kitsune noir's food trucks

Totally dropped the ball here, meant to make this a rainy day project, but @KitsuneNoir held a "make-it" contest. Philip Kennedy designed a killer food for the brain bookmobile as below. Awesome...

basic -burton promo 2009

-via Brad Kremer (Burton Snowboards Inc.) on vimeo.

"...shot on a wide variety of cameras including RED, Canon 5D Mark II, Panasonic HVX200 with redrock adapter and a Sony CineAlta HDC-1500 used in the cineflex heli mount. The full movie is out late Sept '09.

Music credit
Artist: Dimmu Borgir
Song: The Serpentine Offering"

I just want to start watching these things... enough trailers.

ladybird books

British publisher Ladybird produced sets of iconic titles for children on a variety of subjects. Well Loved Tales, How It Works, People at Work, History, more... The great thing was that although there were reading primers (Peter and Jane etc...) and nursery rhymes, all were painted in a semi-realistic style and never talked down to the reader. You have books about how the the the police force functions, how to build a radio... hell the MOD infamously commisioned a set to teach about computers. As a kid you just assumed their versions of traditonal British stories (like Dick Whittington) were the definitive telling...

"The first books appeared between 1915-38, and were printed on cheap, puffed up paper with titles such as Tails of Ships and Trains, Farmyard Panorama and Nursery Rhyme and ABC Book - although ‘A’ in those days stood for armoured train!

The books were an instant hit with children, and at half a crown, or 2’6, were equally popular with parents who knew a good bargain when they saw it.

Thanks to a standardised 56-page format made from just one sheet of paper, Ladybird books were not expensive to produce – and for this reason, they kept the same price (and their popularity) for the next 29 years.

After the second-world-war, Ladybird expanded into educational non-fiction with the launch of the now globally recognised Key Words Reading Scheme. This was followed in the sixties by the Learnabout Series, which put Ladybird at the forefront of educational publishing with books consulted as much by adults as by children." -via Culture 24

These vintage titles are being re-issued by Ladybird, or keep eyes peeled on ebay.co.uk.

keith floyd

Photo via Owen B. on flickr.Not as well known in the US; but the British, Francophile, bon vivant personality Keith Floyd died yesterday. Keith was huge in the 80's in Britain for his slightly shambolic tv cooking shows and was the first to do them in set-piece (you know, cook for a football team on the pitch of a stadium, that sort of thing) that is common place now. Equally famous for swilling wine throughout the show (and getting slightly tipsy as the takes progressed) Keith was ever dressed in a fantastic collection of bow ties. He pushed fish and respected regional or peasant cooking wherever he went (when not setting the hotel on fire and then inviting the jakes in to eat afterwards). This was how to cook; swig some wine, fry things up and relish local ingredients. Obituary in The Times.

Nice bit in The Telegraph too; "Floyd's programmes dispensed with the static formality that had defined the television cookery of his forerunners, such as Fanny Cradock. Indeed they rarely took place in anything that could be defined as a studio. Instead he was likely to be found braced over a camping stove on the heaving deck of a North Sea trawler, rhapsodising over a sea bass. At the time it was revolutionary.

So too was his penchant for ad libbing jocular instructions to his film crew. A generation of viewers became familiar with Clive and various other long suffering cameramen, who were forever being ordered to get in close for a look at a fish gill or the marbling on a steak. "Back to me Clive," was a familiar refrain."

llbean plaid shirt

Hidden a bit on their site but if you just got the LLBean catalogue you will spot it. A Forbes Dress tartan flannel shirt. I pretty much hold to the line that "Scotch" is a drink, "Scots" are a people, so I would call this is a Scots Plaid Flannel Shirt... $29. Bosh. Wore the hell out of these as a kid, with a turleneck underneath... yeeaaaa loved that look.

bookshelf -alphabatics

This alphabet book Alphabatics is illustrated in an almost papercraft way, with the letters changing and twisting to become pictures (letter Y becomes a yak's head e.g.). Suse is the mother of one of my childhood friends and I remember this first book of hers book coming out when we were kids... very cool. Happened to see it on the shelf of the local preschool today, good stuff.