blogs, links, events and art from the teens behind ►

My main man Nico Berry has been a professional baller since the day he was born, or so I hear. Really, by writing this blog I’m trying to legitimize our friendship so that next time I see him he’ll hook me up with a free t-shirt or something.

Nico was the art director over at a little skateboard magazine called Thrasher for a minute, has done countless shirt designs for Timberland, Mecca, Sureshot, Kid Robot, etc. etc. The release of his vinyl toy had lines around the block in New York, and you know New York keeps it real, nawhaddI’msayin kid?

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Tomorrow, director Lance Hammer will be screening his new film Ballast.  WACTAC and filmmakers that particpated in last weekend’s All City Youth Film Showcase will get the special opportunity of meeting and talking with him – we are totally excited! There will be a public screening on Wednesday at 7:30 PM at the Walker.

Another upcoming film event that we are looking forward to is a screening of I’m Not There. The film revolves around the life of Bob Dylan and consists of an all star line up – Cate Blanchett, in an Academy-Award nominated performance, and Christian Bale, Richard Gere, and the recently deceased Heath Ledger. If you needed more reason to go, the film will be accompanied by legendary rock critic Greil Marcus! Marcus is the author of Lipstick Traces (a book that traces the interesction of pop culture and high art through the lens of the Sex Pistols) and Mystery Train (brilliant study of rock’n'roll and American culture).

If you are a high school student and want to go email us at teenprograms@walkerart.org for special discounted tickets.

Not to be confused with the yet to evolve Ponyta, the pony tail is a hair term. Well, I guess it is also and animal term.

The ponytail is a simple and easy way to make your hair look good, and, gosh darnit, stay out of your eyes. I wanted to learn more about ponytails, so I turned to the smartest man in the universe, Charles Wikipedia III. Here’s what it had to say:

“In the late 1980s, a short ponytail was seen as an edgy, “in-your-face” look for men who wanted to stand out from the crowd while keeping most of their hair flat and functional. Steven Seagal’s ponytail in “Marked for Death” is an example of such.”

Woah! I completely forgot how badass Steven Seagal did look with a short ponytail. How embarassing would it be to get your ass handed to you on a shiny platter of fists by a slightly large man in a pony tail that looks like he might spend his off time learning the bar chords to the old Star Trek theme? You have to be a man to embody that look… And the only way you can become that kind of a man is to rock a PONYTAIL!!!

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Emmanuel, I read you loud and clear, but I want to stand out from the crowd.”

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Jay-Z made American Gangster last November in 1 week, used all samples fromearly 70’s soul albums, P Diddy actually put in some legit work and used real players and added additional horns, came out right after the movie was released and was a big hit. Yeah yeah, but now Shuko and Gunna have taken all Marvin Gaye songs and edited them around the accapella of American Gangster. It’s pretty hot. Check it out, www.jayandmarvin.com

The Oak Street Cinema is doing a retrospective on filmmaker Jean Luc Godard.

He was one of the founding members of the Nouvelle Vague, or “French New Wave.” According to wikipedia, many of his films challenged the conventions of Hollywood Cinema, and he was often considered the “most extreme New Wave filmmaker.” His films often expressed his political ideologies as well as his knowledge of film history. In addition, his films often cited existential and Marxist philosophy.

CONTEMPT- Fri Oct 10 – Sun Oct 12 @ 7 & 915pm w/ Sat and Sun Matinees @ 5p

BAND OF OUTSIDERS- Mon. Oct 13 – Tues Oct 14 nightly @ 7 & 9pm

TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER- Wed Oct 15 – Thurs Oct 16 nightly @ 7 & 9pm

PIERROT LE FOU- Wed Oct 22 – Thurs Oct 23 nightly @ 7 & 9pm

I’m really excited to check out his films, I had fun reading up about french new wave and iconoclasm, so I’m pretty intruiged.

In my almost endless quest to find ways to procrastinate I stumbled upon StumbleUpon. It is a website that finds other websites, images, or videos all over the internet for you to visit. If you are a loyal reader of mine, (which I highly doubt), you read about Pandora, a music site which provides you with loads and loads of new music in a streaming radio fashion by first having you enter an artist that you like. Well, StumbleUpon is kind of like the Pandora for strange websites you’d never find but now you love. I know I love it, but if you are my girlfriend, you probably hate that I’ve posted about a thousand links to your facebook in the last week…

Check it out. It is a lot of fun. Here are some of my favorites so far:
-LIST OF UNUSUAL DEATHS
-FUNNY CAPTIONS
-DYING FROG
-HAVE A HEART
-ONE SENTENCE
-ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
-MORE SEXISM THAN YOU COULD SHAKE A STICK AT

Note: These last two were more shocking to me than anything. I wondered if I had accidentally checked the ‘chauvinist pig’ box in my settings, but apparently it thought these were something I’d really be into.

