S' Murvelus, S' Wanderfoll

Why do people like dance crazes? It's not the ridiculousness of the videos, the sense of participation in a global cultural phenomenon, or the devotion of the young to the latest and hippest. No, we can't resist the Harlem Shake and the Gangnam-Style pony dance because of a long tradition of Shimmying that goes back nine centuries, and was described by Mae West as having "a naked aching, sensual agony about it." Quick, apply some critical pressure to this series of loose movements, stat!

He might be on to something, but what does he know? He just wrote the song.

BEAUTY The National Geographic Society has narrowed down the best photos of the year, and you're invited to vote. Just about everything has .01%, except for this one, which a self-portrait of a woman's morning routines. It has 17% of the vote, It's beating this and this.

"WANDERFOLL PICTURE" says someone named Sharon in the comments. I think people are drawn to it and its wanderfollness because the artist has captured what it's like to use the bathroom in the morning and that's something we can all appreciate. As opposed to horse-wrangling or being the universe, which is like whatever and not wanderfoll at all.

How can you known how to spell "picture," but not "wonderful?"

ART Another one of those "rare masterpieces by a genius discovered and sold for a buck fifty" stories. From a newspaper about art called the Art Newspaper:

The article points out a big difference between the two: Here Crito, the fellow Socrates charged with fowl-debit settlement, has a large open book on his lap, symbolizing something. Probably the Judgement of History or some such concept.

His hand is on Socrates' leg, but it's not grasping it tightly. It's a way of confining Socrates to the physical plane, while the philosopher himself says "no, it's upstairs that matters. So if you don't mind I'll be off." (David was probably thinking of Plato's gesture in Raphael's "School of Athens," which he probably saw on a trip to Rome. So it's an homage, not a theft.)

"Death of Socrates" doesn't have the proto-fascism of "The Oath of the Horatii," but it doesn't have the same dramatic power, either. You can argue whether the fellow on the end of the bed blunts the drama with his disengagement, whether the corridor and stairs on the left doesn't make sense - where is Socrates taking his last drink, exactly? A hallway? A cell? In the drawing, it's obviously a cell:

But that closes up the image, and David wanted the impression of a spirit about to escape, or perhaps connect the philisopher's work to the world beyond the prison walls; perhaps the people going up the stairs represent the disciples who carried on the ideas. Or they're on a tour and wandered into the wrong room.

What I can't figure out is this: why anyone thought it was a drawing of the original painting, instead of prelimiminary study. Wouldn't a drawing have looked exactly like the original?

CELEBS Wasn't Elton John broke a few years ago because he spent hideous amounts of money on things like fresh flowers for every room in a huge house he wasn't even living in? Nice to see he's learned his lesson:

WEB Sneaky little sponsored-content post at Buzzfeed, here. Not sneaky in the sense that they're hiding something, but how they worked the sponsor into the bit. It really doesn't tell you much about the sponsor, though. If you had no idea what the show was about, nothing about the list of pictures - that's right, a list of pictures on Buzzfeed - would compel you to watch the show. Unlike, say, this.

If a scowling man in a fez falling down a bottomless void over a series of code numbers doesn't tell you that "Gravity Falls" is different from every other kid show on the air, well, nothing will.