Young Offenders

Laptop Tattoos
Oh my god oh my god oh my god I want one SO BAD. (You know what else I want so bad? A laptop.) Surprisingly, I like almost all of these, except this one and this one (yuck). I think this one is my favorite, though.

Another Blik deal
More pictures here.

Nueva Linea
My quest for Catcher Block's apartment just got a lot easier. Again, more here.

Tabletop Fireplace
I love how this elegantly suggests a fireplace without being a literal interpretation of one.

I like this belt.

Le Creuset Petite Blueberry Casserole
Cute...cheap!

Flocks
You can't figure it out from the site, but Flocks are sweaters made from the wool of a single sheep, and come with pictures of said sheep.

Nike Vintage Running Shoes
Oh my god: WANT. Running shoes with 1977 design but 2007 technology. (Click on Collection at the bottom.)

Ocean Levels Are Rising Faster Than Ever
Clever billboard from WWF. (Not the World Wrestling Foundation.)

X-13D

Have you tried the Doritos "flavor experiment" X-13D?

First of all, the bag is awesome.

Dear America: Please start putting everything in Cold War MRE packaging. Thanks!

I had half of a bag the other night, and they're weirdly awesome. Only half a bag because I picked up a high-functioning crackhead who, seeing me eat a Dorito, begged "Oh please mister let me have a chip you gotta let me have one chip I just can't stand it." You have to choose your battles in this world, and nowhere more so than in the frontseat of a cab, so I decided that giving her the rest of the bag was easier than listening to her beg the rest of the way.

Anyway, the taste is so close to what they're trying to emulate that it's a little uncanny, but unlike those disgusting candy bar milks (which taste exactly like you smooshed up a candy bar and poured milk over it), the proximity is curiously delicious.

As for what the taste IS, I've revealed it below in ROT13 in case you wanted to try the chips first (which I highly recommend, by the way):

N purrfrohetre - fcrpvsvpnyyl gur ovgr jvgu cvpxyrf naq bavba cvrprf.

The marketing behind this is genius...I'm genuinely impressed. The only minor flub is the ambiguous "Name It" portion of the contest. Most people have interpreted this like "Name That Tune," which isn't that tough; they taste exactly like a big bite of purrfrohetre. Instead, the contest is to come up with a name for the product.

Oh, and the winner gets a year's supply of Doritos, which is...what? Five or six bags?

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Upon further reflection, doesn't it seem a bit old-fashioned that in these allegedly health-conscious days a chip company would give away massive amounts of its product as a prize? I'm not saying it should necessarily be like this, it just has a curiously outdated ring to it, like a contest from 1978.

Accomplishments

Hey, what does Rita Moreno, Mel Brooks, John Gielguld, Helen Hayes, Audrey Hepburn, and Mike Nichols have in common?
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Answer: they've won an Emmy, an Oscar, a Tony, and a Grammy. There are nine altogether...the others are Rodgers of Rodgers & Hammerstein, and some dudes named Jonathan Tunick and Marvin Hamlisch.

There are a few more if you count Daytime Emmies (Whoopi Goldberg), International Emmies (Andrew Lloyd Webber), or non-competitive Special Awards (Barbra Streisand & Liza Minelli).

Also, "two of the people on the list, Richard Rodgers and Marvin Hamlisch, are also recipients of the Pulitzer Prize." Jesus!

Self-Relationship

As a follow-up to the post below, here's an artist who goes beyond the self-kiss and into a self-relationship:

Kelli Connell: Double Life [NSFW]

As with every other photography site on the web, have fun trying to figure out the unusable Flash interface. Note that there are four pages of images, and you somehow access them with the arrows on the bottom. I've looked at this site for half an hour now, and I have no idea if I've even seen all of the pictures or not.

I like these two kids; I hope they work it out.

