The Zine Goes Glossy

HP’s new MagCloud service allows anyone with a computer and some design skillz to publish glossy magazines. This kind of self-publishing was the realm of hand-crafted zines. (Check out the cool new NYT slideshow+audio presentation too!). View the slideshow.

Read the article at NYT.com.

Giant Robot Post-It Show

This is a brilliant idea for an art show: commission a slew of local artists to create little drawings on Post-It notes, stick them to your gallery wall, and charge about $20 for each. It’s Cash-and-Carry–when you buy it, you take it home. It’s a great way to make original works of art affordable, makes a really fun exhibition to explore, encourages the artists to have fun and experiment, and exposes your audience to a whole bunch of new artists all at once! I love it.

On view at the GR2 store/gallery on Sawtelle in West L.A. through January 14. But hurry! They are disappearing fast! They should do this again!

Giant Robot GR2 Post-It Note exhibition

Bogglific on FB no more…

I am saddened and feeling the twinge of impending withdrawl. Supposed copyright infringement has just gotten personal! I cannot believe that the big corporate suits are shutting down Facebook’s Bogglific! This is horrible. This game has reawakened in me a love of a game I have not played since I was a child. Hasbro, listen up! You owe these Bogglific guys a favor! They made you more customers. This should be rewarded. Instead you punish us all.

Read the DMCA notice.

Luxembourg, USA: the movie

There’s a new documentary out about all of the Luxembourgese communities in the USA: Luxembourg, USA. The person we stayed with in Luxembourg City on my recent trip there just sent me the link. (See my earlier post about finding my roots in Luxembourg.) I hope it comes to the U.S. The web site is in French, I translated the promo text below. But the trailer is in English, with French subtitles. Watch the trailer (Windows media file).

Luxembourg, USA
“The film is a ringing portrait of the Midwest, of rural America, crossing a very specific and little known community: the Luxembourgese.

“Between 1830 and 1900, around 70,000 Luxembourgese (at the turn of the century, that was more than 25% of the population of Luxembourg) immigrated to the United States to discover the new world. They named their new cities Luxembourg, Belgium, Rollingstone…

“The film explores the history of and reasons for this immigration to the new world. But Luxembourg, USA is primarily about the Mid West today, the region in the central-north of the U.S., where 90% of the population today is of European descent.

“This part of America is known today as the heartland. It’s rural, conservative, faithful, and patriotic and different from the America imagined in the media. It’s an America rarely treated on television or on cinema and an America within which the descendants of Luxembourgers are truly representative. Who are they, how do they live, and what do they think about their roots?”

Lagging in Europe

I haven´t been keeping up with the postings of my European experiences. But I have a good excuse: schwein (ham) and cheese. These culinary staples are hard to avoid in continental Europe at practically every meal. (Coming in a close second are potatoes.) With all this eating of the pig and the milk fats, I have been spending my time wandering around, trying to walk of the fat, rather than sitting at the computer. So forgive me.
Coming soon: I shall report on adventures touring around the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, driving on the Autobahn, drinking Luëtzebuerger and Belgian beers, and wandering various mediaval streets….first I have to wait 12 hours or so for this slow computer in the heart of Barcelona to upload all my photos….