Concerts

Nas

Smashing Pumpkins

Ferrari SUV

"Flex your buying power"

"SINCE 1998, the price of a “Speedy” handbag — the entry-level style at Louis Vuitton — has more than doubled, to $685, indicative of a precipitous price increase throughout the luxury goods market. The price of Joe Boxer’s “licky face” underwear, meanwhile, has dropped by nearly half, to $8.99, representing just as seismic a shift at the other end of the fashion continuum, where the majority of American consumers do their shopping."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/fashion/29PRICE.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

Gold MacBook Air

LAX finally dropped! dope

Rotating towers - Dubai

"Dubai will be home to and international hub for an innovative skyscraper, which will keep changing its shape and generate surplus energy from the wind as well as the sun.

The ’tower in motion’ is a revolutionary project based on “Dynamic Architecture”, a new concept introduced by Florentine architect David Fisher. The project has generated considerable interest all over the world even before its launch, as a trend-setting architecture."

http://www.fahad.com/labels/UAE.html

Ras Al-Khaimah Gateway Project (150km west of Dubai)

"The urban master plan for the city is currently being under taken by the Netherlands based architectural practice OMA. The Gateway project is situated at the entrance to the city and will form a landmark for the city entrance."
http://www.dezeen.com/2008/08/12/sn%C3%B8hetta-in-rak-gateway/

One of the swatches I ordered

Sneak Peek

USSR killed it

"We On" - Gemstones ft Lupe Fiasco

HAH! Loser!!

"NEW YORK: Roc-A-Fella Records company co-founder Damon Dash and his wife are in jeopardy of losing two of their Manhattan apartments after apparently failing to pay their hefty mortgages.

The bank holding the mortgages says in a court filing Dash and Rachel Roy owe $7.3 million on the properties and it has begun foreclosure proceedings.

Eastern Savings Bank says Dash and Roy were supposed to make monthly payments of $78,500.

Efforts to contact Dash's lawyer and publicist by phone and e-mail have been unsuccessful.

Dash is the estranged business partner of rapper Jay-Z."

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/08/19/arts/NA-US-Damon-Dash.php

Anyone who earns eight(maybe 9) figures in their lifetime and has their house foreclosed is a loser with a capital L!

Finance stuff

No wonder JPM bailed out Bear. They have $90 trillion worth of derivatives at risk. Hah.

M.I.A. - Paper Planes

BAPE

"A Bathing Ape (or BAPE) is a Japanese clothing company founded by Tomoaki "Nigo" Nagao in 1993.[1] The company specializes in street wear, operating stores in Japan, including BAPE, BAPE Store, Foot Soldier and the Bape Exclusive store (located in Aoyama, Tokyo). The company also operates Bape Cuts hair salon, Bape Café and gallery, Bape Sounds records. There are also stores located in Hong Kong, London, New York, Taipei and Los Angeles. Nigo also founded the women's clothing lines "APEE", and "BAPY", the female "couture" clothing line." -Wikipedia

BAPE is catching buzz in the US via American hip hop artists. Pharrell Williams, superproducer and member of the band N*E*R*D has collaborated with BAPE founder Nigo to design and manufacture pieces for Williams' brands Billionaire Boys Club (BBC) and Ice Cream. BAPE's signature feature is the exclusivity of their designs. Production of a design numbers in the hundreds, not tens of thousands. They therefore sell their pieces for exorbitant prices. The apparel is nothing special in my humble opinion. Their shoes on the other hand are definitely designed well.

Wilderness Crew

"Addictive hip hop from Canada's Pacific Northwest. Music to surf to, drive to, dance to, live to."

"For seven plus years Brett Mjanes, Eli Dill and Eric Amberg have been developing the sound that is 'The Wilderness Crew'. Connected through the heart, soul and mind, the three friends formed an unbreakable bond while growing up together on the Sunshine Coast (BC Canada).

