Band of Outsiders x Sperry Deconstructed Boat Shoe

LA-based designers Band of Outsiders team with Sperry to turn old-fashioned boat shoes inside out, literally (heh heh heh). Available in the three styles pictured at Tres Bien for stupid amounts of money.

via hypebeast

New York Delft by Lovegrove & Repucci

A really cool take on porcelain dinnerware from The Future Perfect collective of designers.  It's refreshing to see innovation like this in an area most people equate with stuffy family dinners at grandma's house.  Stuffy dinners like Thanksgiving, complete with turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, and I forgot what I was talking about before...

$100 per place setting here.

FAIL stickers

failblog.org has brought us some of the most memorable moments in failure since the dawn of the internets.  Now you can get the real FAIL instead of a Photochop via failsticker.com.  $5 for 5 on the low end, $24.95 for 50(!) up high.  

via uncrate

Phish Melts Faces, Author Weeps at Setlists

I can't talk too much about this because I am a little sick I couldn't witness Phish's three night reunion stand at the Hampton Coliseum in Hampton, Virginia. I will say that I went to my first Phish show in 1995 and that I have...complex feelings about the band. That isn't to say I wouldn't have traded a kidney for a ticket to these shows:

03.06.09 :: Hampton Coliseum :: Hampton, VA

Set I: Fluffhead*, The Divided Sky, Chalkdust Torture, Sample in a Jar, Stash, I Didn't Know#, Oh Kee Pa Ceremony > Suzy Greenberg, Farmhouse, NICU, Horn, Rift, Train Song, Water in the Sky, Squirming Coil, David Bowie

Set II: Backwards Down The Number Line^, Tweezer, Taste, Possum, Theme from the Bottom, First Tube, Harry Hood, Waste, You Enjoy Myself

E: Grind**, Bouncing Around the Room, Loving Cup

* Last played 9/28/2000

# with Trey on drums

^New original

** Last played 12/30/98

03.07.09 :: Hampton Coliseum :: Hampton, VA

Set I: Back On The Train, Runaway Jim, Brian and Robert, Split Open and Melt, Heavy Things, Punch You in the Eye, Gumbo, Reba, Mexican Cousin, It's Ice, Halley's Comet, Beauty of a Broken Heart*, Guelah Papyrus*, Lawn Boy, Run Like An Antelope

Set II: Rock and Roll, Limb By Limb, Ghost, Piper, Birds of a Feather, Wolfman's Brother, Prince Caspian, Mike's Song > I Am Hydrogen > Weekapaug Groove, Character Zero

E: A Day in the Life

*First time played

03.08.09 :: Hampton Coliseum :: Hampton, VA

Set I: Sanity, Wilson, Foam, Bathtub Gin, Undermind, AC/DC Bag, My Friend My Friend, Scent Of A Mule, All Of These Dreams, Maze, She Thinks I Still Care*, Army Of One, Tube, Cars Trucks & Buses, Free, Frankenstein**

Set II: Down With Disease, Seven Below, Horse > Silent In The Morning, Twist, 2001, Moma Dance, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Wading In The Velvet Sea, Slave To The Traffic Light

E: Happy Birthday Leonard^, Contact, Bug, Tweezer Reprise

* First Time Played, George Jones song

** With Page on Keytar

^ $$ Crowd and band sing Happy Birthday to Leonard Fishman, Jon's father

setlists via jambase

Chinese Hackers Crack iTunes Gift Card Algorithm: BONANZA!

Gizmodo is reporting that Chinese hackers have cracked the algorithm which generates the code for iTunes giftcards. I hate iTunes and am not a fan of Apple in general, so while I won't be baiting the FBI or identity thieves by purchasing codes from Chinese websites, I will admit that I am laughing diabolically on the inside. Looks like prices have increased a bit, but $40 for a $200 gift card is still a good deal...and pretty funny.

via gizmodo

Pitchfork Music Festival '09

Really good starting lineup, has the potential to be a great festival.  July 17-19 in Chicago.

Friday, July 17

Built to Spill 
The Jesus Lizard 
Yo La Tengo 
Tortoise 

Saturday, July 18

The National 
Pharoahe Monch 
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart 
+ many more!

Sunday, July 19

Grizzly Bear 
The Walkmen 
Vivian Girls 
+ many more!

