Puppies and Flowers

Blind rock and jazz musician Jeff Healey has died after a lifelong battle against cancer. He was 41.

Healey died Sunday evening in a Toronto hospital, said bandmate Colin Bray, who was in the room with Healey's family when the guitarist died.

The Grammy-nominated Healey rose to stardom as the leader of the Jeff Healey Band, a rock-oriented trio that gained international acclaim and platinum record sales with the 1988 album "See the Light." The album included the hit single "Angel Eyes."

Healey had battled cancer since age 1, when a rare form of retinal cancer known as Retinoblastoma claimed his eyesight.

Due to his blindness, Healey taught himself to play guitar by laying the instrument across his lap.

His unique playing style, combined with his blues-oriented vocals, earned him a reputation as a teenage musical prodigy. He shared stages with George Harrison, B.B. King and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Bray said he and many others expected the guitarist to rally from this latest illness.

"I don't think any of us thought this was going to happen," Bray said. "We just thought he was going to bounce back as he always does."

Healey had undergone numerous operations in recent years to remove tumors from his lungs and leg.

Bray and fellow bandmate Gary Scriven remembered their frontman as a musician of rare abilities with a generous nature and wicked sense of humor.

Healey's true love was jazz, the genre that dominated his three most recent albums.

His love of jazz led him to host radio shows in Canada where he spun long-forgotten numbers from his personal collection of over 30,000 vinyl records.

His death came weeks before the release of his first rock album in eight years.

"Mess of Blues" is slated for a North American release on April 22.

He is survived by his wife, Christie, and two children.

From SFGate

Link to hundreds of examples.

Via The Presurfer 

From the Austrian Cultural Forum: 

Gregor Graf’s exploration of urban architecture involves taking medium format images of mundane urban settings and painstakingly removing all text and symbolic references from the image, producing an anonymous and generic metropolis, yet evoking a sense of familiarity. In 2006 Graf was commissioned by the Visual Arts Platform to produce a new work during a residency in London. For his first UK solo show at the Austrian Cultural Forum London, Graf will exhibit new photographs of London along with other new works produced during a residency in Chicago, bringing together exploration of this two huge and complex urbanscapes.

Link to Artist's site

Headline: Everyone Makes Mistakes

Advertising Agency: Grey Hong Kong
Executive Creative Director: Keith Ho
Creative Director: Paul Chan
Art Director: V Lau
Copywriters: Paul Chan, Kennex Ma

via The Creative Blog

Link to YouTube clip 

Hilarious, yet elaborate stunt in a food court.

Previously on P&F by Improve Everywhere 

I've long been a fan of Frank Zappa and I'm sure he'd be proud of this use of his music… 

Previously on P&F about Zappa 

found photo

From Seattle Times: 

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — "It's just like judging a beautiful girl," said Fowzan al-Madr, a camel breeder from the Kharj region southeast of Riyadh. "You look for big eyes, long lashes and a long neck — maybe 39 or 40 inches."

As he spoke, Madr was surveying the offerings at Saudi Arabia's largest camel market, on the outskirts of Riyadh.

The days are long past when camels were crucial to life, a chapter lost in increasing urbanization and technology. But there is still pleasure in raising them, sometimes for milk and meat, for racing and, yes, for their beauty.

Camel beauty pageants, in which camels are judged on their looks and dressage, are held all over Saudi Arabia. They have become so popular in recent years that a respected Saudi cleric recently issued a decree against them, saying that they encouraged pride.

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Came across these images on Flickr. Crazy images, the guy carrying his camera gear, tripod, makes the jump in his flip flops! Original image found here.

From reading the comments, I discovered someone else shot the same guy from a different angle, here and here. From one of these photos it looks like the guy finished his cans of Budweiser first.

Legendary British science fiction writer Sir Arthur C Clarke has died in Sri Lanka at the age of 90.

He came to fame when his story, 2001: A Space Odyssey, was made into a film by director Stanley Kubrick in 1968.

