But I fall asleep with the TV on, at 3am they play O Canada…

Shotgunreview.ca is one of my favourite feeds to skim when I am looking for something distinctly, but not obnoxiously Canadian. Bill Rodgers work is heart stopping and Kim Neudorf has a great review of his autumn exhibition at Skew Gallery.

Kim Neudorf’s Shotgun-Review.ca: Bill Rodgers at Skew Gallery

The books we encounter and live with, particularly the antique or flea-market find, eventually take on a knowingness and even a gaze. These books not only link to the past but link to the moment of the find, unexpectedly reactivating traces of ourselves. The statement for Bill Rodgers’ recent exhibition Studies in Citizenship echoes the ceremonial, austere presence of his chosen subject: the early 20th century reference book for rural Canadians. These books evoke a “rigor of self-reliance”, declaring themselves through modest covers and “self conscious and distilled” titles which suggest the boundaries and necessity of their contents.

Title credit: Joel Plaskett Emergency, True Patriot Love

I turned it over in my mind like a living chinese finger trap, seaweed and indiana sawgrass

I have had an enormous design crush on Todd Falkowsky since coming across a Becker’s post by the (also very design crushworthy) Hannah Wise on the Canadian Design Resource.

He is still making cool things, and now he’s forming young pencil-propped design minds as well.

Go see his pick for this year’s colour. {Oh WordPress, quit trying to correct my perfect spelling.}

Also, if you are a Canadian designer (or a Canada-based designer) and you are going to be in Toronto on May 30 — email me ASAP. I have some exciting top secret project news to disperse, and I’m looking for participants. Ones who understand why this is funny:

Title Credit: The Mountain Goats, Pale Green Things

Ed. Note: Thank you Hannah for catchin my Becker’s blip 😉 You two design-fiends keep doin what you are doin – CDR should be on everyone’s radar rss feeds.

And then we’ll all take photographs of what we made…lemonade

I love it when my likes overlap. It is no secret that I have an affinity for beards. Or photography. Baseball may be one of my more closely kept likes. It stole my no-depth-perceptioned heart when I was 12 and Roberto Alomar hadn’t yet done anything more troubling than McCain’s Catch The Taste commercials.

One of my favourite Chicago-based art-makers recently posted his ode to the legendary Mr. Alec Soth, teeming up three of my likes.

{Click through to see Jonathan Gitelson’s Sothdog Millionaire}

Want to see the legendary beard in person? Sign-up for the Photo-Bookworks Symposium at Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY (July 1-3). And to make this post completely circular, 31 Prince Street is where I first saw Mike Mandel’s Baseball Photographer Trading Cards, and met a bunch of my bearded friends.

Here is Alec Soth’s original baseball card post, via his archived blog. I think that officially exhausts Beards, Baseball and Photography for today.

Title credit: Guided By Beards Voices, Weed King

But it’s okay. I’ll find a bookstore and buy Saul Bellow.

I love this blog. It makes me want to make more books. I’m almost done NYAAC, and have another idea boiling over on the burner. Here comes a productive streak, thank god.

Title credit: American Music Club, Myopic Books

When I first met you, I walked you to your car, you said “let’s take a drive”, we parked beneath the stars.

“…and although this photograph was taken long before I was born, I could at last imagine a scene like the ones that used to unfold one floor beneath us, and I could see the beauty, sweetness, and love that brought those couples together and sustained their friendships, in some cases, going on sixty years.” [Read the rest of “Photography changes how we imagine the past” here]

Great photo essay resource from the Smithsonian Photography Initiative at http://click.si.edu/Default.aspx. Some big names as well as new & up-and-comers.

Title credit: Rialto, Failing in Love

I got sunburned waiting for the jets to land

Critical Art Ensemble editions at Circuit Gallery. Glad affordable art has caught on. Wish I didn’t want so many of their prints.

Title credit: Sparklehorse, Piano Fire

Necessary time waster of the day

Breadline Design Naming Machine.

For all those about to rock start a design business, I salute you.

Not the pizze place on Winton…

Captain Tony’s Saloon, Key West, Florida, Hemmingway’s Sloppy Joes.

But still awesome.

(I was lookin for cheap pizza yesterday)

Heaven knows it’s got to be this time, avenues all lined with trees, picture me and then you start watching.

Yesssss. (If Drawings Were Photographs : Rob Matthews, via Caustic Cover Critic)

Title credit: New Order, Ceremony

Tomorrow will you drive around this town, and let the cops chase us around?

To all my fellow Gin Blossom fans.

Title credit: see video.