Posts Tagged ‘kultur’

funny…

Tue ,22/12/2020

and again – RIP.

candybowl

Sneaker Wars?!

Sat ,02/12/2017

Sneaker Wars: The Enemy Brothers Who Founded Adidas & Puma & the Family Feud That Forever Changed the Business of Sports

This is quite frankly, one of the craziest (nonfiction) books I’ve ever read. It tells the story of Adi Dassler and his rival, Rudi – as they created and fought for business over the decades since just before WWII with Adidas and Puma, respectively.

But arguably the most crazy (and interesting) part of the story is Adi’s son Horst, who literally built the Adidas brand and worldwide presence we know today, through athlete product endorsements, additional clothing lines and relentless promotion across nearly every sport imaginable. From the way the book portrays him, he’s all but a head of state in many ways, especially given the relationships he creates and cultivates until he passes away at a fairly young age in his early 50s.

Puma is kind of an also-ran in the later years as depicted in this book (Rudi also had a rival son to Horst, but seems to continually come up short on nearly all fronts, save for a few cases) – but it’s also interesting to see along the way how Phil Knight learned the lessons of Horst well and built his own, even bigger shoe and clothing empire starting with one Michael Jordan….the research that went into this book is top-notch and obviously took years to accumulate and review, especially given these are private companies, not governments or public entities.

defnitely one of the best books I’ve read this year.

candybowl

He’s got a point….

Tue ,29/11/2016

candybowl

Christopher Lee – RIP

Sat ,13/06/2015

One of the baddest of the all-time bad guys passed away over the weekend – Christopher Lee, at 93. RIP, Lord Summerisle…..

Christopher Lee dies at the age of 93

Wikipedia bio
IMDB

candybowl

MST3K….the legend

Tue ,19/08/2014

great article. Although truth be told, I haven’t ever seen much of this show. But I should…..! And a possible reboot?

Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Definitive Oral History of a TV Masterpiece

Joel Hodgson Wants To Resurrect Mystery Science Theater 3000 In 2014

candybowl

HR Giger, RIP.

Mon ,04/08/2014

HR Giger has passed away as of this past May, just found out about it tonight.

‘Alien’ artist H.R. Giger dead at 74

Love him or hate him, he was certainly one-of-a-kind and one wonders where the ‘goth industry’ would have been without him – much of its art can certainly be considered a Giger ripoff at some point or another.

Definitely not art for the timid or faint of heart, most well known for the xenomorph alien, movie artwork and set design in Alien (reused in the sequels), the ELP and Debbie Harry album covers, and a bit more obscure, one of the original attempts to make a movie out of Dune. I actually have copies of both Dark Seed videogames on my shelf, need to break those out sometime…..

In whatever eerie, disturbing bio-mechanoid resting place you now inhabit, rest in peace, Herr Giger.

candybowl

Oh, Pete….!

Sun ,16/03/2014

Just finished reading Pete Townshend’s memoir Who I Am, which I got from Kerewin on my recent birthday.

Being a huge Who fan for at least a couple decades now and having read (or own) most of the Who bio-type books out there (Maximum R&B by Richard Barnes; Before I Get Old by Dave Marsh; Dear Boy: The Life of Keith Moon by Tony Fletcher; Full Moon by Peter “Dougal” Butler; countless other Mojo and similar articles) I’ve read a lot about them besides enjoying their music, and am familiar with much of their history, successes and demons over time.

But this book is quite different, no doubt intended that way by Townshend – it’s much more personal and revealing, and to me, not always in a good way – but again, as implied or outright stated by Townshend in the book in several places, that’s exactly the way he wanted it.

On the plus side, you get to see a fairly different view of The Who and its principal songwriter. The Keith Moon books (Butler, Fletcher) paint a varied picture of a semi-fulltime lunatic who played drums brilliantly at his peak, but sunk pretty low or perpetually lived in a fantasy land when not, often to the sometimes extreme detriment of those around him. There is no real book directly dealing with John Entwistle or Roger Daltrey that I know of, and as the former is sadly dead, besides possibly a book on his massively powerful and influential bass-playing, I suspect there won’t be – Roger of course can still write his and may be in fact doing so, not sure. Both Dave Marsh and Richard Barnes give a pretty good look at Roger in their books, however.

