Remember the digital pet game Tamagotchi? Well, Japan now has the next step in virtual relationship, a Nintedo DS video game called Love Plus where nerdy males can have their very own anime girlfriends.
Lisa Katayama, Boing Boing’s contributing editor, reports that a man who calls himself "Sal9000" has taken the next logical step:
On Sunday, a man named Sal9000 married the love of his life. Her name is Nene Anegasaki, and she lives inside of a Nintendo DS video game called Love Plus. The wedding took place during a Make: Japan meet-up held at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. In attendance were a live audience, an MC, the bride’s virtual video game girlfriend — who made a speech — and a real human priest.
A wife with an on/off switch! I don’t know if this is crazy or genius – maybe both: Link (with embedded YouTube clip) – Thanks Xeni!
Over a few years and several blogs I have posted quite a few imaginative marriage proposals, but this is by far the most elaborate proposal I have ever encountered. Steve posted the story at the YouTube page.
I have know my fiance Tracey Wade for over 14 years and wanted to propose to her in a very unique way. Tracey thought we were just going to the movies on a Sunday afternoon. Little did she know, I had rented the entire theater and filled it with 160 of our friends and family. I made it seem as though we were showing up a little late to the movie and went in to the theater after the lights had gone down and the movie trailers were already playing. This was done to keep her from recognizing anyone in the theater. What I had done was make an entire movie trailer that had actors portraying both Tracey and I at different times in our lives, both present day and in the future. After a few trailers played including one for Lord of the Rings the one I had made started. Tracey thought it was just another trailer for a movie soon to be released. Tracey was just perplexed as to how many different things had similarities to our relationship, she kept nudging me throughout the trailer. Tracey had no idea this was a marriage proposal until the last three seconds of the trailer.
Nine months earlier in September of 2006 I started by hiring a professional production team, securing two and a half million dollars (FOR FREE) worth of film equipment (THANK YOU PANAVISION, THEY DONATED THE EQUIPMENT FOR THE SHOOT), and writing a script that would show what would go through someone’s mind (Tracey’s) if they were about to die. It is said “moments before you die your life flashes right before your eyes”. JUST A NOTE: Ever since Tracey was a young girl, she has had a reoccurring dream that she was going to die in a plane crash. Actors were cast to portray both Tracey and I at different times in our lives (twenty years in the future as well as present day)
Oh yeah, she said yes! This is one of The Top 14 Geekiest Wedding Proposals at LaptopLogic. Link -via Unique Daily
A new website called Rent the Runway is betting that it can do for haute couture what Netflix did for movies:
“It was so easy. You just wear it and drop it back in the mail to them,” Ms. Harris said. “I don’t spend $2,000 on a dress regularly, so it’s nice to be able to wear some of the more expensive brands I wouldn’t be able to buy otherwise. And instead of just buying one or two dresses for this season, I can still have a lot of things to wear.”
Rent the Runway was founded by two recent Harvard Business School graduates, Jennifer Hyman and Jennifer Carter Fleiss. Ms. Hyman said she got the idea for the service last year after watching her younger sister agonize over whether to buy an expensive new outfit to wear to a wedding.
“Here was this young girl who loves fashion and was willing to spend a good portion of her salary on a dress that she’s only going to wear once or twice, and I thought, there has to be a solution for this,” said Ms. Hyman.
Jenna Wortham of The New York Times has the scoop: Link (Photo: Todd Heisler/NY Times)
34-year-old Teane Harris of Bensenville, Illinois had planned a big wedding, but it was called off when the groom backed out only a week before the big event. Harris and her mother were told it was too late to get their deposit back for the reception. What to do? Harris decided to use the facilities and all the wedding supplies to throw a party for the Asbury Court Retirement Community.
Just like that, the Halloween party planned for the 340 residents at Asbury Court turned into a lavish banquet, with a sumptuous meal, elegant flowers, sparkling masks right out of a masquerade ball, and a disc jockey who kept the mood lively.
