The emperor's new clothes.

I've been thinking about ranting about this site for a while now, but after seeing some of the stuff up there today is the last straw. There are a few of these men's fashion idiot blogs on the web that seem to dabble in over priced designer faux vintage 'americana' style.

HYRCollective is based in Victoria or Vancouver BC and its at the top of my list for scathing hatred.

I suppose once in a while there's something interesting that comes up, but most the time its shit you could find at Walmart for 1% of the price.

Though its mostly the bombastic clothing designers that are to blame for thinking they have the right to charge astronomical sums for such bland run of the mill crap, I feel more disgust for the losers that soak this stuff up like a sponge and write reviews using the word "swoon" when referring to them.

Maybe its because I picture most of these blog writers as some sleeve tattooed ex-american-apparel-neon-dunks-hipster/kanye-west-goes-preppy bandwagoneers.



[sic] Coming in at about $90 it’s not a bad price for a cap you’ll definitely have for a few years. While some people complain about the price of a cap, it’s actually an item that you can easily wear 5-7 days a week without worrying about it. That gets the cost-per-wear down quickly and makes a $100 hat not seem so bad.


NINETY FUCKIN DOLLARS FOR A GODDAMN TOQUE?? What hell is wrong with these people. You think thats acceptable? Was the damn cloth dyed with blood of Micheal Jackson?





DESIGNER WALMART HUNTING JACKET, Sign me up!





Common Projects get a lot of love on h(y)r collective, that’s because they get a lot of love on our feet. Some people will never go beyond their beloved Vans for sneakers, and that’s fine, for canvas. But for us, and leather, it begins and ends with Common Projects. The range has grown nicely each season, the spring and fall collections are always a little different, but connected by a familiar aesthetic and the OGs. The white Achilles low is the best white leather sneaker you can own. The price may not be your favorite, but the shoe should be. The low profile, extremely durable sole is a perfect fit for the Nappa leather upper and buttery soft interior. I personally will tough out a cold day with no socks just to feel the Italian made softness against my feet. With the opening of our online shop just around the corner and our launch party announced, we are complimenting our collaborative efforts with just a few of our favorite products. We have a reasonable stock of the great white hype ready for your feet ready for the launch.

Common GARBAGE footwear


Please, can I pay $300 USD for a pair of knock off Keds?


If you scan the site for long enough you'll get a perfect image of the general look these guys are trying too pull of... I believe its, "I just spent my trust fund on this outfit but I look like I'm head to toe in fuckin' OLD NAVY".

Half of this 'new' fashion direction is heavily tied to vintage "Ivy League college campus style".

The prepp... I mean 'Ivy League' revival style bible seems to be this Japanese photo book from the 60s called Take Ivy


Some of these freaks have supposedly paid $1000s for copies of this ridiculous book on ebay, no doubt created by a hilariously creepy Japanese man who lurked around 60s college campuses staring at east coast american snobs.

Leave it to the HYRCollective to try to recreate this book... in Victoria BC at a high school with a bunch of 30 somethings


While we're talkin' about preppy cool, Andy Bernard is one heck of a snappy dresser! Were to I sign up for the Glee Club?

Xbox Indie Game Round Up

After a hard weekend of staying up til 3am getting mosquitoes drunk on my blood at a campsite, then going too a wedding getting mosquitoes drunk in a pavilion near a pond, my friend and I spent our hangover morning browsing the wonders of the Xbox Live marketplace.

We took a trip through the Indie Games category, aka "I writes thas games for uos tos pLay":













First impressions: Its astounding how many people love the Comic Sans font. I guess it lends itself well to the zaniness of mid 90s SuperVGA shareware grade shit. 90% of these games use some kind of rendered space blob scene and with a few blinding full blasted colour objects congregating on the screen in some dizzying display of pink laser bullets.

Alot of them involve Balls. There is a severe love of Balls and Ball titled games.
Battle Ball, AceBall, MothBallz, Get The Ball etc.

If you like chinese animation, you will find it here.

Further if you like using the xbox controller to massage/pleasure yourself, you can find that here as well.


In amoung this riff raff, we found a few stand out gems that decided to break off from the norm and attempt something totally different then a Asteroids rip off.



First comes this thing we've nicknamed the TARHD, for obvious reasons.

The TARHD is just a spinning annoying vortex, buy it for $5 for more vortex animations and comic sans instructions.

