Michael Okum is an L.A. based filmmaker and visual artist. Originally from New Jersey, he fought hard to leave behind his "working class" mindset for the jet set. He still listens to "The Boss" and does not frown upon those who choose to live a life of material gain. He is currently working on a feature script titled "BULLHEAD."
In celebration of the success of recent films that explore themes related to madness and distorted reality (Shutter Island, Alice in Wonderland), I’d like to recommend a vintage “undiscovered” gem titled Lilith from 1964. The film features a brilliant, haunting performance by Jean Seberg and a strange, subdued turn by a very young Warren Beatty.
Born in Australia, Leon spent a pinball upbringing in places such as Switzerland, Rhode Island and Los Angeles. He studied Industrial Design on the mean streets of Detroit and cut his teeth as a professional at Motorola in Chicago, where he attempted to make design a bit more sustainable. Currently he writes, designs, travels, fights crime and works on VEGA$BROKE, a new fashion line.
The Bloggomist: Design in the Blood Design Opinion
I’ll admit it doesn’t happen too often, but today I’m speechless. I usually have to look far and wide for examples of dubious design that should be punishable in a court of law…or at least punishable by ridicule and a loss of face. Sometimes I can pull a good example from a mental checklist of past observations, but not often does a multi-faceted specimen of frivolity fall on my lap so neatly, confirming all along that the realm of celebrity design has reached its peak of pointlessness. In this situation however, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Jenn Chen is a relatively recent Southern California transplant. She practices law by day and contributes to EM by night from the outskirts of Los Angeles. When somehow doing neither, she enjoys a wide range of activities, including but not limited to: reading about zombies, drinking boba, and listening to freeway traffic reports.
Bloggomist: Today’s Dish / Yesterday’s Spam Political Opinion
Two weeks ago, Canadian authorities were notified by an Xbox live gamer in British Columbia that one of his Modern Warfare 2 teammates had threatened to gun down classmates at his high school. According to Kotaku, the teen had planned to obtain weapons “from a friend in the Marine Corps,” claimed he would shoot a pregnant classmate and his best friend, and “make the headlines so that people would remember him forever.” Continue reading →
Born in NYC, Caleb grew up in the city and a preppy town called Darien where he played every sport (including preppy games like lacrosse). After college he was suckered into the fashion industry and currently resides in Los Angeles where he works for 3sixteen and Opening Ceremony. When no one's looking, Caleb makes music, obsesses excessively over basketball and works on the GDFHT (http://www.gdfht.com/). Follow him at twitter.com/caleblin.
I’m blessed with a job that affords me the opportunity to see in-person the people we gawk at on TV. Some I see randomly, others are consistent visitors. It’s nothing worth name-dropping; I don’t delude myself–it’s not like they came to see me–I’m just the lucky bystander who happened to cross their path. I chat with them, show them the collections, bring them pieces, and do my best to not look awkward while I stand by and watch them browse obliviously through the store. It’s not much, but I still feel lucky. Those moments are still a world more than most will ever get to experience. Continue reading →
Abe Ahn is currently working on a research project involving the 1977 non-fiction war novel DISPATCHES. He likes nothing more than the freedom to cook his own meals, drink plenty of wine and listen to records.
The Bloggomist: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men Music Opinion
In the last days of Jay Reatard’s life, there were no signs of impending self-destruction. The 29-year-old garage and punk rock musician seemed to be picking up his life, having recently bought a new home in Tennessee and released a full-length record on New York’s Matador Records. His last Tweets contained little of the vitriol he frequently leveled at antagonists Continue reading →
Michael Okum is an L.A. based filmmaker and visual artist. Originally from New Jersey, he fought hard to leave behind his "working class" mindset for the jet set. He still listens to "The Boss" and does not frown upon those who choose to live a life of material gain. He is currently working on a feature script titled "BULLHEAD."
