Madame Lamb

John Lennon shot dead by cuckoo holding Catcher in the Rye

2011-12-08T00:23:00.001-08:00

Thirty-one years ago today, Yoko Ono watched a smiling gunman fire five bullets into John Lennon's body. Armed with a .38 revolver, the gunman proceeded to eerily leaf through J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye".

The doorman of John and Yoko's 72 St and Central Park West home asked the killer if he knew what he had done. The killer responded: "I just shot John Lennon".

stranger than fiction.

This photograph by Annie Liebovitz was taken on the day of Lennon's death.

writer's block

2011-09-20T00:52:00.001-07:00

this motor protein's got swag

2011-07-31T21:48:00.001-07:00

interesting simulation (or is this microscopic imaging?) of a motor protein. you can take the protein out of the hood but you can't take the hood out of the protein.

tgif

2011-07-08T20:21:00.000-07:00

hope your summer weekend is as vibrant and impish as this music video from delicate steve. tonight, i'll be at george clinton's 70th birthday funkbration at yoshi's on fillmore.

peace love and funky carrot mango juice,

adrien de bontin, photographer

2011-06-29T10:10:00.000-07:00

adrien de bontin, my dear friend, photog, and aesthetic illuminator, has a new website. adi, as we fondly call him, is a global citizen currently situated in buenos aires. like most talented creative minds, he's always on the go. follow his camera lens around the world at adriendebontin.tumblr.com. and, enjoy some tastes of his eyes:

i'm wrestling with an octopus by j prelutsky

2011-06-17T01:49:00.000-07:00

I'm wrestling with an octopus

and faring less than well,

one peek at my predicament

should be enough to tell.

It held me in a hammerlock,

then swept me off my feet,

I'm getting the impression

that I simply can't compete.

I'd hoped that I could hold my own,

but after just a while,

I ascertained I couldn't match

an octopus's style.

It flipped me by a shoulder,

and it latched onto a hip,

essentially that octopus

has got me in its grip.

I tried assorted armlocks,

but invariably missed,

and now I'm in a headlock,

and it's clinging to my wrist.

It's wound around my ankles,

and it's wrapped around my chest—

when grappling with an octopus,

I come out second best.

Jack Prelutsky, A Pizza the Size of the Sun

WWOZ New Orleans Radio

2011-06-16T10:45:00.000-07:00

If you are a lover of New Orleans jazz, add WWOZ 90.7 FM, New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Station, to your iTunes playlist. My friend Ross turned me onto this station a while back, and it's takes me to NoLA each and every time I listen...a great Pandora alternative.
Here are the instructions to add a station to your itunes (which I find to be the easiest way to access the stream):

In iTunes, Choose Open Audio Stream from the Advanced menu to add the station to your library. Paste or enter the station’s URL (http://wwoz-sc.streamguys.com:80/wwoz-hi.mp3) in the dialog that appears and click OK.

You can also stream the station in your browser, or get the app by jumping over to this page: http://www.wwoz.org/programs/streams

samuel l. jackson reading "go the fuck to sleep"

2011-06-16T02:29:00.001-07:00

Listen to f-bomb-dropper-extraordinaire Samuel l. Jackson read the highly acclaimed children's book parody,"Go the Fuck to Sleep" by Adam Mansbach. Takes me back to my days as a nanny. Follow @thebadnanny on Twitter for related humor.

when technology bypasses artistry

2011-06-16T02:05:00.001-07:00

plots and paintings will be derived from algorithms

hump day: thumbs up, everybody, for rock and roll!

2011-06-01T12:32:00.001-07:00

after learning how to ride a bike, this little boy offers up an epic speech. dig this kid's charisma! and hearing his dad cheese out in the background is priceless.

via our friends at BuzzFeed

how cool clothing is v. how easy it is to wear

2011-05-17T18:11:00.000-07:00

i disagree with a lot of what's going on in this graph, but i think it's a clever use of the scatterplot so i'm posting it.

here are some of my thoughts: 1) the "zero" here is the baseball cap and should be underwear 2) wearing a scarf is easy

what are your thoughts?

a new one from david lynch

2011-05-10T10:02:00.002-07:00

here's a new advertisement from david lynch for his organic, fair-trade coffee. buy it here and let the nightmares ensue.

ode to broken things

2011-05-04T07:01:00.000-07:00

last night i had a dream that my apartment was smashed to pieces. it was like pete townshend had been spent the night, and everything was broken; lampshades, hairbrushes, jewelry, plates, cups, silverware, walls, frames. it was strangely beautiful, though, and in my dream i didn't seem to mind it much at all. it brought me back to a poem by pablo neruda i read in professor maraniss's class at amherst. the poem is titled "ode to broken things" and is from neruda's 1956 compilation of odes to commonplace things called odas elementales. i especially enjoy the last line, "tantas cosas inútiles/que nadie rompe/pero se rompieron." the poem resonates much better in spanish, so those of you blessed with bilinguality jump here. enjoy.

Ode to broken things by Pablo Neruda

Things get broken
at home
like they were pushed
by an invisible, deliberate smasher.
It's not my hands
or yours
It wasn't the girls
with their hard fingernails
or the motion of the planet.
It wasn't anything or anybody
It wasn't the wind
It wasn't the orange-colored noontime
Or night over the earth
It wasn't even the nose or the elbow
Or the hips getting bigger
or the ankle
or the air.
The plate broke, the lamp fell
All the flower pots tumbled over
one by one. That pot
which overflowed with scarlet
in the middle of October,
it got tired from all the violets
and another empty one
rolled round and round and round
all through winter
until it was only the powder
of a flowerpot,
a broken memory, shining dust.

