I’m watching Scott Pilgrim on an airplane. It’s trepedacious. Trepidatios? Cheerios? My wife and I are on our way to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando Florida. I’ve got two phone and my keys in one pocket, and a super cool black and blue wallet thing with my iPod Touch in it, and it’s got a Gelaskins skin on it, one with the London map of pixels by Eboy. The phones are a an Optimus… something, and a Samsung Continuum, which is a Galaxy S phone. Does any of that make sense to you? Both of them have Android inside and are totally whacked out with a billion apps because I’m busy reviewing every single app in the app world for SlashApps. We’ve gone through the doorway to the sky and now were in the sky and soon we’ll be eating lots of M&M’s.
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Hooray for chocolate! And science. Pure Nacional has been found in Peru – this is a rare variety of cacao, the plant used to make delicious wonderful chocolate. Before 1916 (when disease grabbed the area in Ecuador where Pure Nacional was known to grow,) Pure Nacional was a fine chocolate known worldwide for its fantastic flavor. Now Willy Wonka – I mean Dan Pearson and Brian Horsley, some fellows who source fruit (I didn’t know that was a job!) were searching through Peru’s Maranon Canyon, they found cacao growing on tiny farmland in a remote horseshoe-shaped canyon surrounded by 6,000-foot canyon walls – this makes this whole situation a total fantasy adventure. They sent a sample to the USDA, who, when calling back with the results, first asked, “Are you sitting down?”

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Welcome to the world of DIY programming, a place where “why?” is almost always preceded by “how?” In this case, it’s work done with nine graphic calculators that were fricking sweet when I was in highschool (I think I ended up having a TI-89) and remain as useful today as they were waaay back then (seven years ago.) With major advances in display technology since then as well as the unbelievably fast turnover rate in technology (especially in the mobile world) you’d think these would have been tossed in a landfill – no way mang. This dude named Christopher Mitchell has nine graphing calculators networked together and he wants to show you what they can do. Hint: crazy cool wacky stuff with balls.

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This is no TMNT arcade game, this is a redux vision of the massively successful line of Angry Birds games for Apple and Android devices (and soon for video game consoles and desktop computers.) It’s a set of images conjured up by Penney Design in the aesthetic vocabulary of early 1990s video games for systems such as Sega, Super Nintendo, and PC + Mac computers. In the same way that Lemmings or Worms were gigantically well sold and played in those days because of the simplicity of their puzzle fun, so too is Angry Birds today.

And look! So cute!

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WARNING: there are no spoilers here. This post is written only a few days after Tron: Legacy was released, and yes indeed I’ve seen it, and oh my goodness there’s a fun little speck of trivia happened upon by chance that’s totally worthy of a post. Who is Rinzler? That’s the question – where did the name come from? The character Rinzler is a gladiator, enforcer, and right hand man of Clu 2 in this new installment of the Tron series. There are many clues early in the movie as to what secret character he represents as a character, but where did the creators of the movie grab his name? Hint: Star Wars.

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Behold the power of Zynga, that company that whipped up a couple of games a few years back and has one whole hell of a lot of money now. They’re responsible for Mafia Wars, a game that started doing big business on Facebook and is on the fast track to taking a top spot in mobile entertainment through apps. Now they’re working with none other than Dr Dre to promote his LONG awaited third album: Detox. The promotion will come in the form of a “Hustlin’ Wit Dre” portion of the game where players will collect Dre-related items, see the music video for the single “Kush,” and get an “exclusive” video message from Dre.

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Hey! Let’s take a look at some prints! Each of these prints is done by designer and illustrator Lisa Grue. They’re part of a new series called “Where’s Alice?” and each is a lithograph made with care using original paintings (done by Grue) as a source. Fabulous amalgamations of well adjusted shapes and letters! Take a glance at the set of three then buy them all up. So fancy! Also see Grue dressed as a rabbit in the gallery below. You know you can’t resist such a thing.

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Let me introduce you to the evil one. Not Satan, not the Anti-Christ, but the Beast! Aleister Crowley. He was the night-mare and now he haunts us all with his excellent influence on the world. And now it has come to a point of no return. He’s on the cover of a Beatles album, he was a master of chess, and now a man dressed as a woman is playing a guitar cover of an Ozzie Osbourne song in his honor. I present to you in it’s full glory, guitarist “17586063″, certainly a masonic combination of numbers in some way or another. Take a look at this epic interpretation below.

