funny

Despite being one of the most well known artists in the world and selling out at auctions and exhibition and even movie theaters, sometimes the one reward that’s most wanted is the one you can’t seem to ever get. Such is the case with internationally renowned street artist Banksy. Reportedly for the fifth year in a row (we can verify at least back to 2007), the artist has submitted a piece to the Turnip Prize judges, only to see his name left off the shortlist. The prize, for those unfamiliar, is the 12 year old annual art competition in answer to the slightly more high brow Turner Prize. Its listed information on how positive marks are awarded for entries include “lack of effort” and “alliteration or pun used in title,” and with flat out disqualifications handed out for “too much effort” and “it is not sh*t enough.” This year it’s presumed that Banksy entered a frame painting of a stick figure with a though bubble wondering “Is crap art ‘art’ or is it crap?” Unfortunately for the artist, the shortlist has been released and he looks to have been bested by the likes of “a piece of cheese cut into the shape of the letter E” and “a coloured rock called Half a Stone Lighter.” However, perhaps it wasn’t even his attempt at bad art that wound up getting him kicked out in the first place, but rather for one other disqualification listed on their site for pieces that are submitted using a pseudonym.

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We hope you had a very nice holiday and a long weekend, and we realize that you’re probably a bit grumpy at being back to the grind, so let’s start off a bit gently with something fun, shall we? Over the weekend, at a fundraiser at his alma mater high school, the actor B.J. Novak, of NBC‘s The Office, confessed to a prank he’d pulled on Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts more than a decade ago. Boston Globe recounts the great story of Novak and his friends deciding to re-record the audio guide given out to guests visiting the museum’s popular 1997 exhibition, “Tales from the Land of Dragons.” To make it more convincing, a friend with a thick Eastern European accent provided the narration, and the pranksters swapped the tapes after legitimately paying for tickets and audio guide rentals. It’s a great, fun story, and something we wish we’d thought of when we were 17. Here’s a bit:

“The first three minutes of the tape were completely accurate … but about 3 minutes in, the tour started getting a little weird. The guy started injecting his personal opinions. He’d say, ’Personally I think this painting is a piece of crap,’” Novak recalled, using a heavy, vaguely Eastern European accent and laughing along with the audience.

“Quietly remove the glass and inhale the rich aroma of the paint,” the faux narrator said. “Ah, that is good stuff!”

If you’re curious, or want this all verified before you believe it, here’s the original article that appeared in the Globe (pdf) in 1997 after the prank tapes were discovered.

If you’re going to get into the licensed sports apparel business, the first rule should probably be that you know a little something about your targeted audience. Not doing so resulted in retailer Victoria’s Secret over the weekend, as its VS Pink Collegiate Collection arm was forced to pull a shirt it had rolled out to Michigan State University (home of the soon to be completed, Zaha Hadid-designed Broad Museum, by the way). Seemingly innocent and general enough, the shirt played off the school’s mascot, reading “Spartans: Hail to the Victors!” which seems rah-rah enough. Only problem is that “Hail to the Victors” is the fight song of MSU’s rivals, the University of Michigan. After being caught by a CNBC reporter who tweeted, “The folks Victoria’s Secret have made a horrible Michigan error,” the shirts were immediately pulled. While some have speculated that it was perhaps a “clever joke” perpetrated by the company, we can’t think of a world in which that makes any sense (why would the Ohio-based company suddenly have it out for MSU?). Instead, it just seems like a design oversight wherein the company wanted to do the least possible due diligence before going to press.

Peter Bristol’s “Cut Chair” (Photo: Peter Bristol)

With Helsinki poised to begin its reign as 2012 World Design Capital, a couple of crafty Finns have issued a challenge to designers worldwide: go a year without designing a chair. Carpenter/artist Eero Yli-Vakkuri and blacksmith/designer Jesse Sipola of Ore.e Refineries are spearheading the No Chair Design Challenge, with goals ranging from freeing up time for non-chair-design-related activities to altering the world’s view of sitting. “We believe that the world already has enough chairs. Designing new ones only takes time away from renovating the ones we already have,” say Sipola and Yli-Vakkuri. “Consider this the ultimate challenge for you to rethink how sustainable design should be manifested.” Show your support by committing not to design a chair in 2012 through their online petition. Beginning in January, the duo will solicit text message-based updates from participants about what they’ve accomplished when not designing chairs, and five designers will be rewarded with “DnS – Design and Craft Diplomas.” Take a seat—or better yet, stand—as you watch this video tutorial on how not to design chairs.

An eight-foot-tall man returned from a swim on Tuesday morning in Siesta Key, Florida and was promptly detained by authorities. The 100-pound fellow, who resembles a giant Lego figurine, is made of fiberglass. The front of his green tank top reads “No Real Than You Are,” and the back is emblazoned with the number eight and “Ego Leonard,” the name of a Dutch artist whose creations have previously washed up on beaches in England and the Netherlands. “I am glad I crossed over. Although it was a hell of a swim,” wrote the artist, replying to an e-mail from a writer for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. “Nice weather here and friendly people. I think I am gonna stay here for a while. A local sheriff escorted me to my new home.” According to a press release issued by the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office, “Mr. Leonard is being kept in a secure environment until his owner comes forward.” Lego is not amused. A spokeswoman for Legoland in Orlando told the Herald-Tribune that the Lego man is a counterfeit and not endorsed by Legoland. Meanwhile, the Sarasota Convention & Visitors Bureau is eager to keep him in town. “We were trying to spring him out of jail,” said Erin Duggan, communications director for the tourism bureau. “We had offered to give him a home at the visitors center, where people could come and have their pictures taken with him.”