And that clock
whose sound
was
the voice of our lives,
the secret
thread of our weeks,
which released
one by one, so many hours
for honey and silence
for so many births and jobs,
that clock also
fell
and its delicate blue guts
vibrated
among the broken glass
its wide heart
unsprung.

Life goes on grinding up
glass, wearing out clothes
making fragments
breaking down
forms
and what lasts through time
is like an island on a ship in the sea,
perishable
surrounded by dangerous fragility
by merciless waters and threats.

Let's put all our treasures together
-- the clocks, plates, cups cracked by the cold --
into a sack and carry them
to the sea
and let our possessions sink
into one alarming breaker
that sounds like a river.
May whatever breaks
be reconstructed by the sea
with the long labor of its tides.
So many useless things
which nobody broke
but which got broken anyway.

the mall: 1989

2011-04-20T11:51:00.005-07:00

stumbled across this project on good ole GOOD magazine...from the photographer, michael galinsky:

"In 1989, following in the footsteps of Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand, and William Eggleston, I drove across the country and documented malls across America. I had a cheap Nikon FG-20 and an even cheaper lens - but I had a lot of passion.

I shot about 30 rolls of slide film in malls from Long Island to North Dakota to Seattle. It was hard to tell from the images where they were taken, and that was kind of the point. I was interested in the creeping loss of regional differences. I thought a lot about Frank's "The Americans" as we drove from place to place without any sense of place."

talk about a time capsule...i like his last remark about the homogenous look and feel of these places. same shitty tiled-over, fake topiary, neon-light schtick goin on everywhere.

he's apparently trying to publish a book...thus explaining the kickstarter piece of it. if you've got some extra change lying around (perhaps that tax return...?), head on over and donate.

also, spent too much time looking up the song not to mention that 1: it's great, and 2: it's sleepyhead - "punk rock city usa"...good luck finding it.

the grateful dead movie event

2011-04-20T11:11:00.003-07:00

"the grateful dead movie" will be showing on over 500 big screens nationwide for one night only...tonight. the film, which hasn't been played at a movie theater 1977, will be coupled with never-before-seen jerry and bob interviews taken during the production of the film. for those of you (like me) who never saw this epic rock and roll moving picture, it includes live performances "u.s. blues", "one more saturday night", "casey jones", "playing in the band" and "sugar magnolia" (and more) at winterland arena. seems like a nice wednesday evening sf event, think i'll check it out.

tickets are available through Fathom Events

16 lines of spring

2011-04-17T04:22:00.000-07:00

leads the flock away, one ribbon at a time.

magical frijoles

2011-04-17T03:37:00.002-07:00

RE>>

how to make a crappy ad

2011-04-12T17:04:00.005-07:00

the ole 'finishing each others sentences construct'...been saying how tired/annoying this is for a while now and portlandia skewers it awesomely.

sunday

2011-04-10T22:11:00.000-07:00

it's still sunday in california

bicycle coffee co

2011-04-04T10:14:00.001-07:00

if you're in the bay, check out bicycle coffee co. they make organic, fair-trade coffee and deliver it via bicycle to offices and shops around they bay. i like knowing that a rugged man climbed many a hill just so i could enjoy these peruvian-grown, san francisco-roasted beans. yum.

meet brad, co-founder of bicycle coffee co:

tgif

2011-04-01T11:36:00.001-07:00

this weekend, take a few moments to douse yourself in record store aromas.

-ML

barbie as patrick bateman

2011-04-01T11:17:00.002-07:00

mariel clayton, a photographer with a subversive sense of humor, cleverly portrays barbie as a psychotic narcissist... a la american psycho. these are funny, and kind of the opposite of cindy sherman's series of women in vulnerable settings.

"group shot everyone! i want a picture for the website!"

ironic traps

2011-04-01T10:52:00.001-07:00

artists jeff greenspan and hunter fine installed a series of "hipster traps" (see above) throughout new york city. the bait includes sunglasses, a yellow bicycle chain, a holga camera, a can of PBR and a pack of american spirits. fyi, greenspan is the same artist who pulled last summer's “tourist lane” prank. i like this guy. next up, "bridge and tunnel traps" (see below).

gellyvision

2011-03-30T09:44:00.001-07:00

my kicky and enterprising friend from minneapolis, @bahertz, has a blog called "gellyvision" (his nickname) where he publishes picture narratives. below, an open letter he wrote me last week. this guy has a very keen eye. subscribe to his blog for more visual confections.

Hey Blanca

how are you

how is SFO

do you have a job

how are your room mates

do you still have a boyfriend

what does he do

are you coming here to visit

Love

BAH

tom, bill, and mary

2011-03-29T20:07:00.005-07:00

i remember when i first saw nashville i searched endlessly for this tune and couldn't turn it up...not sure what made me think of it, but this song's great and i'm glad it's now out there.

christina raines is beautiful here...and believe it or not, she'd never sang before. i was reading the comments on the vid, and someone called attention to how closely she resembles emmylou harris here...spot on.