This is charming — an inventory of “all the properties for my Lord Admiral’s men,” taken by theatrical impresario Philip Henslowe on March 10, 1598:

Item: 1 rock, 1 cage, 1 Hell-mouth
Item: 1 tomb of Guido, 1 tomb of Dido, 1 bedstead
Item: 8 lances, 1 pair of stairs for Phaeton
Item: 2 steeples, and 1 chime of bells, and 1 beacon
Item: 1 globe, and 1 golden sceptre; 3 clubs
Item: 2 marchpanes, and the city of Rome
Item: 1 golden fleece; 2 rackets; 1 bay-tree
Item: 1 wooden canopy; old Mahomet’s head
Item: 1 lion skin; 1 bear’s skin; and Phaeton’s limbs, and Phaeton chariot; and Argus’ head
Item: Neptune fork and garland
Item: 8 vizards; Tamburlaine bridle; 1 wooden mattock
Item: Cupid’s bow and quiver; the cloth of the sun and moon
Item: 1 boar’s head and Cerberus’ three heads
Item: 1 caduceus; 2 moss banks, and 1 snake
Item: 2 fans of feathers; Belin Dun’s stable; 1 tree of golden apples; Tantalus’ tree; 9 iron targets
Item: 1 Mercury’s wings; Tasso picture; 1 helmet with dragon; 1 shield with 3 lions; 1 elm bowl
Item: 1 lion; 2 lion heads; 1 great horse with his legs; 1 sackbut
Item: 1 black dog
Item: 1 cauldron for the Jew

Much of what we know about the business of Elizabethan theater comes from a book of accounts that Henslowe kept around the turn of the 17th century. He never mentions Shakespeare directly, but his theaters competed with the Globe.

Expression markings used by Australian composer Percy Grainger:

• “Louden lots”
• “Soften bit by bit”
• “Lower notes of woggle well to the fore”
• “Glassily”
• “Sipplingly”
• “Bumpingly”
• “Hammeringly”
• “Bundling”
• “Clatteringly”
• “Like a shriek”
• “Very rhythmic and jimp”
• “Rollikingly”
• “Hold until blown”
• “Jogtrottingly”
• “Easygoingly but very clingingly”

Musical directions in Erik Satie’s piano works:

• “Wonder about yourself”
• “Provide yourself with shrewdness”
• “Alone, for one moment”
• “Open the head”
• “Superstitiously”
• “In a very particular way”
• “Light as an egg”
• “Like a nightingale with a toothache”
• “Moderately, I insist”
• “A little bit warm”
• “Very Turkish”

One of Satie’s directions — “Very lost” — might have been unnecessary.

The Ferrari 250 GTO has been called the top sports car of all time. Only 39 were manufactured, so they sell for as much as $35 million among collectors.

Chris Smart of Bishopstoke, Hampshire, couldn’t afford to buy one …

… so he painted one on his garage door.

For the Festival of World Cultures in August 2008, street painter Edgar Mueller transformed the East Pier in Dún Laoghaire, Ireland, into an ice-age crevasse.

“Beside the personal messages, questions and sometimes answers in my paintings I’m questioning the experienced daily perception of people by changing the appearance of public places,” he says.

More of his paintings.

Near a streetcorner in Winslow, Ariz., trompe l’oeil artist John Pugh has painted six windows. On an upper sill perches an eagle, and in the lower windows is reflected a girl in a flatbed Ford — presumably slowing down.

In 1980 Pugh received a commission from his alma mater, California State University, Chico, to paint a mural on the side of Taylor Hall. Shortly after its completion, a woman who worked across the street called the administration to ask when the wall would be repaired.

With his mural Art Imitating Life Imitating Art Imitating Life at San Jose’s Cafe Espresso, Pugh created a convincing extension of the restaurant’s interior. Everything within the brick proscenium — the alcove, sculpture, painting, stairway, cat, and woman — was painted by hand.

After the mural was completed in February 1997, a male patron tried to introduce himself to the woman and complained to a manager that she was giving him the “silent treatment.”