Red Pepper Flakes. A blog by Imelda Suriato

Roots x Douglas Coupland

The RootxDouglasCoupland clothing line, a collaboration between Douglas Coupland (the author of the bestseller Generation X) and Roots (the Canadian clothing company), finally unveiled in stores yesterday.

I heard about this collaboration through the grapevine a.k.a Twitter and I straightaway thought, oh no, what’s a literary doing with a clothing brand? But then I remembered that he’s also an artist, screenplay writer and producer. His ability to capture our techno-pop-culture extends to his art, where he explores and corrupts dimensions of pop culture and pop art. Andy Warhol’s his favorite study.

The collaboration with Roots features not just clothing, but art installations, sculpture, custom designed art and retail spaces. The RootxDouglasCoupland website is projects Coupland’s aesthetic very strongly –TV test pattern, pixilated objects and punch-card dots to name a few. The warping mouse-over effect that is suspiciously very Yugo Nakamura (remember his Wonderwall?).

To be honest, the pieces are fantastic. Look at these Test Pattern Armwarmers! That’s going into my closet.

When interviewed by Steven Heller, Coupland explained that his Roots clothing line as more of an art/design experiment, part of his exploring new ways of perceiving “being Canadian.” A friend suggested he collaborated with Roots as part of that exploration and he thought “it was a good idea, and wonderfully free of cynicism.”

Coupland also loves Penguin (the Canadian publishing house, not the bird) for their cutting edge worthiness and dutiful minimalism. He’s speaking about the covers and he’s not just saying. For Penguin’s 75^th Anniversary in March, he created Speaking of The Past, celebrating the publishing house with invitation for fans to design their own Penguin covers as well as showcasing the various original templates used from 1935-1963.

His devotion to their simplistic design lines was strongly expressed in this little autobiographical paragraph:

Last month I installed new bookshelves in a room in my house. They’re black, and my painter offered the unsolicited opinion that they might look depressing when completed. I knew he was wrong because, at the very least, the paperback shelf couldn’t help but have a cheerful orange zing a zing that comes from the Penguin spine, the most wonderfully insidious default interior design statement in our culture. Even crack dens glow with Penguins on the shelf.

That, in my opinion, is lovely. What a statement of devotion.

You have to admit, Douglas Coupland is one hell of a creative and productive human being. How inspiring.

A Photoshopped Truth by The Economist

The New York Times’ revealed the truth about the cover of the June 19 issue of The Economist:

You see President Obama standing alone, off-shore oil rigs sitting in the background. His head down, looking forlornly at the ground.  It was a well-chosen image to portray a politically troubled president; he looks like he’s carrying the immense weight of not just the oil spill disaster.

The problem was, he was not actually alone.

The Economist deliberately airbrushed Charlotte Randolph, a local Louisiana official, and Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard out of the photograph to create the right tone to carry their editorial. What? Apparently, Reuters’ stringent standards regarding photo editing didn’t seem to bother them.

As a product of journalism school, I am a believer of some sort of journalism code of ethics: To seek truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues.  However, Walter Shapiro, a PoliticsDaily.com columnist, says “It is time to regain a sense of perspective. We all live in a Photoshopped century.”

Shapiro also pointed out that long before Photoshop, Joseph Stalin (yes, that mustachioed guy from Russia) routinely airbrushed his purged rivals out of photographs of the early days of Russian Revolution. The Economist’s digital manipulation may be far from Stalin’s intention to change (or in this case, custom-made) his history but like The New York Times, we reserved some sort of higher standard for The Economist.

I’m glad for The New York Times’ revelation & Walter Shapiro’s point of view. The next photo editor who thinks he’s found a perfect picture (minus a few pesky details, like another person) would think twice before doing so.

A Nation of Protruding Nails

I was reading Eric Weiner‘s The Geography of Bliss this weekend and I came upon a paragraph that I found very interesting. It’s about what social scientists call “cultural fit,” basically whether you fit into a culture, a country or a place, and it should explain a lot about happiness.

Like people, each culture has its own personality. Some cultures, for instance, are collectivist; other are individualistic. Collectivist cultures, like Japan and other Confucian nations, value social harmony more than any one person’s happiness. Individualistic cultures, like the United states, value personal satisfaction more than communal harmony. That’s why the Japanese have a well-known expression: “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.” In America, the nail that sticks out gets a promotion or a shot at American Idol. We are a nation of protruding nails.

I came from an Asian nation that, although not Confucian, does embrace a collectivist culture. Certainly not in a level that the real Confucian nations adhere to. We are expected to do certain things certain ways for the greater good. (I still don’t know what does group calisthenics every morning in grade school add to the greater good.) You don’t try just for the sake of trying. You try to succeed. You have to succeed because close doesn’t count. Your family (community) relied on you to be a success. I fit fine there. I was happy even though I was a protruding nail. I was the high-school reporter who crashed press conferences, sneaked into concerts to take photos to sell to my friends (yes, I was a paparazzi before I knew the word existed). And yet, I was rewarded with job offers from top glossy magazines and music promoters.

