Ever wonder what Bugs Bunny looks like underneath that skin and fur of his? This exhibit at the Arario Gallery in Korea is one that you definitely don't want to miss. Brilliant work here.
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AUTHOR: David
DATE: 8/25/2006 12:37:00 PM
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BODY:
This is straight out awesome. If a side-scrolling arcade fighting game like this had been out in the day (say, when I was in high school or college) I would have been all over this game.
Disturbing to say the least but the concept is just wicked. The kicker is that it was funded by the City of Melbourne as a commitment to the Arts! Got to hand it to those Aussies.
The links on the page are good for a straight-up download or a torrent file.
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AUTHOR: David
DATE: 4/07/2006 03:41:00 PM
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BODY:
Ojingogo is a beautifully drawn comic strip that's nominated for an Eisner Award for the second year in a row. Simple colors and a sketchy feel belie the well visualized and realized POV of each panel. Plus the sasquatchy guy really reminds me of the sasquatch kid and mother from Bitey Castle.
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AUTHOR: David
DATE: 3/17/2006 03:39:00 PM
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BODY:
Back in college days I was as happy as a clam whenever I was able to find one of Jeff Smith's Bone comics at the store. I was lucky enough to pick up the series from the start, turned off from the mainstream Marvel and DC garbage that was spewing out, and looking for independent artists and writers that still understood what story and artwork meant. The first few issues of Bone are just magical in the way the characters and places are illustrated and put together. The ink lines work as much as the drawings themselves in creating the mood of Fone Bone and his friends and, of course, the two perenially bumbling rat creatures. I wasn't able to keep up with the comic, the story arc stretched out over years and between missing issues and not being able to find any it was just a matter of time before I decided to drop the whole thing.
I don't know where most of you got your fucking definitions for this word, but the Chode has nothing to do with a short or fat penis. It is a synonym of "taint" and "gooch". It is the area between your sac and your asshole. Why would you create a definition for something that doesn't exist, you morons? "Last night, you mom tongued my chode."-------- AUTHOR: David DATE: 2/08/2006 03:37:00 PM ----- BODY: Things I Learn From My Patients is a hilarious forum on the Student Doctor Network. It's like a mashup between America's Funniest Home Videos (without the videos) and C.O.P.S. Wicked. -------- AUTHOR: David DATE: 2/02/2006 03:05:00 PM ----- BODY:
This SCARED OF SANTA GALLERY is hilarious. Photos of kids freaked out by Santa Claus through the years. Precious.
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AUTHOR: David
DATE: 12/21/2005 03:59:00 PM
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BODY:
Bangkok. Manila. These two words conjure up images of cities that are very much similar to each other: crowded, traffic-snarled, organic metropolises stinking of poverty and corruption of all kinds. True enough there are aspects of each other that these cities mirror almost exactly but, feet on the ground, Bangkok is just leagues and leagues away from Manila and pulling farther and farther away with each year. Whether it is the crazy variety of shopping available to sate the consumer lust of the huge middle class, the very modern and efficient transport system, the cleanliness and sanitation (would you dare eat street food in Manila). Hell, even the legalized prostitution and x-rated fare all add up to initiatives by the Bangkok and Thai governments to bring their city and country up above the third-world mire that the Philippines seems to be slipping deeper and deeper into.
Just take a stroll down Sukhumvit Soi 55, also known as Thong Lor, and you will notice the striking difference. One street, maybe five kilometers long. How many high-end furniture stores is that? In this case it is not just stores but complexes such as H1, Playground, and the Design Connexion. Moroso, Capelli, B&B Italia..these are expensive brand names that are difficult, if not impossible, to find in Manila and yet, this street houses only a few of their Thai showrooms. Can you say spending power? Need more proof? How about the 3 Mercedes-Benz dealerships along this same street? Or the multitude of wedding boutiques and "galleries" packed so densely along this road that you can’t walk more than five paces without tripping over one.
How about midnight on a Monday and Q Bar is packed to the gills with expats and locals spending their hard earned cash on overly priced drinks? 
How about a row of night clubs for the university crowd that makes enough in one night to bring in internationally acclaimed DJs that offer their services for a hundred thousand Dollars for a three hour gig? How about that Suan Lum Night Bazaar off Lumphini? I was expecting a dirty, smelly wet market type of place and instead it is this outdoor mall with all the same things as you’d find at Chatuchak but with less of the grime plus a fabulously complete beer garden with great food, great drinks, live entertainment, giant tvs broadcasting sports, and conveniently connected to the crazy modern MRT system. Greenhills? Baclaran? Forget it. Wake up and smell the Thai iced coffee, Manila has got nothing on this place.
