Chalayan + Puma = L O V E ?

I hate to be late with news, but this is really exciting.

On February 28th, "sportlifestyle" brand Puma officially announced that they are appointing Hussein Chalayan as the brand's Creative Director.

Which is fantastic, because Hussein is one of my all time favorite designers (see blogger profile). Hopefully during his tenure at Puma, he'll produce some fashionable sportswear - and hopefully, it will be a little more accessible than his eponymous collection.

Why do I love him so? In a word, innovation.

You'll know what I mean through this video of his SS07 collection (possibly NSFW, watch the entire video and you'll see why):



FUCKING AMAZING.


&& major thank you to W Magazine for letting me know.

I'm Fucking Cool

Remember this post from a few weeks ago, featuring the video for Justice's "DVNO"?

Well, the music blogger over at the Wired mag website just posted about it today:

Music Video Shows Utter Mastery of Title Sequence Technology

....................................
Remember this one, about rickrolling, the greatest internet-message-board-prank in ages?

and did I tell you that I convinced the DJ to rickroll everyone at MEX (in PowerPlant Live!) last Thursday night?

Well, the same aformentioned Wired music blogger posted some quotes from an AMAZING interview with the man himself, Mr. Rick Astley. It's fucking priceless.

Rick says:

I am aware of it obviously...

It's weird, really, because I don't perform much anymore... I'm going to do a few gigs later this year with some other people from the '80s... [ML says: WE NEED TO BE THERE]

It's a bit strange anyway, to be honest, to have videos of when you were a young guy out on the internet, do you know what I mean? I'm 42 years old now, so it's a little bit weird anyway... It makes me laugh -- I'm sure it really annoys a lot of other people -- but it's made me laugh occasionally.

The moral of the story is, I feel validated in my hipsteryness.

Paris Changes Everything

Who else watched the season premiere of The Hills on Monday?!!
& who else is just dying to get to Paris now??! & hopefully be taken on a romantic midnight tour of the City of Lights on a vespa by an indie rocker??!

While I could write pages upon novels about the episode, I'll just share an interesting news item:

Whitney Port (the darling, perfect-skinny Teen Vogue intern) is launching her own fashion line, as reported by Fashionista, reporting on a clip in WWD.

PORT OF CALL: "The Hills" star Whitney Port is the third cast member (after Lauren Conrad and Heidi Montag) to jump into the fashion fray: She's launching a young contemporary line called Eve & A for fall... a 17-piece collection of convertible dresses, tops and jackets that will wholesale for $40 to $250 ... Port designs cocktail and partywear, much of which should be appropriate to don at her next gig as an intern at the public relations firm People's Revolution. Women's Wear Daily, Friday March 14th

That means that 3 of the 4 main Hills cast members (the others being Lauren Conrad, Heidi Montag and Audrina Patridge) now have their hands in/names on some sort of apparel.

So now when they're not fighting for screen time, they'll be fighting for shelf space at retailers...



............
More News from The Hills

- Nude pictures of Audrina (from post-high school, pre-The Hills days) have recently hit the net [links to a TMZ article]


- Heidi will be putting her name all over clothes to be sold at Anchor Blue stores under the name "Heidiwood," retailing at $10-$60. She will also be a brand "spokesmodel." ...keep it classy, Ms. Montag.

Jessica Simpson Strikes Back

...her shoes do at least.

Remember these, from a post way back in November of '07?



They remain a favorite pair of shoes (despite a lack of any practicality).

So of course I was shocked (SHOCKED!) to see this ad for H&M in the latest issue of Nylon.




Hey now! Check out the platforms on that model!
I feel so trendy. The H&M shoes are Sp2008, and I got mine around xmas 2006...

Thank you Jessica Simpson <3


p.s. from far away, doesn't the H&M model kind of look like Jenah from ANTM cycle 09??

Taryn Simon's "An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar" [Another Post Inspired by Wired]

(I'm debating how cool/uncool it would be to create a tag called "Inspired by Wired")

Photographer Taryn Simon has put together her newest book, An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar by shooting images of places and objects that are otherwise abstruse to the American public. How she got access to some of these scenes is intriguing enough for me to want to buy this book ($47.25 at Amazon ... did I mention that my birthday is coming up?)

Her images are haunting & thought-provoking, both in composition and subject matter. I would love to hear your thoughts on her work.

The album (and source of the image below) available here.

My personal selection is the nuclear radiation:



The image is so striking, and without a caption it might not register as a photograph at all. And it kind of looks like the cylinders of radioactive waste are trying to send a message, but that could be just me.

The blue glow is apparently due to Čerenkov radiation, a form of electromagnetic radiation. I found a decent explanation on a UPenn website:

To be precise, this radiation, named Cerenkov radiation after its discoverer, is produced whenever the velocity \beta c of the particle exceeds c/n, where c is the speed of light in a vacuum, n is the index of refraction of the medium traversed by the charge, and beta is the usual relativistic term given by the expression
beta = {1\over\sqrt{1 - (v/c)^2}} if v is the velocity of the charge.

I have no idea what that means, but it sounds about right.

I also chose this image because it was taken at the Hanford Site in Washington State, a nuclear storage facility and one of the most radioactively contaminated locations in the States.

According to Wikipedia (never the most reliable source, but certainly the most convenient), the Fat Man bomb (dropped on Nagasaki) was built with plutonium from the Hanford Site.

&&

In my research on the Hanford Site, I was able to locate a Google link to the Department of Energy's official Hanford website (www.hanford.gov ) - but everytime I tried to access it, I got an "Problem Loading Page" error message.

Just something to think about.

One More Post Before Bed [Lucky Magazine Cover, January 2008]

I love being on vacation, because I can stay up all night blogging & listening to leaked Heidi Montag tracks ... i mean, obscure Misfits recordings of live shows. YeahDefinitely.

Anyway, the point of this post is:
look who's on the cover of the January 2008 issue of Lucky Magazine!



Our good friend Serena van der Woodsen.

She's so pretty, I almost want to kill myself. I said almost!




[stole the pics from JustJared]

Time To Get Geeky

I read Wired almost everyday. I love the magazine, and should really invest in a subscription... but anyway, some of the stuff on the site is fantastically dorky && I love it. And I feel the need to share.

This is particularly timely.



&& amazing.

This is not just fantastic Christmas decorations, but TESLA COIL decorations.

Tesla coil? It's basically a transformer. That the dude built in his backyard. S!ck.

I can only wish to be so crafty.