w a s t e . t i m e . n o w

But great images at The Poster List.

With worldwide fame and an upcoming movie, our favourite foreign correspondent Borat is the bee’s knees these days. Make click here for a preview, pictures and more.

Comedian Sarah Silverman is wickedly funny (and a drop-dead fox). Her stand-up is peerless, and her appearance on Conan O’Brien was pretty much the funniest stuff in the history of late night talk shows. She’s so nifty I can’t even hold it against her that she slums around with Jimmy Kimmel.

Jesus Is Magic, Silverman’s first feature film, is part of the 18th Annual Vancouver Jewish Film Festival this weekend — and word on the street is that it’s perfectly awesome. Catch one of the two screenings, Saturday April 8 at 10 PM or Sunday April 9 at midnight. Both shows will be held at the VanCity Theatre.

Attention Hollywood — nobody has the attention span to sit through your two-hour movies anymore. And we’re tired of nauseatingly flawless actors making us feel badly about our own imperfections.

These days, I watch all my movies at the 30-Second Bunny Theatre, where a troupe of bunnies re-enact Hollywood movies in 30 seconds, more or less. They have yesterday’s classics, today’s blockbusters, and everything in between.

I just watched the 30-second bunny Brokeback Mountain, and have to admit I don’t understand what all the hype is about.

I’ve been watching a little too much television lately — you know it’s excessive when you start getting into The Golden Girls. Anyway, I was surprised to recognize one of my favourite artists working on a Discovery Channel show called Mythbusters.

Turns out Kari Byron, in addition to creating amazingly compelling found-object installations, also drops mannequins from airplanes, blows things up and performs all other manner of pseudo-scientific experiments for the small screen. And they said the day of the multi-disciplinary artiste was over…

A joke where I come from goes “there’s only two kinds of music — country and western”.

I was mostly raised on 70s rock, but every now and again I settle into a wicked honky tonk bender. If you’ve ever done somebody wrong, or been done wrong by somebody else, you’ll recognize the sound of the steel guitar.

Honky tonk music started taking shape around the end of the first world war, found its stride through the 40s and 50s, and reached its zenith in the 70s. Henry Horenstein celebrates the sunset age in Honky Tonk: Portraits Of Country Music 1972-1981.

It’s easy to get lost in these pictures — moments frozen in time so clearly you feel yourself there. Horenstein’s photos document famous places and legendary entertainers, but my favourites are the pictures of people like you. So put on some Ernest Tubb, pour some Wild Turkey, and spend some time feeling lonesome for places you’ve never been.

In a national CBC poll last year, former Saskatchewan premier and socialist icon Tommy Douglas was voted the Greatest Canadian. With the federal election now over, the CBC has finally decided to air Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story on March 12 and 13. Check out the movie trailer here.

But not too busy for this.

I don’t have much time to waste these days, but thought I’d share this little gem.

I’ve been wasting hella time at the Smoking Gun’s gallery of celebrity mugshots. Arresting Images has dozens of household names caught at moments in their life they’d probably rather forget. This is tawdry stuff, and I’m ashamed to enjoy it as much as I do.

Each jailroom image is accompanied by details of the arrest, but it would be fun if details of the excuse were also included. James Brown: nobody believes you were “rehearsing to play Ike Turner in a Broadway musical”.

I love magic and hate the circus, and enjoy all these shots of 19th Century posters promoting magicians and circus shows. My favourite is the little devil (or whatever) delivering this question to a psychic.

New York’s Museum of Modern Art presents SAFE — an exhibition of “more than 300 contemporary products and prototypes designed to protect body and mind from dangerous or stressful circumstances, respond to emergencies, ensure clarity of information, and provide a sense of comfort and security”.

Make sure you have Flash Player installed, then visit the Design Takes On Risk exhibition online.

I’m back from Smithers, and have posted a few photos from my trip on Flickr. Here’s a series from Mom and Dad’s wedding on October 11, 1980 — and a few photos from their 25th wedding anniversary on October 8, 2005.

Ben Crane’s Before and After Trade Cards slideshow is really… something. I don’t know that I’ll be picking up the book, but I enjoyed passing the time with these.

Jason Munn designs some wicked show posters for some kick-ass bands.

A quick nod today to French artist Olivier Passieux. I’m not usually taken with paintings, but Passieux’s warm, hazy oils are exceptional. Much of his work involves common scenes of people and families — familiar images Passieux transforms into uniquely mysterious eye candy that has been compared to aging Polaroids. Four of Passieux’s paintings are on display at Vancouver’s Buschlen-Mowat Gallery for anyone who’d like a closer look.

I once stole a garlic press from my friend’s kitchen and threw it away in an abandoned lot.

