Back in university, there were two or three guys whose most prominent piece of furniture was a giant black performance speaker - the sort of three foot by five foot box normally carted around in the back of a Ford Econoline van, the sort of thing that needed a strong professional amp.

Usually, these guys didn’t even play an instrument or belong to a band - they had made a significant investment in audio equipment so that they could be “da man” when it came time to set up a house party.

“Jesus! Look at the size of that speaker! They’ll hear the music down the street! You da man!”

Made in Queens is the story of a group of young Trinidadian men who wheel around their Queens neighbourhood on BMX bikes - jacked to the max with those old school speakers and decks.

“In this age of obsessive video sharing and social networking, nearly every action is designed and packaged for public consumption. Especially with young people,� says co-director Joe Stevens. “The immed­iate charm of Nick and his crew is that they’re the exact opposite of all that. There is nothing calculated or self-conscious about who they are. They’re just a group of friends doing some­thing to challenge themselves and have some laughs. It’s a story which would have never come from kids who were born here.�

Here’s the trailer:

h/t Creative Review blog

Technorati Tags: Made in Queens, amps

The latest ad from Discovery Networks: the world is awesome.

h/t @ryananderson

That’s SoundGarden covering Tap’s Big Bottoms.

Forget about stoic pride. Forget about demure recognition. When you hit a defining moment in your life, you should celebrate with energy, with passion and with a demonstrable air of excitement.

That’s what Rafael Nadal did last night, climbing up into the stands to hug his friends and family. He then walked across the top of the scoreboard at Centre Court to speak to the Spanish Crown Prince.

It was only after he had finished his personal celebrations that Nadal returned to the Court - where the tournament organizers in blue jackets grabbed him to make sure he returned to the age-old script for awarding the trophy - and maximizing television time for sponsors and Wimbledon club officeholders.

The second that blazer-toting apparatchik grabbed Nadal, I recognized that the Spaniard’s impulsive decision to head into the stands had exploited the transition between sport and business on Centre Court.

The convention is that the winner stands at Centre Court, turns to each side of the stands and does the aw-schucks do-see-do, then returns to his courtside chair to be led through the rest of the agenda.

Nadal did not pause to consider his dual obligations to sport and business - his epic match was a landmark in modern tennis, and he let his emotions shine brightly through.

Technorati Tags: joy, Wimbledon, Nadal, Federer, celebration, life goal

… from Popdose: Lists You Didn’t Ask For: Consumer Safety Edition.

“… 8. God is a white lie perpetuated through the ages to keep people distracted from the fact that life is long, cruel, and holds no meaning. Also, Mitchum deodorant contains actual chunks of Robert Mitchum.”

Brighton Port Authority - a new side project by Fatboy Slim/Norman Cook. I’ve loved this guy since the Housemartins and Beats International. Take a look at the video for Toe Jam, one of the first releases and backed by David Byrne and Dizee Rascal. There are a couple of other tracks on the MySpace.

Technorati Tags: Norman Cook, Fatboy Slim, Brighton Port Authority

Sure. Garage bands are mocked. Almost everyone has been in a band, humped equipment for a friend’s band, or paid a cover to hear a sh*tty band from your high school.

But you really don’t have the right to criticize. Because if you don’t throw your hat in the ring and take some risks, you will never fail .. but you will never hit the ball out of the park, neither.

Which is why I like For Those Who Tried To Rock - a blog chronicling:

“… band to have been formed by teens with that perfect mixture of big dreams and questionable talent in suburban garages, high school music rooms, and college dorms across America….”

It’s entry after entry of young hopes and ambition, slogging it out in basements, garages and clubs.

Technorati Tags: garage band, failed youth, hopes and dreams, Marshall amps, van down by the river

It’s a beautifully sunny day outside. Two pieces of inspiration for you - get out there and get creative!

And remember - the fear of embarrassment should never keep you from doing something ridiculous but entertaining.

You know, with all the focus on immediate prototyping and taking Alpha products to market, I think we forget the basic principles that underly most theories of public opinion research.

If you rely on user testing, your development process is only as strong as the variety and depth of demographics in your user pool.

Image courtesy vcwear.com

For your Saturday enjoyment, the video for Ghostbusters, notable for two things:

- one of the last times that a singer visualized making a telephone call by moving his finger in a circle (2:02), and
- a string of b-list artist cameos that provides a built-in “are they dead or alive” drinking game. Irene Cara? Danny Devito? That guy from Cheers?