The genre of war film has been sorely lacking in recent years. Rarely do independent films rise to the occasion of rivaling classic studio releases in the war genre. Films like The Best Years of Our Lives, Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line, The Dirty Dozen and Bridge on the River Kwai have traditionally featured big stars and big budgets. 2009 marks a year when two independent studio-based films, up for Best Picture, represent polar opposites of the spectrum regarding this specific genre Continue reading →
Zinzi was born in Providence, Rhode Island where she developed a perfectly healthy love of shellfish, flannel and the Red Sox. Today she and her Beagle Ruby live in Northeast Los Angeles where they're more likely to see khakis from Dickie's than Brooks Brothers, which is cool. She reads Classical Literature (Greeks, not Romans), Continental Philosophy, glossy magazines and Wallace Stevens. You can also visit her here: http://coffeeandoranges.wordpress.com!
Tonight I’m watching the first round of Olympic women’s figure skating. As these teenage girls, weighed down by pancake makeup and pressure well beyond their years, parade in front of millions in precarious footwear, I can only think how different it is from that other world cultural event going on right now: fashion week. Continue reading →
Stephen Loh was born and raised in Southern California. He first entered a darkroom at the age of 12 and fell in love with the medium. While attending UC Riverside he was the arts and entertainment editor for the campus paper. From there he went on to hold down a sting of terrible jobs while writing and photographing whenever and wherever he could. Some ridiculous things he enjoys are following the Clippers, MMA, pinball, eating new/odd foods and Futurama. He dreams of going into space someday. His Russian Cosmonaut application has been rejected three times. Someday.
Portland-based Parenthetical Girls are about to release their fourth album, entitled Privilege, Pt. 1: On Death and Endearments. They started off with original members Zac Pennington and Jeremy Cooper under the name Swastika Girls, taken from a Brian Eno song, and released their debut EP Christmas With Swastika Girls in 2002 Continue reading →
Preoccupied with fashion, non-fiction literature and an unhealthy obsession with ELO leaves TheMissLinds with an often asymmetrical view of the world. Taking it all in stride she recently relocated from the lush green of the south to the hard concrete of NYC and while she's only been there a short while she can attest to two things: New York needs to up it's mexican food game, and girls in Brooklyn need to stop dressing like they fell out of a laundry basket. She also throws out fashion gems on her homebase, TheMissLinds.com.
In light of the recent death of designer Lee McQueen, I wanted to very delicately touch on a subject that T magazine editor Stefano Tonchi brought up only days after we learned that McQueen had taken his own life. To many it seems offensive to speculate over the pains of someone else’s life so soon, and Tonchi did in fact receive a load of Continue reading →
Hi – I’m Jennifer Chen, Bloggomist for Today’s Dish/Yesterday’s Spam. If you’ve been watching my videoblog, I do want to make a correction – I misspoke about one of my favorite sites – Sorry I Missed Your Party. I stated that it’s a New York blog when I meant that the blog’s author was from New York. Please don’t think that the people on that blog are exclusively from New York. Continue reading →
Allicia was born and raised in the suburbs of the nation's capital. She likes sriracha sauce, live shows, college hoops, art galleries and traveling. Her favorite travel destination is Angkor Wat, a 12th century temple located in Siem Reap, Cambodia. She writes commentary to promote the political interest of individuals in her generation and is hopeful that more people will become politically engaged in the future.
Has the stigma about DC’s bland sense of style gone away since Michelle Obama moved to the White House or Robin Givhan’s return to Washington give rise to a focus on DC fashion?
I’ve always felt that style has existed in Washington for decades but there were moments that had the entire country and world keeping a close watch on DC style. Continue reading →
Rickey Y. Kim is a native of Los Angeles and the first from his family to be born in America. As a student at UC San Diego, Rickey founded Evil Monito [EM] Magazine in his dorm room. In his spare time, he enjoys fine dining, a glass of Jameson served neat, and cutting his own hair, simultaneously. You can catch up on his daily life via - www.mrkimsays.com - his personal blog.
