Another installment in our "faves from 2008" BoingBoing tv retrospective -- this two-parter in which Mark Frauenfelder gets an exclusive tour of Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea. Above, part one, below, part two, and MP4 links for download here:
Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea is based out of Chicago, Illinois and has recently opened up a new store in the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles. Kyle Glanville, head of research and development at Intelligentsia and winner of the 2008 US Barista Championship shows Mark how they acquire and roast some of the finest coffee in the world.
The word intelligentsia derives from the Latin word intelligentia, meaning a group of people engaged in complex mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture. Kyle Glanville has been laboring to promulgate a new coffee culture with Intelligentsia to combat the "get up and go" mentality, and Mark is along for the ride to learn the careful art of roasting coffee.
Intelligentsia is located at 3922 West Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, California 90029 and is open 7 days a week.
The new compendium will include mole men. And, frankly, it's pretty sweet. We visited with him during a hotel hole-up at the Chateau Marmont, and interrupted his writing flow. He forgave us, and offered us a ham sandwich with some Soylent Green. Please to be watching.
(Ed. note: We aired a mole-man-centric cut of this visit late last year, but we're revisiting again to reveal more undiscovered Hodgmanic goodness. Stay tuned for all-new fun with this guy, planned soon.)
Klaus Pierre, a French/German actor-waiter-whatever, aspires against all odds to become America's next great action hero. Today, in the final chapter of our observational documentary of this Hollywood hopeful, we witness his final challenge -- the American immigration system. His green card has run out, and that is a dilemma no amount of drop-kicks or ninja-punches can solve. Goodbye Klaus. Auf wiedersehn or whatever. Ciao. See you on the laptop screen.
Klaus Pierre, a French/German actor-waiter-whatever, aspires against all odds to become America's next great action hero. In today's episode, he heads to the hills above Hollywood, where scrub brush and aspiring starlets bask in the sun, to work out with a really mean personal trainer. Warning: episode contains cucumber masksmasques and pushups.
The 1982 cyberpunk cinema classic Blade Runner remains one of the most influential science fiction movies of all time, and tops many a nerd's favorite films list.
Today on Boing Boing tv, Boing Boing Gadgets editor Joel Johnson visits the studio of artist and futurist Syd Mead, who designed the film's dystopian look and feel. We learn about the "erotic machine" he dreamed for the replicant Zhora (this breast-shaped dreampod was cut from the script when director Ridley Scott ran out of dough), the 123 *4* alternate opening scenes designed by Syd (one of them, which involved shoveling dead bodies, was deemed "too Holocaust"), what really lights up those building facades, and many more secrets.
Syd explains he envisioned the world of Blade Runner as a place "you wouldn't want to be for too long," and describes the challenges of designing for "a love story with moralistic underpinnings... if we could actually make people, would we treat them like dishwashers? Just use them up and throw them away?"
If you like this episode, you might want to pick up:
Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow visits his favorite comic book store in all the world -- Secret Headquarters, in the Silverlake area of Los Angeles. With shop owner Dave Pifer, Cory walks us through some of the graphic novels and comics he loves, everything from manga to zine howto manuals to Jodorowsky to Warren Ellis. Cory is particularly fond (as are all of us at BBtv) of the shop's awesome simultaneous tribute to Stan Lee and the Sex Pistols in this t-shirt, "God Save Stan Lee."