The Weekender – spoons, balloons and being spied on by shop dummies

Date
23 November 2012

This week was Thanksgiving over in the good ole U S of A and so The Weekender decided to make a list of the things it was truly thankful for. Unfortunately after several hours’ meditation on the subject it was left with a piece of paper with the phrase “jacket potatoes” scrawled in one corner, which was just a bit sad. So here’s some things the Weekender is kind of grateful for if you really twisted its arm – 1. Gin (delicious) 2. That lions are either quite rare or in zoos (scared of lions) 3. Table tennis (I’d beat you) 4. Gin (again) and 5. Laser Quest (makes an ace birthday party). Onto this nonsense…

Best of the Site

This week we loved the gorgeous, weird illustrations of Rikka Sormunen, were seriously impressed by the portfolio of Shelter Press and we were wowed every which way from Wednesday by loads and loads of balloons.

Best of Best of The Web

Thanks to BOTW ( as all the cool kids are calling it) we found out why Yellow Submarine had such a massive impact on The Simpsons and Shrek, we enjoyed reading about the creative process of DJ Shadow and we perused Design Week’s list of the 50 best creative studios around (and no, Apple’s not number one)

Best of the Rest

Elsewehere we defy you not to smile at these cloned video animation GIFs courtesy of Colossal, we thought too much about Dads in pants (thanks Creative Review!) and we were pretty surprised to fid out that we might be spied on by mannequins. Yikes!

Tweet of the week

“I wish someone would sort through all the sayings and label the ones that only apply to dogs.”

Good point @NIckDoody – if we had a pound for every time…

Critics of the week

Everyone knows that thanks to the shroud of anonymity prevalent online people are preferred to vent their anger about pretty much anything. But this collection of negative Google reviews of some of the world’s most stupendous sights has to be seen to be believed. Mount Everest is a particular favourite, dismissed simply as “Very bad.”

Humorous Norwegians of the week

With it now just a matter of days until we start being subjected to not just the original Band Aid but its mutant modern incarnation too, kudos to the team behind this Norwegian spoof charity single for Radi-Aid. Purportedly the efforts of a group of African musicians concerned about the Arctic temperatures in the Scandinavian land, it’s a brilliant piece of satire with some lovely touches.

Cutlery-based trance cover of the week

Want to see an old man playing the spoons along to Faithless’ Insomnia? Your wish, my command…

Cartographic shock of the week

Proof that scientists are cool, number 4,561. This week a team from the University of Sydney set out to investigate Sandy Island in the South Pacific as their records indicated that the water depth in the area made land-mass highly unusual. And sure enough – after what I like to imagine was a fairly perplexing boat outing – they discovered that Sandy Island doesn’t exist. Nothing there, even though it’s on Google Maps, a spokesman for whom is quoted as saying: “"The world is a constantly changing place…” So part map service, part cod philosophy…

Time-killing of the week

Four Liverpudlians bored in an airport – understood. Decide to indulge in some horseplay to pass the time – still fine. But how the heck did they get to this? Because this is GENIUS

Now pass me my ping-pong paddle. And the gin…

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About the Author

Rob Alderson

Rob joined It’s Nice That as Online Editor in July 2011 before becoming Editor-in-Chief and working across all editorial projects including itsnicethat.com, Printed Pages, Here and Nicer Tuesdays. Rob left It’s Nice That in June 2015.

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