The lovely Glennis McMurray (RADAR Ep2 - I Eat Pandas) shared a bit of her world with us by curating AND writing this weeks edition of RADAR NYC. Glennis is co-founder of I Eat Pandas, Founder of G.L.O.C (Gorgeous Ladies of Comedy), can be found on numerous stages, and all over the internets. Last time I saw Glennis was at the URDB Christmas event breaking the world record for the longest musical chairs interlude clocking in at 04:53.90 min/sec. And so, without further ado…

Space Unicorn – Parry Gripp

Nerd trifecta alert! Parry Gripp, unicorns, and space! Parry Gripp, lead singer of Nerf Herder, called for Space Unicorn drawings to accompany his latest meme and the result is a highly watchable, totally danceable and pretty darn adorable video. My one regret in life is that I didn’t submit a drawing. Well, that and the perm disaster of ‘94.

Tony! Toni! Toné! – “If I Had No Loot”

Da da da day, hey! Long before Cee-Lo told that money-grubbing ex what was what in “F*ck You”, there was a funky boy band by the name of Tony! Toni! Toné! (The third Toné had acute accent.  Heyoooo.) and I, for one, have had this song on repeat as of late. The Tony/i/é trio called out the moochers in “If I Had No Loot,” providing the world with not only the best song of all time (I said it), but a song with a message. And that message?  No one in this band is named Tony (i/é). Nailed it!

Julie Klausner’s – I Don’t Care About Your Band

Are you a lady? Were you, are you, or will you one day be in your twenties? Have you yet realized how much your twenties sucked BALLS (sometimes literally)? Then Julie Klausner’s book, I Don’t Care About Your Band is for you! She lays her poor decisions on the table like a sassy deck of sex cards and makes you feel a little less awful about being such an idiot in the second decade of your life.  Empowering and hilarious and soon to be an HBO hit starring Lizzy Caplan!

You can buy the book HERE

In The Pony Palace / FOOTBALL

I am really looking forward to Half Straddle’s “In The Pony Palace/FOOTBALL”. So much so that I’m going to be at every performance! That’s how much I love this show! OK, full disclosure: I’m in the show.  Kristina Satter’s play about living for a feeling and being on a team features a marching band and live mashups by Chris Giarmo. (Lady Gaga meets the Stones, what the what?!) Tickets:
http://www.thebushwickstarr.org/

Side note: Jon Friedman’s The Rejection Show is always a great time.
Monday the 14th they take on lurv (or lack thereof) with the Valentine’s Day Heartbreak Haven.
http://www.ticketweb.com/t3/sale/SaleEventDetail?dispatch=loadSelectionData&eventId=3395105

Catalogliving + @Caissie

I am obsessed with Molly Erdman’s Catalog Living.  Gary and Elaine’s delightfully droll catalog life leaves me hungry for more, eaten off Crate & Barrel plates on a West Elm table.

Follow the hilarious Caissie St.Onge – @Caissie – on Twitter.  She’s why twitter was invittered.

(Painting by Jay Shells and Ben Hollingsworth)

This week, we asked Jay Shells (RADAR ep 25 – Subway Etiquette) to curate this week’s installment of RADAR NYC. He obliged us with some submissions that give us a peek inside a subway artist’s head, including a blog on New York subway art, a humorous book on racism and culture, and a beautiful video of fingerboarding.

Hermes Fingerskate

Everyone who went to high school in the last decade remembers fingerboards, right? Those little skateboards you could do tiny-sized ollies and shove-its with? I’m betting not that many people ever got that good at it. But while the rest of our ADD-addled brains moved on to 5 or 6 more things, Alexis Milant mastered the art of it. And directing, apparently! This video is surprisingly well made, with impressive lighting and editing that gives it production values you just don’t see on Youtube. But more important than that, it’s just really cool to watch.

Alexis Milant’s website

Fitz and the Tantrums – MoneyGrabber

First of all, Fitz and the Tantrums is either the most awesome or awful band name ever, depending on your view of puns (I would say awesome, personally). Once you get past that and watch the video for MoneyGrabber, you’ll see that there’s a lot more to them than just a cool name. As one (unusually perceptive) Youtube commenter puts it, “did Motown and Bowie have a lovechild?” Really, I couldn’t have said it better myself. Prepare to have this, and the rest of their songs, in your head all day.

