Do you know what else are beautiful? Handmade bleach-stenciled The Hedge hoodies.

Dave Zucker and I have had our eye on this project for nearly half a year but never found the time or inspiration to complete it. Around two weeks ago, we realized that our dearest Claire Storck (see below) was leaving for New York City today. As in, she's already left right now. To commemorate the fantastic, loving house we shared, Dave and I needed to produce before she departed.

Dave had the concept for each letter of 'hedge' based on congruent (is that the word I want?) circles at varying heights. I took this concept and added some thematic flair—the leaves and branches you see adorning the letters above. One late night with Illustrator and I had the design you see above, complete with a leafy heart for the left breast. Dave laser-cut the stencils into plastic sheets at work on Monday. We were ready last night, armed with bleach, a cosmetics spritzer, rags for blotting, and plastic bags for masking.

And we produced two perfect hoodies with nary a hitch. Success! I'll have to take some better (non-iPhone) photographs because the one we have really doesn't do the piece justice.

These final shots came from a fantastic evening over Memorial Day weekend, when Whit and Claire were visiting from San Francisco. We had purchased (nearly) matching shorts at REI then added to our outfits with 15 minute–$10 limit shirts from Buffalo Exchange, assigned to all participants randomly. What choice did we have but stage a photo shoot with these gorgeous ensembles?

Laura commented on my previous post, noting her appreciation for the photograph above and, lo, I was motivated to write again of Europe. She mentioned the toothless nature of the sculpture, while I found its lack of eyes even more stirring (and appropriate to my recent discussion of Blindness). The British museum website has a concise but illuminating description of the Knidos lion and its history, dating back to 200 - 350 BC.

The photograph is from my final afternoon in London, spent wandering about the British Museum, the edifice in which the British Empire proudly displays all the artifacts that it has... collected from around the world. I walked into the very first display hall and was greeted by a thick crowd of tourists around one case. What could be in this case, I wondered.

I got closer and, oh, right, it was the Rosetta Stone.

Strong work.

I quite enjoyed the breadth and depth of art and artifacts the museum offered. Still, I found it somewhat difficult to accept the appropriateness of these works having been removed from their native cultures and countries. I find elitist the notion that "The White Man" conquering cultures or nations have a responsibility and unique capability to preserve the world's wonders. On the other hand, I would not have wanted any of those works I perused to have been lost to age, weather, political turmoil or other unforeseen elements. How horrible is it that the Catholic church went around covering or knocking penises off of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture?¹

Does anyone have any thoughts on this matter? Or did all my discussion put you to sleep:

1 I have heard this in the past but now I went looking for sources supporting this claim and am having difficulty finding any. Does anyone know if my claim is accurate? Or do you have examples of other regimes or groups destroying or inadequately preserving art and artifacts?

First, a new stick figure slideshow cleverly and succinctly describes the Sub-Prime Mortgage Disaster in the United States. I found the explanation reminiscent of XKCD as well as a fitting accompaniment to Liar's Poker, which I read at the beginning of the year.

After Kottke posted his list of single serving sites, someone meta'd the topic and made a single serving site listing all other single serving sites. I particularly enjoy Beth Cherry, who maintains a single page blog with no archives or apparent feed to which to subscribe. This blog philosophy reminds me of my drawing professor senior year, who recommended keeping a sketchbook in which one glues down the page after completing each drawing (but admitted personally to tearing out and saving particularly good ones).

Finally, art imitates life. And let's hope life will imitate art come November.

The Guardian has a full discussion of the Santos-Obama story.

On Sunday, Brooke, Birch and I headed to the Showbox for scratchy goodness. I arrived five minutes into Kid Koala's opening set to find the crowd hooting and hopping, obviously pleased with his tight turntable work. I don't really know how to describe DJ performances. Um, he was awesome? Koala had a standard two turntable setup with mixers between. The Showbox had cameras trained on his rig and projected behind him so we could see just how fast his fingers are.

He used "Moon River" quite well, citing it as his mother's favorite song. Aw, such a sweetie:

Brooke got up quite close for a sweet shot of the superstar.

Then, THEN, at ten, we had our world rocked for two solid hours.

DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist performed The Hard Sell: eight (8) turntables, all 45 RPM original pressings, all manual, all awesome. This set was in the style of their original and somewhat groundbreaking BrainFreeze set from the late 90s. 45RPM records are smaller and harder to manipulate than standard vinyl, and are more difficult to procure, especially for well known tracks.

They took a bit to setup and eventually had records stacked up six or eight high, pulling them off and just keeping going, getting the crowd riled up. Within the first twenty minutes, when they layered the "Gilligan's Island" theme vocals over "Stairway to Heaven" instrumental, I knew we were in for a treat.

