BOOOOOOM! He's Done It Again!

As I'm sure you've seen BOOOOOOOM! Has opened my eyes to another wonderful artist. Her name is Marguerite Sauvage and she does beautiful illustrations. Mostly of people or sometimes people bodies with animal heads. I love the use of colour and white. Like how she'll colour the main focus of the picture in a bright colour to draw your eyes in but then still outline other also important entities in bright colours. BRILLIANT! Her website obviously gives you a better look at her works but I chose quite a few because I just couldn't choose. I think my favorite has to be the ultra-luxurious looking girl chillin with the iguanas. Although the banjo playing monkey (below) def has a place in my heart.

A Barrel of Fun!

The April 2009 cover of Vanity Fair was absolutely AMAZING! I was so excited to see Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen, Jason Segel and Paul Rudd adorned in barrels in a O' Brother Where 'Art Thou style cover. As Well the inside of the magazine showed Rogen, Segel and Hill in nude unitard bodysuits with Paul Rudd smelling Seth Rogens hair. Calling them "Comedies New Legends" VF opens up to show these people portraying their comedic "part" as well known movie/media figures. Danny McBride "The Breakthrough" as Jack Nicholson in The Shining (I'm a bit confused as to why they chose that instead of something funny) and Russell Brand "The Comic" as Charlie Chaplin. Bill Hader, Anna Farria, Jason Bateman and Leslie Mann as The Honeymooners (my favorite!). Paul Rudd "The Role Model" playing Jack Lemmon in Frankenstein, Jonah Hill "The Chopper" as George Washington? I think? That's the only connection I can make with the picture. As well it shows Amy Poehler, Will Arnett, Jason Segel, Seth Rogen but I don't want to ruin the whole fun of it for you. Seth Rogens is pretty hilarious. 

An Addition To The Blog

So Fraggle Rock now has a little sister, Picture Show. There's a new link on my sidebar, because I'm all about easy access. Basically I post pictures that I randomly take and that I like. Another exciting thing, totally to do with this is I registered for school. I'm going to be studying Photojournalism and Commercial Photography, which I'm really excited about so hopefully my picture taking abilities get better as time progresses. 

Stand Up Against C-15!

I was told about this website that was an online petition against C-15, called 

whyprohibition.ca . A compilation of user blogs, political banter and it gives common people the easy access to stand up and fight to shoot down prohibition. People who may not feel the need to stand up publicly to do so can now anonymously protest against it. 

Bill C-15 is " an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances and to make related and consequential amendments to other acts" - The Minister of Justice- The Hon. Robert Douglas Nicholson. Basically this bill is about giving people who are facing drug charges a minimum sentence penalty. Much like the United States. It basically takes the judges job away from them. There is no case specifics, every case is dealt with as if it was like the last. One case will set president and the rest will have to be subject to it's doom. 

Marijuana is less harmful than alcohol, cigarettes and McDonalds so why the bad wrap? If controlled the government could thrive on BC's perfect cannabis growing climate. Mass produce it, different strains, different prices, different highs or uses and tax it. They would be making money off of a less toxic habit. Though studies have shown that marijuana does affect your mobility skills and your thought processes short term (when you're high) there are no definitive long term health issues. Unlike smoking cigarettes which contain more poisons and toxins than I could even imagine sucking into my body, or alcohol which permanently damages your liver. People in China have been using cannabis since 6000 BC! They put it to use as a health aid, smoking it alleviates pain and they took advantage.

If the government was smart enough to harvest this god given miracle plant they could genetically alter it to be a super-drug. Think about if the government took just a little bit of the money that they have for AIDS and Cancer funding and put it towards scientists who's job was to find the exact cannaboids to breed and make a plant that has less side effects than pain killers but is specialized to each type of disease. They've already taken the first step in making medicinal use of marijuana legal. People with Crones disease, or Rheumatoid Arthritis can go in and get a bag of dry chalky buds and smoke it to alleviate their pain. So what's so bad about the rest of us doing it? 

