Not Onion-level satire, but still kind of funny.

I don’t know if Flickr user AJ Fosik is also super fantastic artist AJ Fosik, but I do know this: this Flickr collection of promotional beer sweaters from the 1970’s and 80’s took the express rocket from Planet Awesomesauce to punch me in the gut with HolyShitINeedThisness.

link » AJ Fosik’s Beer Sweaters
link » AJ Fosik @ Jonathan LeVine Gallery

Of all the programming, I’m most excited about Thursday night. That night, alongside the Prixxx Arse Elektronika 2008 Award Ceremony, monochrom and RE/Search Publications will be presenting the first preview copies of the first Arse Elektronika Anthology, pr0nnovation?. When I was a young gothy, punky, rivet-heady anti-socialite, my friends and I spent untold hours browsing the shelves of counter culture bookshops and RE/Search, publishers of the Industrial Culture Handbook and books about Throbbing Gristle, JG Ballard and modern primitives, were hands down the coolest book slingers on the planet. So, while I didn’t personally design the cover of this anthology, it’s derived from all of the other collateral that I developed for them and seeing my work on the cover of a RE/Search publication has pretty much made my year. I’m tempted to go buy a pack of clove cigarettes and some new creepers just bring things full circle.

link » Arse Elektronika
link » monochrom
link » RE/Search Publications
link » RE/Search Publications on Amazon

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I’m saddened to see that Britain’s Daily Mail just published an investigative piece that has likely turned up the true identity of street art phenom Banksy. I know it’s human nature to kill your heroes, but isn’t there anyone left in the world that values mystique over sordid detail? The headline is the worst. I don’t know anybody that cares whether he’s a middle-class suburbanite or a council-estate hoodlum, only what his latest work is. And it’s not like he’s tromping around the media making claims to some kind of troubled, ghetto past. Thomas Pynchon is damn lucky he wasn’t born 40 years later.

link » Mail Online: “Graffiti artist Banksy unmasked … as a former public schoolboy from middle-class suburbia”
link » Banksy

I was a huge fan of both Mad and Cracked magazines as a kid, so I was thrilled to see the profile of Al Jaffee that the NY Times published a few weeks ago. For 40 (!) years, Jaffee has been illustrating my absolute, hands-down favorite Mad feature: the infamous “Mad Fold-In.” The Fold-In ran every month on the inside back cover of the magazine, and was an illustration and question that, when you folded the page into thirds, revealed its own funny and surprising answer. I remember going to the magazine rack in the grocery store on months that I couldn’t afford to buy the latest issue and trying desperately to bend the back cover of the latest issue without damaging it just so I could see what Jaffee had dreamed up that month. So, as excited as I am about the Jaffee profile, I think I’m even more thrilled about the accompanying “Fold-Ins, Past and Present” interactive feature, which features 20-plus Fold-Ins from the sixties to the present that you get to read and fold all on your own thanks to the magic of Flash.

Funny for Potterheads and Kotterheads alike.

I don’t remember what this is from, but I totally remember watching it when I was about 15.

Holy awesome. Spotted on Sean’s blog. Are Voltron and Transformers really that old???

As with most dudes who grew up in the early 80’s, I was a total, maniacal G.I. Joe freak. But I was also poor, so I never got any of the high-end toys like the Skystriker or the legendary, huge aircraft carrier, the USS Flagg. Hell, as far as I know nobody ever even saw the USS Flagg. But I did get all kinds of individual figures and smaller vehicles, and among them was the Snowcat. The Snowcat was the crown jewel of my collection, and the glorious illustration above played no small part in my aching desire to own one. These kinds of killer illustrations and really consistent, developed packaging are a real hallmark of 80’s toys. Check out the Snowcat package front and back. Or take, for example, the Transformers packaging with the “Tech Specs” that you could only decode with a little strip of translucent red acetate included in the box. Genius. Anyway, if you’re interested in any of that, you’ll love The Art of G.I. Joe: 1982-1985. It’s an unbelievably rich collection of G.I. Joe illustrations, and a great reference for 80’s toy and package design. Even the site design is Joe-inspired. Can’t help but wonder if House managed to stumble across this while developing the marketing materials for über-type family United, or if all of us ex-Joe junkies have the look and feel so burned into our psyches that it just spills out on command.