“We knew we weren’t going to be getting our money back,” says Harris, during a phone interview from Hawaii, where she followed through with her honeymoon trip. “So after doing damage control and not wanting anything to go to waste, we looked for somebody who would benefit from it, and we saw the retirement center.”
Asbury officials still marvel over the turn of events, and of the selfless act by Harris. On Friday, they mounted a marquis sign thank you to Harris to show their appreciation.
“It was out of the blue; she knows no one here,” says Eric Haugan, resident services director. “And yet when she came to the party herself, she had all these grandmas wanting to give her a hug. She just broke down.”
Luis Diaz Santis and Magaly Guerrero Ramierz sent out invitations to their wedding depicting themselves as 8-bit characters in a two-player combat video game. Chris Jacob of Gizmodo suggests that this is a subtle social commentary on modern marriage. Either way, it’s cool, and you can view a picture of the groom proposing in binary at the link.
The “autofill” feature of the Google search box was designed as a timesaver, but the suggested searches can also be entertaining. Writing in Slate, Michael Agger compared the autofill of “less intelligent” and “more intelligent” queries, an exercise that has previously been conducted at Digg.
The image above is a screencap of two Google searches conducted tonight using less- and more sophisticated search terms.
A corollary question would be “What searches are most commonly conducted at Neatorama?” The Lijit search engine doesn’t have an autofill feature, but it does offer a list of the most popular recent searches at Neatorama, in descending order of frequency:
“world’s smallest,” mystery sale, halloween, what is it, disney, halloween costume, pumpkin, shop, stories, tattoo, cat, facebook, halloween costumes, pear, game, costume, movie trivia, photography, new species, zombie, bacon, lego, elena desserich, google, anvil cake, costumes, national day, notes left behind, origami, national geographic, videosift, wedding, what is it? game, 6 year old, albert einstein, brain, christmas, chum, hitler, logo, one take, pig, sex, animals, art, batman, brain shot, comic, einstein, shark.
Someone else may want to tackle the sociological implications of that list; I’m not going to touch it.
If you’re of a certain age, you’re no doubt familiar with Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, Gonzo the Great, the terrible jokes of Fozzie Bear and the dry humor of Statler and Waldorf. But are you familiar with what went on behind the scenes of The Muppet Show? Check out these tales from backstage (and a few others) for a few facts you may be less familiar with.
It’s Good to be the Guest Host
Although The Muppet Show had well over 100 guest hosts (and no host ever appeared twice), at first it looked like even turning up a single star to kick off the season. Eventually, all of the producers started to call in personal favors from friends in the industry, begging them to come cavort with puppets for a mere half hour. That all changed in the second season when ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev appeared. The Muppet Show was, well, kind of a strange form of entertainment at the time, so when people like Vincent Price and Florence Henderson and Phyllis Diller appeared, it sort of made sense. Rudolf Nureyev opened up the guest hosting spot to celebrities from all walks – once someone of his prominence hosted, everyone wanted to host.
Many times, guest stars would request scenes with their favorite Muppet. Not surprisingly, Miss Piggy was the highest in demand (not that she would expect anything less) with Animal coming in second.
Sometimes The Muppet Show did theme episodes that usually revolved around the talents or interests of the guest host for the week. For example, the theme of the Vincent Price episode was Monsters and Ghosts; the Muppets busted out their Western wear for Roy Rogers and Dale Evans; and the theme of the Paul Simon episode, was, appropriately, Paul Simon songs.
For the first few episodes, guest hosts were presented with a likeness of themselves as Muppets during the closing scenes. That’s dancer and actress Juliet Prowse with her mini me to the left. However, this ended up being too costly to do for each show, especially while the show was struggling during the first season. The practice stopped after the second episode, which Connie Stevens hosted. However, guest hosts did sometimes still receive a Muppet likeness when it was relevant to a sketch – for instance, Paul Williams sang “Old Fashioned Love Song” with a couple of his Muppet clones later in the first season. Picture from Muppet Central.