Are your ideas inspirational? Can you challenge others to believe in the impossible? Are you a social butterfly, capable of building links between cool tools and others who are crazy, funny, idealistic, iconoclastic or poetic?

h/t to exitcreative

Technorati Tags: inspiration, Michael Bay, imagination, creativity

Finally. A tenuous reason to link to Russell’s splendid blog, eggbaconchipsandbeans - where he provides reviews and photos of the tasty grub prepared by local snack shops across the UK.

And the far less splendid, but somewhat entralling Grocery Eats. Deep fried White Castle Slider. That’s all I’ve got to say about that.

Euan Ferguson, writing in the Guardian, takes a light hearted look at the relationship between food and the senses, building off the ideas of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, in particular his loaded manifesto on “futurist cooking.”

[Marinetti, in a remarkable move for an Italian, suggested there were many more things better to eat than dried pasta]

Ferguson harkens back to his own memories - and the feeling of comfort brought on by otherwise boring and even unhealthy food:

“… A Ginsters sausage roll has to be accompanied by the sound of the M25, the feel of a crappy rental plastic gearstick, the gaze into rain, the smell of a cigarette to annoy the rubbish rental company and also because you cannot physically eat a Ginsters without smoking; the sound of the suburbs.

My favourite being-down meal, macaroni cheese with sweetcorn with an egg beaten into it, is best (trust me) accompanied by the feel of the remote, the opening bars of Armageddon, the smell of fresh-drying clothes, the sight of my kicked-off boots …” (Guardian Observer)

photo courtesy of DavidRLewis

Technorati Tags: Marinetti, futurist cooking, service centres, Ginsters

“… it’s a bit like making sausages. You don’t want to see them made, but they sure taste good …”

I love charcuterie. Of all shapes and sizes. Of all flavours, from savoury to hot. Fatty to dry.

Problem is, really good charcuterie demands careful preparation, respect for the process, and skill honed over time. And paying trough the nose.

“… His meats earn above their weight class, too. Eve’s $16 charcuterie plate, which features 12 to 15 of [Dan] Fisher’s sausages and terrines, brings in $32,000 a month, Fisher says. Nowadays it seems like charcuterie is on every menu in town whether or not it’s made in-house …” (Washington City Paper)

Still, you have to admire an industry where a specialist like Salumi Artisan Cured Meats can plainly state that some products - even commonly available ones like pancetta - aren’t available. And others won’t be ready until the spring.

Technorati Tags: charcuterie, smoked meats

Perhaps you were so inspired by Valentine’s Day that you spent hours sifting through thousands of songs to compile the perfect mixtape (or playlist, for you young kids). Or maybe you just slapped something together.

Either way, you’re probably still in high school or college.

But what were the chances you actually “scored” last night? Well, it all has to do with the Vicki Mendoza diagonal, illustrated above.

At the end of the night, did your soundtrack of love inspire sensual behaviour, or a frenetic and often confusing jumble of emotions?

THAT’s the product of the Mendoza diagonal. In an episode of How I Met Your Mother this season, Barney explained how your potential mate had to balance off their crazyness with a suitable level of hotness - much like the artists you picked for that mixtape.

Technorati Tags: HIMYM, Barney, mixtape, Valentine’s Day, playlist, How I Met Your Mother, Mendoza Line, Hot/Crazy

As I made the transition into grown-up, collecting a full-time job, a marriage and a suburban home along the way, part of my youth remained sealed away - in a box of carefully collected and reluctantly ignored vinyl.

Limited editions, special imports, extremely overpriced rarities: they’re all there down in the basement. The cheap turntable of my teen years broke down long ago, to be abandoned for the trash pickers on Bathurst Street. The mix tapes lasted a little longer, but were eventually crushed under the weight of feet, coolers and seats on numerous road trips.

The result? Bands like the Merton Parkas, the Lambrettas, Selecter, and Makin’ Time receded in time, and in my memory.

One record prompted an unusual absence - The Truth’s Playground (on their MySpace) - despite its relative lack of sophistication. It was one of three cassettes I brought with me on an 18 hour trip between Toronto and New Delhi, and was played over and over in my Sony Walkman (the silver one, barely larger than the cassette itself. Don’t you remember? Sony was the Apple of the early 80s, with a new and cooler version of the Walkman every season!) as I sat on the tarmac at Heathrow during an interminable flight delay. I guess the album was burned into my sub-conscious.

