Reasons To Be Cheerful: week of 10/24/08

(This is a compiled repost of items culled from my soon-to-be-extinct subsidiary blog, 'Brief Window')

1. Chris Wyllie's 'Tailgate The Vote'

Artist Chris Wyllie uses car parts and other found objects in his work, which can be seen at the
Found Gallery in Newport, Rhode Island, and online at the Found Gallery website.

2. Ron Howard Requests Your Attention:



3. I, Nerd (New stills from the upcoming Star Trek flick)

Okay, I'll admit it, I was a little bit heartened the other day by these images from the new
Star Trek flick - - the one we'll have to wait 'til next Summer to see (whether it's any good or not)...

I'd had a moment several months back when I realized with sudden dismay that although the movie is a 'prequel', they probably wouldn't remain faithful to the look of the original TV series.
Sets, costumes, groovy high-'60s color palette, etc. - -



Perhaps because I'm a nerd,
(and a geezer, too) it just hadn't occurred to me that there might not be an interest in adhering to that style just for some sake of 'continuity'.

- - But at least it looks like they're kinda sorta trying to at least give a passing nod to that style.
A 're-imagining' or something.

Looks like the starships will be a little bit 'retro'-looking, too.

Hooray, I'll take it.

You can see these and other images embiggenated at the 'official' website...

4, Via the rich, linky goodness of Journalista comes the treasures of the extensive illustration archives of
Norman Saunders (1907 - 1989).

A good intro and prelude:
'The Painted Covers of Norman Saunders'
at Comics Should Be Good!

- - and then the massive trove of pulp, paperback, comic book, magazine and trading card artwork at Norman Saunders.Com!!

Dig in, and dig it!

Reasons To Be Cheerful: week of 10/17/08

(This is a compiled repost of items culled from my soon-to-be-extinct subsidiary blog, 'Brief Window')

1. Leif Peng at Today's Inspiration has put up a great string of posts looking at the work of David Stone Martin, the American artist / illustrator responsible for so many classic and influential album covers, primarily in the jazz vein, primarily in the 1950s and '60s.

Click over to:
- David Stone Martin: For the Record
- David Stone Martin: Early Days
- David Stone Martin: Modernism meets Traditionalism

One link included is to Fox Music's David Stone Martin flickr set, which is where the four images posted here were found.

(Via Martin Klasch)

For more DSM, see also:
- The Album Art of David Stone Martin, a list at Rate Your Music
- LP Cover Lover
- Like Wow! Vinyl Culture Quarterly




















2. Composer / Arranger Neal Hefti passed away last Saturday, at the age of 85.

He'd worked with big band leaders like
Woody Herman and Count Basie in the 1940s and '50s, as well as many other top names.

Hefti segued into scoring for movies and television in the '60s, which is where he'd said he did his best work.


Most people who lived through that era can instantly recall his themes to 'The Odd Couple' and the '60's incarnation of 'Batman'.

Surfing about the web, a few interesting links turn up that give further insight into the life and work of Neal Hefti - -

Follow links to:
- New York Times obituary
- A profile at Space Age Pop.Com
- A 2004 interview with Neal Hefti, posted at The Robert Farnon Society Website
- Several tracks from Neal Hefti are available at Grabb.it

- The out-of-print LP, 'Hefti in Gotham City', recorded during the height of 'Bat-Mania', is available for download at 'Blog of 999 Dances'

- The 'Hefti in Gotham City' LP included the brassy track 'Gotham City Municipal Swing Band', which for more than a decade became familiar in and around the San Francisco bay area as theme music to 'Creature Features', the local late-night horror movie TV show, hosted for years by Bob Wilkins.









3. The evidence has been around for a while now: Men are the New Women.

- - At least as far as the fashion industry, the cosmetic, personal accessory, personal fragrance industries and certainly the world of advertising are concerned.

Options and a range of choices are a good thing, but not surprisingly it feels like it may only be commerce that's driving it.





"Hmm, what else can we get them to buy?"

How about Pantyhose for Men?

Follow the link above to the 'e-MANcipate!' site, and also check out Manolo's Shoe Blog to learn so much more about 'Mantyhose'.


4. In Walks Plantbot!

It's the planter box that strolls about the room, following the best patches of sunlight.

Imagine several in a small apartment!

Click over to
The Play Coalition for a closer look.

- - And while you're there, take a peek at their other innovative products, like The Subtletie and The Immersion Scarf.
Pretty tricky... (Via Neatorama)

5. Click over to
The Advertising Artwork of Dr. Seuss,
and see some of what Ted Geisel was up to
when he wasn't creating children's books...

Reasons To Be Cheerful: week of 10/10/08

(This is a compiled repost of items culled from my soon-to-be-extinct subsidiary blog, 'Brief Window')

1. Prepare for a feast of amazing visuals at
Wrong side of the art.

"...Specializing in cult/horror/exploitation/B/sci-fi movie posters, and basically any other genre to which one may refer as 'shit'."

(click on images to ENLARGE in a new window)

(Found via DTYBYWL)




































































































2. Follow link to a stack of compelling visuals: 'I Got Millions of Images' at
WFMU's Beware of the Blog (via NOW STYLE POP CROSSOVER).






































