMB.

MoMB may be in early Alpha itself, but this isn’t stopping it from cataloging a world’s worth of apps in Beta. You can browse them all by language, most anticipated, all-time top 100, latest hot 100, and more.

Skimming them is a nifty test of how up to speed with the two-point-oh Interwebs you are. But it’s also an exciting discovery tool — we stumbled upon some great stuff, way beyond our usual Beta main squeezes like Gmail, Flickr, Twitter and the like. Go — explore.

IMPRESSION HACKER

You may recall the guys you can hire to remedy your reputation by burying those what-was-I-thinking moments. Well, now you’ve got a Plan B — say “hey mamma” to the Liquid Trust Spray from Vero Labs.

The product is based on oxytocin — a human hormone and neurotransmitter secreted in acts of social recognition and bonding, including hugging and touching. Your brain gushes it at the sight, smell, touch or even thought of people you love.

Now, we’d be the first to vouch for the legitimacy of the hormone itself, thanks to our countless hours in cognitive science lecture halls, but the premise of the product is a whole different story. It promises that the oxytocin in it will make people develop a strong, inexplicable, immediate feeling of trust when they meet you, without ever realizing you’re neuro-scamming them. (Okay, that last part is our words.)

Read their spiel and decide whether you wanna shell out $50 for this social snake oil or just, you know, be a trustworthy person with an extra $50 in their pocket.

HOME HACKER

Few brands can claim as loyal a following as IKEA’s, and even fewer can sprout so much creative interpretation. We’re talking about IKEA Hacker, a blog that agglomerates the funkiest, most creative transformations of IKEA furniture into something cooler, more functional or entirely different.

Some are utilitarian, like the space-saving moddi murphybed hack that turns it into a hideaway bed. Most are design-inspired, like the leitbox-backlit mini-collages or the light mods stand for Mac Mini. And some are just wild, like the convergence of a sniglar baby changing table and PVC pipe into a 22-note Blue-Man-Groupesque instrument that plays anything from the Flintstones theme to AC/DC.

IKEA Hacker started back in 2006 with a quick Google search that yielded an astounding amount of creative hacks, which just begged to be compiled in one place for all Swedish meatball lovers to savor. Or attempt — the blog sprouted the Instructables hacks group, where you can get step-by-step instructions on various hack projects. There’s even a Facebook app that lets you share your latest hacks and designs with your friends.

We’re off to watching that baby changing table play My Sharona. And we imagine if PacMan was in a band, that’s he instrument he’d be playing.

HUMOR HACKER

And now for some comic relief — literally. What happens when a comic strip is relieved of its main hero? You can find out a Garfield Minus Garfield, a brilliantly entertaining exercise in neo- minimalism that captures the tragicomic elements of modern self-conception as Jon Arbuckle embarks upon solitary adventures into the questionable corners of mental health.

And if you’re like us and often feel like your life’s been robbed of its Garfield (ever worry your neighbors hear your heated debates with yourself?), then you’ll relate all the more.

LIFE HACKER

And now for the grand finale: the ultimate hack. One guy in Australia, Ian, is walking the fine line between genius and idiocy by putting up his whole life for sale. It has nothing to do with suicide, the dude’s just had enough and wants to start from scratch, with nothing but a passport and a ton of cash.

Basically, what he’s doing is to identity theft what shopping is to shoplifting.

Why? He had a life-wrecking breakup with his wife of 12 years, whom he still can’t get over. So he figured the only way out is the all-out out. How? One huge eBay auction, slated to kick off on June 22. And, most importantly, what?

Everything. His house, car, and bike. His furniture and clothes. His hobbies — skydiving gear and jet skis. His friends. Even his job.

No, this is not a joke. The dude is for real and all business — we strongly recommend you check out his site, complete with his reasons, the full list of stuff and their valuation, before this life brokerage thing becomes the latest neo-nomad trend.

Context vs. Controversy

You’re a clichè, lots of skin, stuff that killed people, stuff that will kill you, policing the police, what Hitler is finding painfully unfunny, which European is holding suburban America hostage, how to get $80,782 from people who like you, and why the paparazzi are finally out of business.

BEYOND NASCAR

Making waves with a new website launch is so hard these days, what with taken domain names and beaten been-done-before concepts. Alas, newcomer Stuff White People Like, having dodged both 2.0 kisses of death, is off to a critically acclaimed start — and we think it has sprouted a new trend we like to call “affectionate stereotyping.”