You can find their album and a free download of MoneyGrabber here

ego trip’s Big Book of Racism!

Oh, this is sure to offend some sensitive folks. Proclaiming “we just hate everybody,” Ego Trip’s Big Book of Racism promises to take down literally every group imaginable. And while the book’s five authors of color clearly want to make their readers laugh, there is a serious message in it all: racism is indeed everywhere in our culture, and rather than hiding from it, we should put it all out there and make fun of it. We can learn a lot about other people—and ourselves as well.

You can buy the book HERE

Jay Shells and Benjamin Hollingsworth at Gallery Bar

(Kenny Scharf’s new mural)

On December 17, Jay Shells will be joining Benjamin Hollingsworth at Gallery Bar for a show with all new paintings. This will be a chance to see some of his non-subway related work, and hey, a chance to have some drinks at nice bar surrounded by beautiful artwork. Hard to pass that up. And while you’re in the area, be sure to see Kenny Scharf’s new mural on the Hole Wall at Houston and Bowery while it’s still up.

Friday Dec 21 · 6:00 p.m.
Gallery Bar
120 Orchard St
New York, NY 10002
EVENT INFO

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Subway Art, Animal NY, Changethethought

(subway piece by Poster Boy)

This week, Jay offers us 3 blogs worth checking out. Changethethought is designer Christopher Cox’s portfolio-turned-resource for all sorts of creative minds. Animal New York is a culture blog for snarky, creative New Yorkers who like reading about street art just as much as they like making fun of Libyan dictator Moammar Khadafy and his bad trip to the city. And the Subway Art Blog is definitely a website that would appeal to the average New York commuter just as much as it would appeal to the creator of Subway Etiquette signs—a look at various bits of random art that pops up in the world’s most complex subway system. On that note, now is a good time to follow @jayshells on Twitter as well.

Changethethought
Animal New York
Subway Art Blog
Jay Shells’ Twitter, Tumblr

HOTEL (creepy interactive story/game)

There’s something pretty slick and trippy about HOTEL, the latest interactive Flash-based story from our friends over at SubmarineChannel. The story, now ten chapters deep, starts off some in sort of disjointed, Lynchian world, where each click of your mouse propels you deeper into the rabbit hole. With a story that sucks you in like HOTEL, just make sure you have some time on your hands when you check it out.

Play HOTEL

Lymbyc Systym – Narita Music Video

We’ve featured tunes from the Lymbyc Systym before, so we wanted to share their nifty video for “Narita,” a track off their Field Studies EP. The song is half hazy shoegaze, half Ben-Gibbard-inspired instrumental chugging, but the real treat is the video; it juxtaposes the schizophrenic music with shots of wildlife interspersed with urban sprawl. Even though it’s shot on video, the quick clip is a whole lot of cool.

Visit their myspace: http://www.myspace.com/thelymbycsystym

Gregory Brothers – Wired Interview

If you have a pulse and a connection to the internet (you’re reading this, right?), you’ve heard the Gregory Brothers. The four-piece comedic troupe – that includes one woman – may not be famous by name, but you’ve definitely seen their videos. They’re the brains behind Auto-Tune the News (RADAR Ep27) and recent meme-cash-ins “Bed Intruder” and the “Double Rainbow” song. The group recently sat down with Wired to dish on everything from their process to making unintentional singers famous. We highly recommend it.

Read Wired Interview

Story Pirates: Create-a-Show

The Story Pirates (RADAR Ep30) Twitter bio really does sum them up best: “Kids write stories = We act them out = Kids write more.” For the unfamiliar, the Story Pirates are an improve group that perform for children, acting on the suggestions and reactions from the tikes in the audience. This month, the seven-person cast will put on musical numbers at the Downtown Community Center in Tribeca. Sounds like a good time even if you aren’t a parent or under twelve…

Sept 12th 2pm
Downtown Community Center
120 Warren St (between Greenwich and West St)
$18; Workshop and Show: $30
Event Info

FOLLOW

@beatonna

Hark! A Vagrant is a cool little webcomic by Kate Beaton. Her latest entries have been a series of riffing on old Nancy Drew book covers and we’ve got to say, we’re fans. Check out the wit on display both on her website and on her Twitter. We know you’ll dig it too.

