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diy classic car restoration



diy.net
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vanilla pop


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He might not have been a punk but the man had attitude to spare Django Reinhart could play some guitar and here's the video's to prove it---



more awesome shit from record brother


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The creative period of New York graffiti art lasted for about a decade, beginning with the appearance all over Upper West Side walls and sidewalks of "TAKI 183" in 1971 and culminating, around 1980, in the realization of spectacular works by individual masters that covered the sides of subway cars. The artists called themselves "writers," and their primary works were alphanumeric signatures, or "tags," executed in fonts of singular originality, occasionally illuminated with vernacular images poached from comics or from recent art history. I suppose the closest analogy would be the creation of intricate capital letters by Celtic scribes in such works as the Book of Kells. Seldom has a movement gone so far so fast. The illustrations in a book like The Faith of Graffiti, published in 1974, show tags that have evolved well beyond TAKI 183, but scarcely prepare one for the baroque splendor of those in Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant's 1984 edited collection Subway Art, most of which were executed around 1980. Subway Art ends with an inscribed rap epitaph by the writer Lee Quinones in relatively straightforward lettering: "There was once a time when the Lexington was a beautiful line/When children of the ghetto expressed with art, not with crime...."

The centrality of the signature is easily grasped, since the primary goal of graffiti was "getting fame," and the subway car--or "burner"--offered a billboard-size surface with the added advantage of mobility. Glory consisted in the abrupt emergence of one's freshly painted tag from a tunnel's darkness onto a viaduct, like the one across 125th Street. The primary audience consisted of other writers, who knew one's identity, appreciated the dangers involved in "getting up" and admired the artistry and originality of one's achievement. In a recent letter, Tony Silver--who made a wonderful documentary with Chalfant, Style Wars--wrote, "I liked the idea that the transgressive writers with no consciousness of the art world had taken over public space as vandals with their tags and burners, and discovered they could be artists, creating their own canon."


When I asked Silver why Jean-Michel Basquiat, who was something of a graffitero in the early 1980s, was not included among the writers in his film, he said that he could not fit him in. Despite the fact that Basquiat worked as a street artist for a time and even had a tag--SAMO--he viewed himself, from the outset, as a fine artist, and the unprecedented art world of the 1980s rightly accepted him on his own terms, though the outlaw aura of graffiti probably abetted his meteoric ascent. By 1984 some of the writers were trying to cross over into the gallery scene, but it proved impossible to sustain the energy that had made them underground stars. Basquiat, however, flourished in the downtown art world. In May of that same year, he had his first one-person show at Mary Boone, one of the hottest galleries of that moment, and was included in "An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture," with which the Museum of Modern Art inaugurated its 1984 reopening. He had re-created on canvas the visceral excitement other writers achieved only in the rail yards of the MTA.



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gagogzian



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i shop

just to top it off i went over to apartment therapy to see whats happening there. some important news on spring home furnishings and linen sales. heady stuff. did these people completely miss the whole barbara kruger thing ?(when the going gets tough the though shop sales?!) t-shirts available at regular price from the ICP.

Spring Sales...



Area

Sample Sale - below wholesale! - on all modern bedding and table linens

When: May 4-5

Where: 180 Varick Street #936 (212.924.7084)

Versace

"Decadent" home furnishings are 60% to 75% off

When: April 28-29

Where: 645 Fifth Ave., 12th fl. (212.317.0224)


[...]

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Lorimer Loser: Stop This L Train, I Wanna Get Off



A picture is worth a thousand words on this one. A million bucks for three stories of charmless, 1970s-era interiors in second-stop Williamsburg. Puhleeze! Perhaps there's some way to rationalize this as an investment property, but we just can't imagine anyone paying this kind of dough to live here. (We doubt even the die-hard modernists on the blog will defend this one.)

from brownstoner
yep, folks this is really what bkln realestate blogs are talking about


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in defense of rezoning williamsburg from curbed, one of my favorite right wing nyc realestate blogs


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schwarz omitted from design*sponge list of favorites:

maybe it's the sun outside, maybe it's the fact that i'm going home to VA on thursday, maybe it's ac's new job, but for some reason, i'm just happy today. and i thought, while i was thinking about all the things i'm happy about, why not share my love for my fellow design bloggers?