Kermit the Frog and Waldorf are the only two Muppets to appear in every single Muppet Show – 120 episode. Statler – Waldorf’s cohort – appeared in 119 episodes. He did not appear in episode 13, season four – but Waldorf’s wife Astoria does. Strangely, she looks exactly like Statler (that’s her in the picture). Fozzie Bear was in 115 episodes, Miss Piggy claimed 111 and Gonzo was in 106. Picture from MuppetWiki.
Show Details
If you prefer to read your Muppet Show instead of watch it, you can do that. The Muppet Show Book chronicles the best parts from the first two seasons of the show. The scenes are illustrated and the dialogue looks like a script.
One of the pilot episodes of the show was called The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence, and it aired on ABC on March 19, 1975. Kermit and Co. spent the half-hour show making fun of all of the sex and violence on T.V. at the time by performing skits such as “The Seven Deadly Sins Pageant” and “The Wrestling Match.” The other pilot episode was called “The Muppets Valentine Show” and aired more than a year earlier, featuring guest host Mia Farrow.
Dr. Bunsen Honeydew used to have Muppet Labs all to himself – at least, until the second season. That’s when the red-headed, nonsense-speaking Beaker showed up to assist him with his experiments and inventions. Some of those inventions have included a gorilla detector, a banana sharpener, edible paper clips and exploding clothes.
A Muppet Memorial
Not directly related to The Muppet Show, but an interesting story nonetheless. If you’ve seen the movie Love Actually no doubt you remember the wedding scene where various members of the audience burst into “All You Need is Love,” complete with instruments. The movie’s director, Richard Curtis, got the inspiration for this scene from his attendance at Jim Henson’s memorial service. This is what he says about it:
“This was, in fact, inspired by Jim Henson’s funeral, which was the most moving thing I’ve ever been to, and at the end of it, one of the … Frank Oz was talking and he suddenly lifted up Kermit’s puppet and started to sing this song called “One Voice” ["Just One Person"], and it turned out that all the guys in the, in the memorial service, had brought their puppets with them, and they lifted them up, and when you turned around and looked backwards, there were fifty puppets all singing, and Big Bird walked down the aisle of St. Paul’s Cathedral. They all came forward, and just this massive chorus of puppets all singing.”
The Harry Belafonte episode of The Muppet Show was one of the most critically-acclaimed episodes in the show’s entire run, thanks largely in part to the segment where he sings “Turn the World Around” with Muppets decked out in African tribal masks. It was reportedly one of Jim Henson’s favorite Muppet moments ever, so it’s fitting that Belafonte sang the song at one of Henson’s memorial services (he had two – New York in addition to London). You can still see The Muppet Show performance of “Turn the World Around” in its entirety:
Brad Smith used a program called Lunar Magic to set up his own Super Mario Brothers level, in which he spelled out a message to his girlfriend, Lisa. Then, he got her to play it. Beagle bonus at the end!
Noble used the opportunity of shooting a zombie movie last spring in order to propose to Claudia. Claudia was willing to help on the movie, but she had no idea the whole thing was staged for her benefit (the rest of the 20-person crew all knew). She said yes, which led to an October wedding complete with a Zombie Wedding Cake. Read more about the proposal at the YouTube link. -Thanks, Noble!
Flickr user noblerobinette was delighted with her wedding cake, a zombie scenario created by Mike’s Amazing Cakes in Seattle. Even the attendants were modeled after the real people! See more views in her photo stream. Link-via Digg
Forget the CIA, Frank Warren is probably the world's best keeper of secrets.
In 2004, Frank started a project called PostSecret,
in which he printed 3,000 blank postcards inviting people to mail him
their secrets anonymously. He handed out the postcards to strangers, left
them between book pages in bookstores and libraries, and even left some
on park benches. He got 100 back and posted the secrets on his blog.
Apparently, that struck a nerve: PostSecret went viral and since he started
it, Frank has received nearly half a million postcards in his mailbox
and over a quarter billion visitor to www.postsecret.com.
The website spawned various exhibitions, events and PostSecret books,
as well as various
parodies (a true measure of one's popularity in today's world, I'm
afraid).
