So. In Japan, they have what are referred to as “Love Hotels.” They are basically pay-by-the-hour, fetish-and-fantasy-themed, amusement-park-esque motels. And this is a thing. That they aparently DO in Japan. For fun. EDIT: It seems that a lot of single adults in Japan usually continue to live with their parents even until they get married, and so these love hotels are quite useful. Anywho, THIS BOOK. IT IS AMAZING. It is by a photographer named Misty Keasler (who I had never heard of before…?) and it basically documents, or exposes if you will, this crazy japanese novelty. And I found it the other day, and fell in love with it (haha… no pun intended). You can look at more pages when you click on the picture.
Look at Wikipedia’s explanation of this phenomenon here.
Here is an awesome blog made by a few couples (back in 2003, so its kinda old) who banded together, wanting to explore the love hotels armed with nothing more than a camera, quarters for the vending machines, and the occasional sexy lingerie.
The legendary John Szarkowski, photographer, curator, writer, superhero, is dead. Of a stroke at age 81. For those of you who dont know, Szarkowski used to head the Walker’s photography department and became one of the first curators to acknowledge contemporary photography as art in the late 60s and early 70s. You should read about him. Amazing.
Okay, so I was walking home from SES on tuesday night, after having played much foursquare and tiring myself out. It was about 11-11:30pm and as I was walkng across the street on stevens, where the horseshoe parking lot-thingy is at mcad, I saw a pretty cute couple coming towards me, just walking and laughing alittle. I looked both ways and there were no cars, so i crossed paths with the cute couple. But then, as i got up onto the curb of the opposite side of the street, i noticed a cute little lonely dog coming towards me too. He was really ugly actually, kind of sparsley furry with more on the top of his head than anywhere else. I thought he only had three legs at first, but i was wrong. He didnt have a collar on, so i kind of knelt down next to him and was like, where the hell did you come from dog and do you have rabies…? The cute little ugly dog walked right past me and proceeded to cross the street. I turned and looked and saw two cars coming, one from either way and went instantly into mommy mode… I walked a little off of the curb so that the cars would see me and slow, because i doubted that they would see the tiny little dog in the dark. At the exact same time that i began to step into the street, the girl from the cute couple turned around in the horseshoe as if she were looking for something and then started SCREAMING. O MY GOD BABY O MY GOOOOD. It became clear to me that the cute couple was walking the dog, but without a lease, like some dog-people do, only this time she had apparantly FORGOTTEN that she was walking his at some point, and wasnt paying attention. NOW she was paying attention. So, the cars were still coming, and in slow motion all I heard was SCREAMING, freaking out as if her baby were helpless in the middle of the street she was not doing anything to stop it, might I mention), the little dog happily prancing across the street, and then i put my hand up in a ‘stop’ kind of motion, and the two cars screeched to a halt, while the dog passed maybe a foot in front of them. The lady scooped up the ugly little dog and, crying, said THANK YOU OMY GOD THANK YOU SO MUCH. and i said, almost whithout any feeling, NO PROBLEM.
What could i have been thinking to not only save this littel dog with the woman screaming all the while, and then not be able to squeeze out a tear for her, or a ARE YOU ALRIGHT, YOURE WELCOME I would have done it anyways… or something??? I proceeded to walk home and went to bed.
Scariest thing ever.
Ben and Joel and Emma and I were watching mr rogers today and he made this really wierd face and I thought it was really funny… so i wanted to find the episode on youtube for all of you to watch. Unfortunately, I could not find the episode that I wanted. BUT. We did find this really cool/creepy video where they cut a bunch of clips of mr rogers neighborhood and mr rogers audio together and made a video. I think maybe the audio/music was pre-created, and then the video came after… but whatever. It is nine minutes long right now, so let it load a little or be patient or something…
Seeing as how no one has made an image post in awhile, I wanted to do what emma did and post a bunch of random things that I found on my computer for all y’alls viewing pleasure. Plus, it was really fun going through all of my stuff!
1. A picture of rik sferra, media arts teacher at mcad. “Thats bad joojoo.”
2. Something Alex made me when we were (were?!) obsessed with project runway, but mostly Santino’s impressions of tim gunn. “WHERES AAAANDRE?!?”
3. An Alice in Wonderland illustration that I really liked while making a series of childrens book for my artist books class. I had to make ILLUSTRATIONS. WHAT IS THAT.
4. Yup, thats a really bad clip-art of me from the Northern Elite All Stars website.
Dont I look peppy!? Fuck you.
5. My new cousin anders (who is now about a year old). I just really like the look on the nurse’s face, and the precarious way that she is holding him up, clearly trying to NOT be in the picture. However, I am almost scared for anders’ newly-formed brain every time I see it.
So I’ve been back and forth from the ‘midji lately, which has been quite nice actually. The grass is green, the birds are chirping, and there are no more homeworks for me to worry about (now all I have to do is wait for grades to be posted, yikes!)!!! Everyone, I have been having fun. I get to laze around all day while Alex is plugging away at grueling software engineering finals, I get to watch lots of cable TV and eat at Wally’s with Alex’s friends (which they all like to complain about but I think is kinda cool because I dont get to do these things at MCAD… It’s like I’m in REALL COLLEGE!) And on Friday we went to a BBQ at one of his professors’ houses in the middle of nowhere. Marty had the wonderful foresight to ask if i needed any special food items, so I got delicious portabello veggie patties while everyone else had to eat regular old fatty BEEF patties. HA! They dont know what theyre missing… And there was also this delicious dark brew beer there (this, from Alex, because I didnt want to ask for a beer because I didnt know if he’d be okay with that… everyone else seemed to be at least 21 years of age. Thats okay, I had a root beer…). ANYWHO… look at these LABELS!!
Not only does TommyKnockers Brew apparantly taste good, but come on, these illustrations are GREAT! And if you go to the website, you can look at all of the labels, including their soda labels (which I dont think are as great, but still pretty good design for a boonies beer company… seriously, the only place they sell this stuff is like 100 miles from where Marty’s house is… he must have liked it quite a lot to go that far.) But I thought that all of you shambot-eers would like to see them, seeing as how we all tried to design some labels ourselves! Ironic!
Tomorrow we go with Nate and Tony to Thief River Falls to look at apartments for the summer. There is this one place that they really want to live, but they havent been calling the guys back to let themknow if there are any vacancies! So we plan on hustling them a little bit in order to put them in their place. More to come: pictures of the apartments/Thief River… I hope it’s cute!!
