magpie's shiny things

Transportation

What hap­pens when a Road Star eats too much pie before bed? It dreams of get­ting that rad­i­cal face lift and look­ing like this. Go ahead and click through for the tech­ni­cal details but the jar­ring col­or con­trast with the magen­ta biki­ni might ruin your appetite.

More sooth­ing­ly this Astin Martin DB4 GT is the treat.

LDS appar­ent­ly means Lambo Style Doors. Whatever. This lit­tle  Alfa Mito is too dang cute.

Radical Ducati out of Madrid presents this trib­ute to the Ducati 750 SS Imola. Unusual in it’s very mod­ern feel.

Christmas is com­ing just around the turn of the cal­en­dar page. Prezzies for your Ducatisti friends are gonna be easy this year as Pro Italia now has an online Ducati gift store.

No mat­ter how stymied you are for a present for your weird Uncle George don’t fall for this.

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Art of the Moto

One of things I love about the guys at Wrench Monkees is that they active­ly encour­age artists to use their bikes as mod­els. Damien Kurth does a sim­ple col­ored pen­cil sketch.

Urban Sketchers has a moto theme as well. João Catarino bor­rowed a bike from a fel­low teacher and set it up in the mid­dle of his life draw­ing class. Nice two col­or ren­der­ing of the stu­dents hard at work.

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Food

Obligatory geeky Thanksgiving joke. Pie Crust. From Toothpaste for Dinner.

I’m off do the last bit of cook­ing. You all have a good Turkey Day.

Transportation

Custom body­work tak­en to an extreme. In beau­ti­ful 1950 styling.

A very brief ani­ma­tion of a con­cept bike explod­ing into planes. A cou­ple of the late stage stills are eye catching.

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Science, Tech

Attempts to com­mu­ni­cate with our future alien over­lords always seem ridicu­lous­ly human biased to me. This effort is a lit­tle less so in that it starts from some of the basics of physics and chem­istry that we think hold true through out the uni­verse. We could be wrong of course…

T‑Shirt favorite from the Geek trin­ket experts at ThinkGeek. Zoom for a cod­ed gig­gle.

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Objects, Design

Jim’s been bak­ing pump­kin pies. We’ve had a cou­ple of dis­as­ters car­ry­ing them to the par­ty in the past. Perhaps one of these  two solu­tions will help.

This ‘media cart’ is gor­geous. But for the price I can buy a cou­ple of you guys welders and a glass cut­ter and we can go into busi­ness for ourselves.

Equally over­priced are these new suites at the Hard Rock in Las Vegas. Pimp-tastic.

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Art, Images, Animation

Nudes in oil are not the denier cri. That’s too bad because there is some excel­lent work being done. Case in point Simon Birch. (NSFW)

If you’re feel­ing in a do-it-yourself lit­er­ary mood you could start with this let­ter­press print by Tom Gauld — Characters for an Epic Tale.

I’m sure the wankers at 20th Cent Fox (irony alert)  are going to come call­ing for Georgie Fearns’ client over this sly logo for a PA/copywriter. But I’d so use it if I my last name was Fox.

Fantastic mod­ern take on clas­sic Japanese screens and scrolls. I need more walls.

For those of you who have been dig­ging the Jim Flora work I’ve been link­ing to here’s anoth­er artist work­ing out the bebop good­ness.

Christian Robinson works in a lot of media includ­ing white­board and he sells sweet lit­tle col­lages on line. But it’s the paper cutout ani­ma­tion that grabs me. Here’s Dinosaur Song based on the chil­dren’s poem by Daria Tessler.

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Video on the Way Out the Door

Deanna threw this up on FB in the ear­ly AM. Girl works weird hours. The Sesame Street anniver­sary is bring­ing all kinds of Henson mad­ness to the top of the heap. Here the Muppets do Bohemian Rhapsody. Sing along — you know you want to.

Now get on back into the kitchen — we all got a feast to prepare.

-lara-

Transportation

A nice­ly done Harley from Denmark. The cop­per bits are dif­fer­ent. How
does such a lit­tle coun­try man­age to have so may tal­ent­ed builders?

From a clas­sic and exot­ic car shop in Australia comes a well
doc­u­ment­ed 1966 Lambretta LI 125 Series 2.

Amid a col­lec­tion of col­lectible fur­ni­ture are these gems. Clown
bikes. Made me smile.

Functional moto fash­ion isn’t exact­ly the height of style but this
pair of pants (patent­ed nat­u­ral­ly) is about as dorky as you can get.
The patent illus­tra­tion has a cer­tain something…

Abstract but instant­ly recognizable.

Another one for the Christmas list. Your bike illus­trat­ed. Cay
Broendum does love­ly work with pen and water­col­ors. (via Wrench
Monkees who advise that if you haven’t got a pic­ture wor­thy bike you
use any of theirs.)

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Culture

The “art” cake is get­ting a lit­tle old but some­times they’re just too
fun­ny, The clas­sic wed­ding cake rein­ter­pret­ed for the end of the
rela­tion­ship.

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Photography

For any­one who has­n’t seen it yet. The Big Picture presents the Nat.
Geo. 2009 Photo of the Year can­di­dates. Yawn.