Conduct Unbecoming A Hobo

His Serene Highness, Prince Robert de Rohan Courtenay:
(Photo by Diane Arbus, November 1961)

From a 1949 issue of Time:

The shifting tides of social acceptance were charted in the 1950 edition of Manhattan's Bowery Social Register (also known as The Almanac de Skid Row), blue book of U.S. hoboes. Blue-penciled out this year by Bowery News Editor Harry Baronian: Crown Prince Bozo, for conduct unbecoming a hobo; Frisco John, for abusing people who turned him down for a handout; Buffalo John, for taking a dental bridge from the mouth of a sleeping companion.

In the book this year: Prince Robert de Rohan Courtenay, for inventing a new poetic medium called Pling Plong; Box-Car Betty, ex-hula dancer and snake
charmer, for research indicating that the flavor of a cigar is enhanced if dipped occasionally in beer; Harvard man ('11) Joe Gould, perennial Greenwich Village
drink-cadger and author of an uncompleted 9,000,000-word book (An Oral History of Our Time), for turning out a new couplet: 'In the winter I'm a Buddhist/In the
summer I'm a nudist.'

Incidentally, Gould was the subject of two classic New Yorker profiles by Joseph Mitchell: Professor Seagull, and the book-length Joe Gould's Secret. The latter is exquisitely moving, and both can be found in Up In The Old Hotel. Recommended about as highly as possible.

A Sport And A Pastime

Two excerpts from James Salter's A Sport And A Pastime:

Later on, about nine, there's the hotel where there's music in the bar and somebody at least, a few couples, sitting around. The three or four gilded youths of the town, too, slouched on the divans. I know them by sight. One is an angel, at least for betrayal. Beautiful face. Soft, dark hair. A mouth like spoiled fruit. Nothing amuses them--they don't talk until somebody leaves, and then they begin little, laughing cuts, sometimes calling over to the barman. The rest of the time they sit in boredom, polishing the gestures of contempt. The angel is taller than the rest, He has an expensive suit and a tie knotted loosely at the neck. Sometimes a sweater. Soft cuffs. I've seen him on the street. He's about seventeen, and he seems less dangerous in the daylight, merely a bad student or a boy already notorious for his vices. He's ready to start seductions. Perhaps he even says it's easy, and that women are simple to get. To believe is to make real, they say, A chill passes through me, I recognize in him a clear strain of assurance which has nothing to imitate, which springs forth intact. It feeds on its own reflection. He looks carefully at himself in the mirror, combing his hair. He inspects his teeth. The maid has let him undress her. She hates him, but she cannot make him go. I try to think of what he's said. He has an instinct for it. He is here to hunt them down, to discover the weaklings. I don't know what he feels--the assassin's joy.

*

She stoops with the match, inserts it, and the heater softly explodes. A blue flame rushes across the jets, then burns with a steady sound. There's no other light in the room but this, which reflects from the floor. She stands up again. She drops the burnt match on the table and begins to arrange clothing on the grill of the heater, pajamas, spreading them out so they can be warmed. Dean helps her a bit. The silk, if it's that, is quite cold. And there they stand in the roaring dark. In a fond, almost brotherly gesture, he puts his arms around her. They hardly know one another. She accepts it without a word, without a movement, and they wait in a pure silence, the faint sweetness of gas in the air. After a while she turns the pajamas over. Her back is towards him. In a single move she pulls off her sweater and then, reaching behind herself in that elbow-awkward way, unfastens her brassiere. Slowly he turns her around.

She leaves his kisses finally to stand against the wall, arms at her sides.

"Jeanne d'Arc," she says. The tremulous blue plays across her. Her features seem resigned.

He takes her by the arms. She turns her face to the light. He is her executioner, she says. The word thrills him. His knees tremble.

He puts her to bed in her warm pajamas. She is innocent, he decides. She smiles softly, the calm of a long convalescence in her face. Finally he turns to go, but at the door her voice stops him. Yes? Turn out the light, she says. He does. Like Lucifer, he creates darkness and he descends.

Pupsam

SELFKISS

(mild artistic nudity, possibly NSFW)

Here's the introduction from the first page, translated into English but still sounding so totally French:

***
The marvelous thing about a photo is that it captures a look, a gesture, an instant, a fleeting reality from which emotion springs. However, what is presented here does not exist, has never existed, and will never exist. But this technique puts us there, in front, like a tightrope walker on his rope, in an unstable balance between I believe it and I don't believe it.

