Below: Vogue, June 2009, Bottom left: Vanity Fair, January 2003, Bottom right: Vanity Fair, January 2000



Also see: Testino's beautiful, sexy, vibrant work for VF over the years here
Pretentious? Moi?
Once a name catches on among high-income, highly educated parents, it starts working its way down the socioeconomic ladder. Amber, Heather, and Stephanie started out as high-end names. For every high-end baby given those names, however, another five lower-income girls received those names within 10 years.Today, Wired offers another collection of theories for "Why Your Baby’s Name Will Sound Like Everyone Else’s":
Now that everyone relentlessly Googles baby names, parents have no excuse if they saddle their kids with the most popular names. But Wattenberg says they still want names that sound popular, so they end up choosing endless variations on phonetic schemes that happen to be popular: Ava, Emma, Ella, Bella.

Grey Poupon is owned and manufactured by Kraft Foods. It is the processed cheese of mustards. It is the fucking Velveeta of faux-French products. Can we all shut the fuck up?
I just came across this blog post which perfectly summarizes everything I love about Martha Stewart." I have put my finger on why Martha Stewart is so appealing a personality: She is 100% transparent. For example, she has mentioned in passing on each of the two shows immediately following the show on which Mario Batali appeared that Mario's new thing is a "broken [i.e., not completely emulsified] vinaigrette." Now, you know that the idea of a vinaigrette that is not completely emulsified just kills her. The fact that she cannot stop talking about it and probably does so simply because she can (it's her own damn show, after all) is what makes her so awesome. Also, I love how she just talks over any comments from her guests that don't fit into her plan for the progression of the segment. For example, if banter from, say, Ludacris gets in the way of completing a craft project on air, she just ignores the banter as if she didn't hear it."From The Imaginary Jenny
Polls show that the ranks of atheists are growing. The American Religious Identification Survey, a major study released last month, found that those who claimed “no religion” were the only demographic group that grew in all 50 states in the last 18 years.But it's still true that you can be completely alienated from some American communities if you don't believe in God. Just witness this moment below (NSFW). It's both hilarious and totally frightening.
Nationally, the “nones” in the population nearly doubled, to 15 percent in 2008 from 8 percent in 1990. In South Carolina, they more than tripled, to 10 percent from 3 percent. Not all the “nones” are necessarily committed atheists or agnostics, but they make up a pool of potential supporters.
Condi got grilled by a D.C. fourth grader about waterboarding. Actually, he didn't press and observed the request to not use the word "torture." Wussy."GRADUATE education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market."
--Mark C. Taylor, the chairman of the religion department at Columbia, in " End the University as We Know It", Op-Ed for the NY Times
A Los Angeles Trend Worth Following for Earth Day
WIRED is one of the most exciting print magazines out there*“Blog posts can effectively summarize a story and give you the takeaway idea,” said Thomas Goetz, the deputy editor of Wired. But print publications, he said, are still better suited to conveying “the nuance and effort of understanding the complexity of an idea and why it matters — what the riddles and wrinkles are within an idea.”via NYT, "A Magazine With a Puzzle Buried Inside"

Item 1100:
Paul Bedard (American, 20th century)
Portrait of famous figures wearing Michael Jackson sunglasses and sequined gloves, including Mona Lisa, George Washington, and Albert Einstein.
Acrylic on canvas, signed, and dated 85.
Unframed.
48 by 54 inches
$1,000-2,000
More synchronicity... a day after I found Sneeze magazine in Gastown, Vancouver is Awesome started V.I.A. Imprint, "an ongoing feature concerning book and magazine publishers, book stores, and all things print in this city of ours." Hey. Things catch fire sometimes, even in “real” kitchens. Things overcook, they undercook, they look like something the cat dragged in, they’re oversalted, underspiced, soggy when they should be crisp, dry when they should be moist . . . in restaurants, good restaurants, chefs do these over. On TV, chefs gloss these over. Rarely are you given a sense of what really goes on.
The home cook, especially the aspiring home cook, needs encouragement — not befuddlement. Show people what actually happens in the kitchen, show people that mistakes are made (”The grand thing about cooking is you can eat your mistakes” — Julia Child), show people that, just as you need not be Rafael Nadal to play tennis, you need not be Gordon Ramsay to cook a decent meal.
Talk about songs that are way too obscene to potentially be playing on the radio when one is in the car with one’s mom: “I want to what you like an animal?” We were in the parking lot of the White Oak Library when this happened, I remember it very vividly. In that moment I wished that Tipper Gore had won, so that I wouldn’t have to defend the free speech rights of someone who thinks it’s ok/original to rhyme “penetrate” and “desecrate” (and “complicate”!).

BOAO, China — Action star Jackie Chan said Saturday he's not sure if a free society is a good thing for China and that he's starting to think "we Chinese need to be controlled."
Chan's comments drew applause from a predominantly Chinese audience of business leaders in China's southern island province of Hainan.
The 55-year-old Hong Kong actor was participating in a panel at the annual Boao Forum when he was asked to discuss censorship and restrictions on filmmakers in China. He expanded his comments to include society.
"I'm not sure if it's good to have freedom or not," Chan said. "I'm really confused now. If you're too free, you're like the way Hong Kong is now. It's very chaotic. Taiwan is also chaotic."
Chan added: "I'm gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we're not being controlled, we'll just do what we want."--Via HuffPo (and AP)









With issue 72, Geist switches to vegetable-based inks and eco-friendly paper: 40 percent post-consumer fibre inside and 100 percent post-consumer fibre for the cover."Did you [Bill O'Reilly] really say you are more powerful than any politician?
"That reminds me of the famous story about Squeaky the Chicago Mouse. It seems that Squeaky was floating on his back along the Chicago River one day. Approaching the Michigan Avenue lift bridge, he called out: Raise the bridge! I have an erection!" "
--Roger Ebert
Lads' mag sales have been plummeting for a while now, and it's hard to mourn the losses. The mistake would be to think that the decline of these magazines reflects a decline in misogyny. It's likely readers are migrating online, where they can find much more hardcore material, much more cheaply.--Kira Cochrane, The Guardian
"One thing that Vancouver has been particularly adept at doing is obliterating it's own history."
The CBC Radio 3 Podcast is four years old! Today, Grant Lawrence released the 200TH PODCAST with new tracks from Metric, Arcade Fire, Joel Plaskett, MSTRKRFT, Handsome Furs, plus Super 90 Second Egg, Canadian Dictionary, and Failed Features.
So long as I have fingers, I will keep scrolling Waxin' & Milkin', a "visual mixtape" (the most ingenious and successful idea I have seen in a while). 
The fantastically creative and original Another Magazine has appeared in many forms on the newsstands. It's consistently hard to find because it seems to be redesigned every few months. But now you can read it online for free; yes, that's all 300+ pages of art-y, fashion-y glory — ads included. Just enter your email address here for access.