A few photos from our most recent trip to Italy taken with my iPhone and spiced up with one of my favorite apps, ShakeItPhoto
Collaborations are a thing of beauty. This month, Grand Opening and Our Goods have teamed up and formed Trade School, a month long experiment that offers classes in a variety of subjects including Business School for Artists, How to Make Butter, Intro to Participatory Learning & Action, Grantwriting and a number of other fascinating topics. Trade School omits the dollar system and operates solely on barter. Teachers are compensated in work space and students pay for class by bringing goods to trade. I signed up for “PLAY: Improv for Ideation,” a class that teaches a series of interactive ideation and process exercises aimed at informing and enhancing the creative practice. In exchange, the teachers, the duo behind MakerHappener, have asked for any of the following:
One-time access to a laser cutter
1 hour of Wordpress assistance
A jar of organic peanut butter or raw local honey
Stumptown coffee beans
A winter coat for a 70 pound black lab
Art
Plants
Cool maps or art books
I love the idea of people coming together across a variety of disciplines to share resources and teach one another. Who wants to join me?
I love that one of the simplest words in our language, “and” can be expressed in so many different and beautiful ways. This new blog celebrates the ampersand 365 days a year.
Some of you may remember this post I did a while back with the amazing photos that The Selby took as part of the advertising campaign for Cole, Rodd and Haan. Well folks, he has gone and done it again. This time, The Selby takes us on a beautiful tour of one of my all time favorite chocolate houses, Mast Brothers Chocolate. Rick and Michael Mast are the handsome duo behind these delicious chocolates that are handmade in Brooklyn . These boys are true artisans and are one of the few “bean-to-bar” chocolatiers, which means they own the entire process of making their chocolate from sourcing the cocoa beans from Venezuela, Ecuador and Madagascar to roasting, grinding, molding and eventually packaging it all up. The Selby does a wonderful job of illustrating the whole process from start to finish, so please check out the whole series here.
Not only is this some seriously delicious chocolate (my favorite is the Dark Chocolate with Almonds and Sea Salt), but every bar comes beautifully packaged in Italian wrapping paper; it’s like unwrapping a gift each time.
You can find their chocolate at any of these amazing little shops:
A Little of What You Fancy 19 Newtown Lane, East Hampton, NY 11937
Bedford Cheese Shop 229 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211
Bierkraft 191 Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11217
Branford Green Grocer 1036 Main Street, Branford, CT 06405
Brooklyn Larder 228 Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11217
Dean & Deluca 560 Broadway, Manhattan, NY 10012
France 44 4351 France Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55410
Grab 438 7th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11215
Marlow & Sons 81 Broadway, Brooklyn, NY 11211
Miette Confiserie 449 Octavia Boulevard, San Francisco, CA 94102
Murray’s Cheese 254 Bleecker Street, Manhattan, NY 10014
Park Slope Food Coop 782 Union Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215
Provisions 150 Beekman Street, Manhattan, NY 10038
Rubiner’s Cheesemongers 264 Main Road, Great Barrington, MA 01230
Spuyten Duyvil Grocery 218 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211
Stinky Bklyn 261 Smith Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231
Stone Barns 630 Bedford Road, Pocantico Hills, NY 10591
Urban Rustic 236 North 12th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211
Conan O’Brien released the following statement with regards to whether or not he would accept NBC’s proposal to move his show to 12:05 following Jay Leno.
People of Earth:
In the last few days, I’ve been getting a lot of sympathy calls, and I want to start by making it clear that no one should waste a second feeling sorry for me. For 17 years, I’ve been getting paid to do what I love most and, in a world with real problems, I’ve been absurdly lucky. That said, I’ve been suddenly put in a very public predicament and my bosses are demanding an immediate decision.
Six years ago, I signed a contract with NBC to take over The Tonight Show in June of 2009. Like a lot of us, I grew up watching Johnny Carson every night and the chance to one day sit in that chair has meant everything to me. I worked long and hard to get that opportunity, passed up far more lucrative offers, and since 2004 I have spent literally hundreds of hours thinking of ways to extend the franchise long into the future. It was my mistaken belief that, like my predecessor, I would have the benefit of some time and, just as important, some degree of ratings support from the prime-time schedule. Building a lasting audience at 11:30 is impossible without both.
But sadly, we were never given that chance. After only seven months, with my Tonight Show in its infancy, NBC has decided to react to their terrible difficulties in prime-time by making a change in their long-established late night schedule.
Last Thursday, NBC executives told me they intended to move the Tonight Show to 12:05 to accommodate the Jay Leno Show at 11:35. For 60 years the Tonight Show has aired immediately following the late local news. I sincerely believe that delaying the Tonight Show into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting. The Tonight Show at 12:05 simply isn’t the Tonight Show. Also, if I accept this move I will be knocking the Late Night show, which I inherited from David Letterman and passed on to Jimmy Fallon, out of its long-held time slot. That would hurt the other NBC franchise that I love, and it would be unfair to Jimmy.
So it has come to this: I cannot express in words how much I enjoy hosting this program and what an enormous personal disappointment it is for me to consider losing it. My staff and I have worked unbelievably hard and we are very proud of our contribution to the legacy of The Tonight Show. But I cannot participate in what I honestly believe is its destruction. Some people will make the argument that with DVRs and the Internet a time slot doesn’t matter. But with the Tonight Show, I believe nothing could matter more.
There has been speculation about my going to another network but, to set the record straight, I currently have no other offer and honestly have no idea what happens next. My hope is that NBC and I can resolve this quickly so that my staff, crew, and I can do a show we can be proud of, for a company that values our work.
Have a great day and, for the record, I am truly sorry about my hair; it’s always been that way.
Yours,
Conan
Many of you are probably familiar with Jonathan Harris. He is, in my mind, a genius. While he has created a number of fantastic projects, he seems to have gotten the most press for We Feel Fine, an interactive exploration of human emotion, which also just recently became the We Feel Fine book. If you haven’t checked it out, do.
More recently, he created a series of vignettes titled World Building in a Crazy World, which are based on a talk he gave at UCLA as part of the Mobile Media Lecture Series. When I first came across them, I was in a cozy hotel in the Trastevere neighborhood of Rome wrapping up a two week vacation and mildly dreading heading back to NYC. After reading them, my mind shifted; I wanted to dive back into the projects I was working on and see how I could make them better. I became “less concerned with how the world is, and more with how the world could and should be.” As Jonathan sees it, the series is about the current state of the digital world. As I see it, the vignettes are about life and how to be more conscious of how we live it.
Think about his points. Soak them in. Apply them to your life where it feels right. I did and I’m a better person because of it.
Meet Cheeming Boey. He draws on Styrofoam cups with a Sharpie.
Here is a section of an interview he recently did:
Q: How did you come up with the idea?
Boey: I had no paper while I was craving to sketch one day outside a coffee shop, saw a cup on top of a trash can, took it and started drawing on the surface. I had forgotten how well ink flows on the Styrofoam surface. Its got a completely different feel from paper. Initially it was just with a ball point pen, I later moved to sharpie because I had some sharpies on my desk at work.
Q: Tell us about some of your favorite designs. Why do they resonate with you?
Boey: I like the ones that are more personal, like a dining experience with a friend over sake and stories. I also like waves; hence a lot of my cups have a spaghetti-like, wave motif to it. One of my favorite Japanese artists who has influenced me heavily is Hokusai, and I think a lot about how he draws his waves when I draw mine.
Q: What is the longest amount of time you have spent on one cup?
Boey: 3 months. I don’t do initial drafts on the cups, so what you see is on the final product is the first pass. It takes forever to work on an elaborate piece because my next line could completely ruin the composition. Or I get nervous about drawing certain shapes. Or poses.
So sometimes I take hours to figure out the composition in my head, sometimes I don’t come back to it for months.
I have to also make sure the foam cups are absolutely lint/ hair free. They charge up easily and tiny hairs or lint can stick to it. And when the fine point on the sharpie catches one of these hairs, a thin line can suddenly become a broad stroke. Terrible.
A few weeks ago we headed out to the North Fork of Long island with the mission of having a long and leisurely lunch at the beautiful The North Fork Table and Inn in Southold. The experience was exactly what we were hoping for; after nearly three hours of indulgence, we left with full bellies and big smiles. If you are ever in the Northfork or simply want to spend a day exploring the nearby vineyards, farm stands and beaches, stop by and enjoy an afternoon with these fine folks. They’ll take good care of you.
The Meal:
Dill Marinated Organic Scottish Salmon with a Corn Blini, Assorted Radish and Horseradish Mousse
Alderwood Smoked Cod & Local Yukon Gold Potato Cake with Truffled Tarter Sauce and Micro Herb Salad
Housemade Ricotta Cavatelli & Roasted Satur Farms Cauliflower with Flat Parsley, Pecorino Romano
Slow-Braised Boneless Shortrib of Naturally Raised Beef with Wilted Baby Spinach and Local Yukon Gold Potatoes
Warm Sugar Donuts with Vanilla Anglaise