International Pillowfight Day: A holiday worth having

I just learned of a thing called International Pillow Fight Day. Presumably all you need is a pillow and someone to hit with it. It all sounds very cathartic, though many innocent pillows were sacrificed this day...

Christmas was better in the 80's

"The snow was deeper in the '80's, and everyone used to play."
My new favorite holiday song. The Futureheads will be a Christmas classic. I love the sentiment behind it, and it's a catchy tune.
Ahhh, the 80's...

The Sandman and Vintage Brothers Quay Animation

This is cool:

From the Land of Bjork

New ice hotels from Iceland, Sweden and Romania.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Art from Alice in Wonderland illustrator Arthur Rackham. And the girl in the woods by Kay Neilsen.

Oh, You Pretty Things.

Starman.



Rebel Rebel.



Young Americans.

This is David Bowie's very first day in the United States. Jersey to be specific. That's it, nothing else tying these images together. Just purdy, is all.

This is the happy house.

we're happy here in the happy house.


This is the happy house, where I want to hang my hat.

"Rescued from Oblivion" The Spanish Tinge

Here is a part of a Tom Waits interview in which he describes the Spanish Tinge in the new album Bad as Me. (note to self: Write a song with Spanish Tinge.)

Pitchfork: There's a song on the album that I like very much called "Back in the Crowd", and it's almost disarming in its simplicity.

Tom Waits: Well, that song was an attempt at some of the-- you know what they call it-- Spanish Tinge. It's actually a musical category, like "Under the Boardwalk" is Spanish Tinge. "It's Over" by Roy Orbison, Spanish Tinge. It was done in the 60s. You can still hear it, but most people don't even know that expression. [Los Lobos' David Hidalgo] put castanets and claves on it-- My wife had this melody on a tape recorder, just something she sang in the car or wherever, all by herself-- [sings a melody]. Like that. And I just rescued it from oblivion. Sometimes words are just music themselves. Like "Chicago" is a very musical sounding name.

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/features/interviews/8691-tom-waits/

Donn Kenn illustrations

Donn Kenn illustrations, all made on teeny little post-it notes.

kay neilsen illustrations

From the stories East of the Sun, West of the Moon and In Powder and Crinoline
illustrated by Kay Neilsen in 1913.

Lovely quotes from The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle

"Her voice left the flavor of honey and gunpowder in the air"

"His chuckle sounded like matches striking."

"There was the smell of lightning about the unicorn when the woman had finished her spell."

"He smiled, and she saw that his face was frighteningly young for a grown man--untraveled by time, unvisited by grief or wisdom."

" The spider's web drew the onlookers eyes--back and forth and steadily deeper, until they seemed to be looking down into the great rifts of the world, black fissures that widened remorselessly and yet would not fall into pieces as long as Arachne's web held the world together."

"I'll stuff you with misery until it comes out of your eyes. I'll turn you into a bad poet with dreams."

"Under the shrunken sky there was nothing real but the two of them."

Burtonesque