Mobb Deep Video Special

Shook Ones Pt. 2


Put em in Their Place


Cobra


In the culture of hip hop, where posturing is sometimes seemingly everything, it's always refreshing to see Mobb Deep do their best. They don't shift their image, they don't play nice for kicks, they aren't rhyming about the newest fashion but instead they consistently do what they're excellent at: posturing as the toughest tough guys in hip hop. The Shook Ones Pt. 2, my personal favourite, is a super straight forward video. The director weaves short street narratives with straight up shots of Havoc & Prodigy addressing the viewer. The weave is uncluttered and just seems to honour the uncluttered rhymes and dark beats. Cobra, makes a nice little reference to La Haine or maybe they just shot that video in Paris. Either way, branding strategists take note.


Your crew is featherweight / My gun shots make you levitate.

I'm baaaaaaaaaack

Sometimes I fantasize about living on the side of a mountain in Asia, twirling cherry blossoms in my fingers and stuff, but then I get online and it's nicer being a hermit while still connected to the entire universe. Hello World.

The above image is an early map of the Internet - from back when it was still known as ARPANET and everything. It's from March 1977 actually. That's not that old considering color monitors weren't common place back then.

I need some help putting together a map of a complex community. Holla!

Image via: Visual Complexity

Cocaine Karaoke in June

dress to get killed...

Tyrus's grin

He's gonna be a trouble maker.

Locked Out - Day 14

I haven't had steady internet for 14 days now.

I'm still alive.

Barely.

I'm disjointed. Relationships seem severed, slightly. I feel out of touch. I can't google things, and can't waste time checking stuff needlessly, I don't know who has messaged me on myspace. Email all of a sudden has taken a back seat to telephone. Telephone is more immediate, less mediated, and more live. The reliance on phone in a way, has freed me. But I know I'm constricted in a different way.

I haven't been downloading music or getting steady porn or reading my blogs and net hook ups are brief; when I do get internet, I download my email and send my email out. The computer is less terminal and less communication hub and more tool. My work, when I use this tool for work, is focused. When I force music out of this harddrive, the music seems purposeful. It's also because I'm on a Mac now. It's apples and oranges. It's a computer but it's pedigree is else.

Poland plays Germany. I don't know what time. To check online seems laborious. I wish I could turn on the TV. No TV. No Cable. I'm at a internet cafe anyway. Different mediums for different purposes.

Mediums & Massages. It all kind of makes more sense now, Marshall.

Damn I need a neck rub.

It's been hectic.

Minor deadlines. Visitors from foreign places. A hunt for a new place to live. Then my computer dies. Dang. Deadlines are dead. The mini heat wave rolls through. Visitors go. I move. Then I buy a Apple 12" PowerBook G4.

Can you say flux?

My new place is lovely. 2 rooms, no roommates, sunny, a balcony and small little jaunt from the park, and just past the park all the shopping I'll ever need. However, my new place is in need of a love seat, some chairs, a table, and a dish rack. Buy me a Marc Newson designed Dish Doctor. I love you.

P.S. Damian Hirst is at it again in a big way.

The painting of Dana Schutz

Twister Mat


Sword Rack


Death Comes To Us All

Kineko Ivic, in introducing the painting of Dana Schutz to me, described her work being painted by a person who is "obviously a genius." I looked her up and wasn't convinced. It's witty and smart but for me it kind of echoes too greatly of early 20th surrealism. It has a similar wimsy to that of Marcel Dzama but also shares Dzama's certain lack of cerebral lack of engagement. Where Dzama is an illustrative painter to the point of seeming to be an illustrator stuck in the art world loop, Dana Schutz seems to be milking Dali-esque devices like strange landscapes inhabited by wierd objects. Even though, she's young and important painter in the 2006 art world. Which either makes me think the art world is messed up or I'm just not understanding something that everyone obviously is... so I started looking for positives in her work. In Death Comes To Us All I really enjoy the elegantly rendered hand holding a cigarette with the elegant mess of a torso on the figure; that yellow pylon and the matching street stripe complementing one another like bricks and mortar. I began to enjoy her lyrical rendering juxtaposed against her lyrical messes, even though they heavily relying on de Kooning devices. But I'm still not hailing her as an obvious genius. Her art, like so much art, is still investigating the bleakness, the strangeness of life, the inevitableness of death in life, and just more or less offers little hope. Perhaps that's why the art world acknowledge's her as important; perhaps the world of 2006 in general can identify with those ideas than their positive counterparts.

