COD rage

Lots of research has been undertaken as to whether violent computer games encourage people to behave violently in real life. The scientists should stop wasting their time. Of course it does. Try telling me the fella with the funny accent (Scottish) in this shirty online exchange has never got so angry at his own Call of Duty hopelessness that he put his hand through a patio door. Yeah right.

Newsweek: Diana would have remarried twice and had 10 million Twitter followers

In the run-up to what would have been Princess Diana's 50th birthday this Friday you, like ArchBlog, have doubtless been wondering endlessly about what she would have got up to in the last nine years had she not died.

Thankfully, Newsweek editor Tina Brown has the inside track. She's practically got a red phone to the dead sleb society. For Newsweek's Diana at 50 issue - which tastelessly features a vom-inducing cover shot of Diana photoshopped to look 50 walking alongside Kate Middleton (see above) - Brown has spelled out how it would have panned out for her old mate. Talk about killing her (again) with kindness:

“Still great-looking: that’s a given … Fashionwise, Diana would have gone the J.Crew and Galliano route à la Michelle Obama, always knowing how to mix the casual with the glam. There is no doubt she would have kept her chin taut with strategic Botox shots and her bare arms buff from the gym. Remarriage? At least two, I suspect, on both sides of the Atlantic. Always so professional herself, she would have soon grown exasperated with Dodi Al-Fayed’s hopeless unreliability. After the breakup I see her moving to her favorite city, New York, spending a few cocooned years safely married to a super-rich hedge-fund guy who could provide her with what she called ‘all the toys’: the plane, the private island, the security detail. Gliding sleekly into her 40s, her romantic taste would have moved to men of power over boys of play. She’d have tired of the hedge-fund guy and drifted into undercover trysts with someone more exciting -a high-mindedly horny late-night talk-show host, or a globe-trotting French finance wizard destined for the Élysée Palace … Politically, Diana would have been very much at home with David Cameron and all the old Etonians who now run Britain … In the world disasters of the last few years -9/11, the tsunamis, the Pakistan earthquake, Hurricane Katrina -you know Diana would have been first at the scene in a hard hat with a camera crew (and, by now, 10 million followers on Twitter).”

Read all the reax over at The Periscope Post.

Post Overalls grey bud shorts

I'm pretty much positive these are the nicest shorts I've ever clapped eyes on:

Here's some blurb on Post Overalls:

"POST O’ALLS / POST OVERALLS has been well received by diverse range of customers since their debut in 1993. The idea was to create vintage-inspired but practically new work clothes that can match with our love - superbly detailed and beautifully constructed vintage pieces.

The first collection displayed 1940s styled railroad jacket in Polar Fleece and earlier pullover style work shirt in heavy weight gingham chambray among other obscure yet timeless styles.

Since its inception, POST O’ALLS’ idea has been remain unchanged-Authentic in details and constructions, eclectic in fabrications with some extra ideas and characters built in, and each garment is made in U.S.A.

POST O’ALLS has its primary design idea deeply rooted in vintage work clothes and other functional garments-such as military outfits and outdoor garments-which are all evolved from work wear platform.

Takeshi Ohfuchi, the designer, has huge respect towards anonymous American vintage work clothes designs, especially from 1920~30s which he considers “the very best”- a great marriage of old-world craftsmanship and then emerging Machine Age inspired American industrial design. He believes many of the great American original designs have emerged and flourished in that era.

By wearing and collecting these vintage pieces daily since early 1980s, he became naturally aware of beauty in their patterns and constructions, unmistakable designs and unique fabrications -the elements that make those vintage pieces ultra cool and eternal. Those essences were all thrown into the manufacturing of POST O’ALLS."

Available from The Hideout for a steep £125

Roller Boogie

I've never been much into roller-skating*. Until I saw this:

*I can't roller-skate and have never wanted to learn.

Hot in Japan: Bagel head look

Per the Lovelyish blog, the latest fash fad to hits the streets (and faces) of Tokyo is saline forehead injections. Here's what the hip young things are getting up to when they are not queueing up outside A Bathing Ape:

"Apparently, the newest trend in Tokyo is to inject saline into your forehead in order to achieve 'the bagel head' look. It looks exactly like it sounds—like a huge bagel, or a donut, sticking out of your forehead. The people who do this spend hours dripping saline into their skin while pressing down to keep the center from swelling. Voila! A bagel on your face! After a couple hours the skin goes back to normal, but, still, it seems all too bizarre. I've always appreciated the youth of Tokyo's unique sense of style and ability to try crazy things but this is taking it to a whole new level! What do you think of the 'Bagel Head?' Do you find it scary or bold fashion statement?"

