Last night I attended a screening of DOUBLE VICTORY at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

The Lucas documentary Double Victory showcases the Airmen’s triumphs amid the adversities of Jim Crow and segregation in the U.S. military. Narrated by Gooding, Double Victory goes inside the lives of many of the living Airmen, recounting stories of racism within the military alongside the Airmen’s tenacious heroism.

Lucas’ Red Tails, which stars Gooding and Howard, takes the stories of the Airmen from textbooks to the feature screen. After the project was rejected by all seven major Hollywood studios, Lucas decided to pump his own money into producing and promoting the movie. Continuing the high-energy, big-action legacy of Lucasfilm, Red Tails goes beyond being a mere history lesson, enlisting CGI and other special effects to create an energetic movie-going experience to illustrate the journey of the Tuskegee Airmen.

After more than 20 years in development and production, Red Tails is scheduled for release on Jan. 20.Double Victory, which was recently screened in Washington during the 2011 Congressional Black Caucus Annual Legislative Conference in September, is scheduled to be released soon.

Last week I attended a private screening of the HBO Documentary -

SCHMATTA: Rags to Riches to Rags

Ever wonder where the fabric and samples come from for fashion shows?

“schmatta” is the yiddish word for “rag”-

I previously screened this doc with Melissa Davis of TheFatAppleNyc.com and she thought it would be great to screen this in the company of fellow writers, bloggers, fashionistas and tastemakers for the kick off of Mercedes Benz Fashion Week.

The event was held at Wix Lounge-

Wix Lounge: A free work & event space for creatives in NYC, sponsored byWix.com, an online Flash website publishing platform.

and produced by

The Fat Apple : Created by Melissa Davis, began as a site covering  Fashion generally and Plus-Size fashion specifically, Lifestyle and Technology from the perspective of a plus size woman. Currently, The Fat Apple encompasses 3 brands, TheFatAppleNYC.com, TodayInShoes.com andGalleryDates.com. New York and the Big Apple is Bigger than you thought!

Special Thanks to the sponsors of this event-

Thank you Jennifer Sohan from Devi-excellent Indian Cuisine!

Everyone raved about the cauliflower treats-I wouldnt know becaue they disappeared so quickly!-

check them out at http://www.devinyc.com/

Location:
8 East 18th Street (between 5th Ave. & Broadway)
New York, NY 10003
Reservations: (212) 691-1300 or make a reservation at www.OpenTable.com

Yummy Snacks

“The Garment Center is the heart and soul of Midtown Manhattan and the backbone of the fashion industry. This HBO feature documentary, produced by Blowback productions, explores the rise and fall of New York’s fabled schmatta (rag) trade as a microcosm for the economic shocks that have changed our lives. Director Marc Levin’s documentary will get you thinking about why your H&M dress is $10″

DIRECTED BY | Marc Levin
PRODUCED BY | Daphne Pinkerson, Marc Levin
EDITOR/CO-PRODUCER | Richard Lowe
LINE PRODUCER | Kara Rozansky
ASSOCIATE PRODUCER | Karl Hollandt
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER (HBO) | Sheila Nevins
SUPERVISING PRODUCER (HBO) | Nancy Abraham
FIELD PRODUCER | Donovan Leitch
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY | Daniel Levin
ASSISTANT EDITOR | Chris Walker
ORIGINAL MUSIC BY | John Zorn

Yesterday I launched a new side project:

www.pocketsquaremafia.com

Essentially it celebrates the handkerchief, pocketsquare and haberdashery

“for the Made or Mad Man”

follow it on twitter @pocketSQmafia let me know what you think-

and if you happen to be wearing a pocketsquare-submit a pic-

This is the badge-

this is the schematic for the badge designed by Travis Goodspeed-

“These badges are active RFID tags which beacon the position of each attendee a few times a second, so that the god damned devil army of lies–by which I mean the Next HOPE badge committee–can track each attendee around the Hotel Pennsylvania.”

There were alot of other cool things to check out such as this USB Typewriter setup and a working EASY button

Here are some topics to some of the talks I attended-

• Circuitbending
• Keeping Your Job While Being a Hacker
• Examining Costs, Benefits, and Economics in Malware and Carding Markets
• Arse Elektronika: Sex, Tech, and the Future of Screw-It-Yourself
• How Hacking is Both the Death and Future of Traditional and Interactive Publishing, Journalism, and the Media
• Reach Out And Touch Face: A Rant About Failing
• Sita Sings the Blues: A Free Culture Success Story

A keynote was scheduled to be given by Julian Assange of Wikileaks , he did not show for obvious reasons, but his partner Jacob Appelbaum and developer of TOR gave a great talk,cover past, present and future developments of the project and showed the much talked about a videotape showing a U.S. Army Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed a dozen people, including two Reuters news staff. for more information check out CollateralMurder.com

I got to ride a Segway (video on that later) and got put on to Etherape!-is a packet sniffer/network traffic monitoring tool, developed for Unix (thank you AngelXIII!)

I met threat analyst and journalist, known as a former grey hat hacker, Adrian Lamo  (we now follow each other on foursquare)

He also informed the authorities of the identity of a US Army Intelligence Specialist who is alleged to be the source of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike video leak to Wikileaks.

Which shows guts and balls and I am in his corner no matter what his reputation may now be in the hacker community.

I also enjoyed 2 greats talk and got a pic with Johannes Grenzfurthner

(No-I do not work for @cafebustelo)

He is the founder of monochrom, an internationally acting art and theory group.

