The Voices in Frank's Head

First, yes, I know it's been forever since I've updated this blog. I said it was possibly ending, but after a couple of years, I finally had something that I wanted to share. This simply seemed like the best vehicle for putting it out into the universe. With the help of some friends on Facebook, I managed to create at least the first draft of my bucket list. I will invariably add a few things to this as the years go on. However, I figured it was time to at least start one. Therefore, in no particular order, here are the items on my bucket list. Drive Route 66 from beginning to end; Visit Prague; Visit a random city and take a walk that only ends once I've taken a picture of every letter of the alphabet; Attend the Pierogi Festival in Whitting, Indiana; Visit the American Gothic House in Eldon, Iowa. This, by the way, is the house that Grant Wood posed his models in front of in his famous painting, American Gothic . Go to Chicago and re-enact Ferris Bueller...

Pecha Kucha Night in Detroit The tenth installment of Pecha Kucha Night will be on Friday, October 11 at the historic Doubletree Suites in downtown Detroit. This is an excellent opportunity to see what some of the best creative minds in Michigan have been up to. If you, or someone that you know, would like to present at PKN X then please submit a 300 word summary of your work along with some sample image of it to pkndetroit [at] gmail [dot] com no later than October 23.

Part Trampoline. All Coffee Table. I saw a trampoline coffee table this afternoon. It's perfect for those individuals who look at the middle of their coffee tables and think, "My God, I wish I could jump up and down on my coffee table." My life will never again be the same as it was this morning. The trampoline coffee table by Alberto Bonomi  is available here .

Every once in awhile, I hear a quote that so perfectly summarizes how I'm feeling at a given moment, I am compelled, it would seem, to emblazon it on the wall by my desk. Today, I came across such a quote. "A hero is no braver than an ordinary man," Ralph Waldo Emerson  once observed, "but he is brave five minutes longer." Today, I pray that each of us finds the strength to hang onto our bravery for those extra five minutes in whatever challenges we may face.

Continuing with my theme today of posting on things that I haven't had a chance to, I wanted to mention a couple of items that I've seen on-line late. I've noticed a couple of designers using reusing materials to make lingerie and bikinis - essentially giving recycling a sexy twist. Pink Tab Bikini by Ingrid Goldbloom Bloch Ingrid Goldbloom Bloch , for example, has produced what she calls the "Pink Tab Bikini". As its name implies, it is a pink bikini that is made entirely of pieces from cans of Tab. This piece looks very interesting and can imagine the right woman having a lot of fun with it. However, there's a part of me that wonders how comfortable a metal bikini could actually be. In this regard, I believe one should view her work as art as opposed to a piece of everyday fashion. Her design shows us that there is enormous potential in the things that we throw away. That is important, but it also limits the impact of this design. Moving away on to ...

When I first hear that there are a couple of female artists out there who use their breasts as paint brushes, my initial reaction was simple. Mmm...  Boobs. It seemed like a novelty item, more than anything. The important thing about art, in my opinion, isn't how it was created but the reaction that its audience has when they experience it. Do they stop and stare at it? Does it cause them to think or feel something unique? Every work of art has some kind of a story behind; something that lead the artist to create it. Usually, that something goes beyond the fact that the artist has paint and  breasts. However, as I look at this painting by Kira Ayn Varszegi , there's no getting around the fact that her use of of color is captivating. One almost can't help but be drawn to it. Painted with Boobs When I first saw this painting, I didn't even think about the fact that it was done with a woman's breasts - at least not at first. At first, I found myself drawn to it...

I was at the Russell Industrial Center over the weekend. For those readers who aren't from the Detroit area, RIC is a huge (more than 1 million square feet) former auto parts factory parts factory that now provides studio space to roughly 150 artists and houses a multitude of other small businesses. Recycle the Arts Anyway, I was in the studios of one of those artists, when I saw the door at right. Yes, someone has finally built an artist recycler! And I'm so glad that they did. If there's one thing that I simply cannot stand, it's the sight of artists being hauled off to a landfill. I'm fine with stockbrokers, lawyers, and BP executives going into a landfill - but, please - not the artists, too. It just isn't right. I'm not sure exactly how an artist recycler works. However, I'm fairly confident that it involves lots of coffee, a decent amount of cheap beer, and an NEA grant application.

I love this photo. It's NASA's image of the day for today.  Their description of it follows. At NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, an adult osprey guards its young in a nest built on a platform in the press site parking lot, backdropped by the 209-foot by 110-foot American flag painted on the side of the Vehicle Assembly Building. The Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge coexists with Kennedy Space Center and provides a habitat for 330 species of birds, including the osprey, and a variety of other wildlife. Kennedy's press site is located at the turn basin in Launch Complex 39, making it an ideal osprey nesting place.

Phillip Toledano  is a photographer whose work has shown up in GQ , Vanity Fair , and several other major magazines. His work can really only be described as oddly awesome. There's a bunch of his photos on-line now at theCHIVE that are definitely worth checking out. Although, I do feel compelled to warn everyone that a couple of them are not safe for work. theCHIVE – The World's Largest Photo Blog � Blog Archive Oddly awesome photography by Phillip Toledano (16 photos)

I love this short film by Erika Janunger . One of the truly cool things about it is that they didn't use any CGI to make it happen. It was all done with old school photography techniques. (Hint: what you think is the floor is really another wall. The camera is turned on its side.) There are some behind the scenes photos from this shoot available over here on Picasa.

