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If you ever flip through the cable TV channels, you’ve probably noticed how many reality series cluster around an existing idea. Yes, there’s a lot of shows set in Louisiana. And quite a few set in Alaska, too. I once quipped that a network sees no use in wasting a field office on just one show, or two, or three. But what you see here is just a small portion of the Reality TV Venn Diagram by Margaret Lyons and Jen Cotton. See the full-size version of overlapping ideas at Vulture. And yes, I am aware that this is actually an Euler diagram, which shows existing sets and relationships, and not a true Venn diagram that would show all possible relationships. Link -via Metafilter
Alex Gross takes classic Victorian pictures and then repaints them into portraits of pop culture personalities like Aquaman, Bride of Frankenstein and Godzilla. His work will be exhibited at the Jonathan Levine Gallery in LA next month, so if you’re in town, stop by and support a great geek artist.
Everyone is still buzzing about the news that the Arrested Development movie is finally in the works after years of discussion, but in the aftermath of that bomb, it was easy to miss the news about another cult classic show becoming a movie as well. While not as many people are familiar with Party Down, it’s a great show that’s certain to result in a hilarious movie.
Are you guys familiar with the show, and if so, are you excited about the movie?
Link Via Geekosystem
YouTube user Kanaal Van Ronorozco makes TV display centers in the front or back ends of classic vehicles, such as this 2005 Porsche 996. It’s not a fabrication, but the actual rear of the car, right down to the brake calipers. With a push of a button, the brake lights flash and the screen opens or closes.
I’m not sure how many No Reservations fans we have here at Neatorama, but if you caught Bordain’s Christmas special, you’ll not that this animation was lacking from the final cut. That’s because executives found it a bit too creepy. Personally, I found the Samantha Brown scene to be far, far more terrifying than this animation, but she gives me the creeps anyway.
Via Laughing Squid
What happens when you combine one of the world’s greatest comic books with one of the cutest cartoons on TV? You get a great mash up piece like this one by Dan Hipp.
Link Via The Mary Sue
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The following article is from the book Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Tunes Into TV.
When TV characters cook, the results are often disgusting.
Drink: Flaming Homer
Show: The Simpsons (1991)
Origin: Homer is bored at home one night -forced to watch his in-law’s vacation slides- and he doesn’t have any beer, so he makes a cocktail from whatever he can find. He pours the leftover bits from several liquor bottles into a blender, along with the accidental addition of “Krusty’s Non-Narkotic Kough Syrup.” Homer thinks it tastes okay… but it’s even better after it’s lit afire by a stray cigarette ash. “I don’t know the scientific explanation, but fire made it good,” Homer says when he recreates the “Flaming Homer” at Moe’s Tavern. Moe then steals the idea and starts serving the drink (for $6.95) and renames it “The Flaming Moe.”
Food: Chocolate Salty Balls
Show: South Park (1998)
Origin: When the Sundance Film Festival comes to town, the soul-singing school cafeteria cook Chef (voice of Isaac Hayes) opens a stand to sell cookies to tourists. His most popular item: His “Chocolate Salty Balls.” It’s a blatant double entendre, and Chef even sings a song about them: “Hey, everybody, have you seen my balls? They’re big and salty and brown!” The song (which reached #1 in England) gives the recipe: cinnamon, egg whites, melted butter, flour, unsweetened chocolate, brandy, vanilla, and sugar. (Curiously, it doesn’t call for salt.)
(Image credit: Garnished Adventures)
Drink: Thankstini
Show: How I Met Your Mother (2005)
Origins: This cocktail, a martini, invented by booze-swilling playboy Barney (Neil Patrick Harris), combines Thanksgiving food with booze. It’s made from two ounces of potato vodka, four ounces of cranberry juice …and a bouillon cube for that poultry flavor. Barney remarks that it “tastes just like a turkey dinner.”
Up until now, if you wanted to actually have paper from Dunder Mifflin, the company made famous from NBC’s The Office, you would have to print out your own box labels and affix them to another brand of paper. Fortunately for those obsessive people who demand everything to be branded with a name they’ve seen on television, NBC has struck up a deal with Quill.com, a subsidiary of Staples, to sell official Dunder Mifflin paper.
