The Weekender: Featuring musical beers and Leo DiCaprio - welcome to your weekly fun package!

Date
6 June 2014

What’s happened today, you ask? Well, a live quail chick has hatched from what was thought to be a chicken’s egg, a Kim Kardashian lookalike has taken over as head of a Mexican drug cartel, a poodle wore trainers and, oh yeah, we brought you our weekly fun-package, the Weekender, with a montage of Leo DiCaprio freaking out and an Mmmbop reference. Life’s just like that though, isn’t it? You’ve got to take the highs with the lows. Can’t you tell me who will still care? No you can’t, ‘cause you don’t know. Yes, let’s get on with it, shall we.

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Maciek Pozoga: Untitled

– Ace filmmaker Andrew Telling told us why Until the Quiet Comes, by Kahlil Joseph for Flying Lotus is his favourite music video.

– Kiasmos is the combined efforts of our favourite composer Ólafur Arnalds, and Bloodgroup mastermind Janus Rasmussen, and they made a first-rate Friday Mixtape for us!

– Our opinion piece this week saw Nat Hunter from the Royal Society of Encouragement of the Arts praise design awards for looking beyond the aesthetically pleasing

– The very brilliant Owen Gildersleeve gave us a whistlestop tour of his favourite books. Unsurprisingly, they were great.


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Martha Ellen Smith: Flash sheet

James Cartwright

I’m not brave enough to ever get a tattoo. I hate needles, have a low pain threshold and am much too fickle to ever get an image permanently emblazoned on my skin. But if I were brave (or cool) enough, this is the girl I’d go to. Martha Smith, an apprentice tattoo artist in London. She’s just started to put her work up on this Tumblr and as far as I’m concerned it’s a cut above the rest. I’m still too scared though…

Rebecca Fulleylove

I LOVE Leonardo DiCaprio, he is so dreamy and good, but in his films he does get sad and angry an awful lot. Thankfully someone has thoughtfully put these “freak outs” into montage form, and who doesn’t love a montage? No one, that’s right. It’s a wonder how Leo’s vocal chords have lasted the years, because his shriek is unleashed A LOT in his body of work. Yes this video is two years old and yes it desperately needs updating but for now this will have to suffice. Leo, you so crazy.

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Hanson: Mmmhop

Rob Alderson

I don’t like to show off but I went on a plane this week and stumbled across a tiny paragraph about bands that brew their own beer. To be honest I wasn’t even that interested, merely killing time before the arrival of a sweet or savoury snack, but then in the very last line I spotted something I will never enjoy. Long-haired literal band of brothers Hanson have their own ale, and it’s called, glory be, Mmmhops. It gets better though, you get a free song with every bottle and the promo line is “Beer + Music = Awesome.” Can’t argue with that kind of maths.

Madeleine Morley

This inky extract from a John and Faith Hubley animation is all about hidden fears and the faces that we put on to cover up our emotions. It’s from their masterpiece Everybody Rides the Carousel, which is based on the writings of psychoanalyst Erik Erikson. This particular snippet is from stage six, or what Erikson calls the Intimacy vs. Isolation stage, and Meryl Streep is the brilliant voice of the fearful young woman whose masked face becomes blotted with distress and worry. A lovely animation made of faded, lapping watercolours the texture of melting caramel.

Maisie Skidmore

If there’s anything positive to come from the very sad news of Maya Angelou’s passing earlier this week, it’s that the whole world has been remembering her unparalleled brilliance, resulting in thousands of tributes to her reminding us of just how incredible a woman and a poet she was.

This is one of my favourites; a letter she wrote aged 78, giving advice to her younger self. In the introduction, Letters of Note explain that she left her childhood home alone aged 17 with her newborn son in her arms and yet went on to achieve more than many more women, or poets, ever would. So I feel confident that she’s one of the very best women to take advice from, in scrawling down a quote from her letter to stick on my fridge: “Don’t let anybody raise you–you’ve been raised.”

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About the Author

Maisie Skidmore

Maisie joined It’s Nice That fresh out of university in the summer of 2013 as an intern before joining full time as an Assistant Editor. Maisie left It’s Nice That in July 2015.

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