Archive for the 'Paper' Category
Book Review: Art Out of Time
January 26th, 2008Dan Nadel’s Art Out of Time: Unknown Comics Visionaries 1900-1969 arrived as a Christmas gift from my s.o., who bought it off my Amazon wish list after I blindly put it on there a few years back. Something about the cover design and the concept of trolling through old newspapers for comic obscurities appealed to […]
Bette in Bookstores
November 14th, 2007Although only the latest in a long string of similar bios, Ed Sikov’s Dark Victory: The Life of Bette Davis is an excellent book which manages to uncover new insights into the subject. Having considered Sikov’s 1998 bio on Billy Wilder one of the finest books on filmmaking ever, I devoured this one in galley […]
Book Review: Hand Job
October 21st, 2007Michael Perry’s Hand Job: A Catalog of Type gathers the work of 55 artists who, in rebellion against computers, excel in hand-drawn typography and design. I remember first noticing this trend in the opening credits to Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides, with cast and crew names floating around in lettering mimicking the loopy and unpolished […]
Good Grief!
October 15th, 2007It looks like Ford at Basic Hip Digital Oddio will be shutting down much of his site by the end of the year. Better enjoy stuff like Vertigo: Then and Now before they’re gone forever.
Also: Bill Watterson reviews the new Charles M. Schulz bio for The Wall Street Journal (thanks, Eric!). I can’t wait to […]
March of the Penguins
October 4th, 2007Hello — I am back from Key West, Florida, with a keen suntan and lots of stories to tell. More about that later, but first I wanted to write about something I found in the Atlanta airport bookstore. Shortly before our return trip, I had finished the Peggy Lee bio I brought and was in […]
Book Review: Uncovered
September 27th, 2007You might have seen the work of photographer Thomas Allen floating around the weblogs a few months back — he’s the guy who cuts out and arranges pulpy paperback books from the ’50s in surprising and delightful ways. Now some of his work has been collected in a new monograph, Uncovered: Photographs by Thomas Allen. […]
Manga Carta
September 26th, 2007I had a bit of a deja vu moment while paging through the Geekipedia supplement of the latest Wired magazine. To illustrate the section on manga comics, they scanned a detail from the cover of the 28th and final Rurouni Kenshin volume — which I designed! I am so intimately acquainted with that artwork that […]
Best of Times, Worst of Times
September 22nd, 2007By now you’ve probably heard that the New York Times is discontinuing its Times Select subscription service and opening up their digital archives. The coolest part is the free online access to all of the copyright-free articles the paper published between 1851 and 1922. Although Jason Kottke recently posted links to some of the Times’ […]
Book Review: Taking Things Seriously
September 16th, 2007Back when I worked at the local newspaper, one of the things I confiscated for myself was this ancient metal Swingline stapler which appeared to date from the Kennedy/Johnson era. Streamlined in design, heavy as a rock, painted Industrial Tan and covered in years of grime and scotch tape detritus, the stapler was so out […]
They’re Special. They’re Exactly Like Me!
August 6th, 2007The Washington Post on the long, complicated history of the Celebrity Profile (via ArtsJournal). Reading this made me think back on my time in the magazine world, and how depressingly samey everything is made out to be. Whether the subject is celebrities or cats or the hottest tractors, every magazine has to have the requisite […]
Book Review: Stacked Decks
July 26th, 2007I’m ashamed to admit it, but reading Stacked Decks: The Art and History of Erotic Playing Cards is something akin to browsing through your dad’s secret stash of Playboys.
In this nicely appointed book, vintage erotica collector Mark Rotenberg guides us through his playing card collection — with examples ranging in date from the quaint, ample-thighed […]
Cheap Thrill: The New England Cookbook (1956)
July 21st, 2007Here’s futher proof that the neatest visuals can pop up in the most unexpected places. Trawl through any flea market or antique store and you’ll find dozens of old paperback mini cookbooks published by the Culinary Arts Institute. Organized by food or region, these were cheaply sold in supermarkets to housewives who wanted to try […]
The Geek Squads
July 19th, 2007Watching the last two weeks of VH1’s World Series of Pop Culture, I’ve come to the realization that I wouldn’t make the cut on that show. Too many recent brain-stumpers. I hate to sound fuddy duddyish, but pop culture from the last 5-6 years is a bit of a blur. Identifying memorable, misogynistic song lyrics […]
Just Deserts
June 3rd, 2007Rudy Adler sent along an email about the Border Film Project (which he helped orchestrate). From the website:
Border Film Project is a collaborative art project giving disposable cameras to two groups on different sides of the border: undocumented migrants crossing the desert into the United States, and American Minutemen trying to stop them. To date, […]
Book Review: Charley Harper
June 1st, 2007About five or six years ago, me and my partner stumbled across some excellent framed prints of stylized birds in a dusty antique store. They looked to be from the ’50s, but the prints’ appealing freshness and simplicity had a timeless quality. The birds literally appeared to fly off the paper they were printed on. […]
