• Wooster Collective:

    One of the most interesting email correspondences we’ve maintained this year is with a group of Iranian graffiti writers living in Tehran. While the communication hasn’t been easy, every time we open an email from A1one we feel like the reason for updating the Wooster site has been re-confirmed to us.

    The images above were sent to us a week or so ago with the line – “It was th worst work in Tehran,,, some about Mind Control by Our Gov ,aome a teasand joke with the Voting which is in friday to choose Islamic leaders comity..”

    Here.

    in

  • Wikipedia:

    In the late 1960s — in response to violence at football matches in England — police began confiscating any objects that could be used as weapons. These items included steel combs, pens, beermats, polo mints, shoelaces and even boots.

    However, fans were still permitted to bring in newspapers. Larger newspapers such as The Guardian or The Financial Times work best for a Millwall brick, and the police looked with suspicion at working class football fans who carried such newspapers. Because of their more innocent appearance, tabloid newspapers became the newspapers of choice for Millwall bricks.

    The book Spirit of ’69: A Skinhead Bible describes the use of Millwall bricks by British football hooligans (not just skinheads) in the late 1960s:

    Newspapers were rolled up tightly to form the so-called Millwall Brick and another trick was to make a knuckleduster out of pennies held in place by a wrapped around paper. You could hardly be pulled up for having a bit of loose change in your pocket and a Daily Mirror under your arm.

    The book Skinhead says, “The Millwall brick, for example, was a newspaper folded again and again and squashed together to form a cosh.”

    Here.

    in

  • The Onion:

    “Never have the words ‘win or go home’ provided such inspiration to any team,” Bin-Shakur said. “I am overcome with joy, as well as hunger, and I look forward to bringing the Third-World Cup trophy home to my country.”

    The Third-World Cup trophy, an AK-47 coated with gold spray-paint and mounted on a pallet of United Nations staple foods, has already been seized by Somali troops and distributed amongst ranking military officers.

    Here.

    in

  • NYT:

    But all that changed last Wednesday at dawn when the Islamists attacked Baidoa from two directions. Witnesses said that their waves of young fighters were summarily mowed down by the more experienced (and older) Ethiopian-backed troops. On Saturday, the Islamists announced that Somalia was now open to Muslim fighters across the world who wanted to wage a jihad against Ethiopia, which has a long Christian history though it is actually about half Muslim.

    The next day, Ethiopia struck.

    With warplanes and tanks, the Ethiopian military pushed deep into Somalia and began uprooting the Islamists from their positions. Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia’s prime minister, said his country had been forced into war by the Islamists and that Ethiopia would try to neutralize the threat as quickly as possible.

    The toll is rising in Mogadishu. At Benadir hospital, crowds of women pushed at the gates to get inside to see their wounded sons and husbands. Witnesses said the hospital’s courtyards were stacked with dozens of corpses buzzing with flies. Some of the women even threw stones at the Islamist commanders visiting the hospital and shouted, “Why have you done this to us?”

    Here.

    in

  • WFMU’s Beware the Blog:

    Three years prior to his cartoon, Ali came out with one of the most amazing things he was ever involved with. 1974 brought us one of the most legendary vinyl records ever made, Ali and His Gang vs. Mr. Tooth Decay. The album features an A-list cast of celebrities all in rather ridiculous poses. Frank Sinatra, for instance, appears as a desperate ice cream vendor insisting Muhammad Ali force the gang of children that’s following him (more orphans?) to eat ice cream. “No, kids! Ice cream hassa lotta sugah innit! Ice cream causes cavahtehs!”

    Here.

    in

  • PunkNews:

    Friday 29 $7
    Gilman’s 20Th Anniversary Weekend
    Doors at 6Pm
    Born/Dead
    This Is My Fist
    Drain the Sky
    the Jocks
    Baby Jail
    Thee Double D’s
    Lil’ Runt
    Hey Girl

    Saturday 30 $8-$10
    Gilman’s 20Th Anniversary Weekend
    Doors at 6Pm
    Social Unrest
    El Dopa
    Black Fork
    Schlong
    the United Intrepid Forces
    Look Back and Laugh
    a.D.T.

