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Brent Engstrom

The blog of Brent Engstrom showcases a wide variety of work. The three pieces shown above were for Nickelodeon Magazine and showcase a great mixture of the grotesque and light-hearted. With that in mind, it's not surprising that Brent Engstrom is also one of the illustrators responsible for keeping Garbage Pail Kids alive. It's impressive that he's able to capture the exact same style as a fad from 20 years ago. I'm not entirely clear on who is still buying these cards (kids I hope) or where you buy them but the illustrations are as engaging as ever.

I did post this with great hesitation because I don't want to sell the guy short - there are lots of other examples worth checking out.

McSweeney's on Music

Fifty Years of Popular Songs Condensed Into Single Sentences - when McSweeney's gets things right, they get it incredibly right.

Video Chat: Google Style

So, Google rolled out their latest gmail feature recently - Voice and Video Chat. From the looks of the demo it is very straightforward and easy to use. The problem? I installed the plug-in, rebooted everything and still.. no option for video chat. Apparently it might "take awhile" for it to show up on your computer but I'm calling BS on a move like that. If you install a plug-in you should see the results from it instantly, not sure how they thought waiting was a good idea?

Regardless, the plug-in is available for download - but there's not garuantee it will work quite yet.

Unrelated note: Why did Google use a PNG for this image? It contains no transparency and could have been 1/4th the filesize if they'd used a JPEG. Again, unrelated but counts as another WTF to chalk up to Google.

Intended Play: Fall 2008

Matador Records have posted a new sampler in their Intended Play series - giving a preview of their upcoming and recent releases. I'm particularly curious to hear the AC Newman, Shearwater and Jay Reatard tracks. Regardless of which particular bands intrigue you there's bound to be something on there that hits just right, so go download it.

And The Relatives - Animals

One of my favorite local bands, And The Relatives, just released their latest ep Animals. Six-songs and seventeen minutes of pop-rock songs that are fun and smart. Not an easy combination to pull off. If you live in the Nashville area I suggest hitting up the release show this Friday after you buy the album at Grimeys. If you happen to live in some other geographical area I suggest you head to iTunes and download the whole thing right away.

Links of a varied variety

• Obama and the dawn of the Fourth Republic - a very interesting notion that every 72 years our country experiences a fairly massive sea change in terms of leadership and Obama marks the next in line. Maybe it's just more hype for the man but, statistically, it makes sense.
• Multicolr Search Lab - really nifty Flickr app that finds images based on color and multi-color search. Impressively accurate.
• Wordpress 2.7 in 63 Seconds - the next WP upgrade looks like they continue to head in the right direction, really nice.

Podington Bear: Season 2

Turns out that the Podington Bear podcast has returned. If you are unfamiliar with the podcast, go listen to the first song from Season 2 and familiarize yourself with the instrumental goodies put forth on a free and regular basis. There are plenty of other things to see on the site but my recommendation is to subscribe to the podcast.

5 Directors, 5 Achilles Heels

Thanks to Big Screen, Little Screen I found myself enjoying this article: 5 Directors, 5 Achilles Heels. The director choices are obviously ripe for picking on but the complaints are legitimately presented. I find it amusing that Uwe Boll even gets a nod of any kind because his list of films is composed entirely of crap films. I would have preferred to have seen Quentin Tarantino on there - as he certainly has some Achilles Heels but manages to make some entertaining films despite them.

How I Became the Bomb - Salvage Mission

If it wasn't obvious yet that I'm "in the tank" with How I Became the Bomb this post should firmly establish that fact in your mind. The guys just finished their first official video for the track "Salvage Mission" (off the new digital EP Who Dares Wins) and I think it fits the song quite nicely. Robert Paynter deserves a giant pat on the back for all the hard work he put into it.

In short, go watch the video and spread the word about the free release.

Street with a View

There are entire sites devoted to the random finds stumbled upon via Google Street View but recently two Pittsburgh artists took things to the next level. Their project, Street With A View, is a well orchestrated series of staged events put on for collection by the Google Street View team. Some of the scenes are as subtle as a moving van, while others are quite a bit more absurd. I wonder if this trend will continue in other cities...

EventBox

EventBox is a developing piece of software that attempts to "pack your social networks in one box." Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Digg, Pownce, Reddit and your own RSS feeds all get dumped into one central location. They've got a great job making the software look like a native OS X program but based on the screenshots I would say that the amount of information coming at you at one time is overwhelming. Maybe I am getting old in my digital excursions but I think once you reach the point where you need an entirely separate piece of software to manage your incoming data you may need to re-think the amount of data you choose to try and partake in. I believe it's called "biting off more than you can chew."

