This is really kinda sad.

The Greatest Music Collection is being sold at a massive discount, except nobody wants to buy it. And why would they? When almost everything in Paul’s collection likely exists in a digital form somewhere, who wants the burden of being the paladin over a massive physical media collection?

Now, I’m no archivist. I leave that to Rick Webb. But there’s something heartbreaking about this person who thought they were doing a great thing, a great service in saving all of those records, only to discover that when the time came to pass the torch along, no one would want the responsibility.

With vinyl being the only medium seeing sales growth, you’d imagine that someone, somewhere would be up for it. Perhaps the new vinyl collectors just haven’t hit that tipping point yet.

(via Gizmodo.)

really, when the words inflatable turd are in an article you’re reading, it can only be considered an epic moment in journalism.

So I was in Seattle for the Memorial Day weekend, visiting our friends at the McLeod Residence, an art gallery in SF we own part of, checking in on our beloved McLeod Mirrors and hanging out with my girl for Buster’s 32nd birthday party when my friend Buster told me about his new project: The 8:36 Project. Buster seems to have gotten the idea from his friend Chadwick. Whatever, I’m into it. I’ve been doing it more or less since I was in Seattle (though one day I flew across the 8:36 line when coming back to NYC from SF so I missed my alarm on that one).

Looks like a good number of people are doing it now. It’s really amazing the diversity of stuff people do at that time, and it’s a good snapshot into the unscripted parts of our lives.

Here are my 8:36PM flicks. I also like that the second most interesting one on the global 836PM tag search is Judi hula hooping @ the McLeod Residece.

Ruby and Mike P made some bristle bots one day here at the office, but we never tried painting with them!

Last night, Google was kind enough to invite the Barbarians to the New York launch party for the iGoogle Artist Themes. We’ve been working with Google on the artist themes for a few months now, and we were excited to see them go out into the wild and spread the creative love.

But boy, we sure weren’t ready for the high class event! What a good time. We’ve seen our share of tech gatherings, of course (we hit an awesome Nokia/Webby Award event on Tuesday at the Nokia Flagship store), and ad events (we also hit the ANDY Awards on wednesday), but this was an ART event. We’ve not seen this kind of art star power in one room since the opening of the New Museum last fall.

The highlight of the night was a panel, moderated by Marissa Mayer, featuring… wait for it… Mark Ecko, Anne Geddes, Bob Mankoff (of the New Yorker, whose theme we produced, among others), Jeff Koons and Michael Graves.

Jeff Koons and Michael Graves? Holy heck. It’s not every day you accidentally stumble into a room featuring two of your high school idols. Also spotted: Diane von Furstenberg, and a personal hero of the Barbarian Group, of course, John Maeda. I was too chicken to go say high to him, even though I was recently on a panel with one of his former students and now a prof at the Media Lab, David Small.

Anyway, awesome night. We’re proud to have worked on this project with Google, and we’re ever thankful to Maya Moufarek, Michaela Prescott, and Andy Berndt for the gig.

Okay, who wants to buy me a copy of Maximo Vignelli’s updated New York Subway Map?

C’mon, it’s only $299!

Pretty please? I’ll fix your computer for you!