The Brilliance!

HTTP://WWW.THEBRILLIANCE.COM

We’re really internet and we’re really back. A website about things Benjamin , Chuck , Virgil , and various friends & guests think are interesting. Little-to-no specific focus, a bit odd, speling errors, and incredibly culturally relevant.

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Jungle Bay, Dominica!

It’s been a while since I’ve done a vacation/hotel type post. I’m really into this place for two reasons: (1) It’s super cheap $139 a night. (2) It’s in the jungle right off the ocean. Who doesn’t like the jungle…come on? All sorts of weird plants, animals that can attack at any moment, waterfalls, secret hatches, ‘others’, polar bears, etc…Lost…no? But honestly, this place is quite nice…just got a really positive write-up in Islands Magazine. Very eco friendly with its tree-house type rooms nestled right into the jungle…a beautiful pool over looking he ocean, spa packages for you and your lady, on-site restaurant. I’m just into the whole jungle-island-tree-house-hut-resort thing…and at a price you cant beat. I wonder if you can surf in Dominica?

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sCrAmBlEd?HaCkZ!

I told you it’s all about ‘nerding out’ didn’t I? This was one of those like ‘should I post this?’ First off, I think doing something like this is absolutely brilliant…strictly because its so out-of-the-box in terms of coming up with the idea…like, you have to be pretty damn creative to think this up, then you have to be quite talented to program the application/interface to make it work. So here is the deal, this dude, Sven König, from whatever country in Europe is taking music videos (sound source 1), chopping their sound into tiny segments of stored data then, in real time, playing other music/sounds (sound source 2) that get compared to the stored data…the output is sound source 2 being recreated with sound source 1 data (music/noises)...while showing the tiny video chops associated with the sound source 1 data in real time. Make sense? Watch the video at the link below…much easier to understand. I’m I into the actual music? Nope. But I think this guy is next level. Its 2006 and beyond…Nerd out, be inclusive not exclusive.

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Vans 40 year timeline!

This isn’t a ‘sneaker post’ I just love Vans. Basically just the classics, the new stuff is too techy for me. I just remember being younger and rocking them for skating…the sides would blow out so quick. I remember all my socks had holes in the ollie area. But yeah, talk about a brand with heritage…surfing, the whole Zephyr boys setup, first shoe mfg to be direct to the buyer…they did crazy customs back in the day, you could bring in whatever fabric and they would make the shoe from it…I love that. So yeah, check this 40 year timeline piece they just launched, quite nice. Everything is back to simplicity these days right? And maybe even a hint of sustainability. Still one of the only shoes that look better scuffed up.

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Here’s what’s up!

I’m into edamame again like wild. It’s all about ‘nerding’ out right now, do what you love. Same vein, I am into Web 2.0 heavy. I bought those new trash bags that are supposed to stretch and not puncture or whatever…they don’t work. I need more of those H&M socks. The weather is switching and summer sizzles. Grand Rapids is quite the interesting city to live in. Mystery project? Thursday nights out with the crew is always a good look. Chuck is speaking here next week. I’m getting sick of Noodles & Co. That AKA and Krink book are pretty amazing. Rembrandt’s Premium Mouth Wash is the only way to go. New ideas keep me going everyday. My friends/crew are next level. This website is crazy…who knew? We get hilarious emails. That DJ Lt. Dan - Chopped & Screwed Michael Jackson is fresh. I think aNYthing is the only one that matters right now. I rock dirty Vans now a days, no more fresh sneakers. Chuck sent me on of the upcoming NoPattern / NP&CO shirts…I don’t even like t-shirts, but its perfect! You ever heard of T3XTER.com? Stop trying to be exclusive and start trying to be inclusive. I basically just really grasped why Del.icio.us is so incredible, hats-off to those guys. I love vintage James Bond posters. I kind of don’t like cars. I’m buying a track bicycle. I’m out for the night… I bet there are spelling errors in here.

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Explore the Abyss!

I know Ben and I both are always talking about stuff like this…deep sea life, or stuff in space, NASA stuff, galaxies, Captain Planet, Aquaman…you know. Anyways, this is just one of those cool things I felt like posting because it’s really just incredible to me. Explore The Abyss, maybe you’ve seen it before, is just this site dedicated to deep-sea and oceanic life. You need to go there and just start looking through the photography gallery. It’s nuts…The octopus in the image you see to the right is one of the craziest looking things…check out the Bioluminescence section…check out this dude! Damn! Don’t want to make him mad, he’ll rip your lips straight off your face if you aren’t careful. I love stuff like this, I think, because it’s something that is so foreign and so mysterious. Just imagine the kinds of things that haven’t been found yet, you know? Probably hundreds of thousands more undiscovered species of crazy Trillfish and Octopizzles. Probably!

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New SVSV - so you won’t catch on fire!

SVSV is back at it with a new collection and an online boutique that is now open. I know this isn’t brand new news, but I don’t like posting news about something at the same time that it goes around on other sites…it’s nice to spread it out sometimes…so anyways, once again, the SVSV campaign images shot by my man Kareem Black is gorgeous…very simple and elegant. Just enough to complement the pieces in the line. Check out the bullets too, very nice. Cashmere hats, scarves, New Era fitted, tee’s…lots of cool stuff on here. And most of the stuff is fireproof, in case you are ever walking around at a party or friends’ house and someone pours gasoline all over you while you light a match…it should come in handy then. But for real - what if someone was wearing the fireproof hoodie and they really did get caught in a fire somehow and it saved them?! THEN WHAT?!

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Riding Giants!

Whoa…just mind blowing. I have always been just a bit infatuated with surfing. Am I a surfer? I really wish I was…I mean, I have surfed the clear warm waters of Maui, but it was my first and only time. Trust me that I’ll be back out there. But anyway, I don’t know what prompted me to hit my local Block Buster for this movie…actually I think I was trying to get The Beach but they were out of it. So yeah, this movie just floored me. The sheer size of the waves these guys are riding is just mind numbing. 60+ foot walls of water. Picture like a half a city block, 6 stories tall of water overhead…unreal. Absolutely unreal. Greg Noll, Laird Hamilton, Pat Curran…all those guys. Just so wild. I would highly, highly recommend this movie. Just Greg Noll’s commentary parts are worth it alone…that guy is hilarious, and wild. Surf movies are the new dunks…you heard it here first on the brilliance.

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Fishscale!

Bet you ain’t know I had a fake arm! Of course..of course I’m going to post about the new Ghost album. I mean, come on, every arty-emo-kid-turned-downtown-scenester-type pledges their allegiance to Ghost…to the point where its almost corny. Anyway, enough of the low-key snaps… This album really is pretty wild. No it’s not Supreme Clientele…but if this album just happened to be the first Ghost album you ever heard…you would be ‘bugging’ as the kids say. Favorite tracks: The Champ, Beauty Jackson, Barbershop, Underwater, Jellyfish…and all the pre-release stuff too you know. Seriously, this some classic Ghostface. Classic, like…it gets better with more listens. But yeah, of course the question is always if it can got platinum, etc… I don’t know, I hope so…I hope it’s huge, I really do…but it’s still a bit abstract for the whole MTV setup…and it will certainly be heavily bootlegged. Speaking of bootlegging, when the hell are these artist going to just skip regular CDs and release on iTunes only? They would skip all the bootlegging thing…right?! So I didn’t even talk about the album that much, but Ghost is perfectly ‘out-there’ and is true artist…top 3. And yo, how weird is that ‘Heart Street’ skit…ha?!

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Cobra Snake on Page Six!

Page-Sssssssssssix! Get it? Like a snake? Sssss!?! No? Yo, anyway…the main dude who takes them snaps landed himself on NY Post’s infamous Page Six column today. I’ll be honest, I don’t even sweat living in New York or anything, but I would love to see my name on Page Six some day…of course in positive regard. Is that corny? Maybe so…but who cares? So yeah, check the link…it’s about him throwing his first photography exhibit/opening downtown NYC at Hollywood’s Roosevelt Hotel. Seriously…hats off to the guy. A true member of ‘genre now.’ As Mr. Mark Hunter would say himself…’fools know, fools know.’ Best of luck at the show Mark!!!

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Business 2.0 & Space 2.0!

Am I late on this one? I think I might be, I don’t know when this issue came out. So this is like the ‘new’ space race I guess you could say…but what makes this one entirely different, and way more important to ‘regular’ people, is that all the contenders are private companies. No more government only space missions. We all saw the SpaceShipOne thing go down…I thought it was great, very historic and all that…but kind of like ‘cool, who cares though? The stuff is still way too expensive!’ You know? But after reading this latest issue of Business 2.0 my mind has changed a bit. Just like any damn dot com idea in 97-99 could get venture capital funding…the new privatized industry of space is getting some heavy funding, and with results to match. The idea that people could be living ‘off of earth’ in the next 50-100 years is entirely possible according to the people that are trying to make it happen. It’s almost like yappy loft developers talking about some terrible neighborhood that they have a vision for. They sound crazy when they first pitch it, but when you’re trying to parallel park between that G500 and XK8 in the newly gentrified area 3 years later…you sit back and think ‘when was this area not nice?’ Who is to say that will be our thoughts on space 50 years from now? So yeah…I always have to put some real-estate spin on it…but honestly the whole idea of privatized space travel is pretty wild. I think my favorite piece from the Business 2.0 write up was the space elevator. Just the idea that a massive counter-weight could actually hold it in place blows me away…so cool. Anyway, this was a long post about space…which is kind of weird. Off-topic…does anyone else thing the official NASA logo is really, really well designed…like the one that is always on the circle patch? Not just the plain one, but the more intricate one? Wow, this post is too long…what a joke, I can’t believe your still reading it.