Lucky For Who?

i’ve been meaning to post about this for awhile. my sister sent me to this site of a woman making, well, i’ll just quote her:

Any of you who grew up in the 80’s probably owned a lucky rabbit’s foot at one time or another. I know I always had one swinging from the zipper of my backpack and I loved to rub it during class, feeling the hard tendons and nubby toenails. It grossed me out a bit back then, and still grosses me out now. But I still love the things.

Since we live in utterly p.c. times, you don’t see rabbits’ feet for sale anymore. Decorating with severed limbs is so passe. But I’ve been wanting to have one anyways so I went ahead and whipped one up for myself out of my fabric. It turned out pretty well and I got to thinking about all the poor, gimpy rabbits out there. Naturally I had to then make the rabbit as well.

her creations are pretty hilarious, not to mention the history on the rabbits foot she dug up.

 

Grace Garden

today peter and i went to jiali in tainan county to this funky restaurant/bar called grace garden. the owner is a somewhat famous designer i gather. the food was ok, but the place itself was really cool. a mix of native culture, americana, and diy art. there were even rabbits running around. it reminded me little of howard finster and this place my friend garth took me to in new mexico called tinker town.

i snapped some shots with my new fuji instax 200 camera:

inside the telephone booth were the remains of some old phones. the washed out sign is a poster advertising some old chinese language movie.

all aboard the art train!

cool old style signage.

i’d been debating whether to buy this fuji instax 200 camera or not, but with the murder of polaroid, my options for instant film are dwindling. i’d heard mixed things about the instax film and cameras but i’m already in love with mine. i picked it up yesterday as that evening i was being interviewed by the china news(one of the chinese language papers here) about my camera collection. the interview went ok, so sometime next week i may end up in the paper - space allowing. i’m sure i’ll look like your typical moronic foreigner, but oh well.

 

How To Care For Your Monster

i feel like my childhood must have been incomplete as i never read how to care for your monster as a child, but i still appreciate it as an adult. frankensteinia and the drunken severed head have nice write ups on the book. via eye of the goof.

 

Disgust with Lomography

there are a lot of reasons to be disgusted with the lomography company. their co-opting of other trends and marketing it as their own is just one of the things that makes me hate them. their attempt to co-op the world wide pinhole photography day inspired nicolai to write up this informative post on the evils of lomography. the price comparison is very good - and i was unaware(but not surprised) at this letter they sent to someone in russia telling him it was illegal for him to sell second hand LC-As. i cringe when i hear someone refer to themselves as a “lomographer” and feel rather insulted if someone is stupid enough to call me one. thanks to their marketing you get fools that think any form of a holga is a lomography product which it definately is not or that lomo and lomography are the same thing(lomo is a russian camera company - lomography just sell these cameras at inflated prices).

my first holga came from lomography(bought locally), if i knew then what i know now i would never have been so foolish.

 

Movie References in the Simpsons

movie references and parodies in the simpsons. there’s a ton they are missing, but it’s still an impressive collection. via everlasting blort.

 

Illustrators Ripped Off

this is pretty sad. an illustrators community was ripped off. someone took their low quality images off the web and then published it as a book. initially it was thought it was done by someone in hk, but now it appears to be someone from china(which really should surpise no one). they seem to be getting closer to tracking down those that did this. but whether something comes of it, if and when they do, is still up in the air. the odd thing to me is why they’d go to all this trouble to put something like this together - is there that much money to be made from a book on illustrators? via yip yop.

 

Musical Saw

a few weekends ago peter and i drove down to meinong in kaohsiung county to the hakka cultural village there. the place is famous for handicrafts - mainly paper umbrellas. the first place we went was a little market next to the hakka cultural center. a terrible disappointment. mainly junk. half of which wasn’t handmade, but made in china.

luckily, we soon found another place that was a bit better. when we arrived we could hear this odd music. there was an old man playing the musical saw. he had cds for sale as well as vcds. so i bought one of each. the cd is ok, but it’s bascially him playing along to some karaoke backing tracks. him by himself would probably be more interesting. i haven’t had the chance to watch the vcd yet.

 

Kids in the Hall

the a.v. club has an interview with the kids in the hall about their upcoming(or maybe it’s on right now) tour of the states. one of the most interesting things to me was that the tour will comprise mainly new material and the old material will be more obscure sketches(so probably no i crush your head, chicken lady or buddy cole). the other cool thing is that they say they want to do a new tv series(!). i’d be up for that, but of course it’s doubtful it’d ever play in taiwan…via quiddity.

also, my friend michelle let me know about this. you can watch the kids preparing for the tour here.

 

Sing a Song For You

one of my favourite tim buckley songs is sing a song for you, and surprisingly there’s footage of him performing it on youtube:

i was pretty surprised at the number of tim buckley videos on youtube, though some are just things people made which don’t interest me as much.

 

DIY Theremin

today, i got a call from eslite telling me one of the books i ordered had arrived. it was volume 17 of the mook(magazine+book=mook) publication otona no-kagaku. these are part magazine part diy kit. the first one i got was a stereopinhole camera(which i’m currently running a test roll through). issue 17 is a kit to make a mini theremin(for under 30 bucks u.s.!).

the inside of the kit looks like this:

something that surprised me, but probably shouldn’t have, is that there was an article/interview with cornelius in it:

the article is all in japanese so of course i have no idea what it says. the magazine also has pictures of various thereminists including one of the guys from ymo(though that looks to be more about old elctronic instruments than specifically the theremin).

i’ve ordered stuff from eslite before, but this time a few days after i ordered it i got a call. i misunderstood and thought it was in already. but they wanted me to pay for it in advance(something i’ve never had to do before in all the years i’d ordered books), not sure why they didn’t ask for the money when i asked them to order it for me.

there’s a few more issues i want to order, but unfortunately it’s looking like one of them(some sort of camera) may be sold out. isbn for the theremin issue is: 4056048746 in case anyone out there may want to have their local japanese/asian bookshop try to order it.