So recently Evan introduced me to the work of photographer Clayton Hauck.

“If you live in Chicago and have a Myspace or Facebook account, you’ve most likely seen the work of Clayton Hauck. The 25-year-old immortalizes Chicago’s youthful nightlife scene, capturing candid moments of ecstatic DJ bliss, awkward drunken posing, superstar DJs and wannabe celebrities for his photo blog everyoneisfamous.com”
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I’m no expert on the subject, but my girlfriend recently told me about this 21st century street-art incarnation of the centuries old art of knitting and crocheting, YARN BOMBING. If you are familiar with graffiti slang, bombing is essentially the act of doing graffiti (usually throw ups, tags, straight letters, hollows… you know, the fast, destructive stuff…) Well, groups of young ladies (and perhaps gents) around the country and internationally have adopted the graffiti mantra and started bombing… with yarn. These usually pre-made knitted or crotcheted pieces are secretly adhered to public locations, and newly decorated bus benches, bike racks and the like are the result. I thought it was a cool way to combine a very traditional (and perhaps conventional) artform with the ever growing “street art” movement.

Every so often we like to take a survey of our readers to see what you think. Our last survey was in March of 2007, so it’s time for a new one. The questions are focused on the blogs and a little demographic information, which you can skip if you like.

We’re sweetening the deal this time. If you take the survey, you can enter your name into the pool and we’ll select one person to win a 1GB iPod Shuffle.

Take the survey.

Photo by bluetsunami.

Halloween is my favorite holiday. There is something about being able to scare little children without repercussions that makes me feel so good. If you were to look at my slew of homemade costumes and Halloween decorations you might think that I owned my own special effects shop. I don’t, I’m just an overly enthusiastic creep. But that is why we celebrate Halloween, so all the people like me can get it out of their system and hopefully don’t start dressing like celebrities and offering children candy on a regular basis.

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Last weekend I watched a friend’s copy of and it is hilarious. Makers-Minneapolis natives Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher, began collecting found videotapes in 1991 after stumbling across a training video entitled, “Inside and Outside Custodial Duties” in a McDonald’s break room.They find the cream of the forgotten crop. The clips mainly from the seventies and eighties are actually histerical- they range from dance instructionals to  Self Defense (my favorite is the bearded knife guy). Now they’re back at home with two shows at The Heights Theatre on Oct. 23rd at 7 and 9:00. The guys dish and discuss throughout and afterwards, and they’re always availavle to accept submissions of your favortie find. Even if you can’t go, rent this or something… it’s all i’ve been tlking about for the past week.

foundfootagefestiv

Of all the Science Fiction Western Musicals I’ve seen in my day, this one has got to be the best.

Here’s the trailer, if you’re not intrigued yet, try watching it again, repeat if two cycles isn’t sufficient.

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Hip-Hop journalist extraordinaire Jeff Chang came through the beautiful Twin Cities for the Republican National Convention. You may have heard about it… or maybe ran into problems getting anywhere for the first week of September.

Jeff is famous for his two books, “Can’t Stop Won’t Stop,” and “Total Chaos.” He was in town gathering info for a piece on hip-hop and politics for VIBE magazine, and Evan and Chantz were lucky enough to sit down with him a few blocks out of range from tear-gas and rubber bullets to sit down with Jeff and get schooled on the state of hip-hop and politics. Check out the short video, and then keep your eye on Jeff for new writing and articles in book stores or magazine racks near you.

On November 6th, New Jersey native(s) Danielson will be coming to the Triple Rock. Doors open at 7 pm and it’s all ages. (woo woo!)

I highly recommend going to check them out, they’ll definitely play a good show and know how to play unconventional and interesting music.

They usually perform as a group in nurses uniforms or at least some type of uniform

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Want to perform at the Walker Art Center?

Seeking musicians (ages 14 – 18) to score films inspired by Andy Warhol. Selected musicians will work with young filmmakers to compose new original works to be performed live during the screening of the film. To enter, please submit your music sample to teenprograms@walkerart.org by Friday, December 12. Call 612.375.7628 for more info.

