Category: Bowl Of Noses

Sniffing out the stuff that kids really get best

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Bowl Of Noses

Classic Hoaxes #2: The Feegee Mermaid

It’s a pretty gruesome creation, right?  P.T. Barnum earned a small fortune and created a sensation with this beast.
The Museum Of Hoaxes tells the full story, but it begins like this:

Mid-July, 1842. An English gentleman named “Dr. J. Griffin”, a member of the British Lyceum of Natural History, arrived in New York City bearing a remarkable curiosity — a real mermaid supposedly caught near the Feejee Islands in the South Pacific. The press were expecting him, since throughout the Summer they had been receiving letters from Southern correspondents describing the doctor and his mermaid. So when he checked in to his hotel, reporters were waiting for him, demanding to see the mermaid. Grudgingly he obliged. What they saw totally convinced them of the creature’s authenticity.

You will have to go to the link to get the rest, but suffice it to say that the term Feegee Mermaid now covers all such hoaxes.
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Bowl Of Noses

Pixar’s Presto

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Bowl Of Noses

Rinpa Eshidan Bird’s Eye View

Okay, we admit: we’ve been BOWLED over by this Japanese doodling crew.  Here they are watched from above.  They give new meaning to “action painting”.

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Bowl Of Noses

Rube Goldberg’s Spawns!

Why is watching something do lots of stuff for no reason other than to keep moving so entertaining? Is there a section of the brain that loves useless complexity?  Was it really Rube Goldberg that really got this glorious contraption ball rolling.

We’ve sniffed out a bowlful of such wonderfully organized chaos to place in The Bowl today.
It’s hard to find a well shot video of the Goldbergian devices that call themselves art.  But this one qualifies:

George Rhoads seems to be the most recognized complicated-marble-run-as-art maker out there but unfortunately I have not been able to locate any quality videos of his machines in action.  You can see a lot of what he’s made right here though.
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Bowl Of Noses

Bored? How about lacing your shoes differently?

There’s a saying, mostly used for art — but applicable to everything if you ask me — “make strange”. Sometimes we can’t see how things really are, because we are all doing exactly the same thing.

If you “make strange” you get to see things in a new way; maybe as they really are. Regardless, it makes for some fun, so why not.

How about starting with your shoe laces? Maybe lacing them in a different way would be cool. Crooked Brains found 33 Different Ways To Lace Your Shoes. Check it out.

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Bowl Of Noses

Go! Go! Pikapika!

Two weeks ago we discovered Pikapika, aka doodling with light.  We’ve now dreamt of it every night.  We can’t reproduce those dreams for you here, so you will have to get by on this.  We don’t think it will be all that hard.  It sure is beautiful!

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Bowl Of Noses

Banksy In NYC

Be sure to visit the “Village Pet Store And Charcoal Grille”.  UK Street Artist Banksy delivers us his first authorized show this month.  It can be found on Seventh Ave (aka Varick) just north of Bleeker on the east side of the street.

Lots of caged sausages and a monkey going human join a family of closed circuit cameras and a dolled up bunny, not to mention some cute McNuggets and Swimming Fish Sticks.  Banksy’s anti-consumer humanist humor is not lost on our son who ranks the phantom artist at the top of his list.  Is Banksy the next Pokemon?

We suggest you take advantage of “no school” today and tomorrow and go by when the Pet Store opens at 10A. You will miss the crowds that way. Or since it’s open until midnight, maybe you can stay up past your bedtime and wander in late.

Don’t you just love New York?!!