True Detective's season finale airs Sunday, which means we're running out of time for mash-ups, reimaginings, #TrueDetectiveSeason2 jokes, insane theories, and Carcosa puzzles. So this video got in just under the wire: Here's True Detective done up Law & Order style.
And it's not just a pretty good spoof of the L&O opening: It's a shot-for-shot do-over, with the brilliantly placed American flag stripper outfit where L&O has just a regular American flag. Man, Marty Hart and Lenny Briscoe would have been such good friends.
The Russian president has been widely criticized for ordering a military incursion into the Ukraine . Still, on the secret-sharing website Whisper, he enjoys some passionate support.
Writes our submitter, Amy: “In going through my late great-grandmother’s memorabilia trunk, I saw that she apparently kept a ‘thank you’ letter I wrote her when I was eight years old.” (Said Amy’s mother, of the discovery: ”I clearly did not supervise the writing of this note.”)
A particularly nonsensical New York Times word salad tops this blog post about Joe Biden's dimming presidential hopes. Worst Times headline ever, or best self-referential joke by a newspaper ever? You decide!
Note:The Times has since changed it to "Magazine Article Says Biden Has Eye on 2016 but Has Taken Few Steps" so either they fixed a poor headline or some editor did not like the joke.
As seen on the front pages of the Los Angeles Daily News and its sister newspapers:
* Missouri School of Journalism is closing its survey center. (columbiatribune.com)
* A new weekly magazine about Pope Francis will have an initial press run of 3 million copies. (catholicnewsagency.com)
* Washington D.C. restaurant owners are warned that Post food critic Tom Sietsema “often ventures into the territory of cruel.” (washingtoncitypaper.com)
* Jen Sorensen is the first woman to win the Herblock Prize. (washingtonpost.com)
* Sam Quinones leaves the Los Angeles Times to freelance. “Journalism, you may have heard, is changing, and I want to see if I can change with it,” he says. (laobserved.com)
* “We publish 400 things a day,” says BuzzFeed boss Jonah Peretti. (venturevillage.com)
* New York Times corrects an article from 1853. (cnn.com)
* “Sparkling prose” from recent New York Times stories. (nytimes.com)
* At least three college papers have announced in the last month that they’re dropping print. (collegemediamatters.com)
* Warren Buffett‘s newspapers lose readers. (bloomberg.com)
* New Yorker’s Matt Buchanan and BuzzFeed’s John Hermann are joining The Awl. (capitalnewyork.com) | The Awl explains itself. (theawl.com)
* Legendary New York Daily News reporter Don Singleton “pretty well had an idea of what he wanted to do in life, and it panned out.” (njherald.com)
by Alissa Walker on Gizmodo, shared by Sarah Hedgecock to Gawker
A new startup is betting that you can't find a suitable public restroom to relieve yourself—and that you'll pay top dollar for a cushy seat when the urge strikes. Posh Stow and Go is billing itself as New York's "first members-only day storage and bathroom facility," with memberships that allow you to pay-as-you-poo.
Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing and the A.V. Club pointed out yesterday that an eBayer had listed the exact same vintage FTD coffee mug that appears on the police-station table where Matthew McConaughey's character Rustin "Rust" Cohle has been giving his case notes while drinking Lone Star tall boys in every True Detective episode thus far. This specimen in question, emblazoned with the words "Big Hug Mug" in descending rows of bubble letters, ended up going for $83 after a fierce back-and-forth totaling 41 bids. But there are a lot more Big Hug Mugs out there, it turns out.
Another sold on February 10 for $95, and another for $85 the day before that. Average auction prices seem to be closing between $76 and $85.
It's not likely, but unless FTD updates its current Teddy-bear-themed "Big Hug" portfolio with the throwback coffee-cup reissue, prices for the McConaughey-championed drinking vessel will likely continue to spike on the secondhand market until supply dries up completely. Right now, one mug has surpassed $100 in bids, while others have hit the $50mark.
Sadly, the knockoff Big Hug Mug market is not quite yet up-to-speed. The lettering isn't quite right and the color is all wrong, for starters. "So, you don't feel like paying $50 to $110.00 to get the exact mug," reads the unintentionally hilarious listing for a $31.48 bootleg. "Well this isn’t the same one (notice the color)....but it is close! And at a fraction of the cost."
Okay, but have we ever even seen him drink from the mug?Photo: HBO
Just wait until someone starts selling old 16-ounce cans of Lone Star beer for True Detective hobbyists to make their own tin figurines à la Rust Cohle. Oh, wait, never mind.
Frankly this might be an actual legitimate reaction to Ai Weiwei's smashing a Han dynasty vase series.
Yes, Ai "owned" the work, but it was designed to play with our preconceptions that antiques must be preserved at all costs. This artist is asking if someone's work contains destruction, does he own his own work?
/pretentiousartcomment
"Don't touch," a guard warned, seconds before a 51-year-old Miami artist picked up an Ai Weiwei vase worth a million dollars and smashed it to pieces on the ground.