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Urban Art Gallery : Graphically the talent on this thing is a bit better.. but unless your idea of "Urban Art" is equivalent to "stuff used in Bus Shelters & Subway Stations to sell feminine hygiene products" ... it might not be up your alley.

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Weapon of Choice has a perfect sex content rating, 3/3. Mutant spider teats really get me going:



"INSANE ACTION and HUMONGOUS ALIENS tied together by a TWISTED STORY. Branching levels, 4 unique endings, 7 characters each with a Weapon of Choice. Reap revenge with the Vengeance Missile. Cheat death with Deathbrushing! Scale walls with the Spiderpack. Rock out to original, blistering metal guitar tracks. Enough gameplay to rot your teeth! Third Place in Microsoft’s Dream Build Play 2008. v.1.06"

You've sold me! Sounds like I'm going to need a whole Case of mountain dew for this adventure.

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Unfortunately, the final and best(worst) game we game across doesn't appear in the Xbox Live Creators Club site results.

It's totally in chinese, so I can't even explain what the name of it is.

It's some horrid thing where you're this ninja that travels across the screen horizontally shooting ninja stars upwards, or slashing left or right at stupid enemies and geisha women.

Eventually it seems to bug out and draws clipping rectangle overlays on everything in red/blue while you are being annihilated by weird spider legged ghouls which you cannot defeat.

For some reason you can use the right stick to pan the entire game off screen so you can enjoy the amazing music, but not subject yourself to the array of Red/Blue squares attacking you.

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We were also lamenting at how many games involve rodents with weapons after seeing a the trailer for that Disney movie game with the talking hamster who shoots lasers beams, uh... G Force, and some indie games about battle mice.

Matthew said, well, the games ARE targeted at children, I said by children you mean heavily stoned adults.

Probably Richard Gere too..



"Hello my 35 year old son, what are you up to today? Hopefully preparing for a date with a nice lady?"

"Nah.. just covered in cheetoes on the couch in my basement apartment playing this sweet game where I'm a hamster that shoots laser beams at stuff. I don't even want to get up so I'm using my laundry basket as a makeshift bed pan"

Recent Blog annoyance round up

- Kindle, fuck this piece of shit. Who wants a $500 monochrome text reader that's the size of a sheet of fucking legal paper. I just checked my calendar, and its not NINTEEN-NINTEY-TWO. Go bankrupt already and stop flooding tech blogs with your waste of publicity.

- NES hacks / NES merch / NES anything. Get a life you retards. You're really wasting your goddamn time 'hacking' a 25+ year old game system into a portable 'purse' system ? Have you ever seen a Gameboy DS?????
Is this just you admitting your to technically challenged to program an XNA/iPhone/Flash game?
Wait ... thank god you can't/ I don't want to see any stupid ass pixel graphic'd Mario wannabe bullshit games you cook up.
Most of the morons into NES merchandise were probably conceived when Genesis and SNES were mainstream consoles. Get a life.

- Star Wars hacks/merchandise. Give it up. George Lucas killed the franchise with those dumb prequels about 8 years ago, and your Darth Vader tea cozy is 30 years too late.


UPDATE:
I just saw probably the 12th Kindle post of the day. I wish I could turn one of those things into KINDLE-ING!!

steampunk,
gorepunk,

now oilpunk?



Just give it up boingboing. Enough of the anything-punk stupidity. How does adding punk to anything give it any more significance or credibility. Do these people dress up like extras from Carnival and rock out to Social Distortion or something?

SARAH'S COTTAGE

Holy shit, I'm witnessing this HGTV decorator:


Renovate her goddamn cottage.. that her husband bought when he was 'single'... that is located on a FUCKING PRIVATE ISLAND.

So they're boating contractors and supplies out to do the work of putting an extension on her rich asshole cottage palace... on a private island.


above: Your standard rustic 'cottage' kitchen.

She's 'struggling' right now with capturing the right 'vintage' vibe for her cottage, thats the size of a suburban home.. on a private island.

Her normal show is about the fucking TV station funding her renovating her mansion. So she's extended it to this as well. Except for this job they have to pay the contractors triple... to travel to the private island.

"Taking a boat takes time, lucky my husband has a pilot's license!"

Its an empire built on the best self sales bullshitting in Canada! Good work now you and your husband who have enough money to buy a private island don't have to worry about funding the cottage reno either.



you make me sick, who wants to watch this bragathon.

