Byrdhouse

Snuggie vs. Slanket: The Ultimate Consumer Products Death Match

Round one of this gift giving season are two marvelous 19.95 products as seen on television: the Snuggie, a monk-red blanket with sleeves (also sold in wizard-blue), and the unfortunately named challenger, the Slanket.

Gladiator, ready?

Challenger, ready?

*whistle

CHIRP Holiday Edition 2008

Grab the easy-touch listening tunes of this specially released edition of CHIRP for the holidays. Perfect for any flight or long drive to see family. CHIRP Holiday 2008 mix

The Art Ad of Bob Marley on Krog Street

I generally stay away from discussions on street art, but I pass by Krog Street each morning on my way in and thought this was worth mentioning. The Bob Marley (I thought first it was Whoopi Goldberg) mural was recently painted over. And not with typical replacement, but a blatant defacement that reads "Art Ad." The Krog Street Tunnel's history has always had the spirit of a public art space in Atlanta, so I had always questioned the "mini advertisement" that accompanied the airbrushed portrait. But wow, this slap in the face could be heard from the other end of the tunnel.

Holiday Bonus

Byrdhouse and Weight Watchers would like to offer you this special gift during the holiday season: 250 FlexPoints. These can be used to splurge (in moderation of course) on special treats, parties or dining out. Please don't tell Weight Watchers.

Top Ten Top Tens

These are the Top Ten reasons why I'll click on a link that has a Top Ten anything: 

1. Turns Out: I'm a reasonably intelligent person that loves pop culture. 
2. Paris Hilton (or not. pick your favorite celebretard and we'll go with that) 
3. Best Game Ever? Fight amongst yourselves. 
4. I Love Cracked. 
5. I Want to Bitch About How Their Top Ten Wasn't Knowledgeable Enough. (Welcome to the Club) 
6. Vh1 Has Brainwashed Me Into Oblivion. 
7. I Am Very Interested in That Field. 
8. I Have No Life. 
9. I Wanna See What's the Best. 
10. I Love the Mystique.

Let the Right One In

The Swedish director of this haunting vampire tale replies to news of an American remake in the works by Cloverfield director Matt Reeves and sci-fi producer JJ Abrams:

Remakes should be made of movies that aren’t very good, that gives you the chance to fix whatever has gone wrong. I’m very proud of my movie and think it’s great, but the Americans might be of an other opinion. The saddest thing for me would be to see that beautiful story made into something mainstream. I don’t like to whine, but of course – if you’d spent years on painting a picture, you’d hate to hear buzz about a copy even before your vernissage! 1

Last evening we saw Let the Right One In. It was a great, and yet somehow, an underwhelming experience for me. Perhaps my expectations were too high. It had all the elements that I want in a good movie: character, story, photography, yet something was still missing.

The photography tends to be mostly blues, greens, grays and the cool whites of fluorescent lighting. The framing is highly composed and stationary, with very, very (very) short depths of field. The architectural setting is decidedly modernist, buildings which are trendy by today's standards, but in the early eighties were tinged with institutional/socialist qualities.

Despite how great it is, the photography isn't what makes this film good. (Also, it is certainly not the typographical selection for the subtitles, which makes you work harder than you should to read the dialogue.) It is the story that does it. It is the complexity in its characters.

I failed to have a close connection to the cultural dimension of the film though and this is where I think a good film can be a great film to an audience. I felt foreign to it. I experienced the same thing when seeing Ringu, the Japanese predecessor to the American version, The Ring I liked the remake better. I'm curious to see if an American version of Let the RIght One In will do the same.

Why do I still have a slide projector and a minidisc player?

There have been many instances where I have thought of a fresh appropriation for something created years back on a different device like a tape deck or minidisk player. These bits of sound (or in some cases, images) never made the "technological jump" with the rest of my digital luggage. There they rested, locked into their own proprietary format, inable to be quickly realized in a new contex, only available on an abandoned device. One may choose to sell outdated equipment on ebay or donate them to a charity. Not me.

This got me to thinking how certain playback devices offer unique player-specific qualities. The cassette player adds an unexpected hiss to its recordings. The crackle of a scratched LP. The striped visual noise of a VCR whose tracking is a bit off. Likewise, there are recording-specific attributes, those that are encoded into the work at the time of the recording. Film does not look like video.

From wikipedia:

"The medium is the message" is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan meaning that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived, creating subtle change over time.

How might the media itself posses meaning regardless of the content it stores? Furthermore, should this understanding of media and their specific qualities belong in the communication designer's toolset? What if a movie that is set in the eighties is shot on a technology from that same time period, for instance on betamax?

In a recent exhibit at Art House in Castleberry Hill during LE FLASH, an artist displayed ephemera related to the Challenger explosion. The choice of slide projectors and 8mm film projectors added a layer of meaning that transgressed the content itself. It allowed you to see and experience the event as though you were in that 1986 elementary school classroom when the tragedy occurred.

Where Do Chicken Nuggets Come From?

 

We went to see Banksy's installation of animatronics entitled, "Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill" now running on Seventh Avenue near Bleeker Street. It's like the hall of presidents only with fish sticks and hot dogs instead of presidents. See more videos and images here.

Why I like films about time travel

The actual why I'm not sure about. So sorry for that misrepresentative post title. Actually I'm now thinking it might have been better titled, "Please Tell me why I like FIlms About Time Travel," because I really wish I had a clue why. Back to the Future, Donnie Darko, Memento, Primer, Twelve Monkeys All are about time, all are on my favorites list.

CHIRP Fall 2008

This season's CHIRP mix is out. The cover art is done by the talented Mick Bailey. Get the Chirp Fall edition now.