Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Overexcited by New Products #1
I like Honey Bunches of Oats, but everyone knows that the only really good part is the oats. It's like putting in hours of work at the office (eating the shitty flakes) and then BINGO getting the big fat paycheck of the OAT BUNCH. Well now there's JUST BUNCHES, a cereal filled with paychecks and no work!! YES!!
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Elbe Philharmonic
Neat building from the folks at Herzog & de Meuron that brought you the Beijing Olympic stadium:
From (current) dirty shitty warehouse:
To (future) dirty shitty warehouse with really nice glass/ice effect on top:
From (current) dirty shitty warehouse:
To (future) dirty shitty warehouse with really nice glass/ice effect on top:
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Profile: Karl Lagerfeld
I've always liked reading autobiographies. You might argue that the famous figures hired someone else to write it for them, but at the end of the day, true or not, lives are interesting. No matter your story, it's a story filled with problems and events that are more incredible than anything fiction writers can think up.
So every so often, I'm going to write about some figures with especially interesting stories. First up, Karl Lagerfeld.
Usually, I have a problem with superficiality. But Karl embodies the superficiality so completely that he makes being superficial seem, in fact, dignified. It is an integral part of him, and it seems so natural for him, that you accept it, regardless of how peculiar it sounds. (At age 4, he demanded a valet because he changed his clothes several times a day and his mother used to say, “Children with glasses are the ugliest thing in the world.” and refused him glasses although he was short sighted.)
One interesting facet of Karl is the weight he's lost. He lost 92 pounds in 13 months. “My only ambition in life is to wear size 28 jeans," he says.
From this:
To this:
The most striking thing about Karl is that he is so polar, opinionated, completely set about everything. He is obsessive and loves some things, while he despises others with an equal passion. This is a small sample of his quotations to understand what I mean:
“I do not like funerals, and I do not want anyone to come to mine,” he says. “Do what you want with the ashes. Send them down the garbage chute.”
“I have no problem with journalists – many are friends,” he says. “Only if they are really stupid, or if they’ve got bad breath, or if they smell. Yesterday I had a problem. I said, ‘I’m sorry, you’ve got to tell this woman that she needs to be taken away. Her smell is not possible.’ ”
"I didn’t like to play with children. I only wanted to read, sketch, write, and to learn languages.”
"I never make serious conversation. It bores me to death. I hate that. I love knowledge for myself, but I don’t care what other people think. "
Another aspect of Karl is his blend of the old and the new. While I'm not a fashion expert, and can't speak for his clothing, his signature look defines this juxtaposition. Old - Powdered hair, high collar. New - Ponytail, leather pants (and not just any leather pants. His are Agatha leather pants and at $2500, they are the most expensive in the world). His youthful exuberance and controversial/perverted comments liven up his 71 years of age. “I get along with everyone except for men my age, who are bourgeois or retired or boring.”
All in all, Karl strikes me as a strong-willed individual that has certain obsessions that has cleared any noise in his life, and made room for clear opinions about everything. He owns 300,000 books, yet has read Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking" three times in one month. He has peculiar tendencies, and perhaps that is what has led to his courageous work in the face of criticism.
*From what I've read about most "famous" or "successful" people, it seems that all of them dwell in the extremes. Only by being extreme in some sense, does one differentiate one's self and rise above the crowd. Of course, that takes courage, too and does not come without risks. But like everything else in life, those that risk nothing, stand to gain nothing. *
So every so often, I'm going to write about some figures with especially interesting stories. First up, Karl Lagerfeld.
Usually, I have a problem with superficiality. But Karl embodies the superficiality so completely that he makes being superficial seem, in fact, dignified. It is an integral part of him, and it seems so natural for him, that you accept it, regardless of how peculiar it sounds. (At age 4, he demanded a valet because he changed his clothes several times a day and his mother used to say, “Children with glasses are the ugliest thing in the world.” and refused him glasses although he was short sighted.)
One interesting facet of Karl is the weight he's lost. He lost 92 pounds in 13 months. “My only ambition in life is to wear size 28 jeans," he says.
From this:
To this:
The most striking thing about Karl is that he is so polar, opinionated, completely set about everything. He is obsessive and loves some things, while he despises others with an equal passion. This is a small sample of his quotations to understand what I mean:
“I do not like funerals, and I do not want anyone to come to mine,” he says. “Do what you want with the ashes. Send them down the garbage chute.”
“I have no problem with journalists – many are friends,” he says. “Only if they are really stupid, or if they’ve got bad breath, or if they smell. Yesterday I had a problem. I said, ‘I’m sorry, you’ve got to tell this woman that she needs to be taken away. Her smell is not possible.’ ”
"I didn’t like to play with children. I only wanted to read, sketch, write, and to learn languages.”
