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I have to say, Cracked.com nailed this one. I grew up loving Corey Feldman. My cousins and I used to fight over who would get to marry him someday (thank God I lost that one, I guess). But even I have to admit his career is less than stellar at the moment. However, the “anonymous” person who wrote this section of his Wikipedia entry begs to differ:
“In November of 2008 he released his most ambitious musical project to date, a new album with his band Truth Movement entitled Technology Analogy. This high concept album has been met with tremendous reviews, and features an all-star line up, including Jon Carin (Pink Floyd), Mark Karan (Rat Dog, Grateful Dead) Scotty Page (Pink Floyd), and artwork by the legendary artist Storm Thorgerson. To order his album check out his website at www.coreyfeldman.net”
Aw… yeah. Cracked has also outed Bruce Willis, Hulk Hogan, Paul Stanley and William Shatner as the authors of their own Wikipedia entries. And maybe the entries were written by lackeys or overzealous fans, but the article is funny either way.
Professional poker player Chris Ferguson can cut bananas and watermelon just by throwing a playing card. Pretty impressive, but wouldn’t it be easier to just use a knife?
I kid, I kid.
The Los Angeles Pop Art company created this poster of Don Vito Corleone, using the entire script of the movie The Godfather as the medium. Copies are are on sale starting for $300, but personally, I would leave the poster and take the cannoli.
Link, photo by Chris Newbert
Nostalgic for your childhood? No doubt The Imaginary World’s vintage cereal box gallery will conjure up images of Saturday morning cartoons and massive sugar rushes. And even if you were more of the oatmeal type, some of the boxes are at least pretty interesting to look at. Does anyone remember Sir Grapefellow cereal? I’ve never heard of it, but “grape flavored oat cereal” doesn’t sound too appealing to me. And be sure to check out “Grins and Smiles and Giggles and Laughs.”
Link via Slashfood via lemondrop.
Every year, this crafter makes a new sock monkey. I love this one, it’s the Hindu goddess of the arts, Sarasvati.
Can you think logically? Take the armchair logic test! There are only 15 questions, and it doesn’t take very long -if you are logical! I scored only 87%, which disappoints me. Link -via the Presurfer
(image credit: Flickr user loquenoves)
BaR2D2 is a radio-controlled, mobile bar that features a motorized beer elevator, motorized ice/mixer drawer, six-bottle shot dispenser, and sound activated neon lighting. The robot is driveable so you can take the party on the road! It was created in my garage using standard hand/power tools and readily available parts and materials.
Jamie Price built this, and you can, too, by following his Instructable! Link -Thanks, Jamie!
(image credit: Kristie Stephens)
Barry Bernard loves gas. He has a series of videos in which he blows things up with a secret mixture of gasses. This picture is from the video in which he blows up a friend’s bed. You’ll find more of them at YouTube. Link -via the Presurfer
Some people sabotage themselves by setting up an excuse for failure before even trying something.
Psychologists have studied this sort of behavior since at least 1978, when Steven Berglas and Edward E. Jones used the phrase “self-handicapping” to describe students in a study who chose to take a drug that they were told would inhibit their performance on an exam (the drug was actually inert).
The urge goes well beyond a mere lowering of expectations, and it has more to do with protecting self-image than with psychological conflicts rooted in early development, in the Freudian sense. Recent research has helped clarify not just who is prone to self-handicapping but also its consequences — and its possible benefits.
Link -via Lifehacker
Which local TV news anchors make the best team? Well, judging from a behind-the-scenes video clip that has popped up, it’s WGN’s Robert Jordan and Jackie Bange, hands down. The two are shown going through an elaborate routine—complete with coordinated paper-shuffling, precision gestures and various grunts and giggles—that they perform during the first commercial break of their weekend newscasts. They are awesome.
Head Candy has the video, and an interview with Robert Jordan about how the routine came about. Link -via I Am Bored
Leave it to Japan to fiddle with the adult diaper technology and develop the next-generation space toilet. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has teamed up with engineers from the private sector to complete the project in the next five year:
Clean and easy to use, the envisioned space toilet is designed to be worn like a diaper around the astronaut’s waist at all times. Sensors detect when the user relieves him or herself, automatically activating a rear-mounted suction unit that draws the waste away from the body through tubes into a separate container. In addition to washing and drying the wearer after each use, the next-generation space toilet will incorporate features that eliminate unwanted sound and odor.
Recall the surprising news that banks can’t account for how they are using first tranche of the $700 billion federal bailout fund? Well, luckily, Freakonomics blog reader Gannon Hubbard found the answer: a $700 billion rabbit hutch on Amazon!