The latest book, PostSecret:
Confessions on Life, Death, and God
was inspired by a collection of more than 300 postcards that were part
of the "All Faiths Beautiful" exhibit at the American Visionary
Art Museum. The book contains never-before-seen secrets that, as Frank
so eloquently wrote, "expose the common landscape of our private
lives - from our embarrassing desires to our hidden acts of kindness;
from the private prayers of atheists to the voiceless doubt of believers."
Frank, a Neatoramanaut himself (that's him wearing one of our T-shirts),
has kindly agreed to sit down for a virtual interview with us. You are
invited to submit comments and questions for Frank - we'll pick 5 of the
best comments/questions to get a free autographed PostSecret:
Confessions on Life, Death, and God
book.
Neatorama: Congratulations on the new book (it's fantastic,
by the way, I was engrossed reading it for a couple of hours) - did you
ever think that PostSecret would be as popular as it is today when you
started it?
Frank Warren: No, I have been shocked. In addition to
the five PostSecret books, the website has had over 250,000,000 hits.
I knew that if I could earn people's trust and build a collection of
creative and authentic secrets it would be very special for me. It's great
to know so many others appreciate these extraordinary confessions too.
Neatorama: Why do you think it has been so successful?
Frank: I think people find some of the funny and sexual
postcards amusing but eventually you come across a secret that you might
recognize as one of your own. One you might be hiding from yourself. I
think it is those moments of epiphany and empathy that have allowed the
PostSecret community to grow.
Neatorama: Your latest book focuses on life, death,
and God. Can you tell us a little bit about the reasoning behind the topic?
Frank: PostSecret started as a lark, maybe even a prank,
but over the years the secrets have become more meaningful to me. This
new book, like all the books have never-before-seen secrets that touch
on sexual taboos and some outlandish humor, but more than the other books,
the new book has postcards that share some our deepest and most private
feelings about the greatest mysteries of life. The parts that are always
there beneath the surface but we sometimes forget about during our everyday
lives.
Neatorama: What are some of your favorite PostSecret
secrets?
Neatorama: It's been five years since you started PostSecret
- how has it changed your life?
Frank: Knowing all these secret stories that are happening
in so many of our lives makes life, people, and riding the subway more
interesting.
Neatorama: What's next for you and PostSecret?
Frank: My favorite part of the project now is traveling
to college campuses and sharing the stories behind the secrets at live
events where audience members can share their own secrets - without anonymity,
but sometimes with great emotion.
From PostSecret Confessions on Life, Death and God:
Frank has kindly offered 5 free autographed copies of the book
for a giveaway. Got any questions for Frank? 5 lucky commenters
with the most interesting questions and/or comments will win a copy of
the book (I'll post Frank's replies as an update).
Just because you’re a polygamist, it doesn’t mean that you can’t also be frugal. South African Milton Mbhele just got married to 4 brides the frugal way: he did it all at once!
The four brides, dressed in flowing white gowns, walked down the aisle together, before saying “We do” to the 44-year-old groom.
Mr Mbhele says he didn’t marry them purely for the spectacle but because it also made financial sense. “I don’t know how much four different weddings would have cost me but I know doing it all at once saved money,” he explains.
“For example I only needed one tent, I needed to hire one caterer and one photographer for the entire ceremony.”
The Rockin’-R-Ranch in Columbia Township, Ohio hosts a haunted house and conducts haunted hayrides during October. This year, they also hosted a vampire wedding! Jack Holsinger was carried in a coffin to the alter where he met his bride Connie Spitznagel. Both were dressed as vampires. The best man appeared as pirate Jack Sparrow and the maid of honor was decked out as the Bride of Frankenstein.
Minister Greg Kopp got into the spirit of things as well. The couple vowed to love each other, haunt with each other and howl at the moon together till the end of time.
They promised to forsake all other ghouls and goblins and grow in love and “other body parts” until – you guessed – death parts them.
Instead of a first kiss, Holsinger was ordered to bite his new bride on the neck.
Many of the wedding guests were also dressed as vampires or other Halloween characters. Patrons of the haunted house were welcomed to the wedding as well. Link -via YesButNoButYes
Being arrested is bad enough without having some embarrassing details publicized as well. Someday, when your grandchildren ask you if you’ve ever been in the newspaper, on TV, or published on the ‘net, you’ll be glad you aren’t these people!
It will be the second offense for Portland’s Gary Moody who was caught hiding inside the pit of a campsite latrine, once again. The creature of the black latrine claimed that he was not leering at the backsides of bathroom goers. His excuse was that he dropped his shirt down the hole; the previous time he stressed that he had dropped his wedding ring (which was never found). Moody entered a plea of no contest to trespassing for which he will serve two years of probation. He is also required to pay a fine of $1,000 and $700 to the Forest Service for the cost of pumping out the toilet tank and screening the contents.
Vanessa Caldwell and Cole Parker of Atlanta are still ironing out the last minute details of their wedding, including the choice of dessert as well as table settings. One thing they haven’t had any problems deciding on: who will pay for the wedding.
Vanessa and Cole, both on their second marriages, have set up a website and Paypal account asking for monetary contributions in lieu of the traditional housewares. Traditionalists cry foul.
In light of the current economy, 60% of brides to be surveyed on Brides.com felt it acceptable to set up a cash bar to help with the costs of the wedding. But in the same survey, 80% of respondents felt it was bad form to request cash to help defray wedding costs.
“I don’t care if it’s a tough economy or not, it’s incredibly rude to ask your honored, treasured guests to pay for your party,” said Teresa Duggan, owner of The Etiquette School in Cumming. “It’s like saying, ‘I want you to come to my wedding but please pay for my Cinderella dreams.’”
Some etiquette experts say asking for cash gifts is not rude if done tactfully. But for many, asking guests to pay for the wedding reception itself crosses the line — a little like marrying a guy you just met in Vegas.
This has got to be one of the most poignant things I’ve ever read. When 7-year-old Asa Hill died after a car accident, his parents honored the young boy’s lifelong wish that they get married. And married they did, right after their child’s funeral:
The Rev. Joel Miller of The Unitarian Universalist Church of Elmwood, where the service was held, was unsure at first when the idea of a wedding was proposed by the couple and their family.
"I asked twice, ‘We’re doing a wedding?’ This was new for me. I never did a funeral service and a wedding ceremony at the same time, and normally wouldn’t, but they have known each other since they were teens," Miller said. "And they had been providing for Asa, and they made a home together for all of Asa’s life. … It was clear they were following through on something they had been talking about for some time."
Hill and Ghirmatzion have been best friends since they were 15 and have been together for almost half of their lives. After Asa was born, marriage had always been something that they considered but, according to Hill, both felt that a wedding was "superficial and not necessary."
Asa, however, was insistent that they make their union official. "Asa really wanted us to do it, and every time he would ask us
we would say, ‘Yes, we’ll get married,’ " said Hill. But the couple never did get around to figuring out the logistics for a ceremony.
While holding his lifeless son in his arms at the hospital, Hill was moved to finally officially propose to his lifelong partner. "Rahwa was overwhelmed at that moment and just looked at me. When the family sat down to plan the funeral service, she said ‘Let’s get married.’ And everyone broke down at the table," he said.
Oh, where are me manners – with everything that’s been going on with preparing for the new baby and all, I’ve been neglecting doing my usual round of visiting my favorite blogs, including those run by Neatoramanauts, for quite a while.
So happy belated Blogiversary to Miss Cellania, who celebrated her fourth year blogging on August 25! Her blog just passed two million hits, too.
Here’s her post marking the occassion: Link – it’s definitely worth a read because she posted a link to her wedding photos … and why wasn’t I told that the photos were up?
Does this mean that we have to start calling her Mrs Cellania? And since mr. Wonderful wanted to remain anonymous, perhaps we should start calling him … Ed Cetera. Sorry, I blame sleeplessness for the pun.
