Category: Art

The Tale of Mycroft and Stocking

June 25, 2014

Have you heard of Avalon Island? If not, then you’re missing out because a diverse group of citizens is really making it an interesting place to live.

That’s the latest census shot. Take a close look at the front row. There are some familiar faces there! There’s a dude that looks like me, a girl that looks like KLS, and people that look like Adam, Bernard and Florence. Very weird place, Avalon is. You’ll also note a diverse range of other citizens including Einstein, David Bowie, Ali G and even Admiral Ackbar. What an island!!

The islanders have many talents, and I’m particularly interested in their musical abilities. It didn’t take long for instance for Florry and Severus Snape (who must have moved here from Hogwarts) to form a band and start recording techno music. I present the first single by ‘Dark Artists’ named Operation Robodachi:

Now that’s talent! And not only can Florry sing, but she’s also a yoga savant!

But let’s get to the matter at hand, which is a chronologue of a recent ultra-dramatic event that occured on Avalon.

Meet Stocking (of Panty & Stocking fame), here shown in one of her daily jobs as a newsreader:

Cute isn’t she? Anyway she came to me and said she had a mad crush on Mycroft (the guy that looks like Adam). I was not surprised by this, since I had already seen the latest poll of all the girls on the island:

Woah, there’s something about those top three guys that just get the female hearts fluttering! I wonder what it could be?

Anyway, I told Stocking to go for it. “Be cute”, I said, “and confess to Mycroft on the beach!”. And she did…

He was silent for a moment… and then he said…

OMG!!! He spurned her! Or, in her own words:

Poor stocking.

So what happened? Why was such a cute girl rejected by the islands most eligible bachelor? Well the answer is quite simply really. Mycroft has no time for love, since he has sold his soul to rock-and-roll. Behold, the debut single of the new Avalon metal trio The Three Kings:

OMG what talent! Could pop princess Florry have competition for the Avalon charts? And what does she think of the Mycroft x Stocking drama? When asked, her only response was:

The Met

May 25, 2014

That’s a view of the city from Central Park. We were on our way to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is one of the worlds foremost art museums. I’d never been, and KLS couldn’t remember ever being, and after today we can hardly believe it took us so long!

That’s a Van Gogh, one of a roomful, itself a single room in the modern French section which included many paintings from all the masters. It was mind boggling, and you could spend half a day here alone! But this was only a tiny part of the museums collection of two million items.

They have Asian art, including an entire calligraphy section:

American art including many Tiffany windows:

An incredible collection of arms and armour:

A massive Egyptian section including an entire temple (‘The Temple of Dendur’) that was transported from Egypt and is now displayed in a massive hall:

They have ancient roman sculpture (SO much of it!):

Collections of antique furniture:

Ancient Indian art:

And more, and more, and so much more. We spent five hours at the Met, and maybe saw 25% of the collection. You could spend many days here if you wanted to see everything!

Oh and the cafeteria was quite good!

As I said yesterday, the city is crazy popular this weekend and The Met was no exception. Amongst this crowd of art appreciators was an actual artist:

He was very good!

So what were our favourites? We were both big fans of the hyper-realistic oil paintings, such as this one by Jean Leon Gerome that was painted over 150 years ago:

The paintings are displayed in a way that let’s you get very close to them. In the piece above, we just couldn’t see brush strokes. It was a work of mind-boggling talent!

I also very much liked the decorative armour, including this piece that would look right at home on the pages of the manga Berserk:

But my absolute favourite was this piece, named Springtime:

I liked this so much I bought a poster of it and will frame it. The face of the girl stole my heart 😉

The Met is incredible. Go see it; you won’t be disappointed!

Master Of Puzzles

May 8, 2014

It’s time I revealed another of my secret skills: Puzzle Master!

But I’m not one of those half-men that only solves puzzles. No my friends, I have now become adept at creating puzzles. My brain-twisters will be a challenge for all non-genii, and should provide endless hours of entertainment to those that cannot count themselves among the hallowed brethren of the puzzle savants.

Curious to test and see where you rank in the world of puzzlers? Try this one first (you can print the full-sized version):

Good luck working out what that is without finishing it!

But of course I know there are some real smart alecks reading this blog, and I’m sure one or two of you may even be able to finish the above without more than 3 or 4 mistakes. Lest your heads swell, I’ve decided to present you with another of my creations to show you just how lofty the halls of the Gods Of Puzzling are…

And so! One of my greatest creations: a ‘god tier‘ difficulty (and quite positively Laytonesque) Picross for you to solve:

Print it and solve it! Send me a photo of the completed puzzle for a mystery prize! (If you don’t know how to solve Picross puzzles, read this)

Good luck 🙂

Robot Claw