That's How It Happened

Nike's Best In Show event, as part of the Festival of Air, turned out better than I could possibly have expected. The whole of the London sneaker scene turned out at Nike Town to judge the best Nike Air sneakers put up for competition by the Crooked Tongues fraternity. Fraternity is definitely the right word, because there were 300 guys, and about 30 "plus ones". The whole night was a series of huge highlights:

Hanging out with Dave White, celebrity sneaker painter, and discussing the greatness of the 80s Adidas scene in Liverpool.

Catching up with one of my childhood friends, Martina, who now works in house at Nike. I've been bugging her for 18 months for an invite to Nike iD Studio, and she's always insisted that it's an impossible mission. See item 6.

Voting on 200+ pairs of the greatest Nike sneakers ever seen in one place. CT Heads represented with everything from the rarest early 80's deadstock, to the most limited 00's shoes. Totally amazing stuff.

Getting way way drunk at Nike's expense. After the thousands of pounds I've spent on their shoes, it was so nice to get something back for free.

Winning the "Best Sport Specific Other Category", with a pair of DS Nike Dunkle SBs. Really assiduous blog readers may recall the time I came by these uber special shoes, way back in 04.

As a prize, getting to design my own iD Studio pair of Air Max 90's, now called the AM Rufus, which are currently being hand stitched just for me by third world orphans. My garish day-glo dream come true.

Learning that Charlie from Crooked Tongues is a "big fan of my blog". Maybe the beers had gone to his head too, but I couldn't be prouder. The "reach" of this goofy website never ceases to amaze me.

Tags: nike, festivalofair

I haven't been posting because I'm stuck in the middle of an insanely complex site redesign. Despite the wondrousness of the current 3 year old design before you, my html/css/php skillz are practically nil. I've completely overstretched myself with the current plan, and no implementation date is in sight.

While I personally object to finding a Hummer blocking my street, as a kid nothing would have been more awesome than finding a Hummer in my Happy Meal (vaguely hysterical NYT article). The guys at Ronald McHummer, feel rather more strongly about it though. (Previously, ihumpedyourhummer, and FUH2).

Tags: hummer, mcdonalds

Nike's huge Festival of Air 06 exhibit opens tomorrow at Nike Town London. I've entered the pictured "Praline Pony" first edition Nike Air Wovens into the Crooked Tongues, Best In Show sneaker contest, as part of the celebrations. The first edition wovens are limited to 500 pairs, handmade by Vietnamese child labourers in 2001. I'm confident mine are the finest extant pair, and I have the matching uber-rare OG Stussy commemorative tee. I'm confident of a devastating win over the all-Soho trainer otaku.

Tags: nike, festivalofair

For unknown reasons the statisticians who help us out at work are all Mexican. This sign reading "Please do not move this chair! Thank you.", was posted outside their office today, with no chair in view. It was the surreal highlight of my otherwise grindingly real day.

Starbucks / McDs global infographic

hidden image BBC world ads.

Middle East / North African interactive global location.

Tags: maps

On Friday night, listening to Graham Coxon, for the first time in a decade, I got knocked down in a mosh pit. I felt that perhaps I had left an important part of my brain somewhere, somewhere in a field in Cambridgeshire. Unfortunately, sublime though it was, I also lost my car keys, and had to sleep in a tent. Festivals suck; crappy food, seas of mud, and the constant whine of public school rastas inhaling balloons of hippy crack. It's good to be back.

David Foster Wallace visits Wimbledon, finds God, in the form of Federer.(via)

I've posted plenty of DDR videos in the past, but this one is off the frickin hook. Back flips, breakdancing, hand stands, and flawless rhythm. Best. DDR. Ever. (Thanks, Gracey)

Vader is more popular that you can possibly imagine: The Vader Sessions. (Thanks, P Dicky)

T-shirt of the week: Bad grammar makes me [sic].

