MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

When I first came to New York, Robert Rauschenberg was my art idol. 20 + years later, his work is still as relevant to me as it was then. I had the occasion to meet him a couple times and will always think fondly back to the first time I read Calvin Tompkins' Off the Wall. Thanks Bob, Jasper, Andy and Marcel for the influence you've all had on the world!

I don't care what anyone says. Speed Racer is the Shiznit!
Go Speed Racer Go Music Video

This guy really jumped the shark....

Apple insider has a series of articles examining the Flash, its pros, cons,
foes and its future. Good reading:

Flash Wars: Adobe in the History and Future of Flash
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/05/05/flash_wars_adobe_in_the_history_and_future_of_flash_part_1_of_3.html

Flash Wars: The Many Enemies and Obstacles of Flash
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/05/06/flash_wars_the_many_enemies_and_obstacles_of_flash_part_2_of_3.html

Flash Wars: Adobe Fights for AIR with the Open Screen Project
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/05/07/flash_wars_adobe_fights_for_air_with_the_open_screen_project_part_3_of_3.html

Here's a Friday video if ever I saw one. Enjoy!

F.O.F.G. Gary Panter just released a double book set chronicling his art career. I was happy to see Boing Boing post a video interview with him today. Best of luck with the book, Gary!

This caption over at Radar caught my Eye Today... Hilarious! Nina is Gnarly!

Let me caveat this post with a disclaimer telling you all that I'm a reality TV show junkie- but I only jonze for good cable TV reality shows, and not the crappy network TV shows like Survivor or the Bachelor. YeP, Only the really great trashy TV reality shows like Project Runway, Flavor of Love and Celebrity Fit Club for me! Besides VH1, I really do love Bravo's slightly classier offerings and the human dramas they bring. I think Lauren Zalaznick is a genius.

I always loved inside the Actor's Studio and how James Lipton never ceases to blow actors away by knowing intimate secrets of their pasts. I especially love how he throws curveballs at them and exposes their inner Freudian demons when they're not prepared for it. When Project Runway came about I was immediately charmed by Tim Gunn and Heidi, and the entire fashion designer under pressure scenario. Hands down, Santino Rice was my favorite personality with his spot on imitations of Tim. Around the office I immediately came up with our own internal show- Project Website... "Designers, you have to complete a total redesign of CNN.com by noon tomorrow! Hurry up now & Make it Work!"

Among Bravo's other offerings, I have a huge crush on Top Chef's Padma Lakshmi (who I hear is a huge pothead). Now that I know this, its hard not to make munchies jokes while watching her taste food with the judges. I also immensely enjoyed this year's Make Me a Supermodel with their weekly voting on who should be kicked off. Bravo definitely seems at the top of the curve as far as their embracing of mobile voting, and this show being produced in real time was a great achievement. IMHO, that was great TV, as America consistently voted to keep the prison guard in the running to see if he would come out of the closet.

However, as much as I love Bravo, I can't stand their website! Visually they have a great identity that carries on through from on air, but I have major issues with the site functionality. There's way too much use of flash for the touts in the right column, ignoring best practices from an SEO standpoint. But hands down, The biggest issue I have with the site are their blogs. You have to go to the site to read them, and they have been laid out in such a way that in order to read even a single post, it will require several page refreshes. For those of us in the 21st century who use feed readers, All I can get is a lead in sentence that links off to a post that will take an average of 2-3 page refreshes to read in totality, while 2/3 of the screen real estate is devoted to ads, navigation and touts to read other blog posts.

For example, look at the Tim's Take Blog. One page allows you to see to see all the posts- each one with only 2 sentences of each post exposed (this is also all you see in a feed reader such as bloglines or Google reader, too). Am I interested in reading the post? Let me click and see. Now I'm in a tiny little gutter with six more page refreshes to view the full post. Yuck! Give me a break. I could read a full days worth of BoingBoing posts in Bloglines in the time it takes me to read one article on bravotv.com. I know you guys need to serve ads, but this is a little ridiculous.

For this reason, I have never followed any of the numerous blogs they offer. One can only wonder if they adopted best practices, allowing their rss feeds to be truly userful, if their overall reach would not be wider. Hopefully Lauren will call us next time they're ready for a redesign (or when you rework Oxygen maybe?)! Well best of luck to the cast with moving the show to Lifetime. There's some great commentary out there. For the life of me I can't find the post I saw where Oprah was asking the designers to make Mumus for the Golden Girls... what a h00t! I hope that the show survives!