Go to the sight and take a stand against Bill C-15. Why take a step backwards when we were going the right way in the first place?

As well the blog post "Shit Or Get Off The Pot" was my fav so far. Check it out. 

A Cause Worth Fighting For

Recently I went out and purchased War Child's latest effort to fund money for kids at war. A $10 CD that I think that everybody should go BUY or PURCHASE from Itunes. It's a pretty solid CD and a great concept. War Child asked 15 of the most well known artists from decades ago to pick 15 new artists to re-create one of their famous songs. It turned out great! The best part about this is War Child gets every cent that is made off of these CD's (minus applicable taxes of course). Here's the lineup, I hope this inspires you to do a little bit for these poor kids.

(Covering artist first, original in brackets)

Beck - Leopard Skin Pill-Box Hat (Bob Dylan)

The Kooks - Victoria (The Kinks)

The Hold Steady - Atlantic City (Bruce Springsteen)

Hot Chip - Transmission (Joy Division)

Lilly Allen Feat Mick Jones - Straight To Hell (The Clash)

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Sheena Is A Punk Rocker (The Ramones)

Franz Ferdinand - Call Me (Blondie)

Duffy - Live and Let Die (Paul McCartney)

Estelle - Superstition (Stevie Wonder)

Rufus Wainwright - Wonderful & Song For Children (Brian Wilson)

Scissor Sisters - Do The Strand (Roxy Music)

Peaches - Search And Destroy (Iggy Pop)

Adam Cohen - Take This Waltz (Leonard Cohen)

Elbow - Running to Stand Still (U2)

The Like - You Belong To Me (Elvis Costello)

TV On The Radio - Heroes (David Bowie)

Cute Shit

Thank you I Can Read.

HEY! Check These Guys Out

That is if you haven't already. They are The Rifles, from Chingford London and came out with their first CD "No Love Lost" in 2006 and have come out with 3 since. The band is made up of Joel Stoker (Lead Vocals/Rhythm Guitar), Luke Crowther (Lead Guitar), Robert Pyne (Bass/Backup Vocals) and Grant Marsh (Drums). I'm having a tough time trying to group them in with another artist to give you an idea of what they sound like. Their music parents would have to be like if Franz Ferdinand (who's CD Tonight I am totally infatuated with and it's pretty much constantly on in my mind), The Strokes, Arctic Monkeys and Razorlight all had an orgie and a baby was created it would be The Rifles. Even in some of their songs there's a pinch of Kings of Leon. It's amazing, I'm having an eargasm right now just listening to them. And BY THE WAY their music parents are all pretty much some of my all time fav bands (minus Razorlight because I've only recently come to love them). So I suggest you take a gander at these english blokes.
My top 5 favorite Rifles songs (for your downloading convenience to get a good taste):
1. Robin Hood
2. Waterside
3. Repeated Offender
4. She's Got Standards
5. Holiday In The Sun (Has kind of an old school english punk vibe, LOVIN IT! London Falling mixed with Anarchy In the UK but more chill)

I hope you enjoy, I know I do. Happy listening!

I Am So Happy This Is Happening

If you have been wondering what has been going up downtown on the Eastside at the site of the old Woodwards building, check it out. Art-chitect Gregory Henriques has designed a multi-purposed giant of a building to inhabit some of the space. "The project is an exciting attempt to, in a single stroke, remake a depressed community"- Globe and Mail. This is truly a vision of how to start cleaning up Vancouvers most troubled streets, in my oppinion.