Actually a funny little story shows what the difference is between Bangkok and Manila: we were on the way back to our hotel from the night market and decided to take the MRT. It was midnight, nobody else except our group was on the platform and one of our friends decided to sit down on the floor against one of the support pillars. A voice came booming over the PA: "It is not allowed to sit on the MRT platform!" Red faced but giggling our friend had to get up and find somewhere else to rest. Discipline, my friends. In Manila you could be lying down on the platform during rush hour with a blanket and picnic lunch and get away with it. In Bangkok? hell no.
As a designer and a fan of Design it is horribly frustrating to pop into a city like this and see and feel the availability of materials, products, and ideas that our poor country simply cannot or refuses to access. The appreciation of aesthetics and good industrial design and architecture is something I really wish Filipinos in general had. As we were walking around gawking, poking at things, and making mental notes one of our friends hit the nail on the head. Once things in Manila are prettied up too much the immediate reaction of the masa is to think it is too expensive and run in the opposite direction. Unfortunate but true. In Bangkok, as in most every other city in the world, it seems to be completely the other way around. The better designed a store or restaurant is the more people want to seek it out. Snobbery or appreciation, either way it provides a good environment for people to get creative.
Forgetting the odd things that pop up once in a while, such as elephants randomly manifesting on the sidewalks, there are so many reasons that Bangkok is the city Manila should have been by this point in time that it’s not even worth enumerating them. Frustration…my friends and I were bitching about how far behind Manila is so much that by the end I just couldn’t work up the energy to whine about it anymore.
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AUTHOR: David
DATE: 12/13/2005 04:05:00 PM
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BODY:
eat dog cat mouse, a fun short CG animated feature about...well, about dogs eating cats eating mice. Quirky.
Filed in: OOLOM, blog, animation, video, humor, kids
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AUTHOR: David
DATE: 12/10/2005 12:01:00 AM
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BODY:
This is the way I'm trying to get my design team to work. Take an existing material like cardboard and upgrade it or at least give it a more value-added appeal in a cost-conscious form.
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AUTHOR: David
DATE: 12/08/2005 02:15:00 PM
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BODY:
Metro Manila in the year 2004 is a pit. There is not much to recommend it to visitors and hardly enough to recommend it to the people that have no choice but to live here.
Sure, back during World War II Manila was the second most heavily bombed out and destroyed city (Warsaw was the first) but to use that as an excuse is the biggest cop out of our nation’s leaders. When my parents were growing up and straight through to the time they started their own family Manila was a great place to be. There were all the expected niceties of a capital – master planned urban development, parks, grand buildings, boulevards, clean streets – and even a clean harbor with a beach. Today, the master plan is nonexistent, the parks have been cut back, cemented over, and turned into malls or karaoke bars; the buildings, what’s left of the ones that haven’t been bulldozed, are in advanced stages of decay and abandonment; the boulevards have been encroached on by buildings, mass transit systems, and squatters; the harbor is a polluted mess and the former waterfront is now about two kilometers inland because of reckless reclamation.
I just came back from a trip to Chicago and my reaction on walking around was that the Windy City is the city that Manila should have been. Both cities front large bodies of water, both were master planned by Daniel Burnham, and yet today Chicago is this vibrant, clean, and wonderful city while Manila has firmly entrenched itself as a third-world city. The worst thing about modern Metro Manila is the huge opportunity to create a truly remarkable city that’s been wasted. Take a look at this map:
Metro Manila is bordered on the west by what many consider to be the finest natural deep water harbor in the world. On the east by Laguna de Bay, the largest fresh water lake in South East Asia. On the north by the Sierra Madre mountains and the languid, fertile groves of Bulacan, and on the south again by farmland and the higher fruit and vegetable haven of the Tagaytay ridge in Cavite.
This, to me, sounds like the ideal area for what could have been a magnificent metropolis. Imagine if the waterfronts (one salt water, one fresh) had been developed properly with causeways, beach front properties, and a real orientation towards aquatic sports. We have all the ingredients for our own version of a Miami South Beach, a Venice California, or even a Sydney waterfront. The view from the mountains over the city and these two bodies of water is heart breaking.
