BLAKROC

If you haven't heard the latest album from Blakroc- the collaboration between the Black Keys and a variety of incredible artists like RZA, Mos Def and Nicole Wray- you need to. The album is hypnotic and has the Black Keys' signature blues-rock feel. Check out the Blakroc sessions on their website- amazing. This installment is of a jam session with the RZA:

Julia Lohmann Furniture

Julia Lohmann's work is truly ingenious. After spotting her in the NY times magazine design issue I was amazed at the way she embodies the conflict of loving animals while eating meat through design. She constructs furniture inspired by the "transition of an animal to the product". Her work consists of lamps created from sheep and cow stomaches as well as benches made from a cast of a cows internal cavity and draped in the hide to resemble the animal once its completed. She is highly controversial, even in her home base of England, a country that prides itself on initiating the nose-to- tail cooking movement. What makes her work so endearing is that she is inspired by her love of animals in that her way of paying homage to the animal would be to utilize every part of it.

http://www.julialohmann.co.uk/

Book City Jackets

Last week at the Clinton Hill Flea Market I stumbled upon a vendor selling these truly unique and beautiful book covers. Book City Jackets was founded just last year by Emma Gaines- Ross and Jeremy Schwartz offering "updated versions of the classic paper bag book cover". It was a fortuitous encounter for me since I had used my copy of Benjamin Kunkel's Indecision as a cutting board during our road trip. They are totally affordable and the perfect blend of utilitarian and art. They are there every Saturday and on Sunday they set up shop at the Dumbo flea market.

www.bookcityjackets.com

BSAT World

If you, like us, have a natural aversion to standardized tests and feel that they provide no real validity in gauging a persons intellectual capacity (I don't mean to sound angry, I'm just venting here) then you should seriously check out this site: bsatworld.com. The concept is really ingenious. Its a compilation of college application essays, sat-formatted questions, and admissions stories (my favorite being about a guy who decided to pull a prank and turn the tables on his Dartmouth interviewer), all of which provide an honest discourse amongst students as well as being utterly hilarious.

And I'm Diane Rhem

I found this interesting juxtaposition on the NPR website a few days ago. I actually find this quite beautiful, Mrs. Rhem with her gorgeous head of ivory locks and then that hoary ferret. Even the composition of each image compliments the other nicely and adds to the overall graphic dynamism.

Mouse Appeal

This is a pitiful scan from a page in my drawing pad that came about when Jane and I were high on prescription drugs and drunk on two buck chuck. What you see above is a harsh and absurd attack on girls we deem to be MOUSEY. For some goddamn reason we just love to hate on 'em. I'm thinking it's because we feel that these seemingly unrewarding characters keep getting unwarranted attention, that quite frankly we feel we are more deserving of. Due to this fact, mousey girls seem to have a bloated self-confidence, while Jane and I are stuck grappling with our heightened self-awareness leaving us, on occasion, with a crippling case of "the blues." But as you can't really decipher above, it is obvious that we don't quite know what the hell we're talking about. We do know, however, that they have a big ego part in the center of their brain and a fanatical devotion to Wilco.

Rude and Crude

This is a crude illustration of me drafting the illustration in the next post. I'm over there on the left, drawing pad in hand, kickin' back and enjoying some red wine and a Xanex. Below me is my little red duffel containing the three outfits I lived in all summer and a bag of groceries that Jane referred to as "geriatric food" or dried fruit and nuts (she thanked me later). Over there on the right is Jane reading Indecision by Benjamin Kunkel, also kickin' back.