links for 2011-04-25

In order to reach the carbon emission goals laid out in the Chicago Climate Action Plan, Chicago just unveiled a new program where it could help taxi companies around the city purchase hybrid and "alternative fuel" vehicles, excluding electric cars.

Nudie took the popular Western style of dress, already a bit loud, and sent it to a whole new level of flamboyancy – rhinestones, wagon wheels and pastel colors, cacti, critters and crosses. And of course, in addition to designing some ridiculous automobiles for those who could afford to buy them (or those who could cheat their way to winning them at cards, as Buck Owens allegedly did his), Nudie designed both Elvis Presley's $10,000 gold lamé suit, worn on the cover of the 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong album, and Gram Parsons' ominously foretelling white suit featuring pills, poppies, marijuana leaves, naked women and a cross, worn for the cover of the Flying Burrito Brothers' album The Gilded Palace of Sin.

too funny: 
A series of pictures last Sunday of covers of the magazine Tiger Beat, with an article about how the original teen-girl tabloid has remained virtually unchanged since its inception in 1965, erroneously included a parody cover, produced by the satiric newspaper The Onion, that featured a picture of President Obama.