Metro Manila is composed of seventeen (17!) cities, each with their own mayors, vice mayors, councilors, hangers-on, and intrigues. There is a government agency that is supposed to coordinate matters such as traffic, police, flood control, and development but this so-called Metro Manila Development Agency (MMDA) is just about as politically affected as any other government office. Responsibility for the construction and maintenance of our roads and highways is split, indelicately, between the MMDA, the local government units (i.e. the cities themselves), the Philippine National Construction Corporation (PNCC), and the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH). Guess what happens when a highway owned by the PNCC has an off-ramp manned by the MMDA intersecting with a major thoroughfare maintained by the city, with vendors and stores “managed” by the Philippine National Police (PNP). One accident here and you have four different government agencies washing their hands of any responsibility and the vehicle owners scratching their heads and gritting their teeth in frustration over the inability of anyone to fix these kinds of problems. Believe it or not this intersection actually exists and this scenario is not make believe.
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AUTHOR: David
DATE: 12/08/2005 02:14:00 PM
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BODY:
Had a fantastic trip down to Donsol, Sorsogon over the weekend. Swam with the whale sharks or butanding as they're called locally. Even though it was a bit off of the main season (March-May) we managed to have four encounters. The smallest one we swam with was a mere 3 meters long, the largest well over 8 meters. Seeing anything this large coming out of the murk is an experience you will never forget, let me tell you. The following photo is one of the 3 meter shark. Lousy visibility = lousy shot. Plus the thing was swimming so fast I couldn't get a more dramatic headshot. 
In addition to the great shark encounters the food in Donsol and Legaspi was just awesome. I highly recommend a trip down there. We're thinking of going back in March. update -- it's now December and we never did get back. Maybe next year or the year after that.
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AUTHOR: David
DATE: 12/08/2005 02:03:00 PM
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BODY:
The coastal waters of the Philippines are host to a wide variety of fish and marine mammals, many of them rare or endangered. The Megamouth shark, Megachasma pelagios, is much rarer than the whale sharks we swam with in Sorsogon. As the previous link mentions only 23 confirmed sightings are known. Now two of these strange beasts have washed up on Philippine shores in the last two years. Here is the link to the latest specimen.
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AUTHOR: David
DATE: 12/08/2005 02:01:00 PM
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BODY:
This page provides an amazing look at what the Philippines was like back in 1955, viewed through the rose-colored glasses of the Coca-Cola Corporation's marketing department of the time. (Download or stream the video from the links provided at the left part of the screen)
A typical excerpt of the audio: "This then is the story of refreshement, of Coca-Cola a quality product, pure and wholesome. A story of a friendly product, delicious and refreshing. A story of partners in progress with all Philippine industry providing employment for thousands of people in many industries, contributing to the progress of the country, and in the future as it always does, Coca-Cola will continue to bring more pleasure, more enjoyment to more people everywhere and Coca-Cola is everywhere in the Philippines."
While the notion of nutritional and "wholesome" pure cane sugar is amusing from today's enlightened dietary perspective this clip serves as a poignant reminder of what the Philippines has lost over the past forty years. I don't believe anyone in their right mind would dare to call the Philippines the "Pearl of the Orient" anymore.
Aside from that though an ice cold Coke and crispy chicharon just can't be beat.
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AUTHOR: David
DATE: 12/08/2005 02:01:00 PM
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BODY:
I'm not an environmentalist per se but I can appreciate how reducing waste in some areas can actually make life better. The homes and buildings detailed at Treehugger.com's Architecture Archives are great examples of environmentally, and sometimes long-term $, more efficient buildings. Plus a lot of these concepts have some great applications in the third world. I'd love to have a green roof if only to have a garden for my kids in my otherwise tightly constricted lot.
One problem as I see it though, aside from the upfront costs involved in constructing the roof and ensuring adequate drainage, water fastness, etc., is that most of the materials they recommend for green roofs are sedums and all the examples I've seen (as exemplified by the photo above) are in the more northern, temperate climate zones. I don't know how well these would stand up to the harsh tropical sunlight or to being lashed by typhoon rains and winds. There must be an equally hardy, low maintenance plant that can be used for tropicalized green roofs. The local equivalent of the green roof is the traditional nipa hut thatched roof but this is made up of dead leaves, so it's barely an equivalent really.
Back on point, even if the cost of building this type of roof wasn't an issue the next biggest problem would be finding an architect/contractor team locally that would be able to execute this kind of project. Reading through Dwell magazine and the comparable modern-oriented architectural magazines it's frustrating that we don't seem to have the same thinking-forward type architects in the Philippines. If they are around I have no idea who they are.
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AUTHOR: David
DATE: 12/08/2005 01:58:00 PM
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AUTHOR: David
DATE: 9/22/2005 12:35:00 PM
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BODY:
I love the new Battlestar Galactica series and would argue that it's one of the best dramatic shows out right now. The acting is good, the plots are cool, it's a space opera but in the true hard sf sense of the word. 
