by Patrick Appel
This is some of the creepiest portraiture I've seen in some time. The website says that, "children we ask to much of, to be perfect, like dolls." A description of the work:
by Richard Florida
Brian Frank writes:
Richard Florida points to a familiar article about "blipsters" — "black hipsters." Which is funny, now that I think of it, because the original hipsters were known as "white negroes".
Well, almost. Norman Mailer's infamous "The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster" was originally published in 1957 in Dissent.
Nearly a decade earlier, in 1948, Anatole Broyard, published "A Portrait of the Hipster" in Partisan Review. I can't find an online version, but here's how one writer describes it:
Broyard attempted an analysis and a definition of a new type then appearing around Greenwich Village who had, in his view, been welcomed by intellectuals who "ransacking everything for meaning, admiring insurgence… .attributed every heroism to the hipster.,,."
But Broyard was less enthusiastic about these supposed new rebels … In Broyard's words: "The hipster promptly became in his own eyes, a poet, a seer, a hero." And he added that the hipster life-style "grew more rigid than the Institutions it had set out to defy. It became a boring routine. The hipster – once an unregenerate Individualist, an underground poet, a guerrilla – had become a pretentious poet laureate."
Of course, what Broyard was doing, as well as attacking the hipsters, was criticising his fellow-intellectuals for failing to accept that the hipster rebellion was a sham.
Hmmmmmm …
by Chris Bodenner
Andrew is in a documentary that opened this weekend. Here's a taste.
by Patrick Appel
by Richard Florida
More than 2,000 car dealerships across the country will be closing their doors in coming months. Planetizen – my favorite urbanist site – recently asked its readers what should be done with all that space. Here are the top five vote-getters as of May 21:
A reader writes:
As someone who has lived with serious mental health problems, I can relate to the sister your reader writes in about. It's important to understand that every one of us has the innate desire to not be different. Many mental illnesses don't begin to manifest until early adulthood – so you've spent your life as a normal human being and now you're crazy. Right, who's going to accept that? Even if you've always had a mental illness, you just want to be normal. This is why almost every individual with mental illness goes through a period of abandoning medication – it's just much easier to think "I don't need this because the hard times which caused it are over" or "Now I'm cured". In my experience it takes a "bottom" so to speak to realize that you do need to be medicated and arrive at acceptance.
This relates directly to the earlier post regarding patient rights and how often people with mental illness are treated or institutionalized against their will. When I was unmedicated, every thought – no matter how innocuous – twisted into something dark and disturbing. I would begin by thinking how nice it is to hear children playing outside, and then find myself dwelling on all the horrible things that could happen to them. I would look at green grass, and end up thinking about how someday I'll be buried under a patch of it. When I looked at my gas range, the telephone cord, or the beam across my roof, I started to think about how it could be used to kill myself. My thinking was different and dangerous, and I was in no position to make rational decisions about my healthcare. Patient rights really don't apply in the same way under these conditions. I was institutionalized against my will on several occasions, and if I hadn't been I would probably be dead today.
by Patrick Appel
Thomas Allen's work has bounced around the tubes before, but it's worth a second look. A description:
(hat tip: Jacobs)
by Chris Bodenner
It's hard out there for a model masseur.
by Chris Bodenner
I hope your sunny holiday weekend is as joyous as this:
Margaritas from Zach Klein on Vimeo.
by Chris Bodenner
The Vulcan salute has Jewish origins. Leonard Nimoy explains.
The Dish 