That said, it's not a slag on the software - it looks to do a good job at what it's trying to do...

Feedly: The Firefox Startpage

Aside from having an unfortunate logo I'd say that Feedly looks like a pretty nice little Firefox 3 add-on to spruce up your start page. Mostly, it appears to be a skin for your Google Reader feeds but other sources can be applied. This is not a new concept - see iGoogle or Netvibes but it's a fresh approach.

iTunes Doppelganger?

If you saw the image to the left would you think it was iTunes or some third party independent, open source, extendable, powered by Mozilla doppelganger? If you chose the latter and not the former, you are correct. Songbird strives to do all the things iTunes does, and more, but independently of any Apple orchestration. I am still trying to determine why I would switch to a knock-off version from the original but the possibility of some intriguing add-ons in the future may be the thing to do it...

Friday Videos - Nov. 7th, 2008

Watch the playlist or the individual videos below:

• Paul Rudd & David Wain - promoting Role Models (out today), they sing a rather intense song from Les Miserables.
• He Loves A Fat Girl - the Internet brings many weird public access performances to light.
• Gnome, In The ZONE - amazing. Absolutely amazing. Via Jeremy.
• Under The Bridge: Literal Version - these still haven't gotten old for me.
• Happy Birthday Apprehension - poor kid.
• Ricky Gervais, Letterman Top 10 - Stupid things Americans say to Brits.
• David's Situation - a clip from the HBO pilot that Bob Odenkirk and David Cross wrote recently. The duo has decided to nix the project but are sharing a clip just to show the general vibe. Be warned, it's out of contet and, thus, really not all that funny. But it's nice of them to share it. Read more here.

Have a great weekend!

Money Matters

The art of Mark Wagner is comprised of American currency cut up and re-envisioned into astoundingly intricate art pieces. Unfortunately his portfolio doesn't give a very detailed view of most of the pieces but you can see a few examples here that showcase just how much work is going into a single piece. Something like this is just baffling to think of creating.

Heads up via Os!

Robo Legs Revealed

Honda has unveiled one of their latest inventions, Machine Legs. Basically, it's a device to assist muscle movement; particularly in the elderly or disabled. While it seems a little bizarre looking at first I can envision people walking around with these and it would probably improve a number of lives. First things first though, they've got to give it a catchier name. I'm open to suggestions...

Politics Continue

Just because the Presidential Election is over doesn't mean there aren't plenty of great / intriguing things going on in the news to be aware of:

• You Can Forget My Taxes - with the passing of Prop 8 (legal ban on Gay Marriage in California) many high profile gay and lesbian couples are starting to speak out about the civil injustices being served to them. Melissa Etheridge points out that if she is going to be treated like a second class citizen, she's going to stop paying taxes. It's called taxation without representation and she's right. If the church disagrees with gay marriage, fine, but banning gay marriage doesn't make homosexuality go away, it just degrades those that are just trying to live their life.
• ObamaBats - a Dingbats font focusing on Obama. Pretty well done actually.
• Smitten by Sarah - was McCains choice in VP the reason he lost the election? If she was so un-vetted, why did he pick her? This article puts forth a rather odd, but believable, theory that McCain was just listening to his inner urges.

Jim O'Raw

Thanks to Jeremy I've been perusing the works of Jim O'Raw pretty heavily. His archives have a pretty dense amount of material to go through; most of which is pretty engaging. The collage styles of the main portfolio (the Quiche) are oddly seamless, despite obviously being from numerous sources. To say the least, very enjoyable.

Carrot Creative

Jamie had me check out the portfolio of Carrot Creative and I must say, I enjoyed the experience. They are using a lot of out of the box jquery plugins for their design problems and it's a great solution for presenting a lot of information in a fixed height area AND impressing the end user. I particularly enjoyed the Services page.

code.flickr

Ran across this great article from the Flickr development team and their trials and tribulations developing their version of the site for the iPhone. Some great insights are contained within.

On a side note, I had no idea that the code.flickr development blog even existed. Lots of intriguing, and nerdy, items to read.

Build A Beard

Despite being inundated with beard paraphernalia on a regular basis there is an occasional item that rolls along worth mentioning. Build A Beard is a simple concept - download one of their fake beards, print it out, take a photo of yourself with it and email them. If it just stopped there I wouldn't bother mentioning it but the founders of the workshop are donating $1 into a Kiva account on your behalf - just for submitting a faux beard shot. Very admirable.