If a shotgun wedding isn’t fast enough for ya, you can get married in the world’s fastest church: a mobile wedding chapel (converted from a firetruck) owned by Rev. Darrell Best.
His 1942 firetruck is by no means a Ferrari, but it is equipped as a fully functioning chapel.
"I’ve had it up to 55 mph," Best said. "It gets a lot of attention on the highway."
Mechanics from the Country Music Television show "Trick My Truck" did the conversion after Best’s family wrote to the program last year. The chapel has stained-glass windows, a pipe organ, an altar and two wooden pews.
Couples recently paid $100 to get married in the tiny church at the Illinois State Fair in Springfield. "It fits me, the bride, the groom, the best man and the maid of honor," said Best, of Shelbyville, Ill. "It gets a little crowded, but it works."
Two couples from Norfolk, England got married in a double wedding dressed as characters from the TV show The Flintstones!
Andrea and Simon Bean, aka Fred and Wilma Flinstone, and Richard and Jill Noble, aka Barney and Betty Rubble, celebrated their double wedding at Weston Park Golf Club on Saturday by taking a quick trip to the next door dinosaur park for some spectacular wedding photographs sure to raise eyebrows on any mantelpiece.
With 165 guests dressed as cavemen and women, two best men dressed as dinosaurs, and a spectacular tiered wedding rock cake, both Wilma and Betty entered the ceremony to the traditional organ sound of Wagner’s Bridal March.
However, this was quickly replaced by an organ version of The Flintstones theme tune.
All of the participants had been married before and felt no need for a tradition wedding. In lieu of gifts, the couples received donations for the Children’s Liver Disease Foundation. Link -via Arbroath
Some people will go to great lengths to get into the Guinness World Records. Take, for example, this Chinese bride that got married in a wedding dress with a train more than 1.2 miles (2 km) long:
It took guests more than three hours to roll out the gown, complete with 9,999 silk red roses attached to it, in the northeastern province of Jilin, state news agency Xinhua said.
"Both the length of the dress and the number silk roses pinned on the wedding dress can make history," the report quoted groom Zhao Peng as saying.
Zhao, who has applied to Guinness World Records, said he was inspired after seeing a story on the previous record holder in Romania, where the dress measured just over 1.5 km.
"I do not want a cliche wedding parade or banquet," he said.
When Aidra Frazier and Ernest Leitch of Buhl, Idaho got married on July 4th, they wanted a theme for the wedding. Independence Day wouldn’t do, so they went with the video game Katamari Damacy. Link
Lemondrop has a collection of 20 weddings with a unique themes. The one above is one of the most unique, a scuba diving wedding. I wonder if all the bridesmaids or groomsmen already had scuba certification or if they had to get it just for the ceremony.
You may have seen or read about some over-the-top wedding productions, but Tony Lucchese told Sarah LaFore will be going the extra mile when they marry today in Portland, Maine. They will say their vows dressed as Superman and Wonder Woman.
Aquaman, Flash and Spider-Man round out the groomsmen. Ten bridesmaids will be Amazon warriors — in comic mythos, Wonder Woman is an Amazon princess — with spears, togas and sandals.
Two weeks ago, LaFore and Lucchese made an emergency trip to Jersey, down and back in one day, to tweak her costume.
“Paramount to having a successful wedding is having the bride feel pretty,” he said.
He and volunteer carpenters built a Fortress of Solitude altar in a rented warehouse space in Portland. They’ll be married by Kieschnick’s father, dressed as Jor-El, Superman’s dad. Part of the script borrows from Kryptonian wedding vows. The couple will break character to say, “I do.”
The two met while working on a theatrical production in Oak Ridge, Tennessee seven years ago. They have been planning the wedding for 18 months. Link -via Fark
(image credit: Amber Waterman/Sun Journal)
Update: See more at Tony and Srah’s wedding blog. Link (Thanks, Tony!)
