A few weeks ago I stopped by MoMA for a movie, something I wish I did more often since they’re free for members. Unfortunately I chose the one week of the year when the movies aren’t actually free; fortunately I paid to stay anyway and got to indulge in East Asia’s answer to Wes Anderson.
Naoko Ogigami’s “Megane” is so twee and cute it deserves some new descriptive word combining the two, like twutsy or cutwee. Well maybe those are terrible words, but something along these lines could work. Between the enchantingly reserved performances of the actors, Ogigami’s super-saturated visuals of the beach, and the pleasantly simple guitar score, I felt like I was on a vacation.
One and a half hours later though, the vacation was over. It was disappointing to come back to the real world where you can’t trade paper cutouts for the best red beans and shaved ice in Japan. But one and a half weeks later I was on a real vacation. For the first time in two years, since starting my current job in fact, I took some vacation time and flew to France.
I’m not too interested in summarizing here why the trip was so amazing (and most of my friends have already had to sit through hours of exposition about it in person) so a few pictures from the week will have to suffice.
I got lost on the way there, I lost my keys on the way back, I still can’t hear out of my right ear, and it was all so totally worth it. There was stage diving, giant balloons, and enough confetti to, well, let’s just say there was enough confetti…
And, just because, here’s an acoustic version of the same song (full length, no 10 second excerpt like above) performed on a walk through the streets of Paris.
But it’s not a mixtape, it’s a Muxtape: No Parents!
As with most people I’ve talked to, my attraction to Muxtape, the new streaming audio phenom, is definitely grounded in its simplicity. With his initial Tumbler post announcing the service’s launch, creator Justin said “expect rapid developments,” but I’m hoping they don’t come too rapidly.
It might not advance their business model (is there one?) to take it slowly but the lack of features on Muxtape is what makes it so exciting. No friend lists, no search function, and no bloody profile to fill out. You can’t have more than one mixtape per account. It’s beautiful.
The move in this direction is a pleasant broader shift on the part of designers. Even Yahoo, usually a punchline to an untold joke about overcomplicated interfaces, just backed Flickr’s launch of video hosting that restricts length to 90 seconds. No full episodes of Family Guy there, the goal seems to be for people to upload, literally, moving pictures.
Whether either of these sites will remain in their uncluttered state for long is a mystery. Both could very well begin deploying “improvements” as soon as their basic architecture seems stable enough. I’m sure doing so will improve their bounce rate and their site-visit times and other monetizable stats, but for the sake of good design I hope they remain as they are.
