Plus: Maple Syrup And Ground-Up Beetles
1. So that’s where they’ve been putting all the bones.
Posted on July 30, 2013
Beachwood Photo Booth: Golden Nugget
(Teeny Tiny Woman Shapes Character Of Illuminated Things On MCA Plaza
Chicago Ex-Pat Puts On Her First Major Public Art Project Here
“Chicago-born, Los Angeles-based artist Amanda Ross-Ho premieres her first major public art project, The Character And Shape Of Illuminated Things, on the plaza of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago this summer,” ArtDaily reports.
“Ross-Ho transforms the museum’s plaza into an open air photo studio, with larger-than-life still-life models that the public are invited to engage with and photograph.
“The title of the exhibition is adapted from a 1980 photography handbook, How to Control and Use Photographic Lighting. In the manual, the author illustrates how different lighting affects three still-life objects – a cube, a sphere, and a female mannequin’s head, all painted muted gray.
“Inspired by this fundamental lesson, Ross-Ho re-creates this trio of objects on a monolithic scale, faithful to the original image, with the mannequin head reaching 25-feet high.
“Completing the installation is a large-scale sculptural rendering of a color calibration card – the color grid that is used to maintain accuracy in the printing and post-production of color photography.
“By including this card, Ross-Ho consciously disrupts the gray composition.
“The visual experience of this site-specific installation changes over the course of the day as it responds to the path of the sun – which is the evershifting light source for this enormous still life.”
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From the MCA:
“Updating Joseph Beuys’s famous declaration that ‘Everyone is an artist,’ Ross-Ho suggests more specifically that today everyone is a photographer, as the ubiquity and speed of digital photography shapes the way we view and experience the world.
“In Ross-Ho’s hands, the plaza is transformed into an enormous photo studio, with objects on display for the purpose of being photographed by the public, while the sun serves as a shifting source of light, affecting both our perception of how the objects look in real life and how they appear in our photographs.”
Posted on July 24, 2013
Random Food Report: Kentucky Fried Chicken Possibly Neither
Plus: Taco Bell Hates Kids; Stephanie Izard Is A Photobomber
1. First the bones go, then the Colonel.
“KFC has Panera envy,” USA Today reports.
“The fried chicken kingpin, eager to tap into a younger, more upscale customer, is about to test a Millennial-friendly store next month – serving the likes of fresh salads and flatbread sandwiches – near its headquarters in Louisville that it has dubbed ‘KFC eleven.’
“The name is a reference to the 11 herbs and spices that Sanders used in the famous Original Recipe chicken.
“Don’t look for Col. Sanders’ well-known goateed mug at the new location. This single KFC eleven, after all, will be more of a laboratory for what’s next – not what was.”
Yet another company insisting on busting its brand instead of nurturing it. Let’s just say we’re not convinced a KFC Caribbean rice bowl is going to be a hit.
Posted on July 23, 2013
Beachwood Photo Booth: Chicago Fire Escape
(Random Food Report: Is That A Hot Pocket In Your Pocket Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?
Plus: Twinkies For Bros
1. Hands Off The Hot Pocket!
“The Urban Dictionary describes them as ‘the most delicious form of evil.’ In a rant viewed more than 2 million times on YouTube, comedian Jim Gaffigan likens them to Pop Tarts filled with ‘nasty meat,’ best enjoyed if you are ‘drunk or heading home to a trailer,'” Ad Age reports.
“Suffice it to say, the Hot Pocket has a bit of a quality-perception problem. But as the Nestle-owned brand turns 30, it’s taking on the criticism with a major makeover and campaign touting better ingredients such as 100% angus beef, hickory ham, white-meat chicken and new crusts with baked-in flavors like garlic butter.
“We appreciate the press,” said Brand Manager Kevin Holmes, alluding to the brand’s well-established place in pop culture. “But we do feel like it’s time for us to change the perceptions of quality for the brand.”
In other words, they’re gonna take the Hot Pocket upscale and ruin a good thing, just like everything else.
Posted on July 16, 2013
Beachwood Photo Booth: Illinois Slayer
(Meet The Chicago Knights Robotics Team
By Endgadget
“It’s time to rethink the way our children learn. It’s all a bit overwhelming, attempting to restructure the age-old classroom model, particularly in a system as bogged down in bureaucratic red tape as education. This month, however, we packed up our things and toured the country to find out how educational institutions are adopting new models to help reinvent the learning process – rather than sitting idly by, waiting for the system to change around them. Naturally, technology is playing a huge role in that shift, moving from models of teaching to models of learning, where students can explore, express themselves and learn at their own speed.”
Posted on July 11, 2013
Chicagoetry: Green River Blues
By J.J. Tindall
Green River Blues
“Chicago’s a real goddam crazy place. Nobody’s safe in the streets.” – Lucky Luciano
I work
the green river
to earn
my nut
as a docent
of the installation
called “Chicago Skyline.”
I sing
the green river . . .
and then
it turns brown,
Posted on July 10, 2013
Random Food Report: Chimps, Footlongs & China
By Luke Chen
The Random Food Report maintains a theory that human beings are little more than dressed-up primates. What we call the Chimps In Pants (CHIPS) Theory holds, in part, that people make food choices based on subconscious factors, such as “evolutionary pressures to select energy-dense foods to assure nutrition and survival,” behavioral and emotional motivations, and other influencers like socioeconomic background. All of which can, and usually do, gang up to confuse our decision-making process and hinder our ability to make smart food choices. (In general, CHIPS posits that people are dumb. But let’s focus on food-related issues for now.)
Not that we have anything against chimps, mind you. Our short, hairy brethren have a leg up on us clothed apes in a variety of ways: for example, when was the last time you saw a monkey let a banana go bad? Now ask yourself: how many brown, mushy, disgusting bananas have you thrown away in the past month? Exactly.
Posted on July 9, 2013