mini-epiphany: when I don’t have anything decent to post in terms of 2000+ word articles/essays, instead of abandoning my blog to intermittent decrepitude, I shall post interesting artsy fartsy stuff.
Check this out! I’ve never seen anything quite like this before. Italian street artist BLU canvases a neighborhood in graffiti (which I am not a fan of), but turns the graffiti into an animation which spans many city blocks — one word: amazing.
Which way is the babe spinning? Supposedly, if she is turning right then your right brain hemisphere is dominant; if she is turning left, your left hemisphere is working. Very few people can see her turn both ways!
…pretty mesmerizing once you actually witness the change of spin right in front of your eyes because initially it sounds impossible to even conceive of her spinning in the opposite direction. What an amazing subtle optical illusion!
If you just don’t get it, keep staring at the page, perhaps look away for a second and focus on it again. Do not leave this page until you notice it: this is one of the best mind tricks I have ever seen!
Alright, so I’m not the most outspoken Albanian patriot. But I’ve seen some radically fugly Albanian t-shirts out there, none of which I would ever wear no matter how gung-ho I was about the land of the eagles. So I put up these designs on Cafepress, but no one bought! I guess my compatriots shall unapologetically continue to show their love for country with incredibly tacky shirts.
Pretty damn cool, huh? Inverting the color scheme and making the eagle into a heart, though I must admit she now looks like some sort of mutant chicken.
Such a rarity for music as esoteric as Albanian Pop to be universally enjoyable even by foreigners who have no idea what the lyrics mean. It’s now hard to fully recover just how isolated communist Albania was in those days. Big Brother was busy sanitizing almost every aspect of the culture, relentlessly screening out any hints of decadent bourgeois Western influence. Yet these songs clearly evoke sounds from the American music scene of the early 20th century. I have no idea how this amazing music managed to make it out to the public. “Naten Vone” is probably my favorite song. In fact, I recommend listening to the album backwards. Enjoy!
Vaçe Zela has a flawless voice! …And isn’t it eerie how she could be Halle Berry’s white twin in that album cover?
