#30: Enjoyable Disasters, George Romero, Gothamist Love, and A New Sloan Record.

The other day, I came across Enid Crow's photography site and was immediately drawn to a section entitled "Disasters." The images are very reminiscent of Cindy Sherman's work in that they are actually all self-portraits with the artist assuming the characters of various people. The general feel is humorous in its overly dramatic presentation, like stills taken from Hitchcock's The Birds. The colors are fabulous and although the idea for the series has its roots in the terrible events of 2001, the costumes, locations, and kitschy overacting make the photos more amusing than shocking.

(Speaking of which, last night Danny and I watched Dawn of the Dead for the first time. We had to do it after listening to "George Romero" by Sprites about ten times a day for the past couple months. The movie was a lot of fun, it's easy to understand why it's a cult classic. Anyone know why the zombie children were so much faster than the adults?)

I'm also looking forward to more photos in Enid Crow's "Manhood" series, where she dons moustaches and beards to portray characters like a monocle-clad, Guy Fawkes-bearded aristocrat and a backwoods AC/DC tee-rockin' bumpkin.

On Friday, we received a nice mention courtesy of NYC blog Gothamist. The comments are a little rough, but Jen Carlson, the site's editor, reassured us by saying "It's amazing how angry blog commenters are. I could post a picture of a cute baby animal and they'd be pissed off." Amen. That's the power of the cloak of anonymity the internet provides.

Finally, one of our all-time favorite bands has a new record coming out tomorrow... in Canada. Sloan have worked their way through a slew of musical genres in their almost 15 year career, with their early My Bloody Valentine tributes through bouncy, piano driven Beatles pop through more recent fixations with classic rock. The appropriately titled Never Hear the End of It is a whopping 30 tracks long and is as fun as we'd hoped. You can listen to the first single, "Who Taught You to Live Like That," on their MySpace page. The boys from Halifax have also been busy posting lots of short clips up on YouTube, like this one, where they consider possible titles for their hypothetical bio-pics:



Heart,
Nina