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In the wee hours of the morning last week, with no warning or promotion, Beyoncé ruined the productivity of a nation by releasing a 14-song, 17-video visual album titled Beyoncé on iTunes.

The collective freak-out was astonishing—reactions ranged from tears to clothes rending to actual shitting of pants, and with a record this good, all of them were appropriate responses. I couldn't throw my money at her fast enough.

We've spent most of this year watching pop artists jockey for who can be the most shocking and irreverent, with most of them failing miserably. Miley Cyrus's golden grill and pathetic attempts at twerking, Katy Perry's ridiculously racist costuming at the American Music Awards, and Lady Gaga shoving her ArtPop down our throats as a pathway to artistic respectability are no match for Beyoncé's explosion of dance, costuming, ballet, and fire. Instead of big talk and heavy promotion about her unique approach to music, she just throws down intensely beautiful shit and drops the mic. She's not hanging out with Jeff Koons and Marina Abramovic for street cred; instead, she's making mini-movies with Jonas Akerlund about some kind of sexy, demented hotel where TVs flash brain scans, elderly women in white capes hold hairless cats, and goth twins wearing circus-tent-inspired jumpsuits slink around corners. With Beyoncé, it's more of a do as I say and do as I do.

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Pancakes are appropriately named as they are essentially just cakes cooked in a pan instead of in an oven -which is why they make such great breakfasts. It's also why we're amazed they never appeared on a cupcake before. The Moonblush Baker remidied this problem by making these adorable pancake-stacked cupcakes and she even made sure to match the flavors with pecan and maple so they are a heavenly combination of classic breakfast and dessert flavors.

The only thing that could possibly make them better would be Nutella and bacon -as those two things could make everything better.

patriodick:

Love him

"In my life, why do I save all the people that I'd much rather kick in the eye?" -Super Morrissey.

"It's a nice day for a butt kicking" -Aqua Billy. 

Yes, these are a few of the many great catchphrases we could hope to hear if artist Billy Butcher's fantastic music/superhero mashup art in his new series Post-Punk/New Wave Super Friends.

Don't forget to visit his page to see if your favorite artist of the era is included in the delightful madness.

Via Lost At E Minor

(Photos: Nendo)

You can always rely on the Japanese design firm Nendo to come up with fresh ideas. We've previously featured their cylindrical computer mouse, their climbing wall inspired by Alice in Wonderland and their edible craft supplies.

More recently, Nendo has been experimenting with chopstick designs. Its new line is designed to fit a pair into a complete form.

The top 2 photos show a design called rassen, which means helix. It's a reference to the structure of DNA. The bottom design has built-in magnets to keep the chopsticks together when not in use.

You can view more photos here.

via http://www.tumblr.com/dashboard

via http://thisisnthappiness.com/post/69848958496/this-is-not-an-exit

via http://materile.tumblr.com/

(YouTube link)

Dad walks in to see that his toddler son Solomon found the diaper rash cream and had fun putting it on everything. I guess every kid does something like this at least once, but a few take the damage to greater heights. Turn on the closed captioning when you watch this video, because the dialogue is in Dutch. -via Daily Picks and Flicks

Every time I turn around, I see an artist mixing fiction and documentary. For reasons I'm not sure of, I often find this juxtaposition interesting and refreshing. Maybe it's simply that the outer world is pretty interesting and refreshing, and, due to some admixture of iconic forces including Matisse, Freud, Pollock, and Christ, there's a persistent stereotype that artists should focus on inner worlds and leave the real stuff to science and engineering. Let go of the reins of the world at your peril, I say. (When in a pronouncey mood.)

The people in Jesse Sugarmann's videos look like they're dancing, but they're laid-off assembly-line workers showing their basic muscle memories of their jobs. "I want to help us all remember Pontiac," Sugarmann says.

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The stress of the Christmas season can make normal people go all weird. But the converse is true, too: Christmas can make weird people act almost normal! John Waters, the filmmaker behind Pink Flamingos and Hairspray, loves Christmas so much he throws a Christmas party every years and even makes his own Christmas cards. He says,

“Christmas cards are your first duty and you must send one (with a personal, handwritten message) to every single person you ever met, no matter how briefly.” And of course, “you must make your own cards by hand. ‘I don’t have time’ you may whine, but since the whole purpose of life is Christmas, you’d better make time, buster.”

