Wu bath mat. Too much. I’ve a friend who would kill to have one of these by her tub. Ph: Pott Scarsons

Something of the nostalgic Tinto Brass feel about this contribution from filmmaker Ruth Hogben for SHOWstudio’s Fashion Body project. Watch the rest here.

(Undertitle: Socrates, Mozart, Queen Elizabeth, and these guys)

רעב דבר (The Hunger) is on Myspace.

Originally looking for something completely different, I came accross this article about The Israelite Church of God in Jesus Christ, apparently very famous, whose disciples claim to be “the true biblical and ethnic Jews.” The foundation of the ICGJC doctrine consists in the following statement: everything we’ve been taught is a lie: The real Jews are black.

The article was written by Ms Angela Valdez and published in The Washington City Paper on March 21th, 2008.

Following a pretty simple explanation (obviously), we end up facing the possibility that Hebrews actually had and still have “skin as dark as the earth”. The article is directly linked to stories the journalist apparently experienced herself. Extract:

The teacher calls upon his reader to recite from the Song of Solomon, Chapter 1, Verse 5.

Here is the entire verse from the King James edition: “I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon. Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me: my mother’s children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept.”

Whereas the psychological, philosophical, cultural and theatrical reasons why we keep looking for new explanations of our more or less conventional being on earth (may our skin carry a color that is more or less close to its) are most of the time either exhausting or boring to discuss, the resulting (but indeed, not only) aesthetical aspect of it is most usually an thrilling delight.

רעב דבר (The Hunger), at home.

Real Jews might be black, yes, just as much as True People are hedonists.

While dropping out of the techno-age marathon is an ethical decision anyone could easily make, it also means giving up the only real outlet for subversion. But if there is a sadder case than the lonely, radical farmer-luddite who thinks the world noticed their conscientious desicion to give up the cell phone and the laptop, it is the person who cheerleads for progress, who excitedly feels like they’re relly on the cusp of SOMETHING each time they laud the newest techno-innovation, salivating on the instant opinion dispersers of the day over the i-whatever. Like the out-of-touch Hillary Clinton giving a commencement speech at Barnard College and shouting to the graduating class of women, “Get out there, girls! MySpace and Twitter! Social network your way to the top!” This kind of blind faith in the power or social networking betrays a person eager to be tapped into the “next big thing” in order to more efficiently wedge themselves in with the status quo, as we saw McCain try during the presidential debates when, looking like a child expecting to be given a cookie, he made some desperate and cringe-worthy comments about how he had been using Ebay.

It was easy to live without these things before we had them, but now we must not only have them, we must talk about them constantly. Was it really so bad to run to the corner in the middle of the night to use the payphone? How about when we, Europeans, left the continent to come to America, goodbye was goodbye, possibly forever? We cried, we felt sad, we committed suicide, we knew it was serious and didn’t want to fuck up.

Dear people of the future, this is how we lived, and how we will no doubt be re-enacted in your bizarre “period piece” movies: standing at payphones, writing letters, throwing rocks at windows, meeting up by chance, failing those things, weeing each other in dreams.

Cholesterol on the arteries, cancers in prostates, the joke is on us now. Especially on me.

Anyway.

Now give an ear to Akay’s flaring-up mixes!

(all vinyl, no computer wankery)
(and see blog for detailed playlists)

Mix9 100220 (nightXperience, Radio X 94.5, 2010-02-20) by Akay

Mix8 100206, 1/2 (Live at nightXperience, Radio X 94.5, 2010-02-06) by Akay

Mix8 100206, 2/2 (Live at nightXperience, Radio X 94.5, 2010-02-06) by Akay

Mix3 080504 > All vinyl (no computer wankery) by Akay

Something really nice and unexpected about the combination of 70s-style Chloe denim and the vintage pink bedspread with that tattoo. Found on Sophie Arancio’s NAST blog. Tattoo by Yann Black.

Nice interview with Max about Sang Bleu and the New York launch by Sean Risley for the Opening Ceremony blog. Read the rest here. All pics (I’m guessing) by Sean too.

Two very nice portraits of Tom during the Sang Bleu show at Envoy Gallery. Photography by Tuuka. And read here a nice little note on the night by Hooper.