Every once in awhile I find myself rummaging through the CD bargin bin looking for something that might be worth buying.  This time I hit big while I got the CD ‘Excuse Me’ by Kaboose, a Minnesota native.  I was looking at it and the graphics pulled me into buying it, and after listening I fell in love!!!

Kaboose’s goal in Hip Hop is simple. “My vision for music is to bring a message of hope to people who are blinded from the world. There is a power in music that can fill a person’s heart with joy, but music also has the power to fill a person’s heart with hate and rage. The biggest difference is in the message. Today, there are too many pointless lyrics in hip hop with a hostile message affecting the listener and their perception of themselves and the world.” Kaboose chooses to write and perform with lyrics that will uplift rather than tear down.

A couple of weeks ago, a couple WACTAC members and I had the opportunity to go to a dress rehearsal for Eiko and Koma’s new work titled Hunger. The dress rehearsal intrigued me enough to attend thefull performance on Friday night.  In it’s full form, Hunger stunned the McGuire Theater audience with its heart wrenching, painfully slow movements. Not painful in the way you think however, but more due to the fact that their goal was to portray hunger. Their goal was completed successfully in that every second that went by was symbolic and meaningful.

Check out some of the films that will be shown on Saturday at the All City Youth Film Festival.  You may be able to see them on youtube, but come on, what’s better a crappy low-res youtube video or a full screen version in the Walker Cinema?

Karma by Hannah Bates

Writing Backwards by Jack Anderson

So tonight I saw Deerhoof at first ave. Pretty awesome to say the least. What really impressed me however, was one of the opening bands that performed. AU was really frickin awesome.

These two guys come up on stage, one of them has long straggly kinda hair, and they both look pretty down to earth. They plop themselves down at the respective keyboard and drumset. The first song is interesting, the synth is set up to sound like a genuine grand piano. The music is okay. As the first song fades out, there is a smattering of applause. The second song begins slowly, but builds up layer upon layer, not in an overpowering way though. The drums are amazing, and the remainder of their set builds up to one epic finale- a song called “death.” This song integrates so many moods and emotions that it’s pretty hard to describe. The calm beginning is overpowered by a neverending, but amazing drum solo, which ends with both guys standing up and pounding on their instruments with seemingly all the energy left in their bodies. A final thud of the drums, and we all begin to applaud. False alarm. The song has a few trick endings, and seems to end on a more monumental scale each time. The guys clearly have fun, they integrate awesome bells, and the drum solo seemed to even impress the keyboardist. He tried to butt in with his synth a few times, before shaking his head ruefully as another cymbal crash interrupted him. I decided that these guys are going to play at my wedding. 

Deerhoof was awesome too of course. I love singer Satomi Matsuzaki’s adorable hand gestures as she sings,

and the music got everyone (even utterly sleep deprived me) to get at least their feet tapping.
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Artist Axel Peemoeller won several international awards for his painting of this parking garage. I think it’s innovative, and obviously took a lot of planning, but the end effect is incredible. Check it out.

Also, i want to start a website where people can submit voicemail messages you enjoyed. I have quite a few left by drunk friends, and I think it is an interesting form of communication, which hasn’t been around that long. The idea of communicating through your voice at a later time is a pretty strange thing to me, when I think about it… Sorry for the terribly inarticulate post, I’m being distracted by Witt and some sort of ‘meeting’ he’s having.
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About a month ago, let’s call it a month and a half… whenever the Uptown Art Crawl was going on, I received a call on my way out of the Walker, a hard day of copies and data entry.

Emmanuel: “D-DON!”

Donald: “Yo, what’s good.”

E:”Nothing, what are you up to?”

D:”Shit, I’m just up here at the art crawl, met some guy who takes flicks of graffiti. He’s looking for someone to take him out later tonight. You down?”

I’m silent at this point. Who is this guy? You just met him and you’re trying to lurk with him in the dark?

E:”Yeah, I’m down, let me meet you up there.”

Hopped on the old rusty chain and made my way up the hill, where I spotted Donald, who was with his friend Jeb, and we quickly made a detour toward some cheese curds. Donald realized he had been short-changed at the taco stand earlier by almost ten dollars, and it prompted me to discuss a book that I bought a couple of years ago, “HOW TO CHEAT AT EVERYTHING,” which exposes scams, such as short-changing at fairs and carnivals, (and art crawls).

We went on to the booth of Xavier Nuez, a tall Canadian man who definitely embodies the French look. Not the beret and striped shirt, but the olive skin and dark features… Listen to me, I sound like I’m beginning a romance novel.

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