If you weren’t feeling tiny, insignificant and existential enough this morning, here’s an uplifting video showing you just how small a grain of sand you are in this infinite ocean that is our gargantuan universe.

Fairly mind-blowing.

Another offering from the boys at Waverly Films.  Check it.  Love it.  Share it.

Wow do  I wish this was available when I was studying for the AP history tests! An interesting visual summary of the last 100 years. The choices they make are mostly expected – especially with the bombastic soundtrack they have booming, making Earth feel a bit more like Middle Earth. Still, neat to see how much of the 20th century’s major events do have some sort of film or photo footage.

Also, just about every event after the millennium involves the Earth making her presence felt – things are getting pretty apocalyptic…

Enjoy!

As someone who frequents the movie theatre as much as I do, I make no secret of the fact that I adhere to a fairly strict policy of “Don’t Be a Jerk”.  So this little gem, courtesy of Alamo Drafthouse, had me crying tears of laughter.

From the HuffPo:

Just listen to this voicemail from a livid, obnoxiously entitled customer who left a voicemail for the Austin-based company after she was kicked out for texting during a movie.

Instead of issuing an apology, the Alamo instead turned the call into a hilarious video proving that when it comes to a moviegoing experience free from distraction, they mean business.

10. Immigrant advocacy may be the new oil painting. Artist Tania Bruguera has decided to spend one year living in Corona, Queens and is running an “advocacy group/art project.” I think the money quote from the NY Times article about her project is this: “‘She’s an artist? I didn’t know that,’ said J. P. Jimenez, a salesman at Metropolitan Lumber and Hardware on Roosevelt Avenue, opposite the storefront Ms. Bruguera opened last month. ‘I don’t see nobody going in with paintings.’”

9. Foul Mouthed Street Art:

8.

Yesterday I got an email from BarackObama.org. In a response to Jerome Corsi’s new book Where is the Birth Certificate? and to poke a little fun at the Birthers, Obama’s campaign team came up with the above graphic design for a mug. You can all insert your own variation of a “No Tea Allowed in this Mug” disclaimer joke in the comment section below.

7. For the Rembrandt inside of all office workers: Post it note art.

6. Paddle8.com is a new website where visitors can view works and collectors can make purchases. The wrinkle is that influential cultural figures act as curators for the exhibitions of works that go on display. In the same way as visits to galleries and museums, didactic material is provided that puts the works in context and provides insight about a particular artist’s practices. Glenn O’Brien is the curator for the next show.

5.

Devoted readers of my previous posts know that I am a big fan of public art. While I’m partial to NYC, Philadelphia has a ton of wonderful murals and a new interactive website has images of those murals and information about the stories they tell. My favorite is “The Heart of Baltimore Avenue”  (featured above), by David Guinn. For this mural, you can zoom in on a particular person and hear a brief description of who they are in their own words. Here’s a link to the site: http://explorer.muralarts.org/

4.

The folks over at Techcrunch.com have a story about a photographer who is claiming to have snapped the largest photo ever taken indoors. Although the writer of the article I link to below points out that it is actually 2,947 photos stitched together, the clarity of the detail is amazing. The photographer is Jeffrey Martin, founder of 360cities.net and the subject of the photo is in the Strahov Monastery, in Prague, Czech Republic. Video above, story here: 40 gigapixels of awesomeness

3. Dustin Grella is asking people to call him at the “Animation Hotline” and leave him a voicemail. He will then do a work of art based on your VM. The phone number is (212) – 683 – 2490. You can watch videos of his works, set to the recorded VM, on his website. The images plus the words make for a kind of visual poetry.

2.

Lech Szporer and Matthew Blair undertook a project to synchronize a series of actions, within a specific time frame, on two different sides of the world.  On the same day, while Szporer was in Rome and Blair was in New York, they both drank a cup of coffee and smoked a cigarette at the same time. What feels like the climax of the piece is when both men leap into two rivers. Szporer into the Tiber and Blair into the East. After that they each smashed a bottle and collected the shards of glass. Then they had another coffee. They showed this work at a gallery in Miami during Art Basel 2007. Included in the installation were recordings of rolling landscapes from trains Szporer rode in Tuscany and Blair rode in Brooklyn, the glass collected from the broken bottles, their Gmail conversation about the piece and the top recording above.

