So everyone on Downton Abbey eats pretty well. So why and when did British cuisine get so bad?
There's a secret, abandoned subway platform beneath the Waldorf=Astoria. And, on a similar note, a Brooklyn Heights townhouse is actually a decoy subway entrance. And along a note that's related (but not exactly similar), Walt Disney kept a secret apartment at Disneyland.
Did you know that Joseph Gordon-Levitt's impossibly stylish office building from (500) Days of Summer also appears in Blade Runner? Because I didn't… until I set foot in it.
Scooby-Doo and the case for secular humanism.
Kate and Laura Mulleavy, the sisters behind the Rodarte fashion label, explain the best-ever episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. No, really.
How the potato changed the world.
Something that's important for any writer (or any writing-loving person) to remember: Typos aren't bad grammar. However, along similar lines: Why you should never, type two spaces after a period.

- Vajont Dam, a now-disused structure in Italy that was once considered the tallest dam in the world. A 1963 incident, however, caused a a deadly wave so great in size that it would have obscured nearly all of the sky in the photo to the left.
- The Wow! signal
- As Slow as Possible
- Zabibah and the King, the romance novel allegedly written by Saddam Hussein
- Bald-hairy, an odd (but accurate) way to refer to the succession of Russian heads of state
- Allegra Coleman, the fictional It Girl whose Esquire cover story jump started Ali Larter's career
- Blue Peacock, the "chicken-powered nuclear bomb"
- A landmark case in American birth control law that happens to be titled The United States vs. One Package of Japanese Pessaries
- The Republic of Indian Stream, a New Hampshire territory that was its own republic from 1832 to 1835
- Polybius, the game that makes people go insane
- The Crocodile Dilemma: what great minds think about
Another reason that Britney Spears wrecked everything? The current preponderance of the vocal fry among American women.
Via Time magazine, the vaguely Allega Coleman-like story of Cynthia, the mannequin who became a 1930s media superstar, a socialite (who was invited to the wedding of Wallis Simpson) and eventually a talk show host:

Rita Hayworth is super interesting, in case you didn't know.
Paula Deen's health food cookbook.
Proof that dinner at El Bulli is something I need to make happen in my life.
A sentence the world needs to be asking: "Where is Bum Farto?"
The Dyatlov Pass incident, in which nine people died as a result of aliens or military experiements or yetis or the snowbound crazies. Pretty fucking creepy, I have to say.
Flashbacks: the collected recollections of Liz Lemon:
And... follow me on Google Plus, I guess?
Couple of comments--isn't the Bradbury Building a surprisingly small space when you finally see it in person? It's also featured in "The Artist," too, in that weird sequence where Peppy is up the steps from George (how symbolic) and other workers rush by like they're extras from an office-version of "Metropolis."
ReplyDeleteAnd, alas, elBulli is closed as a restaurant. You could try some molecular gastronomy at Ink or Bazaar.
Yes, it is small. It's also less populated by replicants and and Zooey Deschanels than I expected. (And yes, I know those are two of the same thing.) I, tragically, have not seen The Artist yet and logically won't until after the Oscars. I have weird priorities sometimes.
DeleteWhat do you mean "closed as a restaurant"? Did it open as roller disco? And yes, I could simply look it up, but that question was too fun not to ask.
This is from Wikipedia, so it must be true: "The restaurant is closed as of July 30, 2011, to reopen as a creativity center in 2014." What's more creative than a roller disco? So you are right.
ReplyDelete