#7 Glitz and Glamour vs. Nail Hits Hammer

I'm not sure about the camera-work for this video, but the sound and performance are incredible and that is not counting coincidences like the 20 second middle-finger-chord around 4:19... Enjoy-

"Marked" by EMA (song is from :30 to 5:30)

#6 Weakened By The Weekend

Vastly overlooked and underrated things from 2011:
1) There has never been more music/art/books/movies available in the history of civilization.
2) You have never been closer to your final day and breath than you are right now.

So enjoy:

A) Project Nim- A fascinating documentary from before my time wherein the full life of a chimp named Nim Chimpsky (hehe) is followed including his time being raised by a family as if he were one of their human kids as well as the numerous conflicts Nim causes among flawed humans. Also has an amazing photo-montage of all the different outfits and sweaters that Nim sported throughout his life... good docs are always in fashion with me:
                                          


B) I finished less than 20 books in 2011, but one standout that I can recommend across the board was Swamplandia. Read it now or, I guess, wait till it comes to a screen near you...

C) I'm not sure how Horsecollar stayed off of virtually every Best of 2011 List, but I am sure that with the help of a time-machine, Velvet Underground got sozzled with the The Strokes and Kings of Leon and made a backstge baby they called Horsecollar:

http://horsecollarmusic.com/ 

(please listen to STOP. DROP. &ROLL to understand my description above)

#5 Captain's Blog

This video combines some of my favorite things.

#2 Backwards Blackbirds

About a month ago, Portland was invaded by an advertising campaign for the Cirque du Soleil of Horses show, Cavalia. It arrived overnight and blanketed the whole city like an unexpected snowstorm with its billboards and posters that contained a pure white horse and not much else information.

The show was incredible of course which is to say that the advertising trick worked like a charm on me. After seeing all the billboards, I had gone home and googled Cavalia to see what it was all about and was willing to overlook their surprisingly shitbox website because they did have a youtube video which showed a small glimpse into the magic that their show contains. This "let-them-complete-the-puzzle" advertising style has clearly worked as the show's original end date has been pushed back at least three weeks to accomodate for the ticket-demand. The basic strategy of piquing interest and then forcing the customer to find out more themselves on their own time (and thus become more invested) reminded me of one of the coolest art-affecting-life-projects I have heard of.

It is called "Women Are Heroes" and it was spearheaded by 28 year old French artist JR who stays anonymous in a quasi-Banksy way. In 2008, JR heard about three young men from Rio de Janeiro's oldest and most drug-infested favelo/neighborhood/slum (Morro da Providencia) being murdered after they were detained by the Brazilian Army for not having their papers and then inexplicably taken, not to a police station, but to a rival neighborhood where they subsequently were chopped to pieces by drug lords. The implication of both the Brazilian Army and drug-thugs in these brutal murders set off riots in the favela. Whilst the media refused (mostly out of fear) to go up the hill to investigate the story, JR did and asked the first person he met what had happened. Before long he had talked to the mothers, grandmothers, sisters, etc. of the victims and took portrait-style photos of them and started pasting them up all over the favela on huge posters (the same size as Cavalia's billboards actually) until the whole hill was full of unexplained eyes.

Then JR left. He knew the media would have to go up and find out (they initially tried flying airplanes with a "Call this number if you know what they eyes are all about" message on it) what these pictures were and thus find out the story.

As you can see, it was a pretty amazing scale that he took it to thus ensuring that it would not be ignored and the story would be told. JR has done many other amazing projects and I will stay true to this week's theme and let you do the work to discover them yourself, but start with Face To Face. It is amazing what can be done with a camera, some paper, and some glue.

Well, the You-Tube Video of the week is one of my favorite songs of 2011 and I am not quite sure why:

#1: All Things Being Sequels

As I was thinking about the name for this blog I realized that names are tone-setters in life. Meeting new people usually begins with an exchange of names as the jump-off point to that first-impression-forming initial conversation. I am not so interested in the Freakonomics version of names and their importance, but more in how names are used to set up a dynamic. For example, adding a title/lengthening a name is designed to give it added significance and thus skew power in its holder’s favor. Mister. Sir. Miss. Queen. Senior. President. Baron! In most cases adding a middle name is another subtle power move that elevates that person’s standing in the conversation. Even famous killers like John Wilkes Booth and John Wayne Gacy are likely known by their middle names as a way of seperating them from us.

In contrast, nicknames (usually shortening as opposed to lengthening one’s name) are given to subconsciously remind friends/family that they are not better/above you. To take it a curious step further: despite the obvious/inherent comedy of dirty-talking someone in the bedroom with intergenerational trash-talk such as: “You love it Dirty Slut The Third!”, people don’t do that because, on some level, King Henry III and the rest of the “Thirds” in history have reserved it as almost a term of supplicancy. Why dirty talk involves stripping one’s name (as well as their clothes) is a topic for another blog, but this is my attempt to explain the nuetral/anonymous name of The Bearded Baby for this blog.

This blog will be dirty. And this blog is certainly not above you. In fact, the main tenet of this blog is that it is based on the (unoriginal) idea of all things being equal. There is not a different book with better chapters for rich people nor do albums come with different sets of lyrics/chords depending on how much the person had to spend. Movies may be seen slightly differently on fancier screens, but the film itself remains the same. So that will be the focus of this blog: discussion of things on a level playing field. So though I would LOVE to talk about travel or food (though I may discuss booze as it too is a great equalizer and common-ground-creator), the fact is, they take into account the user’s variables.  I may go to Europe and have an entirely different great time than you because we are working on the uneven playing field of money and time-constraints. In order to have a meaningful discussion and understanding, we must know that we are talking about the same things.

Thanks for reading and here is the youtube video of the week featuring living genius Theo Jansen and his amazing strandbeests.