This is artist and photographer Christine McConnell, a/k/a my role model. She does everything, and does it well. She bakes (Miss Cellania featured the cake she baked of her parents' house last month), and some of her creations are delightfully dark.
She is lovely (see photo four) and, according the photo captions on her imgur albums, she personally delivers her baked goods in a beautifully restored classic car (photo five). She does oil paintings. She does house painting. She makes most of her clothes from scratch. She designed a Halloween decoration concept for her parents' large home. She makes skeletons, aliens and snakes out of sugary tastyness. I just love that Christine!
About a year ago, we saw a graphic visualization of James Jamerson’s bass line in the song “For Once in My Life.” Now we have another visualization of the late bassist’s talents on Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s 1967 version of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” thanks to musician Jack Stratton.
James Jamerson was a member of the Funk Brothers, a group of jazz-oriented session players who played on most of the songs produced at Motown Studios. Jamerson laid down the bass lines for 30 #1 pop hits and more than 70 #1 R&B hit songs. -via Digg
This is a short documentary about three 6-year-old girls. They like pink. In fact, they wear pink crash helmets and call themselves the “Pink Helmet Posse” as they shred through the skatepark. They fall, they cry, they get right back up and try it again. Bella, Sierra, and Relz want to someday be professional skateboarders. Read more about the Pink Helmet Posse at The New York Times, and check out their website, too. -via Tastefully Offensive
Disney parks are a great place to celebrate special occasions like anniversaries, birthdays and more, but they’re also a great place to make up an excuse to celebrate some of your favorite things. Whether it’s a subculture, a fashion, a British TV show, an epic wizarding tale or your sexual orientation, there are tons of great excuses to celebrate and meet people with similar interests and here are a few such organized meet ups.
Bats Day
Billing itself as the “largest dark subcultural event on the West Coast,” Bats Day is an annual event where goths, lolitas, rockabilies, steampunks and other subcultures with an interest in the darker things in life meet up at the park. There are three officially sanctioned photo events, one in front of the castle, one in front of the Haunted Mansion (with smaller groups) and one for the goth kiddos in front of the Sword in the Stone.
While originally just a meet up for goths, the event has gained a lot of steam over the years and now includes all number of subcultures and a number of events outside the park during that weekend, including a special dinner, a goth club night, a Black Market and an art show. Bats Day typically takes place in May, so if you want to visit the next one, check in on their website as it gets closer to that time of year.
Lolita Day
For Lolita purists who don’t want to deal with all the goths and other subculture folk there on Bats Day, Lolita Day is a dedicated day for those obsessed with the Japanese harajuku fashion. Scheduled to take place sometime in October, it’s also set during a month that’s much more suitable to wearing elaborate, layered dresses all day in Anaheim.
It’s A Ska World After All
Do you think of dancing when someone yells “skank?” If so, be sure to dress up in your best two-tone gear and hit the Disneyland Park on September 21 and meet up with fellow rudies in the happiest place on Earth for It's A Ska World After All.
Nichelle Gainer of the blog Vintage Black Glamour discovered that one of her aunts had been a model, and another had been an opera singer. As she researched their lives, she uncovered a world of black culture that was hidden from the mainstream media before the Civil Rights era. As she learned of more black actors, musicians, artists, dancers, writers, fashion designers, and other celebrities, she posted their pictures and stories on her website.
Appearing in magazines is image control, too, because after a while, if people don’t see black celebrities or models in old magazines, they assume black women didn’t do Hollywood glamour. Now, we have these beautiful coffee-table books with Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, and the old Hollywood goddesses like Jean Harlow. But you can say, “Look, I have a lot of these old Hollywood books, and I don’t see any black people in there, therefore, they must not have been there.” They’ll have Mexican actress Dolores del Rio. Then, they might slide in a picture, like I saw in a book about Kennedy, where they put in one picture of Dorothy Dandridge. One picture! So that’s why people are fascinated. They say, “Where did you find these pictures?” The pictures I have are right in front of your face. You just weren’t looking for them because it never occurred to you.
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A lot of people think of vintage black pictures as either civil-rights photos or black ladies at church, or maybe sharecroppers picking in the cotton fields and sweating from the hard work. That’s fine. Those are our pictures. But that shouldn’t be the only image of us. It’s nice to see a black woman who is not sweating in the field, but glistening from all this bling, like Josephine Baker, dripping in diamonds. Sometimes you want to see that. Why not? It’s easy to take glamour for granted. You can be a white woman, and you can care less about Bette Davis, Jean Harlow, Greta Garbo, and Marlene Dietrich, and that’s fine. But you know what? Black women haven’t had the same option.