The building is home to 536 suites. So here's the breakdown; 40% of those suites are going to non-market housing! Basically that means that in this building there will be a vast mix of "classes". . . . a true social expirament. This building will also house SFU's new Centre for the Contemporary Arts, the National Film Board, a Nesters market, the first bank to move back into the downtown east side, and non-profit organizations. Best of all, it won't be a flop. All of the units sold out in the short time of 8 hours! I don't know of anything like this happening before and I think it is absolutely wonderful. There was a lineup around the block the night before the sales office opened. This is the first time EVER that there has been such beautiful real-estate mixed with low income housing. I am so excited for Gregory Henriques, this really is a one of a kind idea and the perfect time to have it moving in. The project will be up and running sometime between May and June and the students will move in months later. I suggest you go check this sustainable building out. Thumbs up Gregory!

".....This is as good a project, program and site and client group that I could ever imagine having. If this is the end of my career then I'm okay with it. I've done more than I ever thought I could do in one life." - Gregory Henriques

ART ATTACK!

Motoi Yamamoto, another great gift from BOOOOOOM! Though I don't have much to tell you about this amazingly unique artist as I can't find anything about him online really. Basically he uses salt to make these large pieces of floor art. He's pretty much nuts, I'll keep trying to put in more research time to update you on his installments. As well, it reminds me of those Art Attacks! That would happen on tv sometimes and it was short, a british guy would take random things and make a giant picture on a field or something of the sort, same idea but these are way more intricate.

In Memoriam

While reading The Onion today, I noticed this story entitled "Tree Featured In 'The Deer Hunter' Dies" and obviously was intrigued. The Onion is pretty much my favorite news source considering it's quite witty.

This tree, located in the Blue Ridge Mountains and is one of the most publicized Hemlocks ever. The tree was planted in 1722, had been featured in 40 films and died of a mixture of lightening and adelgid beetles.

"[The tree] was a consummate professional that truly lived for its work," said filmmaker and friend Michael Mann, who cast the 98-foot-tall plant in its acclaimed role as an Adirondack black spruce in the background of 1992's The Last Of The Mohicans. "On Mohicans we would sometimes do 30 or 40 takes, and each time it gave us something totally different and interesting. This is a sad day for cinema."

Just one of the quotes from the article, which I suggest you read more of.

Reminder

FUCKING RIGHTS! Saw this on I Can Read about 30 seconds ago. Figured it needed to be shown across the universe. Pretty much the key to life.

This Shit Is BANANAS!

Sorry for the Gwen Stefani because really it's not banana's it's nuts.........robotics. You MUST check out this guys blog. Rob Spence (a filmmaker who lost his eye) decided one day when he was looking at his fake eye that he wanted to figure a way to put a camera in his fake eye. So on his blog it takes you through the movie of "The Two Week Trial" of this guy getting funding and having people fly across the world to be a part of this idea. To try and make him an EYEBORG!!! Dun Dun DUNNNNN. It's pretty inspiring if you think about it. I thought this guy could use a few more people watching him because he's pretty remarkable. Thumbs up Rob!

Chronology

So apparently there's no bloggers block happening here. I feel that I should get my ideas and thoughts all out at the time that I am thinking of them or else they'll be unauthentic. Or I might forget to say something and we wouldn't want that. Here's a little bit of what I like to call "Chronology" a little bit of random tidbits about my favorite recreational drug. . . . marijuana.

I think it's only right to start from the beginning. 

"Marijuana" is the Mexican name for the plant that is known to botanists as Cannabis Sativa. In Africa it's "Dagga", China "Ma", Northern Europe "Hemp", India "Bhang" (that one's my favorite), "Ganga" and "Charas". India has the most names for it. . . they must like it a lot. It most likely originated in Central Asia but now grows in almost any climate and has been cultivated for at least 5,000 years. Also, it is one of the oldest commodities not grown for food. From this plant you can make paper, rope, canvas and clothes.  

Pythonbrug

This is a picture of Amsterdam's Python Bridge or the Pythonbrug. It was built in 2001 by the Rotterdam Firm of architects and connects the Sporenburg Penninsula with Borneo Island. It is a walking bridge with wooden steps all the way up and across it, and is much bigger than it looks. I get really excited about unique but practical art-chitecture. Something that totally helps the area out esthetically but is practical. I walked for HOURS to get to this bridge because I didn't know that it was totally out of the main city of Amsterdam and actually had to walk across two other bridges to get there. An amazing sight and I'm glad to say that I have experienced it in real life. 

