As many will soon realize from my blog posts, I have an absolute fascination and somewhat obsession with vintage and retro ephemera. This especially includes vintage photos, postcards, magazines and advertisements. I’m always collecting and adding to my personal collection. Here’s a sampling of vintage print ads that I discovered online that are so bad in today’s standards, that it makes them great. Make sure you check out the hilarious video at the bottom of this post.

Ian Johnson is a self–professed agoraphobe and portrait painter living in San Francisco, whose work features predominantly 1950’s and 1960’s jazz musicians like Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, Bill Evans and Charlie Parker, to name a few. Intentionally or not, the subjects he chooses often had difficult lives in spite of their talents. When his subjects are creating music, the entire piece is full of energy, yet in many of his pieces a sense of solitude remains. Working as art director for Western Edition Skateboard Company, it isn’t surprising that many of his jazz portraits end up on skateboard decks. This makes sense as both jazz and skateboarding are rooted in movement and improvisation.

Here is Johnson’s stance on painting modern day musicians…

“I don’t really like that many new musicians. What they’re doing is not that exciting to me as something you hear from the ‘50s when people were breaking new ground. There was a kind of energy back then that isn’t in jazz now, even though they try to do the same thing. They’re just rehashing shit. Plus, they just don’t look as cool. People don’t dress good anymore. Their faces just look hollow to me. So many of them back in the day, maybe it was the heroin, but they had really cut features and really angular faces and I like drawing that kind of stuff. They all had their preppy style. I like drawing people in suits and ties. Eventually I’d like to do some more modern people, but I’m not in a rush.”

Matt Petty shot this cool little video and interview of Johnson during one of his solo shows in the Bay Area.

This video is just so bizarre and funny that I couldn’t resist sharing it. Listen to the people who are videotaping too.

There are so many graffiti documentaries out there these days its hard to keep up with them or stay interested. But this teaser trailer for an upcoming documentary by Underdog Pictures about GHOST, one of the most legendary and prolific bombers in NYC history looks pretty interesting. GHOST, who has historically remained rather reclusive, talks openly about the insanity involved in painting trains while the rest of the world is seemingly normal.

Though this video is very cool, I find it kind of creepy at the same time. Definitely a good effect to use in a horror movie.

Our stay with Lars’ family in Cuxhaven has been nothing but relaxation and chill times thus far. Well, isn’t that what vacation is supposed to be? Eating well, sleeping a lot, hanging out with family and sleeping more. Tomorrow we are planning to rent a car and check out some nearby cities and a huge annual art fair.

Here is my 1st attempt at editing a video for YouTube in iMovie HD on my new MacBook. It’s composed of 3 short videos and some stills I took with my digital camera from our time in Hamburg. Nothing too exciting, as I’m still a novice at this and just learning.

After reading a bunch of online tutorials on what the best compression technique is for videos to upload to YouTube, I came across a simple and straightforward method on this awesome blog : Will Video for Food to use with iMovie. Kevin Nalts writes: “Since I use iMovie, I simply select “Share: CD-ROM” and transform a potentially 30 GB iMovie file into a small (10-20) MB .mov file that seems to upload well. Also note that there’s software out there that has automated YouTube features, such as VirtualDub (for Windows users). These programs are great time-savers if you’re a hardcore YouTuber, and they should be considered.”

Also from CrunchGear, courtesy of Matt Hickey, here are some key factors to ensure you get the best optimization of your videos for YouTube: