some words to not

in bob dylan's new ipod ad, he is singing into a very cool looking mic. i haven't been able to find any references to the make of it (i'm assuming it's a real mic).

if anyone knows more about who makes those, i'd be happy to hear.

update: someone tipped me off to the fact that it's probably the 'blue' baby bottle.

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just saw 'little miss sunshine' last night and i highly recommend it. as always - the less you know ahead of time, the better. having just watched the trailer, it definitely gives too much away.

michael arndt's script is bold, touching, and very funny, which made me immediately guess that this is his first script. one can now expect the pressure of his success to deem his future work boringly mainstream and safe.

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i'm a big fan of using technology to improve traditional stuff when it doesn't take anything away from it, and reading about the above-linked tennis innovation, i really hope that fifa will adopt some similar technology in their refereeing soon.

speaking of which, this weekend i was taken by a very cool feature in the very cool car that i rented to go to a wedding in canada.

the speedometer on the dashboard (as well as the resulting measurements such as the fuel consumption, trip distance, etc) could be switched from english to metric, i.e. from mph to km/h.

but here's the cool part: when you change the unit system, a light indicates that you're now on "km/h", and instantly the 0-20-40-60 markings now represented kilometers instead of miles per hour. and in place of the double line of numbers, which is found on the speedometers of most cars, the needle would instead change position according to your current system.

this was in line with an overall minimalist design of the car's controls and indicators, using digital displays instead of permanent markings in many cases.

this reminds me of another digital-age design choice, and really my favorite feature in the (mitsubishi) elevator we had at my old company in israel: undo. yes, amazingly, this is not available in every elevator - but at my old employer, you could undo a floor selection after it was lit, but before you arrived at the floor (by pressing it again). simple but brilliant.

telling this story to a friend, he mentioned another interesting innovation in elevators: no internal floor selection. instead, you select your destination floor, and not just the direction of travel, outside of the elevator, allowing the elevator computer to schedule the cabin travel more efficiently.

cute.

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as part of my hobby of reversing the blade on these annoying telemarketers who call me every once in a while, i've made up a new technique that seems to stop them on their track for a couple of seconds, while seeking for the right next step on their flowchart.

when they ask me how much i'm paying currently for [insert service here], i give them a ridiculously low price. today i stated that i pay $9.99/mo for 105 channels of cable tv. even my new friend had to admit that his offer is not that good.

previous techniques included being completely silent after the first few exchanges of greetings, and sharing my recent loss of a close family member with the telemarketer.

but nobody does it as well as mr. mormon.

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"[J]ust pray you don't fool yourself into thinking you've got the answer. Becaus e that's bullshit. The trick is living without an answer... I think."
Character in 'Thumbsucker' by Walter Kirn and Mike Mills

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due to last week's deluge of perfectly innocent looking spam comments, which i've no idea how to filter anymore (they come from random ip addresses and contain normal looking plain text) - comment posting is now switched to manual mode.

this means that comments will only appear on the site after i read them, which might delay them a bit. however, given the low comment traffic on this blog, there shouldn't be a noticeable difference to readers.

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by sheer luck i walked into the sound and vision exhibit at the montreal museum of fine arts. this free show displays some very interesting photographic and video images by young canadian artists.

strikingly, i found many of the works to fit my recent art credo - it almost felt like the show was curated along those lines.

i was particularly fascinated by evan penny's sculpture l. faux: tri-x, which alone is worth the trip to the museum. no photo can do this unusual creation justice.

other great works were isabelle hayeur's and scott mcfarland's hyporealistic photographic composites, which appropriately use digital trickery without putting it on an fucking altar.

much less subtle, but still worth a view were alexandre castonguay's drawing the passions, which blend four people's personal interpretations of a human emotion into a single portrait. the background r.g.b numbers in the titles are a little too much, though, if you ask me.

finally, pascal grandmaison's glass photograph was also fun to explore, as were stan douglas's photos of repurposed buildings in cuba noting their designation before and after the revolution.

ok, i'll admit it - this blog entry is mostly a link memory pad for my future reference.

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three new phrases in the american phrase book: "let's just say...", "not great / not the best", and the related "not a good / great / the best fit".

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impressive (if a bit slow and sticky) animation on this new adidas ad (local link).

it also reminds me of one of my animation teachers who used to say to us that even though it's in 3d, you should avoid the constant camera fly-around effect. "i get it! you can put the camera *anywhere*. amazing."

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right next to safdie's classic habitat '67, the rapids in the st. lawrence river create a standing wave, which has recently become the locus of a river-surfing subculture.

the wave is so steady that at times it seems the surfers are just hanging out on their boards waiting for inspiration to make their next move.

here's a photo series of this weekend's wave riders. i've also put it up on youtube where you can find a couple other videos of the action.

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just came back from travel with much to write about - so watch this space in the next few days...

first off, though: good friend and documentary film producer yonatan israel has opened a patisserie, colson, in brooklyn's park slope.

it's on the corner of 9th street and 6th ave, a block away from the 7th ave stop of the f train.

if you're in the area, you must stop by, and when you do, i highly recommend the brioche suisse with chocolate, although i'm sure that the rest of the pastries are just as dreamy.

colson has the same no-nonsense but warm and familiar vibe as yonantan emanates, so i'm sure to be caught there quite often in the future. although now that the ny times has discovered it, i'm not sure i'll get a seat.

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