RIP Stuart Rimes

One of the greatest poets of the 21st Century, Stuart Rimes, dies at the age of 27.

Stuart Rimes, noted by critics and fans, as one of the most renowned poets of our generation dies of a cardiac arrest. The case is currently being investigated by the police and details are being held from the general public as investigators speculate that the death might have been caused by 'unnatural ways'.

The artist led a very public life, being constantly under the spotlight since his modeling days. He rose to fame after becoming the face of Walmart and really reached a rockstar status after his brief romantic stint with Paris Hilton. He rose to fame as a poet after his book Die baby, die won the prestigious Griffin Poetry prize in 2005.

Today he is no longer with us but Pomonow features the last interview with the poet extraordinaire, Stuart Rimes, taken 5 days before his tragic death.

We will miss you. XOXO.

Save the Batz

A environmentally conscious lip gloss manufacturer markets a new line of lipgloss to promote awareness about the depleting bat population in the Philippines due to deforestation. They are planning to team up with Environmental Biologist, Jodi Sedlock, a professor at Lawrence University, WI in an attempt to "save the batz". Sedlock is currently working on documenting the behavior and population of insectivorous bats in the Philippines. So far, Jodi Sedlock has refused to associate herself with the project but the company maintains that she has been their number one inspiration. Reliable sources reveal that Sedlock does not agree with the main focus of this project and that in reality, their project does not particularly pertain to anything related to her research. She is reported to have said that, "They don't really care about bats. I think they are more interested in the different flavor names that can be named after the different species of bats." I mean, bats are definitely in this season.

I've been looking...

For the past couple of days I have been coming up with ideas that I would want to execute for the magazine and researching on other cool subculture magazines. I have not been on campus so it has been hard for me to really execute any of the plans but I have gotten my hands on some awesome mags to inspire the magazine design and interface.

First up, I am thinking about doing some outrageous video collaboration with fellow artiste, Nick Stahl. These videos will function as something being featured in the magazine as well as be included with the bound copy in form of a dvd perhaps. Our inspiration was this really interesting music video that Nick found, called Plump Bisquit by Femme En Fourrure. Please check out the vid. It's real crazy. We plan to make something visually interesting like that. It probably won't make any sense at all but we figured that it doesn't have to.

Second, I found these two magazines: Code and Lemon. Code is a street fashion magazine from Holland and Lemon Magazine claims to represent pop culture with a twist. I am looking through these magazines to help me in terms of formatting and designing. I have also been trying to get the hang of Indesign. Real fun.

My very own Hipster Mag: Post Modern Now

So, I guess I have changed my mind about doing the mouths video. I started working on it and the prospects seemed highly uninspiring. I guess it could be kinda funny but I'm not willing to make bets on it.

So now, instead of that, I am going to make a fake hipster magazine. So far, I have worked on the cover and brainstormed a few ideas for potential articles that will be featured in the magazine. All the advertisements and artwork will be photographed or created by me, but I will have a few of my friends write the articles. I hope it will be interesting.

A few ideas for features:

Josh Youngren: the top 10 albums of 2011

Sivanich takes on Vonnegut

Evan Micheal Tracy "I hate living." and "My life's a joke but I know it."

Special fashion spread: the post hipster

You don't Nomi me either, Love -Andy

Everyone knows Andy Warhol. He projected the image of the quintessential pretentious artist and just like Klaus Nomi, his image was very constructed. However, I personally find Warhol to be a lot more interesting because his persona is a lot more consciously constructed and it is as meticulous as it is annoying. He said he loved plastic and that he wanted to be plastic.

The lecture did not make any particular impression on me but I found it very interesting that Andy Warhol changed as an artist as a result of the assassination attempt on him. Warhol thoughts on the attack were: "Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there – I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. People sometimes say that the way things happen in movies is unreal, but actually it's the way things happen in life that's unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it's like watching television – you don't feel anything. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it's all television."

The lecture was about Andy Warhol's work in his last decade and since I knew very little about his later works, I was all ears. I was disappointed to find that the lecture seemed to scream a lot of you-just-had-to-be-there and there wasn't really anything said that stuck to me or swayed my ever eager heart. I suppose the most I remembered about was how he revisted his earlier works and turned them into memento moris. I share Warhol's fascination with popular culture and popular imagery and find it interesting how he started to look at those very same objects/people that he treated as symbols of whimsy from a very different perspective after his brush with death. Makes me wonder what Hello Kitty would mean to me if someone attempts to kill me.

Anyway, I'm sure the exhibition is really great and a work of curatorial genius.

Milwaukee Art Museum - Andy Warhol: The Last Decade

Grlllll, you don't Nomi!

Klaus Nomi. What a looker!

So we watched a documentary on Klaus Nomi for class and I got out of the room feeling rather sad. I don't particularly know if it was because the man had died of AIDS alone in a hospital, or because he was portrayed to have lived a lonely life or because it didn't really seem as though Mr. Nomi was trying to really do anything other than becoming famous (not that I have a problem with that). The film was very New York centered and the information provided about Nomi may have been rather biased and I don't really know what to make of it. The part that really did interest me was in the beginning when they talk about the underground punk/club scene that was happening in New York during the 70's that came to be known as 'The New York Scene'.

The mid 70's till the early 80's came to be a period of musical revolution taking place in the city of New York, where 'kids' from all over the place (US and other countries) were gathering to show their work and make their mark. These were people who felt out of place in their small town beginnings and wanted to do something less mundane than a white/blue collar future. It seems that Nomi came to the right place at the right time, or more importantly, met the right people at the right time or else he would have probably died in obscurity as an unsuccessful opera singer. His whole look was rather outstanding and I can see how artists today (e.g. Lady Gaga, Bat for Lashes) may have been influenced by his method of assuming a completely constructed stage persona but I don't know if his music had any function in revolutionizing pop music. The interesting part is that it almost seemed as though Nomi had stumbled on to this idea of creating this special stage persona, like it was almost an accident. It could have been the biases in the way he was portrayed in the film, but he was not really made out to have been a pillar of intellect and all his innovations were credited to the people he had the fortune of having stumbled on to in the New York scene. Nevertheless, I suppose it takes someone special to wear the weird suit and Nomi wore it quite well. I enjoyed the fact that there was a scene that gave birth to and encouraged performance artists like Klaus Nomi but I must admit that I found him to be a lot more intriguing before I watched this film.

Recently on my mind 1

So these are things that I have recently ran into or have been thinking about.

1. Bath Ramen

This is a product that recently came out and it is basically a bath set made to look like instant noodles. The bath sponge is in the shape of instant noodles and there are bath agents in the sauce sachets. This really got me thinking, is this a product catered to Japanese people specifically or is there a demand for something like this all over the world? This product just boggles my mind. For more info go to: JapanTrends.com

2. Elizabeth Báthory

I was looking up female serial killers, specifically the female serial killer in the world, and I ran into her. So this woman was a 16th-17th century countess from the Kingdom of Hungary and she was said to have killed around 600 little girls. According to popular belief, she would bathe in virgin blood in order to preserve her youth and beauty. Ballin'.

Here's her Wiki page in case y'all want to read up on her more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Báthory

3. Places to Work

I would love to work for this magazine. Or for this company. Anything. Or maybe I can make little dolls or paintings to sell at their stores. Everything looks so shiny and nice.

Giant Robot