Friday, August 29, 2008

The 27th Silly Olympiad


The 27th Silly Olympiad, an event held traditionally every 3.7 years, which this year has brought together competitors from over 4 million different countries:
-100 yards for people with no sense of direction
-1500 meters for the deaf
-200 meters freestyle for non-swimmers
-Marathon for incontinents
-High jump
-3000 meter steeplechase for people who think they're chickens
Hide And Seek Olympic Finals

WRITTEN AND PERFORMED BY: Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Eric Idle, John Cleese, Graham Chapman.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Milkmaid Toy


Commissioned by the Dutch Souvenir project, and initiated by the European Ceramic Work Centre,the Milkmaid by Oooms is not your typical souvenir. Inspired by Johannes Vermeer's innocent painting "Het Melkmeisje" (The Milkmaid) this blue and white ceramic dildo is a perfect alternative to bringing back windmills, clogs and tulips.

Studio Oooms has created a line of art pieces that are both ingenious and humorous. Visit their site to see USB sticks encased in chunks of tree branches (so awesome!), cabinets whose doors cannot all be shut at once (so subversive!), hats made out of real human hair (so creepy!) and small huts that can be placed in urban settings for the purpose of clandestine observation (so sneaky!).
The Milkmaid Dildo is part of Studio Oooms’ “Dutch Souvenirs” project, which pokes fun at the sorts of small gifts people typically bring back from the Netherlands. Made of white hollow ceramics, the dildo shows an image of a pensive milkmaid tending her flock. The design is rendered in shades of blue, and the piece is completed with a cork plugging the product’s end.
A small card tucked into the dildo’s packaging warns that the piece is intended as art and not a hard-core sex toy.

Description:
Type: Ceramic delft blue dildo with cork
Designers: Davy Grosemans & Guido Ooms
Dimensions: 22 cm / 8,66 in, Ø 2,5 cm / 0,78 in
Price: 130,- Euro

An American from New York City

Conjuring up visions of southern California, Ein Hod is home to some 450 inhabitants, the majority of whom are painters, sculptors, writers and musicians. People like Naomi Verchovsky, a potter, and Dan Ben-Arye, a sculptor.

Verchovsky, an American from New York City, has lived here since 1974 and has had her own studio since 1982. Ben-Arye, originally from South Africa, has been in Ein Hod for the past 23 years.
Verchovsky produces functional stoneware and teaches pottery classes. Her husband, Zeev, whom she met on an ulpan in a kibbutz in the Negev, operates a grocery store and a second-hand bookshop. He is also an immigrant, having been born in Riga, Latvia. Ben-Arye, who conducts guided tours of Ein Hod as a sideline, resided in Jaffa before coming here. His wife, Leah, is a fabric designer from Safed who has lived in Haifa.
At least one member of each family in Ein Hod is an artist. “We’re a very mixed group in terms of age and ethnic origin,” said Verchovsky. “We absorb people from alternative lifestyles, not too square, not your usual people. There are a lot of characters here.”
Members of the community are approved by an absorption committee. Candidates who pass muster have to live here for a minimum of six months and mount an acceptable exhibition.


read more...

Friday, August 22, 2008

QuinQuag or Ein Hod?

The story so far: Having purchased land in the Catskills on which to build a conference center for his Wellness Solutions Group, dot-com entrepreneur Mike Smith has made an exciting discovery. The site used to be home to QuinQuag, a Utopian artists' colony founded in the late '40s and bankrolled by a certain Isabelle Nash, patroness of the arts and the wife of a rich dental-supplies manufacturer. QuinQuag's reputation, we learn, rests largely on its output of folksy handpainted tiles and clunky wooden rocking chairs. Both enterprises were resounding financial failures, though one of the rockers was supposedly given to JFK by Jackie. Halston allegedly contributed a design for another, but "for some reason, it didn't catch on." Despite this, it's all a thrilling revelation for Mike, who, seeing a perfect fit between QuinQuag values and Wellness Solutions' goals, has adopted the colony's name for his company. "When people think about 'wellness' in the future, they'll think 'QuinQuag'!" he declares in a promotion al video, his expression suffused with a nicely judged blend of awed humility and visionary zeal(from UBUWEB)
For Ein Hod Future(FEHF) CLICK HERE

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Happy Assholes


Why are most Americans so utterly willing to have an essential part of their hearts sliced away and discarded like so much waste? What are we to make of this American obsession with happiness, an obsession that could well lead to a sudden extinction of the creative impulse, that could result in an extermination as horrible as those foreshadowed by global warming and environmental crisis and nuclear proliferation? What drives this rage for complacency, this desperate contentment?
Surely all this happiness can't be for real. How can so many people be happy in the midst of all the problems that beset our globe — not only the collective and apocalyptic ills but also those particular irritations that bedevil our everyday existences, those money issues and marital spats, those stifling vocations and lonely dawns? Are we to believe that four out of every five Americans can be content amid the general woe? Are some people lying, or are they simply afraid to be honest in a culture in which the status quo is nothing short of manic bliss? Aren't we suspicious of this statistic? Aren't we further troubled by our culture's overemphasis on happiness? Don't we fear that this rabid focus on exuberance leads to half-lives, to bland existences, to wastelands of mechanistic behavior?(read more...)

Monday, August 18, 2008

Rev. Gary Davis playing "Candyman."


