Hope. Phillip Toledano Photography.   {via art nudes}

Miss America and Nude Miss America

 People of all ages would stream to local carnivals, a longed-for form of entertainment, to play games of chance hoping to win a carnival chalk prize of their choice to take home. Harmless as this seemed, the evocative qualities in these stereotypical figures only reinforced the American population's deepest roots toward gender roles for women, men, race bias, and fantasy. Eric Renner's Pinhole photos of Carnival Chalk

Mae West

Carmen Amaya

via rashomon

Rube Goldberg gets his think-tank working and evolves the simplified pencil-sharpener.

    Open window (A) and fly kite (B).  String (C) lifts small door (D) allowing moths (E) to escape and eat red flannel shirt (F).   As weight of shirt becomes less, shoe (G) steps on switch (H) which heats electric iron (I) and burns hole in pants (J).   Smoke (K) enters hole in tree (L), smoking out opossum (M) which jumps into basket (N), pulling rope (O) and lifting cage (P), allowing woodpecker (Q) to chew wood from pencil (R), exposing lead.  Emergency knife (S) is always handy in case opossum or the woodpecker gets sick and can't work.

* If you haven't yet seen "The Cog", the 2003 Honda Accord ad featuring an incredibly complex Rube Goldberg machine assembled entirely out of Accord parts, you must take the opportunity to do so now. Costing millions to produce, and requiring over 600 takes, the spot uses no cgi -- the entire setup is real, and had to be rebuilt every time something went wrong. More details on the ad can be found on Snopes.com. It's absolutely unbelievable.

via Blue Tea

So i'm an Animated Artist. (what ever that means..)

Animated Artist

This is the result i got after taking this originaly designed self-testing technique..Check the Personal DNA
(they also allow sharing and viewing results of others -probably they have *community* concept as so many other new-born sites) via sapphosbreathing

(A swift change from my previous posts today, for tonight began Israel Independence Day celebration)

The solution to a mid-life crisis Or Better: "Join the Circus!"

Only at two in the morning can "Start a blog" look like the solution to a mid-life crisis. Greg Knauss (via)

Circus, what I love about it is the interval - between the glory and shinning outfits and the dark paths and side ways stretching between the tents, the corners that are not lightened by the huge light bulbs.

I'm fascinated by this vagabond* people and their make believe life...something about it has a mysterious chemistry interests, and the dark side is no less fascinating then the exposed one..maybe it has to do with childhood memories, of childhood movies and books...

David Redhouse's Photo Album

 
Lawrence Gipe The Caberet Series #4 monoprint

"For in places such as this there is something despising. In a fundamental and necessary way.
The sawdust on the lane, the smell of animal droppings, the dust of the dome of the worn out tent, the mold of the sweat on its panel. It is important that it will be a closed space: the arena cycle, the clothed sky, the banisters. The Circus defines space to it self. A world that does not mixed into the rest of the universe. in a way the circus define it self AS the human world."

Lawrence Gipe The Caberet Series #3 monoprint

" It is about creating a bubble of dreams inside this limited space. In a very elementary way, even a very foolish way, or even vulgar: Sequins, glass, sparkling things. shiny as if to resemble...a faked splendor, a faked magnificence, a sort of affected easygoing feeling, a sort of artificial  joy on a foundation of wretched sorrow. That's what makes the Circus touching,  exemplary, a simple model but human: to build ridiculous dreams inside the filth and the mud, but with persistence...You have to find so your way to the tent, to make the queue. to pay expensively for the discomfort, the erosion, the stench. To be sited uncomfortably for a long time "

  
Lawrence Gipe Painting No. 4 from Zirkus and Varieté h 96 w 124"
oil on polyflex  2006 bentley gallery

 "you will over come easily all those discomforts. you will be convinced to escape from the distress, to follow the acrobat's weightlessness, the jugglers competence  . You will be able to dream of humanity full of crystal bubbles, amputated by floodlights, smiling with trumpet blasts, happy with the cotton candy.  You will almost think that the people on stage are beautiful, brave, appropriate, saturated by good virtues, capable of heroic deeds, bigger then life, their body shines as if they were  gods, and they are so flexible, quick, light, fluffy. you will float for a while in this sequin - bubble.

And then, and that is most important, most touching, something get screwed up.  a ball is falling, a hook is dropped, a swing is stuck. you remark that  the beautiful  acrobat got a hole in her  outfit. you see all of sudden some thing pitiful. A pride that was humiliated till oppression. An earthy dream, that is to say stained, more or less wounded.  embarrassing  failure. an imagery of human obstinacy. you will have to get back to the circus again and again."   

 
Dean Allen  

World peace

Cloak of invisibility

Bottomless margarita

Pegasus unicorn

Fifteen minutes with Jesus (or Bono)

Magic credit card

Bionic robot arm

more LISTS via mcsweeneys

Via realitycarnival

Tullio Pericoli

Design Anarchy

 
Via purselipsquarejaw