After the disastrous travel day that was St. Patty’s Day Parade traffic, and successive layovers in Ft. Lauderdale, Memphis AND Greenville, the entire M.I.S.S. x Revery Media fam finally made it out to the South by Southwest Film Festival on late Wednesday in one piece (sorta!). With our equipment and schedule of the showcases in hand, we made our way to our hotel, stashed our crapola in the luxury that only a Days Inn in Austin, TX can provide (*sarcasm, anyone?*), and decamped for East 6th St!

The South by Southwest Music and Media Conference, now in its 24th year, is one of the major must-attend yearly musical festivals. With the focus on spotlighting new music, labels, and music-industry media trends, the Austin, Texas festival has grown from a small gathering to a nation-wide music frenzy. With thousands traveling from all over the country to attend the 5 day festival, the liberal college town in Central Texas becomes a mecca for hipster kids and those that love them for one week in March. Seriously– being at baggage claim at the Austin Airport was basically the same experience one has while riding down Bedford Ave in Williamsburg on a fixed gear. All we’re saying– beards were everywhere!

The first day of the festival rolled along rather nicely. The Brooklyn Vegan Showcase blew the speakers out at Club Deville, with bands The Middle East and Dawes kicking things off. Elsewhere, NPR brought a bit of class to the night with Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings and Broken Bells. Over at Aces Lounge, 2 AM Club, Mike Posner, and Bun B killed it. And, if you haven’t come across this tidbit yet in your morning blog troll, Nasty Nas straight ANNIHILATED the Levis/Fader Fort.

For us, though, the highlight of the day was definitely taking in all that the closed-down East 6th street had to offer. From hipster galore to drunk St. Paddy’s day … well, you know whats… the variety of people coming together to celebrate new music was a beautiful thing. We felt the love!!

Check in on M.I.S.S. for daily updates, including exclusive photos and video interviews with your favorite artists (trust us kiddies, we have some big ones coming) for the duration of SXSW… because it’s only Day 1! 4 more left and counting!

Yes yes yes. the Link List is back with 20 like crack.

♥♥ You can accuse me of playing favorites here, but even NPR recognizes you’ll hear some of the most haunting, obscure and forgotten music ever from my homeboys Chances With Wolves over on East Village Radio.

♥♥ A lot has been said so far about the music of 2009, but The Hype Machine sums it all up with three handy guides of the 50 Bests in Artists, Albums, and Tracks in 2009, as judged by what was most aggregated through the machine via music blogs. That makes it scientific.

♥♥ Crooked Ruler is basically my favorite Photochop blog to look at. My friend has been investigating and we think it comes from some wonderful Swedish fellas. It’s a Tumblr. Follow it.

♥♥ You know what I love? Food Tattoos.

♥♥ You like something? Give it the Seal Of Approval. Downloadable. Very applicable.

♥♥ So, Who is getting ready for the return of LOST? Prepare yourself, not with spoilers, or previews, but with Ack Attack’s recaps. You will cry laughing.

♥♥ It’s in another language but it should be easy enough to follow the DIY for this Burberry 2010 inspired draped skirt on Anywho.

♥♥ If you haven’t seen the Moseley Tribes X Hellz Bellz lookbook yet, peep it on Highsnobiety.

♥♥ Or the new Fafi X Adidas collection over on Juicy.Mashkulture.

♥♥ Mike Giant did a fresh Ad for Bebe featuring a model adorned with his iconic style via Joshy D’s Juxtapoz Blog.

♥♥ We’re Loving this M·A·C Give Me Liberty Blue shade in the adorned bottle spied on All Lacquered Up.

♥♥ If H&M cleans up their disgusting habits of destroying and discarding perfectly good clothing, consider their Spring Garden Collection. It’s pretty cute.

♥♥ Lovely lingerie collection from Carine Gilson on Highsnobette.

♥♥ Meet Mr. Gaga, Nicola Formichetti, Lady Gaga’s stylist on T Magazine.

♥♥ Finally, someone invented an umbrella that doesn’t blind and impale others! via Designboom.

♥♥ Also via Designboom, there’s a new iPhone app that allows you to lego out a photo, like it’s been pixelated.

♥♥ The Cut poses the question Does a Naked, Unretouched Supermodel Promote Positive Body Image?

♥♥ Check out the South Rakkas Crew Stimulus Mixtape that just dropped on Mad Decent.

♥♥ Plus Mishka NYC dropped their latest Keep Watch Mix, from Crookers. Download that!

♥♥ Apartment Therapy suggests 5 Home design ideas to pilfer from the January Anthropologie Catalog.

