You don't have to be a Techie to appreciate this.
Wearing
This month's US GQ (you know, the only one that's worth reading) has a great little fashion/style/service piece about The Seven Style Mistakes Every Man Makes. It's pretty much on the button - and what I like about it is that they don't just tell you what you're doing wrong (yes, I'm talking to you, Mister Mom Jeans)... they also tell you how to do it right.
That's proper service journalism - and that's why I read the US GQ.
Wait, Wait
I'm loving the NPR radio show/podcast Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me. It's a news quiz show where they have a panel of guests (PJ O'Rourke has been on a couple of times) answering questions on behalf of themselves and call-in contestants. The show hosts - Peter Sagal and Carl Kasell – are very witty, and the show runs like an interactive talkshow monologue.
It's pretty much impossible to not laugh (or at least smile, if you're listening on a crowded train on your morning commute) at the sharp one-liners.
It kinda makes me sad that we would never see (or indeed hear) a show like this - or like the brilliant UK show Have I Got News For You - on South African airwaves. You can imagine how it'd work: they'd have the über-earnest Jeremy Maggs, the witless Jeremy Mansfield or the charmless Colin Moss as the host, they'd battle to find three interesting people for the panel, and all the jokes would be about politicians in general but (lest we offend) no politicians in specific.
Wait? We're going to have to.
Oil
Foreign Policy had a recent cover story on The End Of Oil... by which they mean the end of everybody needing oil to drive their cars around. The story's a bit long and ponderous (and, quite honestly, it's so far from becoming actually relevent that I'm going to wait a couple of years before I read it properly).
But the accompanying gallery has some amazing images.
Tower
There's an art/science trick called forced perspective, which... well, the best way to explain it is visually.
See? He's not actually holding her, and she's not actually so small. It just looks like it. Hee-larious, right?
Well... sometimes. And when it's done well it looks really good.
There's something about human natuire that compels visitors to the Leaning Tower of Pisa to pose so that it looks like they're holding the building up. Cabinet of Wonders has a great page up which illustrates the daftness of this, while also appealing to my weird sense of humour. Taken out of context, the tourists look less like funny jokesters, and more like berks who're pushing fresh air.
Marcel Marceau would be proud. Or not.
See? He's not actually holding her, and she's not actually so small. It just looks like it. Hee-larious, right?
Well... sometimes. And when it's done well it looks really good.
There's something about human natuire that compels visitors to the Leaning Tower of Pisa to pose so that it looks like they're holding the building up. Cabinet of Wonders has a great page up which illustrates the daftness of this, while also appealing to my weird sense of humour. Taken out of context, the tourists look less like funny jokesters, and more like berks who're pushing fresh air.
Marcel Marceau would be proud. Or not.
Bones
I just finished watching the DVD set of Long Way Round, the documentary series of Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman's overland motorbike trip from London to New York (via, like, the entire Asian continent). Early in their journey they stopped in at the Sedlec Ossuary - a.k.a. The Bone Church in Kutná Hora, Czech Republic. The church is decorated (and I use the word loosely) with human skulls and bones. So you'll have a chandelier made of spinal columns, and walls made of skulls, and various similar ornamentations.
It's very, very weird. Interesting story behind it though. Take a look at Wikipedia. Gives me the heebs.
It got me to thinking, though, about the orthodox Christian fascination with relics: the bones of dead saints. Curious Expeditions has a whole collection of them, including the mummified skull of Saint Catherine, the petrified finger of Galileo (who wasn't even a holy man!), and similar delights. There's a (very funny) legend doing the rounds of the Italian town that enjoys the blessings of housing Jesus's foreskin.
That's possibly taking things a bit too far, I reckon.
Ignore Everybody
Hugh McLeod has to be one of the best graffiti artists currently not working in graffiti. His blog at Gaping Void has some of his work. I've printed "Ignore Everybody" out and have it pinned up above my desk at work. Recommend you do the same.
Wild
I schlepped (while my wife slept) through parts of Into The Wild on Saturday night. Having enjoyed the excellent book and the even more excellent magazine article, I knew I was going to enjoy the movie too. And I did. But I could've done with it being a tad shorter than its 148 minutes.
I have to agree with Esquire. Their Daily Endorsement today is for the 90-minute movie. Because, as they say, 80 minutes is too short, and 100 is too long.
Is anybody in Hollywood listening?
