Looking comfortably mechanical at the Comte Étienne de Beaumont’s Automotive Ball in 1924.

P.s. How awesome is it that there was such a costume ball?

P.p.s. Looks like Gerald’s costume came complete with a revved up engine under the hood!

It is the tale of a third-grade indiscretion that also happens to also be an economic parable for our time. It involves snacks. In addition to the above snacks, there are appearances by classics — Cheetos, Fritos, Jolly Ranchers — and some peripheral favorites, like Nutter Butters. There is a Chunky. And by the way: remember when Chunky came out and it was billed as this long-anticipated new development, a Great Leap Forward in the chocolate bar like nothing you’ve ever seen? And then it hit the counters and was thicker, yes, but also smaller than other chocolate bars while costing the same? Now that’s marketing. “It’s chunkier!”

A version of this story also appeared on Planet Money/Morning Edition. But then I wrote it down, and now it’s as official as it gets. A humor piece. Usually I spend months reporting stories about weirdos, but now the weirdo is me. And there I am, right across from Biden and Spitzer. Now I just have to get hair plugs, and have paid trysts while wearing only my sock garters!

You gotta respect it: dude knows what he wants — and just asks for it:

Click to view larger version

PS: Is he asking for a handjob with the hand that is actually wearing the Nintendo Power Glove? Because that takes it up a notch. And this whole thing was already up a notch!

(Courtesy Gideon, who, as always, is talkin’ bout his generation.)

Here are dozens more equally entrancing images.

Architect Jakob Tigges suggests putting Berlin back on the monumentalist map by erecting a 3,000-foot mountain on the site of the recently decommissioned Tempelhof airport. Summer hiking, winter skiing, Teutonic myth-making — all convenient to the S-Bahn!

A nifty idea that will never happen, and not just because the architect’s own video presentation features him, along with digital images of the Berg plan, set to Looney Tunes cartoon music. But that doesn’t stop this imaginary mountain from tweeting! And the pictures are neat:

Twilight in the Wilderness:

Related posts:

1. Weekly Dose of Wonder

To commemorate our nuptial adventure, Ronni’s sister Marina has made a painting. That’s right: paint, canvas and stretchers — the old fashioned way of capturing epics afield for the audience at home. It is a huge canvas, one befitting the vistas of the Great Rift Valley. I do not what the canvas contains. No one does. It is a secret! But it is a secret that will soon be revealed — at the artist’s studio. Please join us for the unveiling. There will be red cloth and a gilded rope and singing horns. (Really; my brother is a brass master.) It will be just like when Manet unveiled Olympia. Except there are no nudes. Or maybe there are! Who knows? Not me!

That Saturday everyone was surprised when we pulled back the curtain on our very own personalized homage to Olympia! Everyone thought that my perspicacious goofing in the invitation meant I was in on the deal. I wasn’t. Precisely because of my goofing, I was most shocked of all when I saw this:

As promised, the esteemed members of the Salon were scandalized.

And so now all seven feet of this painting now hangs on our wall. Or it did until yesterday, when it was borrowed to be featured in the show at Royal/T. It was requested for its depiction of a complicated relationship — our complicated relationship: husband, wife, and twin, appearing together in symbolic  composition. What it means exactly I’m not sure. I might be afraid to ask. But it was chosen as the poster image, which was flattering to all. Such a thing happened once before, in Japan, when a painting Marina had made of Ronni wearing a fake fur panda hat was chosen as the poster for a big museum show that was opening while we were all three in Japan, resulting in the odd experience of us wandering the streets of Tokyo and looking up to see an anime version of panda-headed ronni smiling back down at us. Like so, but much bigger:

That was the handbill we took home. If we could just combine these to have Ronni nude in a panda hat — now that would be one vigorous artistic hybrid..

Among the 70 dials (and 122 indications) are: a perpetual calendar, leap year cycles; sunrise and sunset; local times at seventeen world-wide places; and animated tidal charts in eight different French ports.

Now that I am a seaside denizen of Malibu, and attuned to the ways of the waves, I appreciate such fine detail. Surfline is handy, but just doesn’t have the charm of an intricate machine with 40,000 moving parts. All the Besançon timepiece needs is a dial for Pt Dume tides. And a window indicating the precise, universal and astronomically accurate arrival of 4:20!