As the journalism and news industry continues to churn and find its way to a sustainable future, the New York Times made an open call to its readers to submit their photographs with captions to document the last decade in photos. I am rather surprised by the general lack of “best of the 00s” media coverage. Perhaps, it’s because we are also too busy cautiously looking towards the future. Regardless, it is important to be look back and think about the past before we go barreling forward. Happy New Year!

The Museum of the Phantom City launched, which invites people to interact with unbuilt architectural proposals through an iPhone app and website. The project plays with some interesting ideas about location (obviously) but also of how designers in the past envisioned the future.  We started with New York, and try to show that an invisible history that never was, resides to a physical/ actual space we inhabit.

We had a great team working on the project, and thanks go to Brett and Irene for getting me involved in building the website portion of the project. I hadn’t done any serious programming in a while, and I re-learned everything I love and hate about coding. (Also note, the site and iPhone are beta versions.)

I recently got a nice package in the mail, my eagerly awaited issue 2 of Manzine. What looks like a large format zine is actually a clever take on mens magazines. Created by a group of writers and designers based out of the UK, who write for places like The Guardian, British GQ, and Arena (RIP,) Manzine riffs upon the world they helped created.

On a previous trip to London, I had the pleasure of meeting up with one of the writers Kevin Braddock, who I was first ran into after scouring the internet for a copy of issue 1.

I’m an avid fan of magazine publishing. Manzine has been added to my collection of Chap, Butt, and Fantastic Man. Going to sort of great lengths to find semi-obscure and certainly obscenely expensive international titles. (London, by the way, has some truly, awesome magazine shops, like RD Franks 5 Winsley Street, London W1 8HG T: +011 44 20 7 636 1244. Of course the exchange is a killer.)

But back to the issue at hand, no pun intended. Manzine is a different take on magazines, that moves in the opposite direction of creating magazines as art object. Here, Braddock and his conspirators, have gone indie, dyi, and underground. In he face of the ongoing implosion of the magazine industry, the writers, while still keeping their day jobs, are producing articles and columns that feel much more personal than you get in men’s mags, like writing about learning out to play pop songs (specifically by Phil Collins.) The article destructing the sexuality of a mermaid is more, dare we say intellectual, than what you get in Details or GQ.

The magazine, itself, feels disposable. Its low-fi design and barely better than newsprint paper quality, and of course, cheeky design give it a cheap look and feel to go with its a couple of pounds pricing, (Free (Two Quid where sold.)) As we learned in grade school, looks are deceiving, and judging books by their covers leads to misinterpretation. At first opening, I just liked looking at it, with its over use of typefaces and seeming new style guides for each two page layout. However, when you actually starting reading, personal articles about the art of fixing up a bicycle, an honest voice comes through the guy-ish surface.

What better way to spend one’s spare time than trying to reinvent and resuscitate magazine?

(composite image via Flickr and Pandora.com)

I know that Spotify is all the rage, but it doesn’t have a public release in the US yet, and invites are still a bit rare States side. So, I’ve been finally playing around with Pandora at work, and came to the realize that there is real intelligence and even, fortune telling in Pandora’s recommendation engine.

When Paula asked me a question about what project she should work on next, Pandora voluntarily kicked out Anyway You Want It by Journey, which made us stop in our tracks (so to speak.) It only took me a moment to realize the potential wisdom that Pandora imparts. Ask it a question, wait for the next song, and get an answer.

It’s like magic or visiting a psychic, only better because it’s free and you can hum or sing along. The answers are also much more interesting than the static answers from the standard Magic 8 ball. Plus it gives you something to do while Gmail is down.

Here is an actual record of our questions and Pandora’s answers.

Paula: What will my roommate be like?
Enjoy the Silence, Depeche Mode

(We’re not sure if this good or bad?)

Me: How am I going to like my apartment?

This Must Be The Place I Waited Years to Leave, Pet Shop Boys

(Honest!)

Susan: What am I going to have for dinner?
Toxic, Britney Spears

Paula: What am I going to be when I grow up?
Man Eater, Nelly Furato

Susan: What am I going to do for Labor Day?
Drive, The Cars

Ray: How is my project going?
Calabria 2008, Enur… you know that song, which was played in every retail store for the past two years, and finally made it to that “dance battle” Target commercial. Not sure how that applies to my current work project. Oh Pandora, just when we think we understand you, you uphold your mysterious ways.

Try it out, and let me know how it goes!

I finally made it to New York Comicon. The first year they had it, they oversold tickets and I couldn’t even get in main event area. Now, a few years later, I seem to have recovered from the experience and had a jolly ole time. Unfortunately, my partner in crime (that’s you Jesse) had to bail for work reasons. Next time, you’ll see me posing with the cosplay(ers?).  NYCC was the warm up event to my dream of attending the main event in San Diego. The day did make me nostalgic for the time when I used to go to these comic book conventions in Connecticut in the 80s. No costumes, “celebrity” autograph signings, or corportate booths. It was just comic book collectors and sellers.

