A Canadian artist called Heather Benning converted a derelict farmhouse into a giant doll's house, open on one side. Her photo gallery includes several making-of images that are quite marvellous. She created it while serving as artist-in-residence for the town of Redvers, Sask, and notes that she found the house in 2005.
The Museum of Comic & Cartoon Art (MoCCA) announced “Miami Makeover: Almost Anything for Beauty”, an exhibit featuring the work of Aline Kominsky-Crumb and Dominique Sapel. They "set out to entirely re-imagine their body image. Donning new outfits, wigs, jewelry, nails, makeup and padding in just the right places, the two artists remade themselves in the image of a modern Miami woman."
Aline: "My parents moved there twenty years ago and some of my best memories are of the many hours I spent with my mother visiting the beauty parlor, Hair Magic, and the beautician, Cookie, who performs miniature miracles there on a daily basis. The 'look' there is big blond hair, big lips, and big tits, and you can always count on there being some personal philosophy and practical tips thrown in.
"Being a cartoonist, I wanted to find a way to capture this atmosphere and these fabulous women -- the creators and their creations! I am fascinated by their idea of beauty and by what women are willing to do to achieve it. As a 63-year-old woman raised in the Five Towns of Nassau County on Long Island, logically I should be 'one of them,' but I was touched at age 8 by some divine intervention and was propelled in a very different direction- I became an artist/observer. Still, there’s a part of me that is curious and can identify with this 'other type' of female."
The LA Times's Diana Marcum tells the story of the bankruptcy of Stockton, California, a city of about 300,000 people, which has just filed for bankruptcy. The city -- and its developers -- borrowed heavily in the past decade to build a series of follies: a luxury hotel, a marina, a promenade, in a bid to lure people down from the Bay Area. Stockton is a boom-and-bust poster-child, and has just gone through the new AB 506 arbitration procedures set out for municipal defaults in California law, a drawn-out "death of a thousand meetings," and is still headed into bankruptcy.
Although a city of almost 300,000, Stockton is a place where many families have known one another for generations. The most impassioned speakers argued on behalf of others, with the main rallying cry a plea to keep health insurance for retirees with illnesses. A high school student spoke of his aunt, a retired city worker with cancer, and a retired fire chief spoke of his former secretary who cares for her ill husband.
"People look at me and say, 'Well he can afford his own insurance,' and I can," said Gary Gillis, the retired chief. "But how about the ones who mowed the lawns, went in the sewers, typed my letters? We have to protect the most vulnerable among us."
Experts say there are no clear answers to what comes next for Stockton or how its fall will affect the rest of the state. Other cities hit hard by the housing bust and state budget crisis are negotiating with employee unions for concessions and are watching to see if municipal bankruptcy proves medicine or poison.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is in no hurry to depart his refuge inside the embassy of Ecuador, in London, where he has been holed up for about a week. British authorities are demanding that he do so, and head straight to a police station as part of his extradition process to be questioned in Sweden about sex crime allegations. But if he complies, police may arrest him immediately, because he has breached the terms of his bail.
On Thursday, British police summoned Assange to a London police station, demanding he leave the embassy. But Assange later told BBC television in a telephone interview: "Our advice is that asylum law both internationally and domestically in the UK takes precedence to extradition law, so the answer is almost certainly not."
Jeff Newelt snapped this photo of Robert Crumb reading a copy of the recently-published book, Cleveland, one of the late Harvey Pekar's final contributions to comics. It has beautiful art by Joseph Remnant and an introduction by Alam Moore.
A lifelong resident of Cleveland, Ohio, Harvey Pekar (1939-2010) pioneered autobiographical comics, mining the mundane for magic since 1976 in his critically acclaimed series American Splendor.
Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland is sadly one of his last, but happily one of his most definitive graphic novels. It presents key moments and characters from the city's history, intertwined with Harvey's own ups and downs, as relayed to us by Our Man and meticulously researched and rendered by artist Joseph Remnant. At once a history of Cleveland and a portrait of Harvey, it's a tribute to the ordinary greatness of both.
NASA/NOAA GOES Project. Caption: NASA Goddard, Rob Gutro
The NASA GOES-15 satellite captured this image of the western United States which shows smoke from fires in many states creating a brownish-colored blanket over the region.
