The type of people you will find on Twitter

These are my picks out of a much longer list of the archetypes you’ll find on Twitter (where I am currently hiding behind an avatar of Rush Limbaugh). Funny, but thought-provoking. (Didn’t I also say that about something in my last post?)

people who are just back from a really awesome run

people who have forgotten how to text

people who are involved in "social networking" and optimizing the power of re-Tweeting and "computers"

people who really like the news

people who are cold

Shaquille O'Neal

people who are concerned about the collapse of the publishing industry

people who are about to go for a run

people who are mad about Twitter

(Sasha Frere-Jones via Scott Simpson.)

Bad hair puns go international

I guess I’m not alone in noticing that, when it comes to making egregiously bad puns (is there any other kind?) when naming businesses, hair joints are the absolute worst. Please, “Royal Canadian Hair Force?” Well, at least it wasn’t a scripty tyepface in ALL CAPS (jeez) which I also saw today. I wanted to claw my eyes out.

Apparently those pun-loving Germans are also big on bad hair names, as referenced by this map from Die Zeit, which plots the locations of stores with just three individual bad-pun names, roughly translated as “Hair-mony,” “Seasons of the Hair,” aka “seasons of the year” (it makes a better pun in German, trust me) and the final one, a word meaning “within a hair.”
(Read the Strange Maps piece where I found this. It’s fun and thought-provoking whereas I just drone on…)

Retro novel covers for current movies

Everybody from BoingBing to Coudal is referencing them, but they are so frickin’ cool!
via spacesick. Awesome!

Wall of Voodoo, Back In Flesh

Something Merlin Mann wrote reminded me that Urgh! A Music War! might available be available on-line, and indeed it was, so I can link to this video of one of my all-time favorite bands doing one of their best-ever songs.

We in Vancouver were lucky enough to have a Urgh! warm-up show at the legendary Commodore Ballroom which featured Pere Ubu, Magazine, The Members, and a crappy act passing itself off as the Dead Boys, even though it was just rapidly-failing Stiv Bators and a bunch of hacks.

It’s all or nothing, really

Graphs can be funny, in the right hands.
(BB.)

I like shiny things

Ever heard of a 1970 Dodge Challenger Frua? Neither have I. But it sure is shiny!
(Hot Wheels.)

When in doubt, put a wastebasket on your head

I think that in this picture, it is the girl who is the Star Trek freak, and her brother and mother are playing along for some reason.

I was about to pass this off as a rare phenomenon: women as Trekkers, who knew?, when I remembered an old friend whose sister did the Star Trek-reenactment thing, right down to the crazy ear jewellery and the starship bridge in some guy’s basement.

And it occurred to me that Star Trek, for all its faults, has from the beginning been an unspoken but steadfast champion of the idea that humans are all equal, regardless of color or gender. So maybe because of that, Trek has more female fans than other space operas?

Just thinking out loud…
(PS. What is going on in that picture behind the brother’s right shoulder? It looks vaguely like bukakke.)

(via nevver.)

How He Wrote Elastica Man

Yesterday, Jetpacks featured Elastica doing “Connection” for his random Thursday musical pick. An inspired choice, and it prompted me to see if there was a video of my fave Elastica song, “How He Wrote Elastica Man,” which features the distinctive guest-vocal stylings of Mark. E. Smith, who is one of my personal musical heroes. And there it was!

Can penguins go insane?

Can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to the latest from Werner Herzog, “Encounters at the End of the World.” I’ve been a huge Herzog fan for decades now and he just gets better and better. If you haven’t yet seen “Grizzly Man,” may I humbly suggest that you are an incomplete human being?

I’m holding it for a friend, honest

I think Mom might be on to me…
(via Graham Linehan.)

The Long Life Vehicle

The Postal Service ordered 99,150 Long Life Vehicles. At a cost of $11,651 per vehicle, the USPS contract with Grumman totaled over $1.1 billion ad was the largest vehicle order ever placed by the postal service.

Call me a weirdo, but I love this story from the National Postal Museum about the Long Life Vehicle, in which the postal service, rather than calling cap-in-hand on the usual car manufacturers, decided to issue a call for proposals from various industries, with a fairly severe list of what the vehicle would be required to do, and they eventually went with Grumman, choosing the plucky little vehicle that would dominate the next couple of decades of postal delivery:

Interesting that an aerospace company could beat out a transportation company when it came to bidding on a massive government vehicular contract. I think we can put this victory down to superior lobbying. And lousy car manufacturers.
(Inspired by Coudal.)

Hey guys, girlie photos!

And they are “ACTUAL PHOTOGRAPHS” because I’m not sure what else you would have been expecting. Etchings, perhaps?

As Modern Mechanix points out, $2.00 in 1949 bought about the same as $18 does today, which seems like a big payout to buy some vague, possibly-not-even-good porn. And if it turns out to be not very porny at all, who are you going to complain to? The Porn Commission? Ha!

This is why we invented the Internet, right?

Clash of the Colors

You have to give credit to Lawrence Welk for even allowing this on his program.

