The Brothers Brick

These are some pretty awesome Hippos. Tim Goddard hit this one out the park. You should check out the award-winning zoo he built for them as well.

I ran across this story on Thursday and thought it was interesting enough to pass along.

Put yourself in Jeremy Bell’s shoes. You’re a creative director at Teehan+Lax, a Downtown Toronto design firm and a lifelong LEGO fan. You’re having a quiet Tuesday afternoon at the office. Hey, you just got a custom BrickGun model kit of a semi-auto handgun in the mail. Why not build it at your desk? (I for one totally understand, I just did the same thing last week with the Space Police Smash ‘n’ Grab.) After you’re done, you show the model to a co-worker, he breaks it, you put it back in its box, then unwind with some co-workers by playing video games.

Photo above courtesy of National Post and Global TV

The problem is, handguns are illegal in Canada, and gun play at work is generally associated with disgruntled employee rampages, rather than good LEGO design. So that afternoon, a person with a condo overlooking Jeremy’s window office saw him assembling the model, thought it was a real handgun and called the police. (He has since apologize via Twitter, Facebook and a handmade sign put up in his window.)

About an hour after putting away the model gun, the gaming was interrupted by yelling in the hallway. Jeremy peeked into the hall and saw members of the Toronto Police Emergency Task Force with real big guns pointed at him. He cooperated, got ‘cuffed, told them to check out the LEGO gun in his office, and he was uncuffed in about 90 seconds. Done, right?

It became a slightly bigger deal because people in and immediately around the building were detained, had big guns pointed at them, the street was closed off by half a dozen police cars, a couple ambulances waited nearby, and a helicopter hovered overhead. For details on the basic facts of the story, the best details and perspective are in Jeremy’s blog, but also check out some of the local Toronto online news outlets like GlobalToronto and Torontoist, where I first ran across the story.

Jeremy is now obviously being pestered by media all across Canada, and even by US LEGO nerds like me. He was gracious enough to answer a few questions:

The Brothers Brick: How do you feel about all this attention over a bizarre misunderstanding?
Jeremy Bell: I could do without the attention, but I do find the whole situation hilarious. Don’t get me wrong, guns in the workplace aren’t cool, and I’m aware that people have been killed over similar misunderstandings—luckily this event didn’t turnout the same.

TBB: What form has your LEGO fandom taken? Collector, builder, sets, your own creations, just looking?
JB: I’ve been a fan of Lego since I was a little kid, but it’s not something I spend a lot of time playing with now. That said, I’ll usually assemble actual kits and then combine the pieces with the rest of my collection and build my own creations.

TBB: Was the ordering of the custom gun kit a bit of lark? How did you find out about the kit? Was it any good?
JB: I discovered the BrickGun kit on a design blog (if I recall correctly), so ya… it was a bit of a lark. The kit had about 250 pieces in it, plus some elastic bands. Was it any good? Well, I got arrested… that’s gotta count for something I guess.

TBB: According to the other news stories, you’re the Creative Director at a design company? How has this affected your professional relationships, since this went down at work?
JB: Excellent question about the work side of things… no one has asked that yet. At the moment, all of our clients seem to think it’s pretty humours (although we haven’t heard from all of them yet). We’ll see how this shakes out next week.

TBB: How about your family?
JB: My family’s always known I was a Lego fan, so they weren’t surprised to see what I built. That said, my wife wasn’t so thrilled when she found out.

Thanks, Jeremy!

From looking at BrickGun’s website, they’re a little overwhelmed by the media driven orders because of this story, so if this gets you all excited to order something from them, good luck trying to get it in time for the holidays.

The Wunderkammer or cabinet of curiosities existed since the Renaissance to collect intriguing man-made and natural artifacts. Guy Himber (V&A Steamworks) does the same in LEGO with his rendition of wunderkammer in a steampunk style, collecting artifacts from various builders.

