Your Daily Awesome

When I launched Your Daily Awesome 16 months ago, I was between projects and looking for a creative outlet that incorporated the myriad cultural phenomena that constantly inspire me. YDA was the perfect vehicle for this, and to my great surprise and happiness, other people shared my enthusiasms: The earliest days of the blog drew a few dozen visitors daily. November alone has seen more than 90,000 hits, a level of popularity that excites and humbles me.

But all good things must end, and this is the final entry on YDA as we know it. I am a writer first and an artist second (or vice versa, it’s hard to keep track): Blogging is not my main gig, and for the past several months, I’ve been unable to devote myself to my real work so that I can noodle around on the internet every night, hunting for something appropriately awesome to blog. Those (substantial) daily chunks of time need to be applied to other projects that are more significant to me, creatively and professionally.

When I posted the clip from True Stories of David Byrne deadpanning his way through the history of Texas, I didn’t realize that it would be YDA’s last real post. But if pressed to choose a closing statement, I’d be hard-pressed to select something more appropriate to this blog’s sensibilities.

Infinite thank you’s to Your Daily Awesome’s readers, linkers, and the artists who inspired this blog. I promise to spend my time wisely.

Chas

Semioticians, feminists, and postmodern theorists: eat your heart out. (Also: Anyone who enjoys attractive women with sporty automobiles.)

via This is That

“These are four scanned pictures of hardcopies I possess of the French nuclear test codenamed Licorne, which was fired on August 24, 1970 . The French army had these pictures taken on site. The pictures were readily available at the time at Tahiti and Moruroa military base, and mine have been quite degraded. I scanned them and tried to restore them.”

link

Still best known for his innovative and unique “Zuma” photographs of the mid-late ’70s, John Divola is an amazingly prolific photographer with a superb, exhaustive website. I’ve been on a huge Divola kick lately; here’s but a tiny sampling from the past 30 years. (Series are central to Divola’s work; the images here are labeled for the series they belong to.)

Dogs Chasing my Car in the Desert


As Far as I Could Get
(”These photographs were made by pushing the self-timer button on my camera and running as fast as I could away from the camera. An exposure is made in 10 seconds.”)

MGM Backlot
“The photographs in this series were made at the MGM New York City back-lot in Culver City, California in 1979/80. The lot was already partially demolished when I began and completely demolished shortly after the completion of the series.”

Abandoned Houses

I have long admired the art of Wayne White, whose art I first saw on the cover of Lambchop’s Nixon LP, but I had no idea until today that he did the voice of Mr. Kite and Randy on Pee Wee’s Playhouse, or that he directed the video for Peter Gabriel’s “Big Time” (which holds up really well after 20-plus years).

(In case you’re wondering, he buys the paintings at thrift stores, then adds the text.) There’s no one good website for his work, so let Google be your friend.

The phrase “vintage ceramics blog” might not sound like the sexiest string of words ever uttered, but Bloesem, a blog written by a Dutch woman living in Kuala Lumpur, is a gorgeously curated and highly informative site about exactly that.

Dear Louis,

You’re a very nice man and I do enjoy working with you. The fact that you own a donkey and a rooster makes me laugh. I don’t know many people who own a donkey and a rooster who don’t also live on a farm. You’re sincere and there is not a whit of vitriol in your body. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you mad. Often you share your lunch with me when you can’t finish it.

That’s why this is difficult for me.

Every time you come into my office I already know what you’re going to tell me. You’re going to tell me that you sent me an e-mail. And usually, just about the time you’re walking into my office, the boingy sound that I set up to alert me that I have received an e-mail is boinging. Or it boings right while you’re standing there. Then we say the same things: You say, “I just wanted to let you know I sent you an e-mail!” I say, “Yup, just got it.” And then you say, “Great, thanks! Just wanted to let you know!”

I know you’re a bit older and not technically inclined. I know you still use words like “facsimile” and “teleconference.” But here’s the thing with e-mail. When you send me one, I get it. That’s the whole point of it. Really. It’s why they invented it. So you can send me stuff electronically, and I can get it.

I want you to know I dream of killing your donkey.

Sincerely,
Jason

many more open letters

gallery
via Cynical-C

beautiful gallery here
via Cynical-C

via Channel 53

Francois Zanella, a 58 year old former mine worker has built a cruise ship at his home in Morsbach, Moselle in North-Eastern part of France.

He started building his ship on August 10-th, 1994. By that time, he had already spent more than 3,500 hours designing in excruciating detail all the components of the ship. It took him 11 long years to build the ship, a process that was completed on June 23, 2005…

more here
via Rocketboom