Fun

Bembo's Zoo is a children's book which features an illustration of one animal for each letter of the alphabet. The cool part is that the illustrations are done using only the letters of the animal's name. It's crazy, but very clever and artfully done. I expect fans of typography will wet themselves over this one.

You can see all the animals at the Bembo Zoo website or check out the book on Amazon.

It seems that in the last year of his presidency, George Bush can't win a trick. It's traditional that the Presidential Memorial Commission goes around naming things in the president's honour in his final year, but he can't even get a sewage plant named after him without major opposition.

The Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco has just recently submitted enough signatures to city election officials “hoping to place on the ballot an initiative that would rechristen the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant as the George W. Bush Sewage Plant.”

The debate seems to centre mostly around whether the naming would be appropriate because a sewage plant cleans up mess, or inappropriate because it's too useful in doing so. As one of the commission's founders Brian McConnell puts it:

"If you get to the point where people are defending the sewage plant, that’s a sign that things have not gone so well."

Listen to what McConnell says in a radio interview below:

Perhaps you have already seen or heard of Chico Marx, part of the famous comedy team of brothers, who acts Italian and plays the piano in impressive and entertaining ways. This clip is from the Marx Brothers film Go West (1940). I have always wanted to be able to play piano like this

The comedy art group Improv Everywhere have a mission to cause scenes of chaos and joy in public places. They are behind the well-known Food Court Musical as well as dozens of other elaborate setups and performances. They used to have someone pretend to be Ben Folds at piano bars in New York, until the real Ben Folds found out about it. Fortunately he loved it so much he invited them to make it a part of his concert performance, with hilarious results!

The group's latest outing involved getting a group of identical twins to ride on a New York subway car in such a way that they created a mirror image of each other, and then watching people's reactions. You can read how they did it here, and watch it below:

It seems some folks in England's south west have hit upon the perfect conditions for growing and harvesting creativity for today's world. This little video made my day

Matt is a video game designer from Brisbane who quit his job after he realised he was very bad at it and decided to spend his time travelling around the world. Everywhere he goes he records a video of himself dancing to various songs and posts the videos on YouTube.

He has been doing this for a few years now and has gathered a worldwide following. He has just released a new video of him dancing in 42 countries over 14 months. If you think it sounds weird or silly, well it is, but watch it and I defy anyone not to have a big grin on their face by the end of it.