Eddie Murphy’s First Appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in 1982

Every morning Bill Plympton wakes up at six, goes to his drawing board, gets a piece of bond and a No. 2 pencil and sits down to the business of animating the indelible, noirish figures that have garnered cult status as Plymptoons. What began in high school with drawings of bugs and plants for the Portland Yellow Pages has grown into an empire that encompasses political cartoons, animated shorts, features, advertisements, music videos (his first for Madonna; his latest for Kanye), and a forthcoming Rizzoli book (Independently Animated: Bill Plympton) with a Terry Gilliam forward. Along the way he’s filled his shelves full of awards, not to mention earned two Oscar nods. On the eve of the release of his latest feature, Idiots & Angels, we caught up with the industrious illustrator at his Chelsea studio to talk about the new feature, working with Kanye (vs. Weird Al), and what’s really going down on the animator groupie circuit.

—Michael Slenske

photographs by David Potes

Getting stuffed: a tale of love and taxidermy by David Sedaris

David Sedaris wanted to buy a stuffed owl as a romantic gift, but tracking one down was only the beginning. In this exclusive tale, one of the world’s greatest storytellers recalls his introduction to a weird world of dead kittens and preserved Pygmies

Directed by Les Blank, who passed away earlier this month at the age of 77.

via, openculture

Cats can get addicted to McDonald’s too.

via, arbroath

Mike Brodie talks with NPR’s All Things Considered

Louis C.K., Oh My God

A Public Service Announcement in the form of a Daily Metaltation from Steve Powers

This Week…

We were nominated for a Webby

Ian Mackaye put together two hours of tunes for Henry Rollins’ radio show

We looked through turn of the century portraits of Native Americans

We checked out the opening of Andrew Kuo’s new show

and

Marlijn Hoek was our Muse

We are pleased to present our 171st installment of Sound Advice featuring Handselecta. Created in 2003 by Christian Acker, Handselecta is a project to create authentic and usable fonts based upon graffiti hand styles. The culmination of this project is the 2013 book Flip the Script, A Guide Book For Aspiring Vandals and Typographers.

Sound Advice 171

01. Apache by Incredible Bongo Band
02. Out Ta Bomb by Lordz Of Brooklyn
03. Hard Times by Baby Huey
04. Return Of The Funky Man by Lord Finesse
05. Check Tha Resume by Grand Puba
06. Forty Days by Billy Brooks
07. The White Moses by Beezwax
08. Speaker Breaker by Ray Barbee Meets The Mattson 2
09. Skillz by Gang Starr
10. Beautiful Music by Action Bronson
11. Summer In The City by Quincy Jones
12. Wrong Side of Da Tracks by Artifacts
13. Give It Up by Lee Dorsey
14. Easy Star by Poor Righteous Teachers
15. Sport by Lightnin’ Rod
16. The Only One by The Black Keys
17. Music Man by Pleasure
18. Groovin’ by Willie Mitchell
19. Flip The Script (Outro)

Download Sound Advice 171 Now!

25 Grams is a feature that culls pictures from some of our favorite instagram feeds.

JR is a photographer and artist working across the globe.

He can be followed on instagram at @jr

Igo Shalo had made 400 dives before he visited the Red Sea’s famous Blue Hole. His 401th dive would be his last. Shalo was one of the dozens of unfortunate souls—over a hundred in the last 15 years—who answered the call of the Blue Hole, determined to beat the odds deep below the glittering ocean’s surface.

No one knows exactly what went through his head when he headed past another diver at 90 meters, shaky, but showing no sign of distress. No one knows why he hit the ground at 120 meters, but kept diving deeper, much deeper, until he hit 150 meters. This far down, his hundreds of hours of diving experience would be of no assistance. Exhausted from the effort and effects on his body of the dive down, Shalo ran into trouble pretty quickly. Instead of ascending slowly and steadily, pausing every 10 meters or so to allow his body to adjust to the pressure around him, he shot up like a rocket from 130 meters on—sending hundreds of nitrogen bubbles into his bloodstream. Even if he had been rushed to the closest compression chamber, an agonizingly long 30 minute drive down a tiny gravel road, he didn’t stand a chance.

[Read more]

The Shins, Phantom Limb

[Read more]

Heavy D & The Boyz, Blue Funk (Live), 1992

— @TheNameIsJerald

We’re celebrating our lucky number 13th post with a bit of a relaunch: a new graphic by Aiyana Udesen, and an evolution in the rules of the game. The format stays the same, we’re still The Principals, we still have an Office, but to get called into The Principals Office now you gotta be a public figure. And to heighten the danger, since some of these public figures aren’t readers of TWBE (a good start as to why they might be getting called in) we’re gonna call them out on whatever social media outlet they use to communicate with their fanbase: facebook, their blog, carrier pigeon network, cat memes, whatevs.

To kick off our new format, we’re going after a big dog: esteemed architect, pritzker prize winner, and all around bilbo ballbagger: Rem Koolhaas, On the cocktail party scale of, “droppin’ names to get laid,” if Roman and Williams are a handy in the bathroom, Koolhaas is an ass-to-mouth threesome in the kitchen. But even for a big gun like Koolhaas, the global depression has had an impact. Thus his new furniture line for Knoll called “Tools for Life.” It’s a pretty standard track for any architect when the commissions start to dry up; have some interns fart out designs for a furniture line, ship it off to China for production, then slap a price tag on it with no less that 4 zeros and BOOM! you’re back makin’ Bentley payments and wearing Prada suits in no time.

[Read more]

Directed by Alex Gibney

via, biblioklept

100% sustainable, customizable, and starting at 42 Euros.

[Read more]

The Yuketen Country Ranger in Two Tone Peanut

The spring evenings in San Francisco are drunk with gold. It pours down the avenues of the Sunset. It ignites each leaf of the acacias along Frederick Street. Gold collects in a rich haze over Ocean Beach. It makes a summer haystack out of Potrero Hill. It gilds the telephone lines on Downey Street, stretching a web of bright metal. Gold blows out the windows of the Painted Ladies. It lays down bright parallelograms under the eucalyptus on the Panhandle. It lights the massive glowing arteries of the 101. It alchemizes the skyscrapers on Market Street, creating a city of gold slabs. I love living in this city, I love the Pacific light, and I love the motto given by the city fathers in 1859: “Gold in Peace, Iron in War.”

Goldschläger tastes entirely quotidian, but the gold flecks approach the sublime.

—Arlo Crawford / @museumy

for more Nips, click here