With exposure via the international surf community and a healthy local fan base, The Wilderness Crew is reaching more ears everyday. Their first full length independent CD (self titled) has recently been released."

Their music was featured on a surf video and is pretty dope. Check 'em out at MySpace!

Glad I'm not living in Michigan

N*E*R*D

Inflation Olympics

" Olympic Results: (in Full)
(Beijing - Aug 11)

Overnight Interest Rate Pentathalon
Gold ...... ....Turkey
Silver .........Iceland
Bronze....... Brazil

Final Standings (for qualifiers only)
Turkey.............16.25%
Iceland.............15.50%
Brazil...............13.00%
South Africa......12.00%
Egypt...............10.50%
India.................9.00%
Hungary.............8.50%
New Zealand.......8.00%
China...............7.50%
Australia...........7.25%
Norway.............5.75%
Korea (South).....5.25%
United King........5.00%
Sweden.............4.50%
Germany/France/
Belgium/Spain
etc.................4.25% (all tied)
Slovakia...........4.25%
Taiwan............3.62%
Czech Rep........3.50%
Hong Kong.......3.50%
Canada............3.00%
Switzerland......2.75%
United States....2.00% (Disqual - doping!!)
Japan..............0.50% (Disqual- false starts)

Current World Recordholder: Zimbabwe-(800.00%, 2008)"

from Cassandra Does Tokyo

Jockin' Jay-Z Full Version (Blueprint 3)

The whole new album is rumored to be produced entirely by West.

Kanye West - Champion

Kanye West "Champion Video" Official Directed by NEON from nabil elderkin on Vimeo.

Moments like these are what make the Olympics

Men's 400m freestyle relay....unbelievable...broke the world record by multiple seconds and came back from behind to win. Jason Lezak(anchor) deserves all the credit.

Phat hats

Not too far off the mark!

Everyone Nose Remix Video

Directed by Hype Williams

Hilarious blog I came across

"Take a report (you're done)"

Here is the description of the blog:

"Take A Report: Who we are and why you LOVE IT
Similar to the way the Eskimos have over 50 different words for snow, “take a report�? means many things to many people.

Some believe the origins of telling others to “take a report” can be traced to the phone clerks who have toiled on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange for generations. Often social misfits and ne’er do wells, phone clerks have often been the bearer of bad news to trading professionals.

Some traditional usage:

Clerk: Take a report…you bought 5,000 TAR at thirty-eight cents and I met some guy at a wedding who used to bang your wife - no relationship, just selfish, dirty sex…she still enjoy “the vulcan”?

Trader: $0.38 ? THIRTY-EIGHT CENTS?!?! I CAN’T -

CLICK.

Take a report, pal. You’re done. "

http://takeareport.com/

Blueprint 3 - "Jockin' Jay-Z"

BLUEPRINT 3 from kwest on Vimeo.

Newton Faulkner

"Newton Faulkner is an English musician. He is well known for his guitar playing style, which involves him rhythmically tapping and hitting the guitar's body,and unusual plucking techniques." - Wikipedia

He performed at Lollapalooza '08 and was great to watch live.

"The Future in the Past"

by Yoshi Andrian Amtha

God's Warriors

Christiane Amanpour, my college graduation speaker and CNN chief international correspondent, takes us to the frontline of a volatile battle between religion and politics. Encore presentations this Saturday and Sunday at 8pm ET.

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2007/gods.warriors/

"Dim economy drives women to donate eggs for profit" - CNN

NEW YORK (CNN) -- "With a full load of classes, two young children, and her bills piling up, Michelle decided to face her economic straits in a pretty unorthodox way.

As the nation's economy is slumping, some fertility clinics say interest in donating has surged.

She is donating her eggs to an infertile couple.
"The cost of living is crazy right now, with two kids, gas prices, and rent...I'm living paycheck to paycheck" said the 24-year-old, who did not give her last name to protect her identity. "I just really need the money to finish school."
Michelle is not alone. As the nation's economy is slumping, some fertility clinics say interest in donating has surged."