Hark! A Vargrant – http://www.harkavagrant.com/
Kate Beaton Twitter – http://twitter.com/beatonna

Nate Hill

Since 2002 Nate Hill has been an uncatagorizable force in the art world, covering everything from photography to performance art, all the way to helping you forget your last love. His first work, New Animals, seemed a fitting way to introduce himself into the artistic community of New York City. As a young man, Nate have lived in various places across America, beginning in California, then pushing east to Nebraska, then Tennessee, south to Florida, and then settling in New York City in 2001. New Animals is an amazing expression of both death and creation, from a young man brought into this world by two doctors, who has lived in so many different environments, it is only natural for him to be boiling over with a medical fascination. Add a note of a disjointed desire to create, with a splash of medicinal sterility and New Animals was born. A renound work, New Animal #31 was a combination of falcon talons, cardinal wings, opossum ears and snout, an armadillo ear and the heart of a squirrel From there, he explored a few different routes with taxidermy.

After that, there was the A.D.A.M. project, comprised of 13 diffferent animal species, put together to form a life size human replica. A.D.A.M. stands for A Dead Animal Man.

Since then, Nate’s focus moved to a more performance driven form, first with the Candy Crack Delivery Service, where he would sell bags of colored, crystallized sugar rocks, dressed in a dolphin mascot head and tuxedo, after receiving a phone call or text message from a potential “customer”. Then there was the Death Bear. A personal favorite to the RADAR team, the Death Bear consisted of Nate again arriving at a private residence after receiving a text or phone call, asking him to remove items belonging to a lost relationship, where they would be brought to his “cave” never to be seen again, aiding them in their detachment from those physical objects..

Lately, He has moved onto a few photographic exploits, most notably Untitled Nudes, where he asks female models he has found on craigslist to write his initials somewhere on their bodies, photograph them, only to mount those body parts on wireframes. This continues his theme of exploring body parts, in a selective, and disjointed fashion. Nate Hill’s work can be seen at NateHillisNuts.com.

The Drawing Show – May 29th

Do you love art? What about cold beverages and massive quantities of pulled pork? Well then you have to check out the Tompkins Projects Drawing Show this Saturday, April 29th from 6-11 PM. All the art is going for a reasonable price of $40, which you’ll feel great paying knowing it’s going to charity. Look out for RADAR contributor Matt Held (RADAR 009 – Matt Held), who will be exhibiting his work at the show! And don’t forget to head on over to the lightsaber battle afterwards to fight off some of that barbecue (check out GO in this post).

More info about this event

Dan Deacon – “Paddling Ghost” Music Video

Musician Dan Deacon (RADAR Season 3) had a big year in 2009: his latest album Bromst ranked #46 on Pitchfork’s Best Albums of the Year list and #199 on The Billboard Top 200 Chart. Deacon, known for his wild live shows, was also named artist of the year by The Athens Blur Magazine in 2009. Check out this video, directed by Natalie van den Dungen, for the song “Paddling Ghost” off Bromst.

Listen / Purchase Dan Deacon’s music:
Dan Deacon – Full Catalog

Tom Tom Magazine

We just took a survey and found that there’s really nothing cooler than girl drummers. Just another reason to check out Tom Tom Magazine, the place to get all your information on females that drum. Tom Tom was started by Mindy Seegal Abovitz, member of the RADAR-featured band Taigaa (RADAR Season 3), and a Masters-holding, East Village Radio-engineering, and all around ass-kicking female drummer with more than 10 years experience. Head over to the website for featured articles and subscription info.

http://www.tomtommag.com/

Massive Lightsaber Battle – Newmindspace

From the people of Newmindspace (RADAR 010 – Newmindspace), who brought you The Great 2010 Union Square Pillow Fight and the Christmas ‘09 Santa Convention, comes the totally free Massive Lightsaber Battle, this Saturday, May 29th at Chrystie Park in Manhattan. This fight is Jedi vs. Sith, so use The Force and pick your side. And hey, maybe Jar Jar will make an appearance so we can all just set our differences aside and pursue the common enemy.

Sunday, May 29th, 9pm – 11pm
Chrystie Park
E Houston St. & Chrystie St., NYC
Free – purchase a light saber from newmindspace for $5
http://newmindspace.com/ledlightsaber.php

FOLLOW

@dddangoldmannn

Catch up with Red Light Properties (RADAR 022 – RLP) webcomic creator and digital artist Dan Goldman on his twitter and preview his newest panels from RLP.

Twitter: http://twitter.com/dddangoldmannn