Monthly Archives: July 2009

From the ESPN match report on the previously-documented half-speed, yet still newsworthy, EPL-over-MSL All-Star game loss on the last round of PK’s due to Sounders FC All-Star (and former Arsenal man) Freddie Ljungberg’s stopped shot:

“Ljungberg, who played the entire game, was carted off the field after the final kick due to a migraine headache and taken to a hospital for evaluation, according to MLS.”

Frank Stella is one of the giants of Modern minimalism, and Roy Lichtenstein will always be remembered for elevating the graphic language of newsprint comics to oil-on-canvas ‘high art’. But a whole generation of disco-era gear-heads will likely remember first being introduced to these guys (and others like them, including my favorite Robert Rauschenberg, RIP) via their participation in the BMW art cars marketing scheme.  Stella’s “graph paper”/grid design for his M3 is typically judged to be the best of the lot, Warhol’s painted-right-on-car version has not surprisingly not really stood the test of time, and Lichtenstein’s looks like a Lichtenstein.  BMW got gigantic ROI on this program, by associating their brand forever-more with edgy/urban/cool people and being among the first companies to merge cold industrial design products with hot high art. And they recently revived the program after some fits and starts through the ‘90’s, with current artworld hothot Olafur Eliasson contributing a bunch of whack-a-doodle car-ish designs and some sculpture under the aegis of the program.

Trek, one of the pedal-powered brands benefiting most from wealthy eco-conscious consumers’ shift from high-octane to high-calorie-burn, recently took a page from BMW’s playbook and has introduced it’s Stages line of artist-designed Madone model road bikes.  @lancearmstrong just tweeted his reaction to the Damien Hirst model direct from Stage 18 of the Tour de France;  personally I’d rather have the Yoshitomo Nara model in about a 52cm frame size please (confidential to Trek marketing program manager: if you are listening and see this post come through your blog alerts system, just think of me as a potential brush-fire in the cycling-mad Seattle market with these things… i’m just saying :).  And then there’s the Shepard Fairey model – I mean, WTF, that guy is just everywhere (including Spring Creek Group worldwide headquarters, where several of his original Andre the Giant OBEY street-art wheat-paste posters from the mid-‘90’s adorn our walls. Yep, we’re just that OG).

Check them out – I can guarantee that if you showed up to your usual Saturday morning weekend ride on one of these things, you would be throwing down a seriously blingy gauntlet to the group…

In addition to being rich (as has previously been chronicled ad nauseum, including here), a bit dim (as the old adage goes, “When the dimmest proclaim your lack of dimness, thou art verily proven dim.”), and a poor teammate / cheapskate / leadership-responsibility-shirker / douche-bag (as described in detail to 25-year-old males worldwide here), it now appears that David Beckham can become something of a hothead when he gets his feelings hurt. 

If there is one thing that both the Yanks *and* the Brits can agree upon, it is this: Heroes don’t lose their cool.

Welcome to the start of your long, wealthy, substantially-less-heroic career denouement, Becks. Alas, it seems we had just begun to know ye….

I casually followed this guy’s whole, short, odd “art career”. My first reaction several years back was, “What a douche. Since when did we enter the era when shooting smack and Krylon qualifies for ‘contemporary artist’ status?”  I saw one of his overpriced photos at a collector’s NYC apt a year ago. Mostly it seems it was just a 10-year drug-fueled, trustafarian, media-and-museum- (including my mid-90′s alma mater, mistaking “hack homeless dilletante drug addict with a kodak” for “edgy” in this case, imho) -hyped deathwish. Well, he got his wish Monday night following a too-big plunger push it seems. R.I.P., indeed.

Ironically humorous discovery of the last week:  Not one, but two, volunteer Fire Departments near here in far-western North Carolina are currently operating their own *fireworks stand* to raise money for *their volunteer Fire Department*.  Out of their second Fire Engine bay at their garage. This concept is viewed as neither surprising nor terribly ironic in these parts, though apparently this tactic has lit the fires of opposition further north in the past.  I’ve been wanting some Black Cats, guess I can buy them and still feel socially responsible in the Appalachians.