Once called "the first dweller in the electronic cottage", his vision captured the popular imagination.

Sir Arthur, who was born in Minehead, Somerset, and was a radar specialist for the RAF in World War II, become a full-time writer in the 1940s.

Source

Thousands of starfish wash up on the shores of southern England, the Environment Agency now believes that dredgers - the kind used to scrape the sea floor for mussels - were almost certainly to blame. Read more

9 ads from Ramón Rubial - Fundación Españoles en el Mundo, the Foundation for Spanish people all over the world. The campaign warns Spanish tourists about the dangers of doing (and getting busted for) drugs abroad. Beautiful work. Links to higher rez versions can be found here.

Cuba 

Denmark 

El Salvador 

Greece 

Liberia 

Thailand 

Togo 

Uruguay 

United States 

Links to higher rez versions can be found here.

Link to YouTube

Melting chocolate bunnies

The film will make its US TV premier on the Sundance Channel next week Tuesday, April 1, 2008.

A California family says the unusual markings on one of their kittens, proves the kitty's love for its mother. Take a close look at the side of the cat -- on its fur you can see the message "I Love Dot." The family says the name of the kitten's mother is Dottie -- and the message of love is for her. The unique kitten was one of a litter of six.

Link to article and video 

Previously on P&F: 

Pig born with love-heart pattern in fur

Chihuahua puppy born with love-heart pattern in fur

See more entries at Osocio 

Simply stunning.

According to its designers, it is built to resemble a Chinese dragon. Its structural plan is a homage to the architectural marvel that is the Forbidden City.

Link to Telegraph article  

More photos, including interior shots from the architect, Foster + Partners site.

Construction photos.

Hal Riney, the San Francisco advertising man whose iconic and memorable work helped establish the city as an important creative center for the industry and a magnet for major accounts, died of cancer in his San Francisco home Monday. He was 75.

Whether his client was an automobile manufacturer, a company selling wine coolers or the committee to re-elect President Ronald Reagan, no one could put as graceful a spin on Americana as could Hal Riney. He made likable, engaging advertising in a career of nearly 50 years.

He is best remembered for creating the brand - and the outside-Detroit image - of General Motors' Saturn automobiles, but he may be equally famous for creating the codgers Frank Bartles and Ed Jaymes, who sing the praises of the Gallo wine cooler that bore their names. In 1984, he created "Morning in America," the soft-textured, 60-second memorable montages of Americana, telling stories of swelling national pride, making people comfortable about re-electing Reagan.

These advertising campaigns and many more had a unique and relaxed western feeling to them, and stood in relief to so much in a New York-dominated industry. In the process, Riney ads prompted marketers to pay attention to the San Francisco ad scene.

Before Riney, the legendary Howard Gossage had established San Francisco's ad industry roots. Riney proteges Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein, who started with Riney doing "Billy Ball" ads for the Oakland A's, left in the spring of 1983 to establish one of the country's top tier agencies and encourage the next generation of San Francisco creative advertising people.

"He created an atmosphere and body of work that attracted the highest level of creative people outside New York," said Goodby, co-founder of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco. "Some would say higher."

Source

Shown here: Public Urination as Advertising - Guerrilla Ad Campaign

See all fifty at TrendHunter 

Shown here is J C Penney's, I like that he was 'self-employed'. 

From the Gov Archives:

The 24 million World War I Draft Registration Cards in the custody of the National Archives Southeast Region provide an invaluable resource for academic researchers and genealogists. All males in the United States, born between the years 1872 and 1900, were required by law to register for the draft throughout 1917 and 1918. This series of records includes cards from all 50 states and Puerto Rico. The answers provided to the questions on the cards typically reveal details about where a man lived, his occupation, race, immigration status, and in many cases his place of origin and nearest relative. The following selection presents a unique snapshot of what is available in this extensive collection.

Link

Old roller coaster at Chippewa lake Ohio. Built in 1920's ended service1978. 

Link to more photographs