3. 'Sitting in the Dark with Patton Oswalt' (and at a high school graduation ceremony, too)

This film series is already half over as of this writing, and it's only really available to folks in Los Angeles (not me), but still it's an interesting peek into the current happenings of Actor / Stand-Up Comedian
Patton Oswalt and his passion for cinema.

- Click over to Patton's website for details and program notes on the series of double-bills he's programmed at
The New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles (ending later this week).

At left, a lovely poster for the series by cartoonist
Ivan Brunetti!
◀

(click on image to ENLARGE in a new window)

You can also check out
a nice interview with
Patton Oswalt at The Onion's A.V. Club, in which he elaborates further on the movies he's chosen, his history with the New Beverly and with film in general.








- - And as long as you're skirting the edges of Planet Oswalt, head back to his website and read the funny and truly inspiring commencement speech he delivered this past June at his old high school in Ashburn, Virginia.


4. Spin the dial over to The Outland Institute for Eight Theme Tunes No TV Show Could Live Up To.

The question is posed: "Is it possible for a theme tune to promise something so exciting, so spooky, so newsy or so scantily-clad that the television show simply cannot live up to it?"

The institute is located in Melbourne, Australia, which (for me) enhances the exotic qualities of the TV themes chosen (in a series of video clips), even when the shows are somewhat pedestrian.

- - And while I agree whole-heartedly with their inclusion and opinions regarding 'Space: 1999', I personally disagree with the stance they've taken on 'Lost In Space', as I much prefer the theme music to the first two seasons, as opposed to the theme used in the third.


















- - However, the Outland Institute post has also introduced me to 'Chopper Squad' and
'K-9 and Company', so for that I am indebted...

- Some further info has come from the Institute- -
"Curiously, the "K9 & Company" theme was written by Ian Levine who also wrote and produced "So Many Men, So Little Time" by Miquel Brown (two million copies sold), and "High Energy" by Evelyn Thomas (seven million copies sold).

"And they were both terrible too."

Louis Prima and Space Junk

(Reposted from 'Brief Window')

Oh, the places you'll go when running a google search in our modern, information-saturated age...

...So there I was, innocently searching the web for any quick bits of background info regarding 'Beep Beep', a mid-1950s song (with proto-space age sound FX) from lounge lord Louis Prima, in preparation for submitting the song (with spoken intro) to a 'songs with sound effects in them' episode of the Contrast Podcast.

One nugget of news I encountered was that the song had been played in December of 2006 as a wake-up call aboard the international space station for astronaut
Sunita Williams.






Among Williams' achievements on her mission was having been the first person to run the Boston Marathon while in Earth's orbit.

A further bit of trivia happened while Williams was on one of several space walks, floating outside the station.
A camera she was carrying became untethered and floated away into space before she could do anything about it.








Where it gets more interesting is that the mishap was captured on video, and that we here on Earth can still watch the incident on YouTube.

(Found via Kempton Ideas Revolutionary, where you can also listen to Prima's
'Beep Beep'.)

What's more, that wayward camera is now among thousand of pieces of space junk circling the globe, all currently being fastidiously tracked by NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office.

Like bits of space junk in orbit, little 'pearls' of trivia collide and bounce off one another in interesting ways, but can soon become a dense cloud of data and just all too much to take in...

Reasons To Be Cheerful: week of 10/03/08

(This is a compiled repost of items culled from my soon-to-be-extinct subsidiary blog, 'Brief Window')

1. Normally I don't care for big lists, especially if they try to be 'definitive'.

I loved Tom Spurgeon's post yesterday at
The Comics Reporter:

'The 50 Things That Every Comics Collection Truly Needs'

- - Not just because it included a small link to a Pogo cover gallery I posted last year, and not just because I agreed with so many of the choices and smugly recognized so many things from my own collection.

(The collection that sits in storage while I do my current 'limbo shuffle'... sigh)

Even with inevitable omissions and the fun differences in opinion that such a list elicits, this is still a great list of great stuff.

It speaks to the warm & fuzzy joys of a lifetime spent reading funny books and the surprising breadth of territory that such a journey can cover.



















2. - The Record Cabinet
Cool Hunting reports on a new, mid-century styled record cabinet from Atocha Design.

(found via Monoscope)

"...the first offering from Jenn and Nick Atocha (the husband and wife team behind Atocha Design), is the happy result of two music fanatics needing a home for their newly combined vinyl collections. Unlike most LP storage systems, which store records sideways allowing you to only see the spine, the Record Cabinet allows you flip through your collection savoring the artwork in full frontal view. Jenn elaborates, 'The whole MP3, digital music world doesn't make sense to me. So many musicians are visual people and you really need the LP at a minimum to see their vision. So much is expressed in album cover art that becomes part of how you hear the music. Pick any Beatles record, or Bowie, or Bjork, or Beck, just to stick with the letter B, and imagine hearing it without the artwork. You can't!'"

"...Each piece is made to order and pricing is based on size, materials and design requirements. The option pictured has six LP drawers and four CD drawers and is priced at $12,500."

- - So, just the thing for storing all those cool Reader's Digest 'Easy Listening' records you found at the thrift store, yes - -?

3. Follow link to:'50 Inspiring Vintage Advertisements' at WellMedicated, the 'web design overdose' blog.