A couple days ago I stumbled upon a blog-post that made chills run down my spine. A liberal prank group, The Yes Men, created a fake (but very real looking) version of the New York Times dated July 4th, 2009 & distributed them across the region for free. The peoples reactions are priceless and the shear magnitude of the prank deserves a proper golf clap…Check the video

You can read the actual fake paper online at NYTimes-SE.com…Damn I wish I had a hard copy…

Speaking of Paper Boys, if you have seen the Mike Mills film ‘Paper Boys’? Add it to your Netflix. It’s classic!

Alan Fletcher’s book The Art of Looking Sideways has long been my favorite book and a never-ending source of inspiration. I was just looking for a few Alan Fletcher images online and stumbled upon this video of him speaking about The Art of Looking Sideways…Everything he says about the book I find to be true…

Pick up The Art of Looking Sideways…you deserve it!
**It makes a perfect gift around the Holidays…inspire someone!

I finished up the 2008 Jetty Skateboard Tour Video last week…Have a look!

My desk has been covered with miniDV tapes as of late…I’m just finishing up final touches to the edit of the Jetty Skateboard Tour footage. Later this week I’ll be jumping into editing footage from the Second Annual Jetty Clam Jam, which was held this past weekend in epic conditions! After that I’ll be tackling the long overdue footage from a music video shoot I did with You Can Be A Wesley this past Summer! As you can imagine there is a considerable amount of dust gathering on all of these un-edited tapes! Look forward to plenty of video action as I blow off the dust and get these edits finished in the next week or two!

You’re probably thinking “What the hell is Hamburger Eyes?” I thought the same thing when I first heard the name a couple of years back. In short Hamburger Eyes is a black & white zine out of San Francisco, CA. I’ve only seen a couple of issues in person but between my real life encounters and their entertaining blog I’d say Hamburger Eyes has been and continues to shake up the photography world. The short documentary below is a very nice glimpse of the world via Hamburger Eyes!

Hamburger Eyes from Nick Fogarty on Vimeo.

Vu Skate Shop in Baltimore, owned by my good friends Chris Donmoyer & Gary Smith, was recently featured on FuelTV. I was down in Baltimore to help Gary & Chris paint, buff the floors, & open up shop! A little painting I did on a door inside the shop got into a little clip in the feature so take a look!

Last week I went to see Yo Majesty and Does it Offend You, Yeah? at Johnny Brendas in Philadelphia. The show had me dancing all night! Later on that night I ran into Shunda K of Yo Majesty and DJ Orion (Yo Majesty’s DJ) at the Barbary and they invited me to come hang out in the studio. We met up the following day at Brendan Bringem’s Philly recording studio and kicked it for most of the day. We are hoping this isn’t the last time we collaborate…Next up? Possibly a music video for Yo Majesty…stay tuned…

My good friend Jerry has been busy traveling & filming for his upcoming video project (working title Spectacular Adventures). He caught some killer frames in the Outer Banks this past week and I wanted to share. Some of these waves are bone crushing! I’m excited to be working with Jerry on the new film, and I promise you…it will not disappoint!

Amid some morning chit-chat my friend Jesse pointed me to the video ‘Genius of Love’ by Tom Tom Club. I really missed the boat on this stuff, but it’s fantastic! After watching a number of Tom Tom Club’s videos its very apparent that this stuff was key to inspiring the work of ‘So Me‘ (Justice videos) and a heap of others!

A few years ago I stumbled upon HillmanCurtis and their beautiful collection of films. I was particularly interested in their Artist Series films. The Artist Series features some of my favorite artists, such as Mark Romanek, Stefan Sagmeister, & Milton Glaser. I always go back to a couple of these films every few months or so and am just as inspired by them as I was the first time I saw them. This Milton Glaser piece is my favorite and I can only hope he is as RAD in real life as he is in this video. I almost cry watching this! INSANE!

“My belief is that if you like Mozart and I like Mozart we already have something in common, so the likelyhood of our killing each other has been diminished” - Milton Glaser

SiteLA is a beautiful communal work and exhibition space in Los Angeles. Six independent and creative women, who have been dubbed “Visionaries in Residence” have been living and working at the space since February and will continue to do so throughout the year. The project is a way of promoting and celebrating the launch of Quiksilver’s latest womens line.

Quiksilver will be supporting the six women for the next year as they pursue their individual goals as artists, activists, entrepreneurs and designers. At the same time they will be hosting positive community events which are free for everyone! Brands today seem to be trying harder and harder to get their lines worn by their ideal target customer. Quiksilver is taking a ‘Give before You Receive’ approach, which I think you will see more and more often as brands realize that they need to reach out further to their customers before they receive anything in return. It’s a ‘You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ with the customer coming first! Not only is this a very cool project but the bi-product of the entire year will be some fantastic work, and plenty of photographs and video, which will serve to promote the line of clothing and most likely will pop up in Quiksilver’s advertising and collateral. Just a VERY Smart Idea. When your ideal target customers (The Visionaries in Residence) unintentionally are creating your campaigns and living their lives in your clothes chances are the end result is big exposure and very natural and genuine marketing. Visit SiteLA.org for more and check out these six beautiful and empowered women!

Familjen a.k.a. Johan T Karlsson, a Swedish techno/electropop artist, has blown my mind with the video for the song ‘Det Snurrar I Min Skalle’. That is Swedish for ‘It’s Spinning Inside My Head’. Directed by Johan Söderberg, the video is a mash-up remix of footage from a tent revival. I am hesitant to even use the term mash-up because this is so far beyond what your typical media mash-up has become. Open your eyes and ears and enjoy!

**Where do you start to look for archived footage like this? There are probably so many gems out there waiting to be reborn into modern magic!

via Ryan Firth