ArchBlog thinks it is a and b - boldly scary.

Thanks to wifey @ HanPicked (see blogroll) for the tip-off

Chubby-size clothes (for chubbies)

Back in the fifties, ad men cut straight to the chase. No-one dared dream up anything as wacky as gorillas drumming to sell chocolate bars. If the target audience was chubby gals they just went right ahead and marketed directly to 'chubbies':

Image via Prog Porn (see my blogroll)

Ai Weiwei out in time for free sarnie, toys

Via Prog Porn

For those not familiar with Ai Weiwei's work, here's some ancient Chinese pottery re-mixed by the outspoken maverick:

Via Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish

Armando Iannucci jumps on Steve Coogan's Baby Cow

Great news just in for anyone out there who likes watching good telly and laughing.
Armando 'The Thick of It' Iannucci has joined Steve Coogan's production company Baby Cow. Here's the deets from Steve Clarke, my mate and the UK's number one TV biz reporter:

British satirist Armando Iannucci has been tapped by Steve Coogan's production company Baby Cow as its first creative director.
The move reunites the who pair co-wrote cult 1990s spoof yakker "Knowing Me, Knowing You With Alan Partridge," starring Coogan as the gauche host.

Iannucci will work alongside Coogan and Baby Cow co-owner Henry Normal. He will oversee a slate that includes comedies "Gavin and Stacey," "Nighty Night," "The Shadow Line," "The Trip" and "The Mighty Boosh."

Iannucci said, "I want to make Baby Cow the place the next generation of comedy writers and performers head to first; a place where they know they'll be encouraged and stimulated going forward." Coogan added, "Despite his inherent Scottishness, over the last 20 years I have been inspired by and collaborated with Armando Iannucci. His joining Baby Cow builds on that. Armando has uncynically always created work he believes in. That's what Baby Cow is about."

Iannucci's biggest hit is BBC skein "The Thick of It," a satire based on the Labour Party's spin machine, which is set for a fourth season this year. Spinoff feature "In the Loop" was released in 2009. Iannucci is also working on HBO's political satire "Veep," starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

Be nice to African Grey parrots

Because Gawker suggests that they are the species "most likely to conquer and enslave the human race." The grounds? Research revealed in New Scientist reveals (deets below) they have the capacity to reason, something previously thought only only us (humans), chimps and gorillas were able to do.
"Each parrot watched a researcher hide a walnut under one opaque cup and a seed under another. Next the researcher hid the cups behind a screen, removed one of the treats and showed the bird which one had been taken. Finally, the screen was removed to see if the parrot could work out which treat must remain, and under which cup it must be."
One of the parrots chose correctly 23 times out of 30. The rest were dunces. But still. And they can fly. Unlike us, chimps or gorillas.

Photo credit: Badruddeen

The Devil's Double update - poster & trailer

This is the sort of thing Tutankhamen would find a little OTT, a touch blingy:

And here's the official UK trailer:


The film screened yesterday at the Los Angeles Film Fest.Click here for an interview with director Lee Tamahori. Here's what he said about the film's timeliness: "this Arab Spring has just erupted around [the release of] this picture and there's no doubt that by the time it comes out in August that the parallels between the rotten regime in Libya and other rotten regimes right across the Middle East, it's going to have some sort of relevance, even though it's dated by 20 years."

Floating doctors float on

These floating doctors folk are super. The spend their time floating around beautiful islands chillaxing and vaguely looking for people with gross, made-for-TV injuries. Like badly broken arms. When they find 'patients' they make a little online video and then leave to do a few push-ups and work on their tans on the boat.

Via Current

Dumb clever invention: Stuxnet

Something like this is how oh-so-clever humans are going to wipe themselves out. Even the woolly mammoths wouldn't have been stupid enough to dream up a weopon made purely of code which uses 20 'zero days.' I've off to hide under the bed for the rest of Monday.

Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Computer Virus from Patrick Clair on Vimeo.

Di bus can swim!

Having spent a Jamaican holiday rained in @ Jakes, Treasure Beach, due to flooded roads at Black River, I have a particular soft spot for this catchy 'twanging' number:

Via TT's Fezbuk

Heavy metal violinist smashes it

Most busking is pretty lame. Buskers rarely seem to inject much passion or energy into their perfomances. Then there is this ... a heavy metal violinist feeling Depeche Mode. It is not lame. It positively rocks!