Liz Hickock

So Liz Hickock, a sculptor based in San Francisco, makes stuff out of Jell-O. And by stuff, I don't mean Jell-O shots or upside-down cake pan Jell-O. I mean the city of San Francisco itself. Says the artist:

"I create glowing, jellied scale models of urban sites, transforming ordinary physical surroundings into something unexpected and ephemeral. Lit from below, the molded shapes of the city blur into a jewel-like mosaic of luminous color and volume. The gelatinous material also evokes uncanny parallels with the geological uncertainties of San Francisco’s landscape. While the translucent beauty of the compositions first seduces the viewer, their fragility quickly becomes a metaphor for the transitory nature of human artifacts."

Jell-O. She made a city out of Jell-O. Now say what you will about the premise, but as you can see from the pictures and video, the execution was undeniably brilliant. Which, really, is where I go wrong in my artistic endeavors...yeah. See I always have great ideas, such as my critically panned "Man in the Mashed Potato Moon," but the execution...

Thanks to KDM. All images are property of Liz Hickock and were obtained via lizhickock.com

Self-Deprecating Story Time for Slow Week

So after the bonanza of content I was able to scrounge up last week, this week has been quite slow. So for you loyal readers and my mom, I will tell you a brief story about me being an idiot.

Yesterday, I met with a new boss for a new project involving new logic computations for a new system for whatever. They required my services to provide the system with feedback on whether its logic was good or bad in a given circumstance. Of course, my initial impulse was to confuse the system with conflicting responses until it exploded, but that's another story.

After an initial meeting with the supervisor, there was a period of semi-useful training followed by a couple hours of mind-numbing tedium. As I was not necessarily working on all aspects of this project, I excused myself early from the meeting.

At my office, Tuesday and Thursday are 'free fruit days' in the cafeteria. Yesterday happened to be free banana day. When I first started at this gig, my team would take this free fruit, draw funny faces on it, and put it on the desks of people who didn't show up to work. I realize that doesn't sound particularly funny as I describe it, but in the context of breaking up monotony, hopefully it doesn't seem that strange.

So we now have two converging parts of the story: free banana Thursday and Ryan leaving training early. I strolled through the cafeteria and grabbed one for fun. Back at my cubbycle, I began to devise a work of art on yellow canvas. I began slowly, tenderly, and then with rising passion and a sense of clarity I quickened my penstrokes. I could hear the booming crescendo of whatever was playing on my iPod and then...

...My boss tapped me on the shoulder. Seems she had some last instructions for me.

"Uh, Hi... Ryan?"

I am trying to come up with something more bizarre that I have been interrupted doing, but I've got nothing. I don't even remember what she said for the most part, just the last few lines of the conversation:

Boss: "...so you won't start getting the data until Monday."

Ryan: "Oh... well that's okay I've got plenty of work and...and bananas to keep me busy!" (forced, nervous laugh)

Boss: (smiling uncomfortably) "Good."

As she walked away all I could think was ,'GREAT. I am now the weirdo who sits by the interns and draws on bananas.' After a few frantic instant messages and some sweating, I calmed myself enough to complete my masterpiece: The Shark Banana.

THIS Shark Banana

Parties interested in commissioning a shark banana of their own may contact me here at Newrosis or in person at my studio in the Basque region of Bizkaia during the summer months.

P.S. The client who commissioned this piece was extremely happy with my work.

Daft Punk to Score Remake of Sci-Fi Classic TRON

OMFG my head just exploded. Billboard has confirmed that Daft Punk will score the remake of TRON, called TR2N, which is stupid, but whatever. If you don't know what TRON is, go here. If you don't want to go there, I will simply tell you that it is a movie set inside of an evil computer and there are dayglo hockey helmets.

If you don't know who Daft Punk are...well, this post clearly isn't for you.

via pitchfork

Twin-Parablolic Skis

I used to ski all the time. I hiked up ridges and fell down chutes and clawed my way out of tree wells. I had what were probably first generation parabolic skis. These are not pictures of my skis. These are pictures of skis which were designed and built (yep, there are some working prototypes out there) by Charlie Pyott.

The theory, one must assume, is that the more edges you have in contact with the snow, the more maneuverability and control you will have. The skis themselves look as if they are a couple of x-country skis with a hinge holding them together and a third floating element that sits on top of the actual skis and houses the bindings. No data is available on the actual ride, presumably because they have yet to be ridden or are, in fact, very dangerous.

I am seeing some things right off the bat that would scare the crap out of me if I were not on nice well-groomed runs. First and foremost, I want to know what happens if that front hinge gives out. Will the ski just disintegrate? Can you ditch half your ski? But what would the binding then attach to? Blah...prototype is right.

via dvice