Sam Edelston plays led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” on a three-string dulcimer. Yeah, it’s electrified -and electrifying! I have one of these instruments, made by my father, but my repertoire is limited to “Wildwood Flower” and a few Christmas carols. I think I may have to pull it out and practice a little. -via Boing Boing
A lot of terms you might think came from science actually came from science fiction. Some of those words, like robot, cryostasis, and spaceship were born in fiction but later became real science. Others, like force field, came from science and were appropriated by science fiction. The terms super-hero, dystopia, and multiverse came from neither science nor science fiction! You can find out the earliest use of these familiar science fiction terms and more at io9. -via the Presurfer
Social reformer and photojournalist Jacob Riis took many pictures of New York City in the 1890s to show how “the other half” lives. Those pictures are now part of The City Museum, and a selection is online at Vintage Everyday. These pictures show the streets of the city, the back alleys, tenements, poorhouses, schools, sweatshops, and makeshift livings spaces for the struggling poor of the era.
As you see how much has changed in the past century, you also realize that cities still have sweatshop workers, homeless people, crowded slums, and marginalized folks getting by the best they can. -via mental_floss
Twelve-year-old McKenzie Carey (warning: autoplay music) suffers from mitochondrial disease. That doesn’t stop her from wanting to do the same things other girls do, like enter beauty pageants. Mike Corey, her truck driver father, lends a hand by dancing on stage with Kenzie to the Miley Cyrus song “The Climb.”
“Pageants give her the same opportunity as other children and show people that she can accomplish anything with a little bit of help,” says her mom, Tammy. “I just want the judges to look at her, not her wheelchair.”
Mitochrondrial disease is classified as terminal, and most children diagnosed do not survive past their teen years. “We were told it would be a miracle if McKenzie made it to age 5,” Tammy says.
Good news guys, it's contest time again! This time it's to celebrate the NeatoShop Facebook page getting 2000 fans in only a matter of months. We're offering up eight special Transformer toys from our most recent mystery box and a NeatoShop tee shirt. Each entry method in this contest qualifies you for a tee and toy. The contest ends on Friday, June 27 at 11:59 PM PST.
Slackstory brings us a followup to Actually Guy. Maybe you’ll like this guy, too! He likes to argue. There’s nothing wrong with a friendly argument in which people refrain from personal attacks or hitting below the belt, but there is a certain type of internet commenter who doesn’t really care if he wins, loses, or changes any minds. He just wants to argue.
Still, the producers of this video managed to avoid the most irritating tropes in an unfruitful argument: “Educate yourself!” and “Wake up, sheeple!” and the endless name-calling (on other sites). Neatoramanauts don’t comment as much as we’d like, but when they do, they’re at least original, often quite funny, and downright good folks about it. -Thanks, Nick!
2nd Lt. Taylor Batye is a recent graduate of the US Naval Academy and a newly-commissioned officer in the Marine Corps. The Naval Academy maintains certain traditions for the first salute of a graduate. Batye wanted her first salute to go to her grandfather, retired Army Sgt. Maj. David Teufel.
Unfortunately, Teufel was too ill to attend Batye's graduation in Annapolis. He was in an intensive care unit in a hospital in Missouri. So Batye drove 16 hours from Maryland to Missouri to exchange her first salute with her grandfather. The Marine Corps Times reports:
On Sunday, Batye’s mom, Marty Teufel, snapped a photo as the newly minted Marine officer got the salute for which she had waited.
“I wish you could’ve seen the emotion when she walked in in uniform and said, ‘Give me my salute, grandpa,’ ” Marty Teufel told Marine Corps Times.
When Batye arrived, three of the nurses on staff in the ICU joined the family to see the exchange. Teufel has since requested that the photo be blown up and framed so he can keep it by his bed, Marty said.
The 1922 German expressionist movie Nosferatu is a classic horror film, but it’s an hour and a half long. Of course, everyone should see it all the way through at least once, but if you’ve seen it before, you can relive the experience by watching this four-minute version. And, sadly, if your busy schedule and/or attention span is too short to ever get around to watching the original, this may be the closest you’ll ever get.
Mario Wienerroither condensed the whole movie using a few illustrative clips, and added some rather odd (and often comical) sound effects, which will be appealing to those folks, like my kids, who can hardly handle black-and-white, much less a silent film. Wienerroither calls this a “silentless film.” Don’t bother turning the lights off, as you’re more likely to laugh than to scream. -via Laughing Squid
Hélio Surdos's friend Carlos is deaf, blind, and a huge soccer fan. As a result of his sensory limitations, he's been largely left out of the excitement of the World Cup in Brazil. One morning, Hélio woke up with a great desire to help Carlos follow a soccer match live. So he made a scale model of a soccer field and marked lines with what appears to be a plastic clay.
During a match between Brazil and Croatia, Hélio moved Carlos's hands over the board to match the movement of the ball. Regiane, an interpreter, verbally signed the gameplay into Carlos's back. As you can see, Carlos really got into the spirit of the event.
The lengthy video embedded above shows how Hélio and Regiane built the board and conducted the event. The gameplay begins at 4:07. Watch a thrilling goal at 9:50 and Regiane's clever use of a vuvuzela at 10:10.
This humorous video is made by self-described mentalist and magician Jose Ahonen and comedian Rudi Rok, the same guys who made Magic Tricks for Dogs. In it, they record the varied reactions of various dogs of breeds big and small to great dog imitations by Rok. I'd love to see my two dogs in this situation to see what they would do! Via Twisted Sifter.
