As a frequent thrift store shopper I’m always coming across terrible paintings being sold for a few bucks because nobody else wants them, a sad testament to the time and energy spent by a budding artist who had no idea of the cruel fate that awaits their painting.

Luckily there’s a good Samaritan named Dave Pollot shopping thrift stores and bringing a geeky new life to reject paintings. With the simple inclusion of pop culture icons like Darth Vader, Bender from Futurama and that cute little Android spokesrobot Dave gives these abandoned works of art a new life.

Dave’s appropriated paintings may not land him in the MoMA, but they’re sure to get him some geek love on the interwebs.

-Via Nerd Approved

(Image via Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images)

Star Wars went from being the stuff of geek dreams and a surefire way to remain abstinent to a pop culture phenomenon accepted and enjoyed by all. It’s no longer totally geeky to declare your love of Star Wars, and now it has even become an inspiration for a line of dresses from fashion label Rodarte.

Designers Laura and Kate Mulleavy were fans of the space opera before they became fashion designers, so it’s only fitting that they explore their geek roots and create a couture collection featuring iconic images from their beloved Star Wars.

Now you can say “these aren’t the droids you’re looking for” while pointing at your dress and the uninitiated will actually get the joke!

-Via Gamma Squad

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Creating good looking CGI artwork, models, shorts, etc. requires a lot of experience, some technical know-how and a good eye for detail. But creating utterly terrible CGI works can be an art in itself, or simply an (un?)happy accident along the way to your final 3D destination.

The folks behind Really3D are trying to create “The best 3D animations of the world!”- in other words 3D shorts that are so bad they’re grrrreat!

Watch as they bring a horrible mutation of Jurassic Park to life, complete with a lumbering cantaloupe, err, I mean Brontosaurus.

Stare in amazement as classic Mickey incarnation Steamboat Willie is brought into the digital age, with just a bit of chromosomal damage along the way.

Wonder why you’re watching such deliciously bad CGI animation, then keep on watching until it looks good!

-Via Gizmodo

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Despite what you hear on cable TV these days, you still can’t say just anything on TV in the U.S. Before Ryu from the video game Street Fighter can take part in a televised tournament, he has to be vetted by the network's standards and practices department. That’s not so easy when you operate in a language you don’t really know. This clip is from The Pete Holmes Show, with Ryu played by Mark-Paul Gosselaar, who you might recall from Saved by the Bell, NYPD Blue, or Franklin and Bash. -via Uproxx

Marijauana Yoga or Rave Yoga? Why Not? (Oddee)

Does Your Dog Actually Love You? (Geekosystem)

This Rescue Cat Weighs 21 Pounds and Stretches Three Feet Long (The Presurfer)

The Nine Nuttiest Winter Olympic Stories Ever (Mental Floss)

Image: The Dinosaur Pet Guide (John Conway)

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From 1982 to 1986, the Nickelodeon network hosted an educational program called Standby: Lights! Camera! Action!. It showed how movie productions function. Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock on Star Trek, hosted it. This clip from a 1983 episode shows how prop makers and costumers made the non-human characters in Return of the Jedi.

It's a pity that George Lucas did not make full use of the acting talents of the Star Trek cast in Star Wars. He could have simply imported the entire cast and set them to work from Episode IV onward.

-via Geek with Curves

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When Victor Delgado wanted to propose to his girlfriend Liz, he got a few friends involved. The result was a sci-fi action movie that mashed up your favorite film franchises in all their glory. Participants included the Costumers Guild of Hawaii, The Pacific Outpost 501st, Ghostbusters: Hawaii Division and the League of Shadows Hawaii. It took months to shoot and weeks to edit. Read more about it here. Buried in the comments at YouTube was the crucial information that she said “Yes.” -via Geeks Are Sexy  

The Weirdest Models Around (Oddee)

Did You Know Tug of War Was An Olympic Sport (Mental Floss)

Grilled Apple Burgers? Why Not? (Consumerist)

The Military Wants to Make A Real Iron Man (The Mary Sue)

Image: The Most Impressive Fast food Creation Ever (imgur)

The 1987 film Robocop was rated R, for very good reasons, if you recall. It was ultra-violent, ultra-gory, and creepy enough in places to induce nightmares. It was also very big hit, and Hollywood aimed to wring every last dollar out of it.

