Cool Hunting
| 30 May 2006view entries from: this week | this month | view previous day | view next day |
Cool Hunting Daily, Now with Pictures
by Josh Rubin
Loyal readers of CH know we update anywhere from 3 - 7 times each weekday. While many of you visit the web site and some subscribe to the RSS feed, there are also a bunch of people on our email list. We had been pretty slack about getting emails out up until a couple weeks ago when we started sending daily summaries of the site. That's now totally automated which means it's more reliable. Over the weekend we made another enhancement to the email newsletter—pictures! Now each story includes a little photo to go with the excerpt and a link to read the entire story on our site. So if you're interested in getting daily summaries delivered to your email inbox sign up using the form on the top right of this page.
Peeping Tom
by Ami Kealoha
Famous for fronting Faith No More, Mike Patton's many other projects—from the early '90s metal funk of Mr. Bungle to recent collaborations with fellow California noise-maker Kid 606—have always been on the edge of experimentation and taste. Now the release of his latest album, Peeping Tom, brings in a bevy of big-name guest artists for a disc that Patton calls his "version of pop music." Made entirely by swapping files (à la The Postal Service), some of the artists, like Kool Keith's out there persona and the dark trip hop of Massive Attack, are more obvious fits with Patton's more irreverent side. But, tracks featuring members of Oakland avant-hip hop collective anticon and the unlikely pairings with Bebel Gilberto and Norah Jones are surprising mixes of Patton's charming macho vocals and his collaborators' more- smoothed-out styles. Officially due out 30 May 2006, order it now from Amazon.
Refinery29: On Location in Reykjavik
by Ami Kealoha
Iceland's climate and terrain is so otherworldly—glaciers, geysers, and lava deserts dot this island in the Arctic Circle—that NASA astronauts come here to train. In contrast, the capital, Reykjavik, is a small, thriving city that plays host to great music, fashion, and art scenes. The city's compact layout encourages a sense of community and so do its many stores and cafés where young creatives converge for coffee and conversation (and to road-test their daring haircuts).
Here's a round-up of our favorites.
The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife
by Ami Kealoha
Sebastien Agneesens is a riot of candy-hued balloons suggestive of the sensual sea creatures in the original. Unlike Hokusai's nearly 200 year-old print, the thousands of balloons that make up the show are an ephemeral medium; Hackenwerth sees the shrinking and shriveling that occurs as a "process of transformation metaphorically similar to our own short lives." More info and a flyer, after the jump.
Filliers Fruit Jenevers
by Evan Orensten
Nothing says summer's arrived like a cold jenever on ice. Jenever is a liquor made from juniper berries (and often grain) that comes in many varieties. Only those made in Holland or the northern part of Belgium are able to use the name jenever.
Marisa, editor of CH sister site Needled stopped by CH HQ with a few bottles that she brought with her from Belgium. Somewhere in the middle of researching our epic Summertime Rules post we busted out the jenever and put it to the test.
The Filliers family has been making jenevers for five generations. Though production has grown too large to make jenever from the grains they raised on their farm, like they used to do, the family still produces the entire product on site.
The fruits used in their line of fruit jenevers (apples, plums, currants, lemons...) add natural flavors and colors to the liquor. The flavors we sampled were bright and subtle with strong fruit aromas. They were not sweet at all, but the presence of the fruit was pleasantly noticeable. Best enjoyed chilled over ice, or with a splash of soda, fruit jenevers add a little flavor to any summer gathering.
The Filliers family makes a full range of fruit, grain, premium and organic jenevers, and sadly is only one of two distelleries in Belgium that continue to make jenever in the traditional (i.e. time consuming and expensive) manner.
Other summer drinks on CH: Aperol, Pimm's Cup, Mint Juleps
State of the Union Visualizer
by Josh Rubin
Brad Borevitz created this tool, simply named State of the Union, to visualize keywords from US presidential State of the Union addresses from 1790 to 2006. Every address is included; for each one common words are displayed with the size showing how many times they were used in the speech and the height on the graph showing the word's significance as compared to other speeches. A fascinating look at both the politics and tone of the moment—clicking on the timeline even pulls up all that period's US history entries from Wikipedia.
