Artist Saul Bass is renowned for his movie titles, credit sequences, and trailers, all done in minimalist style that made them artworks able to stand on their own. He also designed posters for movies, 37 of them in all.      

Directors were floored by Bass’ ability to distill a story down to its bare essence — how his thick black lines and bold swatches of color seduced and focused a viewer’s attention where other posters would simply try to overwhelm it — and legendary auteurs like Otto Preminger would fight the studios to protect Bass’ creative freedom. His style was so striking and influential that it was widely copied in his own time, and many of the posters that are still attributed to Bass were actually created by imitators (e.g. “West Side Story” and “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad World”).

You can see all 37 of those Saul Bass's movie posters, from Champion in 1949 to Schindler's List in 1993, at IndieWire.  -via Metafilter

Andy Warhol is often portrayed as a cold, emotionless character who also constantly seems a bit addle minded, but this stereotypical portrayal doesn't really do the man justice. In real life Andy had many sides to his life and his personality, and he was quite the fun loving fellow when he felt like kicking up his Beatle boots.

He was a fan of pro wrestling, appeared in music videos for The Cars and even made an uncredited appearance in Tootsie, but his 1985 appearance on The Love Boat is really out there- even for Warhol.

Love Boat Season 9 Episode 3 by lexie-guerrero-14

Here's more about Season 9, Episode 3, entitled “Hidden Treasure / Picture from the Past / Ace’s Salary”:

An all-star cast, including Andy Warhol, Andy Griffith, and Milton Berle, helps the crew celebrate the ship’s two-hundredth voyage. In “Picture from the Past,” Warhol, as himself, offers to select a passenger as the subject of his next portrait. Marion Ross plays a former Warhol superstar who fears the artist will recognize her and reveal her secret past to her disapproving, conservative husband, played by Tom Bosley.

After The Love Boat episode was aired, he complained to a friend that people in Hollywood were “idiots.” They didn’t buy art, he said. They stank.

-Via Dangerous Minds

Odette Doest is a veterinarian and a wildlife rehabilitator on the island of Curaçao. The few rescued birds she cannot return to the wild find a permanent home with her. That includes Bob the flamingo. Bob was injured when he crashed into a window. Doest nursed him back to health, and found out he was raised by humans and is not equipped for life in the wild. So Bob became an ambassador for his species, visiting schools with Doest to teach children about island wildlife and the importance of conservation.

While Doest would have preferred to free Bob, she says he’s helping to instill a conservation ethic in the next generation. Kids want to know all about the four-foot-tall pink bird: how his life differs from that of his free-flying cousins, why his feathers are pink (as a result of compounds in the shrimp and algae he eats), and his favorite snack (caviar, which he tries to eat straight out of Doest’s hand). After each school visit, Doest asks one student to carry Bob back to her car. “You see them glowing with pride,” she says of the newest members of Bob’s growing fan base.

Doest's cousin Jasper Doest is a wildlife photographer. He visited Dr. Doest and accompanied her to a school and a television station with Bob. You can see those photographs, along with Bob's story, at Audubon magazine. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Jaspar Doest)

Summer camp is a great place to set a movie: you're away from your parents, you meet all kinds of new kids (and weird camp counselers), and anything can happen. What happened to us when we went to camp as children was usually fun but not outrageous, yet the possibility of something really outrageous was always there. So of course, those awesome ideas go into movies about summer camp. Relive the most outrageous moments from summer camp movies in a list at TVOM. With video evidence. 

In 1954, Toho Studios turned Haruo Nakajima into a monster. Nakajima was the first actor to portray Gojira, or Godzilla, in a movie. He made the role his own, appearing as the giant reptile in 12 films. That wasn't his only role in monster movies.

In addition to Godzilla, Nakajima also portrayed monsters in Rodan, Mothra, The H-Man, and Frankenstein Conquers the World, and The War of the Gargantuas, as well as the Tsuburaya-produced series Ultraman: A Special Effects Fantasy Series. Simply, if you’ve seen a kaiju movie made before 1973, you’ve seen phenomenal and iconic work of Haruo Nakajima. He’s a legend.  

As an actor and stuntman, Nakajima was also seen in movies such as Seven Samurai, Eagle of the Pacific, and Sword for Hire. We posted an interview with Nakajima just a few months ago. Toho studios announced that Nakajima died on Monday. He was 88.

Ever wish you could have a drink while sitting on the lap of a Xenomorph? Or enjoy a white Russian with The Dude? Theme bars are the closest any of us could get to doing things like this in real life. Over on Supercall, you can read about 13 of the best theme bars on earth. Often when these things say "on earth," they tend to mean in the US with a few exceptions, but in this case, they really do mean around the globe as the bars are located in Japan, Iecland, Switzerland, Romania and more. 

So check out the full list of strange and wonderful theme bars here.

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Film maker Pei Yan Heng was at the beach in Cyrene Reef, Singapore in 2013 when he stumbled upon an octopus stranded far above the water line. Pei filled up a cup of water and scooped up the octopus before releasing him back into the sea. After taking a moment to recover, the octopus went to his rescuer's shoe and hugged it with his tentacle in a sincere thank you gesture. 

Via Laughing Squid

A litter of eight baby hedgehogs (hoglets) became orphans when their mother was killed in a lawnmower accident. The hoglets were found and taken to a lactating cat named Musya.