As with nearly every other gruesome action film from the 1980s, Hollywood realized that kids freaking love Robocop. It didn’t matter that it was a seriously hard R-rated movie with tons of gruesome violence and satirical jabs at corporations, the media, and Cold War-era nuclear paranoia that likely flew over young impressionable heads. Hollywood decided that they could turn Robocop into a superhero, and thus the subsequent sequels, cartoons, and live-action TV series stripped the property of everything that made it great in the first place.

What we got following the film was Robocop anti-drug PSAs, a comic book, an animated series for kids, appearances in professional wrestling, political photo-ops, fast-food advertising, and more. Relive those surreal moments in a list (with videos) at Gamma Squad.

Here to demonstrate that even a robot could have written scripts for the sitcom Friends is the Infinite Friends Machine, a bot programmed to write an episode of Friends and may be credited as the creator of a sequel series called Frenemies. Okay, that last bit may not be true, but the fact that a bot and a bit of coding is all it takes to write your average sitcom isn’t really earth shattering news.

 Creator of IFM Tom Armitage explains how he used a program called Plotagon to create the strangest episode of Friends ever made:

The machines does a few simple things. First, it scrapes Friends transcripts. For now, it works for most of Series 1. It then parses those scripts and chops them up into episodes, scenes, and lines attributed to individual characters. It also strips out some directions. Then, using all that, it offers ways to generate new scripts.

Is this the future of televised entertainment, with rooms full of sketch writers being replaced with server racks and script writing code? I certainly hope not...

-Via Gawker

The xenomorph from the Alien franchise can terrify any human with its inner mouth. But as Dragonarte demonstrates, Superman isn't human. And for all practical purposes, neither is Batman.

-via Daily of the Day

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Okay, Alex, I'll stop wearing my underwear on the outside of my pants while I'm at the office. But the cape stays. In my cape, I look even more dashing than I usually do.

Buzzfeed presents a demonstration of what would happen if ordinary people behaved like superheroes. As usual, the video is shot in the offices of Buzzfeed. I'd like to think that most of the employees aren't told that they're shooting a sketch and that they think that these are normal events at work.

-via VA Viper

Viewers are obsessed with the latest incarnation of that most famous of detectives- Sherlock Holmes as portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch, and since audiences can’t get enough Benedict’s face is starting to show up in all kinds of unusual places, from Sesame Street to fun photo shoots to classical works of art.

Let’s Draw Sherlock is a Tumblr site dedicated to art featuring Benedict's beloved mug, with various projects like replacing the subject of many famous works of art, like Modigliani’s “Franz Hellens” and Lempicka’s “The Blue Scarf”, with Mr. Cumberbatch's face, and drawings featuring Sherlock and Watson attending historical moments, just to name a few.

Whether Mr. Cumberbatch's fifteen minutes of fame extend ad infinitum, or he ends up shying away from the spotlight, these remixed artworks bearing his instantly recognizable face will live on.

-Via Geeks Are Sexy

15 Pictures of Adorable Cats In Hats (Scribol)

This Mario-Themed Wedding Pretty Much Rocks (Offbeat Bride)

Cosplay? Why Not Zoidberg? (Geek Girls)

15 Awesome LEGO Tattoos (Flavorwire)

Image: Oscar Nominated Movies in LEGO (Laughing Squid)

The puppets that occupy Sesame Street all seem to get along pretty well on the show, but even furry monsters that eat cookies and sing songs all day need to blow off some steam every once in a while.

For that there's Sesame Street Fighter, a new, and of course semi-educational, game played with typing control mechanics similar to games like Typer Shark and The Typing of the Dead. As you type out words your Street Fighter inspired character throws balls of fuzzy fire or lays a cookie fueled smackdown on the opposition, all to a sweet chiptune version of the Sesame Street theme song.

So get yourself a cookie, give your knuckles a good cracking and prepare for the typing fight of your puppet life, which you can play at Flavourmachine.

-Via Gamma Squad