Scans from an 80s "adult English" book for Japanese. Reading is believing in this case. Sample text:"You have more hair than I imagined. But I have nothing against hairy girls. So don't sweat it."-------- AUTHOR: David DATE: 3/14/2005 12:35:00 PM ----- BODY: You read that right. For all you aspiring artists, illustrators, anime-fiends, perverts out there, here's a good tip on how to draw breasts properly. Assuming of course that "properly" means the boobs in question fit into a standard 42EE bra. -------- AUTHOR: David DATE: 3/14/2005 10:10:00 AM ----- BODY:
Yes. This is a legit scan of an actual Batman comics panel. Superdickery has a whole bunch of these odd things. Odd because they're taken out of context and out of the time they were published. Odd because, well, a lot of these themes just wouldn't pass muster nowadays Wonder Woman demonstrating a bondage game? Jimmy Olsen dressing up as a woman? That certainly explains a lot.
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AUTHOR: David
DATE: 3/11/2005 10:28:00 AM
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BODY:
Two words for some of the most inspiring animation I've seen in a while: Bitey Castle. All Flash-based. Brilliantly rendered. Well told. Especially "Prowlies at the River". Great stuff.
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AUTHOR: David
DATE: 3/11/2005 08:32:00 AM
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BODY:
A New Bunny is a violently funny send up of the upcoming Warner Brothers freakshow known as the Loonatics. Not your thing if you don't like swearing, violence, graphic obscenities, drugs or Buzz Bunny. In other words it's damn hilarious and hits the nail right on the head.
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AUTHOR: David
DATE: 3/10/2005 09:02:00 AM
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<Jay Pinkerton has a running series of alternate Superman origin comics going on on his site. Very disfunctional. Very funny.
I haven't laughed so hard in such a long time. This Chinese Tattoo prank from zug.com is hilarious. Especially the part about his leet graphix skillz. Check out the other pranks on the site too. The Viagra and Credit Card pranks are classic.
This is a blast from the past. Back in the 70's my brothers and I had a bunch of these Micronauts toys; I had this particularly lovely 'Repto' guy pictured at left. They were cool toys for the time and I'm happy to say that on my last visit to Japan I'd found that they'd been resurrected, albeit with cooler names and better looking characters. There was a brief, odd comic book tie in with the X-Men in the early 80s. If I'm not mistaken Kitty Pride was the love interest of Baron Karza and even inhabited his body/armor for a short period of time.
The Order of the Stick is a great online comic based in a fantasy MUD/D&D type world. Illustrated in a uniquely simple but effective style, with, again, clever writing and good characters. It obviously rings a bell with me because of my MUD background but even without that it would be a fun read.
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AUTHOR: David
DATE: 2/25/2005 12:16:00 PM
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BODY:
This isn't new but in addition to learning !337$p33k with Microsoft check out the Urban Dictionary to finally figure out just what the hell, "Fo sheezy my neezy" means and avoid getting your ass kicked down in the hood. Scope this for an example definition:
1. beyotch a more formal greeting than bitch. A: Good afternoon. B: Yeah, beyotch!"-------- AUTHOR: David DATE: 2/25/2005 10:41:00 AM ----- BODY:
So...White Ninja is another one of these witty weird web comics that float my boat. Think of a Chris Farley "Beverly Hills Ninja" in terms of intelligence, but with the scrawny body of David Spade. Then make it even weirder than that. With talking fish.
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AUTHOR: David
DATE: 2/24/2005 12:37:00 PM
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BODY:
These Daily Dinosaur Comics by Ryan North are just hilarious. Nothing changes in the art from comic to comic, just the dialogue between a confused T-Rex and his friend the, um, other dinosaur.
On another note, Beaver & Steve now has RSS feeds as well! Joy!
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AUTHOR: David
DATE: 2/24/2005 10:53:00 AM
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Back in the day, make that the early 90's, a couple of friends and I were sucked into the insanely addicting world of text-based Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs). This was before the advent of Mosaic, Netscape, and MMPORPGs and I would wager that these original MUDs are still just as, if not more, addictive and fun to play as any of the 3D online games out there today.