Autumn
It's Summer down south, but up in the northern hemisphere they're deep into Autumn – and, as you'd expect, The Big Picture has a gorgeous orange/brown/red/yellow-hued gallery to mark the season.
I guess us Southerners are going to have to take the xkcd approach.
Mad
As nice as they are, the classic Esquire and Rolling Stone magazine covers can't hold a candle to old-school Mad magazine.
It's as if they carefully researched every rule of magazine cover design, and then specifically (and hilariously) set out to purposefully break every rule of magazine cover design.
Information
There's that old saying that goes: The more I learn, the more I realise I don't know. (Or something like that.) Words to live by, I reckon.
Eleven Wise
Mental Floss has a list up detailing the origins of all 30 NHL team names. You've got to love the story behind the Pittsburgh Penguins:
"The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sponsored a name-the-team contest, but Carol McGregor, the wife of one of the franchise’s part owners, Jack McGregor, was the one responsible for the nickname. In his book, Pittsburgh Penguins: The Official History of the First 30 Years, Bob Grove describes how Carol McGregor came up with the name. “I was thinking of something with a P. And I said to Jack, ‘What do they call the Civic Arena?’ And he said, ‘The Big Igloo.’ So I thought, ice... Pittsburgh... Penguins.” More than 700 of the 26,000 contest entries were for Penguins."
Now all I need is someone to explain the stories behind some of West Africa's soccer teams. The Ghanaian Premier League includes teams like Hearts of Oak and the brilliantly-named Eleven Wise, while Nigeria's Premier League includes teams like Kano Pillars, Ranchers Bees and the famous Wikki Tourists.
Makes English football pioneer Sheffield Wednesday (so named because that's the day they used to play cricket) sound boring by comparison.
Soviet
Say what you like (because you're probably right) about the Soviet Union's brutal regime, its poorly-thought-through economic policies and its unforgivable treatment of its people. The USSR's art was pretty good. And - if we're taking the Hollywood Polanski approach - good art is enough to make up for any sins.
There's a wonderful visual history of Communist Russia up at Foreign Policy, where they have a gallery up of photos and posters nicked from David King's new book, Red Star Over Russia. If ever you've wanted to see Stalin mugging for the camera, now's your chance.
House Arrest
In all the hoo-hah about Roman Polanski's arrest (and it's about bloody time, if you ask some people), Gawker presented an interesting side to the argument. Polanksi has asked to be placed under house arrest - which sounds like a terrible punishment, until you see the house in which he would be incarcerated.
Some quiet time in the Alps, as punishment for giving a 13-year-old girl (whom you've undressed for a fake photoshoot) a glass of champagne spiked with Mandrax and then raping/sodomising her before pleading guilty and then going on the lam for three decades? Hardly seems fair... no matter how good your movies are.
Red
Slate have a stunning (yes, stunning!) gallery up of photographs of women wearing red dresses. For some reason I now have a Chris de Burgh song stuck in my head...
Bar Code
Yesterday was the 57th anniversary of the first bar code patent. Who cares, right? The smart folks at Mental Floss, and – as someone who read Mad magazine throughout my impressionable childhood - so do I.
They've got a great little story up, along with a linke to some creative Japanese bar code designs... which is much, much cooler than it sounds.
Diva
I recently revisited the (now somewhat dated) French film Diva... and while the 80s clothes, the 80s acting and the 80s dialogue ("C'est les flics!") don't hold up, the signature tune, the timeless, achingly beautiful Ebben? Ne Andrò Lontana from La Wally certainly does.
Illustrate
I'm a sucker for a good illustration. I've lost count of the times I've started reading a magazine article (usually in The New Yorker) purely because it had an interesting illustration. (The bonus is that – as happened a couple of months ago with their story on the Icelandic economy – I'll usually be rewarded with a great story that would otherwise not have read.)
And more often than not, that illustrator is Steve Brodner.
Colour
The word from this year's Milan Menswear Collections was of bright colours and bold yadda yadda... Look, the bottom line is that this season's clothes are going to look like a big box of crayons. And that's a good thing. We could all do with some cheering up, I reckon.
Danish label Humör delivers exactly that.
Purple Rain
Next year's SuperBowl is slated for Miami's Dolphin Stadium. Last time Miami hosted the big game was 2007, when it pissed down a torrential rain which made the game a slippy slide nightmare and made Prince's halftime show one of the best I've ever seen.