See also: The $700 Billion T-Shirt
Jesse of Flee Alaksa likes to eat strange things. How strange? How about this: a tuna eyeball!
I was at the grocery store and I got the urge to eat something new. I looked around and I didn’t really see much until I found a food that could look back. It was only a hundred yen, which is less than a buck, so I figured I’d give it a whirl. It had a sticker on it that said that it should be cooked, but I didn’t really know how to cook it. I tried to find stuff online, but there aren’t a lot of English webpages devoted to eating fish eyes, so I just decided to boil it.
If you’re squeamish, this isn’t for you: Link – via J-Walk Blog
Previously on Neatorama: 10 Weird Gourmet Foods
Evolution of Technology is a jaw-droppingly creative ad on the "evolution" of steampunk robotic dinosaurs to modern androids. It’s developed by Scholz&Friends Group for the German electric store Saturn.
Laughing Squid blog has the clip: Link [embedded YouTube]
Previously on Neatorama: Evolution of Tech Logos
How do the things that we buy become things in the first place?
Documentary filmmaker Gary Hustwit (who also did Helvetica – yes, a film about the typeface) takes a look at product designers and their industrial designs his new film, Objectified:
Objectified is a feature-length independent documentary about industrial design. It’s a look at the creativity at work behind everything from toothbrushes to tech gadgets. It’s about the people who re-examine, re-evaluate and re-invent our manufactured environment on a daily basis. It’s about personal expression, identity, consumerism, and sustainability. It’s about our relationship to mass-produced objects and, by extension, the people who design them.
Here’s the trailer: Link [embedded YouTube clip] – via Fimoculous
Photo: Mary Anne Fackelman/The White House – via The Sly Oyster
Hooray! It’s time for the Neatorama and Hobotopia Caption Monkey game.
Yes, your eyes aren’t deceiving you. That’s Nancy Reagan sitting on Mr. T’s lap (Santa T?), giving him a smooch, at a White House Christmas party in 1983. The First Lady actually requested Mr. T come to the party dressed as Santa Claus. This photo was printed in countless newspapers and magazines around the world.
Your job is to come up with the funniest caption for this photo. I pity the fool that couldn’t come up with at least one. Funniest caption will win an original Laugh Out Loud Cat comic by our favorite artist Adam "Ape Lad" Koford.
For inspiration, don’t forget to check out Adam’s blog.
Update 1/7/09 – Adam has picked the winner! Congratulations to jonathan who won with this gem: “I see it in the stars: your career will last forever.”
Congratulations to many of our friends in the blogosphere for being the finalists for the 2008 Weblog Awards.
Go forth and vote! (Did I miss anyone?)
Most of us played with building blocks to create our own make believe buildings and cities. Fortunately, not all of us outgrew this habit. Here are some cityscape artworks made from unusual objects like egg, cookware, and Jell-O. Yes. Jell-O.
(Yes, we've featured many of these artists before on Neatorama, but it's kind of neat to see them all in one place.)
Photo: cinghialino
[Flickr]
Photo: cinghialino
[Flickr]
Chinese artist Liu Jianhua created this cityscape of Shanghai out of poker chips and dice. You can fill in the part about the metaphor of a city's growth and economic development to risk taking, gambling, and chance all by yourself. Part of a solo exhibition at Galleria Continua in San Gimignano, Italy.
More about Liu Jianhua at ArtZineChina | Unreal Scene at designboom
Bay Bridge (2005), San Francisco in Jell-O by Liz Hickok
The City (2005),
San Francisco in Jell-O by Liz Hickok
Liz Hickok and her Twin Peaks in Jell-O, complete with "fog."
San Francisco may be prone to earthquakes, but things never seem so jiggly as when artist Liz Hickok made a cityscape of Baghdad-by-the-Bay out of ... Jell-O!
Check out more of Liz's fantastic San Francisco in Jell-O at her website: Link
On Gold Mountain: Sculptures from the Sierra by Zhang Wang
What is it about San Francisco that inspired so many artists? Here's one by Zhan Wang, who used stainless steel pots and pans, as well as silverware to create his cityscape: Link
I don't know much about the background of this Egg City, but it's doubly eggscellent because it's also the image of a RMB 50 bill! (Previously on Neatorama)
In his installation titled "Eating the City," Chinese artist Sang Dong used about 72,000 biscuits, including "digestives, chocolate digestives, rich tea, hobnobs, caramels and fruit shortcake."
When his assistant remarked that she wanted to have a biscuit or two after the exhibition was completed but worried whether the biscuits would be stale, Dong had a sage advice: "Go for the ones at the bottom."
