23 years ago today the first episode of Twin Peaks aired on ABC. We love these original TV Guide advertisements for the show, they are so perfectly Lynch and its always so interesting to see how something as esoteric and bizarre as Twin Peaks is “promoted” or “marketed”. More below.

Best line? “P.S. – She’s still dead.”

More from our Twin Peaks obsessed selves:

• A Very Twin Peaks Christmas
• Black Lodge 2600
• Fire Walk With Me Event / Photos
• Fire Walk With Me Costume Inspiration

We also thought we’d take this opportunity to say how much we absolutely loved his latest album, Until The Quiet Comes, it felt like a bit of a return to form after the more conceptual but still incredible Cosmogramma, and its a welcome, gorgeous return. Check out a video from the album (starring Elijah Wood — weird?) below.

We love Stones Throw’s response to the Cease and Desist from Marlboro for the first Jon Wayne cassette they put out. Apparently Marlboro owns the trademark for the “pyramid shape” seen on their packs, as evidenced below:

Go figure. Anyways, here’s Mr. Wayne’s new release. This will surly cease the copyright complaints:

Brilliant. All images from Stones Throw. Get the cassettes here.

Well, after 5 years of living and working in Austin, this is the first year that we’ve actually got badges and will be attending SXSW! We’ll be jaunting all over town during the Interactive and Film portion of the festival, and then we’ll be working non-stop in our food trailer, Johnnye’s, for the week of Music. Its going to be a busy one!

Tomorrow night (Saturday, March 9th) we’ll be working our special kind of projection magic for the fine folks at SXSW Eco & Geostellar for their launch party at The Blackheart. Ryan Padgett of Duale has been kind enough to lend us some 6 foot tall triangle crystals to project on for the evening, so its definitely going to be a site to behold. More info about the event here. If you’re in the Rainey Street area, be sure to stop by and say Hi! Its going to be really rad. Trust us.

Also of note, we just made some quick and simple business cards to pass out during the fest — we’ve been using the same cards for years now, so it was time for an update, but we weren’t quite ready to get rid of our beloved skull and crossbones yet. Keeping the information simple on the card is nice so that if you want someone to just check out your site, you can give them the card as is, but there’s plenty of room for a phone number and e-mail on the back if more info is necessary.

For those of you that are in town for the music portion, you’ll definitely not want to miss the Exploded Drawing party at MOHA on Wednesday, March 13th. That is where our food trailer is going to be set up, and is definitely going to be the best party of the week. You heard it here first. Extra special bonus: their poster was designed by our favorite Austin designer and good friend, Glory Gold & Glitter. Unmatchable skills. Always making us want to step up our game. To get the details for the party, RSVP here.

Above is an awesome special SXSW Exploded Drawing compilation for your listening pleasure. Great ready! It’s going to be quite a week. See you on the streets, or on the other side.

Men are climbing to the moon but they don’t
seem interested in the beating human heart

Two video posts in a row! Our music video for Reaganometry‘s amazing 8-minute Endangered Love Suite is now finished. When Butch Webster of Insect Records approached us about creating this video, the only cues he gave were the colors red and blue, water, and a woman’s face. Listening to the song over and over and thinking about endangered love, we kept thinking of beautiful Marilyn, so gorgeous, so misunderstood, so smart, and wrapped up in all kinds of endangered love, while being so endangered herself.

If you’ve never read her letter to her psychiatrist about her stay in a psychiatric hospital, you should, as its a beautiful and intense look into an incredible woman who was so, so fragile. The first time I read it, I cried, her pain and confusion so apparent and real with every sentence. Read it here.

As I started to write this letter about four
quiet tears had fallen. I don’t know quite why.

We tried to show everything from that vulnerability and pain in this video, to her beauty and charm, and even the moments where it all falls apart and you can see that she is lightyears away, be it from the drugs, or depression, or sleep exhaustion, or what have you. Endangered, indeed. Because of her own beauty, and the world loving her and cursing her all at the same time.

This video was created as a lead up to the release of the new Reaganometry and Butcher Bear record, coming out on Insect Records in April. We also designed the vinyl release, which you can see in our portfolio here. We’ll post about it more when its available for purchase.

Thanks for watching and we hope you’ve enjoyed our latest video projects as much as we enjoyed making them. We’re trying to work on more videos in 2013 and it seems that so far we’re off to a good start. Expect more. Much, much more.

Oh internet. So full of time wasting distractions, overwhelming social media obligations, and pictures of really really cute cats (we’re obsessed with Snoopy Babe at the moment). But the internet can also be so helpful at times – with some sites we come across truly being mind-blowing in their usefulness and simplicity, making us think: “thank goodness that someone took the time and care to make such a wonderful and useful tool that I get to use for free.”