But sensationalist title aside, the witty blog doesn’t actually talk about race at all — it’s more about a certain economic subset united by the common gene for Christopher Guest movies, “The” bands, Whole Foods, Nordic furniture, and Obama. And, somehow, it manages to capture those tastes surprisingly well, indulging the shared disdain for certain mainstream pastimes (say, television) to nail the exceptions (say, The Wire.) In fact, it does it so well you should consider yourself warned: you may end up feeling like a far too common, albeit culturally elitist, walking clichè. Do you have bad memories of high school? Listen to public radio? Got a lot of t-shirts? Hate “The Man”? Recycle? Then you’re a figurative “white person.” They even got us on the Michel Gondry front. Shame. See the full list, then join us in a disillusioned head-down retreat to the “white person” factory. But, in all seriousness, this is easily the smartest blog we’ve come across in a long time. Between all the “affectionate stereotyping” and the captivating, witty voice, it somehow manages to ask all the big questions of identity, society, culture, politics and life. Plato couldn’t have done it better himself — despite his quintessential ancient white personness.

LARGER THAN LIFE

Speaking of social trends, could fat be the new phat? We’re not talking about the acclaimed but oh-so-over- discussed Real Women of Dove, who are actually quite the hot stuff. We’re talking way, um, realer.

Like the “models” British celeb megaboober Katie Pierce, who goes by the alter ego Jordan, used in the launch of her eponymous lingerie line. The 29-year-old Anna-Nicolesque Brit tapped girls from her fan club to do the job — we’re resisting a joke about her “biggest admirers.” Unsuccessfully.

Then there’s the Big Ballet — another U.K. phenomenon that, Turkey Lake jokes aside, has been said to put good ol’ skinny ballet acts to shame. In fact, the tour has gotten so big the ensemble is extremely hard to book.

But, really, there’s a King Pin in fat town. Big Fat Deal has been around since 2004, dissecting with snark and irreverence the pop culture portrayals of weight and “hottyness.”

But the blog, written by the mysterious duo of Weetabix and mo pie, has enjoyed a recent spike in popularity. It’s even got a Facebook group. We’re pretty ambivalent about the premise here — BFD works under the “fat acceptance” mantra — given our tax dollars are paying for the costs of obesity. But we must admit good questions are being asked and good points are being made. Like how come fat women feel betrayed when a fat celebrity gets back into shape? And why are fat people expected to slim down, but get mocked when they exercise?

Trans-fat-loaded food for thought, have a bite.

MEMOIRS OF NOSTRADAMUS

We like the present. Mostly because it’s a lot like us: egocentric. So we’ve always dug indulgences like Today In Music History. But because we’re all about making people uncomfortable this week, we turn to times when the present was less of a gift: a “today in disaster history” dose of morbidity brought to you by The Living Almanac of Disasters.

Earthquakes. Fires. Floods. Crashes. Eruptions. Collisions. Bombings. It’s got it all. Twenty-eight years ago today, for example, 22 members of the US boxing team died in a crash in Poland. Or on our birthday, when in 1945 the Empire State Building took its first hit by an airplane.

So check your birthday. Your anniversary. (Like you need another disaster on that date.) The day you lost your virginity. Hey, let’s go crazy: the day you had your first prostate exam. Superstition stopping you? Phsh.

UNTRIVIA

If all the disaster talk got you paranoid, here’s a refreshing reality check about what could actually kill you and with what likelihood. Because common availability bias (our tendency to overestimate the statistical prevalence of things we’re bombarded with in the media or have experienced ourselves) can really do a number on your objectivity. So here are your chances of dying from select non-health-related causes in the U.S.:

• Motor vehicle accident: 1 in 100
• Homicide: 1 in 300
• Fire: 1 in 800
• Firearms accident: 1 in 2,500
• Electrocution: 1 in 5,000
• Asteroid/comet impact: 1 in 20,000
• Passenger in aircraft accident: 1 in 20,000
• Flood: 1 in 30,000
• Tornado: 1 in 60,000

POLICE POLICE

And now for some real controversy — how much transparency should there be in government? According to Rate My Cop, an online forum where people voice raves and rants about police officers, a lot.

