Après-Ski Party at Hugh

Kick those ski boots off and sip some champagne by the fireside at Hugh for the Holidays' après-ski party, this Tuesday 12/21. If you haven't made it out to Park Avenue's 3-week pop-up shop this holiday season, I urge you to check it out. This year's theme is Hugh Hefner on a swank Scandinavian ski holiday. The collection is part new, part vintage, with a heavy Danish Modern focus. Lots and lots of beautiful teak.

I dropped in this week and picked up a killer fondue set.

Rumor has it that this may be Mr Posch's last retail endeavor. He mentioned hanging this hat up and starting to look for a j.o.b. Please urge him not to make that mistake. His store is one-of a kind.

Hope to see you Tuesday.

Link to the website.

Dave Bing Volume 2

This year's Holiday party is at Leopold's Books. Tonight!!! at 7 pm. Come as David Bowie or Bing Crosby, but don't come as Bill Cosby because that one doesn't really work. I tried last year. Damn, it's hard to find a box of puddin' pops in a pinch.

Spitzer @ the Burton

Last Thursday, the night after the D Show, the Creative Arts Scholarship Series (CASS) debuted at the Burton Theatre with a special screening of Client 9: The Rise & Fall of Eliot Spitzer. Academy Award-Winning Director Alex Gibney came out to show the crowd his latest work. Those of us who weren’t too hung-over from the night before were able to get in a few more drinks and watch a great film in a hip Detroit theater, while raising money for the College for Creative Study’s Advertising Scholarship Fund.

If you’ve never been to the Burton Theatre, then you’re missing out. Once an elementary school auditorium, this hidden gem features velour seats, suspended iron & glass lamps and a modest stage where you can imagine grade-school students putting on Holiday pageants. The Burton hosts everything from zombie flicks to international award winners to blaxploitation to oddball/home made/found/psychedelic/’Never Seen Anything Like This’ movies. Always interesting. The theater hosts barbeques in the summer with a generous outdoor screen, grilled Porktown sausages and classic favorites like The Burbs & Polyester.

It was certainly the first time an Academy Award-Winning director dropped by to show his/her own flick, and his work did not disappoint. His take on the Eliot Spitzer story was less of a ‘here’s what happened & why he’s a bad/good guy’, and more of a ‘here’s how this story is a fairly-common tragedy that we’ve all read before’.

The Q&A benefited from the intimate size of the crowd and their industry experience. Questions ranged from how Gibney pulled off so many impossible, close-up interviews to more technical matters of documentary style and crew size. It was a pleasure to have such a tuned-in group, it made me feel smarter.

The Creative Arts Scholarship Series is devoted to supporting the development of the next generation of creative thinkers in Detroit by raising money for CCS Scholarships. This marked the debut event. I will be working to help this series gain traction. We aim to bring world-class film-makers to Detroit to screen their films, and eventually to branch out into music and art-based events as well. We're gonna start with a mission statement. One step at a time!

If you feel like you missed out on the invite, it’s probably because you did. We blew that part. But fear not, next time we’ll do it a little better! I promise.

Here’s to keeping more creatives in Detroit...

If you weren't able to join us, but are curious to hear what Gibney has to say about the film, check out a video of another Q&A here:

We'll have to get ourselves one of those fancy video-camera things to start taping our own Q&A's next time...

'Home Slice'- Benefit for Mocad

Third Thursdays in Midtown

Burton + Hott Lava. This Saturday

Draplin in Detroit

The first joke his dad told went something like this: "For Christmas one year when I was a kid, my parents were torn between wanting to get me something to wear and something I could play with. So my mom had a breakthrough— she bought me a pair of jeans and cut out the pockets.

Smallest present I ever got! I still play with it today."

Aaron Draplin's dad tells a good dirty joke. No wonder his son grew up to have a taste for the gritty, old fashioned things in life.

Last night Aaron Draplin came to 1515 Broadway to speak to the Detroit design community as part of an event put on by AIGA Detroit & Team Detroit. 100-plus people packed into the sleek, backroom theater to hear the man speak. But first they were treated to his father's warm-up.

Draplin told tales of his start as a designer— heading out West from Michigan to find some "real mountains" and snowboard as much as possible. After designing graphics for snowboards and seeing them on the slopes, he had a revelation: he could make a living doing this!