A Little Bit of a Makeover

So I figure that since spring is.. . . springing my blog could use a little makeover. So my new deal is to seasonally change the look of my blog. I feel that it's needed, just like spring clean up, to keep things new and fresh. Enjoy!

Quote Of the Day!

"One of the ugliest bitches I've ever seen in my life rolled up, and I'm not one to call women ugly, but I think this woman was, because she had a penis." - Disco Cabbie (Dave Chappelle) 200 Cigarettes 

The King

Recently Chelsee put me onto the show T.I's Road To Redemption, because OBVIOUSLY I wold love it. I LOVE T.I and I LOVE people in need of help and reform. .  . . and I not so secretly have a crush on reality TV even though I am sure that it is slowly rotting away at my brain from the inside out. Basically the whole idea of the show is T.I goes to people in gangs or into drugs and such and puts on an "intervention" style show to get these kids, essentially off the streets. The one that I watched yesterday followed a 19 year old guy from some slum in LA who had been a part of one of the chapters of the "Crips" since he was 13. He was pretty much directed there because his mom is married to one of the high ranking members of the gang. So T.I shows up and takes this kid to a mans house who was a part of a gang and then got shot in the back and it paralyzed him from the waist down, basically showing him the worst case scenario if he is in a gang and doesn't end up in jail or dead. THEN he takes him to the federal prison and has a little sit down chat with a former gang member who had been sent to jail and pretty much told the kid that if he were in jail he'd be raped and killed because he's small, his gang chapter is small and he's half black and half mexican so he wouldn't be able to choose a side if the yard came down to a race battle. That's pretty much the scare the shit out of the guy tactic, and then comes the sugar. The guy wanted to go back to school to become a chef, so T.I takes the guy to a high class LA restaurant that hasn't opened yet and gets the chance to cook with the chef. It was wonderful! When the show was ending they did the update as to what he was doing now and it said that he had enrolled in school and was working as a prep cook at an upscale downtown restaurant. Good for you! The next thing you see is him receiving two boxes from T.I that said that it was the first of many to come, incentive to keep him off the streets. The boxes were filled with all of the kitchen tools and hardware he would need to make pretty much anything. I think that the best part about this is that it's T.I's community service to keep HIM out of jail. WONDERFUL! At least the courts in the states are doing something positive with people in the spotlight that have done things that could be turned into examples. 

Oh What A Day!

So I'll start this post of by saying that Friday was a pretty random day for me. Worked sucked, as usual and I thought that I had plans with a girl that I had used to work with but they were cancelled and ended up doing what I actually wanted to do which was get some stuff done around the house and hang out with my good friend Cheese. I began the night off by picking her up at her house and we proceeded to my house. We then gathered up all of the bottles, cans and other recyclable drink containers and I expertly tetris packed them all into my hatchback. Worried about time we killed two birds with one stone and smoked a bowl in my car before heading to the Bottle & Return it Depot. Though we had no idea where it was or what time it was open until we were lucky to find that it was where we thought it would be and it was open, I think we were the last two people there and were probably frustrating the couple who I assume ran it. After we did our good deed and cashed in on our alcoholism ($40 later) we topped my car up with some gas and headed off on our wonderful adventure. Dinner was the one and only Pita Pit, of course it was delicious though the girl looked like she could have been 10 years old and when I asked her what the special sauce tasted like I'm pretty sure she said "It's a secret" or nothing I couldn't tell cause she was pretty quiet. From there we headed down towards the Marijuana Party Bookstore, planning on only buying a long stem I was in for a big surprise. It took hours of contemplation for me to finally decide to purchase my new baby, the fabulous piece of art in the picture(s) above ( a big thank you to Stu for his pipe modeling skills). A hand crafted "Hippo" pipe. I was having a difficult time deciding if I should spend the money on it but the wonderful people that work in the bookstore gave me a very large discount and said they had wanted it to go to a good home and could tell that I really wanted it. This pipe was my unicorn, I must have gone in there 10 times and looked at this pipe every time saying that it was my dream to own it and now I do. 

