Waaaay back in the late 1990s, my friends and I were addicted to Sifl and Olly, MTV’s late-night sock puppet comedy show. (Well, some of my friends. Sifl and Olly turned out to be a real lightning rod: either you loved it or loathed it).

Anyway, the creators of that show (Liam Lynch and Matt Crocco) also made a comedy album called History of America? lampooning America’s gilded past. Their “Ansel Adams’ Theme Song” stands out as the most absurd, uh, “interpretation” of Adams’ “historic” legacy. More than legendary photographer, Adams attains super-heroic status. Sample lyrics:

Who at the age of 10 built Cincinatti … Ansel Adams! Who put American flags on all the dolphin’s dorsal fins … Ansel Adams!

[ YouTube - History of America? - Ansel Adams ]

This incredible piece of photographic history is up for auction if anyone has a a few hundred thousand euro they’ve been saving for a rainy day (starting bid is €200,000; it is expected to fetch between €500,000 and €700,000).

“The wooden sliding-box camera was made in Paris in September 1839 by Alphonse Giroux, the brother in law of the inventor of the camera. The camera is signed by Jacques Mande Daguerre to verify that the device is authentic.”

Signed by Daguerre? Wow. Made in 1839 by his brother-in-law? Wow.

Don’t know how to use it? No worries … it comes with the manual:

The camera was found in Northern Germany and is in outstanding condition and even has the manual written in German that goes along with the camera.

Again … wow.

[ Oldest and most expensive camera in the world up for auction - SlashGear ]

Above: Detail of Jan. 20th's Tom The Dancing Bug. Click through to the whole comic.

This week’s Tom the Dancing Bug by Ruben Bolling is doubly awesome: it’s an edition of the recurring “Super-Fun-Pak Comix” (a favorite of mine; mostly hysterical meta-jokes about comic strip cliches) and it includes a great send-up of “fine art” in general.

[ Link: Tom the Dancing Bug at Salon.com ]

Above: Screen capture from 2leep.com

Click through to the article (hosted a site whose top articles are currently 10 Bizarre Pairs of Underwear and 10 Weird Diseases) and you’ll find Diane Arbus’s Identical Twins, Roselle, New Jersey, 1967 bearing a caption that reads “Mengele’s Twins from Brazil”.

Uh, no.

Is this picture not terrifyingly odd enough on its own without being (incorrectly) linked to Nazi genetics experiments? Sometimes fiction is a lot stranger than fact.

Dayton Castleman’s “Bread Bird” is “an inquiry as to whether birds would eat bread in the shape of their own. In this case, Chicago pigeons would not.”

As a recently-arrived Chicagoan, this gives me a modicum of hope for the beasts of this town (and, by extension, the town itself). Something tells me the flying rats of, say, Detroit wouldn’t even shrug before devouring this thing.

[ via today and tomorrow, via trendbeheer ]

UPDATE

In the comments, Dayton Castleman posted a link to some YouTube footage of the Bread Bird. Thanks!

[ You Tube - Bread Bird ]

Certain to be among Lady Gaga’s future costumes: the Polaroid Dress.

Well, I didn’t see this one coming. Lady Gaga has been named a “Creative Director” at Polaroid and, according to reports, “co-branded Polaroid and Lady Gaga products are slated to be on store shelves starting later this year.” The Lady herself states:

“The Haus of Gaga has been developing prototypes in the vein of fashion/technology/photography innovation – blending the iconic history of Polaroid and instant film with the digital era … “

Quite a change from Polaroid’s boneheaded response in 2004 to Outkast’s smash hit “Hey Ya!”:  a  statement warning customers not to shake their Polaroid pictures. They might as well have just hollered “you kids get off my lawn!”

[ Boston Herald: Lady Gaga Signs Deal with Polaroid ]

“Founded on the belief that everything in life would be better with a little more Nic Cage”, Nic Cage as Everyone presents the National Treasure: Book of Secrets star as, well, everyone.

Here we have the site’s only (to this point) appearance of Nic Cage as an “art world”-er, and who else could it be but legendary avant-garde composer John Cage. (No relation … if only). Bizarre and hysterical.

FOR DISCUSSION
Which of Cage’s projects tests an audience’s patience more: “4:33″ or Con Air?

[ Nic Cage as Everyone: Nic Cage as John Cage ]

Tacita Dean’s Weihnachtsbaum is the twenty-second Christmas tree commissioned by Tate Britain, and is described beautifully by the Guardian’s Johnathan Jones as “unpretentious, melancholy, exact”. Very, very well put.

The tree ended it’s run on the 23rd, but I offer it as a holiday greeting to anyone and everyone who lands at this site. Pour yourself a nog (or your holiday hooch of choice) and enjoy.

I want this shirt! Image and T-Shirt design © Blake Andrews

Blake Andrews recently executed a perfect “Triple Lindy” over at his blog B (Rumblings from the Photographic Hinterlands …) with this post on the current New Topographics (reunion?) (anniversary?) (smackdown?!?!) tour:

1. Said of the New Topographics artists:  “To collect them all in a bunch back then is like having a rookie card with Williams, Dimaggio, Robinson, Mantle, Musial, and Satchel Paige all in one.” (In my review for the Eastman House leg of the tour, I wrote: “The roster of artists is amazing, akin to the line-ups of the New York Yankees of the 1920s.”)
2. Offered images of the entire (and hyper-rare / expensive) original New Topographics exhibition catalog.
3. Designed the above t-shirt, which I think might deserve life on CafePress (or some such one-off t-shirt store). I want it!

[ B: Old New Topographics ]

A Parallel Image by Gebhard Sengmüller, in collaboration with Franz Büchinger

“A Parallel Image” is an electronic camera obscura, made by Gebhard Sengmüller, in collaboration with Franz Büchinger. It is an interactive sculpture which can capture and display images. On one side is a camera made of 2500 photo senser which are mounted on a 1 by 1 meter board. On the other side there is the monitor with 2500 light bulbs to display to image. In between each sensor and light bulb there is a 3 meter long copper wire.

This is just absurdly beautiful. I especially dig the conversion of no-tech (transmission of light in a straight line, the very basis of natural images) to low-tech (bulbs and delicate, angel-hair copper wire).

I’ve done optical camera obscura works and projects, and have always wondered about the possibilities of somehow using fiber optics to achieve something like Sengmüller and Büchinger are doing here.

(via  today and tomorrow)