#Miscellaneous
Street Art Group Trusto Corp Humorously Points Out How Dumb We Are
I first came across Trusto Corp over at Super Punch, and spent the good part of Saturday following them across the web via links and references. Oh, hypertextuality! Let me tell you something. Everything is definitely probably interconnected. What the fuck is Trusto Corp, exactly? According to dailyDuJour, they’re a street art collective that debuted last year at Miami’s Art Basel. And over the weekend, Trusto put on a show at Gallery1988 in Los Angeles. Now, I’m a fat, dorky kid who sits in a basement, and doesn’t live in the chic metropolis of Los Angeles. However, thanks to the power of the internet (and Super Punch, and dailyDuJour, and Gallery1988), I was able to check out their work.
It’s amazing, humorous, and painfully correct.
Corp subversively leverages American consumption through the manipulation of our good old leviathan known as Marketing. They riff on familiar feeling logos, such as “Tide” and despite typing this in my Gap jeans, while sipping a chemically-soaked soda, I was amused. While all too aware of how shitty I am. Or we are. Or maybe we aren’t. Whatever, I chuckled.
Hit the jump for more of Corp’s work from their show “New Americana” at Gallery1988, and if you’re in Los Angeles, hit it up for me.
THIS WEEK ON Dexter: First Blood
Did you miss this week’s episode of Dexter? Good for you. ‘Cause I watched the entire thing, and I’m happy to report that absolutely nothing of worth occurred. Oh man! Sippin’ the Hatorade. That’s me, right here. Naw, not even. The fifth episode of season five was unremarkable. That’s the long and the short of it.
And for anyone in the “give it time” bullshit mode, we’re a third of the way through. At this point in previous seasons, we were humming sexily along. Secure in our trajectory. Right now? Waiting for shit to take off.
Wake me up.
Tonight’s episode can be distilled down into three painfully telescoped plot-points, and two interesting moments.
Aesop Rock – Coffee
If this video doesn’t get you pumped for a Saturday night in October, nothing will.
Images & Words – Kick-Ass 2 #1
[images & words is the comic book pick-of-the-week at OL. equal parts review and diatribe, the post highlights the most memorable/infuriating/entertaining book released that wednesday]
It’s hard to fathom now, at this point. It’s hard to conjure in my mind an idea that I once held: Mark Millar is the best fucking comic book writer right now. It seems so fucking alien to me. Kick-Ass 2 #1 only drives home a belief that I’ve felt nagging at me since the middle of his first Kick-Ass run. Either the dude is out of ideas, mailing it in because he’s been stretched too thin, or he simply doesn’t care. His work has fallen into empty, pointless, paint by the numbers self-parody. And this is the same guy who used to inspire me.
He isn’t cool anymore. He’s just trying too hard to be shocking. He isn’t insightful anymore. He’s mashing the same tired tropes over, and over, and over, and over again. Let me break it down for you in something resembling MILLAR VERNACULAR:
KICK-ASS 2: FUCK ORIGINALITY, REHASH! TASTE THE SUCK!
The T. Rex’s Favorite Movie Was Apparently Alive; Dug On Cannibalism
Dinosaur talk always strikes me the same as space talk. That is, in the sense that there’s a ton of interesting conjecture, but I’m always a smidge skeptical. But sometimes when the news is interesting enough, it’s worth repeating. Studies have dropped in the past couple of days suggesting that the King of All Dinosaurs, Mr. Tyrannosaurus Rex was a cannibal. Say it ain’t so! According to a crack team of crackpot scientists – that isn’t fair, they’re in all likelihood more brilliant than I could imagine – the gashes on one T. rex suggests that it could have only been made by another of the same species.
Like I said, we’re taking leaps of impressive speculation here.
Huffington Post:
“They’re the kind of marks that any big carnivore could have made, but T. rex was the only big carnivore in western North America 65 million years ago,” Nicholas R. Longrich of Yale University said in a statement.
Longrich and colleagues report their findings in Friday’s edition of the journal PLoS ONE.
They found 17 fossils with deep V-shaped gouges of a type identified as being made by T. rex. Of those, four were remains of T. rex themselves.
It seems likely the marks were made during scavenging from a dead dinosaur, the researchers said.
“It does seem improbable that Tyrannosaurus routinely hunted full-grown members of its own species,” the researchers wrote.However, they added, it is possible that combat led to casualties, with the dead becoming convenient sources of food for the victors. “Still, compelling evidence for predation in Tyrannosaurus remains elusive.
So well then! I mean, yeah, what the hell is the story worth? Some interesting guesswork and a handful of possibly this and possibly that. But I mean, yeah! There you go. I think more interesting than the fact that the there were T. rexes walking around in North America. For sure, millions and zillions of years ago. But still, it’s interesting to imagine that the very land we’re smashing about on, at one point in time, houses cannibalistic insane-o creatures of unfathomable fright and might.
DEFEAT. 003 – Rattlehead
[DEFEAT. is Rendar Frankenstein’s truest attempt at fiction. Presented in weekly episodes, the novella tells the tale of Daryl Millar – a hero who dies at the intersection of pop culture, science-fiction, war epic, and fantasy]
When he thought about it logically, in the practical terms that really make the Earth go `round, Riff knew that there’s no way she’d get with him. She was too smart for him. Too hot for him. Too popular for him. Too old for him. “But I’ll be damned,” he thought, “if Ms. Lang isn’t the finest piece of ass in town.”
KILL SARAH CONNOR
Source: Super Punch
Fucking Cylon Terminators. I knew it. I just knew it. They be lurkin’, they be hidin’. It’s only a matter of time, guys.
THIS WEEK ON Dexter: Pratically Perfect
There was a moment in last night’s episode of Dexter where Boyd was rocking out with his shirt open and his sick ass yokel mustache riding the damp Miami wind when everything became clear to me. The power of Boyd had distilled the universe into a simple message I could comprehend: via the power of some sick facial pubes, and a backwards hat, existence was mine! I could take it!
Seriously though, I loved the fuck out of Boyd. He was such a ridiculous change of pace that I had to tip my cap to him. Dexter had to ruin my torrid dong-sloshing for Boyd though. He had to get all high and mighty. Really, Dexter, Boyd deserved to die? I noticed that Harry said Boyd was your first kill since…”You know.” No really, I don’t.
‘Cause I seem to recall the piece of refuse you bludgeoned to death with an anchor. Doesn’t that guy count, at all?
Dexter seems to get shittier and his shittier in his execution of his executions. The dude has gone from some high proficiency slayer into a wielder of dumb assery. Remember in the first couple of seasons when he pulled off everything with aplomb? Those were the good ole days.
Dexter dude, have to heed the code, yo! Or some piece of shit is going to bring you down.
Like Quinn!
Rafael Grampá – Mutant Wrestlers, Yo!
Rafael Grampa is a gahdamn stud. While he hasn’t had too many releases in the States, the shit that has dropped has been spectacular, astonishing, amazing, sensational, fantastic, and uncanny (hrm…I can’t think of any DC titles with modifiers).
This trend looks to continue with Strange Tales 2. Grampá describes his contribution to the anthology in the following terms:
Here is two of the eight page story that I did for the Marvel’s anthology STRANGE TALES II. It is the main story of VOL. II and I have to say that I’m really proud of it. I did the script, art and colors — a tentative for a new vision for the palette of the 80′s comics. It is a “mutant wrestler” story (could be cool if it was a genre, huh?), very violent and “sweet” at the same time.
[Furrywater]
Strange Tales 2 hits stores 10/13/2010.