British Tabloids: Amy Winehouse Better Than Britney
Ms. Winehouse’s acclaim could not have come at a better time for the sultry, beehived songstress, whose husband Blake Fielder-Civil received on the same day a twenty-seven month prison sentence for his June, 2006 conviction on dual charges of beating a Hoxton pub landlord and attempting to smoke a wicker chair.
While worldwide support for Ms. Winehouse has ebbed and flowed — depending upon her daily batshit-crazy antics — the devotion of her UK media fan base reflects traditional British values of loyalty, perseverance, and clinging tenaciously to lost causes.
Fish Pedicures
Proof print media is far from dead.
John Hendrix did a piece in the NYT Op-Ed that is just gorgeous. I am sorry I missed it until today (my usual Sunday NYT’s routine had been disrupted this weekend). Just compare the below picture with its online (red-headed, step-) brother.*
(click to enlarge)
*Apologies to red heads and step-brothers everywhere.
Godard’s Band of Outsiders
One of my favorites.
Fire Jumpers
You’ll find this image at enigma janitor, one of the sites belonging to Balkan ‘flocker Alek Lindus. I just had to post it here, not only because it is mesmerizing but because it sets one to thinking about the ’safety culture’ that so many people in the US have adopted over the past decades.
some time at the end of June, they collect all the bunches of flowers that have decorated the doors since May Day and make a bonfire in the street of them, the children then jump over the fire. Intentional double exposure.
FujiPro160S
YashicaD
Poll: Cindy McCain Hotter than Michelle Obama?
A poll released Wednesday offers new evidence of a tightening 2008 White House race, with the candidates’ wives currently running in a statistical dead heat—an indication this year’s election could be decided by the public’s opinion about whichever prospective First Lady is the hottest.
Amazing horsemanship
A Visiting Insect
Anyone recognize this creature?
Would you look at the time?
It’s the clock you just can’t stop watching.
I Am Going to Buy This Book
This has potential to be amazing.
With that simple question and an enormous white suggestion box, the New York City based collaborative Illegal Art canvassed the five boroughs, collecting suggestions from passersby of every stripe the young, the old, the filthy rich, the homeless, the mouthy, and the shy. “Love each other or perish.” “Take breath mints when offered.” “Give me a break!” In true New York style, the suggestions are by turns hilarious, nonsensical, angering, and heartwarming. Some people held the suggestion box prisoner while they wrote suggestion after suggestion; others ignored the box, but then came scrambling back with a sudden idea. One woman scribbled as she walked down Wall Street: “More time in the day.” One man in Harlem, when asked if he would like to make a suggestion, said, “Isn’t it obvious? World peace.” Or at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, a woman sadly wrote her misspelled suggestion and then held it up for all to read: “Never brake up with someone on a bridge.” With over 350 entries and 50 photos of the suggestion box in action, Suggestion is authentic, honest, and totally appealing a testiment to the the public’s innermost desire, whether it’s free beer, free daycare, or free pumpkin pie every Thursday.
(thx Leo)
Two quotes, the first one just for Cindy
“Through the shrubbery on the south side of the lawn, a path led to a walk lined with hazels, where grey squirrels were up to their mischief in the canopy of branches overhead.”
–W.G. Sebald (trans. by Michael Hulse), The Emigrants (Harvill, 1996, p. 6)
“I remember that Valery came to see me one afternoon at home, after eating, looking for me so we could take a walk. While I was getting ready, he took a sheet of my paper and wrote:
‘Story’
Once there was a writer ________ who wrote.
Valery”
–Enrique Vila-Matas, “Recuerdos inventados” (Recuerdos inventados, Anagrama, 1994, pp. 13-14)
clusterflock by the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre
The custom clusterflock video is here!
What I want, is this kind of a site, only for men.
Featuring me, of course, as the ONLY male model.
I’m green with envy.
Giant Leopard Moth
Here’s the moth Mia and I took from caterpillar to flight (and no, a bird didn’t get this one as soon as we let it go, as happened with a Luna moth at her school). It was lovely as a caterpillar, too–covered with black bristly hairs and showing vivid red bands between its body segments. Here’s how the Peterson First Guides book on Caterpillars describes the moth:
“The adult moth is very striking, with its 3-inch wingspan, white and black spotted forewings, and metalic blue abdomen with orange markings. It is eastern but more common in south Texas.”
this just in
Monica Bellucci is gorgeous.
visual cues to human attractiveness
Body shape and the way we walk are large factors in perceived attractiveness.
The findings reflect the views of over 700 individuals who participated in a series of five studies, three of which involved animated representations of people walking. The attractiveness ratings for perceived women increased by about 50 percent when they walked with hip sway, and attractiveness ratings for perceived men more than doubled when they walked with a swagger in their shoulders.
A Rainbow in Curved Air
Terry Riley’s 40-year-old album contains only two tracks, each a side long in the original LP format, now a tidy 40-or-so-minute CD. What is cool is that, though the CD lists at $11.99 and though iTunes sells it digitally for $6.99, you can get each track individually in MP3 format from Amazon for only 99 cents each! I bought the complete “record” last night for $1.98! I love the title track, but have only heard “Poppy Nogood” so far while asleep. (That is to say, I set my iPod up to play them both at bedtime and zonked pretty soon.) “Rainbow” is minimal maximalism, or maximal minimalism: a few charmingly repetitive and melodic elements performed in a richly toned, non-minimal fashion. Joy-inducing without being sappy.
Crash, Burn, Get a Ticket
This just cracks me up. I mean, I know it shouldn’t be funny, but I just can’t stop laughing.
Someday
I will have a back yard filled with vintage lighted signs. The large ones–some neon, some with tiny colored bulbs–of the sort that stand in front of old liquor stores and neighborhood shopping strips. I’ll have ten or twelve of them. And then, on very special occasions, in the middle of the night, I will flip a large switch and turn them all on.
Pooh Sticks
Lenny’s collection of Pooh Sticks:
Wisteria
From the comments
People have distinct flavors and smells — not literally, but in my mind. One of my friends is strawberries and cinnamon; another is black coffee and pencil shavings. An ex-girlfriend was lemons and sandalwood.
The weirdest ones, for me, are the people who have no flavor or smell at all. These people creep me the hell out, because it’s like they’re not really there.
—Jeff Harrell on having synesthesia
All of those sound like yummy friends. If you could choose your flavor/smell, what would you be?
attention gentlemen, flowers make people happy
Sure, it was paid for by the floral industry but:
A team led by Jeannette Haviliand-Jones has conducted an impressive set of three experiments, each of which contributes to the idea that giving someone flowers improves their mood, not just at the moment of delivery, but long afterwards.
Weekly Picture 114
Meat Loaf, Ludy’s Beauty Salon (Abandoned), Hempstead, TX, 4.12.2008
Grey Gardens Collections
A collection of jewelry based on the design and fashion sense of Edie Beale, star of the Maysles brothers documentary Grey Gardens.