there are so many wonderful blogs out there that share my passion for design and have made this wonderful design community what it is, so i just wanted to send a little d*s virtual love note to each and every one of them. today is about celebrating you guys- you're amazing, you keep me up to date on all the wonderful things about there and i'm so lucky to be involved in a community full of great people like you guys. keep up the great work! (and if you haven't seen some of these sites, please check them out!)

to apartment therapy: you are the lifeblood of this community. thank you so, so much for your heart and all your dedication to making our apartments as wonderful as they can be.

to land+living: i just love you guys. you have just a nice, positive vibe on your site and you review really thoughtful projects that i wouldn't have heard about anywhere else. keep up the great work guys!

to josh rubin: you're the coolest of cool, josh. i don't know what we'd do without your insights on fashion, design and everything else that makes our lives just a little bit hipper. thanks so much for your eye and your dedication to finding the best of the best.

to core77: you guys are great. coroflot is a wonderful resource that i couldn't live without. you feature wonderful technological advancements in design and i'm always amazed by some of the stuff i see up there.

to unbeige: thanks for always investigating issues i wouldn't think to delve deeper into- your insights are thoughtful and timely- i really enjoy your site.

to treehugger: you know i love you guys- you're the greatest. putting out such wonderful, earth-friendly designs, you guys are in a class of your own. keep up the great work!

to id fuel: dom and crew, you guys rock. nuff said.

to not cot: welcome! you've got some really great stuff up there! i always love seeing what you've discovered!

to josh spear: we're in the young club together- don't know what i'd do without your insight on all things cool and buzz worthy.

to mocoloco: the classic, the ultimate- you consistently provide us with the best in european and american design, thank you for your commitment to excellence in design.

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trailer trashed


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fish camp follies 4 frames


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Rock-a-billy artist Hasil Adkins dies
April 27, 2005 11:47 AM

MADISON, W.Va.
Rock-a-billy artist Hasil Adkins, a one-man band whose screaming vocals and freestyle approach to rhythm landed a cult following, has died.

He was 67.

Adkins' body was found yesterday at his Madison home, where he lived alone. The cause of death has not been determined but it does not appear suspicious.

Guitar, harmonica, drums, foot-rhythm instruments -- Adkins played them all.

Known to his fans as The Haze, Adkins struggled for decades to get noticed. In a 2002 interview, he said he mailed out thousands of tapes and records over a 30-year period while fishing for a record deal.

Adkins was the original star of Norton Records, a label built around the primal recordings he produced beginning in the Eisenhower era.

Adkins claimed to have written more than seven-thousand songs. He first emerged in the 1950s, only to disappear again. European fans kept the rock-a-billy rage alive, and when the Cramps did an early 1980s remake of "She Said," Adkins' records suddenly became hot again.

His other hits included "Poultry in Motion," "Chicken Walk," "The Hunch," "Chocolate Milk Honeymoon," and "Boo Boo The Cat."
from brian at fmu


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you would think they could just grab their slide-rules and sort this out in advance!

What’s up with Los Angeles architects and their sun problems? First, there was Frank Gehry; the polished stainless steel that clads part of his Walt Disney Concert Hall has produced so much heat and glare that it’s having to get sandblasted as we speak. And now Thom Mayne’s much-praised Caltrans District 7 Headquarters in downtown L.A. is also proving to be solar-challenged. As reported in The Los Angeles Times, some Caltrans employees are complaining that the new 13-story building not only has too few water fountains and toilets (oops), but that the perforated and louvered metal screens that shield much of the glass structure, and that are among its most distinctive design elements, aren’t always doing their job. Apparently, the sunlight still gets so bothersome inside that a source now tells us up to 900 new MechoShade blinds, joining an existing 200 to 300, will need to be installed at a likely cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars. (Mayne’s rep tells us that only a few areas of the building have glare issues, and only at certain times of the day and year. However, extra shades are being installed for visual continuity.) In any case, this seems to make Mayne’s secondary metal skin somewhat redundant. At least it still looks cool.

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Earlier this month, a sharp-eyed reporter for the New York Times noticed that the performing arts center planned for Ground Zero will be excluded from the $500 million fundraising campaign for the World Trade Center site memorial. Instead, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation told Robin Pogrebin of the Times that fundraising for the center will be part of a “second phase.” To architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable, it is clear what this “second phase” really means -- the performing arts center will probably never be built.