The dawn's early light revealed smoke and haze throughout the Midwest, arising from forest fires throughout the Rockies. While the most publicized fires occur along the populous eastern range in Colorado, the great smoke plumes in this image came from Wyoming. NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-15, captured this visible image on June 28 at 1245 UTC (8:45 a.m. EDT). This image was created by the NASA GOES Project at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Orla Reynolds's "As If From Nowhere" is a bookcase with four removable chairs and a dining table cunningly worked into its frame. It's basically a storage unit for an extra table.
New Zealand's high court today ruled that a raid on Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom's Auckland mansion was illegal. From the Guardian:
Justice Helen Winkelmann said the warrants used when more than 90 New Zealand officers stormed the Megaupload founder's home and other properties in January were too broadly cast, "lacking adequate specificity as to the offence". "The search and seizure was therefore illegal," she ruled, adding that it was "clear that the police, in executing the warrants, have exceeded what they could lawfully be authorised to do".
The 56-page judgment is here (PDF), and may complicate future hearings on extradition to the US. The case has been described by some observers as a Homeland Security case, initiated under pressure from the MPAA.
Winkelmann said police had acted unlawfully by refusing to release material that was not relevant to the charges, and that their provision to the FBI of cloned hard drives seized in the raid was in breach of extradition legislation. Among the seized items that police have refused to release is video footage captured by Dotcom's surveillance cameras of the raid on the mansion.
More good news: Dotcom has a new pal! Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. In an interview with the Associated Press, Woz said, "It's just kind of ridiculous what they did to his life. An awful lot of Kiwis support him. The U.S. government is on thin ground."
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
I went to the NERF site to look for a basketball set for my first grader. Not only is the NERF brand now mostly about pretending you are in an elite special forces unit (protecting NERF Nation, no less), they have drafted President Obama into their non-expanding recreational foam militia. (Yes, I know it's not really him. But the resemblance is striking!)
I'm a big fan of the garage punk band, Darling Pet Munkee (Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling's Michael J. Epstein and Sophia Cacciola and Cathy Capozzi of Axemunkee). They write songs based on old comic book ads: X-Ray Specs, Sea Monkeys, Monster S-I-Z-E Monsters, Darling Pet Monkey, and more.
Michael just sent me a link to the band's new "creature double feature." He says:
We decided to pair up our Frankenstein and Dracula songs to create two music videos as a "creature double feature!" To tie it all together, we got a friend to give her best Elvira impression to host as Dalya, Mistress of the Munkee.
In Monster S-I-Z-E Monsters, we send poor Frankenstein's monster on a series of questionable Internet dates, which, as you might expect for a monster looking for love, don't go so well.
For Genuine Soil From Dracula's Castle, we used the actual item that the song is about to craft a Hammer-Horror-style tale of a fool stealing soil from Dracula's castle and paying the price.
As the Democratic National Convention prepares to descend upon Charlotte, the Charlotte NPR affiliate perform the regular ritual of sending their reporter to talk to strip bar owners about how Republicans are much better for strippers and their employers than Democrats:
“Hands down, the Republicans have always been our best customers,” says Angelina Spencer, the Executive Director of the Association of Club Executives. It is the national trade organization for adult nightclubs.
“And they tend to be business-focused,” she says. “That’s really all I can say. We get clients from all walks of life, but for whatever reason… I have heard club owners say, ‘Boy, those Republicans really are great customers.’”
A Canadian artist called Heather Benning converted a derelict farmhouse into a giant doll's house, open on one side. Her photo gallery includes several making-of images that are quite marvellous. She created it while serving as artist-in-residence for the town of Redvers, Sask, and notes that she found the house in 2005.
The Birds With Arms Tumblr has a simple command for the net: "Photoshop arms on to birds. Send them to us." This turns out to be remarkably effective.
The Museum of Comic & Cartoon Art (MoCCA) announced “Miami Makeover: Almost Anything for Beauty”, an exhibit featuring the work of Aline Kominsky-Crumb and Dominique Sapel. They "set out to entirely re-imagine their body image. Donning new outfits, wigs, jewelry, nails, makeup and padding in just the right places, the two artists remade themselves in the image of a modern Miami woman."
Although a city of almost 300,000, Stockton is a place where many families have known one another for generations. The most impassioned speakers argued on behalf of others, with the main rallying cry a plea to keep health insurance for retirees with illnesses. A high school student spoke of his aunt, a retired city worker with cancer, and a retired fire chief spoke of his former secretary who cares for her ill husband.
Orla Reynolds's "As If From Nowhere" is a bookcase with four removable chairs and a dining table cunningly worked into its frame. It's basically a storage unit for an extra table.
I went to the