Crrrrazy Nuts Birds!

These things are my new heroes! Macgregor's Bird of Paradise aka Macgregor's Giant Honeysucker aka Macgregoria Pulchri (like the italics? I'm like a dictionary). The bird is a little bit bigger than a ruler, black and lives in New Guinea. But these simple looking black birds do nuts shit when they're mating or trying to mate. They are monogamous birds and the male does a fun little dance and show to attract a mate and there's different kinds of moves and colors. The pictures are of the same birds! They're unique, way to be your own people....er..birds. It's on Planet Earth, I am obsessed with those DVD's. Biggest geek ever but watching nature in high definition is like seeing it up close and that's even more intense. And to think that they had no budget to shoot these movies is even more insane. Who is funding these films and can they fund my life please? They can film it and sell it on DVD's I don't care, if I had an unlimited budget I would travel all around the world and buy so much shit and take all my friends . . . . okay I'm a dreamer, what can I say, I'm quite off topic of the birds. 

On A Side Note. . . . .

The album cover of "Frances the Mute" the Mars Volta's second album is an interpretation of the Rene Magritte painting called the Lovers. This album came about when Jeremy Ward (one of the members of Mars Volta) found a diary in the back seat of a car when he was working as a repo man. He read the diary and identified with the original owners story as they were both adopted. In the diary the man told the story of his search for his birth parents and the named songs on the album are the names of the diary author's parents. The song "The Widow" (of the same album) has many interpretations as to what the meaning behind it is. One "story" behind it that of Jeremy Wards fight with a drug addiction that eventually ends the reason for his death. The second, more theatrical verson is about a Priest who had been having sexual relations with a young member of the church, Frances. The Priest who was not so much of a man of the faith because of the sounds of it he was a bit of a man whore, had slept with many other women in the town and eventually contracted the AIDS virus and given in to Frances. When he found out he then cut out Frances' tongue making her mute so that she couldn't tell the town what had happened. Personally I like the story of the second one better, and nobody will know for sure unless they've heard it from Jeremy Ward or read the infamous repossessed diary.

John Baldessari

                                                   


Since one of my great passions in life is photography I thought it's about time that I begin to share some of my favorite photographers with you. Firstly I would like to introduce you to John Baldessari. I thoroughly enjoy his work as I hope you will too, though technically he's classified as conceptual art I'm lumping because I can. The colors on black and white photo's are my favorite, I like that he always spots the faces out, it's like it makes the picture more . . . mysterious? It is a feast for my eyes. Bon Appetit!

                                                 

I Am Officially Disappointed In People

Today I am officially disappointed in people. People who have been raised in a home where I am most likely sure that they learned rights and wrongs. Wrongs like theft or vandalism. It's unfortunate to know that some people will be so nice to your face and act like a genuine friend or someone who is interested in your life and even goes to the point of saying that if anything were to "go down" they would be on your side. Someone who says that they would stand up for you and your well being in a situation in which you need help, but is completely bullshitting you to your face. It is truly sad that when I opened my home to someone who was a friend of a friend would disrespect my hospitality and steal from my friend, steal something from my house not knowing who's it was. Then proceeding to slash ONE tire of a person who he probably hadn't even said one word to. It's bothering to know that these people one day will potentially have children of their own. Children that they will have the biggest influence on the way that they represent themselves than any other person. To think that one day these vandals, thieves, murderers, hard core drug dealers and gang members will be raising spawn of their own (or not raising) and taking on their views, beliefs, mannerisms, and ideas scares the shit out of me. Say what you mean, do unto others as you want to be done to you and man up to your "mistakes".