We do it #ForTheCultrs
Before, I was hyped. Now I’m HYYYYPPPPEEEEDDDD! I’m really leaning into Idris Elba’s Knuckles, Jim Carrey’s Dr Robotnik, more Sonic and TAILS! We’re just weeks away from release and I can’t wait. I may or may not see this at the cinema more than once (subject to pandemic safety).
Ad agency DDB Athens created a new ad campaign for McDonald’s called “Meant to be Classic”, with a series of ads depicting the fast food corporation in classic impressionist paintings. For me, this looks good on face value only and doesn’t really speak to McDonald’s target audience who may appreciate it a Monet or Cézanne but probably aren’t impressionist art fans in general.
McDonald’s related: The spaceship McDonald’s from Alconbury in Cambridge, How and why the McDonald’s McPizza failed in 315 seconds, Jason Kottke on old McDonald’s menus, and Chris Morris’s prank on a McDonald’s employee
Caity Weaver profiled Chloe Gordon, a film maker who went Robert Langdon on Dan Brown when she tried to get her hands on a copy of Dan Brown’s lesser known book, “187 Men to Avoid: A Survival Guide for the Romantically Frustrated Woman“. The reason for the mystery and intrigue was every time she tried to buy a copy, she got sent the wrong book:
So when she stumbled upon an internet rumor that identified Mr. Brown as the author of a tongue-in-cheek dating guide from 1995 called “187 Men to Avoid: A Survival Guide for the Romantically Frustrated Woman,” she immediately bought it on Amazon.
The 96-page novelty book, which was originally published under the name Danielle Brown, promised very short descriptions of men the author considered unsuitable romantic partners — a book of red flags, if you will. “Men who think Lamaze is a famous French car race,” for example. “Men who decoupage.” “Men with pet rocks.”
But when she opened her mail, Ms. Gordon realized that the wrong book had arrived (“Heretics of Dune,” a 1984 science fiction novel by Frank Herbert). She forgot about it for about a year and then went on Amazon and bought the book again. This time she received Elizabeth Taylor’s 1988 dieting memoir, “Elizabeth Takes Off.”
Having struck out twice on Amazon, Ms. Gordon tried eBay. She paid a seller for the book, and a few days later received a refund and an email explaining that the book did not exist in the seller’s inventory. She ordered a copy from a different seller. This order, too, was canceled and refunded.
Ms. Gordon, who lives in California, did not give up. She ordered the book on AbeBooks, a subsidiary of Amazon. Once again, she did not receive “187 Men to Avoid” but, this time, “The Ghost Light” by Fritz Leiber.
She began to anticipate receiving wrong books. On July 19, she filmed herself opening her most recent Amazon package, which turned out to be a copy of Bill Cosby’s 1992 musings on youth, “Childhood,” and posted it on Twitter. “Oh no,” she groans. “This is worse — it’s getting worse!”
I’ve covered Steamed Hams a lot (see Steamed Hams but in the style of Seinfeld, Steamed Hams but it’s edited like Dragon Ball Z, Steamed Hams but there’s a different animator every 13 seconds, and Steamed Hams but its an oral history). But this one is magnificent. Somehow this is the one that tops the rest, after all these years. As the title suggests, it’s the Steamed Hams skit but each scene has a different art style covering decades of animation, from Peanuts to Rocko’s Modern Life.
His fashion game is so on point, he doesn’t even know what some of the labels even are.
More on Dafoe: The best of Willem Dafoe as the Green Goblin
In conversation with a friend, they asked me when I was seeing my favourite band, Khruangbin. I knew it was on the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday but couldn’t remember the date so I Googled the term “Easter Saturday” thinking that’s what it was colloquially known as. Then I got this result:
I thought that seemed a bit late, vaguely remembering the gig date was closer to the middle of April. And looking at my calendar confirmed the date I was actually looking for was 16th April. I then tweeted the above image, calling Google out for yet another error! John Mueller, a Search Advocate at Google and someone I’d class as a Twitter friend, responded saying he would feed it back which was very generous of him (and so John). But there was a plot twist, courtesy of another Twitter friend:
The Saturday after Easter?! Lo and behold, I was wrong and Easter Saturday was a thing that wasn’t the thing I thought it was. Even more confusingly, Eastern and Western churches observe Easter Saturday weeks apart from each other (Eastern churches observe it a week after Western churches).