Aaron's career grew out of this snowboard culture. He took on work making ads for friends' clothing companies, designing logos, painting signs, etc. He figured out how to do what he loved and scratched out a living doing it.

Aaron's done the big firm thing, and done it well. He tore things up at Snowboarder Magazine— earning Printmedia's Art Director of the Year award for 2000. But the big firm thing wasn't where it was at for Aaron. "They kept saying, we'll bust our asses this week and so we can take time off next week. But next week never came— instead it was just more work."

So after a few more gigs (and a body of stunning work), Draplin headed out on his own— taking commissions for clients, and more often than not— making work that he dreamed up himself. The lecture started with Aaron passing out trinkets— vintage slotted rubber coin purses, plastic pocket combs, old wood carpenter's pencils, and his infamous Field Notes guides. Mostly, these are products Aaron rescues form extension— shelved away in the back of some stockroom waiting to be thrown out. "Look at these black combs- the company that made these is now on to making crappy USB drives and stuff like that. They salespeople get disgusted when I ask to buy them. They've gotta go dust em off & bring em out. I'm saving them from the landfill."

He adds his own touch to these objects- Draplin design Co information, sometimes a new name (like the comb that's labeled a 'Hair Organizer'), or facts & dates written in classic type. He always keeps it fun.


How does he have time for all this?- Aaron follows the motto sleep when your dead. And he fuels his imagination with lots of junk shop runs.

Take a look at a clip from the recent film he made called the World's Longest Yard Sale. The real juice starts about 2 minutes in when he stumbles upon the goods: http://www.vimeo.com/13968517


Thanks for coming out Aaron, and c'mon back soon! More pics can be found on the flickr page.

Photos by Rebecca Goldberg.

Deconstruction Lecture 8/17

This Sounds Like A Circus...

I'm in.

Events!

Tornadoes & earthquakes got you bummed out? Here's a few things on the horizon to cheer things up:

Tonight– grab a lawn chair & some cold beers and watch the Detroit Futbol League games on the Belle Isle soccer fields. Or skip the beers & get down with some martinis like the Villages fans do. A funny story about the Villages: when we played them last time– I'm on the Mexicantown team and after the Villages players repeatedly didn't chase down their own missed shots (a league rule), one of my teammates who hardly speaks any English said "they forgot to bring their ball boy." He nailed it. I guess you don't even need to know much English to make fun of villages fans! I kid, I kid.

Anyway, after the games- put your dancing shoes on and head out to Slows for a fundraiser to support Scott Benson's campaign for State Rep. $20 gets you full access to beer, white wine and the polished dance floor. Scott Z and Mike Tee from Macho City will be spinning rare dance records with Brad Hales (Magic City Soul Club). Here's a link to a fine mix of Modern Soul that Brad put together a little while back.

Tomorrow, start your night off right with the West Canfield Street Market. It's a first-timer for this event and the details sound great: locally-made & vintage goods, beats & eats— all in the front courtyards of the Canfield lofts. Sounds kinda like a well-designed block party.


After that, head to Oslo's sleek basement and get down at Fierce Hot Mess' 2nd Birthday Party.




For a taste of how the FHM dj's party, check out the Fierce Hot Mix Tape.

Saturday, the USA continues it's World Cup run with a must-win game against Ghana.

A good afternoon bike ride would be across the new pedestrian bridge over I-75 to get some tacos in Mexicantown. I just did that last weekend.

Don't eat too many tacos though. You'll want to save room for the Cinema Barbeque II at the Burton Theatre. 'Escape from New York' and 'Total Recall' are showing with Brian Merkel (the Abe Froeman of Detroit) grilling fine sausages. Can't go wrong!

Talent Show Pics!

It shouldn't be too surprising that the 'hipster' recap of the Talent Show comes about a week after the 'gay' one. If you haven't read Supergay's piece, you should do that before reading this. He sums the night up pretty well (he's the one, after all that boils down the whole crowd into two equal parts: gays and hipsters). Pretty spot-on. He also had a pretty good vantage point for the night: he took home the gold from the talent show, he brought 'out' the most supporters (although most of them were likely 'out' already), and he took the cake in the pre-party hype.