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Overlord NIGO has blessed the earth with a new weird triad of photos for an upcoming collection of A Bathing Ape clothing. Look at those shoes. They are completely insane. Who else in the world would release something so audacious? Something so fabulously out-there? Something so wildly ungraspable? Look at this and a few more pics from an upcoming line of clothing going by the name “Mr. Bathing Ape” as presented by NIGO and Mr Suzuki. They are buds. They both have cameras.

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Perhaps you’ve been privy to all the new information about how NASA announced that they’ve discovered a new type of bacteria on the planet we currently inhabit – right over there in Mono Lake, California. This newly discovered form of life swaps out the phosphorus in its DNA for arsenic, “or merely uses the poison in some way.” This discovery is the result of many months work by geomicrobilologist Felisa Wolfe-Simon who says this bacteria’s DNA is completely alien to what our understanding of life is today, and that this is the first form of life we know of to take on a form other than being built of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur.

When pressed for an explanation of why they hadn’t “pulled a rabbit out of a hat” at the NASA press conference today revealing “little green men,” one of the researchers spoke up, saying that this discovery was right along the same lines as that, recalling an episode of Star Trek where the fun-lovin crew discovered a new form of life they same way they had. How exciting! Let’s talk about it.
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Perhaps you may be possibly aware that World Famous Design Junkies has been experiencing some technical difficulties of late. These have happened because of gross people planting evil codes into the bones of this beast, and they’ve hopefully been knived out as maliciously as they were implanted. If this sort of thing ever happens again in the future, you can rely on http://wfdjshadow.com/ for all your updates on the wellbeing of this main news and sweets feed. Thank you and that is all.
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When I was 10, I had no internets. Now I’ve got unlimited internets. Sort of. No matter where I go in the few locations I travel in my day-to-day, I’m no more than a half-hour away from some free and unlimited internet signal. When my immediate family survived on internets through AOL disks which offered 50, then 100, then 500 minutes free internet usage, the times between install disks I remember feeling cut off. When I was 17 years old, my grandma gave me a dictionary to use when I went to college – I was baffled.
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I’ve been searching for a way to take one thing and turn it into another. My own quest involves record covers as canvas, attempting to carry them into another dimension by the name of immortality in artwork. That’s exactly the same thing that’s going on here in this set of ceramic sneakers by Kang S. Lee, a Korean artist living and working in, of all places, Mexico City, Mexico. This project goes by the name “sneakers in ceramics” and it is 100% certainly the bomb. Made entirely with a mold sculpted from a size 41 Nike Dunk, each piece fired to cone 6 (1260′C, 2300F), and now in a collection of 10.
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This is a mini-splosion of tasty treats designed by designer / man of earth / friend of mine Erik Brandt. He has been at work on this lovely collection (these are but snips) from the year 1996 until now (2010), take a dive into this, then, if you’re living in the future, view his static and yet updated portfolio website Typografika at TypOgraFika.com – it is there and with that that he found his digital connection using electricity and pixels to gain the eyeballs of those who would transport him into the loving arms of Minneapolis. Be warm with it, Ice Station Tango and Powderhorn.

