Andrew.frampton

Where the Wild Things Are

Steam Punk

African Scene Carmine Bee-Eaters

Autumn

Megumi

Artists can do a lot with pregnant women’s bellies. We’ve previously seen them used as a Death Star costume, a prenatal zombie costume and as molds for plaster casts.

Andrea Hows is an artist in New Zealand. She works in many different media, but professionally, she’s a makeup special effects artist. She made these lovely paintings, putting the rounded forms to effective use.

The koala wasn’t always this vicious. But during ten years in the pen after that bank job gone wrong, he had to get nasty.

Now he can get regular knives. Probably a gun, if he wanted to—he’s got connections like that. But the koala says that he likes to do his work up close and personal. He says it’s the only time he feels truly alive inside.

It’s just one of many natural animal defense mechanisms illustrated by Jeff Wysaski of Pleated Jeans.

A year after Hurricane Sandy hit our shores, tragedy strikes New York City again: pioneer blogger Andrew Sullivan is leaving. "I loved New York City with a passion," he writes today, "until I tried to live here."

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I just want to second everything Kermit sings. I loved New York City with a passion until I tried to live here. It’s been over a year and I am horribly home-sick. So we’re going to move back to DC next month. I miss my DC apartment (1500 square feet of a school classroom I got for a steal in 1991); I miss my friends, many of whom I’ve known for decades, and some of whom I bonded deeply with during the plague years of my 20s and 30s; I miss the relative calm; I miss the green; I miss the increasing vibrancy of the city – which somehow doesn’t make it harder to live in. I miss the oases of quiet and the energy of a new emerging city that is both a second Brooklyn and a global hub of media and politics.

But I’ll be commuting to New York City for up to two weeks a month – as a visitor. So it’s more like finding a home I love while keeping New York close. I realize I’m married to Washington, and it’s best for me to think of New York as a mistress. Besides, I need to be here for the Dish (all my colleagues are New Yorkers), and for AC360 Later. I also have many friends here I think I’m more likely to spend time with if I’m not actually struggling every day to handle the, er, challenges of actually settling into the massive metropolis. And in this experience – to love and yet leave this amazing place – is not new, I’m relieved to say. Eryn Loeb just reviewed a new essay collection Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York, an anthology inspired by Joan Didion’s 1967 essay of the same name:

As laid out by Didion and the anthology’s contributors, it happens like this: First there’s anticipation, imagining how your life will finally make sense when you arrive. The actual experience of living here is one of finding your place, followed by an intense feeling of ownership. You can stay at that point for years. But eventually, sometimes without knowing it, you begin the slow slide toward a moment of decisiveness. Sometime after that, there’s the actual leaving. And then, the having left. Living in New York turns out to be a process of earning nostalgia — hoarding enough memories to give you the kind of claim on a place that makes it possible to leave it. When you reach your limit and set out elsewhere, memories are your consolation prize. (Bonus points for writing about them.)

If you’re tired of hearing about how New York is the center of the universe, you’re not alone.

Even those of us who live here and love it get annoyed at the relentless fascination with the city, the way people project so much onto it and then feel betrayed when it doesn’t live up to their expectations. (Emma Straub, who grew up here, captures this tension nicely in her essay, writing, “because my hometown is New York City, everyone else thinks it belongs to them, too.”)

But even in basic ways, the city is still special enough to justify the fixation. It’s concentrated. It’s diverse. It’s where a lot of important things have happened and influential people have lived, and so it is full of history and legend. It’s a place of ideals, “where anything is possible.” And yet it’s also a place of limits, one people leave when their desire for more space or stability — or very often, a family — begins to clash with reality.

Previous Dish on New York and its discontents here, here, here and here.

Thomas Kinkade, master of the innocuous cottage paintings with warm, candle-lit windows and fluffy clouds just got upgraded with Star Wars. Watch as a batch of Stormtroopers set Kinkade's world ablaze in this astounding upgrade.

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In support of his pal Chris Brown—who checked into anger management treatment on Tuesday—Justin Bieber created some street art on a wall in Colombia. Inside of a hot pink arrow, Bieber scrawled, "FREE BREEZY" in spray paint. So. I'm sure the people of Colombia will...get right on that.

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[Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, testifying today in front of Congress about the missteps in the lauch of the Affordable Care Act. GIF by Dorsey Shaw]

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"When Obama was asked once what his basic deepest flaw was, he said, ‘deep laziness.’ And I wonder whether this is not the equivalent of that first debate last year. The guy just didn’t focus — playing too much golf." - Andrew Sullivan, speaking about the Obamacare website fiasco last night on CNN.

"Coast is clear lil bro, practice that wink i showed you!"

Is anyone in the world going to come up with a better Halloween costume than Edgar Allen Ho? It seems unlikely.

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Spooky, right? I wonder where that tradition stopped, where you look in the mirror and see your future husband's face on Halloween. Judging by the card collections, it was pretty popular!

Just a couple of sketches for the season.

I was busy a while back designing shirts! They should be up in the store soon. Keep track of things on my tumblr, where I post sketches and updates and things I find interesting!