Cool site alert

Check out VeganTattoos.com, y’all.

I found my friend Dustin’s awesome “HERBIVORE” tattoo on there, too, even though the bitch didn’t send me a link or anything:

Isn’t that clever? The letters are made of vegetables and fruit.

Art vigilantes paint over illegal billboards

From Consumerist:

A big bravo to the authentic graffiti artists in NYSAT or New York Street Advertising Takeover. These folks are going around the city and painting over corporate street art ads – yes, illegal graffiti ads created by corporations who want to appear “hep.”

In some cases NYSAT is replacing the ads with original street art and in others (see photo above) they’re simply painting the word “Delete.”

Here’s an incensed blog post about the phenomenon of corporate street ads in New York and an earlier Consumerist post about the blight of these ads in Los Angeles.

If you want to read more about guerilla and “underground” advertising tactics corporations are using to market to hipsters and young people, or if you just want to be scared shitless about advertising’s infiltration into every facet of our lives, pick up a copy of Anne Elizabeth Moore’s incendiary Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing and the Erosion of Integrity (New Press, $15.95).

Artist paints Mona Lisa with hamburger grease

This is gross, but sometimes art is gross, ladies and gentlemen. Phil Hansen is a talented young man who “paints” using only the grease found on Arby’s hamburgers.

Watch this. Hansen paints the Mona Lisa:

Wow.

As you know, I am totally against the meat industry, so while I applaud Hansen’s talent, I hope maybe his art clues people in to just how unhealthy that shit is.

Incidentally, Leonardo Da Vinci, the fellow who originally painted Mona, was a vegetarian.

Happy Anniversary!

It’s Gina Vivinetto’s Greatest Hits’s eight month anniversary! Woo-hoo! Let’s celebrate with a clip from The Flinstones:

This blog is way more popular than I ever thought it would be thanks to you guys.

We’re going to get our 190,000th hit today. Can you believe it?!

XOXO

Quick pop culture round-up

Legendary rock ‘n’ roll producer Phil Spector found guilty of murder.

Comedian Al Franken is officially a Minnesota senator (!).

Former Jane’s Addiction/Porno For Pyro’s lead singer and Lollapalooza creator Perry Farrell is 50. Yes, 50.

1980s ska pioneers The Specials are a band again. Hurray!

Watch Jeremy Konner’s “Drunk History” videos starring Michael Cera, Jack Black and others. Here’s “Volume One” in which Michael Cera plays Alexander Hamilton complete with colonial wig and cell phone.

Behemoth bookseller Amazon censors gay sale stats, blames “glitch”

On hipsters, their funny-looks and their death

In celebration of whores

Care to comment?

Our weird cartoons

My friend Marky Mae Brown and I have known each other a long time. On a recent trip to Brooklyn, Marky Mae dug up these old cartoons we created when we were mere twentysomethings, killing time at the daily newspaper where we worked as errand runners.

Marky Mae drew the pics and I wrote the quips. Here are two from a larger series:

and

We cracked up when we looked at them again. I keep trying to get Marky Mae to do a book-length series with me, but he doesn’t see their marketability.

But, seriously, wouldn’t you buy a book of these? Wouldn’t you?

Teeny tiny television show interiors

I love Apartment Therapy because it offers great decor posts, links to old magazine archives and strange Flickr galleries like this one where an artist known only as “On The Set” recreates famous American television shows’ interior sets.

Recognize these? (Click on any to enlarge)

The Brady Bunch:

The Facts of Life:

The Golden Girls:

The artist behind the “On The Set” series writes that he/she visited Hollywood TV show sets as a kid and though the show’s producers forbade taking pictures, he/she could rush home and recreate the sets using various items including Legos.

Go to the “On The Set” Flickr page to see the sets of Murphy Brown, Three’s Company, Roseanne, Designing Women, and more.

The dinosaur art of Blake Sanders

This dinosaur has been my favorite image for several weeks now:

It’s called Swim or Sink 1 by Blake Sanders, an artist in New Orleans. I like Blake’s work a lot. I also like his artist statement, all about respect for animals and the need for a more sustainable culture. Blake writes:

“My work illustrates the many ways animals not only prove our equal but also surpass our own traits and abilities. Recently, I have returned to a favorite motif from my childhood: dinosaurs. These remarkable creatures were thought to be the dominant life forms on the planet for tens of millions of years. Despite their sometimes-enormous scale and appetites these impressive prehistoric animals left comparatively little physical impact on the land they inhabited for millennia. Instead, through the forces of evolution, species and populations changed their shapes and sizes in order to adapt to the demands of their environment.”

Swim or Sink 1, Blake says, is a nod toward Hurricane Katrina and the need to tackle climate change.

See more of Blake’s work on Flickr.

A quick round-up

Here are stories I found interesting and you might, too:

* Wall Street Journal piece on the chemicals in household cleaners.

* Showtime wisely passes on insulting, asinine L-Word spinoff.

* I feel sorry for this Graffiti Girl who’s facing serious hard time. Am I a sap?

* Kooky Cloris Leachman and Gene Hackman had “epic sex”? Weird.

* She’s gonna play Judy Garland?!

* Artist Justine Lai paints realist portraits of herself having sex with U.S. presidents.

* Wow, talk about old meets new: Modernist architect Frank Gehry has been picked to design an Eisenhower monument in D.C.

Art Spiegelman speaks tonight in D.C.

Hallowed comic book writer and Pulitzer Prize-winner Art Spiegelman (Raw magazine, Maus, ) will be George Washington University here in D.C. tonight discussing “Comix 101.1,” whatever that is.

Spiegelman’s speech begins at 7 p.m. in the Jack Morton Auditorium, Media and Public Affairs Building at GW, 805 21st St. NW. (Phone (202) 994-5206).

I want desperately to go, but as you regular readers (yes, all five of you) have probably surmised, I am wickedly busy. I’ve got actual work-related writing to do, I’m walking something like 700 neighborhood dogs, I’m tending to a post-surgery lady friend, and I’m preparing to move both of us into a much smaller apartment in two weeks. This is why, Facebook friends, I’ve been complaining about falling asleep every night at 10:30. My shit is tired. Or vitamin-deficient.