The Weekender: With extra sprinkles of joy because it's our BIRTHDAY WEEK

Date
4 April 2014

This week has been something of a historic one over at It’s Nice That Towers; not only did the days start getting longer (not that that’s historic, it happens every year) but we also had our SEVENTH birthday! So to celebrate, we’re bring you a weekender that is, in the words of everybody’s favourite TV chef, well and truly “chocka” with all the best stuff we’ve posted on the site this week, plus a few extras that you might have missed from out in the interwebs. Like a beard with stuff in, and a melancholy feline. Altogether now: “Haaappy birrrthdaaay to ussss…”

Above

Jean-Louis Klein and Marie-Luce Hubert: Harvest Mice in the Wild

- The very wonderful filmmaker Tom Haines picked Arcade Fire’s My Body is a Cage as his Favourite Music Video.
- It’s Nice That transformed into It’s Mice That for April Fool’s Day. Because cats are overrated.
- Editor James Cartwright pondered the rebrand and fresh new corporate identity by Japanese organised crime syndicate, the Yamaguchi-gumi.
- We talked about April Fool’s Day, Snicker’s feminist construction workers and nerdy graphic design (the best kind) on Episode 13 of our weekly podcast.
- And we thought it was time to take our cool-level down a notch with a studio curated Fun Friday mixtape.

Lisa Farrell – Kurt Vonnegut, on Stories Having Shapes

In this hilarious video Kurt Vonnegut illustrates the fundamental concept behind his master’s thesis in anthropology at the University of Chicago, which was simply that “stories have shapes which can be drawn on graph paper.”

Maisie Skidmore – John Maloof and Vivian Maier

Six years ago, a Chicago-based historian named John Maloof purchased a box full of negatives for $400 at an estate hunt, thinking that they might help to inform the book he was writing about Chicago’s Portage Park neighbourhood. As it turned out, however, the negatives had all been taken by a woman named Vivian Maier, who had spent her life working as a nanny and a caretaker, photographing on her Rolleiflex camera all the while.

I didn’t know much, if anything at all, about Vivian Maier, but this amazing interview with John in Interview magazine gives an incredible insight into the woman behind the camera. It’s a fascinating story, and one that will make you feel like a better person for having read it.

Above

Vivian Maier: Photograph

James Cartwright – Henri the Cat

This week I rediscovered Henri, the depressed cat. He’s in the middle of a deep existential crisis and can’t seem to shake the perpetual malaise that’s descended over his life. Nobody knows melancholy like a depressed cat…

Sophia Epstein – Willitbeard

This week I discovered a glorious man and an even more glorious beard. Pierce Thiot is the owner/grower/commander-in-chief of this beard, and he’s definitely making the most of it. For no real reason, other than to entertain complete strangers, he and his wife Stacy (she’s the photographer) started @willitbeard, an Instagram account and Tumblr documenting Pierce putting a whole load of stuff in his beard. And I mean everything, from flowers and slinkies to gummy bears and miniature army men, once a baby chicken even made an appearance. I can say for certain, nothing has ever given me such a strong desire to have hair growing out of my face.

Above

Willitbeard

Share Article

Further Info

About the Author

It's Nice That

This article was written by the It’s Nice That team. To find our editors and writers, please head over to our Contact page.

It's Nice That Newsletters

Fancy a bit of It's Nice That in your inbox? Sign up to our newsletters and we'll keep you in the loop with everything good going on in the creative world.