I shot an interview with a teacher from The Hacktory, a Philidelphia-based group that promotes the use of technolog in the arts.

(look for that video to be posted soon)

Overall, it was a good time of learning and unlearning.

Note: Most of the videos of the talks can be downloaded at Hattorents.com

This one time upon the earth,
let’s not speak any language,
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be a delicious moment,
without hurry, without locomotives,
all of us would be together
in a sudden uneasiness.

The fishermen in the cold sea
would do no harm to the whales
and the peasant gathering salt
would look at his torn hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars of gas, wars of fire,
victories without survivors,
would put on clean clothing
and would walk alongside their brothers
in the shade, without doing a thing.

What I want shouldn’t be confused
with final inactivity:
life alone is what matters,
I want nothing to do with death.

If we weren’t unanimous
about keeping our lives so much in motion,

if we could do nothing for once,
perhaps a great silence would
interrupt this sadness,
this never understanding ourselves
and threatening ourselves with death,
perhaps the earth is teaching us
when everything seems to be dead
and then everything is alive.

Now I will count to twelve
and you keep quiet and I’ll go.

-from Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon
Translated by Stephen Mitchell

Thank you NYAZE!via Facebook

Courtesy of  The Pirate Bay

I got this courtesy of The Smoking Section:

Steinski – What Does It All Mean? 1983-2006 Retrospective

The back story is great: Steve Stein, collegiate dope-dealer-turned-suit at the Doyle Dane Bernbach ad agency, enters a hip-hop-remix contest with a pal in 1983 and smokes the competition. His entry, The Payoff Mix, is a funky train wreck of uncleared samples — the Supremes, Little Richard, Culture Club, Humphrey Bogart — crosswiring Grandmaster Flash’s mixology with the pop tune punch lines of Dickie Goodman’s Seventies novelty collage singles. Payoff, included here with its offspring Lesson 2 (James Brown Mix) and Lesson 3 (History of Hip Hop), inspired crate-digging producers from Prince Paul to DJ Shadow to Girl Talk, and permanently raised the bar for rap track makers. Influence aside, what’s just as impressive about this handsome anthology of barely legal rarities is how well tracks work as songs. The early party joints build and ebb with intractable momentum, and later pieces tell unlikely stories. “The Motorcade Sped On” samples newscasts on the JFK assassination; the chilling “Number Three on Flight Eleven” documents a flight attendant’s 9/11 call for help. And the hilarious, hour-long “Nothing to Fear” megamix proves that this guy didn’t just pioneer the mash-up, he’s still the outlaw genre’s dean.

http://www.myspace.com/steinski

1-1 The Payoff Mix (5:23)
1-2 Lesson 2 (James Brown Mix) (4:23)
1-3 Lesson 3 (History Of Hip Hop) (5:03)
1-4 Jazz (5:04)
1-5 Voice Mail (Sugar Hill Suite) (5:35)
1-6 The Motorcade Sped On (4:00)
1-7 It’s Up To You (Television Mix) (5:05)
1-8 I’m Wild About That Thing (4:46)
1-9 The Big Man Laughs (4:19)
1-10 Vox Apostolica (4:38)
1-11 Is We Going Under? (6:38)
1-12 Ain’t No Thing (6:33)
1-13 Everything’s Disappeared (4:12)
1-14 Number Three On Flight Eleven (7:48)
NOTHING TO FEAR
2-1 Tonight From NY Intro (1:31)
2-2 Swingset (10 Beautiful Girls Mix) (3:21)
2-3 Opening Credits (1:16)
2-4 Greatest Man Alive (Man’s Game Mix) (2:31)
2-5 The ID (Small World Mix) (3:23)
2-6 Let’s Get It On (Big Daddy Mix) (1:25)
2-7 Hit The Disco (MC Enuff Mix) (3:48)
2-8 Lolita (Burning Mix) (1:36)
2-9 Hot Spot (Terrible Love Mix) (2:49)
2-10 It’s A Funky Thing Pt. 1 (Special Feature Mix) (5:18)
2-11 Bboy Breakdown (You Got The Job Mix) (2:29)
2-12 B-Beat Classic (Airwave Interlude Mix) (0:36)
2-13 Funk Construction (Prodigal Son Mix) (3:00)
2-14 Them That’s Not (Cash Mix) (2:10)
2-15 Swan Lake (Beat Poets Mix) (3:06)
2-16 Here We Come (Death Mix) (2:18)
2-17 Product Of The Environment (Redfern Gowanus Electro Mix) (1:41)
2-18 By Any Means Necessary (Malcolm & Bobby Mix) (2:07)
2-19 The Art Of Getting Jumped (1:08)
2-20 I Like IT LIke That (Scratch It One Time Mix) (1:02)
2-21 Solid Air (Junk Mood Mix) (3:23)
2-22 Country Grammar (Hydro Mix) (2:33)
2-23 Let’s Get It On (Reprise Mix) (0:46)
2-24 Muscles (Mistake Interlude Mix) (0:23)
2-25 Easin’ In (Pedro’s Letter Mix) (1:27)
2-26 It’s Time To Testify (MC5 Mix) (1:54)
2-27 The Acid Test (0:52)
2-28 Silent Partner (Peace Out) (0:53)

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=AOYARU25

Click to play the entire “I Have a Dream” speech recorded August 28, 1963

Download audio file (mlkingihaveadream333.mp3)