Images from: Saatchi Gallery

May Cocaine Karaoke

Cocaine Karaoke - Saturday May 27, 2006 - not my dog - Deejay Gramera & Deejay G-Spot - 10pm - $5 or whatever - 1,000,000 milligrams = 1000 grams = 1 kilogram -

"What's Going On / What's Happening Brother"

In the month of May I...

Welcome to Tonik World. We're everywhere where you are... this week I can be found all over.

1. On Thursday May 18th in the evening, I'll be in the East end. Don't call it a comeback but gltss cofounder Shaun Dhani and I will be doing a collabo live painting for I AM A WILD PARTY in the Toronto Free Gallery at 660 Queen St East. You can thank Zinc Roe for the fun. Should be right on and far out... come by and I'll buy you a beer.

2. A little more central in the city on Friday May 19th in the morning, from about 8:30 to 10:30 or so, at 247 Augusta Avenue in Kensington Market, I'm going to be having a bit a Happy Birthday sale. I'm not telling you what I'm selling - you'll just have to come by and see, yeah?

3. And finally on Queen west west, on Sunday May 21st all day long, at Paul Petro Multiples + Small Works at 962 Queen St. West, Paul Petro is going provide the music and I'm selling all my t-shirts, my Gucci sunshades, my furry Kangols, my shoe collection, all my Polo, my Italian suit, and all my socks and dirty underwear. Okay, maybe not my socks and undies but I'm selling my entire wardrobe. At the end of the day I'm going to kick back a portion of my profits to Youth Assisting Youth and everything. So come for the tunes, buy some art from Paul or just come and get me naked. I'm Selling The Shirt Off My Back.

Bisoux,

tonik

Chris Ofili's "The Blue Rider"

Dubbed as Ofili's sculptural debut and/or his blue period, The Blue Rider happened late 2005 at Contemporary Fine Arts in Berlin. The dots seem to be gone and the blue is creepily deep. The installation shots of the exhibition, with dark floors, white walls and blue works makes the space look oceanic or even heavenly. Just what is about blue?

Photos: Jan Bauer, CFA Berlin

Glenn Ligon in Artforum

Glenn Ligon has this wicked way of working with text. I'm not too crazy about some of his work, but when you can pull off text art, not many artists can, then you have my respect. Ligon's Warm Broad Glow above,is proof he can get it just right. Read Richard Meyer's artforum essay about it all, it's worth it.

Photo: Rick Gardner via artforum.com

Jude Tallichet's C Note

A 1:1 aluminum coconut with the words "In God We Trust" stamped into it. Lovely.

Photo: Cabinet Magazine

gltss - still sailing sweetie

Spring on a Thursday evening

Mostly on Dundas Street West between Crawford Street and Ossington Avenue. The gardener, there, he's on Shaw Street; as is the shot of the CN Tower.

Cocaine Karaoke April 2006

On my way home tonight

The CN tower from the top of Churchill Avenue



Infills & a truck on Skey Lane


Rusholme Road


le gallery on Dundas Street West

3 Photos from early 2006

One of these photographs I didn't have the joy of snapping; I like that one the best.

Ironman Anthony Starks Speaks

Ironman aka Tony Starks aka Ghostface Killah, speaks with Davey D about his feelings, life, and why he's making music for women too.

April Fools!

That Gordon Lightfoot couplet I wrote about the other day has been floating about in my head, so you know what I did? I found the song, that the couplet comes from, for you. Gordon Lightfoot has a simliar melancholic drone that Leonard Cohen sometimes has, and the same celebratory joy in his music that Leslie Feist sometimes has.

It's kind of a good break up song too.

Gordon Lightfoot - If you could read my Mind

PS. Today marks 1 year of not having a 9 to 5 gig. It feels great. I encourage you today to find less soul sucking means of supporting your self if you're one of those people who thinks their soul is getting sucked.

I ain't gonna work for no soul sucking jerk, I'm gonna take it all back, and I ain't saying jack © Beck