Via Milo's killer Kanye East blog

Swimming trunks

Orlebar Brown make awesome (if horrendously over-priced) swimming trunks. Their best short is the bulldog model. They are called a bridge short, which I think means they are suitable to wear on the beach (you'd hope so) but are also smart enough to wear for lunch at the beach bar. If I had £150 to splash (geddit?) on swimmers, I'd go for these Eley Kishimoto flash print bad boys.

Andy Slaughter: Got my vote

Labour MP Andy Slaughter is my kind of MP. He has a killer second name and yesterday he tabled an Early Day Motion (EDM) congratulating Queen’s Park Rangers on winning the English Football League Championship and gaining promotion to the Premiership.

"That this House congratulates Queen's Park Rangers Football Club on winning the Championship and being promoted to the Premier League; acknowledges the skill, dedication and effort of Neil Warnock, his management team and players and the enthusiasm and loyalty of QPR fans worldwide; and looks forward to the return of Premiership football to Shepherds Bush and the continuation of the wonderful contribution the club makes to the local community through the activities of its outreach team, QPR in the Community Trust".

Hopefully the coalition government will sit up and take notice and imprison Flavio 'boutique club' Briatore for crimes against qummanity (coinage).

Via The Shepherd's Bush blog

'Arab Scarface' The Devil's Double coming soon ...

In the run-up to the release of my dad's film "The Devil's Double," an Iraq-set gangster thriller starring Dominic Cooper as both Uday Hussein and his body double Latif Yahia, ArchBlog is going to engage in some shameless tub-thumping. HanPicked & I saw it at the Berlin International Film Festival back in February and it went down a treat. While I'm obvs biased, the critics also dug it, especially at Sundance, where it was dubbed an “Arab Scarface” by Screen International and Yen Yamato of Movieline called it the “guiltiest thrill” of the festival. The Wrap described it as “Three Kings meets Scarface meets Goodfellas.”

Much of the buzz surrounding the Lee Tamahori-directed film is about Cooper's breakout role. Variety described it as “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for character actor Dominic Cooper (usually relegated to dreamy supporting parts)” as it “allows the Brit thesp to tackle two juicy, red-meat roles, playing opposite ends of the moral spectrum as both Latif and Uday – often in the same shot. In fact, Double’s seamless split-screen work makes The Social Network’s high-tech twinning effects look as old-fashioned as Friendster.” “In utter command of both roles, Cooper differentiates between the two beautifully, suggesting Latif’s necessarily restrained natural cockiness and seething resentment at his lot in life while letting out all the stops as the mercurial Uday,” praised The Hollywood Reporter.

Here are a selection of promo images recently released. The top two were given as exclusives to www.cinemablend.com





In coming days, I'll post the official trailer and some more images.

Girls who park in cars are not really popular. Not even with the boys they park with.

How to be 'liked' in the pre-Fezbuk age. 1947 to be precise.

One of the best examples of post-World War II social guidance films, with examples of 'good' and 'bad' girls, proper and improper dating etiquette, courtesy to parents, and an analysis of what makes some people popular and others not.

Nepalese hippie ogre booties

If your mum or dad runs a shop which sells any or all of the following - crystals, joss sticks, erotic prints of women with knives, candles shaped like King Arthur - then this is what you are getting for Christmas: Woolenstocks, handmade booties for children from Nepal.


Via the always-ace HanPicked blog
Photo credit: Woolenstocks

One with everything (the joke that never was)

You're an unknown Aussie anchorman. You get a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to interview the Dalai Lama. You decide to tell a joke. It's a bad decision. (Later you blame the Dalai Lama for not knowing what pizza is)

Whilst on the subject of pizza ...

Baby hedgehogs enjoying bath-time

Like baby hedgehogs?
Congratulations ... you are not a serial killer. Or a (heartless) robot.
These pictures of hedgies being bathed by their owners come from www.funlobby.com They are quite possibly the cutest thing e v e r.

Surfing by starlight (this is living)

Some surfers actually have jobs. But it doesn't mean they are not still surfers. They just hang ten at night:

Nightsurf from Iker Elorrieta on Vimeo.

Via Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish blog

SHOCK! HORROR! Ed Miliband's indecisiveness in the newsagent

I'm no big fan of Ed Miliband and, like many others, reckon his older brother would have done a better job at widening those fissures in the Coalition. That said, the guy has only been in the job eight months so it's a little unfair to declare him a failure as Labour leader just yet.