“Tasty or tasteless?” a Texas reader asked me in an email about a Houston Chronicle blog post headlined, “Oh, cum on.” (First sentence: “Jizz seems to be on everyone’s lips lately!”)
I posted the link and reader’s question in my Monday Morning Report, and the item was quickly pulled from chron.com.
“Disgruntled employee?” blogger and consultant Steve Outing asked about the post. “They got hacked? I wouldn’t believe this except that Jim Romenesko documented that it actually was published.”
I asked Chronicle managing editor Vernon Loeb about “Cum On” and he sent this explanation:
The 2010 content you linked to on Monday originated on a website called 29-95.com that the Houston Chronicle created some years back to appeal to a younger audience attracted to alternative media.
After several years, it was disbanded. In 2013, the site’s archive was moved over as a blog onto the Chronicle’s free site, chron.com. At the time, no one realized the archive included offensive and inappropriate content, which was apparently written as part of a column on sex advice, and no one here realized it was still live on chron.com until you linked to it.
We immediately removed it, and had someone search the site and remove additional similar content. The author of this material was a freelancer and is no longer employed here. We apologize to anyone who may have been offended by this content, and we trust that all of it has been removed from our website.
By the way, both Loeb and Chronicle editor Nancy Barnes were at different papers when “Oh, cum on” was first posted.
The winning project, Hy-Fi, opens at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City in late June. Using biological technologies combined with cutting-edge computation and engineering to create new building materials, The Living will use a new method of bio-design, resulting in a structure that is 100% organic material. The structure temporarily diverts the natural carbon cycle to produce a building that grows out of nothing but earth and returns to nothing but earth--with almost no waste, no energy needs, and no carbon emissions. This approach offers a new vision for society's approach to physical objects and the built environment. ...
Hy-Fi is a circular tower of organic and reflective bricks, which were designed to combine the unique properties of two new materials. The organic bricks are produced through an innovative combination of corn stalks (that otherwise have no value) and specially-developed living root structures, a process that was invented by Ecovative, an innovative company that The Living is collaborating with. The reflective bricks are produced through the custom-forming of a new daylighting mirror film invented by 3M. The reflective bricks are used as growing trays for the organic bricks, and then they are incorporated into the final construction before being shipped back to 3M for use in further research. The organic bricks are arranged at the bottom of the structure and the reflective bricks are arranged at the top to bounce light down on the towers and the ground. The structure inverts the logic of load-bearing brick construction and creates a gravity-defying effect--instead of being thick and dense at the bottom, it is thin and porous at the bottom. The structure is calibrated to create a cool micro-climate in the summer by drawing in cool air at the bottom and pushing out hot air at the top. The structure creates mesmerizing light effects on its interior walls through reflected caustic patterns.
That's a pic on the planned structure above. The whole thing sounds very Ecovative.
And no, using the word tragedy is not hyperbole. We love Glasserie and are dubious that it will be worth visiting once they lose their chef Sara Kramer. She says she’ll leave by the end of February at the latest. We’re just getting over Gwynnet St closing which, incidentally, is recovering nicely as Lachlan and still serving their beloved whiskey bread!
Grub Street has more on why Sara Kramer is splitting. She’s careful not to be incendiary, but this does not sound like a pleasant situation:
The owner [Sara Conklin] and I had never really met or worked together previously. It was a big leap of trust on both of our parts. As much as two people can say that they want something similar, you can’t ever know until you’re doing it in practice. She had different ideas for the direction of the restaurant. There will be some significant changes to the food. The whole trajectory of the restaurant is very different from what I would have wanted, so I think that it’s a positive move for both of us, even though it’s sad…. I’m looking forward to working on another project in an environment that feels more cohesive, holistic, cooperative…
This has been an ongoing struggle, and part of what makes it even harder to walk away is the success of the restaurant. It’s doing a lot for my career. But success isn’t what matters most when it comes to you daily existence.
Looks like much of the staff is leaving as well:
The woman who’s been working with me as my sous chef, Sarah Hymanson, and I are excited to try to work on something together. She’s leaving as well. A lot of my kitchen staff, who I brought in, are leaving — independent of me. They’re not leaving to come and work for me, but we were a team, and even if the new chef is great, I think that they feel like it’s not the same place anymore. They don’t feel as excited to stay because it’s not what they signed up for.
Sarah [Hymanson] and I are excited about new frontiers and trying to figure out a way to work on a project together. What that is yet, I don’t know, but we’re a great team. We have as similar approach to food and management, and feel like we can do a good job and have fun at the same time. That’s crucial when you’re working so many hours and you care so much about what you’re doing. That’s about as much as I can divulge. She and I have a strong future ahead of us, as a duo.
I’m helping to transition the staff: The majority of the line cooks are leaving. With such a large kitchen turnover, it can be helpful to have my support.
When asked if she’ll be looking to stay in Greenpoint for her next project she responded simply and sadly: “Probably not.”
We found it! The wait is over (and it's not Admiral Ackbar.) Spoilers about season two of House of Cards below!
