The Village Voice recognizes fashion photog with an excellent look back at the best images to grace the covers and pages of style mags in 2004. It's rare that this area of publishing and photography gets ranked and called out outside of the cliquesh insidery worlds of fashion, design and advertising and their associated media.

The Voice's selection is impressive and is really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the body amazing photomaking that gets churned out annualy. One of favorite images is a cover for the hugely influential and now defunct British monthly The Face. Its cover of hip-hop super-producer Pharrell blowing bubblegum on a model's breast gets special love from writer Vince Aletti, who gives a short, well-written and insightful article acompanying the best images (some of which are shown above).

Aletti makes an important point about context, writing "A good photograph tends to get lost in a bad magazine; a great magazine can make even a so-so shot look brilliant."

One serious flaw with the selection, however, is that the chosen images/publications here are limited to a sampling of well-known and hugely commercial American and European fashion books--Vanity Fair, Paris Vogue, W, Elle, GQ, etc.

That there is nothing from the vast universe of photography produced by Japan's fashion press really casts serious doubt as to the diversity of mag titles and output considered. Japanese publications like H, Commons and Sense, Composite and Gap produce plenty of worthy images each year. The dozens of smaller independent lifestyle-culture and fashion mags like Tokion and Trace get no attention here either.

Still, seeing serious attention given to this photographic work made in the name of style is a beautiful thing. More, please!

RELATED LINKS

Do Not Recycle: The Most Stylish Magazine Photoography of 2004 [Village Voice]

While we're on the topic of Apple and iPod accessories, one of the earliest makers of iPod cases, iSkin, rolled out a new design line of its popular eVo2 iPod protector. The eVo2 is distinct for its tight, form-hugging silicon cases, which really more accurately fall in the "protector" category rather than that of "case"

The first version of eVo2 was limited to several solid colors, including the classic rubber-white version. The new line is called the iSkin Wild Sides eVo2. What sets it apart is its glow-in-the-dark tiger-like stripes in vivid hues. The Wild Sides come in "Rebel" (deep blue and white), "Diva" (hot pink and white) and "Verve" (bright green and white). iSkin's really cool feature in the new eVo2, however, is the swirl-like cover for the Apple's innovative click-wheel control on the iPod's face.

Personally, kids, I like my iPod cases/protectors a little more sedate in design. The Wild Sides verison hurts my eyes. The glow-in-the-dark factor is most definitely cool and undoubtably a practical feature for those who listen to their iPods in the dark. But aesthetically, I find the animal-print-like stripes, kind of cheesy. But to each one's own.

If this is the iPod case flavor that you favor, then get ready to cut $34.99 from your stack. These new protectors will work with all new 4G iPods, with dock access for iPhoto included.

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iSkin Web Site

Apple Computer, Inc. Web Site

Okay, so what was the brainstorm session like that gave birth to this cute and absurd accessory? Like just about everything that Apple makes, we feel strangely compelled to run out to the nearest Apple Store right away and spend money on it. (Damn you, Apple!)

The "Socks" sell in packages of six in an equal number of bright colors for $29.00 and will fit all iPod models from 1G to 4G. As the product copy says on the Apple Web site, "Dress your iPod up in any one of six vibrant color socks (green, purple, grey, blue, orange, and pink). This set of knit socks provides a stylish, fun, and practical way to protect your iPod. Fits all iPods."

But as if that wasn't enough, Apple goes out of the way to make it clear how to use the socks by adding: "Forgive us if we're stating the obvious, but here's how it works: Just slide your iPod into the sock to keep it safe and warm. Slide it out to dock or change playlists. It's as easy as... putting on a pair of socks."

No kidding. (You could probably actually wear them on your feet, too!)

The idea of an accessory for protecting your iPod isn't new. As we've seen, the design and manufacture of iPod cases is in itself a growth industry. What's novel and, depending on your point of view, either clever or nauseating is the brand/product naming: "Socks." Well, technically, "iPod Socks." Each sock even has its own prominently placed Apple logo tag.

This Socks idea is good. It's DAMN good! In fact, it's fucking brilliant! This might actually sell quite well ... I mean--damnit!--dress me in all-black right now, give me a British accent and a RISD degree, move me to Cupertino, California and give me the credit for this product concept! (And while we're making demands, give me a promotion and a raise, too.)

(Of course, we're sure a certain insanely great, mock-turtle-neck-and-blue-jeeans-wearing vegetarian CEO/genius had something to do with the final approval of iPod Socks product line.)

