Crank up the bass on your mini hi-fi system, it's the Weekender!

Date
26 June 2015

If the Weekender was to create a soundtrack it wouldn’t have any of those cool jams the kids listen to these days. It would be filled with the songs and artists that remind us of a time when you had to ring someone’s house phone to talk to them. With bangerz from Craig David, Blazin’ Squad and Billie Piper, it would be like an old episode of Top of the Pops, and then we’d all go out for a Pizza Hut buffet. So while the Weekender drifts off into a carb-fuelled, cheese-laden food coma, have a little peek at what we’ve been seeing and reading this week.

– Excellently crafted animation Coda was the most read article on It’s Nice That this week, and with a host of awards, a focus on life and mortality, and a beautiful soundtrack, it’s little surprise. If you haven’t watched it yet, do: it will be the wisest nine minutes you spend all week.

– Personally I don’t really feel that us Brits have quite got the art of bathing just yet – it’s all slippery soap, Mr Muscle’d showers and an unavoidable fear of being naked – but the people of Budapest have nailed it. Photographer Baker (this guy is too cool for a first name) shot some friendly looking Hungarians playing chess, sipping beers and having a leisurely soak together.

– There’s nothing like an illustration that carefully treads the boundary between erotic and weird to get us going on a Friday afternoon. All hail Petra Mrzyk and Jean-François Moriceau, who have set up on that delicate border like it’s a comfy hammock slung between two towering precipices.

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Brecht Vandenbroucke: Photograph by James Rawlings

– Once a year, the comic book lovers and cartoonists of east London flock together to fling beautiful printed matter around, shout about illustration and paper stock, and compare inks, and this year as ever, we were there to receive them. We took a photographer with us to ELCAF to capture five creatives we caught up with on the day.

– “I am not comfortable with the term ‘Americana’” he says, but after first bundling into a Volkswagen van in 1981 with his wife, photographer David Graham spent a grand total of eight years exploring the wide open expanse of the USA with his wife. We spoke to him about his experiences, and learned a lot from him along the way.

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Donald Featherstone

– Sad news for fans of the plastic pink flamingo we’ve seen so many times in kitsch gardens around the world, as Donald Featherstone died aged 79 this week.

– This week in The Independent journalist Karen Wright spoke at length about the change in entries for the BP Portrait Award, but her final point is one that’s stayed with us: “My one quibble is that despite its insistence on quality the award continues to brand itself with BP."

– If you’re feeling a bit nostalgic check out this great video from Motherboard who spent the day with the forefather of the mobile telephone, Marty Cooper.

– Following the fashion trend (oh ho), Dazed Digital questioned the need for gendered fashion weeks in response to all the big fashion houses making the runway co-ed in their latest shows.

Wired put the science back into fashion this week by revealing the news that researchers at the University of Toronto have developed an algorithm that helps you identify where you’re going wrong in your fashion choices. No longer will we spend Monday mornings looking helplessly at a pile of clothes we have no recollecting of liking or buying…

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Ezra Miller: Iridescent Puddle

Maisie Skidmore

If like me you spend a lot of time gazing into the depths of your computer screen, you’ll occasionally find yourself drifting off into a bubble that only GIFs and hypnotic, automatically regenerating visuals can penetrate. For those times there is Iridescent Puddle, a website created by tech wizard Ezra Miller, which veers from recreating the rainbow glaze of an oil spill in the middle of the road to looking something like a cloudy sky in a kids’ TV programme. Whatever, it’s magnificent, and exactly what I need when my eyes have turned rectangular and my bran has gone to mush. Cheers Ezra, you’re a real mate.


Alex Hawkins

My various news feeds have all but blown up with ecstatic reactions to the news that the American Supreme Court has ruled in favour of same-sex marriage today, anywhere and everywhere in the United States. It’s the pretty monumental step toward equality both stateside and worldwide, and a brilliant way to start the weekend! As Obama says, #Lovewins!

Beccy Fulleylove

The Simpsons is one of those programmes that’s repeated a lot on TV and it’s great when I need a little televisual comfort. King-size Homer is probably my favourite episode mainly for the huge flower-printed dress he wears because he’s unable to fit into anything else. This week I spotted a great album of Signs around Springfield on image website Imgur. In my youth these witty billboards, banners and shop signs that litter so many Simpsons episodes completely went over my head, but now I’m older and wiser I can smirk and snigger at their cleverness to my heart’s content.

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