Pizza Bagels

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Spectacular (as in "society of the...") youtube video from i like nice things.

Pretty sure the "dad" in that commercial is a male enhancement spokesperson in current cable ads.

Children do not get enough carbs and processed food, what they need is a hyperkinetic commercial to remind them to "eat carbs!"

Sorry I missed the top video in the pair before the use violation monster ate it.

Update: The missing vid was The Lennon Sisters at their android prom queen finest singing "Sugartime." [YouTube - thx jeff]

Brooklyn DIY

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Marcin Ramocki's film Brooklyn DIY opens at MOMA tonight.
Am curious to see it for the involvement of various friends but describing art in terms of neighborhoods can be problematic.
Did a "Brooklyn School" ever develop, after artists began settling the region? Do critics talk about it?
Answer: no, the New York critics mostly snub Brooklyn galleries.
So, did the artists develop a style or philosophy that is contrary to the Chelsea style, the way "downtown art" challenged uptown in the 60s or graffiti came to be identified with the East Village?
No, after 1997 or so (the demise of Soho, which mingled artist and gallery lofts), Brooklyn became the region where artists lived and Chelsea became the region where the same artists showed.
Waves of "frissons of difference" came not from within NY but from London, Los Angeles, Asia...
Will watch the film with an open mind and report back with any changes to the above.

Update: Good movie, and most of the people interviewed disavowed a "Williamsburg style." The archival footage of past art shows and present-day glimpses inside studios suggests much trash-picking and bricolage. Amy Sillman comments throughout but I don't think you ever see one of her (non-bricolage) paintings, just quick details.

Critic Sarah Schmerler, interviewed in the film, offers the best "reason for Williamsburg" but it is esentially faint praise. She compares art to the gold in Fort Knox that backed US currency at one time. She feels that for New York to be a credible art center, tangible evidence of actual, vigorous artmaking should be on display somewhere in the city, otherwise galleries are just sterile delivery systems for culture happening out of town. This is a sophisticated variant of the "at least someone's doing something" declaration I used to hear in Dallas when I lived there years ago. Something is better than nothing but that doesn't make it important. Ironically the director of the film did much to advance art into the 21st Century with his Williamsburg gallery vertexList but computer and cyber-discourse is almost completely absent from the movie. For the next Billburg doc someone will need to talk about Ramocki.

another day in file sharing court

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"Crime?"
"Posting the 'THX Sound' on his synthesizer history website."
"Sound quality?"
"Extremely poor."
"Resolution?"
"Extremely low."
"But still recognizably the THX Sound?"
"Yep."
"Somebody might use it at the beginning of a movie. Prison, $200,000 fine. "

ugly comment battles

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Feel a bit bad for posting a link on the Rhizome.org chatboards to a recent Paddy Johnson thread.
Mentioned that she and her commenters had reservations about a project the Rhizomers were high fiving.
So they promptly dispatched one of their worst trolls--a real piece of work--to ask Johnson "how many angels can dance on a pinhead" type questions, to wear her down and punish her for having a contrary opinion.

Arguing on Rhizome has a similar air of futility.
The house style there, especially when one is on the down side of an argument, is to provoke an exchange of personal insults, hoping one's opponent cracks and says something that sounds "too harsh." The one who didn't crack then claims the moral high ground and gets to lecture the one who did about Internet manners. Arguing this way is...challenging...and very little gets accomplished.

A moderator would help.

Underlying some of these battles are real philosophical differences, what could be broadly termed an art-for-art's-sake mindset vs an activist mindset. Also academic vs non-academic, artist vs programmer, artist vs designer, etc.

But mostly it's just people being territorial about their friends and "home turf."