No word yet on how it competes with the big office chains, but I hear their customer service is simply unbeatable.
Link Via The Consumerist
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Rock stars aren’t generally known for their amazing acting skills, but that doesn’t stop television executives from working them into different cameo roles whenever possible. Mental Floss has a great article with some of the greatest (and most terrible) musician cameos ever made. My personal favorite was Michael Stipe in The Adventures of Pete & Pete. Any of you remember these episodes?
Ever since NBC announced that Community would be put on a temporary (read:possibly permanent) hiatus, fans have been rallying behind the show. Here’s my personal favorite effort to bring support to the show.
What do you guys think about the show? Are you upset about the hiatus?
Figure 1. A page from the survey form that was given to male participants.
by Jennifer A. Zimmerman
Psychology Department
Marist College, Poughkeepsie, New York
This study investigates what effect, if any, watching television has on people’s sexual behavior.
For populous countries such as China and India, population growth is seen as a major and vexing problem. The governments of these nations worry that soon there will be more people than the land can support.
Chinese officials are developing elaborate, expensive plans for more effective family planning, including the development and delivery of better birth-control services. The Chinese State Family Planning Commission recently announced a series of new scientific and technological projects for the Tenth Five-Year Plan (2001-2005). These include the production of 15 new contraceptives and abortificant medicines.
The technologies under consideration in China have serious drawbacks. They are costly, and are likely to be implemented inefficiently. It could take many years — perhaps decades — before their intended effects reached a satisfactory, or even noticeable level. Some different, better method is sorely wanted.
This past year, an official in India proposed that televisions be given to the nation’s citizens, because televisions are an effective form of birth control.
The official explained that people would rather watch television than engage in sexual intercourse:
In a mark of frustration over India’s perennially stalled family planning efforts, the country’s health minister has come up with a somewhat Orwellian proposal: distribute telvisino sets to the masses to keep their minds off procreation…. Chandreshwar Prasad Thakur suggested last month to the Indian parliament that “entertainment is an important component of the population policy.” To drive down birth rates, he said, “we want people to watch television.” Population experts, meanwhile, say the minister’s proposal betrays the false assumption that India’s poor breed merely because they have nothing better to do. [Science, vol. 293, September 14, 2001, p. 1987.]
Perhaps for political reasons, the proposal was received with skepticism.
Good news for those of you who are fans of the great Comedy Central show Reno 9-11, Netflix wants to start remaking the show after it was already canceled two years ago. While nothing is completely official, the show’s producers have actively been discussing the idea with Netflix, who recently announced their intention to make original streaming content for their service.
I don’t know about you guys, but I hope this one ends up panning out.
Those of you who grew up on Pete & Pete are certain to appreciate this great shot for shot remake of the intro by the band Tara Melos.
Via BuzzFeed
Comments Off This great Doctor Who mini-episode premiered on the recently canned Doctor Who Confidential. It’s not a full episode or anything, but it’s pretty fun.
Via Geekosystem
By now, I’m sure you’ve heard that Arrested Development will not only be getting made into a movie, but that they’ll also be making a few more new episodes. To celebrate, enjoy this great collection of Arrested Development fan art.
Doctor Who fans may remember the David Tennant episode “Fear Her,” which involved Mr. Tennant lighting the Olympic torch in the 2012 London games. As it turns out, fans are trying to make this a reality, starting a petition to have Mr. Tennant play The Doctor as he lights the torch in the upcoming games.
If you’re interested, you can sign the petition at the link. If not, well, it probably won’t happen anyway, so don’t do anything.
I know it’s been off the air for a while now, but the X-Files still has a huge following, enough that we even carry this great parody shirt in the Neatoshop. If you’re a fan of the show, then you’ll love the Mental Floss coverage of it.
Comments Off Sure Fraggle Rock, The Smurfs and most other kid’s shows are a little strange, but these are nothing compared to the Teletubbies. If you really want to know just how bizarre children’s programming can get though, just take a look at these strange shows that make the Teletubbies look like a study in logical thought.
