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.

476 small

My emails to Chuck!

I think we did something like this before, something similar. Alright, Chuck and I stay in contact via email quite a bit and I occasionally will come up with crazy/weird/unbelievable stories of something that fictitiously happened to me to see if he believes it. There have been a handful, but I’d like to highlight a couple famous ones. My personal favorite is when I was away from my computer for a while and Chuck was expecting and email from me. When I finally got back to my computer (after a hair cut) I told Chuck the reason for the delay was because, out of no where, a stray dog attacked me by my car in my office parking lot…and that I was in the waiting room at the ER using my Treo. Part of his response: ‘Where did it bite you?!!?’ Hands down one of the funnier emails ever. Seriously, I’m laughing right now. A stray dog? One of the more recent ones, today in fact, goes something like this. I was out for a bit and hadn’t talked to Chuck for a minute…and when I got back I told him that I was at the bookstore and got a call about an emergency meeting back at my office about 5 minutes away. I told him that while I was driving back, what appeared to be a black plastic bag was tumbling across the highway and it ‘hit’ my car…and that immediately I got a flat tire and my car limped to a stop…when I got out I discovered that there were quills stuck all over my tire and some blood as if I hit an animal, not a plastic bag. I told him that I must have hit a porcupine. And the best part…I actually had him for a few minutes. Now, if this isn’t the most ‘out there’ and nonsensical post you’ve ever read…then, I don’t know what to tell you. Email us your thoughts.

474 small

That new LR3 commercial!

Another post about car commercials? In all reality, let’s be honest, this isn’t a huge deal. GPS is GPS…and little hand-held nav could probably have done this just as well. But it’s cool, you know? It’s fun/good branding and marketing. I am a huge Land Rover fan, I probably always will be…but I can’t imagine owning one again after my current Discovery until they come out with some sort of hybrid. But anyway…yeah, this is great little commercial. And they also have the ‘documentary’ of how they made it happen as well. Doesn’t beat out the Range Rover Sport commercial done in Tokyo, but it’s cool. That’s my post…

475 small

Airtreks.com!!

Man, I’ve never really seen anything like this before…yet another thing I was ignorant to. Man, this service is nuts. They have this flash-based map that allows you to build a crazy trip, all sorts of connections in any city around the world that might interest you…then it comes back with a real-time pricing estimate in like 10 seconds. For example, I did NYC -> Paris -> Rome -> Barcelona -> Phuket -> Cook Islands - > Sydney -> Seattle. It came back with a few added suggestions, some other cool islands and an addition in Europe I think with a total pricing of $3850-$4500. Wow, that doesn’t sound all that expensive does it? Especially when you would be staying at hostels. Anyway, I love the interface on this site…one of the sites that’s fun to play around with. Also, when you are done with the pricing part they connect you with a travel agent to make all the adjustments and actually book everything. Anyway, cool site…check it out.

473 small

Congratulations Kaws!

Honestly, how could I not post this? What, cause Kaws does stuff with Nigo he’s not a creative genius anymore? Drama aside, this store he just opened with Medicom is quite amazing, a lot of spaces these days are amazing…what floored me is the 10ft tall ‘Companion’ that’s sliced down the middle to show what it would anatomically look like…just unreal. The first thing that popped into my head was the logistics and cost of getting something like that made. It’s amazing. Sorry to sound like I’m drooling on it, but this is creativity and passion in physical form right here. I mean, yeah congrats on the store, great biz move, but let this post be strictly about this sculpture, work of art, that he has created. Instead of ostentatious ‘bling’, 14kt shoe laces, exclusivity, etc…Kaws took a different route and simply created a beautifully mysterious work of art that anyone who hits the store up can experience. I don’t even have any Kaws stuff, so this post is non-biased to that degree, you know? Congrats to Kaws, you are truly a ‘next level’ person. ***Thanks for Jason for putting me up to Damien Hirst’s work…sorry, I was ignorant to it!

472 small

Toronto, NYC, and my Flickr page!!

Did that deserve two !!‘s? I don’t know! Anyways, I’m late on the Flickr thing, but I thought it would be appropriate to do since I’ve been traveling a lot and have a new digital camera (Sony W50, which by the way is a great little camera…) Anyways, I was in Toronto last week speaking at FITC as well as attending the reception for my exhibition at Magic Pony with Eric Quebral. So there are pictures from both events in Toronto on there. Then, last week, I traveled up to New York with Nigel Dennis. We went into the Triple 5 Soul stores in Soho and Brooklyn and did an art installation that was, definitely, one of the most fun trips of my life. Even though we stayed up working until about 6-7 AM working for 3 days…Anyways, check the pictures out and see a bunch of cool people having a good time enjoying drinks and our artwork on the walls. Thanks to everyone who came out and found me to say hi, and mentioned how much you liked THE BRILLIANCE! Ben couldn’t go, but he was there in spirit, or something. Anyways, this is my 3rd post within 24 hours. I’m getting better…now I just have to keep it up. Alright, well go check out the Triple 5 Soul stores in person anytime in the next 7 months. That’s how long it’s all staying up. Crazy… And hey, that restaurant ‘Sea’ in Brooklyn, the one they filmed the beginning of Garden State in, is really really good. I had pad thai. Super interesting huh.

471 small

And now some art stuff.