The second video features the same artists, doing another simultaneous project with Blair in Berlin and Szporer in New York. Blindfolded, they find their way through the streets of both cities, struggling at moments to find their way amongst the crowds, cars and bussle of each respective metropolis.

1.

Photo by Stephen Mallon

Stephen Mallon’s “Next Stop Atlantic” series showcases the disposal of old NYC subway cars in the Atlantic Ocean. Once they submerge and land on the ocean bottom, the subway cars became reefs for various creatures. According to a NY Times photo feature on them earlier this week, the practice is going to be discontinued because new subway cars have plastic parts that make the prep process too expensive. I wonder, do fish also gather around the doors and not push to the middle of the car? Because when people do that on the subway it really pisses me off.

10. Max

Have you ever wondered what America would look like if the South won the Civil War? Or if Al Gore had become U.S. President in 2000, rather than George W. Bush? That very sort of “what if” question hovers over the plot of  Max starring John Cusack as a Munich art dealer and Noah Taylor as Adolf Hitler. Hitler was actually a painter, and this movie highlights a fictional relationship between him and the art dealer played by Cusack.

9. Modigliani

Most people know that Andy Garcia played an Italian mafiaso in Godfather Three, but his talents for playing an Italian in a film did not end there. He does an admirable job playing the painter Amadeo Modigliani in this movie. I think the best parts are the ones that focus attention on Modigliani’s rivalry/friendship with Picasso.

8. Lust for Life

You can bet that when Van Gogh died, he had no idea he’d be as revered as he is today. Nor could he have guessed that the man who would play in a movie  about his life would be nominated for one of film’s highest honors. Kirk Douglas plays Vincent Van Gogh in Lust for Life. He certainly looked the part and he played the artist so well that his performance garnered him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in 1956. The above scene takes place when Paul Gauguin (played by Anthony Quinn) comes to live with Van Gogh in the South of France. The volatility of Van Gogh and the eventual demise of Gauguin’s stay in the South of France with Van Gogh is summed up well in this scene. I love the moment when Gauguin smells the pot in which Van Gogh has been cooking their meal.

7. Downtown 81

Downtown 81 is an urban fairytale starring Jean-Michel Basquiat playing a character much like himself. It’s a really interesting period piece about downtown NY in the 80s and well worth watching. But one note: if the sound seems off, it’s for good reason: the audio was damaged and the film had to be re-dubbed. Because Basquiat died, the filmmakers asked poet Saul Williams to do a voice over of the lead character’s lines.

6. Waking Life

I suppose this film could be classified in a lot of ways. Experimental, philsophical narrative. Spaced out, stream-of-consciousness film essay.  Mindscape movie making… Whatever you call Waking Life, I think it was pretty breakthrough when it came out in 2001. Even if you were to watch only one scene, you can gain something from it. I’ve embedded A.O. Scott’s astute analysis of the film for the NY Times.

5. American Splendor

I LOVE this movie. And though I’m not sure the late, great Harvey Pekar would call himself an artist, I’m going to anyway. Plus, Robert Crumb is an important character in the film, so there. When I watched it, I thought immediately of Henry Miller, given how much the American author may have liked Pekar’s stance that ordinary life is pretty complex stuff. Paul Giamatti does a terrific job playing the curmudgeonly Pekar and the interaction of animated illustrations and regular film making in the movie is great.

4. My Left Foot

In this movie, Daniel Day-Lewis plays Christy Brown, an Irish painter, poet and author who had cerebral palsy. I’m always impressed by Day-Lewis and the roles he takes on for his films. For me, he’s one of those actors that engages a character, learns the script and comes out on the other side of the camera as another person. This film is a prime example of that.