You might remember our friend better as "Bird with helmet with voice of Jigsaw from Saw." He's the avatar of Gavin Orsay, the hacker who helps out/totally fucks over Lucas Goodwin on his deep web search for a connection between Zoe Barnes and Frank Underwood. He first appears to Lucas on an iPad delivered to him in a diner.
But what the hell IS it? Some 4Chan/Reddit in-joke? Is it Anonymous-related? Does it have anything to do with hackers at all?
Turns out, it's based on art.
The little guy is on the right panel of Hieronymus Bosch's triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights.
Here he is in a Creepy Pasta Wiki. The implications of that bird in this context might be even scarier than when we thought it was a Deep Web thing: Despite the title, this guy is just one player in a larger band in hell. (Update: Apparently that is the Prince of Hell, and it's a cauldron on his head.) What does that say about Orsay or his role this season? To say nothing of Cashew!
Oddly, Helmet Bird is not the only part of that totally trippy, over 500-years-old picture that is getting play this week. Or the first original series for a streaming content provider to make an allusion to him.
“After the woman has delivered the child, you should know how to take care of the child. Know that as soon as the child is born, it should be wrapped in crushed roses mixed with fine salt… And when one wishes to swaddle [the baby], the members should be gently couched and arranged so as to give them a good shape, and this is easy for a wise nurse; for just as wax when it is soft takes whatever form one wishes to give to it, so also the child takes the form which its nurses give to it. And for this reason, you should know that beauty and ugliness are due in large measure to nurses. And when its arms are swaddled, and the hands over the knees, and the head lightly swaddled and covered, let it sleep in the cradle.”
Aldobrandino of Siena, Regimen for the Body (1254)
Don’t worry: caring for a newborn is as easy as curing a ham. Just salt it with some aromatics, arrange it nicely, and wait for it to age.
The dream of everlasting pizza may, finally, be within reach.
This is a prototype slice of pizza, developed by the US Army's research division. It can survive for up to three years without freezing or refrigeration, and still be edible.
AP Photo/Steven Senne
Military researchers have been working on the goal of long-life pizza for years. It's described as their "holy grail."
Scientists at the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center, in Natick, Massachusetts, have been trying to combat pizza's inherent tendency to go soggy - and, as a result, mouldy.
AP Photo/Steven Senne
Pizza has been one of the most requested additions to the army's MRE (Meal Ready to Eat) roster.
Food scientist Michelle Richardson (above) says of the pizza prototype: "You can basically take the pizza, leave it on the counter, packaged, for three years and it'd still be edible."
AP Photo/Steven Senne
The key has been finding a way to stop the dough getting moist.
This includes adding ingredients that bind to water in the tomato sauce and toppings, preventing it from migrating to the dough, and altering the acidity of the ingredients so bacteria are less likely to grow.
We've sung the praises of Nano Billiards, the bar and pool hall that operates a lunch counter, before—it's where you'll find the best Dominican cooking in the city, bar none, Monday through Saturday.
I've been returning, sporadically over the last few months, in hopes of landing a bowl of their illusive chivito, a country-style goat stew. (My love for goat has come up previously on this site.) It's still eluded me, but there are plenty of other reasons to come and enjoy chef Anita's cooking, some of the best in the south Bronx.
One of them is her take on chicken and rice, Locrio de Pollo (Wednesdays; all dishes $8 with rice, beans, and salad), that may be wholly unfamiliar to New Yorkers accustomed to the chicken and rice found at halal carts. Locrio sometimes means a dish of pork cooked with rice, but it also can be an informal catch-all for rice cooked with any kind of meat.
There's no white sauce with this chicken and rice, just the fragrance of sofrito—an aromatic base of sautéd tomato, pepper, and onion—and the briny bliss of olives. The chicken, which is presented in the form of nubby, chopped up bits occasionally still on the bone, is itself less impressive than the flavorful rice.
The meat's a little dry, but the rice, lubricated by schmaltz, olive brine, tomato, and herbs, more than makes up for it. For a step up in meat options, go for the Locrio de Cerdo, the same rice cooked with pork belly and shoulder. Another reason to order rice here, and one you won't find at halal carts: the browned concon or pegao, burnt rice that clusters at the bottom of the pot. It's nutty, caramelized, and crunchy, the joy of savory brittle.
Rice is one reason to love Nano. Guisado, stew in a number of formats, is another. Almost all of them, guisado de res notwithstanding, are delicious. The Guisado de Cerdo, complete with a glistening slab of pork belly, is almost impossible to resist.
But the single best stewed dish here is the Guisado de Costillas, stewed pork ribs. Swimming in sauce, the meat is as tender as you could possibly want, its flavor a union of fatty pork with rich braising juices and a hint of brine. With some plain rice and a cold beer, it's a candidate for one of the best things to eat anywhere in the borough.
About the author:Chris Crowley is the author of the Bronx Eats and Anatomy of A Smorgasburg Pop Up columns. Follow him on Twitter, if you'd like. In person, your best bet is the window seat at Neerob, or waiting in line at the Lechonera La Piranha trailer.
It doesn’t really matter what day of the week you book. What matters is how far in advance you book.
