As far as I know this is the only video of the destruction of the Merchants building. Even worse: it's not a video but a GIF. On the other hand, they're very compact. As videos, they weighed in at half an MB, tops; as a GIF with no compression they waddled in at 13 MB. Thanks to Gfycat, they're down to half an MB again.

If you can see it, then it works. The Merchant building was next to the Rand Tower; there's a parking ramp on the space today. The site also included the Thorpe Building:

Both buildings are long forgotten. If you're curious what the block looked like:

The little bank in the middle survives as a facade on the ramp; it was the Marquette Bank, which chose an Egyptian style because people were just nuts about all things Tut at the time it was built in the 20s. Odd choice, but a nice addition to downtown.

Anyway, GFYcat drastically compresses GIFs and saves the world untold gigs of bandwidth. It's free and you don't have to sign up. They not only compress your GIFs into versions that can be slowed down or paused or reversed, they host them.

What nice folks!

What's in it for them, you wonder?

GAMING This game review makes it sound like a bowl of spinach, no? "ENCOURAGES PLAYERS TO LEARN ABOUT TYPE BY EXPLORING A WORLD OF FONTS, MARIO-STYLE." Another review has a warning: "The game freezes if you try to read a recently captured asterisk entry while in the process of dying." So it's ultra-realistic! Hard to describe, really - you're pushing two dots along a landscape made up of letters while atmospheric music lends an otherworldly air. I've never liked side-scrolling games that make you jump. I love this thing. You can get it here. I got it free from a Starbucks promotion; you'll have to pay $3 or see if Starbucks still has cards left with a free code.

In related news - art and architecture, that is - here are some buildings made to look like the work of famous artists. For some reason. This one's easy:

This one's a bit more challenging.

Many many more, here.

FOLLOW-UP Wednesday I put up that Schlitz ad to show the difference between the real thing and the one going around the Internet. I was paging through an old Life from the same era, and found another from the series that shows a guy screwing up as well. In fact, "beer as compensation for screwing up" was the point of the entire campaign. So:

See? Guys in beer ads were stupid too.