Everything is contextual. Need proof? Just check out this re-cut trailer for Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.

If living in the country with better health and vital statistics, universal health coverage, smaller health costs, less violent crime, less pollution, higher home ownership, more democratic participation, greater social programs, less government corruption, fewer teenage pregnancies and better education didn’t already appeal to you, add one more to the list of compelling reasons to move to Sweden.


In a bold national move, Prime Minister Goran Persson recently said that Sweden will try to end its dependency on fossil fuels in 15 years by boosting research devoted to alternative energy sources.

Man, I am so ready. At least we seem to be making progress on recognizing some of our country’s biggest crooks.

Listen to a 30-second preview of Tiga's Shake the Disease Remix over at DepecheMode.com.

I've created a new sub-genre of music over at last.fm, it's called robotica. You read it here first.

Upcoming LA Events

9.24.05
CINESPIA - Last screening of the summer, presenting Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.
DATA BETA - Our friends from Data Age bring you Data Beta, younger and louder.

10.1.05
Matthew Dear, Ellen Alien, Richard Devine - Avalon, Hollywood

10.7.05
Cut Copy & TV on the Radio on the Franz Ferdinand Tour - Greek, Hollywood

10.12.05
Miss Kittin @ Key Club

10.29.05
Chromeo @ Little Pedro's, Downtown

D-E-V-O a'la 5th Grade

Awesome! Fifth grade students at Hawley Elementary School made this faithful reproduction of the Devo classic Whip It.

If you're in PDX, SF or NYC do not miss this rare opportunity to see Frankfurt artist Isolée. Sadly, no shows are planned for Los Angeles.

16.9.2005 |US| Portland, Holocene
17.9.2005 |US| San Francisco, Blasthaus
20.9.2005 |US| New York, APT

Helpful advice for the day: How to Create a Robot Army.

Robots, enjoy a 2 hour mix by Erol Alkan of London's Trash Club, completely free. Recorded in July 2005, it's got some of the summer's catchier hooks, as well as some I'm sure you haven't heard before. Just point your browser here (Real Player required).

Future Retro
I'm not much for compilations, but the folks at Rhino are releasing one that looks like it'll be good this September. The 2 disc remix project titled Future Retro pairs some of the most influential artists and songs of the 80s with today's top remixers. Check out the track list, the update should get a lot of old favorites new life on the dancefloor:

The Cure, The Walk [Infusion Mix]
Yaz, Situation [Richard X Remix]
Echo And The Bunnymen, Lips Like Sugar [Way Out West Remix Edit]
INXS, Need You Tonight [Static Revenger Mix Edit]
Depeche Mode, Shake The Disease [Tiga Remix]
Erasure, A Little Respect [Electrospect Mix]
Howard Jones, New Song [Peter Black And Hardrock Striker Mix Edit]
Alphaville, Forever Young [Hamel Album Mix]
New Order, Bizarre Love Triangle [The Crystal Method Extended Mix]
Grandmaster Flash, White Lines [Elite Force Mix]
Devo, Girl U Want [Black Light Odyssey Mix]
B-Movie, Nowhere Girl [Adam Freeland Mix]
Book Of Love, Boy [DJ Irene Rockstar Mix]
Morrissey, Suedehead [Sparks Remix]

Greetings earthlings. It's now 2005 and you have found Zolar-X.

New Depeche Mode single, Precious available now in the iTunes music store!

L.A. Restaurants Have No Glass.
An open rant to L.A. restaurants: Plastic water glasses are not OK. Unless you're a greasy spoon, I expect to be served water in a proper, clean glass, free of nasty plastic aftertaste. Glasses are cheap, there's no excuse. It's just plain tacky.

I'm a huge fan of designer Mike Mills, which is no shock once you learn he honed his skills working for Tibor Kalman at M&Co back in the eighties. Just look thru the work he and the other geniuses at Directors Bureau have done...So naturally I'm happy to hear that his new movie, Thumbsucker is starting to get some buzz. It premiers on September 16th here in LA and in NYC, it's tough to tell from the trailer, but I think it's going to be a fantastic film. Quirky in the vein of Napoleon Dynamite, but with more depth and heart.

Over at Spherical Robots they're recreating faces (or anything else for that matter) with the Bitfall. It's a special Wasser-Strukturen (water structure) that allows one to create images on falling droplets of water. Sehr gut mein Roboterfreund! [via Jason]

Time-waster of the day: Ultimate Flash Face
This flash app is amazing and addictive. Select from a comprehensive palette of facial features to draw your very own mug-shot style picture. My mug-shot looks far more dignified than my actual photo!