With the help of the data science team at Kayak, BuzzFeed figured out the best times to actually book your next vacation. Contrary to popular belief, it doesn't really matter what day of the week you book, so much as how far in advance you book.
Overall the day of the week you book only brings a 1 - 2% difference in price range. However booking at the correct time for your destination, could change your ticket price by hundreds of dollars.
Please note: all booking recommendations are only for flights departing from the U.S.
Chris Ritter / BuzzFeed
All data exclusively via Kayak, pulled from over 100 million search queries per month.
When a celebrity couple breaks up, there’s an initial deluge. The “he said, she said,” the list of alleged side pieces, the ensuing legal battle. If it’s a good couple, the breakup is enough to sustain a few weeks of tabloid covers, but then we’re all just expected to move on. Well, what if I haven’t? Some celebrity couples need to be revisited. Welcome to Divorce Court, a necessary forum to decide the winners and losers of the most high-profile and most interesting celebrity divorces.
“Robin Wright Penn” has a nice ring to it. Unfortunately for fans of that three-word consonance, it’s no longer a relevant name. Robin Wright and Sean Penn divorced in 2010 after 20 years of marriage, a rocky decade in the aughts, and several separations. Both Wright and Penn have been omnipresent in Hollywood for over 25 years, but thanks to new, flashy relationships and the return of House of Cards today, there has never been a better time to assess who’s won this celebrity divorce.
The Background
Sean and Robin first met while he was married to Madonna in the late ’80s. Their romantic relationship began, though, on the set of State of Grace in 1989, and they married the following year. They settled in Marin County in Northern California with their two kids: daughter Dylan, born in 1991, and son Hopper, born in 1993. And from that point, this marriage was turbulent, including many separations, subsequent reconciliations, and a couple of side relationships. During various hiatuses, Penn reportedly dated Jewel (1995) and Petra Nemcova (2008); further suspected philandering dogged him as well. (Remember that Sean Penn and Lindsay Lohan rumor?) Meanwhile, Robin, who had been an actor since she was a teenager, developed a reputation as cold, laconic, and selective with her projects.
I personally like to believe that the 1997 movie She’s So Lovely, in which they play a married couple plagued by the husband’s mental instability (as well as drug habits and low income), is an exaggerated depiction of their actual marriage. The fictional couple from the movie breaks up when Penn’s character goes to a mental institution, and Wright’s character moves on to marry a stable guy, played by John Travolta. Penn comes back 10 years later much more sane, and a love triangle ensues. In real life they were not (publicly) suffering from addiction and mental health issues, but they were not short on the drama. They first filed for divorce in December 2007, only to withdraw the petition five months later. They filed for a second time in April 2009, followed by a second withdrawal in May 2009. Ultimately, the third and final petition was filed on August 12, 2009, and the divorce was finalized in August 2010. (Note to People: There must be more photos of them to choose from.)
Current Estimated Net Worth
Robin: $60 million Sean: $150 million Winner: Sean. Numbers don’t lie, and thanks to celebritynetworth.com for providing these figures. For context, Sean is richer than Nicole Kidman ($130 million), but way poorer than Tom Cruise ($250 million), the previous subjects of Grantland’s Divorce Court. Despite his reputation as a world-class actor, Sean has no sweeping epics or Baz Luhrmann spectacles to his name, so I’m surprised he bests Kidman. Robin is not even on the radar of riches with her paltry $60 million.
Worldwide Box-Office Gross Since Divorce
Sean: $346,906,247 over four movies. Even if you don’t know anyone who saw The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, it certainly helped pull up Sean’s numbers. Robin: $343,796,158 over three movies. Robin’s return to film after the divorce may have been fairly slow, but Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Moneyball made this race surprisingly tight. Winner: Sean, by less than $4 million, though Robin’s per-film average is higher and there’s no financial accounting for the success of House of Cards. Sean actually has another victory over Robin. She doesn’t even have a dedicated page on boxofficemojo.com, though he does.
Subsequent Relationships
This is where the story of Sean and Robin gets particularly interesting. For the last quarter-century, these two have been omnipresent, like the dull hum in a fluorescently lit room. Sean has been one of the best actors of his generation, involved in some capacity in a string of awards-bait movies (more on that below) for long enough that he is a fact of pop culture life.
Though she may not garner the same heightened praise, Wright is an icon thanks to playing Princess Buttercup in The Princess Bride and Jenny in Forrest Gump. And yet, their respective, dueling new relationships have made them both tabloid fodder for the last few months.
Kevin Mazur/Getty Images
Sean Penn is dating Charlize Theron. He’s 15 years older. This delicious scoop was initially confirmed by Piers Morgan and the Daily Mail, and photos of the new couple have been popping up all over. She is not his first post-Robin blonde. In 2011, Penn had a short relationship with Scarlett Johansson. He then dated PR gal Shannon Costello, who worked on his Haiti relief fund, and model Jessica White. As was not the case with those two women, Penn and Theron seem decidedly domestic. They go to the grocery store. They hang with her son. They make out in cars. They’re just like us!
