brilliant hilarious life

Hi Tumblr!

I haven’t been active on Tumblr in a while, but I really wanted to share my Kickstarter project with as many people as possible. My name is Jess Tsang, and I’m a percussionist in NYC. Through this Kickstarter, my boyfriend Chris (far left), and our friend Rich (center) are looking to perform a percussion trio called Dressur. 

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1100872552/dressur-mauricio-kagels-music-of-the-absurd

Now, Dressur is an extremely unique piece of music for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, it’s written for about 50 wooden instruments and set pieces - the chair, coconuts, and Balinese angklung in the picture are just a sampling of some of the crazy instrumentation. 

Dressur also stands out from other pieces in its theatricality. The composer, Mauricio Kagel, felt that mechanical replication of music should be eliminated - that we need to see performances as well as hear them. As a result, Dressur contains countless instructions to perform theatrically - acting lost, calm, angry, and everything in between. He evens asks one performer to dance!

So what’s the point? If you couldn’t tell, Dressur is a rarely performed piece of music, mostly due to the costliness of the instruments and set. Through Kickstarter, we’re asking for donations to help us fund and record this piece, and we’re inviting everyone to the concert! We’ve already been funded, reaching our goal of $3000, but we can always use more pledges to give you the best possible result.

What’s in it for you? The great feeling of knowing you’ve helped support contemporary music! Seriously though, there are a bunch of rewards lined up, and if you’ve gotten this far, I’d like to draw your attention to our performances of Staatstheater. Staatstheater is an opera written by the same composer as Dressur, Mauricio Kagel. It consists of multiple short vignettes that are hysterical to musicians and non-musicians alike, as we’ve found out. Each $25 donation unlocks a performance of one of these vignettes, and can be found in the “Updates” section of our Kickstarter. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1100872552/dressur-mauricio-kagels-music-of-the-absurd/posts

There are only 48 hours left to pledge to the Kickstarter - no donation is too small! So if you love percussion, or theater, or music, or comedy, or absurdity, or even me (if you happen to be one of my friends) - please reblog, pledge, and/or attend the performance on March 20th at SUNY Purchase! 

jesuisperdu:

“a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavouring to meet it half-way, we easily become indolent and apathetic. We must be patient, and believe that inspiration will come to those who can master their disinclination.”

nedroidcomics:

Here is an excerpt from my erotic historical fiction novel, Lincoln’s Log, coming in 2013 to an airport bookstore near you:

_______________________________________ 

 Abraham Lincoln looked at Mary Todd Lincoln hungrily. “I want to do sex with you,” he said. “I am the sixteenth president of the United States.”

Mary Todd took off all her clothes and then she and Abraham Lincoln started touching each other in places. Like inside the log cabin, on top of the kitchen table, and such. “How many times should we do sex?” she said. “How about fifty, once for each state in the United States.”

“Yes,” said Abraham Lincoln. “That sounds pretty good.”

Unfortunately they did not see John Wilkes Booth hiding in the bushes outside. 

citationneeded:

Welsh folklore says the corgi is the preferred mount of fairy warriors.

Link

v0tum:

Photograph by Klaus Nigge

Flamingos, fiercely loyal in wild flocks, move in unison when there is a threat. Here, near Sisal, Mexico, a research plane is passing overhead. Several major breeding groups live in estuaries around the Caribbean and beyond.

(via euphues)

fab:

In honor of this week’s Fab sale with the illustrious Eames Office design house, filmmaker Eames Demetrios—the grandson of Ray and Charles Eames—has shared some insights about the objects within in, and how design exists at all price points and aesthetic levels. Read on to enjoy some original Eames.

In our family, Charles and Ray were always teaching us by example. And one thing they understood very deeply was the difference between cost and worth. They were as delighted by the good design of the super ball as the SX-70: very different costs, equally worthwhile. After the last auction, some folks wished we had more rare collectibles, while others wondered what bargains we had. So, we are trying something new with this auction. We have both.

The Computer House of Cards is an extraordinary object. It is no longer in production (in fact, they were only made once, for the Osaka World’s Fair, and these are from the Eames Office at that time), so it is a real piece of history. You can admire it on many levels, but I suspect that one way in particular will endure. It is a deeply aesthetic exploration of a pivotal moment in human history: the transition between the analog age of computers and the digital and everything that made possible, including this website.