(If you’re willing to sit through it, our dancing couple really pour it on starting at the middle eight, and continue through the end of the song.)
(via Ow! My Sweet Eyes!)

Kidrobot punk

We’re big Kidrobot fans in this house, so as an ancient punk rocker, I appreciated some of the vintage references in this commercial for the next series (Britain only?). I especially like how the DK’s logo can be so effectively turned into KR.
(via Joy Engine.)

Killer Carabiner

My boys went a birthday party at an army drill hall recently - the twins’ dad is in the reserves, so I guess he got a good rate for a big gym-like area where a bunch of kids could run around for the afternoon.

Plus, my sons said they have tanks! That seemed unlikely, and it turns out that said “tanks” were in fact camo-painted jeeps.

In any event, their goodie bags included these righteous carabiners, with tiny-but-powerful flashlights built in! I immediately pocketed the three-year-old’s, before he even knew he had one. I’ve since found another one lying around, and I’m actively hunting the third. Cool promotional swag like this is wasted on the very young.

And way to go airforce.gc.ca for promoting your message in a different but somewhat appropriate way. The website is kind of snores-ville, but the carabiners are cool.

Lois Lane will do what it takes, for her country

Yes, I am a 12-year-old boy.
(via Doc40.)

“Ohh… sorry, kid”

I don’t necessarily agree with Eye on Springfield that The Simpsons stopped being funny after Season 9, but I do appreciate their Tumblr, uh, tumble thing. What’s the right word for a Tumblr site, anyway?

Also, Happiness is Just a Flaming Moe Away.
(via The Morning News.)

Incident at Loch Ness

It seems filming has not gone smoothly at this monster-hunting movie shoot featuring Werner Herzog.
(via Coudal.)

Short, sweet and to the point

Hank Williams and Anita Carter. Yes, a member of that Carter family.
(via [ the sugar sheet ]).

Tweeting from West Egg

Let’s see how @NickCarraway does. This one is promising.

Gong Hei Fat Choi

Chinese ballerina assassins, at gun-point and en pointe, urge you to enjoy the coming year.
(Future Perfect via Coudal.)

And here’s the cover for the people’s opera whose name was stolen by Brian Eno for his seminal album of the early ’70s. I think I already knew that Eno stole the title, but there is only so much useless trivia a person can keep at the forefront for any given time. (That’s not a good thing to admit, as I am going to do the Jeopardy audition thing again this week.)

House of Tires

Just a really beautiful picture that I stared at for a long time on this isn’t happiness. The actual photographer is Keith Davis Young.

Video success story

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about Roman Signer, an artist who put 56 remote-controlled helicopters in a room and let them fight it out. At the time, I vowed to find video of the installation and then I promptly did nothing of the sort.

Well, a reader in Germany named Marina did the legwork for me and uncovered a video on the website of a Swiss newspaper that shows, at least for a few seconds, the helicopters in flight. Awesome.

Thanks, Marina!

Steve Martin taps

My son was laughing today at Steve Martin in an ad for Pink Panther 2 and I felt kind of sad that my sons might only remember Steve Martin for crap such as Pink Panther 2.

Because he was such a goddamn genius.
(via Apelad.)

Album Cover Hall of Fame

Warning: Foghat spotted making music as recently as 1990.
(via This Isn’t Happiness.)

How to quietly get your afternoon buzz on at work

Or doesn’t speak for itself, if you know what I mean… (nudge).

Good heavens, is there any target audience for this ad other than closet office alcoholics?
(via Modern Mechanix.)

Chrysler Comedy Classics

As most sentient beings are aware, Chrysler spent over a quarter of a million dollars to buy a newspaper ad thanking the government for its largesse in handing over taxpayers’ dollars. Which turned out to be kind of a bonehead move, in PR terms. I guess they also discussed it in a blog post , which was open to comments until about last Wednesday, when the Digg community discovered it.

Now it’s been pulled (it was here) but Consumerist has some choice quotes. Here’s my favorite:

If it comes down to Chrysler or walking.......we'll walk. I'll put my kids on a mule before I'll put them in a Chysler. Suck it, you parasites.

There’s some righteous anger, my friends.
(Thanks to Super Punch.)

The most beautiful server room in the world

Behold the MareNostrum, currently the eighth-most-powerful supercomputer in Europe. It’s housed in a former chapel in Barcelona.
(via DRB, which has more beautiful pictures.)

Blow Up

(via Doc 40)

Marilyn knocks ’em down

Another image from Gunslinger.

1976

I blissed out for a moment when this isn’t happiness posted this cover of Architectural Digest from April, 1976. Because this cover (and when was the last time AD looked like this, for Pete’s sake?) clearly references Habitat, the United Nations meeting on housing and other basic living needs. In fact, it’s a rough map of the waterfront of Vancouver, where the conference took place on the grounds of a former military facility.

Astonishingly, there exists no Wikipedia page for this conference, because it seems to have been pretty cool, from what I’ve heard. It had the world’s longest bar, as certified by Guinness, and you don’t often hear a stat like that being thrown around in regard to the UN.

