Nintendo might have made video game fans the world over chuckle by naming its latest console the Wii but now it’s Sega’s turn to take the piss.
Just seen this over at Wired – Sega has announced it’s testing public urinals in Japan with video games installed. And why not? I mean pissing can get so boring sometimes, can’t it?
Brilliantly pointless. Head to Wired’s great website for the full story.
This is The Picture of Everything. Well, it’s actually just a small bit of The Picture of Everything.
This mother-of-all-doodles has been knocking around for quite a while – since 1997 to be exact. Thirteen years later, artist Howard Hallis finished pedantically scribbling ‘everything’ in September, and the completed 12×15-foot picture is currently on display in Los Angeles.
The exhibition is the first public showing of this stunning, and, let’s face it, a little bit bonkers, coloured-pencil-and-felt-tip-pen documentation of the history of pop culture as a finished piece.
If you’re stateside, it’s got to be worth taking a look – gazing at the incredible, obsessive level of detail on a computer screen is likely to swallow a decent chunk of your day; up close and personal you could well end up owing the gallery money towards the rent.
According to the gallery’s website, The Picture of Everything is also up for sale at the event with a no doubt – considering it’s basically paying Hallis 13 years’ wages – sizeable price tag.
Fans of colossal, billboard-sized sketches be advised, though, you’re going to need a big living room – the work is so epic in size the curators were forced to hang it at an angle to get it into the gallery.
“It didn’t look this big in the shop” might not be quite so believable an excuse when returning home with this bad boy rolled up under your arm.
Or have I? Apologies if you’ve clicked on this, read those first three words and are now very angry with me.
To clear up any confusion for anyone who’s being doing something constructive in the past 24 hours, it’s all kicked off over on Twitter thanks to a joke posted by comedian Peter Serafinowicz apparently so offensive that even a simple glance at the words it comprises could cause your brain to instantly boil in your head.
Feeds for Serafinowicz-mentioning hashtags are going mental. People are desperate to find out what the joke was, despite it having seemed pretty clear since this whole brouhaha started that there was, in fact, never such a joke – the Spaced and Shaun of the Dead comedian merely posted a mock apology for a tweet that didn’t exist in the first place.
Last night, though, rumours were abound that the now-near-legendary quip featured something about maniacal American beauty pageant contestant Sarah Palin and jumped-up vicar the Pope. By this morning, consensus had shifted and the aside was reported to have featured fake-photo-publishing Piers Morgan and hairy Sky box manufacturer Alan Sugar. And possibly Simon Pegg.
Now, if there was a joke, it would have been re-posted by someone somewhere. But the beauty of this (supposed) hoax is no one can be completely sure there wasn’t a joke. And the human brain just can’t handle that. It has to know. And people will keep typing the name Serafinowicz into their keyboards until the whole thing’s cleared up one way or another.
Well done, Peter. That’s how to use Twitter. And if nothing else, it’s a good excuse to post a clip from the brilliant Look Around You.
And there are 24 other new old-fashioned lobby card remakes here. Merry Christmas!
Carnaby Street always has some of the most creative and unusual light displays on offer in the capital.
While this year’s illuminations can’t quite square up to the massive paper chains or giant snowmen that have adorned the famous shopping street in the past few years, 2010’s space age offering certainly grabs your attention.
From a distance, it all looks quite realistic set against the night sky – I had to double-take the sunglasses-clad, spacesuit-wearing moon-orbiting Santa to make sure it wasn’t actually a bloke on wires, and by the looks of some of the confused tourists’ faces, I wasn’t the only one.
End-of-year lists just exist. They are unstoppable, a force of nature that will continue to appear and that you will be compelled to read.
And here’s another one: in no particular order, five great albums from this year. If you don’t have them loaded on to your iPod, you may as well put it in the bin. Or, if you’re less profligate, just buy them and update it – your choice.
Caribou: Swim
This has nailed a spot in quite a few other album of the year lists, and deservedly so. Caribou’s mathematician mastermind apparently said he wanted to make a dance album that sounded like it was recorded under water – a brilliantly simple aim that resulted in a record of deeply textured and beautiful electronic melodies that sounds both like the future of music and as natural as the element that inspired its creation.
Gil Scott-Heron: I’m New Here
Jazz poet and all-round legend Scott-Heron’s comeback album is claustrophobic, at times brooding and at others stunningly delicate. The ‘Godfather of Rap’ has certainly lived – I’m New Here was recorded after a stint in prison for drug offences – and it’s all here: anger, heartbreak and redemption stuffed into a compact running time, with spoken word, Kanye West samples and the aptly picked cover-version title track thrown in for good measure.
Arcade Fire: The Suburbs
Another one that will appear in every other list under the sun. If you still haven’t heard it you need to get out of your cave once in a while – maybe put it on the market and move to the suburbs; growing up in the outer environs of Houston certainly didn’t do the band’s Win Butler any harm on this evidence. Big, exhilarating and just ace all over.
Erykah Badu: New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh)
Anyone that thinks any contestant that’s ever appeared on The X-Factor has a “unique recording voice” really needs to take a long, hard listen to some Erykah Badu. This is Badu as funky and inventive as she’s ever been, if in a more personal and playful mood than on the darker social commentary of Amerykah Part One. The mellow soul of Window Seat, a frank reflection on both fame and love, is a highlight.
The Black Keys: Brothers
The Black Keys’ frontman told The Independent that his pretty-bluesy-actually rock band was influenced by hip-hop, not the blues. Well they both shine through here, and gloriously so: Brothers is sleazy, soulful, stripped-back rock music in which, as the band affirmed in that newspaper interview, the groove is always king.
Finally, the publishing industry has stopped cocking around and the wait is over: Your Chickens magazine is out.
Unashamedly making the bold claim that it contains “all you need to know about rearing chickens at home”, the title will go on sale in January.
That aside, though, it’s a family magazine. So no jokes about readers learning how to take better care of their little peckers, please.
Thanks to printweek.com
This week I have... 