Then I came to the US because I had this hunger for more education, more knowledge. I ended up in a very competitive graduate school and had to learn the American way of being the best. I was worried at first but to be honest, in America, it’s a cushioned fall if you fail, full of encouragement from everyone. School was easy. Teaching was lovely. Then work comes, and then the right company comes, and I love it. So it looks like being in individualistic culture fit me fine. I can handle the envy. I guess I’m always a protruding nail and I fit right in. (In NY City, that is. I tried Portland, Maine, and I had to get out as quickly as possible.)

But everywhere I turn these days, I hear begrudging everywhere: Unemployment at an all-time high, housing market still slumping, Euro in a dive because of Greece with Spain & Portugal following suit… Yeah, the economy sucks, bonuses should be non-existent and people should begrudge. But most people begrudge regardless. We’re turning into a bunch of whining, individualistic babies.

Look in the mirror and stop whining. Individualistic culture without a dash of collectivism makes us run empty and is bound to hit us in the face. It’s what’s ruining the economy and hurting the hell out of corporations. What about some altruism?

Maybe some nails need to be hammered down because they are accidents waiting to happen. Quit whining and let’s drive ourselves out of this slump. And maybe then you’ll be happy.

Superpower your browser

…only if you’re on Firefox & Chrome. (Who isn’t, anyway?) Check out these tips, courtesy of Fast Company.

Set multiple tabs as your browser home page.

Why would anyone stick with single default home page when you can do multiple? You can now set all of your go-to pages (like your Twitter, RSS Feed, WebMail, etc.) to load automatically in tabs when you start your browser. To set this up in Firefox, open only the tabs you want to load when you start, and from the Tools menu, choose Options. Under Startup, in the Home page setting, click the “Use Current Pages” button to set those tabs as your home tabs. In Chrome’s Options you can do the same. Yes, combo is def better than solo.

Automatically restore the last tabs and windows you had open.

You know when you have to shut off the office right this second but you’ve been researching tons of stuff online so you have all these tabs open and you’re wondering how you’d find them again the next day? No worries. You can automatically load what you were looking at when you quit your browser last time. In Firefox’s Options dialog (you know, under the Tools menu), choose “Show my windows and tabs from last time” next to “When Firefox starts.” This will to restore your previous browsing session. In Chrome’s options, on the Basics tab, select “Reopen the pages that were open last.”

Undo your last closed tab.

And what if you accidentally closed a tab? Yes, there is a simple Undo for that. Just like the Ctrl+T keyboard shortcut opens a new tab, the Ctrl+Shift+T shortcut reopens the last tab that you closed. So go ahead, press Ctrl+Shift+T to get any tab you accidentally closed back. Repeat that same shortcut to continue re-opening tabs you closed down your history list. (This works in both Firefox and Chrome; Mac users, substitute Cmd for Ctrl.)

Open a link in a background tab by clicking your mousewheel.

Now this I didn’t know. If your mouse has a wheel on it, click links of interest with the mousewheel to open links in background tabs. It acts like your right-click-point-to-Open-Link-in-New-Tab-and-click. Just faster. An extra tip for mousewheelers: Close background tabs in one click of the mousewheel without switching to them first, too. Nifty, eh?

Sync your bookmarks across browsers and computers.

This bit is useful if you, like me, don’t Digg or del.icio.us. Now you can synchronize your bookmark between work and home. To sync your bookmarks across many different browsers, try the Xmarks extension, which works with Firefox, Chrome, Safari, even IE. Install the extension, create a free Xmarks account and sync your bookmarks to Xmarks, which then downloads them to any other computer or browser with Xmarks installed. For Chrome user, bookmark syncing comes built in, no extension required. From Chrome’s Tools menu, choose “Synchronize my bookmarks.” Sign into your Google account, and Chrome will save your bookmarks into a Chrome folder in your Google Docs account.

Thanks, Fast Company. I truly enjoy all that info, although I wish I did that last bit before my computer got the plague 2 months ago. Now my Firefox feels so naked. Sad.

I won a Jaap Vliegenthart print!

Woohoo!! I won this beautifully awesome, 17×25″ signed and editioned Jaap Vliegenthart print!

How? I received an email from Monaco Reps on Tuesday announcing the launch of their blog, Look Here. I click to see because I liked Bobbi Brown’s Pretty Powerful campaign. I then scroll to see what the new blog is about. Then I saw the JAAP VLIEGENTHART Giveaway! post which said they have fifteen signed and editioned EAT ME prints to send to the first fifteen people who email them.

So I did (Subject: I’m up to the challenge: I want the Jaap Vliegenthart!). Never thought I get anything because I’m just one of those people who never won a raffle or a lottery, although I did win $10 from a $1 Mega Million ticket (yeah, small woohoo…).

Then I received an email a day later saying “Congratulations, Imelda, You made it in the first fifteen emails!” and that my print will be mailed as soon as possible!

Yes!! I won something awesome! And it’s perfect for the dining room!