More at BBC: Link
Artist Gayle Chong Kwan used hundreds of old plastic bottles and food packagings to create a cityscape of the lost city of Atlantis: Link
At first I thought Jacob Dahlgren used books to create this virtual cityscape installation called "Colour Reading and Contexture," but those are actually colored tiles and wooden blocks. Still it's pretty cool! Link
Urville is an island off Côte d'Azur, between Cannes and St. Tropez. If you've never heard of it, that's because it exists only in the mind of a savant named Gilles Tréhin.
Gilles started building Urville, named after Durmont d'Urville, a French scientific base in the Antarctic, when he was 12. Now, he has hundreds of detailed drawings, as well as a "historical" narrative on the founding of the city. Link
Previously on Neatorama: 10 Most Fascinating Savants in the World
For her exhibition titled "Uncharted Terrain," Grace Grothous made an imaginary topographic landscale out of discarded circuit boards. The little buildings are the circuitries that are part of the boards! Link
Jerusalem Sphere, replica of "Jerusalem Fountain" by Frank Meisler
Photo: Jerry
[Picasa]
Inspired by ancient maps showing Jerusalem as a circular city, Frank Meisler created this sculpture of the city in the form of a sphere. It is a replica of the Jerusalem Fountain, commissioned by the King Solomon Hotel. Link
Photo: Keizo Kioku
Photo: Yuto Kirakakiuchi
Japanese artist Enoki Chu created his futuristic cityscape out of polished old drill bits and machine parts: Link
If you love cityscape art, then you'll dig these CityScape Coat Hangers by sixxis. These laser-cut coat hangers are illustrated with the skylines of five cities: Link
If you have anything to add, I'd love to hear about it in the comment section!
Too bad this gorgeous IPSVM skateboard exists only in Loren Kulesus’s design. Given its intricacy, I’d wager that the only loop-d-loop you’ll see with this skatebard is in its design: Link – via NotCot
Just because you need an emergency tent it doesn’t mean that you have to live in an unstylish one. Here’s the Accordion reCover Shelter, by designers Matthew Malone, Amanda Goldberg, Jennifer Metcalf and Grant Meacham:
There’s nothing flimsy about the intricate folds of the reCover Shelter, which can sustain a family of four following a disaster for up to a month. As you may suspect, the oversized origami structure can be entirely collapsed into not one, but two different shapes (either horse-shoe or flat) depending on which is easier to transport. Plus, it’s composed of polypropylene, meaning no harmful gases go into the production of the shelter and it is 100% recyclable after use. Set-up takes minutes and only requires one person on deck.
The Accordion reCover Shelter was designed as a first response shelter – “something that could be transported to the site when infrastructures such as roads were unusable”. Once the temporary residence is unfolded, the functional ridges can be used to collect drinking water, and local materials or even ground cover can be used to better insulate the structure and keep harsh weather at bay. As a sustainable and inexpensive solution to an unfortunate situation that seems to arise more and more often these days, the Accordion Shelter provides a quick roof over victim’s heads and lets them start planning immediately for better days to come.
I don’t know whether to call this American ingenuity and laziness: behold the Canine Treadmill that lets the dog walk itself indoors. You can set the speed, distance, and incline to give your dog the right amount of exercise.
Link | Previously on Neatorama
Can true love last forever? Scientists at Stony Brook University used brain scans to find that indeed, true love can last a lifetime:
Scanning the brains of people who have been together for 20 years, the scientists found that about one in 10 couples still display elements of “limerence”, the psychologists’ term for the obsessive behaviour of new lovers.
They enjoy “intensive companionship and sexual liveliness” but without the anxieties and tensions of early love. They are generous, calm and deeply attached. The scientists call them swans (swans mate for life).
This is good news for the 10%, if not for the remaining 90% gripped by marital fatigue. But Arthur Aron, leader of the researchers, says the majority can learn from the minority. One clue he has found is that the swans share experiences and avoid stress. This may be a symptom rather than a cause, but Aron, 64, and his wife are copying the swans anyway in the hope of enjoying a little limerence themselves.
Scientists have just discovered a new species of iguana that has pink scales and lives on one volcano in the Galapagos Islands:
… scientists have discovered that the "rosada" – or pink – iguana is a species in its own right after comparing its genes with other land iguanas on the Galapagos.
There were also physical differences, besides the striking pink and black-striped colouring. Pink iguanas had flat head scales, unlike other land iguanas, and a thick fatty crest on the back of the neck with small conical scales.
