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You’d think that since the prizes are usually cheaper than the price you pay to play, that carnival games would be easy to win. Not at all. But if you have the right strategy, and some tips from those who have been there, you can raise your chances of winning. The Art of Manliness has tips on winning at Rope Ladder, High Striker, Shoot the Star, Flukey Ball, and Milk Can. Link -via Boing Boing
Now that Lent is here, we can look back at the pageantry of the Carnival season with a collection of 52 photographs at The Atlantic. See celebrations in Australia, Brazil, Hungary, Italy, Haiti, Colombia, Greece, France, Bolivia, Dominican Republic, and the U.S. Some pictures may be NSFW. Link -via Metafilter
(Image credit: REUTERS/Jose Miguel Gomez)
You might not be able to fly down to Rio for Carnival, but you can hear and feel a “bateria,” a samba school drum section, in this web toy from Brazil. Enjoy the rhythm, or toggle on and off the sections to hear how each instrument sounds: shaker, cuica, agogo, tambourine, snare drum, repique, and bass drum. Use the menu at the top of the site to see the actual instruments played or see how a samba parade is conducted. Link -Thanks, Alessandro Manoel!
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This carnival ride concept is making my stomach queasy just looking at it, but my kids would fight for a chance to try it. What about you? -via The Daily What
In the Roaring Twenties, Lillian La France made a living as a stunt rider in the Motordrome circuit, performing in cars and on motorcycles for crowds around the U.S.
In 1894, Agnes was the second of nine girls born into honest-livin’, hard-workin’ Catholic family standards. She christened herself Lillian LaFrance and quickly shook the dust of her Kansas hometown from her boots sometime around 1916, and roared off to create the life she had always dreamt of, carving it raw as she went along. She began Motordrome riding in 1924, and left a blurry, yet brilliant legacy behind that still haunts many who are taken by the images of her incredible spirit staring back through squinty eyes in a copy of a copy of old grainy photos. Incredible.
See pictures of this amazing woman at The Selvedge Yard. Link -via Nag on the Lake
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How easy is it to win at carnival games? In Japan, a popular game is the cork gun shooting game – in order to win the prize, the player needs to knock it off the shelf using lightweight cork shot from a toy rifle.
In order to see how hard it was to win at the game, Fuji TV engaged Mamika Tsuruoka of the Japan National Rifle Team to play:
It takes about 10 shots for Tsuruoka to figure that dead center hits on the targets won’t result in wins. A price has to fall off its ledge and onto the ground, and that requires a shot aimed at the edge of boxes.
After 62 shots, she has claimed 49 of the 50 prizes. The total cost of her ammo was 2,480 yen (40 yen per cork). The total cost of the prizes won was 3,940 yen. However, the remaining prize is a large box that cannot easily be knocked down. Single shots are too weak to move the box, so she gets her friends to help her fire volleys at the target. This tactic works, and after 9 volleys it falls to the ground. Unfortunately, that used a lot of corks, so the total price of knocking over all 50 targets ends up at 5,360 yen. The actual price of the prizes totaled to 4,535 yen, so the festival booth guy made a profit of 825 yen.
Japan Probe has the video clip: Link – via Boing Boing
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When you pay a visit to your county or state fair, or when a carnival comes to town, you may get a chance to ride on one of Michael Jackson’s amusement park rides. The rides were sold to amusement companies around the country and have been refurbished and put back into use.
“It was a blast!” said Benny Vasquez, a Visalia, Calif., welder who was regaining his bearings after a dizzying turn on the Spider, an arachnid-shaped contraption with blazing green bulbs lining its black legs. “It’s exciting for people to be able to sit on something that he owned.”
Over the years, Jackson acquired about 18 rides for his 2,600-acre ranch in Santa Barbara County. Some gradually were swapped out for newer models and hit the carnival circuit without fanfare. But most stayed in place even after Jackson, acquitted on child molestation charges in 2005, left Neverland for good.
Several big amusement companies purchased what remained in 2008, repainting and sprucing up rides run down by weather and lack of use.
(image credit: Tomas Ovalle/LA Times)
Previously at Neatorama: Matt Hoyle’s Encounters and Vintage Boxers.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by 
Strap explosives to the business end of a long hammer and bang it hard on the ground. That’s the basic idea of this strange celebration in the town of San Juan de la Vega in Guanajuato, Mexico.
Metafilter user aetg explains what’s going on:
OK, so the reasons for doing so may be a little vague, but in any case, they’re exploding ‘artisanal’ explosives of a potassium chloride and sulphur base with big hammers. Apparently 17 people had minor wounds seen to by medics in 2007, and 50 in 2008, mostly due to being hit by explosive fragments, etc. That’s not so bad given that there are 10-20 thousand people that come for the celebration. There are actually authorities supervising everything that’s going on.
Explosives on a hammer? What can go wrong?
– via ask
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Christophe.