    Sunday 31
    Gilman’s 20Th Anniversary Weekend
    Record Swap 10Am-2Pm
    Basketball
    Chess

    Here.

    in

  • NYT:

    “The Ethiopians are blowing things up all over the place,” said Mohammed Hussein Galgal, an Islamist commander in Beledweyne, near the Ethiopian border. “Civilians have been killed, people are fleeing. But don’t worry, we won’t be defeated.”

    Here.

    in

  • Wonkette:

    Let no one accuse the NRA of shirking its duty. Freedom In Peril: Guarding the 2nd Amendment in the 21st Century, is a spectacularly beautiful graphic novel. Here, for example, is one of the biggest threats to the white suburban hunter: dirty hippies and their evil sidekicks: the dynamite-carrying owl, sinister pig, angry Wall Street bull, dire wolf, terror chicken and Land Lobster.

    Here.

    in

  • Here’s a painting for my solo at 1988. I gutted an old pachinko machine for a frame. This is pretty big compared to most things I paint.
    Here.

    in

  • NYT:

    Enrique Metinides photographed his first dead body before he was 12. It was as if he had caught a fever, because after that he couldn’t stop. For years while he slept he kept his radio in Mexico City tuned to emergency stations so that he could be awakened by the latest news of disaster. He would often throw on his clothes and rush into the night to see yet another car wreck or fire or murder.

    He found a cornucopia of gore: suicides, jumpers, accidental electrocutions and exploding gas tanks. (In that case petty thieves drove off from the pumps with the hose still inside their car.) We feel somehow we shouldn’t gawk. But how can we not?

    So we do. We stare at the mangled corpses and at the crowds who stare back into Mr. Metinides’s camera, which means they stare at us. The cycle of voyeurism is complete.

    Here.

    in

  • Yana Poskova on SportsShooter:

    On my last day, I printed each doctor and patient a photograph. Many had never before possessed one. As I watched patients tape the pictures above their beds, I leaned against the peeling wall in solitude with my thoughts. I had slowly realized that while this experience taught me much about photography (using an environment with little activity and light,) and about interacting with my subjects (listening to what they wanted you to tell, and respecting what they didn’t,) my greatest lesson was one in motivation-in my personal and professional life, both of which I would try to take for granted less than before. When the patients and doctors asked me to return in 2007, I wanted to tell them all this, but I again lacked words; so I just promised I would. Instead, as gratitude, I hoped my images would shed light on the worth of each of their lives.

    Here.

    in

  • SFGate:

    “To be a photographer was a gift of the gods,” she said in a Chronicle profile by Kenneth Baker, written in 2001. “I can’t imagine anything that would have been better.”

    Biographer Margaretta Mitchell’s book, “Ruth Bernhard: The Eternal Body,” contains the artist’s own assessment of her adopted home. “To me … San Francisco is an ideal city, intellectually stimulating and naturally beautiful. The oceans and forests are close enough to refresh the spirit; the architecture is always exciting.”

    Here.

    in

  • Sprawlscapes, photo blog by Chip Litherland:

    backyards, backwoods, overpasses, underpasses, left turns, right turns, porta-potties, condominiums, loading docks, alleys, targets, wal-marts, cul-de-sacs, mobile home parks, airports, neon, golf courses, parking lots, car dealerships, waffle houses, warehouses, mom-and-pop’s, bowling alleys, skyscrapers, ditches, bridges, graffiti, murals, subways, abandoned buildings, billboards, public “art,” fast-food restaurants, fences, mailboxes, highways, driveways….these are a few of my favorite things.

    Here.

    in

  • A very cool piece of art from Guillaumit, from the blog ArtCade:

    Guillaumit inaugure notre série d’artistes exposés dans le PS3 Living-Room, avec une toile impressionnante et foisonnante de détails.

