Three words: Desktop Jellyfish Tank. String them together, long and soft, murmur them in a baby's ear, use them to woo a lover, or score free drinks from a friend. They might even have the power to stop wars, we dare say, especially if you pony up with the actual product. You will likely want your own (we do), if the 350 backers who have donated $106,950 to Alex Andon -- the 27-year-old Park Slope native who came up with the idea -- via Kickstarter are any indication. Andon, who also has the website JellyFishArt.com, put up the page with a goal of reaching $3,000. Demand has been greater than expected. The people have spoken, and the people want desktop jellyfish tanks! We talked to Andon about the success of his idea, and the possibility that we may someday own our own. Also, did we say he's from Brooklyn?

More »

Back in April, we wrote about what may be New York's tiniest actual intact walls-and-a-door apartment inhabited by an actual human individual. It was 78 square feet, and was featured on Apartment Therapy as one of the "Small/Cool" apartments of 2011. (It beat a 90-square-foot apartment, which we discussed here and which imparted a panic attack unto its own resident, by a good 12 feet.) Now, there is video of Luke Clark Tyler, the tenant, in his teensy Midtown apartment. Some of its bonuses: You can prop your legs up on the wall, and since Luke works from home (he is an architect), he doesn't need a lot of work clothes. Luke works from home. Never does New York City seem as much an exercise in tempered insanity as it does when we discuss real estate. Luke pays $800. He "kinda just swooped this one up when he found it." (He shares a bathroom.)
[@thisisjendoll]

A little girl from Australia has become the youngest kid ever to show her art at the Agora Gallery in Chelsea. Aelita Andre started painting when she was nine months old, when she just crawled onto a canvas and got going. (Her parents are artists, too.) Now, at the lofty age of four, she has a solo exhibition at Agora, and has sold paintings for more than $30,000. She also likes to wear a tutu. Think the Tavi Gevinson of the art world, but with an Australian accent. What's especially amusing is hearing big grown-up adults talk extremely intellectually about the kid's "composition" and "movement."

More »

via

In today's news that doesn't surprise us at all, because we are highly sophisticated peoples of expensive tastes, two East Village penthouses owned by the same dude are connected by a slide. Well, of course they are! How would you connect your East Village penthouses? What's that, you don't actually have one East Village penthouse, to say nothing of two? What's that, you actually live in an apartment the size of a slide? What's that...you LIVE in a slide? Well, yeah. (That's a sweet slide you got there!)

More »

Things that make us want to curl up in a tiny ball and rock, and weep, and drink, and rock some more:

The good news is, at least we know how it's done, finally. Gym, Tanning, Laundry, WORLD DOMINATION. [Slightly comforting update: we have yet to locate the book on the Times list.]

What can't this guy do? Seriously. After announcing on Tuesday his new plan to lose 57 pounds by April, Newark Mayor-of-the-People Cory Booker is already being deluged with Twitter followers supporting and joining him in his efforts. Folks are kickboxing, spending practically an entire hour on the elliptical, and just generally participating and chanting "eye of the tiger" and thanking him for the motivation. It's rather amazing.

More »

Just a week ago Newark Mayor and "social media darling" Cory Booker was digging out his own citizens a tweet at a time, subsisting on Diet Coke and Advil, and becoming the hands-down hero of Snow-pocalypse 2010. Now he's taken to Facebook and Twitter with another cause: He plans to hit 240 (down from his current 287 pounds) by April 27, his birthday, and ultimately to reach his "healthy goal weight" of 230.

More »

via Bowery Boogie

The streets may still be covered in garbage, but, hey, looking on the bright side, the Sanitation Department is being fair about it...at least according to the New York Times, which reports, "The process was, at least in appearance, more democratic than the system for snow plowing used last week, with its arterial, secondary and tertiary roads." Yesterday 1,100 sanitation trucks were deployed to begin trash pickup again after 10 days (and that intervening blizzard).

More »

Yeah, we're all upset because the big old strong and powerful US of A, which nobody needs help pronouncing and almost any decently educated first-grader can locate on a map, lost the World Cup 2022 hosting honors to a teensy little oil-rich Middle Eastern nation. But if this video of the five proposed stadiums is even slightly close to reality, this could be the best World Cup/beach vacay spot ever, minus, of course, the restrictions on booze and the fact that short skirts and bare shoulders are frowned upon, to say nothing of bikinis. Qatar, prepare for your pristine natural beauty to be soiled by drunken soccer goons and rowdy revelers. Russia...well, you're used to that sort of thing.

via The Chive

It's a week for common man (or woman) heroes, it seems. Coming on the heels of everybody's favorite flight attendant's dramatic heave-ho of his job, there's this feisty gal, suddenly her very own Internet sensation, who apparently quit by emailing photos of herself holding up dry-erase boards denoting some choice revelations about her boss to the entire office.

More »