SPACED OUT
Having locked horns in a crossover action flick, two murderous aliens are now sharing an apartment in New York. Such is the premise of the web comic Alien Loves Predator. Possibly the ugliest pair of flatmates to have lived in each other’s pockets, they go about the daily business of ordering Chinese takeaways and being canvassed by Bill Clinton while regularly throwing insults at each other. The tagline is, naturally, “In New York No One Can Hear You Scream”.
www.alienlovespredator.com
VODCAST OF THE WEEK
Cool Hunting has long been the hipster destination for those who want to get advance word on the next big thing. Its narrator-less video podcast series takes a knowing look at every aspect of cool culture, from music,in the form of the French bossa nova group Nouvelle Vague, to art, with a survey of the New York art exhibition of The Beautiful Game: Contemporary Art and Futbol. It also covers fashion, tattoo conventions, design festivals and watch collectors, and there are already more than 50 episodes to watch.
www.coolhunting.com
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TELLY ADDICTS
The internet is crammed with American sites dedicated to critically appraising TV series. We may not have so many on this side of the Atlantic, but there is at least Off the Telly. This website invites contributors to write essays on a whole slew of television- related subjects in a thoughtful and refreshing manner. November’s batch includes the piece “Treachery with a Smile on Its Face”, which takes a look at the House of Cards trilogy and “Of Finger Mice and Mr Men — The Story of Watch With Mother”.
www.offthetelly.co.uk
THE ART OF ILLUSION
The art of drawing on a pavement is a thankless task undertaken by those who don’t mind their ephemeral work being washed away by the rain or ground into nothingness by pedestrians. Thank heavens, then, that Julian Beever’s drawings have been saved for posterity on his website (below). The most astonishing are his 3-D anamorphic illusions. Viewed from a certain angle, they really do make you believe that the artist in question is about to take the plunge off a diving board into a waterfall- fed pool, or that he is being rescued from a burning building by Batman and Robin.
users.skynet.be/J.Beever/pave.htm
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BLOG OF THE WEEK
For Michael Eavis, the Glastonbury Festival never stops. But on the NME website you can find Britain’s most famous farmer making use of his relative downtime by going to Mozambique with his daughter Emily to see just how the £130,000-£140,000 a year that Glasto makes for WaterAid is spent. Eavis’s blog is full of smiling pictures and wonderment-fuelled exclamation marks, but you are never in any doubt about the serious intent behind the trip. As Eavis writes: “They’ve got 75 wells in Mozambique now that they wouldn’t have had otherwise.” It is a welcome reminder that Glastonbury is not just about music.
www.nme.com/festivals/michaeleavis/blog