No diss intended to folks who work at 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino. After all, we've spent enough money on Apple Computer products over the years to pay the Ivy League education of several children. (Ahem ... not our children--we don't have kids--but hypothetical children. But we did, they'd use Apple products, too--but we digress.)

Apple's exceptional hardware and sofware has served us exceptionally well. They just keep getting better (case in point, the remarkably crash-free OS X and Airport Express). There are few exceptional issues (iPod battery replacement) that continue to be a thorn in our side.

Apple never ceases to innovate with technology and design in big, important ways, as well as (as the iPod Socks suggest) ridiculously small ways. You could make a strong argument that Apple has continued to innovate as importantly in its marketing, from its groundbreaking "1984" commercial introducing the Macintosh computer to its "Think Different" campaign to its instantly recognizable ads for iTunes and iPod.

Now if only they could do something honorable about dealing with that iPod battery-life/replacement problem. Then the "iLife" would be several steps closer to perfection.

RELATED LIINKS

Apple Computer, Inc. Web Site

Now here's a Web site we can really dig our heels into. SneakerFreak is an evolving document of mostly personal photos of tennis shoes (or "trainers" as friends in the U.K. say) of all stripes, colors and logos, including both those with mass appeal and those obscure and exclusive. The site is an online venue for sneaker pimps worldwide to post photos of their fave pairs of rubber-sole footwear.

They're all there: Nike, Adidas, Puma, Converse, New Balance, Medium, Reebok, K-Swiss, Pony, Vans, Onitsuka and even BAPE (A Bathing Ape), Le Coq Sportif and on and on. The catalog of images include shots of sneakers being worn on the street, at home, etc., as well as on display, in shoeboxes, and held up to the camera.

RELATED LINKS

SneakerFreak Web Site

David Letterman, Conan O'Brien, Jay Leno--especially Jay Leno--Craig Kilborn and even Jimmy Kimmel make their living entertaining the late-night television masses with a comic talk-show format perfected and cemented in practice by Johnny Carson, the host of the Tonight Show for thirty years. Carson died Sunday at age 79.

Without doubt, Carson was a major American television icon. The simple reason for his legendary status is that the TV personality was for so many years thoroughly embedded in the nightly ritual of so many Americans.

It was his comic presence that helped wrap the political and cultural events of the day in a humorous ten-minute opening monologue filled with one-liners that, given Carson's manner, were as often funny when they flopped as when they hit their mark.

People laughed at Carson's jokes and found pleasure in his celeb-filled hour of talk and variety. His flat, nasally Nebraskan tone was, for some, the last thing they heard each night as they sank into slumber in front of the blue glow of the TV set.

Though never myself a special fan of Carson or The Tonight Show (not then and not now), Johnny's passing brings back a few vivid memories.

Carson's program was very much an LA show writ for America. (For a few early years, the show was produced in New York.) That is, though it was a national program, it was subtly infused with an LA kind of casual, movie-town sophistication. Growing up in LA (and within the entertainment industry), the Tonight Show instinctively felt like it was homegrown. It even looked like a product of the city, especially during the years when the Tonight Show set had a backdrop of LA's lit-up night time skyline and was lined with the kind of verdant palms Angelenos take for granted year around, but that most of the rest of America associates with SoCal's mild Mediterranean climate.

Carson's death also reminds me of a childhood summer when I sneaked (or is it "snuck") into a screening of the Stanley Kubrick film "The Shining" at the local mall multiplex. I was with a gang of neighborhood kids and their cooler, older siblings. These older kids led us to abandon the forgettable G-rated Disney matinee our moms had sent us to and instead to surreptitiously slink into an R-rated horror flick.

"The Shining" was a terrifying film for child, but the most memorable line from the movie was Jack Nicholson's utterance of Carson's signature Tonight Show intro ("Heeeeeeeeeeere's Johnny!") as he psychotically chopped his way through a door with an axe in an attempt to murder Shelley Duvall.

That personal cinematic experience gave me a singular sensation--the simultaneous feeling of being scared shitless and tickled to laughter. Humor in the eyes of terror.

Finally, Carson also oddly reminded me of my dad. Though Johnny was much older and of a different generation, my dad watched him nightly. His humor was that of my parents' generation and sometimes, when my father would crack a joke at the dinner table, he unconsciously bore, for a moment, the manner of the talk-show star, as if Johnny's delivery was dad's template for cracking a successful joke.

Carson was so big that he was a pop-cultural reference point beyond his own talent, his own context, which is a sure sign of mass-cultural transcendence. Read more on Carson in the massive New York Times obit-article (see link below) in Monday's edition.

Johnny Carson, Rest in Peace.

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