Downtown Los Angeles is a place that has been left desolate and abandoned. It is a place where the nature of human beings are put fully to the the test, both from those who permit certain people to remain in pain, and for those who are left on the wayside of poverty. This is Los Angeles at it’s worst, and in some strange way, at its best.
Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance
Guggenheim Museum – New York, NY
3/25/10
Much of contemporary photography and video seems haunted by the past, by the history of art, by apparitions that are reanimated in reproductive mediums, live performance, and the virtual world. By using dated, passé, or quasi-extinct stylistic devices, subject matter, and technologies, such art embodies a longing for an otherwise unrecuperable past. Continue reading →
Big City Forum #13
Honor Fraser Gallery – Los Angeles, CA
3/20/10
Big City Forum invites you to a conversation with poets, writers, and seers about literal vs. metaphoric space, inscape/landscape, the visible/invisible world, liminality — “betwixt and between” — & proximity in motion… Continue reading →
The “Socalled” Movie Premiere
Maggie Mae’s – Austin, TX
3/16/10
Meet Socalled (Josh Dolgin). He’s unstoppable. A pianist, singer, arranger, rapper, producer and composer (and also a magician, filmmaker, and visual artist), he’s blasting through the boundaries that separate music from different cultures, eras, and generations. Continue reading →
Big Freak + Special Guests Crystal Antlers
Black Boar – Eagle Rock, CA
3/15/10
Every Monday at the Black Boar, L.A. Record’s Chris Ziegler will be hosting a night of eclectic music featuring local bands and DJs. Tonight, Crystal Antlers (Long Beach) will DJ along with resident hosts Ziegler and Short Shorts. Continue reading →
When you hear that an album was recorded in a shed in Tuam, Ireland, and that the lead singer spent his early adulthood as a tourist and college lecturer in Seoul, South Korea, you don’t really know what to expect. So was the case with So Cow, a band headed by Brian Kelly and his recently established musical cohorts. Continue reading →
Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre – Hollywood, CA
Live Review: 3/9/10
It has been more than a decade since the music world fell in love with The White Stripes. In 1997, the former husband-wife duo were head-of-the-class in Detroit’s lo-fi rock scene. Six studio albums, 12 million album sales, three Grammys and a divorce later, Jack and Meg White are now rock ‘n’ roll royalty with a worldwide legion of fans wearing their trademark white, red and black. Continue reading →
Aperture and the Photography Program in the School of Art, Media, and Technology at Parsons The New School for Design are proud to present Barbara Probst, internationally recognized visual artist as a speaker to stimulate and encourage us to take a closer look at the possibilities of variations when it comes to photography and the involvement of technological techniques. She uses a radio-controlled release system which simultaneously triggers the shutters of several cameras pointed at the same scene from various angles and perspectives, pretty spiffy, no? The sequence of images allow the camera to capture that specific moment in time and Continue reading →
The final line-up and times for MtyMx: All Ages Festival of Art and Music are set and ready to go. The festival is going down in Monterrey, Mexico from March 20-22 and is organized by Todd P & Yo Garage with Ric Leichtung, Fiona Campbell, and Jesse Hlebo. The festival will feature up to 25 bands a day (over a third of which are from Mexico) for three consecutive days on two outdoor stages in a drive-in theater set alongside the mountains of the Sierra Madre Oriental. For those art enthusiasts out there, we’ve got Continue reading →
Ben Cooper and Alex Kane of Electric President are onto their first stateside album, The Violent Blue. In this mood filled, evocative track, Ben’s reflective harmonies sweep against waves of epic percussion and “silent lucidities.” Continue reading →
Two weeks before the election of Barack Obama, filmmaker Jeff Deutchman asked his friends around the world to record their experiences of 11/4/08, a day that had become “historic” before it had even taken place. He collected footage from a combination of passionate amateurs and acclaimed independent filmmakers, including Henry Joost (Catfish), Margaret Brown (The Order of Myths), Joe Swanberg (Alexander the Last) and Benh Zeitlin (Glory At Sea).Continue reading →
| 