Candy man been here and gone
Candy man been here and gone
Candy man, salty dog
If you can't be my Candy man you can't be my salty dog

Candy man, candy man
Candy man, fattin hog
Candy man, Santa Claus
If you can't be my candy man, can't be my fattin hog

Candy man, candy man
Candy man, been here and gone
Candy man, salty dog
I wish I was in New Orleans, sitting on the candy stand

Run get the pitcher, get the baby some beer (6X)
I'd give anything in this god almighty world
To get my Candy man home

Candy man, salty dog
Candy man, fattin hog
Candy man, salty dog
If you can't be my Candy man
You can't be my man at all

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Rare books for his services:Kigeki ova


Legend tells of a lone swordsman who lives in the Demon's Castle, the ruins near the Black Forest. This mysterious stranger only accepts rare books for his services, books from the ancient past. Comedy tells the story of a young girl who desperately wishes for her family and village to be saved from the coming English soldiers' wrath, and is willing to trade a precious book in exchange for the deed. With only her legs beneath her, she runs towards the Black Forest, hoping to get there in time...

Friday, August 8, 2008

Small Noses and Big Erections


Ninety bicycling police officers from 5 metropolitan regions in the U.S. (Northwest, Southern, Desert West, Midwest, and Southeast) using traditional saddles were evaluated prior to changing saddles and then again after 6 months of using the noseless bicycle saddle.
The findings show that use of the noseless saddle resulted in a reduction in saddle contact pressure in the perineal region. There was a significant improvement in penile tactile sensation, and the number of men indicating they had not experienced genital numbness while cycling for the preceding 6 months rose from 27 percent to 82 percent using no-nose saddles.
Use of the noseless saddle also resulted in significant increases in erectile function as assessed by the initial evaluation, but there were no significant changes noted in Rigiscan® measures, a method used to record penile rigidity while the subject sleeps. With few exceptions, bicycle police officers were able to effectively use no-nose saddles in their police work and 97 percent of officers completing the study continued to use the no-nose saddle afterward.(read more...)

Saturday, August 2, 2008

Ein Hod Boys In Maayan Habira


סדרת כתבות מאת יהודה גולן, כתבה שניה במספר חוקרת את הרגלי השתייה והאוכל של תושבי חיפה בבר "מעיין הבירה" עם נתח עסיסי חם וכוס בירה קרה.

רק המחשבה על פיסת שוק האווז המעושן, המתפוצצת בפי במגוון צבעים סימפוני של טעמים, שורפת בדרך קבוצות שלמות של נוירונים מעומס יתר, מכסה את קיבתי בשכבת כולסטרול דקיקה ומדהימה (כפי שרופאי מיהר להזכיר לי, בעודו מחסל בתאווה מוצדקת את צלע החזיר שדמתה לי כמעט בכל מובן: לבנה, שמנה, ומצוינת) רק המחשבה... תסלחו לי, אבל אני לא יכול להמשיך.

להקת קוסטיצה עם רוי ויוני מעין הוד
(more...)

Friday, August 1, 2008

Thomas Rowlandson: Pornographic Etcher from Old Jewry


Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827) was one of England's great satirists and a master of pen drawing and watercolor technique. Born to a tradesman in the London's Old Jewry, he was raised by his wealthy silk merchant uncle after his father went into bankruptcy. When his uncle died, his aunt paid his way at school, in Paris and from 1772 at the Royal Academy, where he first exhibited paintings in 1775. Lacking success as a traditional painter, he gravitated to caricature and social satire — and his career took off. He inherited a fortune when his aunt died in 1789, but squandered it in several ruinous years of dissipation and gambling, sometimes gaming for two days without sleep.
Rowlandson’s designs were usually done in outline with the reed-pen, and delicately washed with colour. They were then etched by the artist on the copper, and afterwards aquatinted --usually by a professional engraver, the impressions being finally coloured by hand. As a designer he was characterized by the utmost facility and ease of draughtsmanship, and the quality of his art suffered from this haste and over-production. He dealt less frequently with politics than his fierce contemporary, Gillray, but commonly touching, in a rather gentle spirit, the various aspects and incidents of social life. His most artistic work is to be found among the more careful drawings of his earlier period; but even among the exaggerated caricature of his later time we find hints that this master of the humorous might have attained to the beautiful had he so willed.(read more...)

Thomas's coloured ethings cannot be found at the new exibition in Ein Hod Gallery called "Passion". The opening is tomorrow at noon.
תשוקה בעין הוד, תערוכה קבוצתית, גלריית אמני עין הוד, מחר, 1.8.08 שבת 12:00 בצהרים

Jaime Lerner of Curitiba


For many city governments seeking visible improvements in their congested streets, the pace of change is measured in months and years. For Jaime Lerner, it's measured in hours. As mayor of Curitiba, he transformed a gridlocked commercial artery into a spacious pedestrian mall over a long weekend, before skeptical merchants had time to finish reading their Monday papers.
Since then he's become a hero not only to his fellow Brazilians, but also to the growing ranks of municipal planners seeking greener, more sustainable cities. His dictum that "creativity starts when you cut a zero from your budget" has inspired a number of his unique solutions to urban problems, including sheltered boarding tubes to improve speed of bus transit; a garbage-for-food program allowing Curitibans to exchange bags of trash for bags of groceries; and trimming parkland grasses with herds of sheep

A Gentleman of Jewish Descent

TO THE LAND OF MIDIAN; THITHER DR. FRIEDMAN WILL INVITE THE RUSSIAN JEWS. IN LETTERS FROM LONDON, HIS HOME, HE OUTLINES HIS PLANS -- HE WILL BEGIN OPERATIONS NEXT WINTER -- ASSISTANCE INVITED.
June 30, 1891, Wednesday
The question of making provision for the exiled Jews of Russia is occupying the minds of other wealthy and philanthropic men besides Baron Hirsch. Prominent among these is Dr. Paul Friedman. Dr. Friedman is a gentleman of Jewish descent, a native of Berlin, and at present a resident of that city, though he has spent the greater part of his life in London, where he has earned the reputation of a litterateur...

Read this document on Scribd: midian