1976 was a good year to be 17 years old in Vancouver. In addition to all the hoopla at Habitat, with its deep social thinkers and attendant freak hangers-on, there was an international sculpture contest going on at the city’s newest large park, formerly a golf course in the heart of the city and only open to its elite.

Suddenly it was filled with communist sculptors from foreign lands and the local girls who were their groupies; girls who in turn enticed high school boys to do their dirty work and to keep them warm with predictions of free sex for one and all, come the revolution. So I’m not saying I got laid by any of these Heroines of the Revolution Which Never Came, but I can at least look back without bitterness and tell you how tantalizing it all was.

Also, at the end of that perfect summer, I witnessed an army of hippies sending off a Greenpeace anti-whaling vessel painted to look like a cosmic version of the US Coast Guard ships. Looking back, that seems like the final gasp of the Summer of Love in Vancouver.

Which is saying something, because the Vancouver neighborhood of Kitsilano was long looked at as Haight-Ashbury North, particularly when you factored in the draft-dodger scene.

But starting in 1977, punk started to happen, and I gravitated toward that. And the house where I lived in Kits gained a reputation as a sort of punk-rock hell-hole that was a constant plague upon the neighbors, even the hippie neighbors. Oh, did we have fun.

Odd pairing of the moment

Premier Chou En-Lai of China welcomes Charles Chaplin, legendary entertainer.
(via If Charlie Parker…)

What a bunch of a-holes

What a great idea. Wish I’d thought of it.
(via Ffffound!)

It is embarrassing to be caught and killed for stupid reasons.

I’ll say.
(via nevver.)

It must be the end times

This is either brilliant or horrible. I can’t decide.
(via Coudal. Click through and watch it in high-res for best effect. Seriously, if you’re not watching it in high-res then just go home now, loser).

Another boring day at work

Monster waves from the Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch. Play it the next time you’re feeling sorry for yourself in your cubicle, you whiner.
(via things.)

Customize your Camaro

I cannot quickly type Camaro to save my life.
(via Hotwheels.)

Philips Cinema 21:9

I don’t really care about the ratio; this is just a beautiful picture.
(via fubiz.)

Nostalgia

The thing I like most about this ad is that you could not publish it today without getting a shitstorm of bad publicity. Is that progress? Or have we turned into a culture of politically-correct prudes, quick to find offence at even the most benign innuendo?
(via Modern Mechanix.)

NYT iPhone GUI

After I’d read someone recommend this for the third or fourth time today, I thought I’d better check it out.

I haven’t given much thought to the design of the icons for the New York Times’s iPhone app. But now that I am looking at them rather than through them (as it were), they are quite simple yet informative. In this piece, Felix Sockwell, who designed the icons, discusses early ideas and explains how the ultimate results were decided. Fascinating stuff.

(I chose to sample this one because I like the little cartoon donkey and elephant in the top left.)

Planetary Nebula NGC 2818

To me, the blue in this nebula and the glowing orange around the rim create the odd illusion that I am looking at a hole ripped in the universe, through which I can see the sky.
(via APOD.)

Paris-Dakar

This year’s Paris-Dakar Rally was actually staged in South America, due to concerns about terrorist attacks in Africa.

I just love the graphics and logos and all the extra gear on this Unimog. Definitely click for bigger.
(via The Big Picture.)

If I ever start a band, I want this guy in it

He talks like you could just pull it out of the box and start rocking out like this, but clearly he’s got talent.
(via Matthew Good.)

Looks soothing

Every now and then, I feel obliged to sing the praises of Sara Lorimer, who runs the real-estate-mocking blog It’s Lovely! I’ll Take It! and who appears to have the exact same sense of humor as I do, since I laugh out loud at her remarks on a daily basis.

Keep up the good work, Sara. You are Internet gold.

Gremlin

Oh, my god. Was this ever actually a car that we took seriously?
Thank heavens people like Peter Nidzgorski are here to remind us of our past follies.

Headbangers at the Wailin’ Wall

I just love the moment where they are all flailing silently as the other customer passes by. Priceless.
(via MTLB.)

Sawing for Teens

The National Film Board of Canada is among the coolest government bureaucracies ever. It helps produce some of the most insightful documentaries in the world. But it is probably better known for animation, having encouraged the art form since the days of early pioneers such as Norman McLaren.

So today, it published its entire archive on-line, viewable (and downloadable!) for free, which is an astonishing thing. There is a lot of cool stuff there.

And it allows me to share with you, my dear friends, The Big Snit by Richard Condie, one of my all-time favorite pieces of animation.

Thrill as a long-married couple play Scrabble, rattle eyeballs, clean the bathtub, saw the table, argue and then ultimately reconcile, just in time to be eternally redeemed in their happiness.

If you stopped me on the street and asked me to name a defining work of art in any genre, I wouldn’t come up with The Big Snit right off the top of my head. But, if you gave me a while and a news event about the NFB to get me thinking, I just might.

Change

Aaron at RCX has this wonderful Al Green clip in regard to inauguration day. Very nice.

DDC vs. DC

I’m a big fan of Aaron Draplin, who is blogging from Washington for the inaugural. He’s got a good eye for a photographic moment, and his logos and labels, such as at the top of this picture, are gorgeous beyond belief.

