6/30/2007
3/12/2007
Lookin' Good, Chuck D
Shepard Fairey, of OBEY fame, doing a portrait of Chuck D. While I’m not down with all his work, I’m always a fan of anyone who loves They Live.
From the website of UK street Artist BANKSY
The end of Yellow Ribbon Magnets?
Yellow ribbons dwindle with war support
By Andrew Ward in Atlanta
Published: March 2 2007
For three years after the invasion of Iraq, it was difficult to drive more than a few miles through middle America without seeing a car displaying a magnetic yellow ribbon. The magnets, bearing the slogan “Support Our Troops”, became a symbol of patriotism for millions of US motorists. But as support for the war fades, demand for yellow ribbons has collapsed.
Magnet America, the largest manufacturer of the product, has seen sales fall from a peak of 1.2m in August 2004 to about 4,000 a month and now has an unsold stockpile of about 1m magnets. “We have enough supplies to meet demand for years to come,” said Micah Pattisall, director of operations. “Every product has a lifespan and this one has run its course.”
At its peak, the North Carolina-based company employed 180 people to handle sales, marketing and distribution. Today, it employs 11 people. Mr Pattisall said declining support for the war was not the only reason for the slump. A flood of cheap imports from China also hurt the company, which has refused to shift production overseas even though it costs three times as much to manufacture in the US.
Only about half a dozen companies are still supplying the magnets compared with up to 200 at the height of the fad, according to Mr Pattisall. When the company was founded in April 2003, during the initial invasion of Iraq, nearly all its revenues came from yellow ribbons. Today, patriotic products account for only 6 per cent of sales. The yellow ribbon has been overtaken as the company’s best-selling product by a wristband promoting chastity before marriage with the slogan “True Love Waits”. “We are growing again and looking to hire additional staff,” Mr Pattisall said.
Yellow ribbons were first displayed widely in support of kidnapped US diplomats during the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979. Some critics have condemned the magnets as a cheap and superficial way to honour the armed forces and highlighted the irony of placing them on gas-guzzling vehicles that deepen the US’s dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Resentful that the yellow ribbon has become associated with support for the president, George W. Bush, opponents of the war have introduced their own car magnets emblazoned with anti-war statements.
On Ebay, the internet auction site, on Thursday, a black and white ribbon bearing the slogan “Out of Iraq, Bring ’Em Back” was priced at $5. Traditional yellow ribbon magnets, in contrast, could be bought for one cent
Captain America-Dead
While I don't follow comic books like I did 20 years ago, I was surprised about the amount of ink/TV time spent on the death of Captain America and what this meant for US society. Even the New York Times weighed in with coverage in the A section. Granted it didn't get as much coverage as Britney shaving her head....but, after all, there's a war on and the media must focus on the truely important stories of the day. But as is often the case, the Onion was spot on with its coverage.
1/29/2007
Smokin' Ouch!
While I had seen a view ads for the recently released Smokin’ Aces and had chalked this up to one of those films that I will put in my Netflix Q only to be continuously pushed down my list as other more worthy films come out (the film Domino fits this bill as well), this review in the WSJ struck me as one of the most sedately savage reviews I’ve read recently
When someone says, in "Smokin' Aces," that a Las Vegas mob boss wants a snitch's heart, it is not a figure of speech. That heart, beating in the chest of a sleazy magician named Buddy "Aces" Israel, figures heavily in an otherwise heartless and ultimately brainless action thriller. But calling Joe Carnahan's movie heartless implies that this auteur of affectless anarchy might have meant to invest it with detectable human feelings, and failed. Better to call it heart-free, and acknowledge the wisdom of Mr. Carnahan's self-promoting, semiliterate Web site, in which he says: "Don't let those douchebag critics scare you off. I promise, on the souls of my ancestors, you will come out of that movie with at least one scene, that you'll never forget."
Possibly more than one. The splatter of mutual snuffery in an elevator. The grisly ventriloquism of a killer manipulating his dead victim's face. A monstrous child gone off his Ritalin. The souls of the filmmaker's ancestors may be safer than our own, for "Smokin' Aces" is a vision, nightmarish but far from unthinkable, of a movie genre in which drama and character -- fuhgetabout character development -- have been banished by extravagant freakery, cheerful degeneracy, mind-numbing logorrhea, lip-jerk profanity and serial spasms of murderous violence, all framed in the sort of striking, hollow images pioneered by fashion photography and music videos.
Mr. Carnahan came to prominence four years ago with a darkly efficient little cop thriller called "Narc." To give him his due on "Smokin' Aces" (the first word of the title is a gerund), he applies lavish amounts of manic energy and perverse humor to an outwardly simple premise -- all sorts of unpleasant people want to kill Buddy Israel before the FBI whisks him away to protective custody. The plot comes equipped with some intricate twists, but they aren't really dramatized. Rather, they're discussed and simultaneously illustrated, in fragmentary music-video style -- first to let us know what we're going to see, and, at the finish, to explain what we've seen.
1/28/2007
Headcrab update
Adventurous souls looking to serve the Combine in a mentally diminished fashion can get your own head crab HERE
10/16/2006
Get your headcrabs! Fresh from Xen! Don't be the last one on your block without a headcrab!
The above are fake banner ads on a site that has with sewing plans on how to make your own headcrab from the game Half-Life...Since the owner didn't have any real ads, s/he thought they would make up some fake ones. The sewing plans look vaguely involved but some of the end products don't look too bad.
Too bad that Valve chickened out with their own efforts on this front
They didn't make very many and they were very, very small...the only head they would fit onto would be a little bigger than a fist...I guess that liability (Hey, those teeth poked my eye!) concerns was the reason why they are so small....but it is pretty cool looking and would make an amazing full sized hat.
10/14/2006
What doesn't Ebay pretend to sell?
Given Ebay's rapacious and wholly inefficient ad buying strategy, I guess it shouldn't be that surprising that this sort of thing doesn't happen more often...such as in this Register piece on what cropped up shortly after the death of Croc Hunter Steve Irwin
8/23/2006
There's a hole in the sky...through which things can fly
Now with Imperial meeting room action!
The hottest part of the market is for the various forms of clone trooper that often come in color variants (such a battalion dressings such as the white and orange clone trooper that fought with Obi-Wan or the blue and white clone trooper that Vader led at the massacre the Jedi Temple, which come with boots stained with Jedi blood). Characters who where on screen for less than 5 seconds (such as Imperial Galactic Marine Commander Bacara seen here on the left), will have their own figure and some retailers get exclusive colors/versions of figures that are only available at Target or Toy R Us. Typically, many of the commanding officers are the more rare characters (ie, there will be only one of that figure in a retail case, while there will be 2 or 3 identical common characters in that case) and many people try to buy multiple clone troopers to build up their own personal clone army…which also results in their scarcity on the retail shelf, even when they are not less common figures.But I think Hasbro must be running out of ideas, since they are planning to release a set based on the scene in the Imperial briefing room on the Death Star…the one where the various officers talk about what is the best way to use the death star, and one of them calls out Vader (“Don’t try to frighten us with your sorcerer’s ways, Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the Rebel’s hidden fortress…”) and Vader reminds him of the power of the force by force choking him for a while until Grand Moff Tarkin calls him off.
Imperial Briefing Room Boxed Set
I guess all those 3 of those Wullf Uyklaren fans out there will be now, finally, satisfied.