And thus, Huxtable wrote with obvious fury two weeks later in the Wall Street Journal, the news of the center’s exclusion was “the final betrayal” in what has been a continuing “downgrading and evisceration of the cultural components” of Daniel Libeskind’s original plan -- thanks to those who lack “the courage, or conviction, to demand that the arts be restored to their proper place as one of the city’s greatest strengths and a source of its spiritual continuity.”

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end of the century on 13 tonight


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rat rod pick of the week


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TS HJ closing


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i know people have already been talking about the new google satellite maps feature. i just scrolled (at max zoom using my arrow buttons like a joystick) along an old patch of highway i used to hitchhike between dallas and denton back in college. its ranges from whole continent views to picking out your house on your block.


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paint it black you devil


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on yelling freebird


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the library of congress american memory





via zeke
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im reposting that guy who ripped all his 70's albums and put them up on his site.
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hey sally,

can you recommend anything special from here ?

Selected recordings in the National Library of Canada’s collection of 78s, chosen for their Canadian content, were digitally reproduced for this site.

via record brother (my newest favorite site)



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botero's abu ghraib


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reel radio





via dave


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revs rtns


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In his more recent book, Internet Art: The Online Clash of Culture and Commerce (Tate, 2003), one of the first scholarly studies of web art, Stallabrass made a point of championing unconventional art made outside the gallery system. For Stallabrass, the internet is an ideal environment, a place where artists and thinkers can produce and share “immaterial works that can be viewed as art, and which can be free of dealers and the agendas of state institutions and corporations.”

[...]

In his newest book, Art Incorporated: The Story of Contemporary Art (Oxford, 2004), Stallabrass continues his attack on the avant-garde affectations of the international art market. In popular myth, artists can act "like heroes in the movies, [able] to endow work and life with their own meanings," Stallabrass writes, while in truth "the economy of art closely resembles the economy of free capital" -- and consequently the artist is subservient to market pressures, rather than subverting them.

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A trove of free historic artists films by Kenneth Anger, Luis Bunuel, John Cage, Guy Debord, Marcel Duchamp, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Robert Morris & Stan VanDerBeek, Isidore Isou, Man Ray, Robert Rauschenberg, 37 short Fluxus films, Hans Richter, Harry Smith and Jack Smith.



via kenny g
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Less known to the public than his contemporaries Charles Eames and Marcel Breuer, Jean Prouvé has only recently been acknowledged as one of the most influential European designers of the 20th century. Prouvé’s output, ranging from household furnishings to industrial buildings and residential homes, is notable for his signature use of industrial metals like sheet steel and aluminum.


The exhibition is organized around a building Prouvé constructed in 1951 as a prototype of inexpensive, readily assembled housing that could be easily transported to France’s African colonies. Fabricated in Prouvé’s French workshops, the Tropical House—as it is known—was carried in the cargo hold of an Air France plane to Africa. It was erected in the town of Brazzaville and remained there for 50 years. In 1999, retired commodities trader, rare car collector and Yale alumnus Robert M. Rubin had the Tropical House disassembled, packed up and shipped to France, where it was painstakingly restored.


This is the first public display of the house outside France. A 400-square-foot end section of the house – approximately one-fourth of the entire structure — will be erected inside the gallery of the A&A building. The open end of the displayed section will face into the main exhibition space. The exhibition will include photographs by Mark Lyon, plans, artifacts and a short film documenting the Tropical House from its return to France and the completion of its restoration near Paris last summer. Related Prouvé objects, such as furniture made for export to the tropics, will also be included.

continue...


yale show per gary lucas
more on prouve from newsline columbia gsapp

via vz
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inflatable pub

via zoller
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hotrod hootenany


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conversations

conversations regarding the future of architecture

from record brother
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kensington jc


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lens

A soap bubble just floating over the ground” is young Italian engineer Lucio Blandini's description for his potentially revolutionary design for an entirely frameless glass structure. Blandini designed the project while a doctoral student at the University of Stuttgart’s Institute of Lightweight Structures, founded in 1964 by Frei Otto. Since 1995, the institute has been under the direction of Werner Sobek, the noted German engineer who has done pioneering research on glass, including the development of carbon-fiber reinforced glass and load-bearing glass structures.
from the an annual glass issue


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Hernan Diaz Alonso : winner of this year's MoMA/PS1 Young Architects Program


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bye-bye johnny b goode


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the snobs
unintentionally sexual comic book covers



via zoller
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cache of NYC restaurant photos 2002-2004

from curbed
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This is Silverstein’s standard sales presentation. He’s uttered it dozens of times to potential tenants, a cross section of Fortune 500 America, and they’ve all taken the same tour of the building and seen the same view. But so far, Silverstein has not been able to seduce one of them. As of now, in fact, he has secured a single tenant: Silverstein Properties.