    Difficile de décrire les activités de Guillaumit, tant cet illustrateur-graphiste-vidéaste va dans tous les sens. Alors on le laisse expliquer lui même : “J’ai commencé par un travail de videaste et d’animateur flash, puis j’ai réalisé des pochettes de disques, des affiches, maintenant je fais aussi des T-shirts, sweat shirts (avec AndreaCrews), poupées (avec l’artiste japonaise Miou ), cates postales, livre pour enfants…. Je travaille au sein du duo sonore et visuel Gangpol & Mit où je développe toute la partie visuelle et le gros de mon travail consiste en la création de vidéos originales pour des diffusions vidéo live.”

    Here.

    in

  • SocialPest:

    Ok I admit it this is a shameless way to generate traffic, but anyway here’s the SOCIALPEST top 10 list of artists who helped to shape the current “Street Art” landscape.

    This whole exercise is tongue in cheek so please do not let it wind you up.

    Here.

    in

  • Arcade Ambience Project:

    As a child of the 80s, I will never forget the feeling of walking into a crowded arcade — the sounds, smells, excitement, etc. This page is dedicated to recreating the audio portion of that experience in the form of a long, non-looping ambient audio track.

    “If I close my eyes while listening to Arcade Ambiance, I can clearly envision myself hanging out at the local Golfland Arcade circa 1983 sporting the latest in early 80’s fashion (camouflage Vans and a Members Only jacket), while feeding quarter after quarter into Dig Dug, Galaga and Phoenix. Thanks for taking me back to a happier time.” –David

    Here.

    in

  • Juxtapoz:

    Photos from the opening reception of Mike Burnett’s NeighborWOOD, a custon wooden toy group show, at Compound Gallery in Portland, OR. The show opened on December 7th and runs until December 31st.

    Here.

    in

  • NYT:

    And Jace, who created a piece on the building’s fifth floor that includes a frighteningly large mousetrap, made of wood and metal and baited with a huge bag of fake money — a clear jab at the development that is about to transform the building — probably won the prize for longest commute. He flew in from the island of Réunion, east of Madagascar, where he lives, spent several days in the building and then returned.

    “It’s like a family reunion we’ve got here,” said one artist in from Milan who calls himself Bo and works with a partner, a small woman who calls herself Microbo. “Except some of the family you’ve never met before.”

    The other evening, as music blared from multiple stereos, about a dozen artists were arrayed among the floors, still at work. One known as Lady Pink, a veteran New York graffiti artist, was applying the last touches to a large, pink supine version of the Statue of Liberty that was being impaled with a cross but seeming somehow to enjoy it.

    Here.

    in

  • Washington Post:

    They sent congratulatory telegrams to Hamas, their rabbis advised Yasser Arafat (and took a fee for their trouble), and they stood outside the White House wagging signs — “Judaism Has No Right to Rule over ANY PART of the Holy Land” — to protest a November visit by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

    But even by the standards of Neturei Karta, these most ultra of ultra-orthodox Jewish Hasids took a step into the world of the very strange, if not the meshuga, or crazy, when they showed up as honored guests at a conference of Holocaust skeptics and deniers in Tehran. With a hug and a smile for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Rabbi Aharon Cohen walked into a conference room with former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, discredited academics, and more than a few white supremacists and served up a rousing welcome speech.

    Here.

    in

  • NYT:

    The stadium was packed, the guns were cocked and even the drenching rain could not douse the jihadist fire.

    Thousands of Somalis, from fully veiled, machine-gun-toting women to little boys in baggy fatigues, gathered Friday to rally against what they called foreign aggression. As a squall blew in, they punched wet fists into the air and yelled, “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great.”

    “I am ready to die,” said Osama Abdi Rahim, dressed head to toe in camouflage and marching around with a loaded rifle. He is 7 years old.

    Here.

    in ,