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Hello all you fellows and ladies who love artworks in huge exhibitions. Here’s an yell about an art show that’s got some fantabulous names in it that don’t often hold shows, then a ton who’ve never shown works together before. Subliminal is an art gallery in Los Angeles run by some of the same people or otherwise close associates of the people who bring you Obey Giant and Studio Number One. That means they know what they’re talking about as far as effective art and design. This show is going to be a blast upon their walls with wonder, and if you’re in the area, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t head on over and take a big giant peek. There’ll be Martha Cooper works there (pictured above,) that should be more than reason enough by itself!
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If you know anything about television, you know that Conan O’Brien has been on television from 1993 till 2009 with a relatively popular show called Late Night, then a slightly less well known show called The Tonight Show for a faithful few episodes before he parted ways with the National Broadcasting Company in 2010. Now he’s got a show called “Conan” where, as he puts it, he’s a lot less likely to get replaced since the show’s title is also his name. Conan seems to me to be a really nice guy, and judging solely by the numbers of people who watched his first show under the “Conan” title, lots of other people seems to think he’s a really nice guy too, one who should definitely, definitely keep doing a show with a masturbating bear in it forever and ever and ever amen.
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Across two streets! This post is the fourth of four explorations of basically my favorite street slicing up the center of Dinkytown, that being 14th Avenue SE, starting where the U of M campus ends and ending after two blocks down the line. This and the three other posts before it are photo-based explorations of the messages plastered on every surface of the street, looked upon weather intentional or peripherally by students and citizens every day of the year. This fourth walk is the East side of the street between 4th Street and 5th Street. There’s lots of fun stuff to eat (for breakfast) and to read (with care) but watch out for the guitar man, he is suspicious of any photography going on in his general vicinity.
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The following is an account of a beautifully sunny late summer day in Minneapolis Minnesota at the fantastically magnificent U of M football TCF stadium. This piece of the world is also called Stadium Village, right next to world famous Dinkytown, where the streets run red with letters. You’d be right to notice the sea of gold and maroon, the school colors of this particular institution, and the fabulous show of pageantry in the name of school spirit. I never thought I’d be one for celebration for the team in this manner, but you really can’t help but get caught up in the giganticness of it all. Behold, Gopher Country.
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Pharrell Williams is the search term most blinked at World Famous Design Junkies over the past week or two. At the same time, those fun folks over at the BBCiceCream blog have released the cover of a brand new N*E*R*D album cover and that helluva looker is right there front and off-center. With an army helmet on and a red, a blue, and a white feather sticking out the side.
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When I first saw the image you see above this sentence, I thought, WOW great idea for a series of photos! All of them with a boom mic approaching their head! Then I realized that this wasn’t part of a series like that, instead it was an installation, a sound art project recording this piece of wood. What? That’s crazy talk, right? Wood doesn’t make any noise, it just sits there. That’s true, until you get some woodworms involved.
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Music dum da tut dadaaa! The Beastie Boys, one of the most awesome (I was going to say prolific, but not really, right?) bands ever in the history of the world are in the process of one or two albums being released. They’re called Hot Sauce Committee I and Hot Sauce Committee II, both of them having the same track list. What in the what? You’ll love it.
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The creator of the branding for the ever-so-epic Hispanic Branding UNO is coming to the alma-mater of yours truly. Very exciting. And he’s not just gonna be hanging out, no way! He’s coming to offer up his wisdom and knowledge for the very fair price of completely free. Just hang a left on over to the Minneapolis College of Art and Design auditorium 150 on November 1st at 6:30PM to give a listen.

His name is Luis Fitch, and he’s totally Minneapolis based.

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I have to show you how brave the children of Japan are these days. The following is a video of an average, everyday television show in Japan. It’s wild. It’s crazy. It’s madness. It’s something that children’s rights activists in the USA would have a flip-out session about. But it makes the children strong! For one day, when the zombie invasion comes to fruition, you’ll see who’ll be laughing or screaming or attacking then?

The children. Attacking with dinosaurs and cellophane.
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When you go to a show where N*E*R*D is performing, you should clap your hands together and hope they brought along their screens. Don’t get me wrong, they’re pretty neat to see with nothing behind them at all, but when they’ve got those screens out, whoa, wow, heck, hay, you know your eyeballs are about to be set on fire. The first time I saw them was on the Kanye West “Glow in the Dark” tour (also featuring Rihanna and Lupe Fiasco. Lupe had nothing, which made him hardcore. Rihanna had a bunch of pyramids with light-up tops, which made her performance wild but not equivalent. Not equivalent to what? To the gigantic screens of lights that both N*E*R*D and Kanye had lighting up the night in a fancy new world that would never be the same again.
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I bet when you came online today, clicking your way on over to our corner of the internet here at the ol’ WFDJ milkshake and butterscotch factory, you didn’t expect that you’d be seeing Bill Murray’s penis. But you will. Oh yes, you will. You can thank the folks at Puny Interactive, friends of ours with a taste for the magical, the mystical, and the hilariously inappropriate. They were hanging out at the R&R Gallery in Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago and decided to post their findings on the internet with the world.
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