James Thurber

I got a rock

It can take years to complete a book. For Leslie McGuirk, the time was spent taking a closer look at the treasures found on the beach near her home, and collecting 26 noteworthy specimens. Lovely.

Tops

Japanese wood tops from the General Store.

Go

The Holstee manifesto poster: touchy feely inspiration...

unless a stoic approach is preferred.

Indigo

Japanese Boro textiles circa 1900

 Japanese Boro textiles are collage-like, free from any pattern and more interesting as a result. The threadbare clothing and blankets of the most humble and impoverished were patched and mended out of necessity with any bits of fabric available. The random stitches and overlays were never intended to be viewed as art, yet they are achingly soulful and beautiful.

Guys

I wanted to play Masterson. I mean nothing disparaging about 

Marlon Brando, but Masterson didn't fit him, and he knew it.

--Frank Sinatra

Frank is the kind of guy, when he dies, he's going to heaven 

and give God a bad time for making him bald.

--Marlon Brando

Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra as Sky Masterson and Nathan Detroit, 

in Guys and Dolls (1955)

Photos by Richard Avedon

Charles Green Shaw

Process

Tim Lane

Pep Carrió

Before your inner critic, the office pool or your highly demanding boss/teacher/client adds to the mix, an idea, sometimes just a wispy doodle, blossoms across the pages of sketchbook. Graphic: Inside the Sketchbooks of the World's Great Graphic Designers offers a peek into the process of some of the most revered creative minds at work.

Face time

Fantastic melamine plates from Whitbread and Wilkinson 

are printed with portraits from the National Gallery in London. 

The serving platter, the largest of the lot, features a subdued Napoleon.

Talent test, no fee

Stereotypes

The USA according to Common Sense

Europe according to the USA

Italy according to Posh Italians

Agitating maps as T-shirts, prints and calendars.

Educated fleas do it

Isabella Rossellini is goofy. Who knew?  In her book Green Porno, she combines her intelligence, prowess in front of a camera, and deep concern for the Earth's ecosystem by illustrating the wild ways of animal sex. Deliriously odd, but accurate. Why create enormous costumes of spiders, snails and shrimp to explain procreation? Because science is beautiful.

Kid Dynamite

This week, Mike Tyson entered boxing's Hall of Fame.

Just starting his professional career, Tyson at 19

The 90 minute documentary film, Tyson, by James Toback (2008) is a fascinating study of the emotionally complex fighter and his troubled, turbulent life. Included is early fight footage of Tyson at his menacing best, shown in slow motion, so the audience can witness the terror wash across the faces of his doomed opponents. Considering that the men are powerfully built, often taller, heavier 

and more muscular than Tyson, it is really something to see.

Weightless

Burger

Wimpy: (singing) There's nothing in the world that can compare/ With a hamburger, juicy and rare./ A hamburger lives for the pleasure it gives;/ It's a thrill on the bill of fare./ Such heavenly food deserves the best:/ A home and contentment beneath my vest. / There's nothing in the world that's so divine / as a hamburger, tender and fine. / I adore you, hamburger mine!

--from the cartoon, What--No Spinach? (1936)

I met with friends for lunch at Umami Burger.  Purists may scoff at the Parmesan crisp 

and the oven roasted tomato but the burgers were tasty!

For the burger aficionado, there's Burgermat--a one day exhibit of burger art in London on June 27th. 

by Nishant Choksi

Heaven

Issue #12 of Colors Magazine explores many wildly

different interpretations of Heaven.

Things unheard

Brigitte Bardot sits demurely before Pablo Picasso.

The future is calling

Videoconferencing has been the stuff of dreams for over a century.

Illustration circa 1879

From Fritz Lang's Metropolis, 1927

Advertisement circa 1950

From Stanley Kubricks 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968

Don't call us

Dear Mr./Mrs./Ms./Miss J. K, Rowling:

At this time, we must decline your submission of Harry Potter 

and the Sorcerer's Stone. Unfortunately, the manuscript reeks 

of being completed on a manual typewriter. For heaven's sake, it 

is 1997. Do you own a computer?

--From a rejection letter for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

(rejected by 12 publishers)

We are not interested in science fiction which deals 

with negative utopias. They do not sell.

--From a rejection letter for Carrie, by Stephen King

(rejected by 30 publishers)

Too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling.

--From a rejection letter for Dr. Seuss's 
And to Think That I Saw it on MULBERRY STREET

(rejected by 28 publishers)

The girl doesn't, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling 

which would lift that book above the 'curiousity' level.

--From a rejection letter for The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

(rejected by 15 publishers)

I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.

--From a rejection letter for Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

(rejected by 7 publishers)

Two sides

Brief and fascinating.

Strangers

In terms of scariness, Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train may seem overshadowed by his more linear and obvious film, Psycho. Both Bruno Anthony of Strangers, and Norman Bates of Psycho are disturbed psychopaths triggered by impulse and opportunity, after leading functional lives under the radar. Both films have neatly packaged endings with their antagonists dead or imprisoned. Still, Bruno has left an impression, an unmistakable influence on all the other main characters that Norman did not. Bruno very nearly coerced Guy,a perfect stranger, to commit an unthinkable murder. In the film, Guy resists Bruno, in the book written by Patricia Highsmith, he complies. Either way, the friends and family of Guy are left to wonder whether they truly know him, and question whether their trust in him or anyone is sound.