Screen Junkies hopped back in time to bring us an Honest Trailer for Martin Scorsese's 1990 movie Goodfellas. They may have been inspired by the death of star Ray Liotta just a couple of weeks ago, or possibly the recent celebration of Billy Batts Day. At any rate, they point out the superlatives in Goodfellas that so many other movies have tried to emulate and failed at. Goodfellas offers lots of blood, lots of crime, lots of laughs, and lots of F-bombs. True, it's a bit thin on plot, but no one cared, and besides that's what happens when you tell a story based on someone's real life.
They reference My Blue Heaven at the end of this video. The reason the movies are so similar is because My Blue Heaven was written by Nora Ephron, who was married to Nicholas Pileggi, the author of Wiseguy, the Henry Hill biography that Goodfellas is based on. The comedy premiered a month before Goodfellas.
Current conditions of Yellowstone’s North Entrance Road through the Gardner Canyon between Gardiner, Montana, and Mammoth Hot Springs.
— Yellowstone National Park (@YellowstoneNPS) June 13, 2022
We will continue to communicate about this hazardous situation as more information is available. More info: https://t.co/mymnqGvcVB pic.twitter.com/S5ysi4wf8a
I hope you didn't have reservations at Yellowstone National Park this week. While the rest of the American West is suffering under a drought, intense flash flooding on the Yellowstone River along with rockslides and mudslides have destroyed the road that serves as the north entrance to the park, as you can see in the video above. After inspecting other damaged roads, the National Park Service has closed all five entrances to the park at least through Wednesday, and possibly for longer.
Meanwhile, the community of Gardiner is completely cut off to vehicle traffic (see videos here) and many communities are without power. Tourists are warned not to try to find accommodations in towns near Yellowstone, as there aren't many to begin with and this calamity has filled them. Also, cell service, spotty to begin with, is affected. It will probably be months before the north park entrance is reopened, which has us concerned about the person in that front-end loader stuck on the highway. -via Fark
Renowned 19th-century Japanese illustrator Utagawa Kuniyoshi has made a mark on Neatorama with his illusions and puzzles, and the fact that he may have been a time traveler. Kuniyoshi's artworks even popularized full-body tattoos! And there's always more to explore from such a prolific artist.
'Cats Suggested as the Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido' - Utagawa Kuniyoshi, 1850.#Caturday #ukiyoe #cats #Japan pic.twitter.com/dh6sD9WM2O
— curious ordinary (@curiousordinary) April 16, 2022
Many of Kuniyoshi's ukiyo-e woodblock prints featured cats. He loved cats and often drew with a kitten in the folds of his kimono. His works included cats in the shapes of Japanese kana script, as anthropomorphic stand-ins for real people, and as puns. An example of this is Kuniyoshi's Cats Suggested As The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō. It is a spoof of another artist's series on those stations, but Kuniyoshi drew cats for each station and put them in positions that illustrated the pun opportunities of the station's name. Read about that and other cat-obsessive works from Utagawa Kuniyoshi at Illustration Chronicles. -via Everlasting Blort
What do you do with 35 million tons of sand? If you are smart, you harness it for a side gig as a skiing resort. A kaolin mining operation in Hirschau, Germany, named their slag pile Monte Kaolino and opened it for tourists. That is, after they found that people were already skiing on it. People use the industrial waste pile, er, mountain, for sand skiing and sandboarding. I didn't even know sandboarding was a thing, but Monte Kaolino is the home of the Sandboarding World Championships. This way, you can ski all year round, and only wear protective clothing instead of layers of fleece. The resort that has grown up around the mountain offers a funicular railway, a roller coaster, swimming pool, camping facilities, and other tourist activities. Now, this is how you take lemons and make lemonade. Tom Scott takes us there to find out how Monte Kaolino came about, and maybe he'll even do a little sandboarding. Or maybe not.
Mel magazine is running a series on the people and events of 1997, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of those things. One was a uniquely strange news blurb about a lawsuit that addressed valid legal and ethical issues, but at the same time implied that police departments were looking for recruits that weren't too smart.
Robert Jordan applied for a job as a cop with the New London, Connecticut, police department. The process included taking a test to measure an applicant's education and general intelligence. When Jordan was rejected, he thought it was because he was 46 years old, but found it was because he had scored a 33 on the test (the average police officer scored 21). The department claimed they rejected him because they thought people who scored that high would be bored by the job and not stay long. So Jordan sued the city for discrimination.
