Funny or Deadly?

Unknown ventriloquist dummy, safely trapped behind glass at the American Museum of the Moving Image. If you know who this character is, please let me know.

Plugs

Be sure and drag yourself to Ladies First... tomorrow night. I'll be taking tickets at the door, so be sure to say "howdy" if we haven't met already. Like I mentioned before, The WYSIWYG Talent Shows have all been outstanding so far, and this installment promises to be even more fun than usual.

Chris and Andy have been doing a fantastic job of curating and putting on these events, and you owe it to yourselves to see the fruits of their labor. If you can't make it tomorrow, you can always try again next month when I finally take a stab at telling a story of my own for "that’s SO Gay: Tales of Extremely Gay Gayness."

By the way, have you been checking out Culturebot? Supporting the WYSIWYG Talent Show is far from the only thing Andy's been doing over there. It's really turning into a great source of perspectives on what's going on in the underpublicized downtown arts scene. ("Downtown" in this sense not being so much about location as about the spirit of it.)

Forgiveness

Every so often Rooster or I find one of these devotional cards (picture on the front, scriptural verse on the back) lying around on the street, and they really creep us out because the guy being held by Jesus has a disturbingly uncanny resemblance to Rooster. I even found one on our front doorstep once, which was extra creepy. When I looked up the illustrator (Thomas Blackshear II) and found out they grew up in the same city, I was creeped out even more.

What Not to Say

It should go without saying that the British version of What Not to Wear is vastly superior to its snarky, grating American counterpart. Englishwomen Trinny and Susannah are wise, direct, cheeky, and magnificent. Americans Clinton and Stacey are smarmy, a bit obnoxious, and often trying much too hard to be zany. There is one sublime pleasure to the American show, though the moments when the unstated threatens to burst forth and send the show off in other directions altogether.

You see, Clinton Kelly is a bit...swishy. Granted, he's no Carson, but he has a certain way about him that would be a bit much for your run-of-the-mill metrosexual. Being gay is no big deal, and in a lot of ways it's refreshing that they don't use it to explain why he's a style expert, but there are times when the refusal to acknowledge his queerness is as ludicrous as in an old Tony Randall movie. Every once in a while, Clinton runs up against a male guest who's either so gay or so straight that you can cut the tension with a knife. Like a delicious snack!

When guests are totally out and easygoing about it, they almost seem to be baiting Clinton, daring him to relax and gab like one of the girls. With really macho straight guys who are a bit uncomfortable with all the fuss and criticisms of a make-over, you wish Clinton would just make a quick joke about what the guys are thinking and let everyone just get past it. In either case, Clinton shows a panicky, wide-eyed reserve that betrays his worries that his cover might be blown at any second. The silly part is that it never seems like anyone would care: the only tension seems to come from Clinton's panic, not anyone else's. It's a lot of fun watching him squirm. It certainly makes up for all the bad fashion jokes.

Clinton, honey, let it hang out. It's not a paunch that needs to be hidden by a well-cut jacket it's just you. Relax.

Chinese Propaganda Book

My pal Tom brought this little gem back from a trip to China last year. It's a cheaply printed booklet of a little bit of Chinese text and a whole bunch of illustrations that appear to show the many ways that people can contribute to the greatness of the modern Chinese state.

(Read the rest...)

Drummer Magazine

Fetish magazines aren't usually where I’d expect to find exuberant typographic solutions to design problems, but life is full of surprises. I guess this is from some time in the late seventies. [Update: Volume 1, Issue 6, from 1976. Read the entire issue here.]

I Remember the Good Ol' Days

It was quite a scene at the NY Bloggers event last night, what with the blogging and blog-curious hordes filling up the back of the Apple Store. (You can see me here hanging with Jeff and Matt.) Overall it was fun and interesting, but I left feeling pretty similar to what Chris describes conflicted, and a little bit nostalgic.

The publishers panel was fascinating, but it was definitely the part that seemed most surreal to me. My reasons for maintaining the site for all these years have been mercurial, but they've always been intensely personal. Listening to two entrepreneurs discuss which of them has the better way to make blogging its own profitable medium seemed awfully mercenary. To be honest, Nick Denton's approach seemes much less mercenary and much more realistic than that of Jason Calacanis, who is even more unctuous than I expected. Also, Nick has tapped the talents of good people in a way that seems a natural progression of things they've been doing all along.

Blogging as a business model just seems strange to me, because it's been such a given for so long now. Maybe it's a symptom of my lack of entrepreneurial zeal, but it seems so gimmicky, like basing a business model on water-cooler gossip. I guess my sympathies lie with the folks on the technology panel who are more interested in finding a way to sustain their interest in enabling social interaction, rather than making a fast buck by skimming off the top of what goes on out here.

The editors bantered lightheartedly in a way that was much more in tune with my experience of doing this stuff. They all seemed to share a sense of not taking any of their limited fame too seriously, despite the effort that goes into their sites, since they're mostly just interested in writing interesting stuff about things that holds their interest. In the end, that’s the biggest challenge you face after doing this for a long time, even if your site has become less personal and more general interest. How do you still give a fuck?

But then again, this has always been a dot-org endeavor for me, not a dot-com.