He’s also got a nice photo set on Flickr.

I’m living the inaugural through Draplin’s eyes.

The Steelcase Coordinated Office Approach

Whenever I see a picture like this, I think “Man, does that look like a cool place to work,” but then the more I think about it, the more I realize it’s not very cool at all.

So my fantasy is to be transported back into this sort of work environment, but maybe just for an afternoon. A slow afternoon. And then we would all go out for martinis.
(Mid-Century Modernist via Ffffound!)

It has arrived

I would just like you all to know that I am doing my personal best to fight our current economic conditions by continuing to buy weird and useless crap.

Tomorrow, expect the first picture of toast with Darth Vader burned into it.

Salsa y Ketchup

Coudal referenced Alex Cox’s godawful Straight to Hell today, and they even said it was better than Sid & Nancy. I have to disagree. Even if you thought Sid & Nancy was bad, it could never have been worse than this.

But it’s still worth watching, depending on your level of masochism, just to see who’s in the cast. Joe Strummer, The Pogues, Courtney Love, Tenpole Tudor (billed here as “Edward Tudorpole”), Elvis Costello, Dennis Hopper, Jim Jarmusch, Grace Jones, wow, that actually does sound like a recipe for disaster. Especially The Pogues/Dennis Hopper/Courtney Love part.

In fact, it’s tempting to speculate that Cox just took the advance money for this movie and filmed a bunch of his friends getting wasted in Mexico, wearing funny clothing.

It’s sad about Alex Cox, really. He started out so strong and then rapidly deteriorated into weird stuff like this and Walker.

Crappy as the movie was, it did have an amazing soundtrack, which contained the insidious little earworm in this clip (which is perhaps the best part of the whole movie): Zander Schloss singing Karl’s Disco Wiener Haven. I may not have seen the movie or listened to the soundtrack for almost 20 years, but I have always found myself with this tune stuck in my head:

“K!… -A-R-L’s Disco Wiener Haven!”

And now I have infected you! Maybe…

Who was Scott Walker?

Well, he was responsible for this, and that’s a damn good start. I’ve heard a few things about him lately, and I am looking into them and will re-post with more info as soon as possible. In the meantime, do your own damn research if you care so much. That’s why we all love the Internet, right?

Risqué Shakespeare-quoting cocktail napkins!

What could possibly be more racy?

Actually, these are all very good. Shakespeare was all about the double entendres, so he would have thought the cover to be superb.
(via lots of folks in recent months, but ultimately linked to Mr. Bali Hai.)

“I want him fighting rabid wild animals within a week!”

When looking around for the last one, I found this classic, as well. No attempt at social meaning here; just me being juvenile.

Germany vs. Greece

My wife and I have each seen this several times before, but not for a while. It was on PBS on our DVR tonight, and we were killing ourselves laughing. One of the greatest large-scale comedy sketches ever.

Yum!

(via Your Monkey Called.)

Gone

Pictures of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, a month after the bombs. Astounding. And there are still people who think a nuclear war is “winnable” and are working to develop battlefield nukes. Humans are capable of such horror.
(via MTLB.)

I think I see George Lucas

Or maybe it’s just some random bearded guy.

HODG-MAN posts this under the title “I wish I could post this every day forever.” What a touching sentiment.

UPDATE: YouTube pulled the original HBO version that I linked to, so I have changed the link to a European version. ALSO: It is indeed George Lucas.

3D glasses

Another bit of fun with CameraBag: Taken within seconds of each other, these two shots use the 1974 and 1962 filters, respectively. Quite nice, I think.

I have to shoot (as it were, since I am a crappy photographer) my son’s birthday tomorrow, so I’m going to try to sneak in a few CameraBag candids.

We took the guys to see “Bolt” in 3D a while back, and we all got these glasses. This is, apparently, the “new” 3D, but it works about as well for me as the “old” 3D, which is to say, not at all. The only thing I see is a mildly irritating image shift between the red and the blue.

Another boring job

At least part of my amazement about this is that I would have thought you’d get killed like a fly in a bug zapper.

Someone in the comments mentioned the physics term “potential,” which rang a very tiny bell somewhere in the back of my brain where my Grade 10 education lives.
(via Neatorama.)

160 East Lake St., Chicago

Simon Henley's new book, The Architecture of Parking (Thames & Hudson, £24.95), casts an objective eye over car parks, one of the most important but most neglected building types of the modern era, and finds a strange and haunting beauty.

Found this art-deco beauty in a Guardian slideshow of images from the book.
(via Coudal.)

Don’t eat the bad mustard

My kids are crazy for this Nike video. Think I’ve got a bunch of budding acidheads on my hands here.
(via DE.)

Wow.

The AMX GT. I am speechless.
(v. HotWheels.)

The White Pips

I’m kind of entranced by Robert Downey, Jr., in this. The other two are goofin’, but he is acting!
(via Fake Michael Bay.)

