Ottomatic Zen - Don't Just Drive The Bus, Be The Bus


Ottomatic Zen by Ilcalvelage

Otto figured out the secret to inner happiness long ago, but he's not sharing that secret with anyone because he's not actually aware that he's figured out the secret to inner happiness. In fact, Otto doesn't really know what he knows because he's too busy living in the now, which is probably a good thing for the kids from Springfield Elementary because if his mind starts to wander his bus might start wandering all over the road too!

Add some animated chill to your geeky wardrobe with this Ottomatic Zen t-shirt by Ilcalvelage, it's a high-larious way to show some love for your favorite bus driving buffoon!

Visit Ilcalvelage's Facebook fan page, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more toon-errific designs:

Alive Hoors Light The Ruckus Grey Castle

View more designs by Ilcalvelage | More Funny T-shirts | New T-Shirts

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The 2018 Name of the Year Bracket

The Name of the Year Tournament is a little late getting launched, so it can't called itself March Madness, but the excitement is there as it is every year. The full-size, readable 2018 bracket is here. The number one seeds are Salami Blessing, La Royce Lobster-Gaines, Dr. Narwhals Mating, and Makenlove Petit-Fard. Can those names of real people fend of the likes of Forbes Thor Kiddoo, Darthvader Williamson, Fabulous Flournoy, or Beau Titsworth? Voting will begin soon at the tournament's blog. -via Metafilter 


I Awoke

Imagine waking up with no recollection of who you are, where you are or how you got to be where you are in life...*shivers* that sounds like an absolute nightmare, especially considering you might have to live your life all over again...

On the other hand, waking up to discover you're a lamp wouldn't be so bad, unless the people who own you have a cat in the house...*shivers* (Comic via Channelate)

-Via Geeks Are Sexy


Why Columns Have the Same Leaf Design

For some reason, we had to learn the difference between Roman columns in elementdary school. It may have been so that the school could check off "architecture" in our curriculum, but the lesson was disconnected to anything else in world history, so it didn't mean much. The real reason that columns were so important is that they held the building up, which would be important if we ever bothered to learn more about architecture. But now that we're older and know more, we get the fascinating tale of why Corinthian columns were made in the same pattern for thousands of years, from the Greeks and Romans all the way up to today.

(YouTube link)

The legend is a good tale, but the history we know for real is quite interesting, too. -via Laughing Squid 


The 25 Best Set Pieces of Steven Spielberg’s Career

The newest Steven Spielberg movie, Ready Player One, opens nationwide today. In honor of the occasion, we can indulge in some a Spielberg's greatest past work. A set piece is "a scene or sequence of scenes whose execution requires serious logistical planning and considerable expenditure of money." They can often stand alone without the rest of the film, but they cannot be taken out of a film without damaging the whole. For example:

7. Melting Nazis, Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981)

More than a decade before Spielberg The Grownup Filmmaker plunged audiences into the full horror of the Holocaust, Spielberg The Ageless Adolescent tackled history’s darkest chapter from a more boyish, innocently rousing vantage. Raiders Of The Lost Ark is all about sticking it to Hitler—a kind of fantasy score-settling that culminates in the film’s karmic, cathartic Grand Guignol climax. Tied to a nearby post, Ford’s Dr. Jones and Marion Crane (Karen Allen) avert their eyes as the Nazi bad guys pry open the titular artifact and get some supernatural comeuppance. The ethereal effects look primitive by today’s standards, but there’s a timeless (and, sadly, rather timely) thrill to watching these Third Reich scoundrels go from solid to liquid for their sins. It was neither the first nor the last time Spielberg would push the limits of the PG rating; everyone tends to attribute the introduction of PG-13 to the heart-ripping violence in his second Indiana Jones movie. But with Raiders, Spielberg traumatized all ages for a greater good. Remember, the next best thing to clocking a real Nazi is melting off the face of a fake one.

The AV Club looks at 25 such set pieces, arranged in chronological order, maybe because it would be too hard to rank them. Oh yeah, the videos are there, too. Scrolling through them is like watching all your favorite movies again.

