bookofjoe

Michelangelo’s Blueprints for the Sistine Chapel Ceiling

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Famously, Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

Less famously, Michelangelo hated the Sistine Chapel ceiling — or at least the process of painting it.

And we're fairly certain that at the end of the four-year process he swore he'd never do anything like it again.

But while he was a hugely successful artist, Michelangelo was very bad at turning down work he didn't want to do.

Especially when he was asked to do it by the Pope.

My First Car

OMG I watched the 1968 film "The Legend of Lylah Clare" starring Kim Novak last night.

Featured in a climactic car chase on the Pacific Coast Highway: a 1966 White Buick Skylark convertible — THE FIRST CAR I EVER OWNED!!

I found it in the Los Angeles Times Sunday Classifieds, whose used car listings were fantastic: any car you wanted would show up there sooner or later.

I paid $500 cash in 1976.

It was like an aircraft carrier, it was so wide and long.

See what I mean?

I loved that car.

FunFact: my girlfriend at the time called it "The Thrasher."

Good movie BTW.

Ciclotte Stationary Bike

Bryan Gardiner's Wired magazine review follows.

BowFlex, Roman chairs, those things Suzanne Somers was hawking: Most exercise equipment looks like it belongs in a dungeon, not a home gym.

The Ciclotte stationary bicycle, on the other hand, wouldn't appear out of place in a museum.

Which is exactly where its aesthetics hail from.

Designer Luca Schieppati took his Ciclò — a concept bike that the Milan Design Museum liked enough to include in its permanent collection — and transformed it into an exercise machine. (Nice move, because the penny-farthing-from-the-future geometry would make it nearly impossible to ride.)

Push the pedals and the epicycloid crank system — a set of eccentric gears like you'd find in a pencil sharpener—spins the magnetized main wheel.

This in turn generates a magnetic field and plenty of thigh-burning resistance.

Just remember to stop ogling it and, you know, ride.

When this bike appeared in 2010 it cost $10,700.

I thought the only place you'd be able to get one a couple years later would be eBay.

WRONG!

It's still going strong, now available in both carbon fiber and stainless steel versions in numerous colorways.

Price on request.