Not that that's stopped The Mail on Sunday. Yesterday they insisting that Ed is on borrowed time and reporting that some shadow cabinet members have 'lost all confidence' in him. And the paper's pop at Ed was not limited to mutterings from unnamed sources. No, the paper cherry-picked some observations from Ed: The Milibands And The Making Of A Labour Leader by Mehdi Hasan and James Macintyre (which they are publishing in extracts) to prove he is a complete and utter creep. Here's the lamest example:

"In their book, Ed: The Milibands And The Making Of A Labour Leader, Mehdi Hasan and James Macintyre, say Ed blames his brother’s team for spreading his nicknames Red Ed and Forrest Gump. It paints a less-than-flattering portrait of the young Ed, saying he was a ‘nasal, dull’ youth and a ‘very unusual student’ who had no girlfriends in his four years at Oxford and Harvard universities. It observes witheringly that he did not drink or take drugs at college – but ‘agonised over which chocolate bars to buy’."

Call me old-fashioned but, for me, agonising over which chocolate bar to buy does not make a person a bad person and/or politician. (Mine's a Whisper BTW)

Original Kavatza tobacco pouch

This one's for all my smokers ... a sophisticated outback leathers pouch for your (wacky or not) baccy.

Via Selectism

Ugandan pastor doesn't dig anal licking, fisting

Uganda's opposition to homosexuality is well documented. It's been in the news a lot of late. What hasn't been reported much is what ordinary Ugandans are being told about homosexuality by some of their more irresponsible religious and political leaders.

Here's what a spokesperson (and pastor) representing the national taskforce against homosexuality in Uganda has to say about "what homosexuals do in the privacy of their bedroom." He has undertaken his own 'research' and found that homosexuals "eat the poo-poo" "like ice cream" during "anal licking." He also notes that anal fisting (which homosexuals practise) is "so painful that they (homosexuals) have to take drugs, but they enjoy it (the drugs)." If it wasn't real, you'd laugh at the absurdity ...

Via Too Bea blog

Viberg low tops for Leffot

New York shoe seller Leffot has teamed up with The Viberg Boot Co. of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada to make these killer low top boots. They are made with Horween Chromexcel leathers (whatever that is). Leffot describe them as "some gnarly freakin’ bad boys." I can only agree.

I'm just not ready honey

WHEN IT COMES TO MARRIAGE PROPOSALS THIS IS THE OPPOSITE OF A SLAM DUNK:

Via Henry D&G (Fezbuk)

Ham dress

Anything Lady Blah Blah can do, this ghetto queen can do better:

Via Shux

Shepherd’s Bush: a grey, malodorous, overpopulated district, the opposite of its name, in west London.

Writing in the Financial Times, Paul Theroux wrote about places with evocative names which are "disappointing." ArchBlog's very own Shepherd's Bush got a mention:

"A place name can bewitch the traveller. The name Singapore cast a spell on me until I lived there for three years in the 1960s without air conditioning. In Remote People, Evelyn Waugh talks about the deception of names. “How wrong I was, as things turned out,” he says, “in all my preconceived notions about this journey. Zanzibar and the Congo, names pregnant with romantic suggestion, gave me nothing, while the places I found most full of interest were those I expected to detest – Kenya and Aden.” Here are some place names that have misled the credulous traveller

Shepherd’s Bush: a grey, malodorous, overpopulated district, the opposite of its name, in west London. The traveller not wise to the truth of this squints and mutters, “Where is it?”, while gazing at the greasy cafés, kebab shops, Australian mega-pubs, cut-price emporiums and honking traffic."

George Guest Hillside backpack

This duck canvas backpack from Boston-based brand George Guest is shaped like a pear. That's the main reason I like it. The general sturdiness (see detail) also makes it a winner.

Via Selectism.

Gugal Fezbuk

DP underscore the dangers of living your life online. Is following someone really that normal? Is there nothing you can't like?

Via Fezbuk (where else)

Paedo game show

UPDATE: This just in from an ArchBlog reader:

jesus...thats incredible...so similar to this brass eye clip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CBgIxA2umM&feature=related

This clip from vintage Canadian game show "Just Like Mom" defies belief. The host seems to actually be an active, predatory paedo. That or this viral vid is a fake dreamt up by someone like Chris Morris.

Via Sketch supremo Jez-Muffin

Nicked, the musical

A mate of Bea Hodgkin, CEO of the blog Too Bea, stars as Cameron in this catchy number from the musical Nicked. It's well worth watching if only for the bit where Ed Miliband spits dope lyrics on a Boris bike (around the 2 minute mark)

Via HanPicked

Blue Valentine

Can't remember if I've already blogged this trailer. Wotevs. If you've not seen the movie, you really should check it out. It's both romantic and real. Rare.

Too many headers?

Uh-oh, Merse has been trying out words again: