Man Made DIY

The 1980s may have brought us MTV as the definitive place to display promotional videos from record companies, but we hold the 1990s as the peak of the artform - the clever storylines and memorable visuals often stick in our minds much better than a song's lyrics or album title, and evoke that last moment before the complete takeover of Clear Channel and the YouTube era, where you could actually discover something new by staying up late and watching Alternative Nation, or the Buzz Bin. (sometimes...)

The Pitchfork Staff have assembled their favorite fifty from the decade, and it's a pretty fine list. There are the quintessential entries from directors who've gone on to create major motion pictures - Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Mark Romanek, F. Gary Gray - and those from music video mainstains like Chris Cunningham, Adam Bernstein, and Hype Williams. Plus, a healthy dose of electronic and dance artists that never quite hit heavy rotation in the states.

Hit Chicago-based chef and restauranteur Grant Achatz had an interesting weekend dabbling in a bit of molecular mixology.

"Achatz tweeted... that he and [Chef de Tournant] Schoettler were "playing with sensation and texture in a gin and tonic," with a link to the above video (h/t Grub Street Chicago). "Playing with sensation and texture" seems to be an understatement. The gin and tonic Achatz is sampling in the video contains Anchor Junipero gin, yellow chartreuse and "cucumber alginate encapsulation."   … read more

I may be a little behind on discovering this new video by Cee Lo, the vocal half of Gnarls Barkley and former Goodie Mob member. "F**k you," the first video from his new solo album "The Lady Killer" is a is pure eye and ear candy. It features only the lyrics of the song, ever so slightly animated against brilliant colors. Stereogum says: "It’s a sunshining piano soul kiss-off just a shade off from Cee-Lo’s Danger Mouse jaunts, and sees him playing a character that is most definitely not based on his life: can’t afford his lady Ferraris, comparing his replacement to an Xbox while he’s just an Atari." … read more

The screenprinted gig poster medium is still a viable and valuable scene, with designers and print shops all over the world creating original, catchy, and unique one-off posters for music shows and festivals.

Kansas City-based printers Vahalla Studios teamed up with Micah Smith of My Associate Cornelius to create this cool two-color poster for a free Hot Chip show in NYC, sponsored by MySpace. They made this cool video of the process, from designing in Illustrator to printing to - and passing them out at the show for free.

   … read more

The likelihood of anyone actually getting their hands on all of these materials and chemicals and churning these out is pretty low...but it doesn't mean you shouldn't know how to do it.

French electro-pop duo Daft Punk always perform live in space helmets, a nod to the playfulness and the electronic nature of their music.

Atlanta-based prop designer Harrison Krix decided he needed one for himself, and so created an amazing replica over a period of seventeen months!

And, he's created this killer video demonstrating the process that appease music and making-things fans alike.    … read more

We at ManMade do not condone smoking, but we do indeed condone Mad Men. Humorists and pop culture videosters Whirled have chopped up the DVDs of the first three seasons of Mad Men and pasted together a whole heap of smoking scenes, and set it to a ridiculous country-western commercial library song.

And the results are hilarious.   … read more

NPR Music is featuring this exclusive premiere of the "Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise" by the Avett Brothers. The visuals are sparse animated paintings by Jason Ryan Mitchum that detail the rise and fall of a single landscape's urban development.

" 'Head Full Of Doubt/Road Full Of Promise' was written about the temporary nature of our buildings and our mentality,' says Scott Avett.  'Accepting the temporary state we may be in.  (Artist) Jason (Ryan Mitchum) with his landscape paintings, and some that I'd seen that he'd animated, dealt with the temporary nature of the world around us.'

"Rather than make a bunch of different … read more

The World's Largest Skateboard, built by California Skateparks, is twelve and a half times the size of a standard issue piece. It's a full thirty-six feet long, nearly nine feet wide, and three and a half feet tall, making it the size of a city bus.

"Normally The World’s Largest Skateboard is ridden by several people at one time, but recently California Skateparks CEO Joe Ciaglia decided to take it a for solo ride while visiting Camp Woodward in Pennsylvania." … read more

The inaugural episode of Saturday Night Live featured a mock commercial for the Triple-Trac, a three blade razor:

"From the straight razor, to the safety razor, to the injector system, amd finally the highly acclaimed twinblade cartridge. Almost perfect, yet not quite the superlative groom. Introducing the Triple-Trac. Not just two blades in one system, but three stainless, platinum teflex-coated blades melded together to form one incredible shaving cartridge, easily fitted into your old twinblade holder. Triple-Trac's triple-threat cartridge, with more close shaves than ever before...Triple-Trac's third blade, a finely-honed bonded platinum instrument, cuts cleanly through the whisker at its base, leaving your face as smooth as a billiard ball,

The Triple-Trac. Because you'll believe anything."

Thirty-five years later, as we know, George Carlin's satire is alive and well...I just used one this morning.

The shaving market in the U.S., as anyone who's ever stepped into a pharmacy can attest, is a bit silly, and worthy of the ridicule its recieved. More recently, "The introduction of Gillette's Fusion razor, kept secret until its debut in 2005, was eerily predicted the year before by the satirical Onion newspaper, which ran a fake memo from a shaving executive bragging about besting a competitor's four-blade razor by making one with five."

No wonder, all sorts of men are opting for traditional safety razors, creams, brushes, and salves. The Wall Street Journal has created this fascinating exposee.