“Before MTV, and long before we could stream music videos on our cell phones, mid-1960s American hepcats gathered around 500-pound, 7-foot-high contraptions to watch 16-millimeter Technicolor films of B-list pop stars gyrating to their latest hits. The contraption in question was usually a Scopitone, one of several audio-visual jukeboxes found primarily in bars. Their reign, if you can even call it that, was brief, and by the end of the decade, the novelty of these then-high-tech devices had faded entirely.”

Fun to funky!

“Each week, a leading street photographer would issue an instruction and a large band of photographers would take to the streets and capture their interpretation of the theme.”

“For 70 years the Parisian apartment had been left uninhabited, under lock and key, the rent faithfully paid but no hint of what was inside. Behind the door, under a thick layer of dusk lay a treasure trove of turn-of-the-century objects including a painting by the 19th century Italian artist Giovanni Boldini.”

“The Paramount Theatre closed March 31, 1986 due to an increase in insurance rates. This increase also led to the closing of the nearby Adams Theatre. In the years since the 1986 closing the lobby area has been reused as an Army/Navy surplus store and other similar pop-up retail stores. The current plans for a multi-use entertainment complex on the lot call for the auditorium to be demolished. Only the front facade will remain.”

“Most artists would not dare attempt to recreate timeless works of art such as the Mona Lisa. Sagaki Keita, however, is not most artists. His incredible recreations of classic art are impressive when you first see them but absolutely mind-blowing when you take a closer look. These awesome works are not just simple straight-on reproductions of famous art pieces; they are composed of thousands of teeny-tiny other images.”

“Quite how unlucky can one building be? Abandoned, neglected and decaying, at first sight you may think that Bannerman’s Castle is located in Europe, perhaps a Scottish remnant from the days of the lairds or a site in Ireland forsaken by retreating British aristocrats. Yet the Castle, sitting blithely upon Pollepel Island is only 50 miles north of New York City, on the Hudson River.”

Recycling and found object art taken to another level.

Look closer …

The incredible sketches of Irina Vinnik.

“Like massive golf balls, the tattered shells of radomes long since left to the ravages of nature litter the landscape. Once, men were stationed here whose duty it was to listen in on the conversations of those on the other side of the Iron Curtain, thereby gathering valuable military intelligence. Now, graffiti besmirches the crumbling structures, but the views from this vantage point are nonetheless spectacular.”

While it sucks in some mighty intense ways that I have been forcibly relieved of gainful employment, there are a couple of upshots - not the least of them being that I will not ever again have to deal with the sort of arrogant verbal abuse heaped upon me undeservedly by a public that believes it has the god-given right to hurt others, simply because they work in the service industry.

I now no longer have to work for a graceless employer that didn’t allow meal breaks, provided no benefits, and who waited until I showed up for a shift to fire me - rather than mustering enough grace to call me so that I didn’t have to walk into the middle of something.

I no longer have to deal with their illegal business practices, their niggling labour law abuses, nor the substandard staff that couldn’t - on a good day - do the job half so well as I did it.

I don’t have to spend a slow shift falling asleep at my desk and bored to tears because the staff are not only not allowed Internet access, we aren’t allowed to use our cellphones at our desks to read said Internet, nor are we allowed books or magazines, nor even were we allowed to have scratch tickets.

Some of the reasons given for firing me were not totally undeserved, and to preserve some semblance of dignity, I am not going to lay them out. However, I think the fact they knew I was looking for another job played a part in it. They did nothing to attempt to keep me, except make empty promises that came to naught, when I first aired my issues with them - last January. All they offered was one Saturday night a month off, but with no compensating shift to make up for the lost wages that I couldn’t afford to lose, so I had to turn that down.

So, to sum up, I leave behind: no meal breaks; no decent wages; no other breaks; no raise in two years; a semi-illegal wage increase offer; sometimes far less than the legally required amount of hours between shifts; failing equipment; shoddy treatment to dispatch staff where office staff were treated to parties, catered lunches, holidays off and were not given the same semi-illegal raise offer; unsanitary kitchen habits; no benefits of any kind; disrespectful treatment from management when time off is needed due to illness or family death; and constant abuse from the public.

While I’ll miss the money, I will in no way miss that cess pit. They had the opportunity to make it better, and they fucked it up, and fucked me up. They demanded respect, but gave none, and no reason to be respected. So long, farewell, and may you enjoy trying to keep up on busy nights without me there to pick up the slack left by the slackers you have left.

“His precision dioramas of beautifully dreary, eerily quiet Venetian locales set in the 1930s - somewhat surreal yet nonetheless quite real - are the basis for his exquisite large-scale photographic prints.”

“There are more than 100,000 items in the Wellcome Trust’s wonderfully strange collection. On its anniversary, we take a peek at the world’s greatest curiosity cabinet.”

European executioner’s mask, pre 1700

This amazing treasure-trove of pop culture makes me cringe, when I think about what happened to some old films and tv shows - like all the celluloid that ended up as roadfill under British highways. But immediacy knows no sense of hindsight’s sense of value.

A blog about band t-shirts people owned, that still mean something to them, and why. To contribute your own, email us at mybandtshirt@gmail.com.