Just got off the line with Janack. He'd been in New York City over the weekend and managed to catch some of this "art" that Christo has put up in Central Park. In honor of this pretentious project here are three lesser known but equally moving tributes to the Gates: The Crackers, The Somerville Gates, and Batman, Famous Bear, & Andy Warhol.Grafik Dynamo is a net art work by Kate Armstrong & Michael Tippett that loads live images from blogs and news sources on the web into a live action comic strip. The work is currently using a feed from LiveJournal. The images are accompanied by narrative fragments that are dynamically loaded into speech and thought bubbles and randomly displayed. Animating the comic strip using dynamic web content opens up the genre in a new way: Together, the images and narrative serve to create a strange, dislocated notion of sense and expectation in the reader, as they are sometimes at odds with each other, sometimes perfectly in sync, and always moving and changing. The work takes an experimental approach to open ended narrative, positing a new hybrid between the flow of data animating the work and the formal perameter that comprises its structure.Got that? Good. -------- AUTHOR: David DATE: 2/20/2005 11:36:00 AM ----- BODY:
So Warner Brothers decides it wants to update the original line up of Looney Tunes characters to make them more appealing to the Teen Titans and Yu-Gi-Oh! generation. It might have been a good idea if they'd actually stuck to the basics of what the characters are about but to turn them into a bunch of whacked out, badly designed superheroes? Take a look at this trailer for the show and tell me...do you have any inclination to watch it?
Here is the motherload of all those weird Estonian ads that have been floating around. I can't read the intro text but I'm guessing that all these ads were made by the inimitable Harry Egipt. Now this is a legacy to be proud of!I'm not an environmentalist per se but I can appreciate how reducing waste in some areas can actually make life better. The homes and buildings detailed at Treehugger.com's Architecture Archives are great examples of environmentally, and sometimes long-term $, more efficient buildings. Plus a lot of these concepts have some great applications in the third world. I'd love to have a green roof if only to have a garden for my kids in my otherwise tightly constricted lot.
One problem as I see it though, aside from the upfront costs involved in constructing the roof and ensuring adequate drainage, water fastness, etc., is that most of the materials they recommend for green roofs are sedums and all the examples I've seen (as exemplified by the photo above) are in the more northern, temperate climate zones. I don't know how well these would stand up to the harsh tropical sunlight or to being lashed by typhoon rains and winds. There must be an equally hardy, low maintenance plant that can be used for tropicalized green roofs. The local equivalent of the green roof is the traditional nipa hut thatched roof but this is made up of dead leaves, so it's barely an equivalent really.
Back on point, even if the cost of building this type of roof wasn't an issue the next biggest problem would be finding an architect/contractor team locally that would be able to execute this kind of project. Reading through Dwell magazine and the comparable modern-oriented architectural magazines it's frustrating that we don't seem to have the same thinking-forward type architects in the Philippines. If they are around I have no idea who they are.
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AUTHOR: David
DATE: 2/16/2005 02:29:00 PM
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BODY:
This whole Stonehenge replica in New Zealand sounds interesting but I think they've forgotten one crucial fact about the original Stonehenge: it was built to last. Somehow this one doesn't sound like it will last more than 10 years:
"But the New Zealand group had to eschew the ancient in constructing the henge as even with modern building equipment, the henge would have taken too long to construct and would have been too expensive.
Instead the society's team concocted pillars and lintels from wooden frames, covered those with cement board and wire mesh and sprayed concrete over the structure.
Inside, with an eye to performances and weddings that will be held here, the stones are also wired for sound"
Yeah. Talk about 5.1 Surround Sound.
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AUTHOR: David
DATE: 2/16/2005 11:52:00 AM
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BODY:
Okay. I know what you're thinking. It's almost impossible to imagine an ad like the one for kana hakkliha ever making it on to TV, regardless of when or where it was shown. You'll be even more blown away, pardon the pun, by this ad for Pinguin ice cream. Yes, that name does remind me of a certain penguin joke. 
Beaver & Steve is my kind of comic strip. Well drawn, bizarre plots, good characterization, and lots of random violence. 
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AUTHOR: David
DATE: 1/19/2005 03:35:00 PM
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BODY:
I ran across PixelBlocks a few months ago in some other blog or review site. Can't remember which one at the moment. Anyway I charged up the credit card and bought 2 of the happy colored assortment packs. Good stuff. My kids enjoy it. But 800 of the damn things still isn't enough. To really do anything worthwhile, like Digital Stained Glass you'll need at least double this amount. These still aren't available in Manila so I'm patiently twiddlling my thumbs until I can get another shipment in.
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AUTHOR: David
DATE: 1/18/2005 11:59:00 AM
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BODY:
Try out this 'Concentration Test for Men'. Even the ladies in my office couldn't successfully complete it
the first time around.
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AUTHOR: David
DATE: 1/17/2005 06:50:00 PM
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BODY:
First!
Try!
of!
This!
Blogging!
Thing!
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