-c'mon.

Who's in the driving seat of this boingboing shit car?

I read BoingBoing.net. Sometimes they have interesting posts. 50% of the time they post about ukuleles and steampunk.

Its probably just the editor/contributor's obsession with both intensely stupid topics, but its so frequent its almost like there is money involved, payola from Jo Honolulu Ukuleles Inc. and Col. Waxy Mustache's Brass Gears and Clockworks.


Above: Jo Honolulu


Above: Col. Waxy Mustache

The ukulele girls, well that's just annoying because its a really shallow topic of interest. Wow another wispy folk girl strumming out some clanky tune on a tinny instrument. Do people really care? Maybe this an attempt at creating some obscure genre of music the editor can list in his Facebook interests. Either way one, maybe two posts would have sufficed. But 5 a week? You've well worn out the novelty.


Above: Some run of the mill Ukulele girl.


Steampunk though, I find that way more offensive. I think I would have less issue with this 'lifestyle' if some genius hadn't piggy backed 'steam' on the word 'punk'. (I notice they've done the same thing with this 'gorepunk' crap, but let me keep to the topic at hand)

So you like..

• anime based in some imaginary history path set in the Victorian era with advanced steam based technology.

• typing on your engraved brass encased Linux box by candle light.

• a horrible band that sounds like the musical offspring of Savage Garden and Evanescense.

• and wearing a top hat & welding goggles with your pizza stained jogging pant ensemble.

You're a fucking nerd.

It's a style derived from an imaginary fairytale world and you're trying to create a lifestyle from it. You're like that Peter Pan creep with better craft skills!


Above: Steam-brother pan.

So please tell me, what does that have to do with the style of stripped down rock & roll music created from distaste for 70s A-O-R plop?

Nothing.

Wait, a minute ... hmmm, maybe it concerns the classic definition of the word 'Punk'.

From Merriam-Webster: Punk


Main Entry:
punk
Function:
noun
Etymology:
origin unknown
Date:
1596

1 archaic : prostitute
2 [probably partly from 3punk] : nonsense , foolishness
3 a: a young inexperienced person : beginner , novice ; especially : a young man b: a usually petty gangster, hoodlum, or ruffian : a young man used as a homosexual partner especially in a prison
4 a: punk rock b: a punk rock musician c: one who affects punk styles


Let me revise the definition of Steampunk to suit!

Steampunk:
A term given to the culture of boy prostitutes who catered to the patrons of Victorian steam baths.


Above:Losers

The work put into the costumes & the objects must really take some skill and hard work... but I don't want to hear about it you dorks. It probably takes a lot of work to make that shitty 'Shaker' style faux-antique scuffed up white furniture too, but I don't want to see that crap in my daily news feed either.


Above: Voluntarily 'Distressed' furniture!

Let me finish with something that hits me a bit to close to home from the google image results....


Above: Steampunk Vespa? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOS!!!!~!

-C'mon

Alright lets get this thing "rolling" heh.

I'm browsing Google images for a photo of some Vespa part to explain something to this local worry wart. I happened upon a Vespa restoration blog I followed for a bit last year while rebuilding my own Vespa, which is quite similar.

Now I notice the most recent post is from March 2009. If I remember they guy was pretty close to finished his scooter last year, so its a shame to see hes still plugging away at it. I guess things came up, totally understandable.

Scanning down, I see this, which made me want to e-slap the guy.

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"Grinding Hardware Stamps"



"As you know the stock kickstand hardware was not stainless steel, nor did it have a stamp on it. I want stainless steel, but I do not want the stamp; therefore I grind'd all four bolt heads for the kickstand hardware. Also note that there are two different washer sizes here. I was in a hurry before I moved West so I just got the bike together. Now that I am settled I can correct those minor errors.

I used my Dremel and just very lightly ground down the stamps and made it all look even. I was able to handhold the bolts.
"



"It is my hope that over the time the bolt head will weather a little bit and look a little more stock with less glossy shine on where I polished it with the Dremel."

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So let me get this straight, you're still working on this thing, you need to take the time to grind the damn "Stainless Steel" text off the cm wide bolts on the floorboards of the scooter, too make it more factory correct..... in a PAINT colour the company didn't even OFFER the fucking scooter in in the first place?

-C'mon.