Exhausted Renegade Elephant

From MoMA:

Joel Sternfeld. (American, born 1944). Exhausted Renegade Elephant, Woodland, Washington. June 1979. Chromogenic color print, printed 1987, 15 15/16 x 20 1/16" (40.5 x 51 cm). Gift of Beth Goldberg Nash and Joshua Nash. © 2008 Joel Sternfeld

It must have got out of the Woodland Park Zoo, though god knows how. Also, I love the use of the word “renegade.” Not “rogue,” renegade.

(via New Shelton.)

Pushing against the tide

Here is a beautiful image; now, I am going to sleep.
(via Ffff!)

Start the party, already

Daft Punk vs. Adam Freeland is on the job. (That barely makes sense.) I expect others to follow.
(Watch it in hi-def!)

Don’t forget your hat

The crowds begin to gather. The new president? Warren G. “Badass” Harding! The decade to come? The Roaring ’20s! Whoooo!

Big Book of Trucks

As a father of three very young boys, I can truly appreciate this 1950 effort, The Big Book of Real Trucks.

We own so many books that are variations on this title. And the fact is, about half of them are crap. Which is true for most young children’s literature: about half of it is written with love and affection, and the rest is sheer awfulness. And kids, even young ones, aren’t stupid. They can tell a bad story from a good one.

Tonka in particular should take notice. I’ll admit my kids were okay with reading Tonka books a million times, but I sure got sick of reading that almost wilfully bad copy and seeing those half-assed illustrations over and over, and that’s ultimately counter-productive for the brand.

Step up, Tonka! Own the GeekDad constituency the way that Lego does! Better art in the books for young’uns, up the ante on your horrible-looking video games, which actually feature a fairly decent plot, make your videos even marginally better to watch.

The audience is there. I have three of it.
(Flickr setcans from the amazing Mr. Jalopy.)

CameraBag

There are a number of excellent photography apps for the iPhone that add neato features not available in the plain-vanilla Apple “Camera” app, but my current favorite is definitely CameraBag, which renders your photos in the style of a variety of vintage cameras. (The above image approximates the style of a Holga, a cheap Chinese-made unit that was notorious for light leakage but often produced strangely beautiful images.)

Plus, I learn from Merlin Mann on one of his million blogs, it actually takes higher-resolution pictures than the Camera app, which is perhaps its best feature of all.

Sizing wheel

In an odd bit of serendipity, today an old friend and I were reminiscing about proportion wheels and other archaic tools of the newspaper trade and, when I got back to my desk, Coudal had linked to this page.

(My wheel, along with my agate ruler, was stolen out of my car long ago by someone who obviously had no idea what he was taking. I wish I still had them, for nostalgic reasons.)

Dream Sequence

I’ve always been a Coen brothers fan, but not to the point where I believe that they are incapable of producing crappy movies.

I liked the The Big Lebowski when it came out, but I thought it weighed in on the lighter end of the scale in the Coen canon. I can see now why it is attracting a lot of fanboy attention, because I think some things need to be processed in the public mind before they can be considered cool, or not cool, or so not cool that they are, in fact, cool. Which may be the case here.

Which is to say, I am not an instant fanboy, but I have grown to appreciate the movie, and here is the amazing dream sequence of The Dude. Don’t blink or you will miss Saddam Hussein as the shoe-rental guy.

And also, Jeff Bridges? Wow! He had done lots of cool stuff before, but this was like the apotheosis.
(via Popdose.)

That crazy new musical style

Jenny at Dinosaurs and Robots posted this nice video from Your Show of Shows, wherein Sid Caesar explains jazz, then intros a big-time jazz number featuring Chita Rivera.

I don’t actually think this was the crazy-ass bebop shit implied by Caesar in his look-at-me-I’m-stoned intro, but it doesn’t matter. It’s still a great clip.

I kept starting to mark it as read and move along, but something kept me around until the end. It’s pretty damn good.

Beautiful old house gets moved down the street

From a nice Oobject collection of buildings being moved. None of them beats this.

Kansas City Bomber

Coudal linked today to this sweet collection of “psychotronic” movie titles from Mr. Bali Hai. The above title card caught my eye because it referred to a 1972 epic starring Raquel Welch. So I went looking for it on YouTube:


Also, apparently Jodie Foster was in this, but she’s not in the trailer. Nosirree.

Uniball FTW

I already use Uniball, it’s a no-brainer for me, so I’d just like to throw this out: what the hell is wrong with the rest of you? Clearly, if you don’t use Uniball, the personal-identity thieves have won. Thanks a lot, non-Uniball users!
(Yeah, it’s Gawker, but still.)

Happy 5th birthday, you krazy kid

You are a fascinating guy. And I love you so much that I want to lock you in a cage with a dog.

At least you’ve got your pants on.

The good life

I love these guys. These guys live a life that is about as opposite as it can be from my own, yet I watched it with a big grin on my face the entire time.

The one thing that is not explained is how they get it back upriver to do it again. You gotta figure it’s overland - I don’t think that thing could survive being towed upriver.

Because even going downriver looks a little hairy, to tell you the truth.
(via Dinosaurs and Robots.)

Gervais FTW

Hands-down, the funniest routine on last night’s Golden Globes.