Full article here

Kanye West Concert

Managed to somehow keep my hand still to take this no-flash shot!

"What Is a 'Windfall' Profit?" - WSJ

"The "windfall profits" tax is back, with Barack Obama stumping again to apply it to a handful of big oil companies. Which raises a few questions: What is a "windfall" profit anyway? How does it differ from your everyday, run of the mill profit? Is it some absolute number, a matter of return on equity or sales -- or does it merely depend on who earns it?
Enquiring entrepreneurs want to know. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama's "emergency" plan, announced on Friday, doesn't offer any clarity. To pay for "stimulus" checks of $1,000 for families and $500 for individuals, the Senator says government would take "a reasonable share" of oil company profits.
Mr. Obama didn't bother to define "reasonable," and neither did Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Senate Democrat, when he recently declared that "The oil companies need to know that there is a limit on how much profit they can take in this economy." Really? This extraordinary redefinition of free-market success could use some parsing.
Take Exxon Mobil, which on Thursday reported the highest quarterly profit ever and is the main target of any "windfall" tax surcharge. Yet if its profits are at record highs, its tax bills are already at record highs too. Between 2003 and 2007, Exxon paid $64.7 billion in U.S. taxes, exceeding its after-tax U.S. earnings by more than $19 billion. That sounds like a government windfall to us, but perhaps we're missing some Obama-Durbin business subtlety...It's what politicians do in Venezuela, not in a free country. "

The rest at WSJ

Nixon "Dork"

The Raconteurs

The band is based in Nashville, Tennessee. According to the band's official website, "The seed was sewn in an attic in the middle of a hot summer when friends Jack White and Brendan Benson got together and wrote a song that truly inspired them. This song was 'Steady, As She Goes' and the inspiration led to the creation of a full band with the addition of Lawrence and Keeler." The band came together in Detroit during 2005 and recorded when time allowed for the remainder of the year. Due to the various members' success in other bands, they were quickly dubbed a supergroup. The band, however, asserted they were not, saying that the term implies something pre-planned or temporary, whereas they are actually "a new band made up of old friends."[1]
The band has played a number of music festivals in Europe, Asia, and North America (including Oxegen in Ireland, Reading Festival, Leeds Festival and Glastonbury Festival in the United Kingdom, Heineken Open'er Festival in Poland, Vegoose in Las Vegas, Lollapalooza in Chicago, Bonnaroo in Manchester, Tennessee, Austin City Limits Music Festival in Austin, Texas), and Coachella in Indio, California, headlining many.

They rocked at Lollapalooza '08!! Jack White is more talented than I ever imagined.

Nixon "The Banks" watch

"Where's the outrage?"