I saw this watermelon inspired car on-line at Desicolours . It's from the Ukraine and I love this thing. This design is a very cool play on the interior vs. exterior. Both elements fit into the overall design theme perfectly. My only problem with this automobile is that I would get very hungry if I were driving around in a car that looks like a watermelon.

Detroit Synergy and the AIA-Detroit will soon announce that the next installment of their Pecha Kucha project will happen on Thursday, February 19 in the Hard Rock Cafe . Since Hard Rock is different than most PK Night venues, and I'm one of the people who selected it, I wanted to take a moment and tell everyone why we're going there. Yes, Hard Rock is a corporate restaurant. Hard Rock has a menu that is set by folks more than a thousand miles away from the restaurant. There's no getting around these facts. However, Hard Rock does offer a few benefits that make it an appealing option. First, there are all of the logistical issues associated with having PK Night at any venue. Hard Rock Cafe excels in these categories. Hard Rock has secured parking in the Compuware parking structure that's available for free with a validation in the restaurant. A lot of other venues require you to either pay through the nose for parking or have you park on the street. For those ...

I entered this world at 3:57 a.m. on August 20, 1970, which means that today is my birthday. I was lying in bed a moment ago; not quite able to get to sleep. My mind was pondering too many things all at once. Partly to assuage my own anxiety that I haven't accomplished enough at this point in my life, and partly as a mental exercise, I started making a mental list of all that I've seen, done or accomplished in my life that would be truly noteworthy. It wasn't long before this list became too long for me to keep track of in my own head. Since I still couldn't sleep - and the mental list probably was keeping me awake - I decided to compose all of these thoughts in one blog entry. This will, of course, be a fairly long entry. It's a recap of 38 years worth of existence, after all. Rather than go into every point, I'll just record some of the things that most people don't already know about me. In my 38 years on this planet, I published my own novel. It n...

Marlies Dekkers Lingerie Exhibit was in the Netherlands last month. I meant to blog about it when it happened but, well, every time I started to I simply got distracted. The fact of the matter is that she makes Victoria's Secret and most other purveyors of women's lingerie seem boring and un-inspired. Exhibit A is this argument can be found below: Anyway, the rest of her collection can be found at MarliesDekkers.nl .

One of the other bloggers in Detroit published a post yesterday about May being Asian Heritage Month and providing her readers with " 7 days of fun " to celebrate it. The problem is that all of her suggestions were a series of "Asian" restaurants. I'm sorry. I love D-Tales and think she has one of the best blogs around. However, I know enough Asians to know that there's a lot more to Asian culture than a series of overpriced sushi places, even without invoking Frank's Rule of Sushi or talking about the Sushi Witnesses. With that in mind, I give the world my own version of her 7 days of Asian culture - that are 100% sushi-free. Tuesday - Literature Asian culture has produced a cornucopia of top-notch literature over the centuries. Yan Lianke's novel Dreams of Ding Village , for example, told the story of HIV/AIDS in China. This resulted in the novel being banned in his home country because the People's Republic of China insists that AIDS doe...

Peep show Originally uploaded by ftfesz71 Sometimes my friends find the funniest damn things on the web. And this is unquestionably one of those times. Thank you for finding this, Liza !

2007 has been a year of amazing viral videos. The folks at Time compiled their list the best ones. However, I've never been a fan of dancing prisoners or cats playing the piano. With that in mind, I am proud to present my collection of the best viral videos of 2007. First up, leave it to the folks at The Onion to make everyone wish that we were all poor this holiday season. We've also seen women in bikinis shape the course of political discourse this year by proclaiming their love for a certain candidate. Quite frankly, I can only hope this continues into 2008 because God knows most of the candidates themselves aren't very interesting. Rudy Giuliani , Barack Obama and Mitt Romney all had their own gyrating women, but let's face it - Taryn Southern's "Hott 4 Hill" blew them all away. 2007 also saw videos become a rallying point for change, the way Woodstock was a generation ago. Just take a look at This Is For The Soldiers : In addition to all ...

From the mouth of babes, the Good Book tells us, can come enormous strength and wisdom. Of course, sometimes it simply comes from an animated cartoon that I found on-line after clicking one of Liza's links. Can there be any wonder then, why it is that John Hodgman keeps using her work for his blog .

I was at the Old Shillelagh in downtown Detroit recently for a friend's birthday party. I don't actually remember a whole lot about the party except that there were a lot of people there and some great Irish music. I don't even remember leaving the party. The next thing that I do remember is feeling very sore as a man in surgical scrubs told me that I had been in an automobile accident and that I was at Oakwood Hospital . I later learned from my brothers that on my way home from that party, my car was rear-ended by a drunk driver. According to the police accident report, this woman was traveling at a speed in excess of 100 miles per hour when she collided into me. The aftermath of this is: My car is totaled, which leaves me without transportation for the time being; I have a lot of muscle soreness in my neck and shoulders, which the doctors tell me will clear up in a couple of days; I have a persistent ringing in my right ear, which should also clear up on on its own e...