This short documentary brought a little joy to my lunch today. The subject of the movie is the wonderful book, The Phantom Tollbooth, and how it came about. It interviews the author, Norton Juster, and illustrator, Jules Feiffer, both together and separately, as well as many others who comment lovingly about the book. It got me excited to read this again and to get it as a belated birthday present to my nephew, who might really like it.

And this short movie is a teaser to a planned full-length documentary about the book. The Phantom Tollbooth Turns 50 project has already reached their fundraising goal on Kickstarter. I look forward to the documentary and hope the project comes to fruition. In the meantime, we have this…

My workmate alerted me to this article about an incredible piece of kinetic sculpture, a model of San Francisco constructed entirely of tooth picks. The artist’s name is Scott Weaver. The piece is entitled Rolling through the Bay. Weaver playfully narrates this short video which illustrates the sculpture in action.

It’s things like these that give me hope and fill me with optimism and wonder about humanity.

Scott Weaver’s Rolling through the Bay from The Tinkering Studio on Vimeo.

Today I read a nice wrap up of this year’s Decibel Festival on xlr8r.com. Didn’t make it to the festival this year so I was kind of keen on seeing what I missed. While I knew numerous names at the show this year like Zomby, Quantic, Bonobo, Amon Tobin, there are always so many musicians with whom I’m unfamiliar. So even reading reviews after the show bears fruit.

One of the sets that sounded great was by a young Detroit musician named, Kyle Hall. Clicking on the article link brought me to Hall’s website, Wild Kyle Oats on which I found this gem of a movie (short film – 19mins) about Detroit and it’s electronic music scene.

The highlight for me comes at roughly 5 minutes in, when “The New Dance Show” with host, R.J. Watkins, is being discussed. Mind-blowing moves. Totally rad. I mean my sister and I had “Soul Train” when we were growing up, but this show takes the cake and eat it!

Real Scenes: Detroit from Resident Advisor on Vimeo.

This video brought not only a smile to my eye, but one to my mouth as well. Fun and stylish! Made in Portland?

“Golden Tree” by Martin Brooks from Ninian Doff on Vimeo.

I was recently reading about this new typography magazine called 8 Faces edited by designer, Elliot Jay Stocks. The cover of issue number 3 was designed by McBess, a French illustrator who lives in London. His style reminds me of R. Crumb a bit, but perhaps that was just the prevalence of naked women in the illustrations. Looking around on McBess’ website was pretty fun. I especially enjoyed this short music video/cartoon.