[Editor's note: While your Flavorwire editors take a much-needed holiday break, we'll spend the next two weekends revisiting some of our most popular features of the year. This post was originally published September 28, 2011.] The historically minded artist Mike Stimpson lends a tinge of childhood innocence to legendary moments in a collection that uses LEGOs to recreate famous photos (and one famous painting). By placing the original pictures side-by-side with his versions, he simultaneously pays homage to and updates these classic images, including the soaring Lunch Atop a Skyscraper, the darling kiss in V-J Day Times Square, and John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Bed-In. Page through Stimpson’s playful LEGO remixes after the jump.

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Today at Flavorpill, we couldn’t decide which of these spots we’d rather see before we die: the Great Pyramid of Giza or Machu Picchu. We imagined what it would be like to work with a big lampshade on our head. We wanted to build our own LEGO gingerbread house. We decided that everyone needs to donate some peanut butter to their local food bank, ASAP. We read about the invention of the “TwitDot” over on McSweeney’s. We thoroughly enjoyed this Venn diagram. We were surprised to hear that Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 has just been released as an eBook, given its author’s rather outspoken rejection of the format. We fell in love with these photos of swimming babies and these photos of swimming pigs. We met a woman who dresses up like Charlotte Bronte every single day, even though she feels more like Emily. We found out that Tavi can sing. We were excited to hear that the trailer for The Hobbit will debut in front of The Adventures Of Tintin. We kind of liked the idea of Courtney Love as a junkie Auntie Mame. And finally, we decided to give our lives a Casablanca-style makeover. Is there any spot more romantic than Café Américain?

This Black Friday, Doctor Popular, a self-described “game designer, illustrator, tailor, rapper, and super nerd,” created a diorama depicting the recent pepper spray incident at UC Davis in an unused news bin for Employment Guide on Market Street. “My hope was to install a piece to get people thinking about recent police violence while they were trying to do their holiday shopping,” he writes. “If I had more time I would have created many more dioramas based on scenes from New York and Oakland.” He adds, “I didn’t set out to create a Lego diorama, but it turns out that their “City sets” contained almost everything you need to create a protest scene. Seriously though, are the cities in Denmark filled with cops? There’s like a 2 to 1 ratio of police to civilians in these kits.” Is LEGO trying to tell us something? Either way, click through to see photos of Doctor Popular’s project, and let us know what you think in the comments! Read More »

This past Thursday marked the 20th anniversary of cultural icon Freddie Mercury’s death of AIDS-related pneumonia. In some ways, however, it doesn’t seem that long — the Queen frontman is still an incredible influence in art, music and fashion, and has been frequently name-checked as one of the biggest influences of many musicians, including Lady Gaga and Katy Perry, two of pop culture’s current reigning queens. Indeed, something about the Zanzibar-born Mercury (née Farrokh Bulsara) is singularly inspiring — his incredible showmanship, his forward-thinking, his unimpeachable talent both for singing and songwriting, his independent attitude, that moustache — and he continues to have a hand in many forms of art today. On the 20th anniversary of Freddie Mercury’s death, we’ve rounded up a few artworks, both large and small, that pay homage to the man, the myth, the legend. Click through to see our Freddie-art, and let us know which capture him the best in the comments. Read More »

We were sold on the work of LEGO sculptor Iain Heath the moment we spotted his Freddie Mercury portrait at Super Punch. So we were thrilled to find that he’s got an entire Flickr site full of incredible, pop-culture LEGO constructions. Although there are a few funny political caricatures (Sarah Palin, Arnold Schwarzenegger), Heath specializes in recreating the nerdiest of characters and celebrities: Stephen Hawking, Futurama, Monty Python, Star Wars, the anime films of Hayao Miyazaki. Geeks, rejoice, in the gallery of our favorite Heath sculptures after the jump, then visit him on Flickr to see much, much more. Read More »

You can thank our friends at BoingBoing for tipping us off to this neo-Victorian series of models, a work in progress by Lego artist Matt Armstrong aka “Monsterbrick.” His crazy steampunk inventions — which range from an antique typewriter to a meerschaum pipe (complete with a plume of smoke!) — are surprisingly realistic and detailed, in spite of the fact that they’re entirely made up of little plastic bricks. Click through to get a better look at Armstrong’s impressive work, and let us know in the comments which piece is your favorite. Read More »

Bringing the fantasies of your childhood playtime to life are these extreme LEGO designs, uniquely created for living spaces. Some seem to be inspired by the shape and interlocking system of the colorful building blocks, while others are actually created from thousands upon thousands of LEGOs and took several years to build. Click through for a look at extreme LEGO living. Read More »

Today at Flavorpill, we couldn’t believe that the giant Lego man that we told you about last week that washed up on a Florida beach is now in — we kid you not! — police custody. We were glad that Splitsider took the time to rank all 66 segments from every “Treehouse of Horror” episode of The Simpsons because we don’t think that we’d have the energy to do so ourselves. We liked Lady Gaga’s latest Indian flag-inspired hair color. We listened to Karen O perform “Duet,” a song from her recently-debuted “psycho-opera” Stop the Virgens. We wondered if Anderson Cooper felt awkward about meeting Phil Donahue while dressed up as Phil Donahue. We learned the science behind what makes people pee when they’re scared. We had our hearts warmed. We were thrilled to hear that American Horror Story has been picked up for a second season by FX. We watched a time-lapse video of the Google doodle team carving some giant pumpkins to make today’s doodle. We found this piece about the “cordial enmity” between Pauline Kael and Joan Didion a fascinating read. And finally, we were convinced that this was by far the sexiest Hungry-Man Dinner costume that we’ve ever seen. Now if only someone would make Sexy Inexplicable Melancholy a reality, our Halloween night would be complete!

Today at Flavorpill, we browsed the shelves at the People’s Library of Occupy Wall Street — which recently started its own public readings series. We tried to imagine coming across this giant Lego man while walking along a beach in Florida. We decided that this clever (and fully-functioning!) Nikon camera getup is definitely the most impressive Halloween costume idea we’ve seen so far this year. We were thrilled to hear that the animator behind the unofficial Tintin credits was invited to the film’s premiere and got a job offer from Steven Spielberg. We learned how toothpaste gets made alongside Mr. Rogers. We were happy that AMC has renewed The Walking Dead for a third season. We listened to Patti Smith do a cover of U2′s “Until the End of the World.” We were a tad bit concerned by Burger King’s “all the Whoppers you can eat in 30 minutes” deal in Japan — can you imagine if they did that here in the US? And finally, we printed out a Ron Swanson mask, just to randomly wear it around the office.

For his new series Ink Riders, Italian photographer and digital artist Albert Seveso — who is probably best known on the internet for his “sperm shaping” technique — captures images of LEGO surfer dudes deftly navigating waves of blue ink and water. We find them almost as mind-boggling as those tattooed LEGOs that Barcelona’s Grey agency created last year to help promote Pilot Extra-Fine ball-pens. Click through to see some additional photos of the tiny kahunas in action.

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