If you love American television programming, but wish you could use it to teach your children the perils of the evil Western fascist dogs, then Tomorrow’s Pioneers might just be your new favorite kids show. The show features a female host and a few costumed characters, including a knock-off Mickey Mouse character, entertaining children with ideas of antisemitism, anti-Americanism and Islamic extremism. As if that weren’t enough, many of the costumed characters are martyred, most notably, the Mickey Mouse character is killed by an Israeli interrogator, providing youngsters with a deep, long-standing hatred for Palestine’s sworn enemies. Nothing like getting your propaganda into your kid’s minds before they’re too old to think for themselves.
If you thought the Teletubbies were strange, just wait until you get a load of this show that their creator released after it. According to their website, the Boohbahs are “five magical atoms of power” who live in a Boohball, which is a glowing white ball that can travel from country to country whenever a child calls it. The Boohball features a spinning recharging pod where the Boohbahs can recharge their energy through the laughter of children they play with. Since this show was made for kids between the ages of three and five, I’m going to go ahead and say this show is actually just supposed to entertain kids with bright colors and weird effects –just like the Teletubbies, since all of that background story is way beyond the scope of any kids in their demographic.
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Maybe, according
to a new study, that found kids perform poorly at certain tasks after
watching fast-paced cartoons:
Lillard and Peterson randomly assigned 60 4-year-olds to three groups: one that watched nine minutes of a fast-paced, "very popular fantastical cartoon about an animated sponge that lives under the sea;" one that watched nine minutes of slower-paced programming from a PBS show "about a typical U.S. preschool-aged boy;" and a third group that was asked to draw for nine minutes with markers and crayons.
Immediately after their viewing and drawing tasks were complete, the kids were asked to perform four tests to assess executive function. Unfortunately for the denizens of Bikini Bottom, the kids who watched nine minutes of the frenetic high jinks of the "animated sponge" scored significantly worse than the other kids.
Previously on Neatorama: 10 Neat Facts About SpongeBob SquarePants
Dan Meth, the same artist who told us what prescriptions our favorite Pooh characters needed, has recently put together this graph of the relative intelligence of all the characters on Cheers. I personally agree with his assessment, what do you guys think?
Link Via Laughing Squid
You may think you know Scooby-Doo, but unless you’re a die-hard fan, there’s a good chance you haven’t even heard of half of the movies and you probably haven’t seen most of the TV shows. That’s nothing to be ashamed of –after all, the series has been running for almost 42 years straight. So for those of you who haven’t caught up on decades worth of episodes and movies, here’s a run down on the different incarnations of the franchise in honor of Scooby’s September 13th birthday.
Image via abibrooks [Flickr]
I know a lot of our readers take issue with how overprotective many parents have become in the last few decades, but if you like Scooby-Doo, then this is one time you might be able to forgive them. As it turns out, the idea for the show arose after parent organizations, particularly Action for Children’s Television, began protesting the violence of Saturday morning cartoon shows. The pressure was so high that many of the most popular Hanna-Barbera shows, including Johnny Quest, were cancelled due to the protests.
As a result, CBS was scrambling to come up with a Saturday morning cartoon line up that parents would be able to get behind. The first successful new show was The Archie Show, which was based upon the Archie comic book. One of the most popular parts of the show was the musical numbers performed by The Archies during each episode. To capitalize on this idea, Hanna-Barbera was hired to come up with a show that would feature a teenage rock group that solved mysteries between gigs.
Image via informatique [Flickr]
The first version of the show was called Mysteries Five and it featured five teens, Geoff, Mike, Kelly Linda, W.W., and their dog Too Much –who played the bongos in their band. Eventually it was decided that Too Much should be a Great Dane. The character designer, Iwao Takamoto, then consulted a Great Dane breeder to learn more about the breed’s distinguishing characteristics. He then promptly ignored almost everything he learned, designing Too Much with overly bowed legs, a sloped back and a double chin, making him look much more humorous than the real dog breed.
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Television
has controlled our mind for long enough! The engineers at Haier have turned
the table on the boob tube.
