Month: November 2007

This is hilarious… h/t to Fred Wilson:

This little town was featured on the front page of the NYTimes website today. It’s a heartwarming story. (Link is here.) Essentially this little town is an absolute football powerhouse, having not lost a game in several seasons, now.

But as I was reading it, I had a blinding flashback… I’ve BEEN to Smith Center, Kansas!!

Back in my Solar Car days, I stayed with people in the town during Sunrayce 97, which went right through town. From what I remember, they were very supportive of the whole event, and the whole town opened their doors to let us stay in their homes. (There certainly weren’t enough hotels for hundreds of college kids to stay in!)

Now I do sometimes get a little confused between Smith Center, Kansas and St. Francis, Kansas, which was another little town we stayed in on the race. (If memory serves, we stayed at the county sheriff’s home in St. Francis, but it’s been a decade so I may have forgotten a few details.)

Anyway, it’s a funny little thing to see a town like that featured in a national paper, and realise that I’ve actually been there. Strange…

A while ago I read about this absolutely INCREDIBLE new bookstore in the Netherlands. (H/T to John at Brand Autopsy.) An old (essentially unused) church in the heart of this city was turned into the most incredible bookstore you’ll likely ever see.

The building hadn’t been used as a church for years. In more recent times it had been used for bicycle storage, of all things, which seems like an inappropriately poor use for a building of that significance.

Well, a bookstore has now moved in and really done a good job of melding a bookstore into the space and beauty of a good-sized cathedral.

These photos are fantastic.

[UPDATE]- More photos on the BLDG BLOG here.

I couldn’t pass up quoting this:

A stunned schoolboy was given a birthday to remember when a stripper performed a no-holds-barred routine for him — while he was still in class.

The youngster’s mother asked an agency to send a man dressed in a gorilla suit to mark his 16th birthday. But the booking got mixed up and a ‘sexy policewoman’ turned up at the un-named lad’s drama class.

His fellow students could only look as she stripped off and invited him to rub cream on her bottom.

Now education officials have launched an investigation into the incident at Arnold Hill School in Nottingham. A witness said: ‘We were in shock.’

Gorilla… policewoman… I can see where the confusion might lie.

UPDATE:

New quote from the afternoon edition:

‘The teacher was stunned but when the cream came out, she told her “that’s it, that’s enough”’

-Classmate of the lad in question

I’m a firm believer in that cream always puts a situation over the top…