We had a blast at one of Detroit's rarest and finest dives and succeeded in raising over $1,000 for Astro Coffee! Get ready for a flat white...

Alright, so on to the pics!

Here's the bar in back where people could smoke and mix with the vets...

Here's a portrait of the general himself, for whom we owe much thanks and respect...

This is what the scene was like in the 'hall' before the show got underway...

Act I: Phil Cooley does Phil Collins - "In the Air Tonight". Yes, Jeff Anderson is helping me with the backup vocals by pointing a blowdart gun at Phil Cooley's head...

Detail of Phil 'keeping it real' on the keyboards...

Act II was a gentleman named Robert who is a singer. He is legit. I don't have a pic of his performance, but check out the first pic on Supergay's post...

Act III - Dave Mancini chugs a pitcher of beer and slightly vomits. I don't think we need to see that.

Act IV- Supergay "rings those bells". A very well-done combination of storytelling & singing...

Detail of the gold medalist (note Patti showing her support)...

Let there be light! You know Astro Coffee will be good when the future owner runs home during the event to grab christmas lights & spots so we don't have to sit in a pool of crappy fluorescent light...

Robert Nelson was hilarious. If you don't know his weekly advice column on D'Mongo's website- you should check it out. Act IV, Robert the comedian (bronze medalist)...

Act V- Miriam & Rob Smith. They sang two beautiful, sad songs that flowed as naturally as Rob's glistening afro (I was told that anyway, I missed it for an ill-timed bathroom run). A great last-minute entry to the show...

Act VI- Ms Cindy Elmwood gets on the CASIO. She did a great version version of the Magnetic Fields. She was terrific. But this happened to be the point where things really fell off the tracks. Look at Jeff Anderson looking at you. It's kinda fun.

Oops! he started laying down...

In the end there was a terrific band called Pink Lightening that played a great mini-set. All the guys in the band help make that super-fine pizza at Supino's.

We had a bunch of fun. If you're wondering about the silver medal, it was taken by Roland Legitt who did't even enter the show. His rendition of Tina Turner's 'Proud Mary' during the karaoke warm-up was legit. It's a pretty nice accomplishment to take home a silver medal when you don't even enter the show...

Thanks to Supino's Pizza for the terrific prizes ($15, $25, $50 gift certificates!) and Slows Bar-B-Q for the donated food. The mac & cheese was such a hit that two girls actually argued about taking home the leftovers. I was in the middle of cleaning up when I saw the beef start to happen and when I returned from taking a table back up from downstairs it appeared that they'd given up and decided there would be no leftovers. Six or eight people were hovering and devouring all remnants on the spot. I set down the table and grabbed a fork.

Here's to two "first annual" events that look like they'll be back for more next year (Le Nain Rouge was a hit)! And thanks to Jon Dones for these great pics!

Talent Show Recap

Just finished reading a great post from the Readymade Mag blog, where the editors reminisced about their trip to Detroit earlier this year. Check it out, it's good stuff.

Also, wanted to drop a line to say thanks for coming out to the Talent Show. It was a great turnout and we had a blast- all helping the worthy cause of bringing great coffee to Detroit. If you have any photos from the event, please email them to remainsofthed@gmail.com. Videos would be great too (I know they're out there-!). Can't wait for Astro.

And lastly, this blog is gonna get a makeover. Once I finish the overwhelming task of moving. Please be patient, but know that it's coming- it'll be worth it.

Oh- and just one more thing. If you haven't heard about it yet, check out this festival:

Talent Show Tonight!

Can you rap like her?

Or entrance like him?

The list of acts is almost full, but there's still room for the last-minute entry!

(special thanks to NY Times for the gift of the Tufts University Applicant's Essay Videos)

See ya there!

Talent Show 2/26/10

Remember when we posted that flyer a few weeks back for the Talent Show? Well, if you don't- no sweat, because we had a few minor details to work out with that version. Nothing much, just mainly a couple of grammar mistakes & such. Punctuation, that kind of thing. Sometimes you just get so excited that you hit enter before you really take a careful read of something. Here's the official goods... Designed by Kristen Dean

Phil Cooley Lecture

Dave Bing Party at Hugh

Photos taken by Dorota Coy Bilica