However, the condensed news items about the lawsuit that went nationwide left the public with the impression that police departments wanted dumb police officers for one reason or another, which became a permanent meme. People still argue about that. Read what really happened, and how the courts ruled in the case at Mel magazine.
Ten-month old Nagi and his cat Guinness (previously at Neatorama) live in a high-rise apartment in London. The view out the window is great, but rarely does anyone come up close. So it was quite an adventure when the window washers dropped by, literally, and interacted with the curious kid and cat. Guinness did his best to catch the squeegee, and Nagi thought that was hilarious. The window washers had a good time, too. You can see another, longer video of this wholesome event (with a second cat) at Laughing Squid.
Toilets are a part of life, but they couldn't be shown on TV, or even mentioned, until broadcasting had been around for several decades. Still, the toilet, with its flush action and relatively easy-to-clean surfaces, is a wonder of modern technology that makes life easier all around compared to what was common before its invention a couple hundred years ago. Yet the modern toilet was less "invented" than "developed," as the working components were added and improved one at a time. These developments make certain breakthrough toilets famous. But there are others that have a story behind them.
It might be pop culture’s most famous toilet: On August 16, 1977, Elvis Presley was found by girlfriend Ginger Alden on the floor of his second-floor bathroom in Graceland after falling off the seat. Presley reportedly died due to a heart condition preceded by excessive prescription drug use. Visitors to Graceland, however, aren’t able to peer at the toilet that hosted the King in his final movement: The bathroom and adjoining suite are off-limits.
Read about other toilets that made their mark on history at Mental Floss.
(Image credit: Whoisjohngalt)
(Image credit: Another Believer)
Rasmus Petersen was a teenager when his family immigrated from Denmark and settled near Bend, Oregon. As an adult, Petersen began to collect rocks from the countryside and built miniature buildings on his property, for almost 20 years until his death in 1952. By then he had constructed a miniature Danish village, bridges, roads, water features, and sculptures including an American Flag and the Statue of Liberty with local stones. The four-acre Petersen Rock Garden became a popular roadside attraction, drawing 150,000 visitor a year at its peak. The garden has since been designated on the National Register of Historic Places.
(Image credit: Another Believer)
The garden is still in the hands of Peterson's family, but not for long. It has been listed for sale. The property consists of more than 12 acres, four of them covered with Petersen's artworks. There is also a house, several outbuildings, and a gift shop included in the deal, for a mere $825,000. Oh yeah, the peacocks that stroll the grounds are included, too. -via Fark
DoodleChaos (previously at Neatorama) brings us a video in which eight Line Riders compete in a race set to the tune of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries." It's survival of the fittest in a steeplechase, as they crash into each other, fall, lose their sleds, and sometimes regain them. A free fall doesn't always mean elimination. But only one rider can win at the end. You might get caught up in the drama of the riders and their, uh, "luck" in the race, but if you do, you'll need to go back and focus on the tracks and how well they synch with the music. These lines were all hand-drawn, and took several months to create. Then again, if you focused on the music the first time around, you'll want to watch again to focus on the riders. These are tough little cartoon figures! -via reddit
Magic: The Gathering is an enormously popular fantasy-based collectible card game that launched that gaming genre. Since 1993, the corporate owner, Wizards of the Coast, has produced billions of Magic cards.
When you're looking at billions of pieces of paper with variable values, you need an economist to understand how they behave. That's why Wizards of the Coast is hiring a Senior Design Economist to study how the game is played and help the company make prudent design decisions about it.
The job posting is here. You'll need a graduate degree in economics or some other data science field and a familiarity with an analytical programming language.
