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News

The Morning's Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. In spite of 4chan’s best efforts, Time Magazine has named Barack Obama — and not North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un — its “Person of the Year”. [via Gawker]

2. Could Daft Punk, The Rolling Stones, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs be headlining Coachella 2013? This email sure seems to suggest so.

3. Here’s an interesting peek at what the New York Public Library’s controversial $300 million renovation of its Fifth Avenue flagship location will actually look like, as envisioned by starchitect Norman Foster. [via NYT] … Read More

Food

How to Throw Your Own 'Downton Abbey'-Style Christmas Dinner

By Caroline Stanley on

While our friends in the UK count the days until this year’s Downton Abbey Christmas Special airs, those of us across the pond still have months of waiting to do. But that doesn’t mean we can’t drum up some Downton-style Christmas fun of our own making in the meantime. We recently asked Emily Ansara Baines, author of The Unofficial Downton Abbey Cookbook, to share a few recipes from her new book with Flavorwire readers. If you’ve ever fantasized about spending some quality time with the Crawley family, Baines has come up with a menu that even the Dowager Countess herself would approve of! … Read More

Design

Mei Linn Chan's Gorgeous, Handmade Leaf Type

By Caroline Stanley on

And now for the latest addition to the typography we’re totally obsessed with file: Spotted by Visual News, this simple, handmade typeface created by Malaysian designer Mei Linn Chan really caught our eye. Using an exacto knife to carefully carve out each letter and number, Chan follows the veins of the leaves to trim decorative designs into the inside spaces. The resulting effect is pretty lovely, don’t you think? … Read More

News

The Morning's Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel and his production team have been freed after spending five days in captivity in Syria. While the identities of the kidnappers and their motives are unknown, it appears that they were loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad. Watch his account of the ordeal here.

2. Cecilia Gimenez, the artist behind that infamous “Beast Jesus” restoration that broke the Internet earlier this year, has sold one of her original oil paintings on eBay for $1,400. [via ArtsBeat] … Read More

Photography

Crazy Portraits of Real Life Doppelgangers

By Caroline Stanley on

We’ve all had the experience of walking down the street and spotting a person who looks just like someone we know, only to realize — often too late for it not to be completely awkward — that we’re absoultely wrong. Or maybe you frequently find yourself the subject of a case of mistaken identity. For his black-and-white portrait series I’m Not a Look-Alike! Canadian photographer François Brunelle shot sets of unrelated people whose faces were surprisingly similar, but who were usually meeting each other for the first time. Click through a slideshow of our favorites, and head over to PetaPixel for even more uncanny photos of real-life lookalikes. … Read More

News

The Morning's Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. Over a year later, a new inquest is being held into Amy Winehouse’s death because the assistant deputy coroner who oversaw the original examination lacked proper qualifications. [via ArtsBeat]

2. Odd Future has been accused of brutally attacking a 17-year-old fan who hopped on stage during a show in San Antonio. According to TMZ, the teen “suffered lacerations on his head, scratches, and burns to his body,” as well as two seizures, and now plans to sue the group. … Read More

Pop Culture

20 Amazing J.R.R. Tolkien-Inspired Tattoos

By Caroline Stanley on

If tried to sweet talk your way into a sold-out screening of The Hobbit over the weekend, then you might not be surprised to hear that there are a ton of hardcore J.R.R. Tolkien fans out there. What we imagine might surprise you is how many of those fans, secretly tucked away under all of those layers of winter clothing, have inked permanent tributes to the beloved author on their skin. We’ve scoured the Internet for some of the the most impressive Tolkien-inspired tattoos we could find — not counting the scores of designs that are people’s names or favorite sayings written in Elvish — and picked out 20 of our favorite tributes to Middle Earth for you to peruse after the jump. What do you think Gandalf the White would make of all this? … Read More

News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. Was Alec Baldwin trying to break out heart when he tweeted this photo of Jack Donaghy’s last day at the office? Probably. [via BuzzFeed]

2. “He’s giving everyone shit the whole time, and he’s a big pain in the ass.” You’ll never guess who Jon Stewart says was the worst Daily Show guest of all-time, and is apparently banned for life. Hint: It’s an actor, not a dictator. [via Gawker] … Read More

Photography

Unsettling Manipulated Photos of Franken-People

By Caroline Stanley on

Don’t worry, there’s no need to adjust your computer screen. There’s a reason why the people featured in Grégoire Cheneau’s Altered States portrait series all seem a bit off. Look a bit more closely. These photographs are composites, created out of images that Cheneau captured of each person from slightly different angles, later blending the various eyes, noses, mouths, and chins seamlessly together in Photoshop. (In fact, the French photographer says that he rarely uses two body parts from the same shot.) Click through a slideshow of his freaky photos, which we spotted thanks to PetaPixel, and if you enjoy the concept, pick up a copy of Cheneau’s book based on the project. … Read More

Gift Guide

100 Gifts for 100 Cultural Icons

By Caroline Stanley on

If you’ve been reading Flavorwire for the past few years, then you already know that one of our favorite holiday traditions is doling out gifts to 100 boldfaced names in culture — it doesn’t matter whether they’re dead or alive; naughty or nice; highbrow, lowbrow, or somewhere in between. Click through to see who made the cut this year, and while you’re at it, find the perfect gift for the Amy Poehler, Philip Roth, Zooey Deschanel in your own… Read More