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if you love dancing and typography...

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Three reasons this video is so very rad:

1. Huge, almost Sesame Street style letters.
2. Dancing like mad, while staying in pretty much one spot.
3. Singing in French.


Yelle - "A Cause des Garçons" Remix Tepr Video Tecktonik


You can listen to more Yelle on their MySpace (but be warned your head may explode if you look at that page for more than two seconds.)

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the sock monkey building

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Ever wonder where sock monkeys work?

I mean, you see them lying around and looking cute, but they've got to earn a living, too. One career path that many sock monkeys choose in Vancouver is to work at Fletchers Fabricare dry cleaners.

The reason is pretty obvious.







This is one of my favourite buildings in Vancouver. It makes me happy just to see it.

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how to cook a crafty meal in under 2 minutes

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Western Spaghetti is a new (and utterly adorable) stop-motion film made by the fine folks at PES. Rubix cubes, tin foil, rubber bands, post-it notes and candy corns all go into making this delicious meal/movie.



Also check out their other films, most of which also employ household objects and toys. My faves are Game Over (where cupcakes are used in old-school arcade games like Space Invaders, Frogger and Pac-Man), Moth (where a tape dispenser is a frog that eats bulldog-clip moths), and KaBoom! (where war is a mixture of toys, popcorn and circuit boards).

Also be sure to watch the "Making of KaBoom!" video.

"I used yellow gift bows, first and foremost, because they look exactly like real explosions."


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garlic scapes

Monday, June 30, 2008



This summer I'm going to try get something new at the farmer's market every weekend. Last week, I got some Manchego cheese stuffed olives that I didn't like at first... but then after the first three became highly addictive.

This week I bought garlic scapes.

I had no idea what they were - nor even what the word "scape" meant - but the farmer was talking them up, plus they're so darn pretty, I couldn't resist.

So, I found out three things:
1. The word "scape" refers to "flowering stems, usually leafless, rising from the crown or roots of a plant."
2. Garlic scapes sure are garlicky.
3. They are delicious.

I ended up making garlic scape pesto, using a mixture of a recipe from The Washington Post and one from What Geeks Eat (what a great name!).

The results were bright green and delicious. I smeared the garlic scape pesto on a baguette, threw some tomatoes on top and broiled the whole lot to make bruschetta. Mmmm.



Apparently, garlic scapes will only be in season for another week or two, so I better stock up next weekend.

Do you have any garlic scape recipes to share? (Or invent?)

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diorama-rama dance party

Monday, June 23, 2008

Dioramas and silly dancing: two of my favourite things.

No wonder then that I love this video for one of my favourite songs of the moment, Port O'Brien's "I Woke Up Today".



As if that's not enough, here's another video of Port O'Brien performing the song for a group of unsuspecting babies. For real.



(Via MOKB)

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something nice

Monday, June 09, 2008

I think we could all use something nice these days.



The tear-offs say things like "good job", "wish you were here" and "you have nice eyes". You can download a copy to print right here. I'm going to put one up in my neighbourhood.

The signs were made by Todd Falkowsky for the recent Radiant Dark show of Canadian design in Toronto.

(via The Canadian Design Resource)

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embroidery rocks

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Embroidery rocks. For proof, witness Architecture in Helsinki's video for "Like It Or Not".



According to the credits page, the video was made by Mathematics, but the artwork looks to me to be the fine stitchin' of Megan Whitmarsh (aka Tiny Industries), who is well-known for her mini embroideries of such natural wonders as yeti and rockstars.



Fecal Face has posted a nice interview with Megan, along with lots more great images of her work.

I am inspired by a desire to be optimistic about the future of humanity. I like to combine the everyday and the junky parts of modern life with the iconography of the supernatural and fantastic and thus transform the mundane into something magical feeling




My favourite part of the video is probably the head-boppin' guy in an orange jumpsuit in the floating pirate ship... who seems to be the pyrotechnician from this other Architecture In Helsinki video!

(via Music Under Fire)

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