See the full flickr set here.

Is this story of suburban dystopia what would have happened if Kate and Leo survived in Titanic?

(Ed Note: ignore the problems of chronology)

A few years ago, I noticed a bunch of books sitting behind the information desk at the St. Mark’s Bookshop in the East Village. The books were multiple copies of Don Delillio, Paul Auster, and Raymond Carver. I asked the sale clerk behind the counter what they were doing there.  As it turns out, independent book shops put certain authors behind the counter to keep them from leaving the store before they have been purchased. If you go into the stacks of St. Mark’s, you’ll find signs within the titles, directly customers to the information desks. The other authors also include Jorge Luis Borges, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and Hubert Selby.  A bit further south in Nolita, McNally Jackson Books uses a similar strategy. Charles Bukowski makes an appearance, with Delillo and Burroughs giving a repeat showing. These choice titles are not the current best sellers, but are works from those aggressive writers who capture college-aged (give or take a few years) minds.  Those books, like White Noise or Junkie, feel dangerous the first time they are read. In a way, it makes sense that that those book are the ones most often stolen.

Somewhere there is this whole small oddity, there resides in compliment making it for behind the counter.

Other people who write about books:
Future of the Book
The Penguin Blog
26th Story
Planned Obsolescence
New York Public Library Blog

On November 6, I didn’t run out to buy a paper. I thought about it for a second. I decided that I have more than enough stuff and because newspapers aren’t archival. Because they are designed to be disposable, newsprint disintegrates over time. I asked myself, “why bother?” When the paper eventual would turned brown and brittle, would I ever want or try to read it? Or would I just log on to nytimes.com and look it up? Of course, then I thought, what nytimes.com look like in 20 years.

Not that it matters, because the newspapers sold out all across the country during all this thinking. And I more concerned about getting a train to Philadelphia.

In retrospect, it’s interesting to observe in a time when newspapers are shutting down and laying people off, on the day after a historic election for many reasons, people still wanted to sought out the newspaper as a physical token of the event.  A copy of the New York Times apparently sold for $400, not a bad return for a one dollar investment in less than a week.

Did anyone bother saving a screen shot of the New York Times website for November 6th?

I wonder if the selling out of print newspaper was a generational phenomenon. Did Millennials, the so-called redubbed, Generation O, view this edition as someone to save?

On Wednesday, November 12, I was lucky enough to pick up a copy of the New York Times Special Edition. The parody issue of the Times dated July 4, 2009, with articles full of a hopeful future. (I wonder, however, what the Yes Men and others had planned if Obama had lost.)

This elaborate campaign took months of planning and reportedly hundreds of volunteers.  It seems that they will someday be collector’s items, according to Alex S. Jones, who wrote a book on this paper titled, “The Times.” Score one for ironic outcomes.

We, as a culture, still value scarcity. My newsprint copy is worth than my screen from nytimes-se.com. The vessel is worth paying for, but the content is not. Now the two have been irreparably divorced. And we want and expect the content to be free.  However, there are times like the 6th and 12th of November 2008, that we found ourselves returning to treasuring the vessel.

For those two days, we were back to the 20th century, where people sought out the print newspaper.

What this its last hurrah?

My friend Alex sent me this link to this recent JC de Castelbajac video, which reconsiders his recent runway show as LEGOs.  JCDC is known for incorporating popular culture imagary into his couture, but this is taking the concept into new levels. The Anna Wintour as a plastic toy is just too good. Below are screen grabs, a still from the animated show, the actual Spring/Summer 2009 show, as well as, Ms. Wintour. I’ve let you go to the site watch the entire video (which I highly encourage) and find Kanye West in the first row. In the confusing time of economic uncertainty and post-election optimism. The show itself leans toward the hopeful, with rainbow colors and plastic hats. Obama’s portrait even makes a showing.  Amidst the gloom of two wars, the shrinking global economy, and pummelled stock market, is this the perfect time for play and reinvention?

Walking out of the C/E Spring Street stop, I got a “free NY Times” from a guy passing them out to riders leaving the station. I sort of knew something was up because it was a lot thinner than normal. Another clue is that it’s dated July 4, 2009, and full of articles talking about a future, where Gitmo is closing, oil companies are nationalized, and the National Health Insurance Act passes.

Here’s a screenshot of the site, nytimes-se.com, which has slow downloads times. A lot of people seem to be hitting the site, whose owner looks like a pseduonym, Ginsu and Treadmill Technologies?  I must admit that they did a good job mimicking the paper and web versions.

UPDATE:

I leared from Trebor Scholz’s, that the prankster activists group, the Yes Men are somehow involved, and have posted some video, which I can’t see because  I’m guessing the servers are still being overwhelmed with data requests.