Behold, the "Brain Wave" remote control that lets you change the channels .... with your mind!
Brian Heater of Engadget gave it a spin: Link
If you aren’t familiar with the show, none of this really matters -but if that’s the case, you should go rent the DVDs from Netflix and then return here promptly after viewing.
Via Geekosystem
While those of you with kids might have gone to see the Smurfs movie, I’m assuming the rest of you haven’t. From what I’ve heard, you aren’t missing much if you haven’t seen it, but I can’t talk from first-hand experience because I haven’t gone either. Regardless of what you think of the new movie, it’s always nice to look back at the things that made The Smurfs so great in the first place.
Image via It’s Meng! [Flickr]
You may have wondered where the heck the word “smurf” came from and why the characters use it so often in the show, but as it turns out, the original characters weren’t “smurfs,” they were “schtroumpfs.” The whole thing started when the creator of the comics, Peyo, was at lunch with a fellow Belgian comic artist named André Franquin. If you’ve ever had a moment where you forgot the name of something, then you’ll understand Peyo’s frustration when he couldn’t remember the word “salt.” Being a goofy guy, he instead pointed at the salt and asked his friend to pass the schtroumpf. Franquin responded, “Here’s the schtroumpf — when you are done schtroumpfing, schtroumpf it back.” The rest of the meal, the two joked around using the word “schtroumpf” periodically throughout their conversation.
Now you know why the characters use their name so much in conversation, but suddenly, the question of how the comics became The Smurfs instead of The Schtroumpfs. Well, as I said, this all happened in Belgium, where the native language is French. The first language the comic was translated to was Dutch and while the name could have stayed the same (do you really need to translate an imaginary word?), Schtroumpfs didn’t quite sound right to Dutch speakers, so the name was instead changed to smurfen. When the comic was translated to English, the word “smurf” sounded good, so it was based on the Dutch version.
Image via Stephen and Claire Farnsworth [Flickr]
The first introduction of the Smurf characters started in Peyo’s earlier comic, Johan and Pirlouit. This strip took place in the Middle Ages and incorporated elements of sorcery and sword fights. In 1958, Peyo started a new series of the strip, which revolved around the characters searching for a magic flute. At one point in the story, the characters run into a number of schtroumpfs, small creatures with blue skin and human-like features. The smurf characters were a smashing success, so Peyo wrote them their own strip that first appeared in 1959. Although the smurfs would periodically interact with Johan and Pirlouit, the spin off was largely based on their own stories.
Technically there are two girls, Smurfette, who everyone is familiar with, and Sassette, who first appeared in the fifth season of the cartoon. According to the smurf back story though, there are actually no smurf females. Smurfette was actually created by Gargamel in part of an evil plan to cause jealousy amongst the smurfs and Sassette was created by the smurfs using the same magic formula they stole from Gargamel. Sassette was intended to provide Smurfette with a female friend, but because Sassette was a pretty big tom boy, the two didn’t get along at first. If you’re wondering why Sassette is so much smaller than the adult smurfs if she’s not supposed to be a baby, it’s because all adult smurfs stand 3 crab apples tall, but they only had two crab apples worth of clay when they created her.
Strangely, after making sure the two female characters were both made from clay and magic spells, season 8 featured another female, Nanny Smurf, with no background story explaining her creation. Nanny Smurf was Grandpa Smurf’s gal, but she disappeared in a haunted house for 500 years before the smurfs rescued her. She only lasted one season and appeared in one episode in season 9 before disappearing forever again.
If you’ve been itching for more female characters in the comic, Peyo’s son who is the current writer of the French comics has promised that he will be introducing more females in upcoming years.
Image via Scottobear [Flickr]
Most people seem to think that smurf berries aren’t real, but as it turns out, they are really supposed to be the berries from the sarsaparilla tree. Interestingly, in the comics, the smurfs don’t eat smurf berries, but instead gorge on the leaves of the plant.