Smart Car survives a 70 mph crash

I think you could almost walk away from this. And it is built by Mercedes, after all.

(via Dixon.)

The Day Lassie Went to the Moon

This is actually fanart by JessesGirl10, but it's very well done.

Cultural Revolution Clip Art

I know the Cultural Revolution was a terrible period, and horrible, awful things were perpetrated in its name, but I have always been ashamedly in love with its graphic style.

I have a modest collection, myself: a watch that doesn’t work, a desk clock that doesn’t work, an oddly effeminate ceramic figurine of Mao, and a gorgeous cigarette case.

So it is with some hesitation that I offer up this beautiful collection of Chinese clip-art from 1971.
(via Draplin, who made me even more angst-ridden about posting it than I would normally have been.)

Nursing

(Via i1326, which has picture of naked ladies, so stay away if that bothers you)

Your idealized hipster girlfriend of 1963

I suppose if it was 1963, I would have fantasized all to hell about Anna Karina myself. But this is the first time I’ve ever heard of her and I would have been four years old at the time, so there you go.

There’s a long shot of a wall in here, like the camera guy couldn’t get around a corner fast enough, but otherwise it’s all good.
(via LondonLee.)

Tilt-Shorp Photography

This just occurred to me, and I might try a few more: combining Shorpy with TiltShiftMaker.

More tilt-shift, for cryin’ out loud

Sorry if you’re sick of tilt-shift; I’m not. Here’s a nice collection from which I had a hard time picking a favorite.

There is also now a website that will tilt-shift your photos for you! I haven’t tried it yet, because I have yet to comb through all my photos for a good candidate. The technique would seem to suit far-away shots of buildings and other items, when mostly what I have is close-ups of children, so my pickings will be slim.
(Coudal, BB.)

Tweedy does Radiohead

This rings the bell for me in so many different ways, it’s just a shame that it’s such a crappy cellphone recording.

Jeff Tweedy doing Radiohead’s Fake Plastic Trees, backed by Johnny Marr as well as Ed O’Brien and Phil Selway from the ’head, all performing in New Zealand because they were there to assist in the sequel to Neil Finn’s 7 Worlds Collide. That’s just super in at least six ways that I can count right off the bat.

Want insurance? Ask Iggy Pop!

A couple of days ago, I posted a clip of Dinah Shore interviewing that nice boy Jimmy Osterberg and Jetpacks commented that I bear a bit of a resemblance to the young man. Which is true, and mildly flattering, but I would like to point out that I bear no resemblance to the current Iggy, who appears to have been cured like a piece of beef jerky.

Not my immediate first choice for an insurance pitchman, but what the hell, and good for him making a spot of money on the side.
(via Copyranter.)

Damn, Hunter

Good collection of HST-related motivational posters, here.

If cars could get fat

There are only two images, sadly. The concept is interesting.

Dumpster Hot Tub

How could you not want to go with this, especially considering our Current Economic Conditions™?
(via Coudal.)

Rocket Lincoln across the St. Lawrence

Wow, this actually happened. Too bad that parachute opened so early. He might have gone about 100 yards farther.

This is from the golden age of these crazy stunts. Evel Knievel was the obvious progenitor, but even he looks like Albert Einstein compared to this guy.
(v. things.)

Hot American Metal!

Oh, yeah!
(via this isn’t happiness™.)

In print at last

Seriously. I’m surprised nobody has thought of doing this until now.
(via Daring Fireball.)

Iggy & Bowie on the Dinah Shore show

When I travelled from the west coast to the east for my first year of university, one of my new dorm best friends totally turned me on to the proto-punk and glam scenes that were going on in the east. He was the guy who introduced me to the Stooges and Lou Reed, the New York Dolls, that sort of stuff. Up until then, I’d been all about Bad Company and the Eagles and Heart and other shit.

Anyway, he was so into Iggy and Bowie and he was so blown away by this appearance by them on Dinah Shore’s show, and he described it to me in such excruciating detail that when I found it today, I felt like I had already seen it, though I’m pretty sure I hadn’t.

Plus: Dinah Shore was so damn nice!

Rolex: now saving celebrity lives!

Can’t keep it classier than Melrose Jewelers, who attribute Owen Wilson’s recovery from an apparent suicide attempt to the expensive timepiece on his wrist. Because it caused him to want to keep on living, just so he could look at it every day!

(I kid you not: read the press release.)
(Superb find by Denver Egotist.)

“Thank You for Smoking” opening titles

If you haven’t seen Jason Reitman’s “Thank You for Smoking,” it’s well worth the rental, in my opinion.

Regardless of what you think of the movie, I defy you to be anything less than in awe of its opening titles.
(Seen it around for a while, saw it most recently on Smashing.)

Future crimes

Wow, this would be funny if it weren’t so thought-police-y. Murder Burger’s new billboard, which features a chicken getting its head blown off, went up yesterday and came down today. Seems the billboard company, which agreed to put it up in the first place, had a change of heart and took it down because of the potential that someone might complain.

So, just so we’re clear: nobody has actually complained yet, but somebody might. Thank you, nanny state.