Charles’ eye captures the beauty of those analogue computers, not romantically, but matter of factly. We have no plans to reintroduce them, but someday we might. However, even if we do, if you get one of these, you’ll have a deck from the first production, that lived at 901 as Charles and Ray and Eames Office worked away on their projects.

So yes, those are pricey. But we have some other treasures—almost as fun as a super ball, and certainly an excellent value too: books and images and even some toys we have released more recently so you can hold some of Charles and Ray’s ideas and visions in your hands.

Let’s give Charles the last word. Here he talks about something that I think everyone in this community understands: that aesthetics can be a part of function. Where Charles and Ray excelled was being sure aesthetics were only one aspect of the function of their designs.

“The ultimate performance of a building or product is a measure of the way it has functioned, how could we damn a work because it has served mankind too well? If the telephone on our desk is a pleasure to look at and if it feels good and if it smells good and if it tastes good, and when you put it down on the receiver, it sounds good, if it adds to the sort of enrichment of our life, isn’t that the way in which it is functioning for us? Isn’t it serving us better; isn’t it functioning a little better? Then is there any possible way it could serve us better if it would function less?”  —Charles Eames

jackspadeny:

Jackie Mock is an artist who turns everyday ephemera into art objects, and was a founding member of the Greenwich Village Pigeon Club. We couldn’t stop thinking about her piece, Mountain Climber At Summit, which is a Cheeto that looks like a victorious alpinist. So we got in touch with her to talk about it.


Mountain Climber At Summit

So what’s the story behind Mountain Climber At Summit? It’s stuck in our brains.

My work is about things I find and collect from life. It’s about preserving a moment of time with some small object that might usually be overlooked. 

I was sitting in a hotel parking lot one night, in the front seat of my car, drinking a bottle of wine with a friend. We were going through a bag of Cheetos and making-up stories about them. That’s where the mountain climber came from. I saved the Cheeto for a while, and eventually made the gold frame for it. 

 
Toilet Paper from Delta Flight 1733 to Salt Lake City

What are some of the other small things you’re actively collecting these days?

I’ve started robbing graves. Chipping off pieces of graves from different characters in American history. I have an ongoing series of work that are these American relics that I travel to seek out. I have a book full of places in America that I want to visit, and whenever I have the time and funds, I go on a road trip. 

I’m always looking for the world’s largest something, the world’s smallest church, the world’s most elaborate bathroom. I love bible-themed amusement parks and miniature golf courses. Places that are a little absurd, but that people are genuinely passionate about. 

 Piece of Traveling Sideshow Mummy Elmer McCurdy’s Headstone, Guthrie Oklahoma 

Where can people see your work in person?

I have a show up right now in Wassaic, New York. (Note: It’s called Return to Rattlesnake Mountain, which should really make you want to go!) I paneled a whole room on the top floor with found wood, and then all of my work is cut into the walls. So you have to literally look inside the walls to see every small object. 

I do commissions sometimes. I’m talking to this woman who’s a professional tweeter. She and her husband just bought this crazy historic home in Connecticut, and she wants me to go in and build her a museum out of stuff they found in the walls during construction. All these old objects from the 1890s to the 1950s. I get to build a museum inside of a turret, and run wild with it. It should be fun.

Have you found any more divine cheeto images, recently?

I think that was a one-off. But I’m always looking!

You can see more of Jackie Mock’s work online at Reliquarium. Wassaic Project’s Return to Rattlesnake Mountain show, featuring Jackie’s installation, closes on September 2nd. It is a Metro North train ride away from Manhattan.

somethingbypuccini:

peculiar-passing-moments:

So I randomly came across this in a magazine (feature about what celebrities are reading. I didn’t think it was possible for me to love Tina Fey any more but…

Oh my god. 

(via fuckyeahstephensondheim)

anhathaway:

Catwoman and Batman kiss on The Dark Knight Rises.

(via iron-thr0ne)

evanfosterphoto:

#highline #nyc (Taken with Instagram)

matchbooknu:

The book: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

The first sentence: “All this happened, more or less.”

The cover designer: Carin Goldberg

The bikini: Kudeta Bikini. $45.

jesuisperdu:

the japanese art of miniature trees and landscapes,

yuji yoshimura & giovanna m. halford, charles e. tuttle co., 1957 (1976)

stopping off place

virgules:

“You can live your whole life not realizing that what you’re looking for is right in front of you.” 

One Day (2011).

hoiboy:

I have to admit, I watched The Dark Knight Rises for Anne Hathaway.