Mad Quickies: Lost Harryhausen, Planking You’ll Like, Not One But Two Jellyfish Stories and More!
Hello my friends- and what a fine, fine day it is! Let’s get right to these delicious features!
First up, a very droll yet very timely piece from McSweeney’s. A wave o’ the fin to @smashleyhamer for this.
“You know the drill: one minute everything’s going great, the next he’s getting airlifted to an emergency room and you might as well not exist! After the tears dissipate, it’s time to be honest with yourself: how many of these all-too-common mistakes are you guilty of?”
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Oh I do love this! It’s rare when an outdoor piece has me this jealous it’s not in my city. And I love to see this in action with actual humans seeming to enjoy the installation, even if they are strategically placed. Looks real and looks very cool. I want to nap on this in the sun! You might say this is planking you’d enjoy.
“As part of the 2019 London Design Festival, Paul Cocksedge’s ‘Please Be Seated’ has taken over Finsbury Avenue Square in the city’s Broadgate neighborhood. The undulating sculpture is comprised of concentric wooden circles that ribbon up and down to create functional spaces to meet, rest, and walk through.”
“The key feature of the Studio’s work, in everything from product design to architectural projects, is a focus on simplicity and imagination in order to create unique people-centered designs.
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“The Royal Observatory Greenwich has just revealed the winners of its annual Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition, and the quality of the entrants was nothing short of spectacular. This year the competition attracted 4,602 entries from 90 different countries across the world, all presenting the universe in a new light and vying for the coveted prize of best picture.”
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Today’s photo gallery is:
The Lost Movies of Ray Harryhausen
“John Walsh’s investigation of the unrealized work of special effects groundbreaker Ray Harryhausen. Casting a wide net over the coulda-been, Walsh digs into unused ideas, projects he turned down and scenes that ended up on the cutting room floor, using a treasure trove of never-before-seen artwork, sketches, photos and test footage from the Harryhausen Foundation archives”
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Really wonderful feature that’s worth your time, especially if you plan to visit the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History. I love how the piece begins with a very lovely share.
“I was probably five years old when I first reconstructed a prehistoric scene. I molded a lumpy landscape from the Mississippi River mud in my backyard and populated it with plastic dinosaurs munching leaves I had snapped off our hedge (sorry Dad!). Like anyone’s, my life has had plenty of unplanned twists and turns, but it wasn’t an accident that more than 50 years after making my first diorama, I was sitting in a well-worn conference room at the Smithsonian helping plan the first complete renovation of its fossil hall since the Natural History building opened in 1910.”
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BONUS: Thanks to the Geologic Podcast for this bit of interesting Fauna: The Deepstaria Jelly. What’s wild is that it starts out as this five minute of oceanic wonder starts out as a prim, pretty little pink sea ghost that becomes a neural blanket. Nature is wild!