We miss those halcyon days before the end of 2008 and the total financial collapse, back when every day you could find a story about some type of crazy architecture or museum project going up in Dubai. Remember the suspicious architect behind the Dynamic Tower? Or the plans for the iPad, the building that pre-dated Apple‘s table device by several years, and was instead a skyscraper that looked like an iPod? It was a fun time to watch the endless, silly spending. Of course, all that wild speculation ended exactly how it usually does, with a total implosion. So it’s nice, now nearly three years after that all ended, to catch a brief glimpse of those ridiculous glory days. Arabian Business reports that a Dubai architect is on the hunt for investors to help him build a Herbie theme park. After reportedly trying to get it launched Abu Dhabi and not having much luck, the architect is now trying elsewhere, hoping that he’ll find enough money to construct a multi-million dollar homage to the VW Bug star of several Disney films. Already they have a leg up on the project, having secured a number of the original cars used in the films, including the last incarnation, used in the 2005 film Herbie: Fully Loaded. The news outlet reports that “Initial designs for ‘Herbieland’ include a central building in the shape of a giant baseball, which would house a museum, workshop and cafe.” Good ol’ Dubai.

‘Tis the season for contemplating the dead walking among us and some designers and architects have likely been doing much more thinking about it than you have. The 2011 Zombie Safe House Competition has just kicked into its public voting stage. With roughly 200 entries from more than 12 countries, the project received many more entries, and, as you might expect, far more gruesome, than this year’s Barbie Dream House design contest (though, in thinking of it now, something made for both purposes totally would have been our entry for either competition). As part of the ZombCon kicking off in Seattle on Oct. 21st, the competition features a distinguished panel of judges, from best-selling author Max Brooks to the real-life architecture firms of Eskew+Dumez+Ripple and emmerymcclure architecture. Not surprising at all, many of the entries are remarkably detailed and well-thought. And failing in those criteria, they’re at least horribly bloody or wonderfully funny. We also dig the simple complexity of the RFP-esque “Program Issues to Address”:

1. How many people can you fit in your safe house?

2. How are you handling power, potable water, and waste?

3. How are you handling access to your safe house?

4. How many days do you plan to stay in your safe house, and how much food and water are you providing?

5. How will you escape in the event of a zombie intrusion?

6. How will you keep zombies out of your safe house?

As for the budget you’re allotted: “No budget restriction is applied. Your safe house is human civilization’s last hope!”

Remember back in the very early days of 2010 when Unhappy Hipsters caught the world by storm? The site, which re-purposed photographs taken for magazines like Dwell by captioning them with funny quotes about the tragic ennui suffered by wealthy modernists. Not only was the site wildly popular online, with links galore, it even made it into Psychology Today, which tried to get to the bottom of why all these modernism-loving people were just so darn sad. Now, as these things tend to happen anymore, the Tumblr site has been turned into a book, published by Chronicle and entitled It’s Lonely in the Modern World. Instead of simply going the easy route and essentially copying the site with photos and captions, co-founders Molly Jane Quinn and Jenna Talbott write pieces of advice on “how to navigate the vast array of concrete finishes and plywood grades, accessorize with children and pets, opine with authority on rooflines,” accompanying the funny captions underneath all those photos of sad modernness (here’s a scan of two pages, so you can see for yourself). Apartment Therapy has a nice, quick review of the book, which they describe as having an “extra-dry brand of design-centric humor.”

Remember those halcyon days way back in 2010 when you could go wait in an incredibly long line at the MoMA to spend a few seconds sharing a stare with Marina Abramovic as she sat and stared for her extremely popular The Artist is Present piece? If you’re hankering to return, and watching the Broad Museum get built in real time isn’t drawn out enough for you, designer and artist Pippen Barr has created the brilliant and bizarre The Artist is Present video game. Control your animated, adventure game avatar through the process of paying $25 for a ticket and then go wait in a very long line to see Abramovic. That’s it. And like the often-referenced non-game game, Penn and Teller‘s equally interesting Desert Bus, where you drove a bus through an unchanging landscape for hours but the steering had a slight pull, meaning you had to sit there and pay attention for all those hours, in Barr’s game, if you ignore your place in line, you’ll get bumped and have to start again from the back of the queue. Beside the game, Barr has a number of interesting comments about his creating the game, adding whole other layers to what first appears to just be a funny endeavor. Here’s a bit:

As happens when you make things, though, different meanings and ideas come up as you go along. On researching the show it was pretty obvious that the core mechanic of the game was about waiting – that’s pretty much what everyone focuses on when they think of the show – either waiting to see Abramovic or, in a sense, waiting with her. And that’s immediately titillating because waiting is obviously the height of poor game design according to convention. (Note that there are some great games about waiting, notably Gregory Weir’s Narthex and Increpare’s Queue). Part of my attitude to it, though, was to take it to some kind of “end game” – just waiting, so real other entertainment or chance of interaction, possibly for hours, possibly never even achieving your aim. Brutal waiting.

Sadly, there’s no bonus level in Barr’s game where if you touch the nude people, you get in trouble with the MoMA staff.

With New York’s Fashion Week now all but a distant, glittery memory, hopefully you’ve had time to recover, either having survived being there in person or wearing your fingers to the bone as you scoured the internet for clothes to look at. Fortunately, you can relive it all with this informative and somber piece put together by the always great Put This On, who sent correspondent Dave Hill into the fray to dig out the real stories of the week that was: