One of the strangest and most hilarious political moments. Stephen Colbert roasts the President at the White House Correspondents’ dinner. Guys like us, Colbert gestures to the President twelve feet away, we don’t pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in reality. And reality has a well-known liberal bias. When Colbert left the podium the President and First Lady gave him quick nods, unsmiling . Although some are thanking Colbert for his truthiness, he’ll get an IRS audit very soon. See it all in three parts: 1, 2, 3 [links offline now] - or a torrent file of the entire night.
Checkout this nice flashy site for Indian commercial photographer Sharad Haksar.
See the crazy graffiti dolls of French artist Miss Van at Galerie Magda Danysz in Paris. And see more here from a recent show in Barcelona.
British art mogul Charles Saatchi has added a new area to the Saatchi Gallery website where artists can upload their work -for free. With the Your Gallery section, Saatchi wants to offer a way for collectors and artists to get together and cut out the dealer. Of course, with just a few thousand more uploads it’ll turn out to be a crass mess. And also checkout the expansive collection of online images from the Triumph of Painting exhibit. It’s one of the best online collection of modern painting in one place.
Director David Schmoeller describes what it’s like directing Klaus Kinski. Don’t say action! Kinski orders the director. What about if I just say ‘Klaus?’ Schmoeller offers. And the film crew mumbles incessently for him to Please Kill Mr. Kinksi.
Graphic designer Danielle Aubert has created a collection of drawings using Excel.
Urban theorist and activist Jane Jacobs has died at the age of 89. Read more about Jacobs and listen to a recent interview with her.
Frank Gehry has unveiled plans to bring more density to downtown Los Angeles with a $750 million project to remake Grand Avenue as a pedestrian-based gathering point. On a three acre spot across the street from the Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall, the plans call for a 47-story hotel/condo building, a 25-story apartment/loft building, and two nearby three-story retail pavilions made of limestone and glass at Grand near First Street. The projected completion date for the first phase is 2009, with the entire nine-acre Grand Avenue project by 2014. More at grandavenuecommittee.org.
Great collection of photos of Marfa, TX from Texas photographer Allison V. Smith. See more of Smith’s work here.
Hybrid cabs in San Francisco are hitting the 100,000 mile mark. It’s been generally good news: Fuel savings between $20 and $31 over the traditional, full-size sedan cabs per 150- to 300-mile shifts. Air conditioning cost on hot days: $5 a shift, about half the sedan-version cost. Brakes are lasting twice as long.
I’m sure you’ll find something you like in the portfolio of English photographer Simon Norfolk. The Bosnia:Bleed portfolio is particularly moving.
So you see in Japan, the nerds there make little paper toy robot figures and battle each other in a multi-leagued wrestling federation. It’s called Kami-Robo and is been going on for over 23 frickin’ years. London’s ICA is puttin’ on a show of Kami-Robos this month.
Cabspotting maps San Francisco Yellow Cab taxis in real-time in a ghostly, pulsing way.
Today’s New York Times Sunday Magazine has a nice peek inside the cupboards, closet and yard of eccentric Cincinnati art collector Andy Stillpass. And a slideshow.
Belgium-born NYC photographer Bart Michiels has taken beautiful photographs of some of Europes most notorious battlefields. The photographs in The Course Of History are landscapes of the worst killing fields of Europe, of battles that were turning points in our history, defining our future. See more of Michiels’ work at the Foley Gallery in NYC and as a finalist for the Santa Fe Prize for Photography.
The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. has just launched a great new site, American Art at The Phillips Collection that has hundreds of images of terrific paintings.
In her series Serial No. 3817131 New York photographer Rachel Papo took photos of Israeli female soldiers from the the summer of 2004. Her photos are currently up at the Paul Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles.
Swiss photographer Loan Nguyen has taken some great photos of the feet of toy animals. Her other photos of forests, family and figures in the fog are nearly as quirky.
Semapedia is trying to create a way to tag the physical world with footnotes. They want to create a physical Wikipedia by tagging little semacodes to buildings and objects so that people can use their mobile phone cameras to retrieve relevant wikipedia articles. Check out some photos of tagged objects.