3. Girl with a Pearl Earring

Before he played a king with a speech impediment, Colin Firth was Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer in Girl with a Pearl Earring. There are only 34 known paintings by Vermeer in the world and one quite accurate part of this film is that Vermeer was a famously slow painter. He took a painstaking amount of time on each of his compositions, which is partially the reason why so few of his works exist. In real life, the man who was Vermeer’s patron was a pious man and not the vulgar womanizer depicted in the movie. And it’s likely that the model the title painting is based on was one of Vermeer’s daughters, rather than a maid who worked in his house. The actual painting called Girl with a Pearl Earring by Vermeer is at the Mauritshuis Gallery in the Hague. But in case you can’t make it to the Netherlands and happen to live in NY, a similar Vermeer is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

2. Pollock

Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings are famously symbolic of American Modern Art in the mid-20th Century. This film chronicles the prodigious drinking, the haphazard dripping, the notorious womanizing and the incredible work that made Pollock one of the titans of Abstract Expressionism. Ed Harris does an exceptional job playing Pollock (and man does he ever look like the painter) and Marcia Gay Harden, who plays Pollock’s wife, the painter Lee Krasner, won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her work in the film.

1. Basquiat

Soho was a very different place in the mid-80s than it is today. I happen to like Basquiat’s work a ton, which is part of the reason I’ve seen this movie about 25 times. But I’m a big fan of Jeffrey Wright too. Wright plays Basquiat, the graffiti writer turned art world darling. The star-studded cast includes Gary Oldman, Bencio Del Toro, Dennis Hopper, Parker Posey and David Bowie as Andy Warhol. The film was directed by the painter Julien Schnabel, who knew Basquiat when they were both NYC based painters in the 80s. Funny enough, the character that is meant to be Schnabel appears to be the most level headed character in the film…

It’s become quite fashionable to dub geeky things porn lately. I’ve seen “space porn” and “math porn” thrown around on blogs when there’s something worth geeking out about. So for those of you who think this post’s title means “something amazing made out of yarn” think again.

“The Blindness of the Woods” is a seminal work in the yarn porn genre. Enjoy responsibly.

And lord does he make it dark… Also, this is probably the best use of a unicorn since Robot Unicorn Attack.

I’m obsessed with this now:

His response is kind of hilarious.  He leads off with, “If I thought like you, I’d kill myself.”  Um… okay.  He’s also understandably defensive about the reporter’s criticisms, which keeps the laughs going (in my head)… mostly because he counters by naming The Village as the crown jewel of his body of work.  Wha….?

M. Night, I see an open letter in your future (but I agree, Unbreakable kicks ass).

Check out the video:

There is no way you read my post yesterday about the Old Spice Guy and didn’t immediately fall in love with him. But did you also fall in love with Isaiah Mustafa himself? Maybe not. But I am nothing if not a facilitator of internet awesome (new popten business card title, anyone?) so feast your eyes on this touching video response to his daughter Haley’s question of “Why do you look so much like my dad?”

There is also a great article about how these were made over at ReadWriteWeb. Check it out here.

UPDATE:

I found out you could follow @Isaiahmustafa on twitter thanks to this completely meta response video:

And did you know women prefer Old Spice for their men ONE BAJILLION times more than lady-scented body washes? It’s true.

But that’s not even the point. Old Spice has an even brand newer marketing campaign, which was brought to my attention by the lovely twitterverse yesterday. After seeing links to the Old Spice YouTube channel all day, I ultimately clicked on a video posted by my friend @aubs, wherein the OSG  made a personalized video, comparing her to Bobby Fischer.

Of course I have lost hours on the Old Spice channel, but what I find intriguing of all is the blossoming love affair between OSG and Alyssa Milano. I mean, could this be any more awesome? The video evidence to date, in chronological order:

The most recent one came in an hour ago, and also happens to be my favorite:

In this corner: Team EVO 4G thinks iPhone users are a bunch of mindless trend-whores.

And in this corner:  Team iPhone thinks EVO 4G is an overloaded piece of crap that is designed for the 4 out of every 10,000 who aspire to hack into the Matrix mainframe.

And for those in want of poignant reflection, here’s a previously linked video from Jay Smooth (my new fave) of nildoctrine.com (and illdoctrine.com), posted a few weeks after MJ passed.  It encompasses pretty much every thought/reaction you might have had in the aftermath of it all… but he probably says it way better.