I'm looking for information on a short film called Stereomongrel about 70's and 80's hip-hop consumerism, but google returned zero results. Any robots with leads?

Boy do I get sick of the attitude I get from some about drum machine music. Drummers are better. Drum machines are better. Well my robofriends, we’ve known the answer for some time now. Real drums played by a midi-driven pneumatic robot trumps all, so put that in your pipe or whatever you’ve got and smoke it. Check out the pictures and video.

For most of us, the joy of flipping through stacks of vinyl records or CDs met its demise at the hands of the digital music revolution. Luckily, for OS X Tiger users, there’s a superb new way of browsing your music collection with CoverFlow. It’s the next best thing to flipping thru a crate, without all the dust.

The Christian Paradox: America is simultaneously the most professedly Christian of the developed nations and the least Christian in its behavior.

I'm not a sports fan. In fact, I'm about the furthest thing from a sports fan, so you can imagine how annoying it is hearing coworkers drone on about their fantasy football or other sports time-wasting fluff. Now, thanks to Fantasy Fashion League, I can be just as annoying by wasting my afternoon with fashion's answer to fantasy football and the like. Pick your favorite designers and earn points when their fashions show up in magazines. Brilliant!

New from Ladytron, check out the video Destroy Everything You Touch directed by Adam Bartley.

Count me in.

I came across this wicked bit of liberal agitprop today (and that's my kind of fun; just In case some jackbooted patriot act wielding Fed is reading this, I didn't write it and don't know who did). It's a bit silly, but it should get you thinking about how badly the Bush administration has ruined our nation's sense of self, our unity, and our common sense.

Dear Red States,

We’re ticked off at the way you’ve treated California, and we’ve decided we’re leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we’re taking the other Blue States with us ... In case you aren’t aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the ation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get Elliot Spitzer. You get Ken Lay.

We get the Statue of Liberty. You get OpryLand. We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom. We get Harvard. You get Ole’ Miss.

We get 85 percent of America’s venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama. We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition’s, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.

Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we’re going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they’re apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don’t care if you don’t show pictures of their children’s caskets coming home.

We do wish you success in Iraq but we’re not willing to spend our resources in Bush’s Quagmire.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country’s fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation’s fresh fruit, 95 percent of America’s quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners), 90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools, plus Harvard, Yale, Stanford, CalTech and MIT.

With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia. We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred unless we’re discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals than we lefties.

Sincerely,

Author Unknown in New California.

What would you say, given one free minute of anonymous public speech? One Free Minute is a mobile sculpture designed to allow for instances of anonymous public speech. When you call the cellphone inside One Free Minute, you get connected for exactly a minute to a 200 watt amplifier and speaker. The speech produced by the speaker can be heard clearly more than 150 feet away from the sculpture [thanks, Chad].

Technorati has been relauched. What's Technorati? It's sort of a search engine for Blogs where memes bubble to the top and where you can monitor discussions going on around keywords you define or search for. Pretty interesting. Below is a profile link they promote putting on your website to enable search, etc.

My Technorati Profile

Design Within Reach has introduced the stunning new Holy Day chair and ottoman by French designer Jean Marie Massaud. It's a beautifully simple shape, and a nod to both Mies and Milo Baugman. Well done!

I know, I know. Text formatting is all botched for some reason. I've got no time right now to deal with it.

This Saturday night in LA, get your robobooty to Downtown and come to Roam Music for a night of electronic music including one of my favorite UK DJs, Damian Lazarus from Crosstown Rebels! It's going to be a rager! 9pm-6am @ Soul Folks Art Warehouse - 613 Imperial St., Downtown LA.

This is why I love the Internet. When else in history could you watch dozens of people crying while eating with just a simple click? For example, Will (pictured above) is crying because he's not convinced by Anakin's turn to the dark side. He's eating exotic berry wine coolers & chips.

A minor update about our favorite boys from Basildon. In addition to a new album this fall, Depeche Mode will be playing the following North American cities during October, November and December of 2005:

Fort Lauderdale
Tampa / St Pete
Atlanta
Houston
Dallas
San Antonio
Denver
Salt Lake City
Vancouver
Seattle
San Francisco
San Diego
Los Angeles
Las Vegas
Phoenix
Chicago
Detroit
Toronto
Montreal
Washington, D.C.
New York
Boston

Check depechemode.com/tour for updates.