I squandered half my day trying to boot Windows ME using Parallels on my MacBook. Most of that time was spent hanging on the phone to an Indian call-centre trying to get a working product key. I've been moaning that my MacBook is slower than my old iBook G4 at lots of things, including Office; but compared to the Microsoft user experience, it's like a dream.
I squandered some of the day making minor changes to the Wikipedia Heavy Metal Umlaut page, regarding the gratuitousness of the Röyksopp umlaut; and squandered the rest of it rediscovering the Asteroids clone Maelstrom. I almost failed my first degree on account of Maelstrom, and it's a delight to remember how awesome it is.
Bonus fact of the day: the word "maelstrom" is named for the world's largest whirlpool in Norway, known locally as the Moskstraumen

Tags: maelstrom

And in a similar vein, Store Wars.

The Star Wars Twin Test suggests I have the agreeableness of Palpatine combined with the conscientiousness of Han.

And while I'm riffing Star Wars links, Spud Trooper and Darth Tater have been joined by Artoo Potatoo.

Tags: starwars

Another bowling night, and another brace of big wins for the Pirates. Somehow we racked up maximum points, and shot to the top of the leaderboard. As ever, click to supersize the official match report.

I try not to post too much viral crap, but I do really like Diet Coke, I do love GTA, and this made me laugh out loud.

I managed to ruin my whole week by winning a magnum of Buffalo Trace Bourbon on Monday. Somehow I posted the highest score of the month at All Star Lanes. My hangover on Tuesday had a disruptive effect lasting through Wednesday and Thursday; hence the lack of posts round here. I'm back on labour ward again now, working a 24 hour shift. I'm wearing blue scrubs, and covered in urine and blood and amniotic fluid. I feel like I've delivered half the babies in South London, and that's not such a bad feeling.

The perils of search-and-replace, on flickr

Toy Boat Race

The Rules

1. Build a toy boat (no motor)
2. Bring it to the park on race day
3. Enter that shit in the race
4. Win a prize for winning the race or for building the fanciest boat
5. Go skateboarding or whatever and forget about toy boats and stuff

International toy boating, sponsored by dpmhi, Nike SB, stacks, Girl, and Crownfarmer. Sign me up.

Chicken Noodle Soup (of which the best is right here) is clearly the new My Humps, on YouTube.

Playdoh Perfume (via tsf)

The shocking secrets of quick change artists. (Though I'm actually more shocked that Piers Morgan is trying to be Simon Cowell-lite.)

The annoying Frosties kid is rumoured to have killed himself after being bullied. Mixed emotions on that. However I love this fackin great frosties remix.

Virtual cow mooer.

Other explosive candy combos than DC and Mentoes.

Tags: bowling, pirates

Best domino rally in the history of ever. (Happy bday P Dicky)

Tags: domino

Profile of aNYthing, in the NYT.

Adbusters find out how Nike ate skateboarding.

Great Observer article about LSD blotter art. Most of the images discussed can be seen here.

Rem Koolhaas' Serpentine Pavilion is a transcendent piece of architecture. Last night Blue Velvet was being projected onto a giant screen by the lake, the soundtrack was audible right across the park, and bats were flitting in and out of the light of pavilion, picking off mosquitos. The pavilion was simultaneously absolutely suited to its setting, and utterly ethereal. I think it surpasses the proposed European flag, as his most iconic work.

Tags: koolhaas, serpentine

Peter Marshall: If you find someone lying unconscious in the street, should you do anything?
George Goebel: I'd probably crawl around him I guess.

The sad story of Lonesome George, named for actor George Goebel, who has been the only known example of a Pinta Island Tortoise since 1971.

Scrollable zoomable flash map detailing the plot of Syriana, which has escaped me since I saw it last.

Those other estates, apart from the Fourth Estate, and us the Fifth Estate (whose motto should be: "Unlike the crap you pay to read in the Fourth Estate, this crap is free.")

There was a young man with a Segway,
Who used it to play robo-croquet.
Though his shots were world class,
His wheels tore up the grass,
So his rivals considered him a plagway.

(Prompted by John Paul Ghetto who commented: "Medieval Europe wasn't ravaged by the plagway, now, was it.")