George Carlin was a character. His most notable impression in my early life was when I first saw him as Rufus in “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”. With the anniversary of his death on June 22nd, 2008 coming up Popten thought it was time for an homage to one of his best comedic performances ~

From Wikipedia:
The seven dirty words are seven English-language words that comedian George Carlin first listed in 1972 in his monologue “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television”. At the time, the words were considered highly inappropriate and unsuitable for broadcast on the public airwaves in the United States, whether radio or television. As such, they were avoided in scripted material, and bleep-censored in the rare cases in which they were used; broadcast standards differ in different parts of the world, then and now, although most of the words on Carlin’s original list remain taboo on American broadcast television as of 2010. The list was not an official enumeration of forbidden words, but rather was compiled by Carlin. Nonetheless, a radio broadcast featuring these words led to a Supreme Court decision that helped establish the extent to which the federal government could regulate speech on broadcast television and radio in the United States.

One of my good friends, Motion Graphics animator Anthony Kraus, chose a passage from one of his favorite routines and created some kinetic typography for the visuals.

George Carlin:
Someone was quite interested in these words. They kept referring to them: they called them bad, dirty, filthy, foul, vile, vulgar, coarse, in poor taste, unseemly, street talk, gutter talk, locker room language, barracks talk, bawdy, naughty, saucy, raunchy, rude, crude, lude, lascivious, indecent, profane, obscene, blue, off-color, risqué, suggestive, cursing, cussing, swearing… and all I could think of was: shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits!

And one last bit of awesome news is this inaugurates PoptenTV on Youtube! Subscribe to the channel for new cool content coming at you in the next few weeks.

I’m a fan of Jonah.  I am.  Even when he shows up in rather unremarkable material.  He makes me laugh… HARD.  Russell Brand… jury’s still out.  But he’s a Brit, so it could take longer than usual for a verdict to emerge (bias admission).  I saw Sean Combs on Inside the Actor’s Studio (yes, Sean Combs).  Say what you will about the mixed messages he sends out into the world (I have myself, many times), but this man is a worker.  And folded into my very disparate opinions on his influence and relevancy, there is genuine respect for him as a human being.

Summation:  I’d see it!  Get Him to the Greek opens June 4!

Jonah Hill and Russell Brand at Diesel, NYC – “Get Him to the Greek” from thatsfunny on Vimeo.

I don’t normally get on a soapbox, and I’m not going to do that now. Years ago I started feeling like something was wrong with our educational system, and for a long time I tried to pin point what it was that rubbed me the wrong way. I read a book called “Bomb the Suburbs” that led me to “No More Prisons”, and its message was that I could have been making choices about my career since I was in high school. It caught me by surprise and made me feel sheepish for believing that life could only really begin once my formal education had ended. Like everyone else I was anxious to finish school, then (like most people) on leaving I could think of nothing grander than going back, and it made me feel like our system had only made me good at being in school.

I feel the tenants our system has been built on haven’t evolved nearly as fast as we have socially, and as such are for an era that past us by decades ago. I’ll give one specific about a modern failure that continues to be a major part of our curriculum ~ memorization. Why do we need to focus so heartily on having a body of knowledge stored up in our heads when computers are much better at disseminating those facts to us? We need to be better at comprehending, evaluating, and adding to arguments. There are innumerable ways to attack this issue, and we just have to get the ball rolling so children don’t get left behind (for real this time though not like in the horrible Bush program that was made). We need to build institutions that benefit a digital era so that valuable graduates don’t come out of school with the wrong skill sets. And I think getting there starts with great conversations.

There are a ton of people that have chimed in on the age old debate of what to do about our defunct system. I don’t really think there is one individual answer that’s correct ~ like saying “Mormon” is the right answer. It’s just that we have more options than we usually believe, and it’s time to start thinking outside the box… or rather poking holes in the box.