"I never make serious conversation. It bores me to death. I hate that. I love knowledge for myself, but I don’t care what other people think. "
Another aspect of Karl is his blend of the old and the new. While I'm not a fashion expert, and can't speak for his clothing, his signature look defines this juxtaposition. Old - Powdered hair, high collar. New - Ponytail, leather pants (and not just any leather pants. His are Agatha leather pants and at $2500, they are the most expensive in the world). His youthful exuberance and controversial/perverted comments liven up his 71 years of age. “I get along with everyone except for men my age, who are bourgeois or retired or boring.”
All in all, Karl strikes me as a strong-willed individual that has certain obsessions that has cleared any noise in his life, and made room for clear opinions about everything. He owns 300,000 books, yet has read Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking" three times in one month. He has peculiar tendencies, and perhaps that is what has led to his courageous work in the face of criticism.
*From what I've read about most "famous" or "successful" people, it seems that all of them dwell in the extremes. Only by being extreme in some sense, does one differentiate one's self and rise above the crowd. Of course, that takes courage, too and does not come without risks. But like everything else in life, those that risk nothing, stand to gain nothing. *
Friday, September 12, 2008
One-Liners
http://www.onesentence.org/stories/popular/all/
Entertainment compacted into one sentence.
Entertainment compacted into one sentence.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Friday, August 22, 2008
Scar Tissue
Excerpt from one of my favorite books:
I took the mike and belted out, "Give it away, give it away, give it away, give it away now."
That line had come from a series of conversations I'd had years earlier with Nina Hagen. Nina was a wise soul, and she realized how young and inexperienced I was then, so she was always passing on gems to me, not in a preachy way, just by seizing on opportunities. I was going through her closet one day, looking at all her crazy clothes, when I came upon a valuable exotic jacket. "This is really cool," I said.
"Take it. You can have it," she said.
"Whoa, I can't take this. This is the nicest jacket you have in there," I said.
"That's why I gave it to you," she explained. "It's always important to give things away; it creates good energy. If you have a closet full of clothes, and you try to keep them all, your life will get very small. But if you have a full closet and someone sees something they like, if you give it to them, the world is a better place."
I had come from such a school of hard knocks that my philosophy was you don't give things away, you take whatever you want. It was such an epiphany that someone would want to give me her favorite thing. That stuck with me forever. Every time I'd be thinking, "I have to keep," I'd remember, "No you gotta give away instead." When I started going regularly to meetings, one of the principles I learned was that they way to maintain your own sobriety is to give it to another suffering alcoholic. Every time you empty your vessel of energy, fresh new energy comes flooding in.
Another excerpt:
I was stone-cold sober and lying on my back and she was giving me head and there was so much love being exchanged, and she was pouring so much of her heart into that physical expression, that i started to leave my body and was able to look down and see myself lying on a bed with this girl, with her flowing chestnut locks and her beautiful white skin, making love to me. I just watched for a while and I had the realization that that was the single most beautiful sexual moment of my life to date.
I took the mike and belted out, "Give it away, give it away, give it away, give it away now."
That line had come from a series of conversations I'd had years earlier with Nina Hagen. Nina was a wise soul, and she realized how young and inexperienced I was then, so she was always passing on gems to me, not in a preachy way, just by seizing on opportunities. I was going through her closet one day, looking at all her crazy clothes, when I came upon a valuable exotic jacket. "This is really cool," I said.
"Take it. You can have it," she said.
"Whoa, I can't take this. This is the nicest jacket you have in there," I said.
"That's why I gave it to you," she explained. "It's always important to give things away; it creates good energy. If you have a closet full of clothes, and you try to keep them all, your life will get very small. But if you have a full closet and someone sees something they like, if you give it to them, the world is a better place."
I had come from such a school of hard knocks that my philosophy was you don't give things away, you take whatever you want. It was such an epiphany that someone would want to give me her favorite thing. That stuck with me forever. Every time I'd be thinking, "I have to keep," I'd remember, "No you gotta give away instead." When I started going regularly to meetings, one of the principles I learned was that they way to maintain your own sobriety is to give it to another suffering alcoholic. Every time you empty your vessel of energy, fresh new energy comes flooding in.
Another excerpt:
I was stone-cold sober and lying on my back and she was giving me head and there was so much love being exchanged, and she was pouring so much of her heart into that physical expression, that i started to leave my body and was able to look down and see myself lying on a bed with this girl, with her flowing chestnut locks and her beautiful white skin, making love to me. I just watched for a while and I had the realization that that was the single most beautiful sexual moment of my life to date.
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