To Type, Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truth...

Ok, so I don’t know that Zooey Deschanel collects typewriters, but after showing up at the Writer’s Guild Awards sporting typewriter-themed fingernails,the typewriter geek community can be excused for seeking out evidence of another big star being a member of our weird little cult. Well, how’s this for further evidence?

Is that a Remington Noiseless?

In Zooey’s current show “New Girl”, she plays a quirky schoolteacher rooming with three guys with various odd character traits (comedy ensues). In the latest episode, she tries to add some of her personal decorations to the apartment, which causes conflict with the neat-freak member of the household. Some of the things she hauls out are three manual typewriters. AHA! OUTED!!! I wonder if these are just studio props or (hopefully) actually Zooeys’ from her (maybe) personal collection. The investigation continues…

A 50's Smith-Corona Silent (Super?) and an early-40's Royal (QDL/Arrow?)

For part 2 of this series on “Perfect Albums”, I’ll be focusing on the work of one artist: Israeli DJ and video artist Ophir Kutiel, AKA Kutiman. Like any other DJ, Kutiman mixes sound samples to make music. What makes Kutiman different is where he gets his samples and what he does with them.

Kutiman works pretty much entirely with found video sources from YouTube. Yep, all those grainy, low-resolution video clips of wannabe singers, people demonstrating musical instruments for sale and school band rehearsals are the unlikely sows ears that Kutiman consistently turns into musical silk purses. Here’s an example:

Magical, isn’t it? It not only works as a video, but if you listen to it as just a song in audio format, the richness of the sound and how each sample blends and works together would fool you into thinking that this was a composed piece rather than a mashup of disparate video sources. Every Kutiman video mix is like this, and each works as well in audio-only as well as it does as a video mix.

Here’s another one where Kutiman traveled around his native Jerusalem, filming dozens of local musicians improvising on their instruments, then using the clips to compose a piece celebrating those musicians. It’s important to note that Kutiman offered these musicians no direction at all in what they played – he took what they gave him and went from there…

And now the Perfect Album by Kutiman, the project he’s best known for, free to view on Youtube: Thru You. Enjoy!

One Stormy Night – DJ Munk

I admit I did very little specifically typewriter-ish to celebrate ITAM, but I did get 2 new typewriters this month, and fixed one of ‘em up. I also typed, if not every day, then a sizeable minority of them. Every day is ITAD to me. (:

Big plastic bag of assorted vintage notecards: $3

Unopened package of rustic recipe cards...

Ahh, back when first-class postage was a quarter. Mid to late 70's maybe?

Apparently postage had just been raised from 22 cents to 25 cents. Some envelopes bear a 3 cent makeup stamp.

This bank still existed when I was in high school, early eighties. Complimentary money/check gift envelopes.

"Route 66 on a Penny" touristy cards

Score! I really dig this sort of vintage card, and bought the whole package based on viewing a tiny corner containing a cactus.

The inevitable DeGrazia stationery that one always finds in these packages. It's possible that there are more copies of "Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass" albums in Arizona thrift stores than DeGrazia paintings, but I wouldn't bet on it.

This DeGrazia painting was one we affectionately called "Mexican kid pissing on Sunflower" when I was a kid.

whatever will I do with these?

Don, from NathanGuitars.com, recently left some comments here. As I normally do, I clicked the link he left attached to his name, discovering yet another typecast blog I hadn’t seen before. Reading his post here caused me to think about the parallels in his introduction to typewriter hoarding and my own. I have the idea that this is a common experience among us. (:

And now for something else completely random: