Today at Flavorpill, we enjoyed this thoughtful analysis of Miss Piggy’s style evolution by our dear friends the Fug Girls. We wished that we’d been at the recent Adventures of Pete and Pete reunion at Cinefamily in LA. We read Leonardo da Vinci’s to-do list from the late 1490s. We were impressed by Yuka Yoneda’s DIY Thanksgiving centerpiece — an incredible tribute to the High Line that’s made out of vegetarian edibles and recycled sushi takeout boxes and chopsticks. We found out just how frighteningly hot pepper spray really is. We listened to Electric Six cover “You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch” for the AV Club’s “Holiday Undercover” project. We liked Slate’s examination of some of pop music’s strangest conspiracy theories — particularly the Illuminati-in-pop meme. We realized that like all of us, Ryan Gosling had an awkward phase too. We mourned the death of the cassette tape with this awesome new print by Ali Gulec. We got a preview of the Christopher Niemann-illustrated cover for the Thanksgiving issue of The New Yorker. And finally, we learned everything that we could possibly ever need to know about money thanks to these incredibly-detailed charts by xckd.
Earlier this week, we saw these great photos of a steel mill converted into a park over at Colossal, and felt a rush of warm feeling. After all, it seems that all anyone can talk about these days is how the world is spiraling downward, how the environment is crumbling, and basically how the seas will soon rise up to claim us. But there is still hope, it seems, as cities and organizations are managing to turn eyesores like industrial ruins, trash heaps, and abandoned military camps into beautiful, green parks for the public to enjoy. At any rate, we think it’s a step in the right direction. Click through to see a few great green spaces — both existing and in the works — that are or will be built on the most un-green of spots, and let us know if we’ve missed any of your favorite natural hideaways in the comments!
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With Rob Pruitt’s sleek monument to Andy Warhol recently unveiled in Union Square and Sol Lewitt’s modular structures being installed in City Hall Park (both installations are presented by New York’s Public Art Fund), we’ve been contemplating innovative art that’s accessible outside the traditional context of museums and galleries. In the coming weeks as you take to city streets, benches, park lawns, (and garages!) keep an eye out for what’s going up around you. That skeletal advertising billboard may not be an actual advertising billboard but one of three works by artist Kim Beck. In celebration of Beck, Lewitt, Pruitt and other artists whose work is on public display this spring, take a virtual road trip with us from New York to Seattle to explore some of the most exciting works, both recently unveiled or well-renowned, in some Flavorpill cities.
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Spencer Finch, The River That Flows Both Ways, rendering, 2007
Brooklyn-based artist Spencer Finch is a man in search of lost time. Take, for example, his installation West (Sunset in My Motel Room, Monument Valley, January 26, 2007, 5:36-6:06 PM): 9 TVs face a wall, playing films whose composite, haloed reflection reproduces the colors of a sixty-minute sunset viewed from Finch’s hotel room in Monument Valley. Or there’s 2 hours, 2 minutes, 2 seconds (Wind at Walden Pond, March 12, 2007), in which 44 fans recreate the gusts and ebbs of wind over at the eponymous pond on March 12 of the same year. Read More »
Unless you are living under a rock with no Wi-Fi, you may have heard about the long awaited opening of the Chelsea High Line, an elevated park refurbished from an abandoned rail trestle snaking up the lower West Side of Manhattan. Winding from an entrance on Gansevoort and Washington Streets, under the new Standard hotel, over Tenth Avenue, and past some of Chelsea’s most creative architecture, the High Line is a public space worth its weight in hype. Read More »
Today at Flavorpill, we couldn’t believe that Chastity Bono is becoming a dude and is already being referred to in the press as a “he”. We wondered what a Michael Moore vampire movie would look like. We took a virtual walk along the High Line, thanks to Inhabitat’s exlcusive video. We reconsidered a career as a William Morris agent. We decided that something about Alexa Chung reminds us of Angela Chase — but not necessarily in a good way. We were sad to hear that My Name Is Earl has officially been marked DNR. We actually felt sorry for Bret Michaels. We’re sure it will pass. We were on Team Choire. We laughed at this piece of news about that Salinger sequel guy. And finally, we stared at the first picture from the new season of Mad Men. Because. We. Can’t. Wait.
1. Barack Obama orders Stephen Colbert to shave his head; Colbert declares a victory in Iraq. [via Gawker]
2. Anne Hathaway will play Judy Garland on Broadway with Liza’s blessing. [via NYDN]
3. After years of waiting, the High Line opens to the public today. [via NYT]
4. Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe are reportedly feuding again on the set of Robin Hood; the studio line is everything is peachy. [via NYP]
5. Malawi’s Supreme Court of Appeal is going to let Madonna adopt Mercy. [via The Sun]
The Storefront for Art and Architecture is on the ground floor of a corner building in NoLIta, open to the sidewalk with a system of cantilevered walls and awning windows. The mission of the architecture boutique is echoed in its very design, more accessible to citizens than the (unoccupied) glass residential towers reaching to the sky throughout the rest of the city. Considering it’s taken this long to resurrect The High Line, it’s mind-boggling to think of urban planning on the scale proposed by the architects and designers represented in Storefront’s current exhibition Work AC: 49 Cities. Read More »