Only 5 years after their launch in Japan, cubic watermelons are coming to the UK.

Amazing glossary of Jeopardy! slang, including explanations of the most complicated "Prisoner's Dilemma"-type scoring problems.

George Saunders travelogue, hilariously hamming up his US-centric experiences while in the UK.

I'm adding Wax Banks to my list of daily reads. Well written mini-essays about books and pop-culture, that remind me of DFW.

Bomb of Brave Boy, a bomberman-rpg, that proves that japanese game naming problems haven't improved much since Donkey Kong.

If you fancy a Gumball 3000 style race across Europe, but don't like the unabashed capitalist sheen of it, check out the Kill Cancer Death Rally. Sub-£100 cars racing to BCN from LDN, on September 28th, for Cancer Research.

Almost 3 years ago, I first spotted a misspelling of "segway" for "segue". As I speculated then, this error has become widespread since the launch of the Segway HT. I am currently slogging my way through Gravity's Rainbow, which is often suggested as the greatest novel of the 20th century. It's certainly not an easy read. Strangely though on page 70 of my edition, Pynchon writes: "But segway into the Roxbury hillside."
There are only three possibilities to explain this.

1. Pynchon writing in 1973, was thinking about the Segway HT, and later gave the idea and the name to Dean Kamen. Highly implausible.
2. "Segway" is an acceptable variant of "segue". This doesn't seem to be true either. Since Pynchon has used it, sometime soon the OED ought to pick it up though.
3. It is a genuine error on the part of Pynchon, and it has survived proof reading for 30 years.

The logical answer is thus that no-one has ever really bothered to read Gravity's Rainbow before, at least not in my edition. The bunch of pseuds that run the searchable web guide to GR don't seem to have picked up on this anomaly. I feel smug and disappointed all at once.

Update: Kind readers Wax Banks and Andrew point out that this is just a typical example of Pynchon word play. I guess a career in literary scholarship doesn't beckon for me after all. Bonus link: a review of Amazon reviews of GR.

Tags: pynchon, segway

Twice a year, on the first Wednesday of each August and February, half the junior doctors in the NHS change jobs. Medical students graduate to housejobs, housemen become senior house men, and senior house men rotate around to different specialties. Folk wisdom has it, that you should never ever visit a hospital on that day. Perversely though, in our new risk managed, health 'n' safety culture, that day (today) has become one of the safest days to be disease-stricken. All our most junior doctors are spending today and tomorrow being inducted into their new jobs. They are busy learning where the fire escapes are, how to lift the immobile without sustaining back injury, and how to order a panopoly of different investigations. In their place the clinical work is being performed by registrars, consultants, and experienced antipodean locums, saving up for their plane fare home. So the take home message is that if you're feeling even slightly ill, make your trip to A&E tonight or tomorrow; because by Friday every NHS hospital will be a vision of chaotic hell, featuring "horrible despair, hatred of God, vile words, curses and blasphemies".
PS That's a stethoscope added to the day of the dead skeleton, in what is possibly my first ever Photoshop work on this blog.

Tags: nhs, hell

I have 5 precious Sneakerplay invites to give away. It's the most exclusive sneaker club in the world, and this is the only way to get in. To win an invite, leave a comment in 50 words or less, telling me what your all-time favourite sneaker is and why.

Tags: sneakerplay, invites

Archie the tortoise is turning out to be the best pet ever. He's endlessly cute, but more demanding than I expected. He needs daily baths, and he likes certain foods: roses, cuttlefish and chicory. I've started to miss him when I'm at work, so I've set up a dedicated tortoise cam. To save bandwidth the image above is refreshed only every 10 minutes. However through the wonders of Evocam, I have access to live video of Archie's antics, whenever I want to check up on him.

Tags: archie, webcam,

Not to be outdone by Sam (see below), I gave our team photo the Comic Life treatment. (Click to expand). The full results are now up at All Star. The Pirates are facing stiff competition from the Balearic Rollers, who posted excellent scores.

Tags: pinpirates, bowling,