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Art, Images, and Paper

How to kill an idea. It took me quite a while to find a full size
ver­sion of this image. Why so hard? No artist attri­bu­tion in the first
3 pages I found it on. (Scott Campbell)

Cartoonish mon­sters with unex­pect­ed back­ground ele­ments. Giggle
wor­thy. (James (Jimbot) Demski)

Another illus­tra­tor in the whim­si­cal chil­dren’s car­toon style. Why
don’t I have a good name for this?  (Chris “Elio” Eliopoulos)

Kevin Kidney works in paper build­ing low relief sculp­tures among oth­er things.

A lit­tle crea­ture with a cute over­ly large skull rides a hummingbird.
No real­ly, go look. It’s not near­ly as unre­lent­ing­ly sweet as you
think. (Mike Mitchell)

Me and my hang­over are going away now.…

Transportation

This Cook Custom caught my eye this morn­ing. It is far more to the
chop­per side of the cus­tom mar­ket than I am usu­al­ly drawn to but good
is good, no mat­ter the genre.

The pho­tog­ra­ph­er respon­si­ble for the above shot is Colleen Swartz at
Digital Magic BigShots. Her Bikes and Builders port­fo­lios are
excel­lent. The Girls port­fo­lio may or may not be NSFW depend­ing on
where you work — no nudes but lots of biki­ni clad women straddling
bikes. (Music warning)

Photos of our fore­fa­thers (and fore­moth­ers) with their bikes are
pre­cious treasures.

VW preps a Tuareg for the Paris-Dakar. Ignore the P‑D as ulti­mate test
of man and machine hyper­bole and just ogle the pics.

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Science

The most beau­ti­ful image of the day comes from the Woods Hole Census
of Marine Life.

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Technology (and Culture)

Ariana rants again. This time explain­ing cogent­ly why the blogs are
not a medi­um for con­ver­sa­tions. Her dig at the
owning-friends/reputation econ­o­my is nice too.

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Photography (and Culture)

The Lives They Left Behind  is an on-line explo­ration of the lives of
9 peo­ple who spent the major­i­ty of their lives insti­tu­tion­al­ized. They
lives are read from the records of the Willard Psychiatric Center in
New York and the con­tents of the suitcase(s) that they brought with
them when they entered. Beautifully pho­tographed and well documented.
Overwhelmingly melancholy.

Early Japanese stere­ograms by T. Enami. Fascinating. (And tons more
vin­tage Japanese images in Okinawa Soba’s photostream.)

To get an idea of what these might look like if you had a proper
view­er you can look at these headache induc­ing sim­u­la­tions.

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Art, Images, and Design

Bonus time-waster Saturday edition.

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Transportation

Go Karts are the ulti­mate form of rac­ing. But grownups look a lit­tle sil­ly squished into their tiny frames. Just ask Schumacher and Piquet.

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The World.

Gawker pull quote of the day. Tina on Lisa and Sarah. (Put the cof­fee down.)

And those tricky Canadians are men­ac­ing our neigh­bor­hoods again.

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Stuff (on my Christmas List)

Lego. Paper. Possibilities.

Not quite the car­niv­o­rous ide­al but baby vam­pire rings? Yup, that’ll do nice­ly. They come as a pair, but who to share with?

Not an Powerbook own­er but I know some­one this stick­er that takes advan­tage of the glow­ing apple would suit. vinylville has oth­er designs as well.

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Culture

Elvis Costello’s Spectacle is one of the fresh­est music shows for old geeks like me. A new sea­son is start­ing up on Dec 9. On the same day you’ll be able to buy a box set of the first sea­son. (Maybe this should have been filed in On my Christmas List?)

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Art, Design, Architecture

Most of these clever stair cas­es would­n’t pass code inspec­tion any­where in Pugetopolis. Yet anoth­er rea­son to be a pirate builder.

Today’s street art begins with a mur­al in Oaxaca by Argentinian Gualicho.

More walls by Gualicho here. (One or two mon­sters may be con­sid­ered NSFW.)

Dan23 has a sten­cil based style that has got­ten him com­mis­sions for wall decor in sev­er­al venues. His por­traits are espe­cial­ly nice.

Shag has a show open­ing at the Corey Herford Gallery. 4 pieces are fea­tured on his web­site. So 50s, so bebop. Yeah, yeah. Mad Men and all that. This is the real deal.

Ty Wilkins has a cou­ple of new illos. This fox looks like a clever fel­low. Spend some time with his more com­mer­cial work as well. (Click ‘Browse’ in the header.)

Urban sketch­ers for this week­end. SF Chinatown described as “the most European” part of the city. Whatever. The black and white scenes sketched at night ring true none-the-less.

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Animation and Video

Live Music is the first “crowd sourced” ani­ma­tion. Very much in the clas­sic Disney style. There’s a brief expla­na­tion of how the process worked and the trail­er for the­atri­cal release of the short. I’ll look for the full ver­sion on-line when it releas­es; chances are not good that I’m not going to pay to see Planet51 just to see this in a theater.

Stop motion and paper craft make this grue­some lit­tle dit­ty. Slightly more real­is­tic than South Park grue­some — there are heads used as soc­cer balls here.

Unicornfish chas­er. Just what it says — some­thing to cleanse the reti­nas after Videogioco.

And that’s your Saturday after­noon gone.