Which is why I was surprised - and pleased - to find a glut of Truth-based material online in the past few months. YouTube videos. Mp3s. A concert recorded in 1983 (that doesn’t sound like it’s a dub of a dub)

It’s like the second-generation mods took ten years to jump onto the web revolution and start to use media sharing apps.

Which is understandable, since we’ve long been programmed to take our obsessions slowly: when I was a teenager, a new single from a British band could mean sending off a letter and a postal order to a shop across the Atlantic. From purchasing decision to delivery, it could take three to five weeks!

If I wanted to “build a conversation” with my favourite band, I either joined the fan club and wrote to the quarterly newsletter, or wrote off to the record label and hoped the snot nosed school leaver in the mail room felt inclined to pass my scrawlings along.

We’ve come a long way, baby.

I’ve got two comments about this pairing: can you imagine being locked in a caravan with Bjork for a two week holiday, and Billy Bragg has never claimed to have the most artistic videos.

Technorati Tags: Billy Bragg, Bjork, sexuality, sensuality, 90s

It looks like a fun snow tubing park, with a webcam, but Chicopee Tube Park has one of those easy-to-misread URLs: www.chicopeetube.com.

I think that’s an episode of Chico and the Man that I missed.

I realize that Canadians are buffered from breaking U.S. trends in casual dining, but a 90 minute wait to get into a Cheesecake Factory?

“…The average wait at a Cheesecake Factory restaurant is 1 1/2 hours, said Alethea Rowe, director of restaurant marketing for the Cheesecake Factory Inc. Once the doors open and the restaurant fills up, then the waiting line forms. …

The lines, however, are a positive sign to restaurant management. “I think this is the biggest compliment our guests can give us,” Rowe said. “It tells us that they think the Cheesecake Factory is someplace special.”(Hartford Courant)

Yeah, that’s what the investors in Planet Hollywood thought as well.

It’s two days until New Year’s, and I thought you might appreciate an instructional case in “putting the moves on.”

What happens when you misdial 1-800 Santa Claus? You get 1-800 Santa Barbara - a website promoting attractions in Santa Barbara. California. Which, for one week in December, becomes Accidental Santa.

John Dickson, the site owner, discovered this last year. Instead of hanging up on the kids calling for the fat guy, he spoke to them. This year, a hundred volunteers are helping out, answering questions and taking orders (and sometimes managing expectations, like the little boy who wanted a real Dinosaur).

“… A list of pointers has guided the novices: Be patient. Mention Rudolph. For safety’s sake, ask only the child’s first name. Steer any offered donations to charity. Be prepared for misdialed calls to a similar number for Enterprise car rentals. (Calls to the actual 1-800-SANTACLAUS keep ringing, unanswered.) (LA Times)

A simple dialling error which could be easily dismissed. Or provide an opportunity to spread some Christmas cheer among the innocents who, somehow, understand 1-800 taxonomy.

Lego building blocks and economic history. Two of my favourite things. Yes. I know I need professional help, thanks.

Glancing through Stanford magazine, I came across an article on the SEE Science Center, where you can find a reconstruction of a late nineteenth century millyard: the Amoskeag Millyard of Bedford, New Hampshire.

The millyard itself was quite impressive, with mile upon mile of mill buildings, canals, railway spurs and tens of thousands of workers.

The display, built of millions of Lego building blocks and housing thousands of Lego workers, seems to make an equal impression.

There’s even a YouTube video of the train that circles the display.

Of course, mills were often horrible and depressing places to work, with long hours, relatively low pay and a significant possibility of workplace injury.

Today, many small towns with a proud industrial heritage are re-purposing these mill buildings, encouraging loft developments, craftsman industries and incubating web businesses.

Lego and yuppies. Isn’t progress wonderful?

Technorati Tags: Lego, New Hampshire, Amoskeag Millyard

What is the connection between badgers and webcams? If only I had known about the badger watch sooner, I would have had an effective and historically accurate retort to every person who questioned the entertainment value of webcams.

Get your minds out of the gutter! I mean webcams circa 2000 - before countless entrepreneurs hit upon the “lonely mom, university student or flatmates with a cam” business model.

Instead, I’m talking about the coffee cam, Jersey Shore Cam, the baby hawk cam and the Hooters Cam.

The sort of online camera where you could watch for hours without anything interesting happening.

Which sounds a lot like the hobby of badger watching, which apparently has some followers in Britain. Badger watching involves sitting very still for quite a long time, waiting for badgers to appear. And when they do appear, they may just rummage around for a few minutes and then return to their burrow.