David Livingston/Getty Images
Robin, refusing to be outdone, is engaged to Ben Foster. He’s not as famous as Theron, though he certainly deserves more acclaim for his turns in the 3:10 to Yuma remake and the ’90s teen adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Get Over It. The latter was epic based on its cast alone. Foster has become the default super-intense guy in almost-great and aspirational movies. (His latest, Lone Survivor, is no exception.) Wright’s comments on their relationship only further this perception. In an interview with the U.K. Telegraph, Wright explained that the proposal was shocking but “we felt married anyway. We’ve been together ever since the first date.” They also have matching finger tattoos: She has a B tattooed on her left middle finger, and he has an R in the same spot. Matching tattoos for new couples have never been a bad idea.
Winner: Toss-up. Penn and Theron are the more powerful duo, but Wright and Foster are more surprising and seemingly more committed. After all, they are engaged with the ink to prove it. Wright and Foster are currently benefitting (by this rubric, anyway) from House of Cards’ second-season premiere. Their stock is artificially inflated by her cultural relevance in this exact moment. Penn and Theron, on the other hand, would command the paparazzi attention no matter what.
Awards and Critical Reception
ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images
Wright’s value as an actor may be at an all-time high right now. Thanks to her recent Golden Globe win, and flattering profiles in the aforementioned Telegraph and the New York Times, she is reemerging, this time with more ambition. The Times article explains how she aspires to direct, and it paints a portrait of a newly empowered woman. Wright also benefits from her choice to do the Netflix show at all, a decision she admits to being reluctant about initially.
The aughts were very good to Penn — Oscar-winning performances in Milk and Mystic River, plus a few other prestige movies like I Am Sam. (And fun fact: Penn and Theron both won Oscars in 2004.) But his résumé since the turn of the decade has been less impressive. There was last year’s Gangster Squad with Ryan Gosling and Walter Mitty, which came and went quietly and wasn’t even his movie as much as it was Ben Stiller’s. The main exception from a quiet decade so far is Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life. But unlike with Milk or Mystic River, Penn was secondary to the movie’s narrative. His biggest impact since divorcing Wright has been his work in Haiti after the devastating earthquake. His participation initially seemed suspect, a charity project that doubled as vanity project. But to his credit, he stayed committed to the effort even after the cause célèbre factor wore off. Despite his leftist politics, Penn’s work has even won him fans from the more conservative military.
Winner: Robin. She is doing all the right interviews, using the House of Cards press to reinvent her public persona. Wright has returned to the spotlight motivated and ambitious, and it’s hard to find a compelling critique of her right now. Penn, on the other hand, is best when he lets his work speak for him, and he has little to present from the last five years. When he does speak, it’s to disparage his marriage and say things like, “We all want to be loved by someone. As I look back over my life in romance, I don’t feel I’ve ever had that. I have been the only one that was unaware of the fraud in a few of these circumstances blindly.” That’s from an Esquire interview in December 2012. Maybe he should just stay in Haiti.
Miscellaneous Relevant Moment
Sean: Remember when he got into a feud with Wyclef Jean? Robin: In case you missed it, Robin had a wardrobe malfunction at the Golden Globes. Boob tape! Winner: Sean. Celebrity feuds are way more fun than boob tape in this post–Janet Jackson Nipplegate world.
Rumors
Sean: Wyclef Jean accused him of abusing cocaine. But Wyclef’s comments were probably motivated by Sean’s extreme opposition to Wyclef’s attempt to run for president of Haiti. Robin: Around the time the final, lasting divorce proceedings began, the National Enquirer claimed Robin was the one who finally had enough. Winner: Robin. If the only rumors about you are about the divorce, it’s not so bad. Drug use, true or not, is far more salacious.
Verdict
On this second-season premiere day of House of Cards, it’s hard to see beyond the show’s haze. Robin Wright seems to be everywhere. She does in fact spend her time all over the continent — in New York where she lives, in Baltimore where she shoots her TV show, in Los Angeles where her kids live, in Vancouver where Foster is filming. She’s used the Season 2 publicity campaign, bolstered by her Golden Globe last month, to reenter the pop culture landscape, and she even acknowledges her own renaissance. But will this be fleeting? Though Sean Penn hasn’t won or been nominated for an Oscar this decade, it seems quite possible he will be again. His sustained success is sufficient reassurance that he’ll rebound from this artistic dry spell. Perhaps Theron will reawaken his artistic interests. But if I am judging solely on the time since divorce, Robin has steadily worked her way into our consciousness. She cannot be denied.
Final Verdict: Thanks to David Fincher, who cast her in Dragon Tattoo and convinced her to do House of Cards, Robin Wright is the winner of this Divorce Court.
A couple of weeks ago, I was taking pictures in Union Square for my article on The Warriors filming locations, when I happened to pass by these six crumbling columns on the mezzanine level near the 4-5-6 train.
Now, I’ve walked by these things a zillion times in my travels across New York City, but it suddenly occurred to me that I’d never actually stopped to look at them.
