The Essence Of Perfection: Back to School

Dope List of Goods To Help Get You Through This School Year. Brought To You By Juxtapoz.com

To the kids returning to school this week...You can get all A's and still flunk at life. I flunked at school and I'm still trying to prove the reverse of this wise utterance.

Here's some awesome back-to-school-ish stuff.

NOTE: Excuse the dated references. It's been a long time, kids, since auntie Alana was skipping to school in a plaid skirt and Oxford shirt.

THE LOOK

Pop Magazine commissioned photographer Todd Cole and Takashi Murakami to create the cover and Brit Pop spread inside. Courtney Love meets Japanese teen queen pretty much sums up my school career. I wish I had more to say about my teen years but I spent a lot of time sleeping through them, so now I rely on images like this to distill my teen years.

THE BOOK

Textbooks be damned. Don't waste precious backpack space on The Fundamentals of Physical Geography (2nd Edition). Carlo McCormick (Paper Magazine, Beautiful Losers, Dondi White) hooked up with Marc and Sara Schiller (Wooster Collective) to create Trespass. A History of Uncommissioned Urban Art.

This is kind of a no-brainer to pick up. It was 3 years in the making and could very well endure more "out-of-stock" time than the iPhone4. Bottom line: order early.

Here's a preview for you nose-y types.

THE OTHER STUFF

I'm really digging the work of Yi-Hsin Tzeng right now because she takes all the sexy porn that's NSFS/W and makes it into a mess of cerebral beauty.

Not to get carried away though. It's still porn.

So, you can get caught with it tucked into your Biology 11: Methods and Protocols book and your teacher will think that you're one cultured kid. Trust me, she'll slap an A on your lab workbook faster than it takes to make a Y cut in a dead frog.

THE HOMEWORK

And for some DIY craft projects, while the rest of the class is reading aloud from Othello, take a hint from Dalton Ghetti. The man knows how to put school supplies into good use. all you need is a pencil and the sharp end of a compass. And the patience of a 17th century monk.