Lost in translation
Chinglish — poorly translated English — is rampant in China. It’s so prevalent that the government has dispatched teams of bloggers and linguists to clean up signs all over Beijing in the lead-up to the 2008 Olympic Games. The f-word has mysteriously cropped up in many signs, and until now, government officials have been baffled and expats amused. Sinologist, Victor Mair, however, recently announced that he may have found the culprit: a translation program that translates the Chinese ‘gan’, meaning ‘dry’ or ‘to do’ as the most notorious word in the English language.
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Also by GERRY MAK
Ravensblight, an old-school-looking website featuring tons of free internet knick-knacks, has a bunch of cool spapercraft models, including the skull above. Hopefully no one tries to put candles in them.
October posters from Alamo Drafthouse
I wish people gave presents on Halloween rather than Christmas — then I’d have asked someone to get me these awesome posters by Alamo Drafthouse available through Mandotees. Read more
California-based drums-bass-piano trio Topaz Rags may or may not have tumbled out of a desert roadhouse, but their sound evokes the kind of gleefully sinister goings-on you might imagine beneath thrumming bug zappers and a flickering neon glow after the bartender has locked the front door and Bubba has donned his purple cloak.
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Philip Hall studied illustration at Central Saint Martins, where he would often do very quick pictures in the space of minutes. Of his work, he says: ‘I work in a low tech way, which is when I realized that play within my work was very important to me. It’s often the catalyst for me, I find it inspiring, the possibility of what could be. More recently, I have started to do more detailed drawings, as I would like to sharpen my observation skills’. Read more
I had the pleasure of seeing Duran Duran play a few weeks back in the balmy drizzle of New York’s Central Park. I always thought the guys had more cheek than they were ever given credit for. But don’t be fooled! For a band so rooted in the immediacy of disposable pop, they wrote some timeless songs, none more so than The Chauffeur.
Colorful is certainly the word when talking about the work of UK artist Simon Wild. It’s hard to be in anything but an upbeat mood after staring at all the swirling colors and bright shapes for even a minute or so.
In Los Angeles, in the gas guzzling centre of the Universe, BP has enlisted Office dA to embrace the paradoxical task of creating a green petrol station. Read more
Leave it to perennially crunchy Portland, Oregon, to open the world’s first vegan strip club. Read more
Australian designer Mic Eaton has created an innovative line called Material Boy which specializes in over-sized shirts and funky trackpants. Read more
Knuckleheads is a pretty fun little side scrolling game where you’re a pair of Mexican-wrestler-looking things attached to each other by a chain. You swing each other around to move and hit floaty capsule things for points, and you can change the length of the chain to get over various obstacles, but watch out for the bats.
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Hong Kong-based illustrator Man-Tsun draws dark and beautiful painterly images that look like they are straight off a high-end Japanese animated film. Read more
Almanac Market in Philadelphia is slightly pricey, but you definitely get what you pay for. Offering fantastic bread, cheeses, produce, and cured meats such as sopressata and pepperoni, it was a great pit stop when my band played in town, and definitely more economical and tasty than hitting a greasy spoon for road snacks.
1970s and 80s Soviet Union buildings
Cambodian born photographer Frederic Chaubin is the editor of French magazine Citizen K. His photo series on bizarre buildings built in the former Soviet Union during the 1970s and 80s is absolutely fascinating. Read more
Illustrator Timothy Karpinski sews painted paper together to create his images, giving them a classic look. Read more
Our celebrity-saturated culture makes many of us irrationally hateful of the faces we see on our TV screens and magazine pages. Good thing there’s Celebrity PunchOut to let off some of that steam.
Wolfmother. Rock n roll. Mystical lyrics. Heavy riffs. They have a new album out, Cosmic Egg, and we have five copies to giveaway, along with their debut album. To enter, tell us your favorite Wolfmother song and the city you live in. Yo! Two fingered salute. Read more
From an artist selection of t-shirts comes this limited edition David Bray illustrated silkscreened tee, distributed in a vinyl sleeve with a biography of the artist on the back of the sleeve. Every t-shirt is numbered and signed by the artist, and comes in organic American Apparel cotton. We like! Read more
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Ben Rowe said | 5 January, 2008
These are great – Have you guys seen http://engrish.com/