I feel like talking about artsy/design stuff now too. After I mentioned Pearl Jam in that last post about music, I remembered how much I used to love their video for “Do The Evolution” by Todd McFarlane (see it here). I went and watched it again and it got me feeling all creative and inspired. Which got me thinking about a lot of artists whose work I’ve been admiring lately. So I’ll share. I’m going to let all their work do the talking too, so just click the links at will and go into it knowing all these people are unbelievably talented and worth a look. Tomer Hanuka, James Jean, Geoff McFetridge (and while you’re at it, Shynola), NFCTD (good Lord, very nice), Vault 49, Inka Essenhigh, Harsh Patel, and Tiffany Malakooti. Already seen all of them? Half of them? None of them? Just go, they’re all worth a look again or for the first time. We could all use a little creative inspiration…Look at me, getting all artistic on here. This is supposed to be a place to talk about cars, islands, money, cell phones, and cool technology! Ha, well, get your black glasses and your tight pants on and start drawing, grasshopper.

469 small

Gridlove!

Monday, back at it, kind of. We get a fair amount of emails…and sorry to say, but most of them are kind of corny. Lots of sneaker stuff, ‘fashion’ stuff, etc…but we got an email yesterday that kind of blew me away. Anson from Gridlove hit us up about his new product, Gridlove, and how he did a Gridlove x The Brilliance thing for us. Wow. I’m still not explaining the service as well as I’d like, but it’s a beautiful example of creativity and new technology smashed together. Anson likens it to a game of Dominos…users are collaboratively placing images next to other images that have some inherent commonality. It’s one of those things one the web that can become highly addictive. I see it applying to a bunch of pictures all your friends took at a party last night, to a modeling agency using it to organically find similarities in pictures while viewing them all at once…or, honestly, whatever the end user can come up with. This is one of those open ended web-things that kind of takes a life of its own…wild stuff. Yeah, so many thanks to Anson. Check the one he did for the brilliance at the link below, then explore his site a bit to learn more on how it works. Web 2.0 at it’s finest.

470 small

Music and some other stuff!

Hi! No, I’m not dead. I know I haven’t posted in a while either, or been very consistent with it. Ben sends me harassing emails about it too. I’ll get better, I promise. I just spent about a week and a half traveling. I was in Toronto and then New York. Both trips were great. Thanks if you came to see me speak at FITC or my gallery at Magic Pony, or came out to the Triple5Soul store in Brooklyn on Thursday night. ANYWAYS! I’m going to write about music, because I want to. Let’s start with the Crystal Skulls’ new album Outgoing Behavior. What a great album. You can listen to this over and over and not get tired of it, it’s a very smooth album. I got the new Tool album 10,000 Days. It’s Tool, so you know it’s technically incredible…no doubts there. As for the album itself, it doesn’t seem to be as great as past albums, but it is still good without question. Haven’t heard the new Pearl Jam yet, but I listened to a bunch of old Pearl Jam over the weekend and remembered how good they actually are. New Red Hot Chili Peppers single ‘Dani California’ is pretty fresh, and the video is great, so I’ll be checking that album out… No hip-hop in my little write-up today, mostly becase it’s all dried up and stale…that Gnarls Barkley stuff is pretty refreshing actually, Cee-Lo can sing too! Damn! Other than that, I’ve been listening to the best of Bob Dylan non-stop lately…Threw some older stuff on too today…Frodus’ And We Washed Our Weapons In The Sea is such a good record…I’d definitely pick that one up if I were you. Then again, I’m not you, and you’re probably listening to Matchbox 20. Wah wah. Anyways, check the link below too for my favorite band when I was in high school. Yes, I’m serious.

467 small

We’re still alive!

Whoa! No posts in quite a while. Chuck’s on the road touring with his screamo band and I’ve been tending to my rare orchid garden. Just kidding…? Anyway, yeah, let me do another one of these posts. This whole ‘Second Life’ and virtual world gaming stuff is a bit weird to me, cool they are making money, but still weird. Where the hell is Sprint’s new Treo? I’ve been biking quite a bit lately, check for me in traffic. The big-wig got back to me, but it was a ‘no’. Still pretty amazing that he even fielded my proposal. I have a visitor in for weekend, they’ve never been to the Midwest, should be interesting. I heard DG got attacked by a rather large rat in the wee hours of an NYC night. I’m addicted to those Starbucks Frapp things in the glass bottles. Nice weather, finally. A real good friend of mine took a vacation from life and is currently 4 months into his travel around the world, very inspiring, shout to Johnny B. Speaking of traveling, I just watched ‘The Beach’ the other night, hadn’t seen it in a while, great flick. I gotta go to the airport in 1.5 hours. Lynx Air is an awesome company, google them. ABC’s ‘Lost’ is…enough to drive you crazy. I heard they are making all sorts of web sites that are mysteriously linked to the show. Unrelated, and they haven’t launched yet, but T3XTER.com is pretty nice. I go there too much, but Bar Divani just never gets old to me. Keep grinding, keep moving…we’ll start updating more next week.

466 small

Eric Elms!

I don’t really post up specific designers, or artist… We get a lot of emails on them and all that, but never really post them up. And me personally, I don’t always feel very educated in the whole scene…so you know you gotta walk on egg shells and all that. But whatever, I just like what I like. And I like what Eric Elms does. I love hand drawn illustration, I love that his stuff isn’t all ‘arty’ even though it truly is, I love the playfulness, the heritage his stuff seems to have – could last forever, I like how he has quite obviously hustled and fully understands the business aspect of things…he has done a lot at the age of 25. I have so much respect for that. Yeah. His stuff for Supreme is next level…wow. The stuff just gives a nostalgic feel of ‘downtown’ New York imagery…again, it has this feel of heritage. And the stuff he did for Rudy’s Barbershop…classic stuff, Rudy’s is perfectly executed…what’s up Alex? But yeah, Eric just did an interview with Being Hunted, a good one. We should have tried to do one. Either way, check it out at the link below, and check his site right here. Man, I’ve been eating those Babybel cheese things and drinking diet coke all day today.