The video of Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz and their attendants dancing down the aisle at their wedding has over 13 million views on YouTube. Neither Chris Brown, whose song “Forever” served as the processional music, nor Sony Music demanded a takedown of the video. Rather, they requested click-to-buy links to Amazon and iTunes from YouTube, and sales of the year-old song skyrocketed. But what about Jill and Kevin? They appeared on morning TV to talk about the video, but haven’t made any money. Instead, they are using their sudden fame to raise funds for charity. From their website:
We have been through a lot in life, but have come through each experience stronger and more in love with each other. Our experience since we posted the video has been incredible. We would never have expected this response to our wedding entrance in a million years.
We hope to direct this positivity to a good cause. Due to the circumstances surrounding the song in our wedding video, we have chosen the Sheila Wellstone Institute.
Sheila Wellstone was an advocate, organizer, and national champion in the effort to end domestic violence in our communities.
The wedding party enters the sanctuary in an unconventional fashion. Say what you will about the staging; this is obviously a joyous occasion for all concerned. -via reddit
You are cordially invited to the wedding of Kelly Hildebrandt and Kelly Hildebrandt? You may not be personally invited, but it’s true that the two Kelly Hildebrandts are getting married. The female Hildebrandt is from Florida, and she fell in love with a guy in Texas with the same name!
“I was like, ‘I wonder if there’s any other Kelly Hildebrandts on Facebook’,” she explained. “So, I searched my own name and he’s the only one that came up. And actually, in the picture, he didn’t have his shirt on, and I’m like, ‘oh, he’s cute!’”
And the Kelly in Texas was also intrigued.
“She started off, ‘hey, I see we have the same name, and I thought it was kinda cool, so I wanted to say hi, I guess’. Lots of laughs,” he said.
Three weeks after their first online encounter, Kelly, the boy from Texas, decided to fly to south Florida, and see Kelly, the girl, in person.
Exactly like its name advertises, Badass of the Week is a website dedicated to spotlighting badasses and their associated badasseries. I’m particularly fond of this entry for Blenda (and the Women of Smaland).
The King of Sweden returned from his campaign to find that Blenda and her girlfriends triumphantly standing on top of a massive heaping pile of dead Vikings, and was so pumped up about the whole thing that he granted the women of Smaland a bunch of totally awesome political and social rights that had been previously unavailable to them. From that point on, all daughters had the right to inherit property, money and land equally with their brothers, and were allowed to wear military-style garments around town and at their weddings. They were also given the prestigious right to wear the Royal Coat of Arms on their clothing – a tradition that has lasted to this day. Blenda is still recognized as a national hero in Sweden.
And that, my friends, is a pretty badass way to fight for women’s rights.
If there’s a lesson here, it’s this: don’t ever mess with Viking women. Ever.
At a wedding in Suvereto, Italy, the plan was to have the bride’s bouquet thrown from an microlight plane flying over the wedding party. A line of women were waiting for the bouquet below. Then things got weird.
… the flowers were sucked into the plane’s engine causing it to catch fire and explode.
The aircraft plunged into a hostel. One passenger on the plane was badly hurt.
But about 50 people who had been in the hostel escaped unscathed, as did the pilot.
Isidoro Pensieri, who tossed the bouquet from the plane, suffered multiple fractures and was taken to a hospital in Pisa. Link -via Arbroath
Abigail Tucker presents some interesting historical facts about the traditional cake served at a wedding in the West:
One early British recipe for “Bride’s Pye” mixed cockscombs, lamb testicles, sweetbreads, oysters and (mercifully) plenty of spices. Another version called for boiled calf’s feet.
By the mid sixteenth century, though, sugar was becoming plentiful in England. The more refined the sugar, the whiter it was. Pure white icing soon became a wedding cake staple. Not only did the color allude to the bride’s virginity, as Carol Wilson points out in her Gastronomica article “Wedding Cake: A Slice of History,” but the whiteness was “a status symbol, a display of the family’s wealth.” Later, tiered cakes, with their cement-like supports of decorative dried icing, also advertised affluence. Formal wedding cakes became bigger and more elaborate through the Victorian age. In 1947, when Queen Elizabeth II (then Princess Elizabeth) wed Prince Philip, the cake weighed 500 pounds.