(Image credit: Jimmy Hasse)


The Evolution of Disney Character Costumes

Disney Dan has a series of videos he's made over the past several years that trace the evolution of costumed Disney characters. Mickey Mouse was making public appearances decades before Disneyland opened, and he is the first character to get a deep dive into the costume. You'll learn some stories you haven't heard before, like how the first Mickey and Minnie at Disneyland were borrowed from the Ice Capades because Walt didn't have any cast members or costumes.  

(YouTube link)

My kids were excited to meet Mickey in 2002 at Walt Disney World. If we'd waited a couple of years, he could have spoken to them, but by then my daughters would have been older and not as thrilled. Disney Dan has 14 videos in the series so far, covering Donald Duck, Winnie-the-Pooh, Peter Pan, Dumbo, and more. Eventually, he'll get around to doing costume videos on the Disney Princesses. -via Metafilter


Nude Art Generated by Artificial Intelligence

Robbie Barrat is testing the limits of machine learning. He gave a neural network lessons in art, and asked it to paint landscapes (digitally, of course). More recently, he turned his attention to classical nudes. He fed thousands of nude portraits into a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) to see what would result.

Generative adversarial networks are defined as a class of artificial intelligence algorithms used in unsupervised machine learning, which uses two different neural networks, one called the "generator" and one the "discriminator."

"The generator tries to come up with paintings that fool the discriminator, and the discriminator tries to learn how to tell the difference between real paintings from the dataset and fake paintings the generator feeds it," Barrat told me. "They both get better and better at their jobs over time, so the longer the GAN is trained, the more realistic the outputs will be."

Sometimes, Barrat explained, the GAN will fall into what's called a "local minima," which means the generator and discriminator have found a way to keep trying to fool each other without actually getting better at the task at hand.

The two neural networks may be quite pleased with themselves, but their nudes are so abstract that they'll never flag a moderator. The one in the middle right of this Tweet looks like Olaf from Frozen. However, people have asked if they could buy a print. Read about the algorithmically-generated art at CNET and see more digital paintings in Barrat's Twitter feed.  -via Boing Boing


Things That Are Bigger On The Inside

The laws of physics forbid an item from being bigger on the inside, so in order to find things that are larger inside than out we must forego standard science and head into the realm of science fiction.

There we can find amazing objects with interior spaces roomy enough for Time Lords, Grouches and families of wizards to chill in, the perfect places for a daydream.  (Illustration by Hello With Cheese)

-Via Geeks Are Sexy


Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla: An All-Time Turkey

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.

Our story begins in November of 1950, when Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were making one of their appearances on the popular weekly variety show The Colgate Comedy Hour. At the end of one of their comedy sketches on the show, a 16-year-old kid named Sammy Petrillo made an appearance as a baby Jerry Lewis, in a crib. Sammy was paid "around $600" for the gig -easy money- he had no lines. A few weeks later, Sammy made another guest appearance as a Jerry Lewis clone on Eddie Cantor's Colgate Comedy Hour turn (the show featured rotating guest hosts).

Actually, our story began 16 years earlier, when Sammy Petrillo was born in the Bronx, in 1934. Like Jerry Lewis, Sammy was born into a show business family. And also like Jerry, Sammy began performing at a very early age and would sometimes join his father onstage when he was performing in the Catskills.

Already bitten by the show biz bug, as a teenager, Sammy enrolled in the High School of Performing Arts in Manhattan. The turning point of Sammy Petrillo's life occurred one innocent day- when he was getting a haircut.

Sammy: “One day I went down to the Annex at the High School of Performing Arts. The Annex was a trade school and they had people who were learning how to cut hair. And so I got a freebie haircut and the guy cut my hair and he started to laugh. And I said, 'Whatta ya laughing at?' and he said, 'You look just like that Jerry Lewis!' And I said, 'Get outta here!' And everywhere I walked, people laughed and asked me if I was Jerry Lewis, it was unbelievable. And Jerry Lewis at the time, I guess, had made his second motion picture, My Friend Irma Goes West. I really didn't know that much about him. I kinda caught some glimpses of the movie and I saw he went, 'Ack! Ack! Ack!' And he talked kinda high... And I said, 'Gee, maybe I do resemble that guy and I can do that kind of a laugh, I could do that kind of a voice."

