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Looking to indulge your geek tendencies? Let us introduce you to the season’s must-have coffee table book, a little double-shot of nostalgia known as Lego Star Wars: The Visual Dictionary, which hit stores this week.
Acting as a comprehensive catalog of all LEGO Star Wars sets (and spin-offs) from the last decade, the book breaks down the facts and features behind every single ship and minifigure ever released. We recently caught up with the book’s author, Simon Beecroft, who was kind enough to speak to us about the various features. For a look inside the pages of the Visual Dictionary, watch the video below…
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Never let it be said that Brooklyn author John Wray doesn’t know the value of a good book. “Girls like it when they see you bring a novel out of your messenger bag,” he says. And if only one book makes its way to your bag this year, Wray’s heady footrace of a novel, Lowboy, deserves the look (click here to buy it on Amazon
).
Before we included Lowboy in our 2009 Style and Design package, we hopped on the phone with the half-Austrian, half-American writer as he was working on his next book at an European writer’s colony. He spoke to us about his nomadic childhood, his writing process and why being an author won’t get you more girls. Read the Q&A below…
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People can assume what they want, but there’s more to us at Complex than kicks, women and Twitter fights. It takes brains to be this fly, and we’re well-read like whoa, despite how this entire sentence is written. Not only do we have impeccable taste in literature, but we’re passionately devoted to making you a better person (or at least helping you pretend to be one), so we rounded up our favorite reads in recent memory in hopes that we can convince you to take a few books with you to the beach, on vacation, or wherever else you’re spending the last month of summer.
All are paperback, which means easy transport, and all have the official Complex co-sign. $150 for a pair of shoes that’ll be out in three months vs. $15 for a book that just might change your life? Get your paper up!
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BOOK: Vans Book (published 6/09)
AUTHOR: Doug Palladini
FUN FACT: Vans has been holding it down for over 40 years and started making special customizaions in the early days of the company (when iD was still something that Freud talked about). Shoppers could bring their favorite fabric by the factory, and the Van Dorens would put together a pair of shoes for them that week. You can design your own Vans through the company site today.
WHY COMPLEX IS CO-SIGNING IT: While the kids are going nuts because Vans is O.G. skate, affordable, and there are about a billion colorways to choose from, this book breaks down a history of the company. History is boring, right? Author/curator Doug Palladini pre-empts your study hall whining by giving you the tales from the super heroes’ mouths. Chapters with skaters Tony Alva, Steve Caballero and John Cardiel; surfer Joel Tudor; music legends’ tales from the Warped Tour; and a photo essay on Frenchman Dimitri Coste’s crazy collection each show a facet of the company that you wouldn’t know otherwise. When it comes to reading we need a lot of pictures to look at, and this does the trick with 208 pages that include photographs by champions of the lens CR Stecyk, R. Grant Brittain, Art Brewer, and Trevor Graves.
CLICK HERE TO SEE PREVIEWS OF THE BOOK & BUY IT!
BOOK: Public Enemies (published 7/04)
AUTHOR: Bryan Burrough
FUN FACT: When Bonnie Parker was killed in a hail of 150 bullets alongside her boyfriend Clyde Barrow, her right hand was shot completely off!
WHY COMPLEX IS CO-SIGNING IT: Because we’re geeked up to catch the Michael Mann-directed, Johnny Depp-starring flick of the same name (in theaters next Wednesday), but we know it won’t be nearly as good as the book (unless it’s like 15 hours long, in which case, maybe we ain’t so excited to see it after all). Written by a longtime Vanity Fair contributor, PE tells the story of the 18-month crime wave in 1933-34 that birthed the FBI as we know it and gave America some of its most famous criminals: Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and the Barker Gang…
In the midst of the Great Depression when folk were broke and everybody hated the banks (hmmm, remind anyone of a time we know?), the aforementioned group became cult heroes by criss-crossing the country robbing anything with cash and shooting at cops. Because local police had little authority to pursue suspects beyond state lines, a cross-dressing fat man named J. Edgar Hoover made a play to increase the power of his fledgling Federal Bureau of Investigations (thereby laying the groundwork for an immense amount of really serious fuckery in the ’60s and ’70s).
CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THE REVIEW & BUY THE BOOK
Eccentric vandal turned contemporary artist Phil Frost has a new art book out. He’s one of the few artists who’s been able to successfully parlay his “high evolved form of tagging” and transform it into a signature style of art that’s highly recognizable and all his own. Frost describes his work as thus: “I believe [my work] is indigenous to myself. I believe that within every person there is an indigenous expression of themselves.” Sure, whatever you say Phil. The 162 page book features numerous full color images of the artist’s work and of course, the obligatory essay by Carlo McCormick as well as some words by artistic mystery man Pushead. $29.70, www.amazon.com
[Supertouch via C-Monster]
Jason Howe and girlfriend Marilyn / Photo: Jason Howe
This dude’s was. Photojournalist Jason Howe fell in love with his girlfriend Marilyn and later found out she had a slightly sinister secret life: an assassin for death squads in Columbia. Howe set out for the countryside of the coke-torn country to interview and profile the real deal Columbians about the internal politics of the drug trade. That’s where he met his girl Marilyn. She invited him to come meet the fam and allowed him to use her house as a sort of home base, allowing the photog some freedom in patrolling around the region and shooting the coca fields and the paramilitary soldiers that guard them. After gathering what he needed, he left for a few months, but eventually returned to see Marilyn. It was then that she dropped this bombshell:
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Superhero sellout creator Stan Lee, who’s ruined countless comic icons by taking them onto the silver screen has a whole new cast of characters to slay, this time setting his aim on politicians like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain, President Bush, among other newfound political celebrities like George Clooney,
Chuck Norris, and Stephen Colbert in his new book “Election Daze.” Lee, who’s most often associated with superhuman idols like Spider-Man, Iron Man, Hulk, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men, took his famed comic book format and transposed it to political humor. His new book features funny dialogue balloons accompanied by eye-catching photos from Capitol Hill shutterbug, Lauren Victoria Burke. According to Lee, the political arena sometimes offers more unbelievable material than his best fiction, “It's a great change of pace from writing fantasy tales, although sometimes politics seems more like fantasy than my own stories.” The caption-filled easy read will be available at the end of March and is available for pre-order online now. $9.95, www.atlasbooks.com
As we mentioned, each week a new webisode of the Three Thug Mice will be released. Now showing is “Bomb Hard,” featuring the voices of Patty Dukes, plus graffiti writers: FUZZ ONE, KET, TEAM GO, MIN-ONE, GHOST, KIT 17, and STAK. Go watch it now or shoot pigs for fun instead.
“Courtney Cruz on the floor,” 8×10 glossy, signed
Ellen Stagg, the photographer responsible for lensing the erotic beauties on Stagg Street, has announced that she is publishing a book! To help raise money for her fleshly endeavor, she set up the Stagg Street Shop to sell, among other things, signed, 8×10 prints of her work including the above shot of the lovely Courtney for $100 a piece. The first 100 people to buy a print will also get a free copy of the book when it’s published later this year. The proposed 200 page coffee table book will feature countless erotic images and will showcase the full breadth of her sizzling shots. Do the right thing for yourself'as well as your fellow man'and contribute to a very just cause.
January 8, 2008 |
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