Larry Silverstein has spent nearly four years as the odd man out at ground zero, written off by victims’ families, urban planners, and the media as the guy who was too broke to rebuild. He’s been continually upstaged by a series of louder, more mediagenic characters: George Pataki, celebrity architect Daniel Libeskind, and Rudy Giuliani, who sided with calls by the families of victims for a sixteen-acre memorial. Today, Silverstein has emerged as the most important player in lower Manhattan. He has the cash and the legal right to rebuild—and with 7 World Trade Center nearly ready to rent and construction of the Freedom Tower ramping up, he’s on his way to doing exactly that. “My world has been filled with people telling me what I can’t do, what I’ll never accomplish,” Silverstein says in his halting Brooklyn baritone. That he’s made it this far can’t help but make him crow a little. It’s almost enough to make him forget that what lies ahead may be the world’s most sensitive marketing challenge: asking tenants to move to the scene of the worst terrorist attacks in history.

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Accused of inciting a riot and resisting arrest, Mr. Kyne was the first of the 1,806 people arrested in New York last summer during the Republican National Convention to take his case to a jury. But one day after Officer Wohl testified, and before the defense called a single witness, the prosecutor abruptly dropped all charges.

During a recess, the defense had brought new information to the prosecutor. A videotape shot by a documentary filmmaker showed Mr. Kyne agitated but plainly walking under his own power down the library steps, contradicting the vivid account of Officer Wohl, who was nowhere to be seen in the pictures. Nor was the officer seen taking part in the arrests of four other people at the library against whom he signed complaints.

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devil jugs


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Of all the triumphantly weird characters who have roamed the frontiers of American art none ever went quite as far out as the composer Harry Partch.



“For death is all the fashion now, till even Death be dead.”
“For death is all the fashion now, till even Death be dead.”
“For death is all the fashion now, till even Death be dead.”
“For death is all the fashion now, till even Death be dead.”
“For death is all the fashion now, till even Death be dead.”



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"Keep the sofa; sell the Schnabel."


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the high line


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It pays to be a well-known webmaster with great connections!  Not only do you get impressive offers from Nigerian royalty to help them move large amounts of cash into the US on a daily basis, but your friends from other web sites will often share hot and steamy pictures from old travel trailer brochures with you, because they know you are oh so lonely like to laugh at that sort of thing.  When Dan from THE IMAGINARY WORLD sent me this brochure from Komfort Travel Trailers, I began to get "Komfortable" indeed, if you know what I mean.  Back in the day, they liked to add a bit of a saucy side to their trailer buying clientele.



via zoller
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the pan am building


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There has long been a tendency in architecture to erect straw figures only to knock them down. In his article “'Criticality' and its Discontents,” published in the Fall 2004/Winter 2005 issue of Harvard Design Magazine dedicated to “Realism and Utopianism,” George Baird admirably—and, I think, accurately—summarizes recent efforts to do just that.(1) These entail the identification of and subsequent assault on something called “the critical” or “critical architecture,” usually accompanied by a collateral assault on something called “theory.” At the risk of erecting yet another straw figure that tramples on the subtleties of Baird's analysis, it might be fair to characterize such practices, variously named “post-critical” or “projective,” as sharing a commitment to an affect-driven, nonoppositional, nonresistant, nondissenting, and therefore nonutopian form of architectural production. But as Baird notes, these efforts have thus far failed to deliver an actual, affirmative project, settling instead for vague adjectives like “easy,” “relaxed,” and—perish the thought—“cool.” Baird therefore concludes his article by asking (with critical overtones?) what they expect to yield in the form of discourse or what he calls “critical assessment.” In other words, by what criteria is the “post-critical” asking to be judged, beyond mere acceptance and accommodation of existing societal, economic, or cultural norms?



hdm spr/sum 2005


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KL
kevin landers bicycle and signpost at elizabeth dee


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lipstick and dynamite


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dymaxion passenger



via zoller
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crd


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the importance of being ernst, max ernst