Continue reading

The Last Jedi Gag Reel

Now that the home version of The Last Jedi is out, we get to see a lot of the extra features -at least the shorter ones. This one is labeled "bloopers and outtakes," but while there are some bloopers, most of it is just silliness on the set.

(YouTube link)

The real gem here is finding out how many times General Leia got to slap Poe. Funny how she took so long to get it right.  


You've Always Gotta Buckle Up

It's important to always practice proper auto safety procedures -even if you already happen to come equipped with your own collision impact protection. 

Via Pets Lady


Alice - The Voice Of Reason In A Land Of Madness


Alice by Nicole Graham Art

When people first read about Alice's adventures down the rabbit hole or through the looking glass their imaginations were captivated and they pictured how the denizens of Wonderland would look. Decades later an animated film would come out that brought this magical world to life, and generations would grow up watching this magical movie and falling in love with an imaginative and adventurous girl named Alice.

Add a colorful cast of characters to your geeky wardrobe with this Alice t-shirt by Nicole Graham Art, it's a wonderful way to take your favorite day tripper with you wherever you go!

Visit Nicole Graham Art's Facebook fan page, Instagram and Twitter, then head on over to her NeatoShop for more fantastical designs:

Esmeralda Moana & Ariel The Wolf Among Us Pocahontas & Moana

View more designs by Nicole Graham Art | More Funny T-shirts | New T-Shirts

Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!


The Long, Strange History of Medicinal Turpentine

While I was never obliged to drink turpentine as a child, I was haunted with the idea a few times. We had access to doctors. My parents, however, were given a few drops occasionally during their childhoods to ward off intestinal worms and other parasites. See, pines trees developed sap that kills parasites, and turpentine is distilled pine resin. Turpentine is good for thinning paint, repelling water, and as fuel for lamps. That doesn't mean it's safe to ingest, but it has a long history as a medicine.

Viewed in context, it’s easier to understand why doctors once used it as medicine. Pine tar, another related product, is still a useful medicine ingredient for rashes and skin problems, while turpentine oil, which was also considered good for lung health, is still an ingredient in Vick’s Vapor-Rub. (Although it’s listed as an inactive ingredient.) Turpentine is antiseptic, too, and the terrible taste and harsh effects could have been interpreted as signs that it was working. “King of the [medicines] was turpentine, a product of the tidewater pine forests,” Kentucky historian Thomas D. Clark wrote. “Turpentine had three important medical requisites: It smelled loud, tasted bad, and burned like the woods on fire.” It also had the strange side effect of making urine smell like violets.

Read the history of turpentine used as medicine at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Flickr user Wystan)


This Dog is Best Friends With Owls

They say birds of a feather stick together, but that's certainly not the case when it comes to Ingo the dog and her owl friends. 

It seems Ingo originally was friends with one little owl named Poldi and his collection of buddies has drastically grown from there -though the pictures seem to prove that Ingo and Poldi are still the closest of the group.

You might say they get a real "hoot" out of the relationship.

Fortunately for all of us, Ingo's owner, Tanja Brandt is a professional photographer who is there to capture every unique and beautiful encounter between Ingo, Poldi and all the other owls they encounter.

You can see more of the fantastic images on Ingpo's Facebook page.

Via Bored Panda


The First Venus Flytrap

Even though species normally evolve in tiny increments, when one develops something that is different from their ancestors, there has to be a first one to try it. YouTube comedian CalebCity imagined how that very first plant decided it would be carnivorous and then evolve into a Venus Flytrap. He plays the roles of two plants and a bumblebee.  

(YouTube link)

Brace yourselves. This is the one-man short version of Little Shop of Horrors. -via Tastefully Offensive


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