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Musya nurtures and feeds the hoglets like they were her own. She might have a little difficulty in grooming them. She probably feels sorry for these ugly kittens. -via Laughing Squid

Harlech Castle on the Welsh coast was built by King Edward I in the 1280s. It still stands strong, and has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage site. And now, the castle has a sentinel, in the form of a giant steel dragon named Dewi. Dragons are special to the people of Wales, and a red dragon graces its flag.  

There was no pressure, then, on artist Anthony Peacock, who was commissioned to create Dewi in 2010. However, the piece is a triumph, made from 78 square meters of steel sheets which were first cut in to scale shapes.  These were then welded on to a frame and polished, measuring in at 16 foot long, 11ft high and 10ft wide.  Finally a total of twelve coats of lacquer were applied.  All told almost 800 hours of work went in to fashioning this magnificent beast. If Llywelyn had had a dragon like this on side, the castle would quite probably never have been built.

See more pictures of Dewi the Dragon, and read the history of Harlech Castle at Kuriositas.

(Image credit: Flickr user Clive Roberts)

Seeing amazing wild animals can be a highlight of any vacation -especially if you actually get to interact with the creatures in a meaningful way. But some animal encounters benefit the local wildlife while others harm it. That's why you should do your research before participating in such an activity. Fortunately, Travel and Leisure rounded up some of the most popular animal encounters from around the world so you know what's good for the animals and what's not. For exmaple, while visiting Kenya's Giraffe Manor is a great idea, swimming with dolphins isn't.

So check out the full list at Travel and Leisure

Josephsen Hardwood Floor Company has a Facebook page on which they post the Employee of the Week every week. The "employee" is always a supervisor. They are the pets of the homes where they install floors. Above, you see Sophie, who made the list in April.

My dad takes pictures of the dogs at the houses he works on and posts them on his business' Facebook page as employee of the week pic.twitter.com/BrkYKdr1lT

— dill2ill (@_illdill_) August 1, 2017

There are plenty of dogs, and also cats, and once a donkey made the cut. -via Metafilter

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Most city slickers see cows as those critters you moo at while you're driving down the highway in cattle country, but anybody with farm experience knows a thing or two about cows.

And one thing you find out real fast- some cows act just like giant dogs, wanting to play, get pets and go on long walks. Some cows even have fur that looks similar to a dog's coat, like the ridiculously photogenic Scottish Highland cow above.

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They'll even curl up with you (or should I say around you) when they're feeling tuckered out, which seems like a pretty normal thing for a dog to do but strange for a cow. And speaking of strange- this herd seems to be sweet on that cute canine, and he's loving every minute of it!

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See 21 Reasons Why Cows Are Basically Just Really Big Dogs here

Ida Wood was thought to be a millionaire socialite from New Orleans who married well after she came to New York as a teenager. She married well, alright, but most of her story was untrue. After her husband died and a business venture failed, she moved into a hotel suite in Herald Square with her two sisters and lived there without going out in public for the next 24 years. Then in 1931, she had to get help for her ailing sister, and her reclusive lifestyle was uncovered.

In the days after first reaching out for help, a parade of lawyers, undertakers, purported relatives and hotel staff filtered through suites 551-552. They discovered that the millionairess, once touted in the papers for her fragile beauty, was now stooped and withered, and sported a wild bramble of gray matted hair. She had been living there with her sisters Mary and Emma in near isolation for more than two decades. The rooms were almost entirely filled with refuse; the doctor who came to examine Mary could barely find a place to stand amid piles of old magazines, boxes, suitcases, strange collections of newspaper clippings and bits of cloth.

The sisters didn’t just hoard objects — hidden among the junk was Ida’s entire fortune. Roughly 1 million dollars in cash and jewelry were found in cardboard boxes, trunks and Cracker Jack boxes, and $500,000 was found in an oilskin bag that Ida hid under her skirt.

Ida Wood died the next year, and it came out that her life was even stranger than that of a hoarding recluse. Wood's story is told at Ozy.

The 1994 film Léon: The Professional, written and directed by French filmmaker Luc Besson, is about a paid assassin who takes in a 12-year-old orphan. The actress playing the orphan Mathilda was 11-year-old Natalie Portman in her first feature film. What happened after the film is interesting, too.

The movie wasn't a blockbuster, but was successful, grossing three times its production budget, and garnering good critical reviews. It is now considered a cult classic. Read more movie trivia about Léon: The Professional at TVOM.

People with a chip on their shoulder are quite blatant about their "eff you" attitude, but those of us who prefer to give the world a subtle eff you without any unnecessary feather ruffling can now make our point while looking sharp.

The subtly offensive "Eff You" Pinstripe 3-Piece Wool Suit was made by tailor David August and made famous by UFC fighter Conor McGregor, who usually says eff you with his mouth rather than his suit.

After seeing it you'll see why Conor let this sharp looking suit do the talking for him- from afar it looks like an ordinary pinstripe suit, but get close and you can see the stripes spell out the words "f#$k you" over and over again.

This $6500 made-to-measure suit looks like it would be fun to wear to an Ex's wedding, parents night or while crashing a snooty country club function full of stuffed shirts.

-Via Boing Boing