Not that the Christmas cards are "normal." Waters' card shown here is from 2006, featuring his real mug shot. Another year, each card was accompanied by a dead cockroach. Read more about Waters' Christmas traditions at Open Culture. -via Everlasting Blort

(Video Link)

Leaving home to go to college can be a great opportunity to develop a measure of independence. College life can be a maturing and liberating experience. But people with intellectual disabilities don’t often get to enjoy that opportunity. ClemsonLIFE at Clemson University in South Carolina is a program that attempts to extend that opportunity to them. It provides a college life experience that is customized to the individual needs of each participant.

Rion Holcome, 20, of Roebuck, South Carolina applied to the program. Clemson mailed him an acceptance letter. His parents recorded his response as he opened it.

-via 22 Words

Elegant, intricate, seemingly too delicate to be worn and covered in sharp spiky bits, this is one heck of a work of 3d printed art in the form of a fantasy headdress.

The Quixotic Divinity headdress was created by Joshua Harker, an artist with a flair for fashion forward designing, and it was worn on the catwalk during a high-tech meets high-fashion show in London.

I’m not sure how people manage to put this thing on without losing an eye but when it’s on it looks really cool, perfect for standing out in a crowd and hiding your true identity at the same time.

Via Gizmodo

via http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/?count=125&after=t3_19g9aa

(Photo: Marc Much/Eater Chicago)

This is real.

You’re not dreaming. There is such a thing as a Nutella Bar. Yes: an eatery devoted to Nutella.

It’s in Chicago at a place called Eataly Chicago. That’s a newly opened 63,000-square foot food theme park. You can get all sorts of food there, especially Italian food. There are eight restaurants, a butcher shop and a grocery store. The prize jewel is a stand-up bar where you can purchase pastries with Nutella on them. The business will open to the public on December 10.

Who’s up for a road trip to Chicago?

-via That’s Nerdalicious

via http://k.onk.as/

Did you buy a little more pumpkin than you needed this Thanksgiving? Then try using it for something else -like this delicious pumpkin tres leches cake from Willow Bird Baking. For those unfamiliar with tres leches cake, it's translated into "three milks cake," meaning it's soaked in condensed milk, evaporated milk and heavy cream, making it rich, gooey and delicious. Now, just imagine adding pumpkin and a whipped icing into the mix and you can imagine just how heavenly this cake just might be -sort of like a pumpkin pie a la mode.

I hope you don’t mind me going briefly off-topic here. I know that the holiday week demands exclusive chatter about giblets and squash and all the things we can pour butter and cream into, but I had the best revelation this week and even though it’s about as revolutionary of a concept as, brr, it’s cold outside in November, I’m going to tell you about it anyway because that’s what I do here.

It began, as distress often does, on Sunday night when I should have been watching Homeland and going to sleep early. Instead, I was on the internet when I came across a gorgeous apartment only to look up from the laptop and see my own decidedly less gorgeous apartment sprawled out before me, and said, as I have a zillion Sunday nights before this one, “Why is this place such a MESS?” And continued, “Alex, look at this apartment on the web. Why can’t we do this? We have these to-do piles everywhere and whole weekends pass and we never get to them and uuuugh.” And my husband, he of few words but exceptional insight, said “We went to the Museum of Natural History today.”

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© smitten kitchen 2006-2012. | permalink to sweet potato cake with marshmallow frosting | 247 comments to date | see more: Celebration Cakes, Everyday Cakes, Fall, Photo, Potatoes, Thanksgiving

Worth your time.

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The SF Gate:

The family of DJ Cheb I Sabbah announced on his website Thursday that the beloved San Francisco-based musician and composer died Wednesday at his home. He was 66.

Cheb I Sabbah was born Haim Serge El Baz in what is now Algeria in 1947 and moved to Paris in the 60′s where he launched his career as a DJ, specializing in American soul records.

He moved to San Francisco in 1984 and five years later began using the name Cheb I Sabbah. He was a master of world music, incorporating Arabic, Asian and African folk sounds into his rich compositions.

He died, it is reported, after a long battle with stomach cancer.

This was my 2001 review of his 1999 masterpiece Shri Durga:

Shri Durga is where East meets West. East being India and its traditional form of music, raga, and West being reggae or dub science. Though reggae is usually categorized as Third World music, here its familiarity makes it Western, and raga's strange strings, talking drums, and throaty vocals make it Eastern. To enjoy this CD properly, you must imagine the slow and deep reggae groove as a kind of long street in a Western city and that on either side of it markets, temples, cafes, and community centers have been settled and decorated by a foreign culture. The architect and designer of this particular experiment in urban globalization is dj CHEB i SABBAH, whose Western musicians (Bill Laswell and Kevin "Broun Fellini" Carnes on bass and drums) pave the way for the ornamental vocals of Ustad Salamat Ali Khan, Mala Ganguly, and Scheherazade Stone. This is not the first such experiment; we have heard many attempts to electrify or update some old, traditional art with electronica or dub, but Shri Durga is one of the most rewarding and seamless efforts yet. It is as if dub and raga were born and elaborated upon in the same brain for thousands of years, thousands of nights.