I’ve always just assumed them to be remnants from the old Union Square station, one of New York City’s original 28 subway stations, and it turns out that this is correct.
Dating to the Union Square of 1904, the station’s walls were once adorned with these fantastic terracotta eagles, along with some beautiful mosaic work:
The walls were uncovered and saved during one of Union Square’s many renovations, and installed as an art installation by Mary Miss in 1998. I love how the innards of the walls have been included in the display…
…showing a sort of geological strata of a New York City subway station wall:
The wall portions are arranged so that they steadily deterioriate…
…perhaps signifying the death of the old Union Square?
Now, here’s the thing – I’ve always known about these wall portions.
What I didn’t know about are the red frames.
See, as it turns out, the wall portions are just a small part of Miss’s installation. In fact, there are dozens of relics from the old Union Square strewn all over the station, all of which can be found enclosed by a red frame. And once you start looking for them, you’ll suddenly see them everywhere.
For example, I never thought twice about this Broadway Line directional arrow – but looking at it again, I now realize how incongruous its design is to the rest of the station. In addition to the mosaic Broadway text, note how the surrounding white tiling is in the old square style, while an additional mosaic strip runs along the top – all stopping abruptly at the red border.
Ditto this great old “Exit To Street sign.” Again, I’ve noticed it countless times before, but never stopped to consider how out of place what’s within the red frame is to what’s outside. In a way, each is literally like a window into the past:
Wandering around Union Square, I started finding red frames in more places than just the walls. Here’s a column you’d never think twice above – but wait! There are those red frames, and between them, we find a white-tiled column topped by a tiled stripe, an all but extinct creature in modern Union Square:
Here’s another red frame, one of my favorites, again highlighting not only the mosaic stripe along the top, but the difference in the old white wall tiling vs. new (and is that authentic old-fashioned New York City grime?):
Along one of the connecting passages…
…a very long mosaic stretches the entire run:
It gets even crazier, as the red frames turn up in the most unexpected of places. Here’s one looking down from the mezzanine above the 4-5-6 train…
…and if you look in at the right angle, you’ll see it’s highlighting “steel-bulb angle columns.”
In the corridor running north toward the 17th Street entrance, there are a bunch of slits cut into the wall…
…which offer a slightly more abstract window into Union Square:
For example, a tangle of telephone wiring:
I’m sure this is old news to a lot of you. But for anyone else like myself who’s been to Union Square a million times and never stopped to look, learning about the red frames is an eye-opening experience, as you suddenly realize you’re basically surrounded by a museum exhibit for the Union Square of old.
Ha, and all this time, I just assumed there was a fire extinguisher on the other side of that red frame.
Originally a cheeky, if titanic, piece of art, the one-room Hotel Casanus is a giant intestinal model that allows guests to spend a cozy night inside a massive colon.
Resting in the Verbeke Foundation Art Park near Antwerp, Belgium, the cozy anatomical model was the work of Dutch designer Joep van Lieshout. The slim, curved interior of the furnished anus features a double bed, windows, heating, and of course, working plumbing. The exterior of the room is sculpted with bulging veins and a giant puckered sphincter (non-functional) on one end, and painted the visceral red of exposed organs. The colossal muscle tube almost seems out of place in the idyllic art park, near a placid pond, yet it is composed of soft, natural angles, no matter how gross.
Despite the stomach-churning imagery, visitors still flock to the site to spend the night in the big colon which is also surrounded by such wondrous sites as black swans and an unobstructed view of the night sky. Hotel Casanus is somewhere between theme bed and breakfast and gross-out stunt tourism, but whatever the draw, guests can't help butt visit.
Whenever Parks and Recreation aired, Larry Gallagher noticed that his young son would start excitedly flailing his arms and dancing. So every Thursday night, Gallagher decided to film his son as the show's theme song played. The hilarious result is this three-minute, dance-filled clip.
Gawker recently asked their commenters what part of their city was their ‘Williamsburg’ (hip/young/brunch etc.) neighborhood. Today they delivered the results which I’m pasting below. You can see even more here:
Albany, N.Y. Center Square
Anchorage, Alaska Spenard
Athens, Ga. Normaltown
Atlanta, Ga. East Atlanta, Little Five Points (tie) East Atlanta, Old Fourth Ward (tie)
Austin, Texas East Side East Side
Baltimore, Md. Hampden Station North
Birmingham, Ala. Avondale
Boston, Mass. Jamaica Plain Roslindale, Somerville (tie)
Boulder, Colo. Boulder
Buffalo, N.Y. Elmwood Allentown
Burbank, Cali. Magnolia Park San Fernando Blvd.