Toys R Us is having another 2 Day Sale sale today and tomorrow. The LEGO item of note is that 7754 Home One Mon Calamari Star Cruiser is 33% off — $73.69 instead of $110. To use the coupon online, you enter coupon code 933897 at checkout.

Unfortunately, the website is showing this item as out of stock, so check back over the next couple of days to see if they add any more.

Check out the post on FBTB for more ways to save money with this deal using more coupon codes, including free shipping so you don’t have to fight holiday crowds. Sweet!

Chris McVeigh (powerpig) is posting an advent calendar of spectacular photos throughout the month of December. Check this gallery often to see what’s new each day.

In my opinion these photos would make for some excellent greeting cards.

This new ship by Stuart (OptimalControl) brings Neo Blacktron to a cool new level. The unconventional shape really makes an impact.

I also like that there is so much black against black surface detail, it really makes the few spots of color pop out, especially the cockpit. Speaking of the cockpit, it’s fantastic, it’s set at an angle we don’t see often, one that I’m sure took a lot of effort to achieve.

Though this was featured as part of TomarLEGO earlier this year, we’ve had to wait nearly six months to see more pictures of one of the display’s centerpieces, “St. Ann’s Cliff” by Ricardo Silva (evildead):

A working windmill and round tower complement excellent landscaping, but my favorite bit is that tiny chunk of exposed brick in the otherwise white wall. Classic.

I’ve been having big problems blogging here lately due to some strange delays in writing posts making it a much slower process than usual. That’s the main reason why I’ve tended to double up models in my latest posts. To keep with the tradition I’m doubling up my two latest models: my version of a LMS Jinty and an old-style Northern English tram. The `stickers’ are applied virtually but I intend to add them for real.

This new mecha from Mark Neumann (SnowLeopard) represents Mark’s return to LEGO after a fairly lengthy period away from his bricks. Welcome back, Mark!

Though it’s been nice to see Mark at events like BrickCon and SEALUG meetings (thanks for the ride home last month!), it’s also great to see a new LEGO creation from him. Click the pic to see Mark’s description and backstory.

A few of the 2010 LEGO sets are starting to show up online, both from The LEGO Shop and Toys R Us.

5981 Raid VPR and 5982 Smash ‘n Grab were both designed by Mark Stafford, and include new alien minifigs.

I love the new shark-headed dude in 8060 Typhoon Turbo Sub.

8058 Guardian of the Deep and 8056 Monster Crab Clash are also out now.

Alex Eylar has really outdone himself with his Cup and Ball Automaton. While the build itself is amazing, and has this wicked sense of macabre, the icing is the fact that it moves…

Railbricks is putting out a calendar for the first time! I’ve gotten a sneak peek of a couple of the pictures and they are gorgeous. Hopefully this does well enough to be an annual event. They are still working out the pricing and other such details, so look for more information to be forthcoming.

It seems that most of the buses we blog are variants of the iconic London Bus (the Routemaster). Today I’d like to introduce you to the more modern buses seen in Europe. Both make excellent use of the new windscreen piece.

This bus by Nieks (mrbrick) runs in Breda, the Netherlands.

While this one by MasterChief1 is a common site in many English towns and cities. I do have to send the purists a warning that there is some use of double sided tape here.

BrickArms just posted new transparent weapons packs on their site. The packs are available in red, blue, green and clear. You get 34 for $25. I saw the transparent weapons flying of their table at BrickCon, so I would expect these to go fairly quickly.

According to BrickArms spokesman, the ever enigmatic badger, these are color matched to LEGO’s transparent pieces.

Edit: I’ve just been told that they added Chrome Weapons Packs yesterday. The chrome weapons are very sweet. I picked up a couple at BrickCon.

For those of who may not have heard, a referendum passed in Switzerland that banned the construction of minarets on mosques. Because, you know, apparently a minaret poses an existential threat to Western Civilization, while upending a tradition of cosmopolitanism is really what you want to go for. This is all Erik Smit (.eti) and I have to say to that: