rowan feels good

rowan wins! first bendy member to star on you tube (unless you guys have previous appearances)

just think of all the evolutionary stages you have to go through to become a species that can publish videos of office christmas party antics to the entire world.

top shape-making by the way, rowan

Lartigue

Here's something more life-affirming at last! Look down the page at our recent subject matter: war, poverty, drugs, painful injuries, shame on us. A favourite photograph of mine, this: Jacques Henri Lartigue's photo 'Hydroglider' from 1904 - tho I prefer the alternative title 'My Hydroglider With Propeller' (that's him in the bath!) It's always a dangerous thing to think of photography as an artform: if you're not careful you get Margaret Cameronesque whimsy (remember that desperately earnest exhibition at the Whitechapel, James, that bored the pants off us but at least got us wondering when was the moment people started smiling at the camera, because none of them were then); or too much stylish precision a la Man Ray / Edward Weston; or the spot-the-art-history-references-worthiness of Jeff Wall. So hooray for flickr and 'what's in your fridge?' pictures, and hooray for JHL who becomes an amateur at seven and stays that way...

check out official French site http://www.lartigue.org. The photo of the dirigible at Ville de Paris, 1907 is great too.

nerdy

sorry if you know this already, but I've come across this compelling nerdy hobbyist site - http://www.instructables.com Lots of advice on how to make explosions etc but some danger / testosterone-free thinsg too: whiteboard animations, tictac box torches, ipod rechargers, and this 'frankenbear' toy... It feels like a digital-era amalgam of Why Don't You, Vision on and Tomorrow's World: hooray!

Meanwhile, across the pond...

Ouch. Quite a grim snapshot of Americana on the viral videos this week. Where to begin? It looks like the battle for hearts and minds is going swimmingly in Iraq. While no Abu Ghraib, the sheer pulling-the- wings-off-flies viciousness of this little snippet gives a disturbing insight into things.

Meanwhile, it seems that beneath every has-been comic character actor there lurks a raging white supremacist just screaming to jump out . Kramer's desperate apology on Letterman is worth watching too. I wonder how many black comics would be given such a smooth ride if they had been caught in a comparable situation? I love those ‘I’ll just have to deal with this unexpected mad racist loon that I seem to have stumbled across lurking in my personality’ excuses Hollywood slebs roll out every time they’re caught doing an impersonation of some addled 1950s Klansman . Mel Gibson leads the way with his ‘The booze made me say all this weird racist stuff. It’s a disease, y’know!’ nonsense after he decided to say out loud what his films have been saying in big illuminated letters for years. Couldn’t find any footage of El Gibbo himself, but here’s Family Guy’s take on it.

Finally, look out students: the man ain’t gonna take it no more! The LAPD are finally cracking down on the endemic violence of the homeland’s, er, university libraries. None of your ‘Sshhh – quiet please!’ here. Oh no. ‘STAND UP! STAND UP OR I’LL TAZE YOUR ASS!!!!’ That’s more like it. No doubt he deserved what was coming to him. I’ll bet he was eating noisy snacks in a quiet zone …