Festival season is winding down, but the shows will go on. Brooklyn-based band Chairlift will be hitting the road September 5th starting with a trip to the Bowery Ballroom in New York City. They will tour the US and then head over to Europe in support of their debut album, Does You Inspire You? Chairlift has has toured with Yeasayer, MGMT, and others carrying with them an electro pop sound that finds a softer perhaps a more romantic side with Caroline and Aaron lending to the vocals. Their catchy song, “Bruises,” was recently featured in an iPod commercial. “Evident Utensil”, the first single they released, was featured on the Urban Outfitters website as a track on the LSTN #2  free downoad mix that they offer in the music section of thier website. “Evident Utensil” has also been nominated for Breakthrough Video at this year’s MTV VMA’s which will be on live September 13th. Their video was the first video to feature “datamoshing” technology. I’ll let Caroline explain it:

It’s a kind of key-frame based editing that scrambles the information in a really organic way, so it looks like the frames are morphing into each other – like your screen is getting crunched. And it’s not like normal pixelation, cos’ it’s movement-based, so it imitates the way the people on the screen are moving. So it’s really psychedelic. (via Faq Magazine)

Chairflift consists of Aaron Pfenning, Caroline Polachek, and Patrick Wimberly.

Listen to them live courtesy of the WXPN and World Cafe Live. via NPR

Photography worked hard to become recognized as an art form in the first half of the 20th century. Along with fellow documentary photographic pioneers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Walker Evans, Helen Levitt’s style married composition with spontaneity. Known for her ability to capture the lives of children on the streets of New York, Levitt’s work is marked by a juxtaposition of playfulness and poignancy. Like her female photographic contemporaries (like Dorothea Lange) Levitt’s images provided a social commentary on and called attention to the lives of children in the city, particularly her work in some of the poorer neighborhoods like Spanish Harlem and the Lower East Side.

Though not concerned with technical skill, Levitt’s pictures nonetheless contain a studied, almost painterly elegance, which Levitt gleaned and honed with frequent visits to museums and galleries. She worked as a press photographer in the 1930s and 40s, while at the same time producing an impressive collection of her own work with her Leica camera in black and white as well as color. In addition, Levitt worked as a film editor and director, collaborating with good friend and artistic influence James Agee, on the short film “In the Street.”

Helen Levitt’s legacy lies in her ability to seek out and translate visually the subtle beauty of seemingly mundane daily activities of American youth.  She paid tribute to their place in society and gave insight into their worlds in a respectful, almost reverent way.

Listen to an interview with Helen Levitt on NPR’s “All Things Considered” here.

Pick up books of her work through Powerhouse Books.

But I’m going to anyway. The upcoming presidential election will have an effect on us for the next 20 to 30 years. How? When you elect a president, you also need to look at his stance on the forgotten 3rd Branch of government – The Supreme Court. The President nominates potential Justices and once nominated and confirmed to the Supreme Court, Justices keep their positions for life. That means that whomever our next president nominates to the Supreme Court may have that position for many, many years.

I just read this article on NPR discussing the wide ideological differences between Obama and McCain on the abortion issue. Republican presumptive nominee McCain “has said that he would appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark court decision from the 1970s that legalized abortion.” VERY SCARY. Read the full article on how the 2 men differ on their stances here. Make informed decisions. Register to Vote. That’s one to grow on.

Noah Brier, a brand strategist in New York at Naked Communications, developed a new site/experiment called Brand Tags. Basically, when you go to the site you are shown a brand logo and you type the first word that comes to mind. All the results that people have submitted are then rendered into a tag cloud – much like the ones you see on blogs. The results are interesting and often spot-on. Brier noticed that sometimes you could tell which brand a tag cloud belonged to without seeing the logo. When asked why he started the project, Brier stated: “I had this idea that if you asked enough people what a brand is, and then made it into a tag cloud, that you’d probably have a pretty good peek into what the actual perception of this brand was.” It’s true. See for yourself. You can see a video on it here and try it out here.

Source

There’s nothing more precious than having a little baby girl to call your own – the itty-bitty witty barrettes, the itty bitty tea party sets, and the itty bitty outfits that are so much cuter than her brother’s. Well the Mayor of Whoville doesn’t agree, and his 96 daughters might as well end up in an orphanage for Angelina Jolie to adopt, because his happiness, and the entire fate of the world rested on the shoulders of his only son. What’s even more annoying was that this was a subplot that was added to the script, and not in the original version of the book. Shame on you, Hollywood!

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