Live
Okay, so what do Luxembourg, Andorra, Cuba, Serbia and Bosnia & Herzegovina all have in common? They, like Kazakhstan, Iran, Tunisia and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, are rated as being better places to live in than my beloved South Africa.
Rated by whom, you ask? By the United Nations, no less, in their annual report on 182 countries, based on the quality of life those countries' citizens experienced.
Watch
There's a great little list up at StyleCrave of 10 Amazing Watch Designs Of The Future.
I like what I'm seeing.
Although I'm not sure how happy I'd be with a modern facsimile of the Antikythera Device strapped 'round my wrist.
Spot The Difference
There was – and I'm picking my words carefully here – some unease when we discovered that both Sports Illustrated (my former employers) and Men's Health (my current employers) magazines were going to run AB de Villiers on their covers in October.
Luckily, the covers were totally different and the story angles were totally different and it all ended happily ever after.
Which is more than can be said for this month's Golf Digest and Compleat Golfer magazines. They're direct rivals, and their cover stories (Ernie Els Turns 40!) had the identical angle, and – worst case scenario – they both had the exact same image on their cover.
Ouch.
Luckily, the covers were totally different and the story angles were totally different and it all ended happily ever after.
Which is more than can be said for this month's Golf Digest and Compleat Golfer magazines. They're direct rivals, and their cover stories (Ernie Els Turns 40!) had the identical angle, and – worst case scenario – they both had the exact same image on their cover.
Ouch.
It Takes Two
The Big Picture has a gallery up on the Tango, which is on the official UNESCO List of Intangible Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding (along with various poems, dances, songs and festivals from around the world, and - disappointingly - absolutely bugger-all from South Africa).
My wife and I spent our honeymoon in Buenos Aires, and lemme tell ya: they sure do like to tango over there.
Reckon I'm going to fire up some Gotan Project to get the memories flowing...
Slim
My three-month get-in-shape programme isn't going as well as I'd hoped.
(Although I did do a 5km run a couple of days ago.)
(But it was more of a run-jog-walk-jog-walk-jog-sprint.)
Moving Pictures
There's a Watteau exhibition at the Met, and Slate have a handy little slideshow up as an introduction/primer to the artist. Watteau's work has always struck me as a tad too - what's the word? - artsy-fartsy. But there's a menace lurking beneath it, which I like a lot... and he was pretty much spot-on when it came to painting movement and painting musicians.
In a parallel universe, he toured with the Stones.
Up Close
I've been spending the morning picking weeds out of my lawn, with my nose, like, a foot away from the ground. It felt a bit like this macrophotography gallery at BestDesignOptions.
0
Scientific American have a fun story up on the history of Zero. It's not as in-depth as the Wikipedia article, but it's pretty good... and it's not on Wikipedia, which has to count for something.
You have to wonder how mathematicians could have gone for so long without it.
You have to wonder how mathematicians could have gone for so long without it.
Heroes
SlateV has a series (via The Big Money) called Cubez, where they visit various companies and see what it's like to work there. Their most recent visit was to Marvel Comics.
Looks pretty much like where I work.
But we've got more supervillains.
Looks pretty much like where I work.
But we've got more supervillains.
Barry
"Lisa Jack, then a student of photography at Occidental College, sought a striking subject for a portrait project and was tipped off about a charismatic freshman named Barry Obama who would make an ideal subject." So begins (or began) the story of a quiet little photoshoot that would eventually end up as an exhibit at M+B.
The story behind the shoot is really charming. "Barry”, according to the M+B site, showed up to the shoot with a bomber jacket, flared jeans, a pack of cigarettes and a Panama hat he thought would look “cool”.
I guess it helps if the guy you photographed 28 years ago ends up being the leader of the Free World.
And yes, the Panama hat is kinda cool.
Lottie
There's a new Winnie-The-Pooh book coming out! According to the BBC: "The Bear of Very Little Brain will make his comeback in Return to the Hundred Acre Wood, the first authorised sequel to Milne's original 1920s stories."
And also according to the Beeb, there's a new character in the Hundred Acre Wood... with the arrival of Lottie the Otter no doubt bringing tears of joy to the Disney marketing people's eyes.
Stand by for the new range of plush toys and Happy Meal cash-ins.
Wings
Motorcrave's running a list of the 10 Top Cars from this year's Frankfurt Motor Show... and I'm overjoyed to see that Flügeltüren are still alive and well. Bless your retro hearts, Mercedes-Benz.
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