-via Marginal Revolution | Photo: Robert
The algorithm knows all. No matter what your mouth says, there are statistics that know you're lying. You might even explicitly request fewer sexy dancing ladies on TikTok, but your behavior when they are around is recorded and quantified. It's the price we pay for using the internet for distraction and entertainment. This video from Viva La Dirt League illustrates how it works in human terms. Now, I surf the internet for a living, trying to sort out the interesting/funny/enjoyable stuff from the mountains of trash every day, so just try to imagine the things I get served up by the algorithms of various internet services. It's the price I pay for being a super-surfer with no consistent preferences. Your mileage may vary. -via Geeks Are Sexy
The White House was first built just prior to 1800, but then it was burned down during the War of 1812, rebuilt, and maintained rather haphazardly for the next century, with little attention being paid to the structure during the Great Depression and World War II. By the time Harry Truman moved in after the death of Franklin Roosevelt in 1945, it was literally falling apart. The Truman family heard weird creaking, the floors bounced, and chandeliers would swing for no reason.
Official White House photographer Abbie Rowe (who also captured the reconstruction) even recalled that the president said he heard ghosts in the Second Floor residence. Truman also imagined a not so humorous scenario in which his bathtub fell through the floor during a Daughters of the American Revolution tea, with the American president “wearing nothing more than his reading glasses.”
Finally, Margaret Truman’s piano leg pierced through the floor into the room below due to the rotting floors. Truman knew the White House needed extensive repair, but didn't want to do it during his re-election year, so the renovation project didn't begin until 1949. Even then, appearances needed to be kept up, so all the work was done from the interior, while the exterior facade appeared almost unscathed. The Trumans lived in the rotting building for four years, then moved to the Blair House during the renovation project, and only moved into the new and improved White House in March of 1952 and stayed for less than a year. Even then, President Truman lamented the $5.4 million cost of the upgrade. See pictures of the White House completely gutted during its renovation at Messy Nessy Chic.
(Image credit: National Park Service)
Have you ever dreamed of sporting perfectly-manicured nails that appear to be dripping with cheese sauce? Nails.INC of London is offering a cheesy deal on nail polish in their Pinkies Out line that mimics the look of melty-good Velveeta cheese sauce! It even has the scent of cheese, once it's dried. The polish is available in a two-pack for $15, one bottle that's Velveeta yellow, the other in red because that's the color of the font on the box, I guess. The first run of this limited-edition polish sold out in nine days, but they've restocked now. If the sales continue that quickly, the limited edition may become as regular product. Now, why anyone would want their nails to look like they're a messy eater is anyone's guess, but apparently some do. -via Everlasting Blort
Uh oh, we've got some bad news if you love sriracha: a hot chili sauce shortage is looming.
Huy Fong Foods Inc, the maker of the beloved hot sauce, has suspended production of the Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce, Chili Garlic and Sambal Oelek because they ran out of chili (they use about 50,000 tons of chili every year).
"Several spiraling events, including unexpected crop failure from the spring chili harvest," said the company as reported by San Gabriel Valley Tribune.
A recent letter sent by the company to its vendors advised them "not promise any products to your customers unless you have the product in stock."
BRB! Going to the supermarket to hoard me some Sriracha (doesn't this seem just like the good ol' days of the pandemic?)
Image: Chris Liverani/Unsplash
The miniseries Becoming Elizabeth will premiere on Starz this Sunday. It's about the teenage years of Queen Elizabeth I, and will consist of eight episodes. You might wonder what could be so exciting about a 16th-century teenager who wasn't expected to become queen. You'll be quite surprised. Sure, we know she was embroiled in a political free-for-all after her father, Henry VIII, died, which resulted in all three of his surviving children eventually reigning as the British monarch. But Elizabeth, the "virgin queen," was a teenager with her own needs and desires, and was sought for marriage by many men, one of whom was her stepfather.
Considering how convoluted the royal family relationships were, you might want a primer before watching the show. Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife Anne Boleyn, whom Henry had beheaded. When Henry died in 1547, his sixth wife, Catherine Parr, was named as 15-year-old Elizabeth's guardian. Elizabeth had already been approached for marriage by Thomas Seymour, brother of Henry's third wife Jane Seymour. Elizabeth, then thirteen, had previously decided to never marry. Instead, Thomas Seymour married Catherine, Henry's widow, very soon after the king died (they had been romantically connected before her marriage to the king). Thomas, however, didn't stop pursuing Elizabeth, as the teenager lived with him and his new bride. Elizabeth, as teenagers do, was both intrigued and repelled by Thomas' attentions, until Catherine sent her away. After Catherine's death, he continued to push himself on Elizabeth. The history is much more salacious than this synopsis, and you can read it at Smithsonian.
