You know those ‘Open’ buttons next to the doors on tubes? Why do people insist on pressing them when they clearly do nothing? I remember when these new trains with the illuminated buttons were introduced a number of years back. I may have naively tried to press one of the pointless buttons once back then but realising it did nothing, I never tried again. So why do I see so many people pressing them every day and expecting something to happen? I see guys in suits who get on at my stop every day doing it and then huffing and puffing when nothing seems to happen. These things are clearly a mechanical placebo. Surely they must realise pressing it has no effect. Are these people braindead?
Archive for February, 2008
LONDON - I HATE PEOPLE WHO DON’T KNOW HOW THE DOORS ON TUBES WORK
LONDON - I HATE PEOPLE WHO DON’T KNOW HOW THE DOORS ON TUBES WORK
You know those ‘Open’ buttons next to the doors on tubes? Why do people insist on pressing them when they clearly do nothing? I remember when these new trains with the illuminated buttons were introduced a number of years back. I may have naively tried to press one of the pointless buttons once back then but realising it did nothing, I never tried again. So why do I see so many people pressing them every day and expecting something to happen? I see guys in suits who get on at my stop every day doing it and then huffing and puffing when nothing seems to happen. These things are clearly a mechanical placebo. Surely they must realise pressing it has no effect. Are these people braindead?
LONDON - I HATE PEOPLE WHO DON’T KNOW HOW THE DOORS ON TUBES WORK
You know those ‘Open’ buttons next to the doors on tubes? Why do people insist on pressing them when they clearly do nothing? I remember when these new trains with the illuminated buttons were introduced a number of years back. I may have naively tried to press one of the pointless buttons once back then but realising it did nothing, I never tried again. So why do I see so many people pressing them every day and expecting something to happen? I see guys in suits who get on at my stop every day doing it and then huffing and puffing when nothing seems to happen. These things are clearly a mechanical placebo. Surely they must realise pressing it has no effect. Are these people braindead?
AUSTRALIA - HERBAL VAGINA TIGHTENING STICK
I don’t have a girlfriend so sometimes I do things that the happily "coupled" may not understand like type "vagina" into ebay. Two weeks ago I did just that and stumbled across this cigar shaped herbal product that claims to be able to (on insertion) tighten your vagina and clear up any nasty yeast infections or anything else unsavory you may have going on downstairs. I unthinkingly hit the buy now option and two weeks later I get a suspect looking package on my desk.
NEW YORK - EROTIC FALCONRY
It’s rare enough running across anything online these days that hasn’t already been blogged and re-blogged and linked to and forwarded to you by one of your parents at the bottom of a bunch of pictures of funny car crashes and served as the template for literally caboodles of depressingly unfunny parodies, but something that hits the obnoxious-web-riff trifecta of sexual fetishes, antiquated hobbies, and photoshop humor and doesn’t even show up on Google? How is that even possible?
NEW YORK - CURTAINS FOR INVITE THEM UP
In case you haven’t already heard, Invite Them Up, Eugene Mirman and Bobby Tisdale’s five-year-old showcase of young funny people, is being put to sleep this week due to the closing or change of management or something (or maybe nothing?) of Rififi. Last night Jon Glaser closed the set with a 20-minute Q&A session as "Green Mask Man," which he plans on pitching to NBC, and Jon Oliver put a velour sweatshirt in the onstage time capsule all sullenly. There are only two more nights of this brand of shitty-sounding-when-you-try-to-describe-it-on-a-blog hilarity, so take advantage while you can. Shows start at eight.
LONDON - DAVID CHOE SHOW
When he’s not searching for dinosaurs in the Congolese jungle or hopping freight trains across America, David Choe also makes genius art. His first solo exhibition in the UK opens this Friday in Soho. Titled "Murderous Heart," this brand new show sees Choe explore the urge to kill in his own powerful, provocative yet playful style. Here’s a peek at some of the prints.
- See David Choe’s "Murderous Heart" at the Lazarides Galleries between February 29 and March 28.
LONDON - YELLE
Yelle is virtually unheard of in England but in France she’s a big deal. She began attracting attention with "Je Veux Te Voir"
(I Want To See You) in which she asks French rapper Cuizinier to do porn so everyone can see his tiny penis. More recently she had a number one novelty single called "Parle à ma Main" (Talk to the Hand) in which she talks to a transvestite teenager on a pretend telephone. We had a chat with Yelle ahead of her show at The Old Blue Last tonight. She doesn’t speak much English but she’s fluent in hater.
NEW YORK - SWINDLED
Man, we are really digging the back cover of the new Swindle. Of course, we liked it a little bit better when we ran it in our Photo Issue three years ago and then re-printed it as the last page in our Photo Book, but a good picture’s a good picture, nawwa’eresayin? We thought it might be an honest mistake—after all, Shepard Fairey probably has a pretty difficult time keeping his ear to the ground between all the album artwork and celebrity guitars and culture-jamming Bush out of the White House—but an anonymous insider told us, "The whole office was against using that picture, but Shepard insisted on it. It was a huge scandal. Everyone was emailing him about how old it was, and he just wouldn’t back down. Originally he wanted to put it on the front cover. Thankfully, we managed to talk him out of that, but this is still super embarrassing." Oops.
LONDON - I HATE TRYING TO TAKE A PHOTO WHEN YOUR CAMERA IS SET TO VIDEO MODE
Because this is what you end up with — 10 seconds of two people desperately trying to maintain a smile, followed by the line, delivered ventriloquist-style…
"Has he done it yet?"
NEW YORK - RETURN OF THE BEAST?
We were just talking the other day about how you don’t see as much satanism around as you used to. You guys notice that? When we were little, it seemed like you couldn’t take five steps into the woods without ending up in some rocky little alcove or abandoned shack covered in pentagrams and spent nitrous containers. Those were really great days for shitty graffiti. Everything had a sort of sinister, River’s Edge quality to it, where even when you figured out it was just stoned high school kids and not a secret witch’s coven, you still couldn’t be entirely sure that they wouldn’t kill you with some kind of decorative knife. I don’t know who’s more to blame for its disappearance—hip-hop for supplanting metal and infiltrating every aspect of suburban life, or goth for becoming so nerdy that it drove all the wastoids over into hip-hop and nu-metal—but we can only imagine how badly it fucked with this next generation’s development to grow up without being scared of teenagers. Anyways, we’re psyched to see at least some of the kids are getting back into the evil, if not so much that they decided to start in our hallway.
MELBOURNE - GARAGE TO V STATE FINALS @ TOFF THIS WED
After a while it gets slightly pointless being in a band if you can’t afford to eat, let alone record and release all the music you spend your entire life writing. There’s a lot of bands out there to compete with and sometimes you have to streak across the oval with your band name written on your ass just to get people to take notice. Battles of the bands and band competitions are also a great option and while we’re not short of either in Australia, it’s competitions like Virgin Mobile’s Garage to V that actually have the power to change the future of your band, forever.
