AMP

I think I just found something great.

Merry Christmas from Tim & Eric Awesome Show Great Job!

I’ve been listening to A LOT of Weezer lately for some reason – Pinkerton has always been a great winter album. Anyway, I like the Good Life video better, but another dumb record company is trying to prevent their material from being shared, and so I can’t embed it. You can, however, watch it here.

Weezer – El Scorcho (1996)

View Larger Map

After all this hard work on my new spot, I’m excited to hibernate for the winter. One thing I’m definitely going to do is sign up for Netflix–I find it satiates my desire to receive stuff I actually care about in the mail. Another way to feed the need: magazines. Here is a list of my current subscriptions and wanna-be-subscriptions.

Blind Spot – If you’re an artist/photographer, this should just be a given. Waaaaay more consistent than Aperture (though Aperture is good, too) and more aligned with my tastes. The issue Jason Fulford guest edits is amazing.

Photo-eye – Alec got me into this one, along with photobook-nerdom in general. Generally the reviews are decent, but their on-going articles (how to make/market your own book, etc.) are where this publication shines. The significant downfall is that it makes you want to spend a LOT of money on books.

Cabinet – I really like this magazine. Maybe too much—like, I kind of have a crush on it. Each issue is on a different theme like magic, or shadows, and the articles are varied and well-written. Plus, when I alerted them of my new address, I received this heart-warming message:

Dear Eric,

Cabinet Subscriptions

Make – Perfect airport read. I don’t think I’ve ever made any of the projects in this magazine, but one day, when I’m retired and I have a little basement-workshop on my farm in the middle of nowhere, I’ll re-read these magazines and keep myself busy until I die.

Tema Celeste – I prefer this magazine to other contemporary art magazines for two reasons: very little advertising makes it portable and less wasteful (unlike the ad-heavy + phonebook sized Artforum), and it helps me work on my Italian. One note: It’s actually more expensive to subscribe to this magazine in the states, so I recommend picking it up at newstands.

New York Times (Sundays) – Both ‘T’ and the NYT Magazine are good reads–I’m guessing they’re my version of Reader’s Digest. They usually hang out on top of the toilet tank.

The Week – The Week is a great source for news and information from around the globe. It seems like one of the fairest news outlets out there.

Lotus – another fantastic Italian magazine–but this one is prohibitively expensive. Go to your nearest University’s architecture library to check out – the $90 cover price is a tad steep for most people. A good mix of art, architecture, and urban planning in a large, slickly designed tome.

King Cat – My vice. I simply love John Porcellino’s drawing style and simple stories. Deeply personal and completely universal, John self-publishes this comic/zine about four times a year and they always make me glow.

From an interview with Pitchfork, which could apply to any creative practice, I think:

“Why is this song actually here? Why is this song taking up two-and-a-half minutes of my life? Is it just because somebody doesn’t have tape anymore and so the amount of recording space is unlimited? That’s why I’m sitting here listening to this, because nothing stopped you from doing it, but there’s not really a reason to do it? I don’t know. If that was me, and I was listening to me, I would get mad, like, ‘Why are you fucking doing this?’ It doesn’t have to be great, but it seems like at least there should be kind of a reason. And it’s hard to come up with a fucking good reason to write something, I think.”