And, yet, people will pay 10 Euros for a good night of badger watching. And there I was, criticized for running a cam window in the background during work hours. Sure, it was on dial-up with per-minute access charges, but it wasn’t dirty!!

By the way. This just in from the “issues and activism for everyone” desk: there is quite a controversy about badgers brewing in Britain. It seems some cattle farmers claim badgers carry bovine tuberculosis. Problem is, badgers are a protected species. Here’s one comment found at the end of a Telegraph story on the dispute:

“I do have a very easy solution to the badger problem, shoot them and distribute the meat free to the elderly. There that solving 2 problems. I’m sure [Gordon] Ramsey’s Kitchen can come up with a Badger menu!!Posted by Tristian ry on October 29, 2007 6:15 PM

Technorati Tags: badger, cams, webcams, hoot, hooters, Gordon Ramsay, activism, British hobbies

Great compilation of Northern Soul interviews and tracks courtesy of “Divisive Cotton“. Includes a Radio 4 documentary about the Northern Soul scene as well as other highlights.

What is Northern Soul?

“Imagine a raw sounding variant of Tamla Motown music, speed it up slightly, and then play it at a number of obscure venues in the midlands and north of England, and there you have it. …

The style of dancing on the Northern Soul scene has to be seen to be believed. The pace of the music is up-tempo, so the dance moves that go with it incorporate lots of spins, twists, and sliding (this is aided by the use of talcum powder sprinkled on the floor). …

Ever since the glory years of the 1970’s, the Northern Soul all-nighter scene has been home to a unique collective of musical fanatics.”(Soulies)

What does it take to be a television weatherman? Other than good teeth, good hair, and the ability to use “overnight” as a noun? Daniel Engber at Slate can tell you. More importantly, he also points to a nerve-grating list of catchy phrases for meterologists:

- Protect the 3 P’s: pets, plants and pipes
- This cold front is packing a powerful punch; this is a Bob Barker “come on down” cold front.
- Wet conditions continue overnight.. Perfect for all ducks.
- Air you can wear… but hair you can’t wear
- In reference to Anomalous Precipitation on radar, call it “Doppler Garbage”

It just conjures up unsettling memories of Willard Scott, dressed up in a costume for Thanskgiving (or as Ronald McDonald, above)

They’re certainly a poor comparison toAl Sleet, your hippy dippy weatherman.

Eleven years ago, I was in university, analyzing intelligence activities related to the surrender of the German forces in Italy. Looks like someone else likes the subject:

“Gerhard Krebs, “Operation Super Sunrise? Japanese-United States Peace Feelers in Switzerland, 1945,” The Journal of Military History 69 (October 2005):�1081-1120.

In early 1945 Japanese navy circles in Berlin tried to begin peace negotiations with the United States. Using their contacts with the arms trader Friedrich Wilhelm Hack, they sent Commander Fujimura Yoshikazu to Switzerland, where he opened talks with Allen W. Dulles of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services. Though the Japanese navy and Foreign Ministry showed some interest, the peace attempts finally failed since neither side took the initiative to an official level. Fujimura confused his government by claiming that the Americans had made the first step, while the U.S. side waited for proof that the administration in Tokyo was backing the navy officer’s initiative.”

Go ahead. Try to draw the career path that led me to public relations.

Today, the Times provides some welcome instruction on how to be an intellectual.

Two hints:

Intellectuals ought only to live in cities. If you must live in the country, try to ensure that it is in some form of converted church or lighthouse. Geography matters. Intellectuals ought to live in North London, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Durham or Devon. In South London, Oxford, Glasgow, Newcastle or Cornwall, you are merely a smartarse.

Clutter your house with books (many decorators will sell them by the yard) and cultivate an eclectic speciality (Scottish jazz, Afrikaaner ska, 18th-century punk rock, etc) among your CD collection. This will help to obscure the fact that you don�t own any Beethoven.

I also have it on good authority that suede shoes with metal buckles and pink shirts also impart an air of eccentricity, therefore superiority.

NOW Magazine: “After Years Of Failure, Techies Working On Cyberdildonics Might Actually Be Making Some Inroads.”

Great. Just great. PPV porn and cyberdildonics. Looks like there’s a looming staff shortage at comic book stores and Radio Shack.

“Denim demand shows no sign of fading” - Reuters.

The scary takeaway? “White denim will be the hot new look.”