If you’ve ever watched the cartoon and thought that Papa Smurf or Gargamel’s voices sounded familiar, you’re right, you probably have heard them somewhere else. Papa Smurf was voiced by legendary cartoon voice actor Don Messick who also did the voices of Boo Boob Bear, Ranger Smith, Astro, Muttley, Scooby Doo, Scrappy Doo and Droopy. As for Gargamel, his voice was performed by Paul Winchell, a professional ventriloquist who became a voice actor later in life. Some of Winchell’s more famous roles included Dick Dastardly (that’s right, he and Mesick worked together before) and everyone’s favorite spring-tailed predator, Tigger.
Image via DNNYA17 [Flickr]
Do you guys dig The Smurfs? What about the movie, if you’ve seen it, what did you think?
Sources: Wikipedia #1, #2, #3, Smurfs Wiki #1, #2, #3
If you’ve been looking for some paper dolls to play with that are actually designed for adults instead of kiddos, then BuzzFeed has a great collection of them for your paper-playing pleasure. Time to get printing!
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Plenty of schools hire celebrities to speak at their commencement ceremonies, but it’s certainly rare for students to request an imaginary character to honor them with his presence. That’s exactly what a group of students from Creative Circus, a two-year advertising school in Atlanta, have requested. Remember, they don’t want Jon Hamm to speak at the ceremony, they’re requesting he show up at their graduation acting as Don Draper.
What do you guys think? Is this a realistic request or just plain over dramatic?
Viewing movies in the movie theater is a problem for many deaf people as theaters just don’t offer that many subtitled screenings. Now however Sony is developing glasses that will provide subtitles to films within the glasses themselves.
Sony has been working on subtitle glasses that should allow deaf viewers to have their own personal subtitles without other viewers having to be distracted by them. While it seems like a pretty simple concept, the real trick is ensuring that the viewer doesn’t constantly have to switch focus from the glasses, to the screen, to the glasses, to the screen. These glasses manage to provide the subtitles in such a way that they appear to be projected on the screen, in the same field of view as the action of the movie.
Kung Fu, which aired from 1972-1975, was an unusual blend of the social questioning of 70s America, an emerging fascination with the martial arts, and the introduction of Eastern thought into American pop culture. It was one of the last Westerns of American television and thus straddled a great cultural shift that occurred during that era. It was also a fine show that earned high ratings and continues to entertain legions of fans to this day. Let’s take a look at some things that you might not know about the series.
1. Kwai Chaing Caine’s last name is a reference to the Cain of the Bible. Cain, having murdered his brother, was marked and cast into the wilderness. So, too, was Kwai Chang Caine marked by the dragon and tiger branded into his forearms and wanted for murder in China. The $10,000 bounty on his head was a constant source of trouble for Caine throughout the series.
2. David Carradine shaved his head once, when shooting the pilot movie. He never cut it again for the rest of the series. So it’s possible to gauge when an episode was shot during the series by looking at Carradine’s hair.
3. Caine must walk a strip of rice paper to demonstrate the lightness of his footsteps. To prepare David Carradine for this task, kung fu consultant Kam Yuen had him step on eggs without breaking them.
The training turned out to be unnecessary. When it finally came time to film the rice paper scenes, no one could locate rice paper. The directors tried butcher paper, but it wouldn’t tear under the feet of Radames Pera, the actor who portrayed Caine as a child. They even attached sandpaper to Pera’s feet, but the paper stayed intact. Finally they pre-tore the strip of paper and had Pera walk over it. To show the adult Caine walking without leaving a trace, they simply left the butcher paper untorn.
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This graphic makes you think, but how true is it? When I watch TV, it’s usually crime shows, in which successful, independent woman are over-represented as cops, lawyers, scientists, politicians, and criminals. Maybe it all depends on the shows you choose to watch. Link -via @John Farrier
Just like “The Sopranos” the hit J.J Abrams show “Lost” had an ending that you either loved or hated. Now an irritated Abrams is asking fans how they would have ended the show better. So what would your Lost ending have been had you been in J.J.’s shoes?
“For years, I had people praising Lost to death, and now they say: ‘I’m so pissed at you for the end of Lost.’ I think a lot of people who were upset with the ending, were just upset that it ended. And I’ve not yet heard the pitch of what the ending should have been. I’ve just heard: ‘That sucked.’”
