A good vinyl toy should be more than a status symbol or dust collector: it should connect with you as an art form, and in an ideal situation, you should feel something. When I look at Andrew Bell’s upcoming O-No Sushi figure, I feel the polarity of consumption: desire and guilt simultaneously. Based on Andrew’s Never Look Back artwork, these toys will be one of the must-have items of the San Diego Comic-Con and summer in general. Each figure (exclusive blue and standard red) has articulated limbs, severed tentacles, extra eyes, sushi, bowl and terrific packaging. This is the second sushi toy I’ve reviewed in as many days. Sushi toy trending? Check out many more snaps of O-No Sushi here. � More delicious pictures after the jump.
Inspired by modern ruins and the spirit that remains alive inside of them, Geometry of Ruins seeks to simultaneously provoke feelings of hope and its death. The multimedia show by Tyger creator Guilherme Marcondes and his artist wife Andrezza Valentin—both from Sao Paulo and now living stateside—goes from an art center in Sao Paulo that was never finished, whose mystical what-could-have-been promise is amplified by a superimposed eclipse on fire, to a video installation with dozens of tiny screens flashing frenetic images and mimicking the city’s grid layout. I love the couple’s concept of using structures as literal skeletons in which to frame imagination. The show runs till July 11 at Flux Salon in Venice, CA, the wonderful little gallery by Jonathan and Meg Wells (of ResFest fame).
Our pals at Jack Threads are holding a big 24 hour sale for Shades of Greige starting tomorrow at 12 noon. Pieces will include dress pants, jackets, dress shirts, ties, and more. All merchandise also ships within 48 hours, so no long wait times for your sale goodies. Not into Shades of Greige? Next up, KR3W, WeSC, Sabre Sunglasses, 10.Deep and Analog. Not a member? You can signup to become one for killer deals on top tier brands in the streetwear and contemporary fashion market.
Ladies and gentlemen: We haven’t reached my goal yet, but we’re getting closer. And I’m not going to stop talking about it until we do. With more than 100,000+ readers, I’m convinced we can do a lot of good together. $1.00 from each and we’d have 20 wells by now. Anything helps, really.
To those of you who have supported so far, thank you. You are all awesome.
Did you donate and want a link to your site, company or project here? Forward me your Paypal receipt to feedback[at]joshspear.com and I’ll give you a proper shout out and full link here.
Today is my birthday, 25 years to be exact. While I really do want to let it pass quietly (I feel old), I also want to do some good. Want to send me a gift? Figured you might. How about you just donate to Charity Water instead. I’m giving up my birthday, and it’s all I want from you: A $25 donation means only 200 of you (and there are thousands of you out there) need to pony up the cash so we can team up and build a well.
Only $5,000 builds a well that provides clean drinking water for 250+ people for more than 20 years.
After more than a year together, our very own Jonathan Stern is, well, no longer our very own Jonathan Stern. Cat’s out of the bag, he has moved on to a dead-sexy job as Senior Editor for the Food Network Magazine– and we’re very happy for him. It’s a great place for him to explore his fanatical obession with all things edible, and a good opportunity for us to sit back and reflect on how far this blog has come. Thanks for all your support and hard work Jonathan, and good luck!
So, naturally now I’m left a bit short-handed day to day. What are we going to do? Well, for now, I’m back to running the show. Watch this space, things are changing, uh oh.
We’ve all been there. A good night out, a drink or five, some break downs in judgment, and then the inevitable drunk-texting begins. The convenience of technology and the loss of your normal social filter can quickly lead to disastrous text messages. The full, ego-crushing, game-killing embarrassment will only become totally clear when you wake up the next day…
Now there’s a site to document all these moments of textual genius. Combining the brevity of Twitter, the fails of Fail Blog, and the “I’m glad that wasn’t me” scenarios of F My Life, Texts From Last Night is simple. Read, scroll, and enjoy. If you’ve got some text gold of your own, you can add it to the site. With gems like “I cant find my shoes, my wallet, or my keys, but I know where your sister is” and “Trimmed my pubes and broke your paper shredder. Separate events.”, the awesomeness pretty much speaks for itself.
Building a rapidly growing Twitter following and with over 20,000 Facebook fans in just a few months, again the ease and brilliance of user-submitted content makes another big time online hit. People like to know what other people think and humiliation is universal. Wrap it up in text-length portions and share online and you’ve got pure gold. It’s only a matter of time until the first “Texts From Last Night” book shows up on coffee tables.
My pals from The Buried Life just dropped me a note with a link to their new trailer shown above. If you missed the news, they’ve been given there own MTV show! Fantastic coverage of what they’re up to in this past Sunday’s New York Times
Four buddies set off across the country in an R.V., video camera in tow, to knock items off their “100 things to do before I die” list: kiss the Stanley Cup, get a tattoo, grow a mustache.
With plenty of high jinks and adolescent humor, “The Buried Life” seems like the perfect MTV reality show, except for one unexpected twist. At each stop the group helps deserving locals with their own wishes. In Idaho, for example, they took eight children with brain cancer on a shopping spree at Toys “R” Us.
We like our usual scale just fine. It tells us our body fat percentage, so we know when it goes near 25, it’s time to cool it with the brie. For those of you who dread what the LED reads, industrial designer Jim Ruck’s conceptual scale might seem like your worst nightmare. Though it looks intimidating– being composed of hundreds of pins and all — the device would allow your body weight to be distributed evenly. Look at the bright side: at least he didn’t put the pins in the other way.
