the mehallo blog. beta.

4th season advertising image for Rescue Me

Tags: photography, thoughts by steve
Comments Off on Tommmy

Photo op/visual metaphor/music video locale/nude model hangout: Detroit’s Michigan Central Station

The state of journalism in the US is a mess; what sells is often put ahead of the real news. Money (desire for/lack of) drives the system. If I want good international reporting, I tend to stick with the BBC. Domestically, it’s more fluff than not.

Here’s Vice magazine’s take on journalists descending on abandoned buildings in Detroit because they’re really good photo ops. Really.

Found via Twitter.com/okayokay

Tags: photography, thoughts by steve
6 comments  . . .   

‘For the past fifteen months I’ve created artwork in hopes of shedding light on the plight of innocent civilians under modern warfare. In this video I put my art to the music of Pink Floyd’s Goodbye Blue Sky.’
– posted by Marc Levine on MySpace, September 1st, 2008

Tags: art, music, thoughts by steve
3 comments  . . .   

At the beginning of 2003, I got involved with Another Poster For Peace, a group of graphic designers who did not agree with the Iraqi war. It just didn’t make sense to us, so we created copyright free protest posters that anyone can download and use. It wasn’t popular sentiment at the time, but was the right thing to do.

When the war started, I was following a blog of a young student in Baghdad; who was photographing and watching the skies, waiting for what was going to come. I followed up until the time his blog stopped reporting, then went down. I wonder what happened to him.

Tags: design, education, thoughts by steve
Comments Off on No war

Designer Erik Spiekermann on what it’s like to be a typomaniac

Extra footage from Gary Hustwit’s Helvetica film. I still use Spiekermann’s Stop Stealing Sheep as the introductory text in my beginning typography courses.

Tags: design, education, thoughts, typography by steve
2 comments  . . .   

‘Jamie Oliver made it possible for me to cook a decent meal in under an hour.’
– mehallo

My wife got me hooked on Jamie Oliver when he was known as The Naked Chef. Which was one of the dumbest monikers ever created for marketing purposes. He wasn’t naked, and to this day I’m still not sure why he was called that. His recipes are quick, easy and often come out looking like the photos.

Today he’s been quietly building a food empire over in the UK – akin to what Martha Stewart has done, without all the nasty stuff that is her extended personality (I seem to have the habit of running into people who’ve met and/or worked with her and, wow, the stories I’ve heard). (And I will say I do miss her paint line at K-Mart. Great palettes.) [Read more →]

Tags: culinary, design, photography, thoughts by steve
2 comments  . . .   

I never liked pickles. But these I like.

Bubbies Kosher Dills are jarred from a homemade recipe, with a salty brine. No weird stuff. They even have a recipe at their site for a simple pickle soup.

Tags: cool finds, culinary, thoughts by steve
Comments Off on Tasty pickle

Stevia has been around a long time. I’ve had it growing in the garden, it grows like mint. A little bitter, but a really sweet edible leaf. And: no calories, an excellent alternative sweetner. I found out about it around 10 years ago. It’s cheap to grow, a natural product and a frightening concept for chemical-based sweetner companies.

And as of December 2008, the FDA has finally, provisionally approved a version of it for public consumption (with a trick in there to help Big Business, click on the provisionally link). It’s been a wait, but with choices of chemicals such as Aspartame or Sucralose – as a soda junky that’s avoiding HFCS and sugar – I’ve been waiting a long time. [Read more →]

Tags: cool finds, culinary, thoughts by steve
8 comments  . . .   

from the netherlands
Driver on cocaine + police + high speed chase + corn field = art!

Found via The Daily Mail

Tags: art, cool finds, culinary, events, exhibitions, thoughts by steve
6 comments  . . .   

Image via Earthfirst

Does High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) have to be in everything? Not just sodas, but meat products, bread, soups – corn flakes, ketchup, pickles (pickles?? wtf?), applesauce, ice cream, salad dressings  . . .

Even Kentucky Fried Chicken has a honey flavored sauce (pictured). Because just plain honey didn’t quite work. It really needed some tinkering.

Here’s some details about what we eat in the United States. And (update!) even more detail here. Powerful lobby them corn people are. Make Soylent Green seem so trite.

Image via Soloflex

Tags: culinary, thoughts by steve
2 comments  . . .   

There’s a huge part of me that wonders where celebrities get the idea that it’s just so easy to – overnight – become a fashion designer. And based on this snarky video, so does Julia Stiles.

Found via Huffington Post

Tags: cool finds, design, fashion, thoughts by steve
Comments Off on Julia & styles  . . .