A new website called 
ueue
The “autofill” feature of the Google search box was designed as a timesaver, but the suggested searches can also be entertaining. Writing in 
For the first few episodes, guest hosts were presented with a likeness of themselves as Muppets during the closing scenes. That’s dancer and actress Juliet Prowse with her mini me to the left. However, this ended up being too costly to do for each show, especially while the show was struggling during the first season. The practice stopped after the second episode, which Connie Stevens hosted. However, guest hosts did sometimes still receive a Muppet likeness when it was relevant to a sketch – for instance, Paul Williams sang “Old Fashioned Love Song” with a couple of his Muppet clones later in the first season. Picture from 
Kermit the Frog and Waldorf are the only two Muppets to appear in every single Muppet Show – 120 episode. Statler – Waldorf’s cohort – appeared in 119 episodes. He did not appear in episode 13, season four – but Waldorf’s wife Astoria does. Strangely, she looks exactly like Statler (that’s her in the picture). Fozzie Bear was in 115 episodes, Miss Piggy claimed 111 and Gonzo was in 106. Picture from 
If you prefer to read your Muppet Show instead of watch it, you can do that. The Muppet Show Book chronicles the best parts from the first two seasons of the show. The scenes are illustrated and the dialogue looks like a script. 
was inspired by a collection of more than 300 postcards that were part
of the "All Faiths Beautiful" exhibit at the American Visionary
Art Museum. The book contains never-before-seen secrets that, as Frank
so eloquently wrote, "expose the common landscape of our private
lives - from our embarrassing desires to our hidden acts of kindness;
from the private prayers of atheists to the voiceless doubt of believers."
Just because you’re a polygamist, it doesn’t mean that you can’t also be frugal. South African Milton Mbhele just got married to 4 brides the frugal way: he did it all at once!
The Rockin’-R-Ranch in Columbia Township, Ohio hosts a haunted house and conducts haunted hayrides during October. This year, they also hosted a vampire wedding! Jack Holsinger was carried in a coffin to the alter where he met his bride Connie Spitznagel. Both were dressed as vampires. The best man appeared as pirate Jack Sparrow and the maid of honor was decked out as the Bride of Frankenstein.
Being arrested is bad enough without having some embarrassing details publicized as well. Someday, when your grandchildren ask you if you’ve ever been in the newspaper, on TV, or published on the ‘net, you’ll be glad you aren’t these people!
This has got to be one of the most poignant things I’ve ever read. When 7-year-old Asa Hill died after a car accident, his parents honored the young boy’s lifelong wish that they get married. And married they did, right after their child’s funeral:
Oh, where are me manners – with everything that’s been going on with preparing for the new baby and all, I’ve been neglecting doing my usual round of visiting my favorite blogs, including those run by Neatoramanauts, for quite a while.
Two couples from Norfolk, England got married in a double wedding dressed as characters from the TV show The Flintstones!
Some people will go to great lengths to get into the Guinness World Records. Take, for example, this Chinese bride that got married in a wedding dress with a train more than 1.2 miles (2 km) long:
You may have seen or read about some over-the-top wedding productions, but Tony Lucchese told Sarah LaFore will be going the extra mile when they marry today in Portland, Maine. They will say their vows dressed as Superman and Wonder Woman.
The video of Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz and their attendants 
If you thought Jill and Kevin’s 
You are cordially invited to the wedding of Kelly Hildebrandt and Kelly Hildebrandt? You may not be personally invited, but it’s true that the two Kelly Hildebrandts are getting married. The female Hildebrandt is from Florida, and she fell in love with a guy in Texas with the same name!
Exactly like its name advertises, 
At a wedding in Suvereto, Italy, the plan was to have the bride’s bouquet thrown from an microlight plane flying over the wedding party. A line of women were waiting for the bouquet below. Then things got weird.
Abigail Tucker presents some interesting historical facts about the traditional cake served at a wedding in the West:
-
Your purchase helps support the blog - Thank you!
