Cool Thing We Want #285: “The Very Very Many Varieties of Beer” From Pop Chart Lab

The Very Very Many Varieties of Beer | Pop Chart Lab | $24 (USD) |

“The world’s most comprehensive beer taxonomy is now bigger and better. This new design features 89 varieties of beer with over 200 representative quaffs, including glassware recommendations for each variety, and covers six square feet with beer-soaked goodness. Each print is signed and numbered by the artists, from a first edition of 1000. Using 100 lb. archival recycled stock certified by The Forest Stewardship Council, this print is pressed with vegetable-based inks in Red Hook, Brooklyn.”

Zoom in and explore this enjoyably informative print here.

EVERY COOL THING WE WANT

Smoke Break #810: To Pour Is To Paint For Kaleidoscope-Happy Artist Holton Rower

It’s questionable. Via HYST.

Smoke Break #799: Seven Minutes And Thirty Four Seconds With Shepard Fairey

Cool Thing We Want #251: Anime Meets Traditional Japanese Art

Loving these three prints by Japanese artist Nori Yamamoto. $250 a pop.

Cool Thing We Want #247: Minga Vintage Series Of “WTF” Posters

There are 11 of these works in total. Check out the full gallery here.

Cool Thing We Want #243: Irony In Marble, But Where To Put It?

Maurizio Cattelan’s 11 meter high “Fuck You” sculpture – currently on display in front of Milan’s lovely old Stock Exchange building – could have so much potential in Vancouver (it’s actually called “LOVE”). Ideas as to would you’d plant such a pedestal are most welcome. This just in case The Stones were totally wrong and we actually can get what we want…(via DesignBoom).

Smoke Break #737: Street Artist Explains By Way of An Apology

You’re forgiven, Vinchen (via Wooster Collective).

The Largest Work Ever By Pablo Picasso Now Showing In London

Picasso’s biggest piece of art, the mural Deux Femme Courant Sur La Plage, measures 34ft by 38ft, dwarfing his famous Guernica painting (a mere 11ft by 26ft). It has been in storage for most of its 80+ years of existence, and is now on display at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

Hegemony of The At-At As A 21st Century Icon Continues, Part 3

As we’ve noted before, “the Imperial Snow Walker (aka AT-AT) from Star Wars’ Empire Strikes Back remains as strong a feature on our cultural and mythological landscapes as vampires and unicorns…” Today, above, we bring you an amazing animation of a canine imitating micro-walker, going about his daily business, and remind you below of our argument for the creature’s inclusion to the hallowed pantheon.

There have been plenty of mechanical things that have wormed their way into the cultural zeitgeist since the advent of motion pictures. Terminator, the Transformers, and HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey spring immediately to mind (there are many others), but these are devices that have been made conscious through the wonders of alien or domestic technologies, and will almost certainly be cast aside as so much cultural detritus (like Care Bears and Klingons). What I instead see sticking around is a device, something that is manipulated. I’m not talking about the X-wing or the Tie-fighter, or even the Millenium Falcon. None of Lucas’ machines – despite being cool enough for young lads and lasses to drop dimes on (for diecast and plastic replicas in minitaure) – exist outside of their original contexts, except one.

I’m referring, of course, to the menacing AT-AT, also known as the Imperial Snow Walker, first seen in Lucas’ second Star Wars film, The Empire Strikes Back.

When I first saw these quadrupedal giants emerging from the snowy haze, advancing on the rebel defense lines on the ice planet of Hoth, my seven year old ass froze in its movie theater seat. Here was a machine that instilled more dread than a Panzer tank, more joy than a Spitfire, and more envy than Magnum’s red Ferrari. So strong was its appeal that it’s almost as if — like the creatures of the classical world — the AT-AT had always existed in the imagination without ever having been seen for real. And like the beasties conjured by the ancients, it now exists outside its original context. Today, the AT-AT just is...on t-shirts, as graffiti, as pop art, as deviant public fornicator, as dessert, as audio design…even as dutiful pet.

For confirmation, check out the gallery of found images that we’ve compiled below: Read more

The Restaurant Trade Was Once A Den Of Depraved Criminals…

Artist Dr. Lou Jacobs has put together a pretty interesting show in Portland, Maine called “Food Industry Mug Shots 1899-1954″. From Good:

On March 12, 1942, Donald Smith, a cook in Iowa, was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct. His case history describes his crime: “During an altercation in the kitchen of the Red Feather Cafe, subject stabbed one Ted Anderson with a butcher knife.”

Maybe bad-ass chefs like Anthony Bourdain and David Chang aren’t really anything new. Restaurants have seedy, sometimes violent, underbellies. And sometimes, cooks get caught doing what they shouldn’t.

Four years ago, Dr. Lou Jacobs found a mug shot and started collecting original images from the dark side of the food world. He found bartenders, cooks, and waiters who had been pushed over the edge and were accused of murder, theft, pimping and pandering, and drunken and disorderly conduct.

So not much has changed. See more of Jacobs’ curated mugshots here.

PS. The genial Ted Anderson, chef de cuisine at West 4th’s Refuel, is perfectly fine.

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