Here are some helpful internets that we’ve been using lately that we wanted to share with you all. Some of this might be old news – or even things we’ve been using for a while, but it doesn’t hurt to revisit some of the most useful sites on the web. We’ll try to share more semi-regularly, or whenever something new pops up that we just can’t imagine internet-life without.

Wordmark.it

We had come across Wordmark.it ages ago, but recently stumbled back on it while organizing some bookmarks. SO USEFUL. What it does is loads whatever sample text you type in, in all of the fonts you have installed on your computer. Being able to see what you have readily available, immediately, side by side, is so helpful when trying to find the perfect type for a project. You can change the font size, view as white on black or black on white, and even select certain fonts to filter and narrow down what you see on your screen. So smart, so simple, so helpful.

PlaceIt by Breezi

This is something I only recently found – but its great for designers wanting to see or show a quick mock-up of a design on a mobile device or tablet. You just drag your image into your selected option and viola. So simple and quick, and great quality images as well.

Feedly

Feedly isn’t just for designers – but it is designed beautifully. My RSS feed has never looked so good! It integrates seamlessly with Google Reader, so you just link the two and anything you add or remove in Feedly reflects in Google Reader as well. It’s so slick and well built that I’ll never going back to Google Reader again.

Thank you to the creators of these wonderful web tools! Making my internet life easier, one site at time.

Of course, that was in December, and its now February, but we took our time because we wanted to add some texture and visual interest to the video since we shot it on the fly on our phone and by then end of the video, there’s mostly just shots of peoples backs. Light leaks, and a vintage video of resonance effecting sand help build the video up, and now we have a display of light and color fitting for the rising of Red Ox.

Expect much more from Red Ox in the coming year, and follow their movements on Facebook, here. And if you live in Austin, you can see them February 22nd at Club 1808.

Also of note, Recspec is now on Youtube and we’ve created a channel where we will be posting more video projects, so subscribe over here.

There are few things more pleasing in my line of work than getting to create designs for some of my favorite musicians (see: Fennesz), so when I was approached by Henna of Church of The Friendly Ghost (who I have worked with many times in the past, most specifically for NMASS), about creating a poster for the upcoming Matmos show at The North Door, I could barely contain my glee.

A band like Matmos is a particularly intimidating beast to design for — so I just went for full-on crazy glitchy weirdness sampling digital and analog scribblings, just like their music. Make sure you don’t miss their show with Horse Lords on February 28th. Its going to be incredible. Buy tickets here.

We’ve been meaning to write about 12th Night Austin ever since it happened – and we’re just now getting a chance to sit down and really process how amazing that evening was. It was estimated that we might have had over 700 (!!) people in the parade and it truly was a night to remember. The costumes, the joy, the krewes, the dancing, the party, the king cake, everything was so amazing that its overwhelming to take it all in, even after the fact! Thank you so, so much to everyone that came out and participated and dressed up and helped us start what is going to be an amazing yearly tradition, that Austin has been deserving of for a long, long time. It was a welcome bit of sparkle and magic in one of the darkest points of the year, and such a brilliant way to start off the New Year – full of joy and music and dancing. You are amazing, Austin!

Our krewe, Krewe du Bisoux (consisting of myself, Angel from Sister Temperance Tarot, Shari from Charm School Vintage, Allyson from Coco Coquette and Amelia from Sweet Ritual) have some other tricks up our sleeve for the coming year, too. And of course, next January there will be another 12th Night Parade, even bigger and better than the last.

Thank you again to everyone for coming out, to Minor Mishap Marching Band for being our incredible second line, and to Devaki from Fun Loving Photos for immortalizing the evening with her always amazing photobooth. Also a big thanks for the amazing video above by Mary Kang and KUTX! Here’s a few of our favorite photos from the evening – more can be seen here, here, and here.

Gorgeous girls in red. Photo by Fun Loving Photos

Wardenclyffe’s Minimalist Cowboys for their Minimalism Rodeo. Photo by Fun Loving Photos

Krewe de Boux-tay. Photo by Fun Loving Photos

Glitter gatos! Photo by Fun Loving Photos

The Austin Chronicle’s Gay Place dedicated their krewe to the memory of Lisa Left Eye Lopez, who don’t want no scrubs. Photo by John Leach

Our illustrious photographer, Devi. Photo by John Leach

Crowning the King and Queen! Photo by John Leach

Queen Kitty and King Gina by Fun Loving Photos

We already can’t wait for next year’s festivities and for those of you who live in Austin but missed this year, we hope to see you in your full regalia for the next one. A year is just enough time to plan your costumes and gather your krewe, right? Want more information about 12th Night and 12th Night Austin? We have a full page of history and other information on our website, here.