These instants were invented by Pupsam. And yet, indeed, this is a record of real events (reportage), since long searches and deep internal journeys were necessary to arrive here:

Starting from one consenting individual, imagine together his encounter with himself (not another, but his double), to create a couple that will embrace each other, then trace their posture, the spark in their eyes, and finally the abandon to the other that is me, to make visible the impossible kiss, monstrously shameless. And so? moments that are desired, dreamed, hidden at the bottom of us, denied... taboo! Perhaps the fleeting reality from which trouble springs.

Louis Samaria

Buy Some Land

-A Grayspace Poster Gallery

-Poweriser

-Read A Book

"I trust those who follow rules they don't entirely believe more than I trust those who believe in rules they don't entirely follow."

I've been doing research on elite private schools and the funniest thing about all of them is that they have the most hilariously random alumni. For example, here's who went to Northfield Mount Hermon, Uma Thurman's alma mater:

* William Ackerman '67, founder of Windham Hill Records
* S. Prestley Blake '34, founder of Friendly Ice Cream
* Natalie Cole '68—Grammy Award-winning vocalist
* Amy Domini '68, the "first lady of social investing"
* Lawrence Ferlinghetti '37, poet
* Lee de Forest 1893, controversial radio pioneer
* David Hartman '52, television host
* Laura Linney '82, actress
* James W. McLamore '43, founder of Burger King
* William G. Morgan 1893, inventor of volleyball
* DeWitt Wallace 1907, founder of Reader's Digest
* Willy Wolfe, founding member of the Symbionese Liberation Army

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As with all mash-ups, your enjoyment of this will depend on your enjoyment of the source materials. Having said that, I like this Nelly / Lynard Skynard mash-up:

Sweet Home Country Grammar [direct link to mp3]

This "cover art" cracks me up, as well.

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This New Yorker profile of Karl Lagerfeld achieves the seemingly contradictory goal of making the designer seem:

1. fascinating, admirable, even sympathetic; and
2. ten times crazier than we already suspected.

Seriously, there's a pull-quote in every paragraph.

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My favorite new (to me) webcomic is definitely Cat And Girl. Here are some of my favorites:

New Memes For 2007
Marginalized Success
Throwing Money Away
Last Refuges Of Scoundrels
Monkeys Pirates Ninjas
Strummer's Law

Sixteen K

You may have read a news blip about how, for the first time ever, Jeopardy ended in a three way tie. (In fact, this wasn't true; it was, however, the first time that the three-way tie was a number greater than $0.)

All the stories took a "what are the chances?" tone, and they all quoted a phoney-baloney number of the odds being 1 in 25 million. But that would only be true if the bets were determined randomly...and they're not. In fact, the only thing left to chance was whether or not all three of them would get Final Jeopardy right. As for the tie itself...the current champion, Scott Weiss, THREW THE GAME.

Let me explain. Going into Final Jeopardy, Scott had $13,000. Both of his opponents had $8000. Scott knew that both of his opponents would bet it all because they'd be hoping that Scott and the other guy would both get the question wrong or wouldn't bet enough.

Therefore, the most his opponents could end up with at the end of the game was $16,000 (that is, double $8000). So, to win, all Scott had to bet was $3001, which would leave him with $16,001.

But Scott only bet $3000. Why?

1. A three-way tie for first is suh-weet.
2. On Monday, he'd face two opponents he already knew he could beat.

but mostly:

3. By all accounts, Scott is one of the nicest guys in the world. If he had won the game, his opponents would have each gotten the $2000 second-place prize. But a three-way tie meant that his opponents would also be champions and each of them would get to keep their $16,000.

It's a fascinating story that's being shamefully underreported. In its own way, there's almost something heroic about it: Scott could have walked away that day with $26,000, but he gave it up so that two strangers would each make an additional $14,000.


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Scott's Friend:
http://www.yarnivore.com/francis/archives/001806.html


Scott Himself:
http://squonk-npl.livejournal.com/5120.html