rock, paper, scissors

Marking perhaps a heartening turn in the tone of sabre-rattling rhetoric, North Korea appears in its latest propaganda video to be challenging America to a dance-off, as Gizmodo correspondent Matt Novak reports, rather than the usual fare of nuclear warheads striking Guam or San Francisco.  Of course, Dear Leader has produced many counterpoints to this spectacle and there is naturally such ill-will between the two as they are too much alike and need their egos protected.  The narrow characterisation of the North Korean regime does the rest of the world a disservice as the country understands very well that it has the strategic upper-hand at what is at stake, which is nothing short of global thermal nuclear war.

wedlock

The winding down of wedding season is a good time for reflection on the institution and the curators of the Ricco-Maresca Gallery in Manhattan furnish us with a captivating lens to view the changing conventions and trappings of matrimony with a collection of Victorian era cabinet cards that take a slice of late nineteenth century attitudes towards portraiture and keepsakes. These sombre, serious poses (a little haunted but typical for the time when photography was new and reserved for such special occasions and vows weren’t always exchanged out of love but rather for the sake of utility) are contrasted with a progression of wedding cake toppers from that time up to the present that reflect maturing outlooks and rituals that retain meaning in their fungibility.

campaign hat

In what’s surely to further unhinge Dear Leader in ways that we can’t predict, we learn from Super Punch, one major, disruptive retail outlet in selling knock-offs of the baseball caps (campaign hats are those typically worn by park rangers and Mounties) he’s been shamelessly promoting during press-conferences on the hurricane response and recovery in Texas for a quarter of the price. Although Dear Leader seems unable to move beyond campaign mode, apparently he can recognise when his merchandise has gone stale.

borscht belt

Via the always brilliant Nag on the Lake, we’re invited on an idyll odyssey with Pablo Iglesias Maurer inspired by a lot of vintage postcards depicting resorts of the Catskills and the Poconos during their heyday fifty years ago juxtaposed with their present state of wrack and ruin.
The ephemeral nature of the missives served their purpose—much like snapshots on social media—but isn’t meant to rubbish those destinations and experiences now abandoned, while at the same the medium romances both the nostalgia and the decay. What do you think?  Surely the portrayals are all the more awful for those with a connection to the places. We’ve a sudden urge to watch Dirty Dancing and inspect the facilities at Kellerman’s. Be sure to visit the links up top for a whole gallery of rather sad then-and-now transitions.