Claudine Ko: April 2008

Cornholio aka the Almighty Bungholio

Last year, when I was in a more scientific state of mind, I blogged about fighting global warming and the importance of being an earnest biker. These days -- months upon months really, I've been smeared by a sh#t-storm of work, and haven't had the time to contemplate, much less post coherent sentences about what's currently at stake in the world. But speaking of inclement weather, how about these gaddam rising food prices, and what United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon describes as the impending "widespread hunger, malnutrition and social unrest on an unprecedented scale"?

I am fully aware that my grasp of global economic/socio-political affairs is weak at best, but hasn't the scientific community already firmly established that corn-based ethanol is, quite frankly, BS? (Apparently in early studies, somebody did the math wrong, and the correct numbers say that corn ethanol not only fails to produce less carbon emissions than regular old fuel, but actually doubles it over the course of 30 years. And on top of that, the giant amounts of corn we're now producing (by government mandate) offsets land for other foodstuffs, like soy, resulting in the jacked up prices, the catastrophic success suggested by Mr. Moon, and clearing of the Amazon rainforest as well.

Anyway, the whole changing legislation stuff is also a bit over my head, so I'll leave that to those who do have their act together. For me, it all goes back to riding our bikes. It's fun. It's spring. And maybe cook yourself a nice dinner tonight with fare purchased from your local farmer's market. Or walk somewhere, like the library. Simple stuff.

You can view more info graphics here at the BBC. The NY Times recently did a big series on rising food costs as well. And if you're really motivated, check out David Tilman's research on cellulosic ethanol and prairie grass.

4:20

It's 4:20 on 4/20.

So Yong Kim

I also like this woman. We met a couple months ago for an interview that just came out in Paper Mag's "Beautiful People" issue. At the time, So was working 14-15 hour days, editing a rough cut of her latest feature, and still managed to take the time to talk. I was asking her about her instinct for benevolence, and she explained her capacity to give as possibly more a function of Asian mother-inspired efficiency. We're talking about a person who produced a feature film over the course of two years for 40 or 50 grand. In Iceland. All-inclusive. On some level, she should really be running for office:

"Maybe (it was) the way my grandma raised us. She just knew how to stretch a bowl of rice to feed, like, 20 people. Also, my mother was very, very frugal when we were growing up. And in art school, you learn how to make things out of nothing. I went to the post office; they have those overnight packages. If you flip it inside out, it’s made out of this special material, it’s half cloth. I collected those for six months so I could use it for the performance piece I was doing because I didn’t have money to buy fabric. It made perfect sense to me: it’s free, our tax money pays for that stuff. There are ways to stretch things if you have little."

If you're interested, I also profiled Riley Keough, aka Elvis' granddaughter, and Julia Rothman, a cool girl who designs patterns in Brooklyn, in the same issue.

Thao Nguyen

I like this girl. And not just because she's Asian. She has a band called Thao with the Get Down Stay Down, which she's on tour with currently.

Click here so you can listen to her meanderings and music (sorta like a morph of Blonde Redhead/Cat Power on uppers with Jolie Holland/Belly/Tanya Donnelly undertones. Sorry, my days as a short-form music-album reviewer are long gone, thankfully).

I also appreciated the time-lapsed ice cream-cone melt.