And it just kept going. Sometimes they got a bit... technical? Cerebral? Brooke noted that the tight, consistent sound they were producing was commonplace in the age of laptops and electronica but quite a display of skill with only turntables and mixers. The crowd certainly approved, but no section more than the front right, which was particularly moved by old school hip hop samples (lots of De La Soul). They were so moved, in fact, that they were shaking the stage and caused Cut Chemist's records to jolt, which only screwed him up once.

Cut Chemist was unreal, otherworldly even. I mean, DJ Shadow was fantastic but Cut Chemist's skills seemed unparalleled. I need to find the Scratch documentary and watch it again. Their visuals were pretty sweet too (when we weren't watching turntable-cam or DJ-Shadow-sleeve-cam), especially the 3D animated jukebox robot blowing up flying iPods.

So, they built to a huge, jiving climax and pulled the set to a close but started talking about how Seattle loves its rock, and its metal, and then gave us a rare treat. They scratched a rendition of Metallica's "One" on portable, battery-powered turntables. Ridiculous: the crowd went nuts.

Now, I have to run away from my office and get home to Sarah, whom I am taking to see Mika! Tonight! I AM SO EXCITED. Her good sir Charlie is out of town (playing Ultimate in Hawaii) so we get to celebrate Happy Heart Day together.

I will report on Mika, and their opener, The Midway State, tomorrow. Cheers!

I just have to stand and give my due. Cheers, Spike. You rule.

Oh, also, he was previously married to Sofia Coppola, who wrote and directed Lost in Translation, which makes him a heck of a lot closer to making out with Scarlett Johansson than I'll ever be. Le sigh.

What do you think about these? Have you noticed posters by a particular artist or for a specific band that you always like?

I had seen that adorable little bunny robot toaster before, marked onto the back of a bus seat with a Sharpie:

I love this character: it's simple, original and adorable. The consistency suggests that one artist is producing the graffiti in various settings and media. I was curious if there was any Internet trail to his or her identity so I went poking around on Google and Flickr. I discovered two other documentations of the graffiti style but, sadly, no clues to the artist.

The first example was a seasonal offering: snow bunny on the bus from Sarah Davies. The second example was found by liquidnight, a street artist herself and documenter thereof: toast loves troll. Liquidnight offered no explanation but was happy to learn of the occurrences. Incidentally, her owls are so pretty and perfect.

Regardless, I will keep looking for more toast loves in Seattle and I would appreciate any information or further examples you can offer. These little mysteries make life so much more beautiful and interesting.

I followed the article to Nat Friedman's web page, where I then found his recounting of time in Brazil. Of specific interest, Nat bought dozens of disposable cameras and distributed them to children in favelas, allowing them to use the cameras however they wished before returning them for development. (In his favor, Friedman gave prints to the photographers before returning to the States). I opened one page, one young boy's portfolio, as it were, and the tears just started flowing.

I don't know why I started crying. Maybe these images are just more beautiful and more important and truer than anything I will ever produce. Perhaps I wish I were doing something more striking, more significant with my life. Or am I just lonely, and any strong emotion overpowers me? At least, if nothing else, I'm getting better at pull-ups.

I was rightly impressed by the creativity and innovation in design concepts for a business card-sized calendar.

I bought a simply lovely calendar in Portland, Oregon when I was down visiting Whit and Claire this last weekend. The artist, Nikki McClure, has beautiful work---seemingly all paper cut---and I hope to visit Olympia to see more of her pieces. The calendar is intended for public space somewhere in our house.

Brooke and I have spent the last handful of months almost wholly focused on the calendar functionality for CaseHawk, our law firm management web application venture. I am happy with our current treatment, beginning to believe in it as a strong alternative to Outlook and the like. The law firm will begin to use the calendar on Monday so Brooke and I will see how the functionality fares in real life. I am looking forward to moving on to another bit of the application.

First, I have been a longtime admirer of Jason Santa Maria, designer extraordinaire and member of Happy Cog. He switches to a new, scary blog theme every October. He recently defeated Brian Taylor in a horror-themed match of Layer Tennis. I particularly enjoyed volleys 2 and 5.

Incidentally, Happy Cog was hired to redesign the website for the environmental news source and non-profit Grist, for which my friend/fellow DarkHorse Trina and my friend/bus-mate Corey work. When Trina told me of this news, I went a bit fan-boy and quizzed her on all the HTML masters she met.

To revisit an old favorite, Michael Paulus explores the bizarre and troubling skeletal systems beneath the skin of friendly and familiar cartoon characters.

Kevin Cornell and Matthew Sutter perform an interminable character sketch battle at The Superest. Start with The Unopposinator and work forward to the present.

And... that's it for now.