This is a store called Maiden Brooklyn in Williamsburg. I have no idea where Pete is.

Dogs, Vice



Really not sure what this is. Suffice it to say, there are dogs flying around in super slow motion to very cool music. This film company called Pleix makes lots of videos. Watch the dogs here.



Also, how slick is the new Miami Vice trailer?

New Year's Eve

Taking stock


My roommate Stephanie's end-of-year report

Taipei to Tokyo

Last week, I got back from a trip to Taiwan and Japan, specifically Taipei (where I was born), Hiroshima, Miyajima, and Tokyo, and right off the bat was newly appalled at the decrepit state of New York's subway system. What's up with the no LCD screens and seat warmers in the trains? While the NYC transit system, shamed by Tokyo's, teeters on anarchy in a story that still manages to be as boring as, well, mass transit, I get ready to fly off to L.A., where the holiday season promises to hover in the 60s and 70s. Here are pictures from Asia:


Early morning jazzercise in Taipei

A nearby street market

Erica Hsu (left) and 101 or I Ling I (right), the tallest building in the world

Not as many scooters in Taipei as there used to be

In Taipei, politicians employ a begging gesture. It's really funny.

Japan

On the island of Miyajima, off the coast of Hiroshima, the deer are everywhere

Highly amusing signs

Sarah consults her trusty guide

The alley as you walk out of Nakameguro Eki (station)

And a very cool cafe a couple blocks down

A place called "Nekobukuro," a play on words ("Neko," or cat, + Ikebukuro), where you can pet all the cats you want

"Picture Club," or purikura (プリクラ), what teenage girls do in Tokyo

No trip to Tokyo is complete without a sprawling shot of Shibuya

... and of the Shinkansen station

Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits


Here's another video, the winner of a contest held by an Australian band called TISM (This Is Serious Mum), for their song, "Everyone Else Has Had More Sex Than Me." It's amazing how much personality this bunny has.

Everything Sounds Like Coldplay Now


Yes. Ha. A fake Coldplay video from some people calling themselves Mitch Benn and the Distractions.

Girlfight

On Thursday, ABC ran a story on Prussian Blue, a pair of 13-year-old twins named Lynx and Lamb who make adorable folk music with equally adorable lyrics like: "Soon will come a great war, a bloody but holy day. And after that purging our people will be free... And the forests will echo our grace for the brand new dawn of our race." Vice's Jesse Pearson did an interview with the kids a while back for their Hate Issue. In it, they explain the origin of their name: Part of our heritage is Prussian German. Also our eyes are blue, and Prussian Blue is just a really pretty color. There is also the discussion of the lack of "Prussian Blue" coloring (Zyklon B residue) in the so-called gas chambers in the concentration camps. We think it might make people question some of the inaccuracies of the "Holocaust" myth.


While Blue are certainly a cute new force in the white nationalist movement, I'd have to go with the sunnier, bouncier, and decidedly non-Nazi sisters Asya and Chloe from Smoosh, who, at 11 and 13, have already opened for Pearl Jam, Sleater-Kinney, Cat Power, and Death Cab. With an inventive keyboard and drum arrangment, they make smart, lovely indie rock spiked with punk and '70s pop, and, on their song "Rad," sing, "Uh huh, yo guys, everyone, now you're feeling bad today? 'Cause maybe you should be a little happier." Totally.

Smoosh: A Musical Sister Act [NPR]

Employees fair game, apparently, at CNN


It's such a fine line between tact and running invasive photos of your own employees.

Friend: Police closer to break in slaying of attorney's wife [CNN]

L.A. does CMJ
My good friend Rickett jetted over from L.A. to stay with me during CMJ/Fashion Week, and here are the pictures to prove it. After a rocky start getting into the Feist show at the poorly air-conditioned Knitting Factory (where Feist cut a set short the night before due to the heat, and where I'm now persona non grata), the week unfolded into perfect chaos. Here's my recap on CMJ's website.


Rickett and me at the Jane Magazine/DKNY/addVice party

Bosque Brown at Rockwood Music Hall

Giant Drag at North Six

Meghan (left), Charlotte's knees (right)

Pianos (one of many, many Dim Mak parties)

Rickett and Tennessee

Melissa (left), Tennessee with her new toy (right)

The Like hulahooping in the middle of the street

The Frankie Palmer Band at Anyway Cafe




Pink Bunny!

If it weren't for art, you'd never get things like a 200-foot-long toy rabbit on the side of a mountain.

Artists erect giant pink bunny on mountain [Ananova]

Ready, set...

They're calling it the age of the "Swiss Army Knife cell phone," and the new iTunes/Motorola/Cingular collaboration, called ROKR, is out today. Critics say phones that play mp3's aren't new—that they've been around since 2000—but nor were mp3 players when Apple first introduced the iPod. Today, iTunes owns a comfy 75 percent of the mp3 market. Also out today is the iPod mini mini, or iPod nano, which comes in a 2GB (500 songs) or 4GB (1,000 songs) version, and was designed by my best and oldest friend, Doug Weber.