I don’t know if I’m really justified to have an opinion about education in general, but I seem to have one, so I figured it was about time I said something. My brother was a teacher at a progressive school on the upper west side, and we chatted a fair amount about the state of education in our country. Another teacher I know works with autistic children, and described at length the antiquated ways in which she is forced to make them learn. I mentored young adults at Street Wise Partners, a non-profit program for bootstrapping under served individuals into better career paths, and that was at once the best experience and saddest verification of a broken system.

I directed the video above for the Institute for Democratic Education in America. I met Dana, the founder of IDEA, at a private school on the upper west side while I was shooting a fundraising video. I’m not 100% sure it’s the right path, but I do think it’s a good path, maybe a good start rather. So below is a little information about what democratic education is straight from their website. Personally, I have found the ethos to be more valuable than what I have seen in practice thus far at schools where the follow its guidelines. However, it’s still a system in its nascent years and has a lot of room to grow. One thing I really like about it is that one size does not fit all, and its implementation in different schools can be catered to what the student population wants and needs:

IDEA envisions an educational system based on respect for human rights and values of freedom and responsibility, participation and collaboration, and equity and justice.

Founded by educators from across the country, IDEA is committed to bridging the disconnect between our democratic values and the way we educate and treat young people. This disconnect is striking, as the learning experience today is largely determined by a standardized, high-stakes, and de-personalized approach that alienates young people from learning and drives gifted teachers out of the profession.

In contrast, democratic education starts from the premise that every young person is unique, and that all young people ought to have the opportunity to live and learn in an environment that practices meaningful participation, that supports self-initiative in learning, and that is directed towards greater equality and social justice.

We created IDEA to tap into and build on the energy of people around the nation who support democratic education. We believe that only by working together strategically will we have the chance to influence the national dialogue about education advance learning that matters.

The work of IDEA is further guided by our commitment to remain humble and open in our dialogue with others, to be full of genuine regard for all people, to think big and “speak truth to power with love” (West, 1993), and to infuse our work with a spirit of humor, fun, and positivity.

Download IDEA’s Brochure (3.39MB)

So please join the conversation. Share the video with a few of your friends if you would be so kind. We need to be better prepared for our digital lives than we are now.

On Valentine’s Day this year I was far from my girlfriend at the University of Michigan, with fellow Poptenner Peter Brauer, filming legendary game designer, Sid Meier, build a game from scratch in 48 hours. It was at once enlightening and inspiring to learn about his process. Now it’s here for everyone to bask in Sid’s beneficence.

He is one of the most acclaimed game designers of all time having created everything from Civilization I through IV, Pirates!, Railroad Tycoon, and dozens of other titles. Most recently he was the keynote speech at the Gamer Developer’s Conference in San Francisco where he discussed gamer psychology. Always a true believer in the idea that games will one day rule the world, Sid Meier wants to inspire a new generation of game designers. Namely the ones from his alma mater at Michigan which he returns to create a video game in 48 hours, and judge the entries for the “7th Annual Wolverine Soft 48hr Game Design Contest”. His son Ryan Meier, (at the time but no longer) president of the organization, co-hosts the event.

Sid first used a computer in Michigan when all there was were punch cards, print-outs, and one mistake cost hours of time. On that IBM mainframe he designed the first tic-tac-toe game, was chastised for using it to make games, and was nearly kicked out. The horrors!  After college Sid met Ace pilot Bill Stealey, challenged him to a game of “Red Baron” (a flight simulator), and beat him hands down. When Bill asked how Sid could win when he was the ace Sid replied, “I could see the algorithm the computer was using”. Bill responded, “Maybe we should start a game company” and so MicroProse was born in 1982.

In 1996 he founded Firaxis Games along with veteran designer and gaming executive Jeff Briggs. Sid was honored with an induction into the Computer Museum of America’s Hall of Fame in 2002, and he was the second person ever to be inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Science’s “Hall of Fame” for Lifetime Achievement in 1999. Recognized around the world as the “Father of Computer Gaming,” Sid has been honored with virtually every award in the industry.  He is often recognized by industry experts as one of the industry’s “Game Gods.”

1. To download the finished games click here.
2. To read an interview with the winners of the contest click here.