Is it me... or did it just get ugly in here?

My dear readers, sitting sweaty and pasty at your computer monitors, may be noticing a distinct lack of sparkly rainbow delight, and, in its place, a pile of whiteness matched only by your sun-starved torso a site that, although reminiscent of the old Beckstar, lacks the tight layout and easy navigation that it used to.

I know - it's gross. But I finally saw this site on IE last night, and not only was it ugly, as people had reported, but it was a completely unreadable mess.

I'd rather have things look boring than have you miss one moment of action in The Beckstar's exciting and magical life.

I'll be fixin' er up over the next couple of days - promise.

The sexiest thing I saw on the internet today...

Atari to Beckstar: Honey, you wouldn't know what to do with me if you had me. Un huh!

Beckstar to Atari: Drooooooooool. Attempt to touch joysticks.

Wolf Man! Cai Guo-Qiang lays down some wicked art.

I love discovering artists I didn't know before, or, frankly were too ignorant to know about and thus attend the show they did in my city six years ago cough-cough. In this particular case, it took the madhouse that is MySpace to find this stuff.

How great is this piece in particular - done with 99 replicas of wolves, made from painted sheepskins?


I got 99 problems but a bitch ain't one. Unless you mean these 99 wolf bitches up in here!


Daaaamn. There's so much commentary about 'the rat race' in here, he should just have hung up a Dilbert cartoon.


Aw shit guys, sorry we're late. I heard this group leap was going to be off the hook! Wait... what the?

Cai Guo-Qiang is a Chinese artist who has been working for decades, making a whole lot of awesome.

He does much of his work in gunpowder, which is cool for two reasons:

1. Both a symbol of man's violent tendencies, and, as one of the Four Great Inventions of Ancient China, a cultural symbol, gunpowder adds layers of meaning to his pieces.

2. EXPLOSIONS RULE!

Check this one, where an unsuspecting viewer's random step triggers an explosion in the gigantic circuit board.


This piece is called I am the Y2K bug.


Cute! He made a cloud!

Or these, part of a series called Inopportune, and executed in two seperate shows:

Inopportune: Stage One, where cars are pierced with tubes of light.


Toured in 2004. Kit from Knight Rider sent to secret underground base... just in case.

and Inopportune: Stage Two, where tigers are pierced with arrows.


Toured in 2006. Tony the Tiger also sent to secret underground base... hilarity ensues.

Not to nitpick, but it must be said: Cai Guo-Qiang's website is kind of crappy. Visually it's fine, but from a user-interaction perspective, the main nav system is pretty much blind, jumpy and impossible to navigate intelligently.

There are a couple ways around the site, thank goodness, but I constantly find myself amazed at how many sites are designed without proper thought to repeat visitors, wayfinding systems and content accessibility.

[-sound of wrestling-] "Get away you nerd!" "Never!! People need to know!!!!" [-more wrestling-] "Seriously! Urgh-Ow! [loud-THUNK-]

Three. Point. One. Four. One. Five. Nine. Two. Six. Five...

Ooookay, so could this be any more awesome? A music video about the number pi, with a singing robot, done in the style of a PBS kids show and dropping the amazing line: '514 was the area code / Quebec, Canada my winter abode'.

What's the name of that emotion again? The one where, upon realizing other people think exactly the same way you do, you're torn between traumatic identity crisis and jubillant excitement?


Extra nerdy bonuses: 1. The second verse weaves the first nine digits of pi forwards and backwards; 2. This song is as close to pi minutes in length - 3 minutes 14 seconds... although actually pi minutes would be more like 3 min. 8 sec.

Why, oh why, are all things nerdcore so amazing?