Art

Our Year Of Agatha Christie Covers: 4: Dix Petits Nègres

Sort of a cheat this, but if you’re going to cheat, that’s the title I want to cheat with. This is not just a cover of a French Agatha Christie novel whose title has been changed a few times in the English. It is the cover of a Bande Dessinée adaptation.

Nice 3D name logo which contrasts nicely with the deliberately 2D artwork on the cover. You get the feel of the artwork and the mysterious house aspect of one of Agatha’s most (in) famous mysteries. … read on …

Our Year Of Agatha Christie Covers: 3: Towards Zero

Now here is a jacket to bring back memories. Photo-art covers on Pan books. I know little, as usual, about Towards Zero, except it has a very sci-fi name for a Christie. What does this cover tell me about the book. Next to nothing, except there may be game of tennis involved (I am sure the Lex can confirm or deny, he being a Christie and tennis lover).

… read on …

The Joy Of Tunnocks ♥

The Tunnocks tea-room bakery display features cyclists, and best of all, tea-cake owls! Via Anne at I Like!

Nice to see them still pushing the Dark Chocolate flavours, although I think I’m still yet to see a dark chocolate teacake in this ‘ere London. Then again! I am no teacake fan. Get your marshmallows off me bleeergh cough hack splutter. Even IF they are arguably the most fun to eat in their methodology as long as you do it correctly, ie smash the teacake against your forehead first in order to crack the chocolate coatin. If you like, you can shout “Haaaaaaai-YAAAA!” whilst doing so, but hey, it’s not essential. I’d shout “YAAAMAPIII DAAAAAAI-SKKKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII” - or I would - if I liked teacakes. But as I don’t - my confession remains…. unmade. DAMN YOU FOUL MARSHMALLOW.

Our Year Of Agatha Christie Covers: 2: The Body In The Library

After last weeks high concept high art piece, lets go back a bit to a time when book jackets were not all airbrushed wasps and TV-Tie-ins. This cover to The Body In The Library is still pretty high concept, and designed nicely without a computer in sight. Indeed its “letters as book jackets” conceit is perhaps a little too successful, giving the actual book title and slightly unreadable font to fit in with the conceit.

… read on …

Our Year Of Agatha Christie Covers: 1: Death In The Clouds

A brand new series in the grand tradition of the Top 100 Singles, the Periodic Table Of Pop and the Top 25 Brands. But this one doesn’t require much in the way of writing, and a pace of one a week should be simple. And we should be able to rustle up fifty two of them. In honour of Starry Sarah’s Fontana edition of Destination Unknown, with the most psychedelic cover of a book I have seen in years. Well I haven’t scanned it yet, and can’t find it on the web - but I did find this one for Death in the Sky.

Which you have to admit is pretty scary (click thru for abject terror).

… read on …

pancake fillings OF THE FUTURE

a scientific report

the project: to road-test some of the fillings people have (incomprehensibly) not yet adopted

the fillings of the future:
i: mushrooms fried in pumpkin seed butter, with garlic oil and red wine
ii: fried bacon and date syrop
iii: chopped avocado and marmite
iv: spinach and ginger syrop
v: ham and gentleman’s relish
vi: brie and japanese plum sauce
vii: grated carrot and cinnamon … read on …

dolly o’ the wood

while our whirring engines prepare the latest edition of the Lollards of Pop podcast (broadcast last evening on Resonance FM 104.4), engorge your minds upon this vision of apocalypse by Minnesota artist Joseph Sinness, o readers:

urban bumpkin lore: roots and sources

there is plenty more to say about this useful particle of lollardry but to kick things off

i. sarah seemed to saying the word BUMPKIN derived from a comical mispronunciation of the word LOCAL — which is awesome ambitious as mispronunciations go! (she was talking abt YOKEL obv but didn’t quite say so)
ii. like all other excellent words, bumpkin derives from the DUTCH = “boomken” meaning a YOG LOG

overgrown doorways 2: “his dark materials” no spoilers update

so this is about semi-unintended portals, and this is one — because at one point will and lyra run for safety to a BELVEDERE and this explodes a bunch of ideas in my head PP maybe didn’t mean bcz

i. belvedere just means a place that is good to gaze from
ii. belvedere is a suburb of shrewsbury where i grew up, where my school (aged 8-12) was, and the art college my sister went to, and my dad’s current GP, and the place i had my first grown-up job — i don’t know why, as it is NOT a good place to gaze from

iii. this escher picture is called BELVEDERE (click for full size)
iv. the only lectures i went to in my third year maths at oxford were by ROGER PENROSE = the guy (with HIS dad) who developed the optical illusions escher turned into these (to me) utterly evocative lithographs
v. my great friend dr vick is related to escher which is awesome!
vi. all of which amplifies PP’s precise intention only glancingly, to be sure, except that it’s about travel between worlds, and the power (and mortal peril) of imagination, and our own ability to connect
vii. and plus also THREE WORLDS dude, which is an even better escher picture (also click)

FACE SCIENCE DAY: fungus dept

“an inch of hair that represents infinite evil”:
vanity fair’s rich cohen attempts to reclaim the “toothbrush”