Burlington, Vt. Pine Street Old North End
Charleston, S.C. Park Circle
Charlotte, N.C. NoDa, Plaza Midwood (tie) NoDa, Plaza Midwood (tie)
Chicago, Ill. Wicker Park Pilsen
Cincinnati, Ohio Northside, Over-the-Rhine (tie) Clifton, Northside (tie)
Cleveland, Ohio Tremont Gordon Square, Ohio City (tie)
Columbus, Ohio Clintonville, German Village (tie) Olde Towne East
Dallas, Texas Oak Cliff Deep Ellum
Washington, D.C. H Street Petworth
Denver, Colo. Highlands Baker, Capitol Hill (tie)
Detroit, Mich. Corktown, Midtown (tie) Hamtramck
Edmonton, Alb. Garneau/Whyte
Fort Worth, Texas Fairmount
Gainesville, Fla. Ducktown
Harrisburg, Pa. Downtown, Midtown (tie)
Honolulu, Hawaii Kakaako Logan Square
Houston, Texas Montrose The Heights
Hudson, N.Y. Warren St.
Indianapolis, Ind. Fountain Square Fountain Square
Kansas City, Mo. Westport
Knoxville, Tenn. Happy Holler
Los Angeles, Cali. Silver Lake Echo Park
Las Vegas, Nev. Fremont St. Arts District
Lincoln, Neb. Haymarket
Louisville, Ky. Highlands Germantown
Madison, Wisc. Williamson St.
Memphis, Tenn. Cooper-Young, Overton Square, South Main (tie)
Miami, Fla. Wynwood Little Haiti
Milwaukee, Wisc. East Side Bay View
Minneapolis, Minn. Uptown Northeast, Uptown, North Loop (tie)
Montreal, Qué. Mile End Mile End
Nashville, Tenn. East Nashville Inglewood, the Nations (tie)
New Haven, Conn. East Rock Westville
New Orleans, La. Marigny Bywater
Norfolk, Va. Ghent
Oakland, Cali. Piedmont, San Francisco (tie) Fruitvale
Oklahoma City, Okla. Paseo District
Orlando, Fla. Thornton Park
Ottawa, Ont. Centretown, Hintonburg (tie) Hintonburg
Pensacola, Fla. Seville Square
Philadelphia, Pa. Northern Liberties Fishtown
Phoenix, Ariz. Roosevelt Row Downtown
Pittsburgh, Pa. Lawrenceville Bloomfield
Portland, Me. Munjoy Hill, West End, East End, Biddeford (tie) Mid City
Portland, Ore. “The Williamsburg of Portland is Portland” North Portland
Providence, R.I. West End Olneyville
Raleigh, N.C. Boylan Heights, Carrboro (tie) Mordecai
Reno, Nev. Downtown
Richmond, Va. The Fan Oregon Hill
Salt Lake City, Utah The Avenues, Sugar House (tie)
San Diego, Cali. North Park City Heights
San Francisco, Cali. Mission Hunter’s Point, Oakland (tie)
San Jose, Cali. Japantown
Saskatoon, Sask. Nutana, Riversdale (tie) Broadway
Seattle, Wash. Capitol Hill Central District
St. Louis, Mo. Central West End, the Grove (tie) The Grove
St. Paul, Minn. Lowertown
Tampa, Fla. SoHo/Hyde Park, Ybor City, Seminole Heights (tie)
Toronto, Ont. West Queen West The Junction, Roncesvalles (tie)
Tucson, Ariz. Fourth Ave. Lost Barrio
Tulsa, Okla. Blue Dome/Arts districts Pearl District
Vancouver, B.C. Gastown, Strathcona, Yaletown (tie) The Drive
Barcelona, Spain Born Gracia
Berlin, Germany Kreutzberg
Budapest, Hungary Goszdu Udvar
Cambridge, U.K. Mill Rd.
Cape Town, South Africa Woodstock
Copenhagen, Denmark Norrebro, Vesterbro (tie) Norrebro
Dublin, Ireland Stoneybatter Camden St.
Hong Kong, China Sheung Wan
Krakow, Poland Kazimierz
London, U.K. Dalston Brixton, Peckham (tie)
Melbourne, Australia North Fitzroy Northcote
Mexico City, Mexico Condesa Roma
Paris, France Oberkampf Belleville
Standing alone on the small island of Aght'amar in Turkey's Lake Van, the Armenian Cathedral of the Holy Cross is the only remnant of a former ruler's island getaway, but the former religious center is under fire for its conversion to a secular museum.
Originally built in the early 900's, the Armenian Cathedral of the Holy Cross was part of a large religious complex that accompanied then king Gagik I Artsruni's home which once sat on the island. The church was built in a blocky architectural style that makes the building seem rather uninteresting from afar, but up close the church is almost completely covered in ornate bas-relief carvings. While there are a number of decorative flourishes, the majority of the carvings actually illustrate stories from the Bible such as David and Goliath. Some scholars have argued that the scenes depict more directly Turkish vignettes but most agree that the influence is mainly Biblical.
After King Artsruni's reign ended, the church became the home of Armenia's Catholic leader until the late 1800's. Once the Armenian Catholicosate no longer lived in the building, it was simply abandoned despite its historical significance. The church was almost demolished in 1951, but an Armenian writer was able to save the site which had fallen victim to years of vandalism and violence.
The church was finally restored in 2005, however since it was now under the jurisdiction of the Armenian government it was reopened as a museum and not a place of worship. This secularization did not sit well with many Armenians who felt that a piece of their religious past was being lost. However despite protests and outrage the museum was opened anyway.