Tonight, Motorola celebrates with a party at Webster Hall, featuring free booze and performances by Common and the Juan McLean

Apple, Motorola unveil music-playing cell phone [SF Chronicle]
Motorola ROKR debuts as first iTunes phone [Macworld]
Motorola to hold iTunes phone after-party at Webster Hall [AppleInsider]

Brutality
A semi-remake of Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left, Chaos is a new horror movie starring Sylvester Stallone's son, Sage, and the creepy rapist from Heat, that dips its brush into that oh-so classic genre of two teenage girls being tortured, mauled, murdered, etc. The interesting part is the not just awful but disdainful reviews, which the filmmakers have been using to promote the film. Not a bad idea...

I urge you to avoid it. Don't make the mistake of thinking it's 'only' a horror film, or a slasher film. It is an exercise in heartless cruelty and it ends with careless brutality. - Roger Ebert

Unless you enjoy viewing senseless, extreme acts of rape and mutilation, stay far, far away from this one. - The New York Times

Male exploitation denizens will file this under 'must-see,' but everyone else above legal age should consider the barf bags that distrib Dinsdale Releasing is considering handing out during limited release. - Variety

Definitely gave me the worst time I've had at a movie in years -- and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone but my worst enemies. Even then, I'd flinch. - Chicago Tribune

Chaos (2005) [Rotten Tomatoes]
Roger Ebert's Letter to the Public [rogerebert.com]

Black people "loot," white people "find"

Thanks to Destroy All Genres for pointing this out.

Look At Myself

International male model Gustav Iliev explains to strangers that he's graced over 300 magazine covers, including Nintendo Power, and tries to finagle free sunglasses by telling female store clerks to "look at my stomach" and "look into my eyes" Amazing.
Watch it here

Awesometown

Passed on by Fox, Comedy Central, and MTV, the three guys known as Awesometown have hit the internet with sketch comedy and stellar rap lyrics like "Andy here, and I love a good sandwich. So if you have a sandwich, come roll with me!"
Watch it here

Tonight

Two hundred sixteen years ago, the people of Paris stormed the Bastille in solidarity with the Third Estate (the other two being the clergy and nobility). Four years later, Louis XVI lost his head, and tonight, Amylu celebrates la Fête Nationale with Le One Night Stand at Happy Ending.

More: Diesel U-Music Awards, Le One Night Stand

Tonight, everyone's headed over to the Roxy (an event space/rollerskating rink), where the Diesel U-Music Awards are being held this year. I've never been, so I'm not sure to what extent there'll be an "awards show," as opposed to music, free drinks, pointy shoes. Winners playing: Brooklyn's own Out Hud, hip hop virtuoso Busdriver, and Michael Tapper's band, We Are Scientists, who were recently signed to Virgin. Last year, the honors went to Mylo and Tom Vek.


Also tonight, Amylu's celebrating her birthday at Bar Eleven with her second installment of Le One Night Stand, a French pop party. Free vodka from 10-11 and go-go dancers all night long.

Jesus loves you more than you will know

Arrrhh, she's had such an effect on me... It was always interesting to me how Mrs. Robinson "aged" in The Graduate. How her face drained in the second half of the movie, and how the light just seemed to hit her differently.

Anne Bancroft, Stage and Film Star in Voracious and Vulnerable Roles, Dies at 73 [NY Times]

Tonight: Dungen, Malkmus

Tonight, Gustav Ejstes, a.k.a. Dungen (above left), is straight from Sweden at the Living Room in the Lower East Side, playing an acoustic set for the press, followed by a "meet-and-greet." He was on the cover of the Fader recently, and his album Ta Det Lugnt comes out August 3rd. Afterwards, I'm heading over to Irving Plaza to see Stephen Malkmus (above right), who's on tour right now pushing Face the Truth, his third post-Pavement album. People were holding their breath for this one, and it seems Malkmus is finally getting some elbow room to be his own weird, sublime self. For one, he wrote the entire thing by himself in his basement. About a month ago, I interviewed him for CMJ, and this part was interesting to hear:

There’s one song, it’s called “Post-Paint Boy.” And it’s not really—it’s more like a self-put-down. ‘Cause it’s like this guy who’s a maker of modern, minor masterpieces or something. It’s really about the things that I’ve done and how it’s just pretty good, but probably not for all-time great. But the hubris that it takes to make stuff like that, or even take the time—like how conflicted and stupid you can kind of feel for doing it.

Look into my eyes
A homemade sword, a hatchet, a knife, brass knuckles, and a blood-stained chainsaw is what this man had on him when he tried to cross the border from Canada into the United States. In April, U.S. Customs officials stopped 22-year-old Gregory Despres, confiscated his sketchy paraphernalia, questioned him for a few hours, and then set him loose into the country. As it turns out, he'd just killed his neighbors (decapitating one) back in Canada. He's now sitting in a Massachusettes jail.

Man with what appeared to be a bloody chain saw let into U.S. [MSNBC]