And so we come to Pete, who ended up being the creative driving force behind the band over time and arguably the real engine behind its success. In this book Pete tries to come to grips with many personal demons in explaining his life story and role in The Who’s peaks and valleys, and confesses to being a potential cause of several of the latter. And it was nice to see – say by comparison to the recent Ginger Baker movie I watched – that he usually takes responsibility for his failures, even if he doesn’t always learn from them (womanizing, drugs, booze). He even calls himself a self-obsessed prat at intervals depending on the story he’s telling.

For me a bit of downside came in all the womanizing – sure, he had a tough childhood – much tougher than I knew of, and fraught with loneliness and alienation from his flaky/lame parents – And surely being married at 25 with two kids amid crazy sudden fame and pressure to keep delivering hits might drive anyone mad. But, I still don’t see why he got married if he was going to carry on with groupies while on the road with the band? Surely any/all rock star womanizing isn’t ‘good’ anyway generally – but at least those who aren’t married aren’t kidding themselves (and those they fool around with), either? Just seems extremely lame to me.

The alcohol and drug abuse – pretty par for the court in the rock world of that time (and since), and most of Pete’s contemporaries went through much of the same, including most of The Who and its surrounding posse. But despite knowing a lot about and being a fan of Pete and The Who, this whole ‘user/abuser’ scenario is simply so outside my experience, I really can’t relate to it. I’m just glad he survived it, even if a lot of it was his own doing.

I guess I would have liked knowing more about his inner thinking when writing songs – I felt I got glimpses of it here and there but the book is more a story about experiences and consequence (to me, anyway) than about methods. And perhaps that stuff is too hard to put on paper, or simply too hard/too private to put in even a memoir. I would have also liked to know more about his usage and experimentation with sounds, synthesizers and the like – he mentions them all the time in passing, but doesn’t provide much detail.

I think the final conclusion for me is/was that Pete is very human, with all the positives and negatives that can come from same – I’m thankful for the great music he’s created with The Who, and still remain a huge fan – even at his worst – he still kicks a**!

Other thoughts on the book:
Wikipedia
American Songwriter
LA Times
Rolling Stone

candybowl

May creeps ever closer…

Fri ,14/03/2014

to Gojira’s return! But in the meantime (april 4), it looks like Gina Carano may have to do – what she does so well – kick a**!

candybowl

The ‘doos that define a nation…

Tue ,19/11/2013

At one point or another, we’ve all seen these on various family members, friends and celebrities. I myself have had the Reverse Mullet as well as an attempt at the Hair Metal (I however never, ever used petroleum products in my hair, I just never brushed it :))

The 13 Ugliest Hairstyles of Our Time

Notable missing participants, by hairdo style:

1) The Flock of Seagulls – this is now called ‘Japanese Anime Hair‘ and if you go to any Comic-Con or watch a Justin Bieber video, you’ll see it in abundance;

2) The Beehive – What, no B-52’s?

3) The Side Ponytail – You can’t leave out Tina Majorino’s ‘do in Napoleon Dynamite! Plus if you double up, you end up with Witch Hunter Robin

4) The Jheri Curl – Ah, the days when Lionel Richie ruled the planet. But Keenan did the best turn in Hollywood Shuffle….

5) The Crimp – The two words that remain, forever, infamous: Gene. Simmons. And in a side note – kerewin and I have seen this ‘do in person at Whistler, complete with guard-Guidos to protect it.

6) The Big Bang – I’m not going to comment on certain sisters who have sported this ‘do – you know who you are 🙂 – but to this day, an entire western half of the Salt Lake City valley still keeps these ‘stylists’ in business….there, however, it is known as ‘The Hair Claw’.

7) The Phil Spector – I always wondered what happened to Bernie from Room 222….Or did he just reach the Tipping Point?

candybowl

Rene LaLoux meets Rene Magritte….

Tue ,29/10/2013

….with a dash of Yellow Submarine thrown in! Very cool project and notable also because of the way the project only exists until they knock the building down …

Stunning street art transforms Paris apartments

street art Paris

candybowl