Visitors can now take a ferry to the church and take in this excellent piece of Turkey's religious history, just leave the religion at the door.
Newark Airport, known for its reasonable flight prices but a completely unreasonable commute, will get just a little bit closer to New York: starting hopefully in 2024, the Port Authority will start running PATH trains from Manhattan directly to Newark Airport. [ more › ]
Is it possible that when Adam said “I fucking murdered it, I cut its fucking guts out and left it in a dumpster by the side of the road,” he wasn’t just talking about his audition?
“Trial.” “Prominent Chinese activist Xu Zhiyong went on trial Tuesday over his role in anti-corruption protests but defied the court by refusing to speak, his lawyer said, calling the proceedings a ‘piece of theatre.’ // Xu, founder of the New Citizens Movement, faces a five-year jail term on charges of ‘assembling a crowd to disrupt order in a public place’ for demonstrations featuring banners calling for asset disclosure by officials — seen as a key measure against graft. // Dozens of police, in uniform and plain clothes, surrounded the court in western Beijing, harassing reporters outside the building.” (AFP)
Corollary: “Why an Intermediate Court? The Impending Criminal Trial of Activist Xu Zhiyong” (China Law and Policy)
Speaking science to those who would discourage dissent. “But as a scientist who has taught in China, I don’t believe that China will lead in innovation anytime soon — or at least not until it moves its institutional culture away from suppression of dissent and toward freedom of expression and encouragement of critical thought.” (Stephen L. Sass, NY Times)
Touching and sad. “A girl named Zhang Xi has attracted the attention of Chinese internet users after some realized that she had been posting daily messages to her boyfriend for the last four years, despite the man’s death in 2009. // Zhang’s boyfriend died in December 2009 in Vancouver, and she quickly started leaving messages on her boyfriend’s Renren (see: knock-off Facebook) as a means of mourning. What started as an expression of grief has now become part of Zhang’s daily life.” (Shanghaiist)
Also, this. “An 85-year-old man in Hunan province is writing daily love letters to his wife, who’s in a coma in intensive care. // The wife, Li Shufeng has been hospital for more than 20 days after a heart attack. Peng Xiaolu asked nurses to read his letters to his wife to keep her company. The couple were both professors in Huaihua city.” (CNTV)
Wen Jiabao. “In a letter to a Hong Kong newspaper columnist, former Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China said he had a clean conscience about his time in office. // ‘I have never, in no way, done anything to use my position for personal gain,’ he wrote in an unusual letter to Ng Hong-mun, who writes for the newspaper Ming Pao.” (Sinosphere)
Li Hongbo’s amazing paper sculptures. “With thousands of sheets of paper, Mr. Li, who lives and works in Beijing, has expanded on the techniques used in paper-based folk art and the traditional Chinese paper toys he grew up with. ‘Tools of Study,’ his first solo U.S. exhibition which runs through March 2, references the generic models used by art students. // Each bust comprises roughly 7,000 to 8,000 sheets of paper and weighs about 30 pounds.” (WSJ)
Li Na is the highest-ranked of the four remaining women in the Australian open. “Tuesday morning’s crescendo on Sina Weibo microblogs over Ms. Li’s bid for her second Grand Slam title – her first was the 2011 French Open – overwhelmed even the perennial top Chinese topic this time of year: the annual exodus home for the Lunar New Year, called the world’s largest human migration , which begins on Jan. 31. // Never ones to miss an opportunity to take a dig at China’s government, some bloggers lauded Ms. Li’s progress with a backhanded shank at Beijing. ‘To Li Na: You are not relying on sugar daddies nor the Communist Party, nor your looks, nor by pleasing the referee or by luck,’ a blogger wrote.” (WSJ)
Spring Festival madness, prepare for more of it. “A Chinese man’s online offer to hire a girlfriend and fly her to his hometown for one million yuan (165,200 US dollars) to avoid celebrating the Chinese New Year alone has gone viral.” (Global Voices)
Get ready for a lot of NBA games on Chinese TV. “For the third year in a row, the National Basketball Association (NBA) is demonstrating its dedication to China, its largest international fan base, with a major weeklong Chinese New Year celebration. // The year of the horse festivities taking place from January 28 to February 4 will include special China-specific games, celebrations at official U.S.-based NBA games, fan activities, and limited-edition products.” (Jing Daily)
Anecdotal, but noteworthy. “A wire connected to his genitals, a Chinese man says doctors administered repeated electric shocks as he watched a pornographic film — part of treatment he hoped would eliminate his sexual attraction to men.” (AFP)
Gawker recently asked their commenters what part of their city was their ‘Williamsburg’ (hip/young/brunch etc.) neighborhood. Today they delivered the results which I’m pasting below. You can see even more 
Newark Airport, known for its reasonable flight prices but a completely unreasonable commute, will get just a little bit closer to New York: starting hopefully in 2024, the Port Authority will start running PATH trains from Manhattan directly to Newark Airport. [ 
