Pretty Goes with Pretty

Two Innocuous and Unrelated Interviews

Book Covers has an interview with the designer Jon Gray (the man responsible for Jonathan Safran Foer’s books, among others). The interview itself is short and semi-sweet. But I like Gray's work. [via Bookslut]

Totally unrelated:  an interview with Andre Torres, the man behind the excellent magazine Wax Poetics. Torres was tapped by Harris Publications to run the far glossier, more mainstream Scratch Magazine last year, but was fired after a few issues for not hitting the market they wanted—not that they seemed to understand who their market was. Maybe it was Torres who was on the wrong page, but nonetheless his idea of a magazine for hip hop producers (akin to, say, Guitar or Modern Drummer magazines) sounds a lot more interesting than what Scratch seems to be devolving into. Torres does a little shit-talking, which is always fun to read. Despite the fact that the interview I'm linking doesn’t seem to have passed by the eyes of an editor, I still encourage you to check out Wax Poetics, which is one of the most intelligent music magazines on the newsstands today.

Yesterday's News—Today!

A few short takes from around the interweb:

—Land+Living does a pretty good job of getting you up to speed on the landscape architect Ken Smith’s recently awarded Orange County Great Park project. Smith will be the master planner, with the architect Enrique Norton, public-works artist Mary Miss, and LA-based  landscape architect Mia Lehrer in tow. The park will be larger than both Central Park and Golden Gate Park, and the defining element will be a canyon that Smith will “build,” running seventy feet deep and two miles long. (I’ve been getting a kick out of everyone saying he’s going to “build a canyon.” When I was a kid, I used to try and build a hole all the way to China.) In addition to L+L, the LA Times had two articles on the announcement in yesterday’s paper, and Curbed LA also has a snarky post.

—Pruned is probably my favorite site on the interweb. Alexander Trevi has a great eye for visually stunning imagery. His most recent post is no exception. Here’s a sampling:

More images of this nature at his site, and take some time to dig around if you’ve never been there before.

—The New York Times had an entertaining little article about scientists who, while studying the workings of the brain, accidentally discovered schadenfreude.

—Last but least, Pitchfork has the latest on the ever-growing legend/parody that is Axl Rose’s comeback of the century, Chinese Democracy.