Under the tagline “You have the right to remain informed,” the privately-held website aims to do just that — keep citizens informed about the positives and negatives of the police force serving them. Because, after all, the police is a public service — so giving the public a say is only natural. Especially in light of the infamous Cop vs. Skater video of uncalled for police brutality that garnered over 4 million views in under a month.

The site encourages people to rate — anonymously but responsibly — each encounter they have with a police officer. And while we dig the concept of citizen empowerment through information and conversation, we wonder whether in this day and age of American Idol text voting and mass bandwagoning just for the sake of it, rating something as serious as the national police force may become a petty game of saying anything just to avoid saying nothing.

URGE TO PURGE

Our product pick this week is the latest book by famed New Yorker cartoonist S. Gross. We Have Ways of Making You Laugh: 120 Funny Swastika Cartoons is, from the paradoxically comic title to the very last page of stellar artwork, an exercise in purging some of history’s heaviest burdens through humor.

In the publisher’s own words: “These witty, beautifully rendered images gleefully stomp through the darkest moments in history and remind us that humor can diffuse our unspoken fears and deflate an overwrought icon.”

Which resonates nicely with one of our favorite quotes by author and humorist Mary Hirsch. “Humor is a rubber sword — ” she says, “it allows you to make a point without drawing blood.” That, and it’s funnier than watching other people’s cats fall in toilets on YouTube.

LITTLE CHOP OF HORRORS

Found Saw disturbing? Thought No Country For Old Men was gratuitously violent? Then don’t go anywhere near what’s already being dubbed this year’s most disturbing film: Funny Games. It’s the latest work in English by acclaimed Austrian director Michael Haneke of Caché fame, starring (of course) the supreme Naomi Watts.

It’s about a well-off all-American family forced to make excruciating decisions about each other’s fates as they are all taken hostage by a ruthless duo of psychotic young misanthropes. And it’s already making waves in the critics circles.

Now, we’ve done a few brief stints in the psychology of violence and its effects on human thought, especially children. So we’re often thrown off by the gratuitous violence of today’s entertainment. But it’s interesting to see something that puts violence in the context of moral choice, making people extremely uncomfortable not by virtue of the violence itself but by posing the big, uncomfortable human questions.

Get uncomfortable starting March 14 at a theater near you.

OUTMANNING THE MAN

As if there isn’t enough controversy in today’s music industry already, one artist is doing the unthinkable: Jill Sobule is asking fans to fund her next record. That’s all the clearly talented singer-songwriter could do after she got dumped by two major record labels and two indie ones went bankrupt on her tenure. (Her ego must be on life support.)

She’s offering 12 levels of “pledges” fans can donate to: for $10, you get a digital download of the album once it’s made; at the $200 “silver level,” you get free admission to all her shows this year; then there’s the $500 “gold level” wherein Jill gets to mention your name in a song — you can upgrade that to the $750 “gold doubloons level,” which Jill says is “exactly like the gold level, but you give [her] more money.” (Gotta love it.) Or, you can go all-out with the $10,000 “weapons-grade plutonium level” in which you get to actually sing on her CD.

We give her points for extreme inventiveness. But points don’t get you published — she set a $75,000 goal. Well, guess what — in a little over a month, she more than met it and capped out at $80,782. How’s that for proving Kevin Kelly’s brilliant 1000 True Fans theory right?

And we must say this ultimate power-to-the-people thing is pretty awesome — traditionally, fans have always played a huge role in the music industry because their buying power ultimately decides what succeeds. But why not empower them even further back in the music production process, letting them decide not just what sells but also what gets made in the first place? Smart, we say, smart.

IMAGE AND LIKENESS

Alison Jackson has been on our radar for quite some time. We weren’t sure what to make of her work — she shoots celebrity lookalikes in classic paparazzi scenarios to a strikingly realistic effect, indulging us with what we secretly hope to see our favorite celebs doing. But then we heard her rather thought-provoking TED talk (aren’t they all?) and had a thought:

Her work is being criticized for glorifying the cheap business of tabloid and celebrity even more, but it actually does the very opposite: it makes us really think about why we’re drawn to celebrity culture in the first place. It makes all those pop culture idols seem like nothing more than packageable images. And it’s those superficial images we consume, not the real values of the people behind them — otherwise, why would lookalikes elicit the same emotional responses from us that real celebrity snapshots do?

Take a peek.