We’ve just put up our 5000th post on JoshSpear.com. Pretty rad, right? We think so too, so we’re celebrating by giving away a little special something — a trip to NYC. Here’s the deal:
I’ll fly anyone in the continental United States to New York City for dinner somewhere ridiculously delicious (think sushi) with yours truly and some very special guests who have been featured on the site before. We’ll have a rocking dinner, I assure you. Then I’ll put you up in a super-swanky hotel in Soho. Boast to your friends, or invite them all to jump on your bed at the after party.
Comment below and I’ll randomly choose a winner next week. Who wouldn’t want a free trip to the best city in the world?
(We’ll arrange a good time that works for you sometime this spring)
On January 10th, JoshSpear.com friend and action sports industry staple Riley Poor was involved in an accident in Vermont that resulted in a serious spinal cord injury. Among the many hats Riley wears in the ski industry: he’s X Games champion Simon Dumont’s personal camera guy, a videographer for Poor Boyz Productions (they just won Powder Magazine’s Movie of the Year Award for Reasons), and the Nike 6.0 Team Manager. Riley is now in an intense rehab program at the renowned Craig Hospital in Denver, continuing his rehabilitation and eventual full recovery. His spirit has been truly extraordinary through this ordeal, and he has come to be an inspiration to many.
Riley’s friends are coming together for a fundraising event and you’re all invited. The Rally for Riley is this Saturday night (2/28) at Sutra in Denver. Full details in the flyer after the jump. Hope to see you there for drinks, dancing (DJ Sounds Supreme and DJ Jesse James will be spinning), raffle prizes, and a celebration of Riley’s spirit.
I was at Davos again this year, but decidedly quiet on the blogging front — I did a bit of Twittering, but for the most part was really there to focus on the topics at hand. If you didn’t make it this year don’t worry, they provided HD links to download most all the big sessions, which is pretty neat. Highlights include Putin schooling Michael Dell in the opening plenary (Number 31) “The Values Behind Capitalism” with Indra Nooyi (CEO of PepsiCo), Tony Blair, and others (Number 60), and one of the most intense sessions I’ve ever witnessed, “Gaza: The Case for Middle East Peace” with Tayyip Erdogan, Amere Moussa and Shimon Peres. At the end of the spirited (read: insane) debate, Prime Minster Erdogan of Turkey, walked off the stage. Interested in geopolitics? Watch it, (Number 97).
Overall, given the financial crisis, this year was a little surreal. Unlike many of the other people, I actually left hopeful. My sessions on Creative Leadership and Youth Culture were off the record, but what I can tell you is this: There are some incredibly savvy young people moving the needle across the board, and we need more of them. We simply can’t depend on the old guard to fix things. They’re too busy looking backwards, analyzing where they screwed up in the first place to see the future. Each and every one of us will be paramount in our own way — whether it’s solving the financial crisis, climate change, or making the world as a whole a better place, it’s going to be fresh thinking and innovation that saves the day.
Back when IWearYourShirt.com launched, I swooped in and grabbed today’s date – January 20th. I thought I’d send him some clever Obama inauguration T-shirt to sport proudly for me, but truthfully I never got around to it. Then I thought I’d send him a ridiculously small tank top, and never got around to that. It also crossed my mind to buy a shirt and have my sweatiest friends work out in it, zip lock it, and send that to him. That too never happened.
And then I realized, I’d make him go shirtless on a cold winter day and just asked him to write “Obama” on his chest in lipstick or something. Tape and sharpie had to do, but it worked I suppose.
All in good fun of course. He took the joke very well. Be sure to check out his video and live-cast later today — very funny.
You don’t need an accountant to tell you you’re going to have to cut back even more on your burger trips if you’re trying to save up for that new computer. But for some of us finances might as well be like figuring out how to say “Where’s the bathroom?” in Martian. Having someone who can put it to you in a way you can understand is the only way it’ll stick. Brazilian bank Itau’s smart and amusing “I Can Bank It” campaign targets late teens and early twentysomethings (OK, and even those who aren’t of that age can still be impacted by the message here) and dishes the financial dirt in realistic terms by comparing survey-based monthly expenditures with purchase goals in a story style that’s highly reminiscent of ARGs. Recognize the feel of the site? It’s by Brazilian design agency Gringo, whose digital foreign-language swear-words lessons are still going strong. Remember, one less muffin and coffee a week could add up to a spankin’-new laptop faster than you can lose the weight from consuming those fat-laced pastries.
It’s great to see a classroom project launch a social enterprise company that is then able to provide for increased educational opportunities. That’s the case for Better World Books, “the online bookstore with a soul” founded by three Notre Dame alums that collect used books and sell new ones to help fund literacy efforts worldwide. Their newest partner is Invisible Children, a program that uses multimedia to discuss the ongoing war in northern Uganda and the need for improved classrooms and resources. The two organizations have invited high school and college students to host book drives as part of the “schools for schools” initiative and have raised more than a million dollars with the involvement of 2,000 schools. By visiting the Invisible Children partnership page on BetterWorld.com, online book buyers can have the proceeds of their purchases benefit Ugandan school children while helping inspire action education and hope in a place that desperately needs both.
After more than a year together, our very own 
