/// PMJ

Eagle Rock-climbing (at Eagle Rock)

Thu, 16 May 2013 13:45:27 -0700

Eagle Rock-climbing (at Eagle Rock)

I’m thrilled to have contributed to the fourth episode of...

Mon, 06 May 2013 10:15:10 -0700

I’m thrilled to have contributed to the fourth episode of The Organist, the stellar new podcast produced by KCRW and The Believer. I spoke to Isis Acquarian, the official historian of The Source Family. They were an iconic peace-and-love-espousing cult that lived in the Hollywood Hills in the early 1970s, wore robes, ran a successful vegetarian restaurant to the stars, made psychedelic records, rode around in a Rolls Royce, and followed their bearded leader Father Yod with spiritual devotion. They’re also the subject of a new documentary by Jodi Wille and Maria Demopoulus, out this month in cities around the country.

I spoke to Isis about her time with the Family, what it was like to leave behind one identity for another, and how she handled experiencing all of that through the lens of a camera. My segment starts around the 39-minute mark, but the entire episode is worth a listen, with fantastic contributions from Nick Cave, James Franco, Christian Lorentzen, Tao Lin, and many others. Oh, and it’s not for the faint of heart.

Mr. Impossible

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 09:37:37 -0700

It’s Friday evening at L.A.’s Grammy Museum, whose walls are hung with iconic rock photographs and shelved with pop artifacts. On stage in the museum’s Clive Davis Theater is another Clive — Aden — a young rapper from South Central Los Angeles. He bounces back and forth between his bass and guitar players like a court jester schooled on the flow of early Eminem. But seeing as he’s dressed in a plaid, grunge-era Baja pullover and black jeans, he looks a bit more like Frank Ocean. His band, called The Strangers, plays without a drummer, which could be distracting, except that Aden punctuates every line with such force that the absence of traditional percussion is moot. “Nothing is impossible,” he sings.

He cites as influences everyone from classic MCs to contemporary pop-punkers, and connects the dots between disparate genres while boasting of the unlikely feats he’s capable of: “I can get struck by lightning, turn day to night and increase the peace by fighting.”

I profiled the L.A.-based emerging rapper/singer/artist Clive Aden for LA Weekly. Photo by Ralf Strathmann via LA Weekly.

The Ento Box is designed to make you think differently about...

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 07:51:00 -0700

The Ento Box is designed to make you think differently about eating bugs—our most sustainable source of protein—by wrapping them in a sushi-like package. If you can eat raw fish, you can eat a caterpillar.

“If you roast wax worms, which are these little caterpillars that eat only honey,” says [co-founder Julene] Aguirre-Bielchowski, “they taste pretty much like pistachios. Locusts, they’re very nutty, kind of like walnuts. Crickets are different, actually very meaty. So if you pan fry them, they taste a bit like sausages. And obviously I think the first time you try them you associate them with a lot of things that are already familiar to you, but as you eat them more and more you start recognizing their own flavors.”

I wrote about Ento’s founders for CoExist’s Change Generation series, which focuses on inspiring young entrepreneurs.

Photos via Ento.

Packed like sardines: Michael Wolf’s images of Hong Kong...

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 13:35:23 -0700

Packed like sardines: Michael Wolf’s images of Hong Kong towers in his photo series Architecture of Density are awe-inspiring and wonderfully geometric. That these homes resemble circuit boards or microchips lends the series a dystopian quality, but it’s still fun to marvel at what humans are able to build.

Via Everlane.

Handsome: The NBA logo, recreated from SLAM, ESPN, and Dime...

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 10:44:25 -0700

Handsome: The NBA logo, recreated from SLAM, ESPN, and Dime magazines by Reddit user LosGangelesBakers. Via Deadspin.

loverofbeauty: Marcel Proust, Manuscript of ”Du côté de chez...

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 08:08:00 -0700

loverofbeauty:

Marcel Proust, Manuscript of ”Du côté de chez Swann”

(38 notes) Originally posted by atrecherche

I imagine I’ll always be fascinated by artifacts like this manuscript of Proust’s. The Xs and scribbles and strike-throughs and marginalia are so relatable, but nevertheless I wonder: Is this notebook a beautiful object in and of itself? Or is it all context? Something like this—or, say, one of David Foster Wallace’s syllabi—tends to travel really well on the internet. That’s not surprising, as it feels like we’re peeking over the shoulder of a genius at work. But are we being too precious with these images?

If nothing else, I guess it’s a good reminder to write first drafts by hand. That way at least you’re left with something—the remnants of a discarded or evolved idea or whatever.

Why You Actin' 'Spicious?

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 15:52:00 -0700

In anticipation of the most electrifying teensploitation film in, well, ever, I spoke to the artist, writer, and filmmaker Harmony Korine for Filter. (Bonus: I also spoke to James Franco, who is a revelation in the film and whose interview appears as a sidebar.) We spent plenty of time on Spring Breakers but also tried to unpack each of his features. Of particular interest to me was whether his fascination with fringe characters was an outgrowth of his own feelings of isolation—either as an filmmaker or just as a person.

The isolation or underlying sadness of the artists in Mister Lonely—did that come from life experiences?

