Des Temps

The only blog you’ll ever need.

  • Kermit the Frog + Terry Richardson

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    TR just shot stage legend Kermit for Supreme – a triumverate for the ages. Richardson’s name is popping up with increasing frequency on the advert circuit. One day is the value/act of being by shot him going to supercede the final product?

    omuTyyulHAs

    I also wonder if in the next few years we’ll see a brand call for Richardson (Get Me One of Those!) and then have 2nd thoughts once the work is delivered. Like Motorola did with
    Michel Gondry, making the mistake of swooning for the starshine, but overlooking the actual work that made the artist an artist .

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  • Barbie, The Ghetto Diaries + Fanon

    your hair looks good girl

    Last week Robin Hafitz from Open Mind/kb+p gave a great
    presentation about how the walls of public/private space are melting. One sign of these times is the sex tapes and commando-flashing tactics of Brit/LiLo/Paris. The recording and sharing of sex is no longer in the back room, but
    writ large, and as Robin noted, Barbie and Ken aren’t just dating, they’re making porn.

    Robin’s talk came spinning back into my skull today when I learned about YouTube auteur SANKYLADY. Her series, Ghetto Diaries, goes one step beyond porn into a realm of absurdity, sexytime and bad haircuts. And it’s pretty durn addictive.

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    SANKY joins the ranks of women vidders, her work lodged somewhere between Brookers and Luminosity, futzing with a billion dollar brand in the lowest of fi. I do hope she catches a virus, in a good way.

    X8IjwO6eFnM(learned about Sanky Lady from the The Message)

  • The Marketplace of Ideas

    MHB
    JA, codename jah neezy

    Willingly or no, every artist who throws his hat in with another set of creatives becomes a part of a marketplace of ideas. The quality of that marketplace — the quality of ideas bandied about within it — will determine how much that artist can gain from his cohort. Here we find the basis of the classic fork: which has more value, the auteur or the collaboration? Film being, at its heart, a collaborative medium, there seems to be at every turn a marketplace among collaborators to be considered or skipped. Does one stop at the fruit vendor for a fresh grapefruit on the way home, or peruse the picked-over stack at the supermarket? Does one go fruitless, or make do with a can of Del Monte? Depending on the context, any one of these routes can lead to the proper nourishment of creativity.
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  • Ohio in the Crosshairs

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    chilli-garage

    I managed to visit the town of Chillicothe, Ohio about eighteen months ago. The visit was part of a solitary three-day road trip that I made on the old post road, route 50, from Cincinnati to Washington, DC. In my dispatch, I focussed more on the relationship between photography and deserted places. I had not, in my short time there, spoken to a soul or had time to dig deeper into the causes behind what struck me as a forlorn, but visually arresting location. During the afternoon stroll I took through the town I found myself looking down the barrel of an idyllic tree-lined street; standing at its dead end I watched as two teen bikers approached. I knew that there would be time for one shot, one shot only.

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  • Sabine and The Elephant

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    Our friend Marie of ScenarioDNA just sent us this “study in why you shouldn’t give your daughter sugar past bedtime.”

    Well, we’re pro-sugar, as it seems to have fed Desedo a new brand champion. Sabine now rolls with the team to all shoots & screenings. We pay her in popsicles.

    Qv8sBo1Zm2s

    —
    rr note:
    Desedo Films launches campaign to establish brand awareness among the popsicle set. Take that Bill Cosby.

  • Mass Processor: Access Granted

    chicken or egg?

    Access is that most elusive quality that is granted to some who wield cameras. The best seem to command it of their subjects instantly, effortlessly. The rest of us work for every scrap we can get and hire the best camera people to buttress ourselves. Perhaps as a cheat, a short-circuit, we who shoot things with cameras for a living decide to use our friends as subjects from time to time. It is simply too enticing not to do.

    From Crackle: Dangerous Beats


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  • Juno, Sex Workers & MapQuest

    When accepting her Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, Juno scribe Diablo Cody proudly displayed her bicep tat of a bikini-clad + rope bound lass, a visual reminder to viewers at home that Cody was once a stripper. And the dark humor that actress Ellen Page spits in Juno is strongly rooted in the self-aware and acerbic style of writing oft found in sex worker literature.

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    Women in the sex industry have historically been labeled as Victim with A Heart of Gold, Radical Feminist or Dumb Slut. Rarely are they seen as having any agency or complexity. Spread Magazine launched in 2005 to flip the script:

    We believe that all sex workers have a right to self-determination; to choose how we make a living and what we do with our bodies. We aim to build community and destigmatize sex work by providing a forum for the diverse voices of individuals working in the sex industry.

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    For those dear readers who may be clucking and saying Not My World, let’s look at the webstat counter Alexa.com to see the story of Our Nation’s online activity.

    Megarotic has more visits than Amazon, AOL and Blogger
    YouPorn beats Digg and The New York Times
    Adult Friend Finder…gets more love than MapQuest?

    With porn’s market position as an ‘outsider industry’, we may be inclined to think that some of these xxxsites are clickbotting. While we may question Ms. Alexa, her stats are bandied about like Mr. Nielson’s ratings. Fact is, porn is no longer just “finding Dad’s Playboys” (i looked, alas he had none) or a dusty VHS. It’s everywhere and we’re all, shall we say, touched, by it.

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    Now Sex & The City EP Darren Star has an upcoming HBO series based on Tracy Quan’s Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl. Also coming, Washingtonienne and Secret Diary of a Call Girl.

    Given that Carrie Bradshaw spawned trends like drinking Cosmos, lusting after Manohlo Blahniks and hearting Marc Jacobs, I’m curious to see what details our pop culture might take from an expensive prostitute. Going beyond any new trends, maybe this show and Diablo Cody’s high profile will begin to remix the public discussion of American sex workers and this naughty little $12 billion industry.

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    —-
    UPDATES

    4/24/08
    What does it mean when Nintendo’s Wii has a stripper video game?

    5/16/08
    Teens + Sex and the City

    6/10/08
    NYT and 365 days of sex

    Porn = Normal trend report

    7/24
    Porn vs. Prostitution

    8/17
    Porn visits Sesame Street?