Today at Flavorpill, we smiled after learning about John Lennon’s crazy cat lady side and members of his kitty family, including Elvis and Jesus. We were impressed with and giddy over this documentary about VHS culture and couldn’t wait to get home to watch a few tapes. We got hungry reading BuzzFeed’s list of taco-related crimes. We thought this Neil LaBute exhibition sounded appropriately subversive. We tried to imagine a world with a nationwide tooth-brushing law and lots of ponies after reading Time‘s story on Vermin Supreme. We wondered about The New Yorker‘s article on women in fashion that got under Refinery29′s skin. We wished Liquipel had been around last time we spilled coffee on our phone. We saw what happens to our luggage once it leaves our hands at the airport. We watched The Hobbitget sweded. We wanted to live like Downtown Abbey for a day. We imagined what it was like for an agoraphobic to hit the road and meet 325 Facebook friends. And finally, we loved time travelling in San Francisco with this impressive interactive map.
[Editor's note: While your Flavorwire editors take a much-needed holiday break, we'll spend the next two weekends revisiting some of our most popular features of the year. This post was originally published September 28, 2011.] The historically minded artist Mike Stimpson lends a tinge of childhood innocence to legendary moments in a collection that uses LEGOs to recreate famous photos (and one famous painting). By placing the original pictures side-by-side with his versions, he simultaneously pays homage to and updates these classic images, including the soaring Lunch Atop a Skyscraper, the darling kiss in V-J Day Times Square, and John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Bed-In. Page through Stimpson’s playful LEGO remixes after the jump.
Musicians have always loved the Jesus look, mainly because it obviates the need to cut your hair and shave — which, if you’re more interested in sex, drugs, and/or rock ‘n’ roll than practicalities, is just the ticket. But while plenty of musicians over the years have gone for the messianic style, only a few have pulled it off with panache, and this got us thinking — who’s the most convincing Jesus-alike in music? In celebration of Christ’s birthday, we’ve attempted to determine just that. We started out with field of ten contenders, and we’re ranking them from bottom to top in terms of their Jesus Quotient. Read on to find out who’s the messiah and who’s just a very naughty boy. (Disclaimer: this is all a bit of fun, so please don’t take it all too seriously/take offense/condemn us to eternal damnation.)
If you really want to know what a famous person thinks about other famous people, get him to do some word association. At least, that seems to be the lesson of this fan-made questionnaire John Lennon filled out in 1976. We’re sure the document was filled with plenty of interesting tidbits, but Lists of Note — our new favorite blog, from the gent who brought us the wonderful Letters of Note — is right to pick out the page of word association. It’s interesting to see what came to mind for Lennon upon seeing the names John, Paul, and Ringo, and information-freedom fans will be gratified to see that he thought bootlegs were “good.” But we couldn’t help getting an immature chuckle at the word he associated with Elvis — “fat.” Bowie, meanwhile? “Thin.”
While you’re combing the Internet this holiday season for the perfect nerdy t-shirt to gift someone, we thought we’d take this opportunity to invite you to look back on a few classics. The things we choose to brand our bodies with — whether it be the logos of our favorite bands, or symbols from most-loved films — are bold statements that help define who we are and what we’re feeling. Some t-shirt designs have become larger than life — absorbed into the pop culture mind grapes and resurrected in various 2.0 redesigns. Others have stayed the same and are classics for a reason. Click through to check out ten iconic pop culture t-shirts, and leave your favorites below. Read More »
Whether you’re an artist or an aficionado of the arts, there’s no question that peering into the sketchbooks of lauded virtuosos is a valuable experience. They serve variously as illustrated diaries or catalogs of casual drawings, paintings, and musings — lending a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the inner thoughts of beloved artists. From a reprint of Frida Kahlo’s diary full of vibrant drawings and writings to the silkscreened lips of Andy Warhol’s portrait subjects to Tim Burton’s sketches, our roundup of adored artists’ sketchbooks is sure to give you some insight into the creative process. Read More »
1. Tower Heist surprised many by landing in second place at the box office in its debut weekend behind Puss in Boots; as ArtsBeat notes, this “does not bode well for the next Academy Awards,” which will reteam Eddie Murphy as the evening’s host and Brett Ratner as its producer.
2. Photographer Amy Harris has decided to bring assault charges against Left Brain from Odd Future, alleging that he slapped her during a performance by the group in New Orleans last month. [via Rolling Stone]
3. Nearly 20,000 people have helped raise $790,000 in donations to help Ai Weiwei pay off the $2.4 million in fines and taxes that the Chinese government says that he owes them. [via BBC]
4. John Lennon’s rotten molar went for £19,000 — almost double the reserve price — at an auction in the UK over the weekend; the rumored buyer is a dentist from Canada. [via NME]
5. A poster for the Tom Hanks/Julia Roberts movie Larry Crowne that shows the duo riding a scooter without helmets has resulted in a €30,000 fine for the film’s distributor in Spain. Says an insider: “When the fine showed up in the post we thought it was a joke. We didn’t even expect something like this when we distributed the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” [via Guardian]
So this is pretty gross: one of John Lennon’s teeth — discoloration, cavity and all — will go up for auction next month in England, ostensibly so that one lucky (and rich) Beatles fan can string it around her neck. To which we say: ick. Celebrity worship is one thing, but we wonder if bidding on one of your idols’ discarded body parts is stepping over the line. Apparently, Lennon gave the tooth to his housekeeper, Dorothy “Dot” Jarlett, after coming home from the dentist in the late ’60s. “She was very close with John, and one day whilst chatting in the kitchen, John gave my mother the tooth… and suggested giving it to my sister as a souvenir, as she was a huge Beatles fan,” Jarlett’s son Barry said. “It has been in the family ever since.” Soon the tooth will no longer be a Jarlett keepsake, however, as Barry Jarlett is auctioning it off with a reserve price of just under $16,000. So much for the British having bad teeth.
A Florida-based artist is railing against Yoko Ono, accusing the wife of the late John Lennon of making the English musician’s artworks “cut-and-paste mashups” by altering them. The Japanese artist and activist has been selling Lennon’s art over the years, raising money for charities. What many people apparently didn’t know is that she’s also been adding color to various pieces, changing their compositions, and pasting “counterfeit John Lennon chop mark/signatures” on them. Not all the images have been tampered with, but four definitely show signs of alteration. The $5,000 Herd Moving seems to be the most changed, taking ” … a giraffe and a rhino from In His Own Write and [multiplying] them, [flipping] them, and [coloring] them, placing three of each figure in a new work also filled with snakes copied from another composition, three identical elephants (evidently taken from yet another composition), and a monkey swinging from a tree.”
Ono has apparently posthumously forged other works in the past. In 2010, she told some “professional people” in regards to one of Lennon’s pieces that they should ” … at least let [her] color it, because John probably would not have minded it if [she] did it.” Is this compromising the authenticity of Lennon’s work, or merely applying an artistic license the late Beatle would have endorsed? Check out a few of the images in question after the jump.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a Beatles fan who visits New York City without visiting Strawberry Fields, Central Park’s memorial to John Lennon, which features a mosaic bearing the legend “Imagine” — the single most powerful word of his career. But this piece of public art is hardly the world’s only open-air tribute to Lennon and his manifesto. To commemorate what would have been his 71st birthday (October 9th) and today’s 40th anniversary of “Imagine’s” release as a single, we’ve compiled a gallery of street art that celebrates both the song and the man. From Liverpool and New York to Taipei and the famous Lennon Wall in Prague, these images prove that his influence was truly global.
