Homer Run.

Well, where do we even start with this? We’ve seen some pretty whacky launches from fashion houses over the last couple years, but this one by Balenciaga may just take the cake. Or gâteau, should I say? Rather than picking from their usual crop of models to strut down a runway, Balenciaga decided to go to Springfield to enlist the cast of The Simpsons to showcase their latest creations. The result is this 10-minute mock episode*, which sees Homer plead with Balenciaga creative director Demna Gvasalia to loan Marge a dress, resulting in a fashion show featuring animated versions of the actual outfits released in the collection. Considering high fashion can often feel like a bubble detached from the real world, this really brought it down to the level of the layman. I mean, one of the main models is Homer: a middle-aged, overweight bloke struggling not to burst out of his clothes. Now that is representation for the masses.

*Edit: since writing this, Balenciaga have kindly changed their video settings to prevent the episode being shared anywhere, which is a bit of a nuisance. But it is decent, so if you do fancy watching it, you can do so here.

Bibimbap-mobile.

In the interest of full disclosure: while trying to think of a food that sounded a bit like ‘bat’, it did take me quite some to get to bibimbap. But yes, you could now get your takeaway delivered by the Dark Knight. Or at least some bloke in the Dark Knight’s motor, as one Uber Eats courier is about to get a nice surprise when he starts his shift and finds out he’ll be swapping his rusty old bike for the Batmobile. This is all in celebration of KFC’s new Zinger Popcorn Bucket – if you can see the connection between the two, please do let me know what it is. I guess ‘popcorn’ and the fact that it’s from a film? Bit tenuous, but we’ll ignore that. The main flaw is that most people order Uber Eats while painfully hungover and, as such, often select the option that instructs the driver to just leave the food at the door and piss off without any unnecessary human contact, so there’s a good chance you could have your hot wings dropped off by the Batman and be none the wiser. Oh well, back to bed.

Bit Breezy.

There can’t be many people who have seen the inside of a hurricane and lived to recount the no-doubt hilarious anecdote. However, thanks to the magic of technology, you can now come up close and personal with a natural disaster without even ruining your perfectly quaffed trim. A floating vessel with a drone attached has managed to capture this horrifying footage – which is the first of its kind – of the inside of a category 4 hurricane out in the middle of the sea. Might be time to re-think that retirement cruise you had planned. But fear not, we’ve been reliably informed that there was nobody aboard the vessel at the time. Or at least there definitely isn’t anymore. It was one of the two. Aye, the sea be a cruel mistress.

Lonely Lidl.

It was a dark day for conversation when Uber introduced ‘Uber Quiet’ a couple years ago to offer riders the option of a silent taxi journey. However, a Dutch supermarket have just gone in the opposite direction with an option that caters for more loquaciously-inclined shoppers. Jumbo will be creating 200 ‘chat registers’ in its stores for people who want a bit of a natter while they pick up their taramasalata. The so-called ‘Kletskassas’ are designed to combat loneliness in response to a study by Statistics Netherlands that found 26% of Dutch people older than 15 feel at least moderately lonely, rising to 33% among those over 75. But now they can have a 5-minute chat with a teenager on minimum wage who keeps looking at the clock every 30 seconds, so I’m sure we’ll see those figures plummeting in no time.

Leaf it Alone.

‘Catch it if you can’ probably isn’t the best mantra to live by during a time of plague, but it was the mission statement behind this recent public performance. Modern art is a strange old thing, as it seems anything can now qualify. Just last week, for example, Danish artist Jens Hanning robbed $84,000 from a modern art museum in Denmark as part of a self-described conceptual artwork entitled “Take the Money and Run.” However, this work from Chaosteria had a more positive message behind it than Mr. Hanning’s, who presumably just needed to pay off his bookie. In a performance entitled ‘Stop a leaf from falling to the ground’, Chaoesteria, you guessed it, blows skywards in an attempt to stop just one leaf reaching the ground. However, it quickly becomes clear that this is an impossible task. This is meant to represent a certain stoic-like resignation to the fact that resistance is often in vain and sometimes you might be best just letting the world happen, rather than worrying about it. Yeah, right – that’s easy for him to say. Your life must be pretty chilled if you can spend the afternoon barefooted in the park blowing on leaves.

Prints for Afghanistan.

We’re closing off this week’s coolsh*t with the latest campaign from Aussie photographer Thomas James Parrish (who has previously featured on SELFHOOD, white papers, realsh*ts and more – safe to say we’ve got good value out of him). For this campaign, Tom teamed up with his old man, Mark Parrish, who in 1977 travelled through Afghanistan, taking black and white images on Ilford film using his father’s Canon Canonet and his own Olympus OM1. Taken before the unrest of Soviet rule and the resultant Mujahadeen rebellion (which followed just months after the images were taken), Mark captured some of the region’s most iconic images, depicting a very different country to the one you see on the news today. The negatives of the old photos have been cleaned up and re-touched and are now available to buy as prints with proceeds going to Afghan Aid, a UK/Kabul-based charity. So if your walls are looking a little unadorned and could do with smartening up, we implore you to go take a look.