Dig that cellphone

After 25 years, small doses of Frankie Goes to Hollywood actually sound kind of cool.

It’s like bad music has a sort of radioactive-decay element to it, and it eventually gets to the point where you can be exposed to it briefly before the old reactions kick in.
(via Creativity On-Line, but their embed was screwed up, so I had to wait for it to appear on YouTube.)

Pass the dutchie

I’m still waiting for the universal reaction to Time’s pictures of a young Barry Obama smokin’ a joint. C’mon, you know it’s true, nobody tokes that hard on plain tobacco.
(Ffff.)

You are truly Great, Red Spot.

As we all whine about the terrible weather we’re having (none more so than me), let’s pause to consider the longest-running storm ever: the Great Red Spot on Jupiter.

That monster has been going on at least since telescopes were invented. That’s over 300 years. Even the name, the “Great Red Spot,” conjures up a distant, more formal era. I feel like I should be raising my cutlass while saying it.

These days it would be Weather Event STRN-1703-1.

Muskie

You know, as much as I loved Hunter S. Thompson, I have to wonder whether he ever felt any personal remorse for spreading those bullshit rumors about Edmund Muskie, and thereby contributing to Nixon’s ultimate victory.

Because, you know, that was kind of a shitty thing to do.
(via Gunslinger.)

Whatever, dude

The irony of this beer commercial, which was briefly iconic in the late ’90s, is that by the time it become worthy of note by the media, the actor playing “Joe” was already in Hollywood, bummin’ for work, like a million other aspiring Canadian actors before him. And that, folks, is a true Canadian cliché.
(via CDR.)

Humans are strange

I’m not sure whether to be appalled or laugh myself silly.
(via Matthew Good.)

I Put A Spell On You

Yes, I know this just appeared on BoingBoing, but I started this blog because I wanted to write about the things that interest and delight me, and this is definitely some of the former and a lot of the latter.

Logos in a time of crisis

Cidade dos Logos has a small but sweet collection of familiar logos re-imagined for these tough economic times.

Marley and Me, the Sequel

Kevin Tor ups the ante.
(via Francesco.)

This has to be one of the most obtuse marketing lines I have ever read…

Klang!!

(via Gunslinger.)

Cat Fud

Everybody’s raving this week about the Far Side Reenactments Flickr set!

In my opinion, the one above is the best and will forever remain so. Super Punch spotted it first, at least in my little universe.

Shipping container icons

If you’ve read me for a while, you’ll know that I’m mildly fascinated by shipping containers. They are in many ways the defining symbol of our global era.

I’ve posted before about the beautiful color-coded shipping-container posters by Antrepo4. (I’d still like to buy them, but if I don’t start mounting and hanging the dozens of works I already own, there’s no point in buying more.)

Now they’ve released two free sets of container-related desktop icons, which I totally love. So I guess I’ve transitioned into full-on shipping-container geekness.

Nice hat, Representative Schafer

Washington, D.C. June 1924. “Congressman John C. Schafer of Wisconsin.”

Apparently, congressmen needed to take part-time jobs back then? Maybe the rail lobby really had him under its thumb?

I can’t tear my eyes away from the big brake on that enormous wheel. Imagine building a massive powerful machine, then having to build something even more powerful to stop it if necessary.
(From Shorps, obvs.)

Intolerance

My six year-old, wandering by: “But I like juice!”

It could have been worse: The sign could have said “Translate Server Error.”
(via Murder Burger.)

The translator

I’ve never heard of Catherine Tate before today, but this video just snapped a crying three-year-old out of a downward spiral, so I’m already a fan.
(via Merlin Mann.)

I want a monkey sidekick! And I want one million dollars!

I don’t want to take anything away from the world of good these monkeys are doing for handicapped people, but is it so wrong to hope for a primate who can take away my beer and fetch me another?

Oh wait, I have three kids who are on track to do exactly that, and probably better, once I train them right…
(Thanks, Subtle Rudder!)

Foiled again!

Those goddamn newspaper editorialists! Up there in their newspaper-lined ivory towers, solving crimes with their fancy brains and dictionaries and style guides! Who do they think they are? Or should that be “whom?” And “genii?”
(via Gunslinger.)

Diversity of Species in the Rainforest

I’ll say! It’s like they’re all different animals or something!
(Via Ffffound!)

Great Underrated Canadian musicians: Kathleen Edwards

Continuing my occasional series of great Canadian musicians who deserve more attention south of the border (and often in their own homeland, as well!), I give you Kathleen Edwards.

Ms. Edwards is hard to categorize: she’s equally at home in the genres of rock, folk and country. It also makes it hard to pick just one video to characterize her. I chose this one, which I’m pretty sure was shot at the annual charity-related hockey game held between retired NHLers and Canadian rockers at each year’s Juno awards (sort of like Canada’s Grammies, but cooler, at least in the last couple of years).

In a sense, she’s a lot like another Canadian: Neil Young, and if she can sustain a body of work over a few decades like him, she will deserve to be mentioned in the same breath. She’s off to a good start.

Phallic architecture, to the extreme

In a post about the St. Louis Arch, The Subtle Rudder makes a passing reference to the statehouse in Lincoln, Nebraska, being known “the Penis of the Prairies” so I had to go look, and it it’s hard to disagree.

And still it snows

It’s supposed to be raining by now, but it’s still snowing. Like, a lot. This is insane.

Good column in today’s Vancouver Sun about why Vancouverites choose to live here: it doesn’t snow!!!
(Image via Shorpy.)

This is unsettling

It’s not like they could have known what woud happen 25 years later, but the foreshadowing is still kind of creepy.

On a related note, we’ve been sitting on a copy of Man on Wire for a while now, and we may get around to watching it tonight. I understand it’s superb, and the unmentioned fate of the towers makes it even more poignant.

(Top image via Chunklet.)

Fertility Pop

(VonMurr via this isn’t happiness.™)

56 Little Helicopters

Sadly, I have yet to find video of this art project by Roman Signer, where 56 kleine helicopter are all launched at once, then crash into each other until all are down. But I am working on it.

In the interim, I found this amazing video of Mr. Signer making a steamroller take flight. Oh my heavens, this is beautiful. I may have a new favorite artist.


(via today and tomorrow.)

AHHHAAAAAYYYEAAAAAYAAAH

Holy crap, if you were as blown away as I was by the leak of the stand-alone vocal track to Runnin’ With The Devil when it suddenly appeared last spring, then this is pretty much the best and inevitable result:
The Diamond Dave Soundboard. Press every button and weep with joy.
(via Coudal.)

Green

The weatherman’s tie matches the green screen. The effect is awesome. They act like this is a mistake, but I think it should be mandatory for weathermen from this point forward.
(via Neatorama.)

Enjoy the Rythmn

Laugh you may, but I betcha I get more Google hits on this album’s typo than I would have got on the correct spelling!

So, Garage Hangover is a very cool site devoted to garage bands of the ’60s, though I don’t think they really count as “garage bands” which, by definition, never really come out of the garage. These are more like local heroes who played a bunch of gigs and recorded a couple of 45's, and maybe a long player, if they were lucky, but never got past state-fair famous, if they got there at all.

He’s got great stories, graphics and a smattering of MP3s to download! Go check him out!
(via nevver.)

God lives here

I’m not religious at all, but I happen to think the altar in St. Peter’s cathedral is one of the most gorgeous things ever made by man. This slightly fish-eyed view of it is beautiful. Does anybody know the history of the altar specifically? Or what lies down the stairs underneath?
(Design You Trust via Coudal.)

H is for “hype”

Here’s a nice little Canadian spot for Lexus. Maybe it’s been saturating the airwaves; I wouldn’t know, as we have the luxury of blowing by the commercials, which my wife does with ruthless efficiency.

The cool building at the 0:15 mark is the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library, which looks vaguely like the Roman Colosseum and has a nice-looking park on its roof, though I don’t think it’s open to the public. Librarians only, if you please!
Here’s a nice shot of the interior, via Google Earth:

(Via CDR.)

Black Hula

One of the best outings we had with our kids in 2008 was a show at the Vancouver Art Gallery called “KRAZY!” It was a celebration of visual pop culture in things like animation, graphic novels, soft vinyl, manga, video games, you get the picture. My kids, ages six, four and three, were in sensory awe, and they fell on a vintage Pac-Man game like they were pilgrims emerging from the desert. We also dropped a lot in the gallery’s special exhibit-related store, but that’s another story.

Today, my eldest and I were looking through the KRAZY! catalog, and that eventually led us to the web, where we found “Black Hula.” This meditation on civilization, animated by Marv Newland and set to an ancient recording of traditional Hawaiian music, was one of the first things that I saw when I entered the exhibit, and it’s superb.

Personal preferences can often make or break one’s overall opinion of an animator’s style. For example, I really loved the few episodes of Ren & Stimpy that I saw, but I just couldn’t get over my aversion to that particular art. I know, I’m an idiot.

Which is going a long way to say that I am partial to the stylings of Marv Newland, though you may not be. I won’t hold it against you if you aren’t, but I retain the right to doubt your opinion on future matters.
(Amazingly, I am only the 83rd person to view this video on YouTube.)

The evolving U.S.A.

Kevin Kelly has a thought-provoking round-up on schools of thought regarding the future look of the United States.

Flying “V”

John Cale does “Pablo Picasso.” That other guitarist looks totally familiar, but maybe it’s just that he resembles Rupert Everett.
(Nice find, Subtle Rudder!)

Spooks!

We got these guys, called “Spöka” (spooks?) from Ikea and they are totally awesome night-lights for our kids. They’re soft rubber, so they can be cuddled right in the child’s bed and dropped (or thrown!) with little consequence. Also, they are rechargeable, which I imagine will save us money in the long term.

And, of course, they’re cute as the dickens!

(This is supposed to be an animated GIF, but I have spent the better part of two days trying to make it work, with no luck. So I’m going to cut my losses and move along. I have successfully uploaded animated GIFs in the past, but I do it so infrequently that I have to more or less learn how to do it from scratch every time.)