SUSO

The Failed Connection

What’s the connection between Arne Jacobsen, the great Danish designer and architect, and McDonald’s, the not-so-great-although-bloody-delicious fast food chain? When the young Arne won an award in Paris in 1925 for an essay he’d written, his father peered down at the programme notes and, seeing the words ‘Artiste Arne Jacobsen’, exclaimed, “But Arne, you are too fat to be an artist.” Is obesity the missing link between the two then? We think not.

From that moment on Jacobsen junior kept what was a blossoming belly in pretty good shape. So, no, obesity is not the link. Indeed, I don’t think there is one. So why did McDonald’s feel the need to throw out the existing and entirely unremarkable furniture in some of its restaurants (should we even call them that?) and replace it with original Jacobsen designs? Why not go for something not quite so expensive but which still improves on what went before? By all means perk things up a bit, but we all know about McDonald’s. We go there knowing full well what we’re going to get. A choice paint job might have sufficed.

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Categories Design Tags Jacobsen McDonald's

By on 29/11/07

A Special Place

Nowhere else in the world will you find such a burgeoning street art scene than you do in Buenos Aires. Why though? Perhaps it’s to do with a politically involved population.

BA is the social and political centre of Argentina so it’s inevitable that political commentaries be played out on the walls of its many streets; in Buenos Aires, there is much to say. Take the Dirty War of 1977, six years of military dictatorship and state-sponsored violence against activists, radicals, students and anyone with remotely left wing views.

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Categories Art Culture Tags Aires Argentina Buenos DOMA suso

By on 27/11/07

Freudian Slip

We just had to put this in. For those who’ve never heard of Tony Henry from St. Albans, Hertfordshire, allow us to explain...

Last Wednesday, Tony became a rare thing indeed: a popular Englishman on the pitch at Wembley. At least to the Croats in the stands he was. Charged with singing both national anthems, Tony kicked off with the away team’s song and, instead of singing “Mila kuda si planina”, which translates roughly as “You know my dear how we love your mountains”, he in fact sung “Mila kura si planina”, which translates accurately as...

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Categories Fun Tags Fun Music

By on 26/11/07

Brutalist Beauty

“Even graffiti, if you see it in a different way, can be celebratory. I don’t think it and these buildings always need to be associated with violence. They are quite grand structuresin their own way.” DAVID HEPHER

Or, at least, they were once grand. They were once modernist symbols of regeneration and great concrete odes to Le Corbusier’s infatuation with “breton brut”. In the UKin particular, this strain of modernism, the one that spawned structures such as The British Film Institute and The National Theatre on the Southbank, became known as Brutalism, and it accounted for many concrete high rise housing blocks like those we encounter in Hepher’s pictures. Structures like Goldfinger’s Trellick Tower in West London once represented modernism’s last stand.

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Categories Art Culture Tags Art culture

By on 26/11/07

Zach

Have you ever been so determined to do something that you’re willing to risk actual bodily harm, if not the permanent use of your body, to get it done? Have you ever wondered what it might be like to try something that hadn’t been done before, to redefine the boundaries of your discipline, to rewrite certain rules, to seek change rather than settle for straight up passive acceptance? Have you ever dreamed of being at the forefront of the thing you love most? Have you ever set out to get there? Have you devoted your entire life to getting there? And did you get there?

Zach Shaw has done all the above. That’s why we’ve signed him up - because he’s retained that same attitude throughout his career as a rider, that imagination, that creativity and that determination to succeed, to be at the front not the back, to change the way people think about the things he does.

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Categories Sport SUSO Tags Sport

By on 23/11/07

A Real Footballer

And so you don’t all go to bed tonight disillusioned by football, take a look at this. This is football as it should be. It’s been lovingly put together by someone for whom the great man clearly meant a great deal; check the sound effects that go with it..

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Categories Sport Tags Soprt

By on 22/11/07

The Great Creative Void

Why do we love football? Because it’s the beautiful game. Because of the artistry. Because of the little half turn. Because of the angled pass with the outside of the boot. Because of the team. Because of togetherness. Because of the fight, the heart, the steel, the passion, the belief. Because of the power. Because of the love. Because of the control. Because of the subtleties, the unseen touches, the flicks and the feints. Because of the theatre, the crowds, the loyalty, the support, the devotion, the passion. Just because.

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Categories Sport Tags Sport

By on 22/11/07

You May Take Our Money, But You Will Never Take Our Magenta

renaissance these last few years. It’s like those batwing tops women are wearing again which enable them, in tight situations, to jump off buildings and float to safety like the Dark Knight himself.

Yes, Magenta is back, and has been for some time now. But there’s a chance it will be taken away from us by that malevolent b*****d T-Mobile. They claim ownership of the colour in Europe. No one else can use it, they say. Ban us from using one of our most beloved creative tools? O2 monopolise the iPhone, and now this?

We will not be moved. Rebel here.

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Categories Media General Tags Media

By on 21/11/07

Wall Jumpers Of Berlin

Peter Schneider’s superb novel, The Wall Jumper, reminds us that, even in difficult times - in this case a city gripped by the effects of the Berlin Wall - there’s plenty room for a little imagination, creativity and determination. This excerpt makes the point, albeit with a decent helping of irony...

“In the early sixties a circus acrobat had used a high-tension wire as a tightrope to walk into the West. And hadn’t a pole-vaulting champion used the Wall as a bar and cleared it with room to spare? There was no end to the list, and on the basis of sheer imagination, it would be difficult to select candidates for a hall of fame (of wall jumping).

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Categories Culture Words Tags culture

By on 20/11/07

Great Scott

There’s been some debate where we are as to just how good a film Ridley Scott’s American Gangster really is.

I loved it. Others here didn’t. I thought part of its beauty hinged on us never quite knowing who to side with in the film. I wanted to love Denzel (playing Frank Lucas, the Harlem-based drug lord who, rumour has it, was making over $1 million a day from selling heroin shipped directly from Asia by the US military during the VIetnam years) but he just kept doing annoying stuff. You know, little things like reshaping his cousin’s head with the roof of a grand piano. Not much, but enough to make me think twice.

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Categories Film Tags Film

By on 20/11/07