"If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention."
So lectures a popular bumper sticker in my university-dominated neighborhood. And according to an emerging journalistic narrative of this campaign season, ordinary Americans are indeed outraged -- at the Iraq war, at gas prices, and by the fact that their houses are not rising in value. As a July 4 Associated Press headline put it, "Americans' unhappy birthday: 'Too much wrong.'"
One does not do well to question the legitimacy of this alleged anger. Former Texas senator and McCain economic adviser Phil Gramm learned this the hard way. Looking at data showing less economic trouble than he felt the gloomy headlines warranted, he said in an interview on July 9 that the U.S. was a "nation of whiners" and that we are merely in a "mental recession." Within a few days he stepped down from a McCain campaign increasingly worried about a possible backlash from supposedly enraged voters.
The controversy about Mr. Gramm's comments involved whether Americans have the right to be angry. The anger itself is simply assumed to exist. Ironically, this assumption is questionable, and is not supported by the data.
In May 2008, the Gallup Organization asked 1,200 American adults how many days in the past week they had felt "outraged." The average number of angry days was 1.17, and 54% of those surveyed said none. Only one in 20 reported being outraged every day. Despite the litany of horrors presented to us daily by campaigning politicians, most of us appear to be doing really quite well managing our anger.
Indeed, we are less angry today than a decade ago. Let's look back to the glory days of the 1990s, when -- according to the media narrative -- we enjoyed uninterrupted peace and prosperity. In 1996, the General Social Survey asked exactly the same "outrage" question of 1,500 adults. Then, only 38% had not been outraged at all in the past week. The average number of angry days was 1.5 per week, 29% higher than at present.
Virtually every group in the population is less angry in 2008 than in 1996 -- those making more and those making less than the average income; college-educated and noncollege-educated folks; men and women.
Only one major group in the population has gotten angrier: people who call themselves "very liberal." While conservatives, moderates and nonextreme liberals all have seen their average levels of outrage fall over the past 12 years, the number of angry days among our leftiest neighbors has risen 56% (to 2.28 from 1.46), and the percentage with no angry days in the past week has fallen to 31% from 37%. Today, very liberal people spend more than twice as much time feeling angry as do political moderates. One in seven is outraged seven days a week.
The reason they are so angry -- and getting angrier -- is probably obvious. This is the group that feels the depredations of the Bush administration with every waking breath.
Should you pity your extremely progressive friends -- after all, they're more miserable than you, aren't they? Maybe not. In fact, anger does not translate very well into lower levels of happiness. In fact, extreme liberals were more likely than moderates in 2008 to say they were "very happy" about their lives (28% to 25%). This is of a piece with a growing body of political research which finds that people on the extreme left (and extreme right) tend to be quite a bit happier than those with more moderate views.
A more interesting question than what afflicts extreme liberals today is why folks outside their ranks (including moderate liberals) are failing so miserably to muster up much rage in the current environment. One theory is that ordinary Americans have been lulled into a culture of complacency -- or in the fancier language of academics, they're suffering from "false consciousness."
Another possibility is that most Americans recognize that, while gas is expensive and our grocery money doesn't go as far as it did last year, we are still an enormously prosperous and fortunate nation.
In some countries, a depressed economic climate means mass unemployment, political instability and large-scale deprivation. In America this decade, we have reached the point at which even in a down economy, our unemployment rate does not reach 6% (lower than the rates in Canada and the European Union, let alone those in the developing world). Any unwanted unemployment is terrible; but it is worth remembering that this stability especially benefits the economically vulnerable.
Furthermore, no matter what the state of our economy, we can realistically count on uninterrupted provision of critical public services, high business start-up rates, the world's highest levels of charitable giving and volunteering, and countless other benefits that come from living in a successful nation.
We may well be unsatisfied with the current state of affairs. Some Americans are suffering, and cannot be faulted for seeking substantial political change in the coming election. But most of us are reasonable people, and can see the difference between correctable problems within a strong system of democratic capitalism and the kind of catastrophic failure that justifies real outrage.
For the nonoutraged majority, here's what the bumper sticker ought perhaps to say: "If you're not grateful to live in America, you're not paying attention."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121746010408198765.html?mod=rss_opinion_main

The Black Keys

The Black Keys have achieved increasing critical acclaim and recognition since their debut album, which was praised by Rolling Stone magazine[3]. Time magazine named them one of the "10 Best Acts of 2003" [4]. They have supported a number of bands, and toured with Sleater-Kinney in 2003, as well as a short stint opening for Beck, and performing at Lollapalooza 2005. They have recently opened for Radiohead on the American leg of their brief 2006 tour. In addition to this, they were supported by the influential British radio DJ John Peel and appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, and The Late Show with David Letterman. They have recorded a cover of Bob Dylan's "The Wicked Messenger" for the I'm Not There soundtrack, and have recorded "If You Ever Slip," a song written by Jesse Harris for The Hottest State soundtrack. They will be at Lollapalooza '08 (tonight!)

Very interesting animation - I like it

A SHORT LOVE STORY IN STOP MOTION from Carlos Lascano on Vimeo.