I did this because my friend was being a real jackass — but we’d just reconciled after a bitter clash that took weeks to resolve, and our friendship couldn’t survive another conflict. So as I left my friend’s place, fuming at this person’s shabby behaviour, I swiped the garlic press on my way out the door. I stomped down the street a couple of blocks, paused next to an empty lot, and threw that press over the fence as hard as I could. I left all my frustration and resentment there, to rust among the garbage and thistles. It felt great.

Some people think I’m crazy when I tell this story, but that’s not the point — it was the only way I could find peace without kicking this person’s ass. We never fought about what had pissed me off, because I never had to bring it up. I got satisfaction my own way, and moved on. I’ve believed in the transformative power of inconsequential, introspective gestures ever since.

I think that’s partly why I like this idea so much — PostSecret is “an ongoing community art project where people mail-in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard”. The site is updated every Sunday with dozens of intensely personal submissions. I believe witnessing these confessions, betrayals, desires and inside jokes helps soothe the people who write them — the same way tossing that garlic press soothed me.

Autumn is an excellent time of year for exploring public art in our city.

Creative Communities is “Vancouver’s Community-Based Public Art Resource” and a great place to start. Their Art Map For Vancouver has a list of projects by neighbourhood, so you can begin close to home. Or, for a more comprehensive directory, visit the City of Vancouver’s Public Art Registry, which has its own searchable map of Public Art by Neighbourhood. Both databases also allow you to search by project and artist.

Go on now — get out the door and soak it all in before monsoon season begins.

I made a disappointing discovery yesterday. Chris Ferebee, a collage artist I kind of dig, also works in other mediums — and it ain’t pretty. His photos are plain, and his objets d’art take their “uber-modern” label very, very seriously. Worse, Ferebee’s prints are shit — I submit McLuhan Was Right and Yawning At War Protesters and rest my case.

Now I’m doubting whether this retro collage series really knocked my socks off at all.

Before your next road trip, stop by David Yanciw’s Big Things Of A Big Country, where “it is not just the size, but the thought that counts”. Searchable by province, artist or subject, this site catalogs all the bigness Canada has to offer — from Mundare, Alberta’s big sausage to the big UFO in Moonbeam, Ontario. There are big Ukrainians, big pinto beans, big turtles, and bigfeet.

For those who’ll never get to visit such attractions in person, you can experience all the magic in one place at the World’s Largest Collection of World’s Smallest Versions of World’s Largest Things — coming soon to a town in a State near you.

If all the bigness is starting to make you feel uneasy, unwind with the Collier Classification System for Very Small Objects — a compendium of items “visible to the naked eye but small enough to go unnoticed most of the time”.

It’s great to be wasting time in Prince George with my family, but I’m anxious to return to Vancouver tomorrow and catch up with everyone. I promise to post something substantial in the next twenty-four hours, but here’s a link to some photos from my trip in the meantime.

Most memorable time-waster this trip had to be the wild cow milking competition.

Geist magazine closes each issue with a splendid theme map. Check out the Canadian Map Of Places That Sound Impolite from their last issue. Links to previous maps are listed in the menu on the right-hand side.

Abram Games was a fellow who understood graphic design. An Official War Artist in Britain during WWII, he created the most fantastic images of their kind to come out of a democracy (whatever — fascists and communists do that shit better). Games continued to be an influential designer after the war; see this exhibition overview from the Design Museum in London for more detail than his official website provides.

My favourite Games design is the blonde bombshell — a wartime solicitation for the Women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service.

One of my most reliable fixes when I need visual stimulation is provided by the Orange County Museum of Art. Their stunning web presence will soon include a directory of every exhibit hosted since the museum opened its doors in the `60s. For those of us too distant to visit, the Orange Lounge offers online exhibition space for new media projects.

I recently discovered one of the illustrators I enjoy most is actually two — Kozy and Dan look like they have a lot of fun.

P.S.
MoCo Loco — “a web magazine featuring modern contemporary design news and views” — is definitely a good place to waste some time.

I definitely don’t mean to promote the whole God preoccupation, but the Brick Testament is one of the sweetest little projects I’ve seen online.

How come their guys have such awesome facial expressions? Where did they get better LEGO pieces than I ever saw when I was a kid?

My first guess had a higher power involved, but as it turns out — “there are a few instances where, as a last resort, Rev. Smith has modified LEGO elements with a hobby knife or permanent ink marker. Further, there also are a few select instances of computer graphics used to enhance certain photos (besides the use of dialogue bubbles)”.

Celestia is three-dimensional software that opens up our solar system to the home explorer. Mapping the stars, comets, planets, space ships — it’s the Keyhole of the skies, and it kicks ass!

Donwload a free copy for Windows, Mac and Linux, then see the dozens of add-ons available.