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EVERYWHERE=CITY DESIGN=HOPE

mau vs the people of torronto


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lake michigan shipping container cottage


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all time worst nyt style magazine low points include AZ quoted here in it's entirety:

Andrea Zittel | Artist: ''I love that design, as opposed to art, can get at the fundamental issues of being alive in this culture,'' says Andrea Zittel, whose work redefines conventional notions of home. She turned a 1940's cabin in Joshua Tree, Calif., into her own Case Study-style house, designing everything, including the living room's carved foam furniture. She also created transportable living pods (like the one here, customized by the designer Jonas Hauptman). For her coming show at the Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York, she is doing more hand-rendered work, like crocheted wall hangings. ''I am getting tired of clean modernism,'' she says. ''I love this whole baroque thing happening in design.''

philip johnson thought that was a good idea too. he was also wrong.


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why i hate venturi (sucks) and other shit about sheds


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dot dot dot


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bambi mod fonts


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rudolph de harak


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well that was just great Tom. thanks. I think that worked out great. lets do it again soon.


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University of Michigan student Madonna in a supporting role with eggs in this short artfilm. --Thom


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Hello Dad, I'm in jail!
Hello Dad, I'm in jail!
Hi Dad, I'm calling you from jail!
Hi Dad, Happy birthday. I'm in jail! Jail! Jail!
Hi Dad.

After all those years, I'm in jail now!
I'm in jail! I'm in jail! I'm in jail!
I like it here. It's nice!
I like it!
Hello Dad, I'm in jail!
Hello! Hello Dad! Hi, I'm in jail!
Say hi to Mom, from jail!
I'm in jail!
I'm gonna stay here!
I like it here!
Ha ha-ha ha-ha-ha!
I like it!
Yeah, throw away the key!
I'm in jail!
Hello Dad, I'm in jail!
Hello Dad. Hi Dad, I'm in jail! Jail! Jail! Jail! Jail!
Haaaaaahhhhhh!


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dirty rotten sell-outs

enjoy!!! --Thom
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Some pretty impressive special effects in this music video. Not sure where I stand on the content though, kind of red-state. No? Btw, I was thinking of changing may name to the Canadian spelling, Thom. Feedback welcome.


---Tom
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keven les steve kerry

Me, Tom Moody - I'm starting off my stay over here at schwarz with some selfless, I mean shameless, self promotion. This is a shot of me and Kevin and Les and Steve and Kerry. That was before the toxic reaction to turpentine incident and I had to switch from oil paint to a xerox machine as my primary creative medium. --Tom Moody

ps: I hope Bill doesn't loom around all the time making comments about how I'm doing as todays guest blogger. Yeah thats right, its just for one day. I couldn't give up control of my page for any longer than that with out adding a few more guidelines and conditions for "terms of use." Bill on the other hand is letting me do pretty much anything I want, except log in under my real DMT member's name.


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starting tomorrow schwarz will be having a guest blogger. its tom moody. that will be taking up most of his time, so ill be guest blogging over at tom moody. be sure to let us know if you can tell the difference.


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design w/o reach


from thwart via design-sponge


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more on this as information becomes available

Federal Report on WTC Collapse Released

by Beth Fertig



NEW YORK, NY, April 05, 2005 — Federal investigators today, will release their most-detailed analysis of why the World Trade Center collapsed.

Federal investigators have already hypothesized that the towers didn't fall because of their lightweight floors or insufficient fireproofing. Those factors may have played a role. But investigators have suggested that it was the impact of the airplanes and the resulting fires that caused the weight of the buildings to shift to their outside columns, bringing them down.

Today's report will offer a revised analysis, with the exact sequence of events. Investigators will also release reports on their interviews with first responders and survivors who were inside the towers. Later this year, they'll release a final report with recommendations for improving building design and fire safety.

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scent stories


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sheer Dallas


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memorial performance for steven parrino

three goth girls eating copies of his book THE NO TEXTS
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the euros are coming the euros are coming


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But let it not be said there is no honor among scrap men. This week a man identified by the police as a scrap dealer in the Bronx returned the missing pieces, and all four pieces of "The Ides of March" are now back at the Hippodrome.

i really like this "ides" piece. they look like four giant salt crystals - the scrap value of anything including (out of style) bronze sculpture is also of interest.


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n1
nakashimas at auction


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soda constructor


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