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I have many fantasies. Rape is not one of them. Being molested by a naked zombie, not so much. So, I definitely didn’t expect to feel so close to either of those nightmares when I entered a Pittsburgh haunted house earlier this month. (They don’t actually rape you or get completely naked. But it gets way too close for comfort, even if you know what’s coming.)

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We love croissants, especially when they're mixed with even more delicious treats. If you're looking for something a little holiday-inspired with your croissant, then you might want to head to New York to try Momofuku Milk Bar's new Thanksgiving Croissant. It not only has celery salt to give it that savory stuffing flavor, but also gravy, cranberry sauce and turkey to ensure you get all the best of a holiday dinner for only $4.50. Of course, if you want to feel as stuffed as you do after a major Thanksgiving dinner, you'll need to eat at least eight of them.

Via Food Beast

If you actually cook up your pumpkins after Halloween rather than just carving them and then throwing in them in the trash, it's time to get baking. If you're tired of the same old pumpkin pie recipe, why not try your hand at something a little different...like, say, cheesecake. And this isn't just any cheesecake, it's maple pumpkin brulee cheesecake, which means it's pretty much heaven. 

The base of the recipe comes from this Better Homes and Gardens maple pumpkin cheesecake recipe, but the brulee topping instructions (arguably the most important) is a special addition to the basic recipe and the directions for that step can be found here.

Via Bakers Royale

(YouTube link)

Sweep the leg! They may be in training as warriors, but it's hard to be fierce when you have to stop and smile for the audience every minute or so. These twins are having altogether a lot of fun! Someone who understands Mandarin might be able to glean information from us out of this TV report. I'd like to know how old they were when this video was taken.  -via Daily Picks and Flicks

Female assassins are rare, but there are more than you realize. They tend to fade from the history books because most of them were not successful in killing their targets. But the stories are fascinating. Take the case of Khioniya Guseva, who tried to kill Grigori Rasputin in a very public manner.

Said to be horribly disfigured through syphilis (she had no nose) Guseva attacked Rasputin as he was leaving Church in a town in Siberia.

She drove a knife in to his stomach, shouting that she had killed the antichrist while she did so. However, she hadn’t and he quickly tried to run away from her. She pursued him and attempted to finish the task but he managed to grab a stick and hit her in the face with it. Not very gentlemanly but he wasn’t exactly renowned for his manners.

Narrowly avoiding being killed by a mob that had gathered, Guseva managed to turn herself over the to the authorities and was committed to an asylum. Rasputin survived but was successfully assassinated two years later. It is not known when she died – and no pictures of her (with or without nose) survive.

Many of the women in this list at Kuriositas were committed to mental institutions, but some were executed, some served time, and a surprisingly number of them actually got away with no punishment.  -via the Presurfer

Scout at Scouting New York knows more about the geography of the city than anyone else I know, so when I saw he wrote The 10 Most Dangerous Places In New York City, my curiosity was piqued. Some of those places have horrible histories! This is just the beginning of the entry on The Bramford.

Considering the atrocities that have occurred at this building over the years, its nickname, the “Black Bramford,” is well-earned. Once home to the Trench sisters (two proper Victorian ladies who cooked and ate several young children, including a niece), later residents Pearl Ames and Keith Kennedy, with his obscene parties, continued to bring infamy to the place. In 1959, a dead infant was found wrapped in newspaper in the basement.

Another thing you should know, Scout makes a living as a location scout for movies and TV shows that are planning to film in New York City. Not only does he know a lot about city geography, he knows all there is to know about movies that are filmed there. -via Metafilter

The Twilight Zone premiered on TV in October of 1959, which means the early episodes are now 54 years old. The show was the brainchild of Rod Serling and set the standard for science fiction and horror stories to follow. The tales often had lessons in morality, and they served as a launching pad for many actors who went on to stardom.

When the show turned 50, we asked for your favorite episodes and got a lot of responses. Now Flavorwire has published a list of 10 of the Best Twilight Zone Episodes with a synopsis of each to refresh your memory. Which one is your favorite? the article made me want to watch them all again!