NBA Tattoos

Ethan Swan just started a new blog called NBA Tattoos. It's pretty much what you think it is. 

He explains:

In 2003 there was a statistic that 70% of the NBA players had tattoos, which seems insane to me. I noticed there wasn't a ready answer for today's NBA, and thought it would be easy enough to figure out who has tattoos now. It sort of was. But then I got into the minutiae of everyone's designs and there are some really crazy stories out there. Anyway, I've gone through and examined all 433 players in the NBA as of the end of the 2010-11 season, and determined an overall figure. I've also listed statistics for each team, and included stories and images, player-by-player. Now that the main bulk of that research is done, I can start getting into the weirdness, which should happen on a pretty regular basis. 

Proof the World Still Has Talented Dogs

Circulating around the internet is this video from Ryan McGinley for Nowness.com entitled Entrance Romance. It's billed as the photographer's 'daringly spiritual' new film featuring Carolyn Murphy.  As a piece of advertising, it's astonishing. I can only imagine the conversation that lead to it's creation; the precise, deft delegation with which McGinley instructed the Nowness team to do his bidding and the eagerness with which they responded. I'm imagining McGinley between two shoots at the tail end of a busy day musing to himself about the most absurd things he could possibly do before picking up his ringing Iphone: "Hello?""Yes, it's Thomas from Nowness.""Thomas, I was just brainstorming this now actually...""Yes, Ryan, what do you think?""I'm going to need a blonde, a very attractive blonde.""Brilliant!""And a dog...""So cutting edge!""I'm thinking white background, no let's do a warm hue, the dog is wet, and, umm, we throw a fishbowl at her head...""Genius, what do we do for the audio?""Ummmm...""I Love it! Like Ohmm? Like monks? Like a sort of spiritual Nirvana thing?""Yes, monks! I'm thinking meditation, and very spiritual, do you see where this is going Thomas?""Yes I love it, I'll hire the monks straight away, see you on Tuesday." I just can't wait for the sequel! Enjoy!

Bookshelf Psychoanalysis

(From "The Subconscious Shelf" blog, Chris Cook, Chandler, Arizona) Ever wonder what your collection of books may say about you? The Book Bench, The New Yorker's books department, is flexing their Freudian muscles by psychoanalyzing photos of bookshelves submitted by readers on "The Subconscious Shelf" blog. Now what would they say about our bookshelf at Golden Age? Submit your bookshelf here: bookbench@gmail.com

Viesta Bag

Recently stumbled across 'greem', a young artist living in NY. One item we found fascinating within her collection of work was Viesta Bag, an object she's created completely based around a 'true inspirational value'. Understanding the message behind her design well after its completion shows us that it holds unique characteristics and demonstrates how good design can just makes sense to human logic. Therefore, the finished product's driven idea (original, having never been done before) is realized as a being something natural to the human mind. Below is an excerpt from greem's statement of purpose, explaining how organically the idea came together. "...I had a vest from my art teacher, who gave it to me because he had two of the same. He did not wear one of them, so he gave it to me. He thought I would wear it so it would be used. However, I did not have many chances to wear it. I also had wool threads, which were left over from my art class project. I imagined these two could be combined to make a bag out of the vest. I sew them together. Now, the bag totally looks like a folded vest, which has a humor. In this way, the vest was reborn as something that I could use again a different form." GREEM