We really love a spectacularly ridiculous hip hop album cover. You know, one that deploys all the common cliches with copious jewelry, fancy cars, naked women, suits, cigars, a lurking posse, toned and oiled muscles, maybe a skyline, the works. It’s hip-hop, it’s all about showing off and having fun doing it. All of those tendencies and more are featured in StreetLevel’s excellent listicle of 10 Hip-Hop Album Cover Cliches, although we’d like to add one more to the pile: the old, “I wasn’t available for a photo shoot so we hired an illustrator and this is what they did.” Here are some classic examples of the illustrated hip-hop album cover.

(via Asylum)

So it’s starting to get really cold and legitimately winter-y, and our spider-senses tell us it’s time to start the winter rituals: bears hibernate, elderly New Yorkers migrate to Florida, and we all wear fake tans every day for about six months.

Seriously, it’s about the only way we’ve found to keep a happy face through the dreary cold months, which may have more to do with the chemicals in the product than the sunny disposition it gives us, but we’re hopelessly addicted and can’t stop fake tanning now, no matter how terrible it looks. Much like the folks in Holytaco’s listicle of 25 People With Terrible Fake Tans. We’re not sure why they left the nice-looking fellow at right out of the list.

(via NextRound)

One time while were riding in the elevator in a really, really tall building one of our favorite jams came on the muzak, and we felt transported to a dark, light-dappled dance floor. We’re not sure the other people in the elevator were transported to quite the same place, and it became clear when the doors opened that we hadn’t arrived at a disco, but for those few minutes (it was a really tall building) the music took us on a beautiful journey. And the best music videos often add to that sense of musical transportation, leading us to stunning and strange places, like these 6 Music Videos About Journeys.

“Time for Nothing” by The Parisians (directed by Nicolas Davenel & Thomas Delebecque)

We love all things stop-motion. Plus we’re Parisian, so this is a beautiful trip around our hometown. Travel to more music video journeys.

You might say that we’ve been pretty heavily into facial hair lately, and that’s partially true, although we’ve been very exclusively dealing with beards. What about that other dominant genre of facial hair, the mustache, you might wonder.

Well, we haven’t forgotten about that–we actually prefer the mustache, truth be told–and we’re especially fond of the ’staches featured in Art of Manliness’s listicle of The 35 Manliest Mustaches of All Time. That said, we’re very impressed by Friedrich Nietzsche’s spectacular whiskers (pictured), but we’re dismayed by what we regard as an irredeemable omission, included after the jump. Another super-manly ’stache.

You may have noticed that we’re huge architecture nerds, and, to a lesser degree, comic book fans. In a weird way, though, we’re maybe even more fond of the places where science fiction and architecture intersect and help to create spectacular, imaginary new constructions. We really enjoyed Architects Journal’s vidsticle of the Top 5 Comic Book Cities, although we’re a little surprised by the absence of some version of Metropolis from Superman.

(via NOTCOT)