I don’t exactly know the answer to that. I’m not exactly sure where anything of mine comes from. I don’t do any type of self-analysis. I try not to know anything about myself, as far as that type of thing goes.

Why is that?

I don’t really know. It’s hard for me to say.

It’s just: You’re fascinated with outsiders, and now you’re making a film with pop starlets. Granted, their characters manage to find the fringes of society, but it’s a departure from, say, Trash Humpers, or the Dogme 95 approach. Were you trying to make something spectacular?

I just conceived it like a piece of pop poetry… I had this image of girls in bikinis and pink ski masks with unicorn patches on a white beach holding guns. I wanted the colors to be bursting like an electric neon painting. I liked the idea of a film being like candy-coating, like these girls. And then all the message and the feeling is the residue of that. I told Benoît [Debie, cinematographer behind Enter the Void] that I wanted to light the whole thing with Skittles. I wanted the tone and ambiance to be the star, like you could touch it. Same with the sound: an audio barrage. I wanted the whole film to be experiential from beginning to end, very quick, and then just disappear into the night. To hit you and then evaporate.

Read the entire interview, “This Is 40? The Spiritually Triumphant Films of Harmony Korine,” but beware that there are some potentially NSFW photos alongside it.

A modern rarity: perfect barrels at Oz’s iconic Kirra...

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 10:36:00 -0700

A modern rarity: perfect barrels at Oz’s iconic Kirra pointbreak, captured at 240 frames per second by Talon Clemow. Via Surfer’s Journal.

From the right vantage point, the images in Yao’s New...

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 07:38:00 -0700

From the right vantage point, the images in Yao’s New Landscapes series bear a striking similarity to classic Chinese landscapes, from their wispy clouds floating between mountain peaks, right down to the presence of traditional red “appreciation seals,” small stamps that historically functioned as signatures for artists and studios. But those bucolic settings are in fact digitally altered composite photographs of mounds of garbage covered with green mesh. That pastoral hillside? It’s more like a landfill. That babbling brook? A littered roadside.

I wrote about Yao Lu’s New Landscapes for CoExist.

“We had people telling us how they learned a lot about...

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 09:31:00 -0700

“We had people telling us how they learned a lot about geographic visualization in the process,” says Wichary. “We’ve heard from people contacting their city officials to release their neighborhood data to the public—and even from city officials themselves. We’ve also, naturally, witnessed a lot of complaints about the shapes and names of neighborhoods, and our answer is always the same: it’s all open data, so just send us your changes. If Click That ’Hood convinces someone about the value of open source projects, or the importance of open data, that’s already a victory.”

I wrote about Code for America’s Click that ‘Hood game, a mapping tool that teaches local geographies, for CoExist.

“The name is meant to probe what’s at stake with regard...

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 08:59:00 -0700

“The name is meant to probe what’s at stake with regard to production, consumption, and waste,” says Hallacher. “My goal was to discover inconsistencies in production versus consumption at a local level. In the states I worked with, more beef is produced than the population of that state could consume. This means the American beef industry is dependent on its product traveling around the country and beyond, creating an environmentally and financially costly system behind eating beef.” Nebraska, for instance, produces 70 times the beef its population consumes.

I wrote about Sarah Hallacher’s “Beef Stakes,” in which the artist sculpts clay into U.S.-state-shaped steaks, for CoExist. The project is a visual feast, from her convincing renderings of meat to her handsomely designed faux supermarket packaging.

It’s also a reminder that regardless of the popularity of locally sourced meat, most of our meat (and food in general) travels great distances between farm and table.

Here are five common usage mistakes, brought to you by DFW. Via...

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 10:01:58 -0800

Here are five common usage mistakes, brought to you by DFW.

Via Open Culture

Staples Center

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 08:18:47 -0800

Staples Center

at Laveta Steps

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 15:30:50 -0800

at Laveta Steps

Gay Telese’s outline for his 1966 profile of Frank...

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 08:58:57 -0800

Gay Telese’s outline for his 1966 profile of Frank Sinatra

nprfreshair:

Listen to Talese read from the classic profile of Sinatra here.

Read the piece in its entirety over at Esquire here.

theparisreview:

Gay Talese’s outline for “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” 1966, written on a shirt board.

Lost Angeles (at Elysian Park Trail)

Sat, 16 Feb 2013 13:07:33 -0800

Lost Angeles (at Elysian Park Trail)

It’s not the future yet.

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 10:53:08 -0800

It’s not the future yet.

Our greatest cities are often the sources of the most light pollution. In those places, we rarely...

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 06:31:00 -0800

Our greatest cities are often the sources of the most light pollution. In those places, we rarely see the stars. But, with a clever method of composite imaging, the French photographer Thierry Cohen has turned the lights out in the city to reveal the stunning stars that have always been overhead.

I wrote about Cohen’s “Darkened Cities” for Fast Company’s CoExist site.

John Nelson designs fantastic maps that illustrate how we get...

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 09:12:00 -0800

John Nelson designs fantastic maps that illustrate how we get from here to there; in each map, every dot you see represents an individual commuter, with each color corresponding to a different mode of transit. I wrote about his series on transit in Seattle and in the 10 most bike friendly U.S. cities for Fast Company’s Co.Exist site.