So there you have it. I’ll have to find a new name for that middle Saturday. Any suggestions?
(Thanks to Faye for the correction)
Easter related: I’m obsessed with Michael Keaton’s Easter Candy SNL skit
If you’re not already subscribed to Jago Hazzard and you like London tube facts, maybe these three videos will entice you:
How come King’s Cross and St Pancras only get one station between them? Why are there two big stations right next to each other anyway? What’s up with that?
West Finchley and its anachronistic footbridge.
The hidden station entombed within Euston.
More on London transport: Jago Hazzard on Phoenix Garden in West London and animals on the London Underground
It’s amazing what you’ll find on a random Google search. Snow cream is a dessert that comes in two vareties:
Due to its appearance, whipped cream was known as snow cream until the 17th century and sometimes contained whipped egg whites. The latter mixed “clean snow” with a dairy-based ingredient and some sugar until it melted and congealed into an ice cream substitute.
Jonita Davis wrote an insightful piece for YES! Magazine all about a century-long battle by Black actresses to get their dues in sci-fi:
Black women have long been fixtures in science fiction film and television. In the 20th century, they largely appeared in background roles as maids, cooks, sex workers, or dancers. Then, the 21st century ushered in high-profile roles like Halle Berry’s Storm, Danai Gurira’s Michonne, Javicia Leslie’s Batwoman, and so many more. Most recently, Marvel’s Black Panther featured numerous roles for powerful Black women characters and was wildly successful, making a billion dollars in 2018. But Hollywood didn’t decide on its own to portray Black women as heroes and women of power. The roles, their depictions, and even the credit for the parts were the result of more than 80 years of Black-led struggle and strategy. During that time, Black women had to endure both racism and misogyny on set, both of which are still prevalent in the industry.
Davis covers some of the greats, from Nichelle Nichols as Nyota Uhura in Star Trek to Gloria Foster, and later Mary Alice, as Oracle in the The Matrix series (“All of these characters are beloved despite the toxicity of the mammy and Magical Negro tropes”).
The sun glints off the water as a hand feels the ground across the world. The connection between people, places, nature and water, in the rain of Scotland and in the warmth of Italy. Challenging OCD through touch and the process of filmmaking, healing through images and sounds.
If you manage to dodge the bigotry, Reddit is a fascinating place when people care about educating and being wholesome(ish). Take this post for example: a Redditor by the name of plumberoncrack posted “Bear with me here, I need a well-known movie screenshot of a white guy crying over a dead black guy…”. The answer was The Bucket List but the post conjured a revelation:
Fun fact about that movie:
The term “bucket list” did not exist before the creation of that movie. The movie coined the term, not the other way around.
Edit: I’m getting downvoted but a lot of the replies here prove me correct. Do your research.
comment by YoyoDevo on the post
Cue a heated debate (because Reddit) to which r/etymology gave its meta critique. The best comment from the r/etymology post was this from hexagonalwagonal (I’ve cut it down to just the first few paragraphs as it’s quite long):
For the record, OED’s earliest instance is from a syndicated UPI Newswire article on June 29, 2006. As found by commenters in this thread, Variety wrote an article about the film the same day, and other commenters have found references to it dating from the day before. It would seem the studio issued a press release on June 28, 2006, announcing the film and describing the concept, and various outlets/people wrote about it.
But as others have pointed out in this thread, surely the concept existed before the movie. So what did they call it? (EDIT: They most often called it a “life list” — see below.)
Rather than trying to find a pre-June 2006 source for the specific phrase “bucket list”, let’s look at sources that talk about the concept and see how they refer to it. What’s notable is that many of these sources could have saved themselves explanation if the author knew the phrase. Yet none of them ever used it.
It would appear the film created the phrase but the concept of a list of things to do before you die was alive and well for much longer. The Mandela effect likely remains strong for those mass debaters in the original post. I doubt “arguing on the internet” was a priority on their bucket list.
Reddit related: James Corden did a Reddit AMA and it turned into a roast
Well, they’ve done it again. Swiss gruyère has been named the world’s best cheese at the World Championship Cheese Contest in Wisconsin for a second consecutive tournament.
The win gave Michael Spycher of Mountain Dairy Fritzenhaus in Bern, Switzerland his third victory (his first was in 2008 and second in 2020, both with the same cheese). A Swiss Appenzeller came second (also the second contest in a row that a Swiss cheese was placed first and second), while a Erzherzog Johann from Austria came third.
This year’s tournament had 29 countries compete, with the US receiving 94 Best in Class finishes and Swiss cheesemakers taking home 10 gold medals to the Netherlands’ 7.
Still no pule or moose cheese entries.
AIGA Eye on Design spoke to Annika Hansteen-Izora about Black Creative Ecosystems, originally a Google Sheets list used to redirect the public donations from the 2020 BLM protests to bail funds and various Black initiatives focusing on the Black women, the Black LGBTQ community, and their various intersections.
After experiencing an overwhelming wave of support for the spreadsheet, Hansteen-Izora tweeted asking if anyone could help turn the home of Creative Ecosystems into something more robust. Partnering with NYC-based studio Athletics, they collaborated over the next 18 months to bring us a “digital garden” and directory of these ecosystems. The design centers on connection, its primary purpose being to connect Black creatives to each other.
While the internet has provided limitless ways to connect us, it also reflects the complex power structures that dominate our offline lives. Hansteen-Izora explains that when “thinking about the architecture of online spaces, and how much Black creative thought has impacted the internet… [the number of] Black online spaces… were very few.” At its inception, the internet was seen as a place to start anew, to rectify the inequalities of our IRL existence, but instead, it sadly grew to reflect those inequalities. Dominated by white men, many of the platforms we use today have been designed to uphold, rather than deconstruct, white supremacy. Hansteen-Izora conceptualized Black Creative Ecosystems as a way to remedy that.
While Pandog (the umbrella group that Cultrface is part of) wouldn’t be eligible for Black Creative Ecosystems’s directory based on its submission criteria, I still class it as an “ecosystem that explores Black art & imagination”. Regardless, I’m glad to see spaces like this for us.
The year was 1968. We were on recon in a steaming Mekong Delta. An overheated private removed his flak jacket, revealing a t-shirt with an iron on sporting the MAD slogan “up with miniskirts”. We all had a good laugh even though I didn’t quite understand it, but our momentary lapse of concentration allowed Charlie to get the drop on us. I spent the next three years in a POW camp, forced to subsist on a thin stew of fish, vegetables, prawns, coconut milk and four kinds of rice. I came close to madness trying to find it here in the States but they just can’t get the spices right.
Other Simpsons scenes: emotional Simpsons scenes and ‘And if we can all be more like little Rudiger…’
I found this insightful interactive by Reuters exploring prounouns and how languages are reshaping to include nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people:
Not everyone identifies as a woman or a man. The movement to recognize gender identities beyond female and male is growing in places like Western Europe and the United States, and changing languages around the world.
In English, the pronouns people use — such as ‘she,’ ‘he,’ or ‘they’ — have come to the fore. In some languages, other parts of speech can also be feminine or masculine.
Modifying language to reflect a spectrum of gender identities is a fundamental change that stirs fierce debate.
Ain’t no debate here. Gender identities already exist and language is malleable enough to accommodate them. If we can literally change the meaning of literally to mean not literally, we can change a few letters in a word to make people feel safe to express who they are. But of course, it can be more than “just a few letters” and it’s important to acknowledge that too. So listen without prejudice and do that work.
More on language changes to reduce harm: Alternatives to ableist terms