Louis Wain was an artist born in 1860s Victorian England who was as intensely gifted as he was mentally disturbed. His fanciful work is examined and featured on the internet from time to time (including on Neatorama in 2006) because his pieces, particularly his cats, are popular and his name is sometimes mentioned when correlation is drawn between artistry and madness. 

Wain lived a hard life fraught with extended stays in the dismal insane asylums of the time, though notable people such as H.G. Wells and Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald interceded on his behalf in order to get him placed in better facilities. Yet no one could help his desultory mental states that included periods of psychosis.

Wain once said in explanation of his process:

"I take a sketch-book to a restaurant, or other public place, and draw the people in their different positions as cats, getting as near to their human characteristics as possible. This gives me doubly nature, and these studies I think my best humorous work."

Read more about Wain and see the gamut of his artwork, from the whimsical to the bizarre, at Dangerous Minds.

Images: Louis Wain 
 

H.G. Peter's first sketch of Wonder Woman, recently recovered from his estate, is now up for sale. Peter was the original artist for the character when she got her start in William Moulton Marston's December 1941 All Star Comics #8. What makes the artwork more interesting (and likely more valuable) are the notes between Peter and Marston underneath it. 

Read the text of their notes, more details about the item and see another photo at the sale listing at ComicLink.

Via i09 | Image ComicLink

I've always wondered why I find push-ups so detestable compared to other exercises — perhaps the answer is that I don't have a pup pushing up with me. Eric Ko, a dog trainer at the Dogaroo Dog Training Center in Kowloon, Hong Kong, has found the secret to simultaneous exercise and puppy love with his attentive student Teeny. See another version of the exercise, with two high fives and a kiss thrown in, below. -Via Tastefully Offensive

YouTube Link

YouTube Link

Image: Portable Antiquities Scheme

A man named Terence Castle was digging a pond in his back yard in 2007 when he found the proverbial pot at the end of the rainbow. A treasure of 80 gold U.S. Double Eagle coins with dates ranging from 1854 to 1913 were in the cache. The virtuous Castle, whose residence is in the Hackney borough of London, informed authorities of his find and eventually gave up the treasure to its rightful owners: the Sulzbacher family.

Martin Sulzbacher, a Jewish refugee from Germany, was a banker who placed the coins in a bank vault just prior to World War II. In 1940, Martin's wife and children were sent to an internment camp in the Isle of Man, and Martin, declared an "enemy alien," was sent first to Canada and then to Australia. Eventually he joined his family in the Isle of Man. In their absence, Martin's brother, a citizen of the UK, took the coins out of the bank and buried them in the back yard. 

When Martin and his family returned home after his period of internment, he found that his house had been demolished by a German bomb and his brother and extended family were killed. No one who knew of the location of the coins was still living. Yet when Castle's discovery hit the news, Max Sulzbacher, by that time aged 81, was able to make his rightful claim on the hoard. 

Read about six other hoarded treasures found in the last seven years at Mental Floss.  

Love & Mercy, a film based on the story of The Beach Boys, is set for release on June 5 of this year. Based on the trailer below, I think it looks promising. Particularly with the thoughtful casting of terrific actor Paul Dano as a young Brian Wilson and John Cusack as an older Wilson, it seems as if the film is a hopeful bet for presenting the rich history of the band and the story of the troubled Wilson in a nuanced and honest way. Wilson himself played a role in the development of the film, which hopefully added some realism and integrity to the production. Esquire conducted a recent interview with Brian Wilson, which you can read here. 

Via Esquire | Screenshot from Official Love & Mercy Trailer

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A baggage handler for Alaska Airlines fell asleep in the cargo area of the plane Monday and began yelling and pounding on the walls when he awoke. Passengers and crew of Alaska Airlines Flight 448 bound for Los Angeles heard screams and banging noises coming from the cargo hold after takeoff. The passengers were told that the plane would return to the airport, and that they would be informed of the reason later. The employee spent 14 minutes in the pressurized, climate controlled cargo hold and was taken to a local hospital when the plane landed. 

Read more on this story and see a video news report here.

Via Gawker | Image: Frank K.

Image credit: Georges Biard

When Christian Bale, an actor who is always dead serious about preparing for his roles, prepped to star as the lead in American Psycho, he used the personality of Tom Cruise as inspiration. 

Director Mary Harron said in an interview that during the pre-production phase, the actor had watched an episode of Late Night with David Letterman in which Tom Cruise was featured. Bale noticed something in Cruise's manner that he thought would work for his character of preppy psychopath Patrick Bateman.  

“It was definitely a process. [Bale and I] talked a lot, but he was in L.A. and I was in New York. We didn’t actually meet in person a lot, just talked on the phone. We talked about how Martian-like Patrick Bateman was, how he was looking at the world like somebody from another planet, watching what people did and trying to work out the right way to behave. And then one day he called me and he had been watching Tom Cruise on David Letterman, and he just had this very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes, and he was really taken with this energy.”

Once one knows that, it's almost impossible not to see Cruise in some of Bateman's cheesy yet manic grins and exceptionally animated quips.

Read other facts about American Psycho in this article. Meanwhile, I've got a res at Dorsia.  

Image: Laney Griner

Shown above is the face behind a hugely popular meme. Called "Success Kid," the meme got its start in 2007 when mother Laney Griner posted the above photo of her son Sammy at the age of eleven months looking victorious during a visit to the beach. Sammy's photo went from MySpace to Reddit on the way to internet fame, and has been in regular circulation in the eight years since.

Yet today, the photo represents a story other than success in all shapes and sizes. Sammy Griner's father Justin is seriously ill and needs a kidney transplant. He was diagnosed with kidney disease in 2006, and in 2009 Justin experienced full kidney failure and began spending 12 hours a week on dialysis. Laney says that Justin can only survive for so long with artificial kidney filtering. Justin's mother passed away from the same disease.   

The Griners have started a fund to help with the associated costs of Justin's medical condition. Learn more about their story and see additional photos here.  

Gemma Correll wants to ease the minds of parents with weepy millenials by helping them try to understand their angst. While it could be a number of minor things as in the images shown here, the source of their pain may also be something more significant. There are only four of nine panels shown here; see the web comic in its entirety at The Nib.  

Image:  prolite669

These eerie pictures of abandoned boarding schools look like something straight out of a horror movie flashback. It's easy to imagine a modern day movie scene shifting to sets that look like these dilapidated buildings full of scholastic scraps. Perfect to flesh out a plot in which an evil headmaster terrorizes youngsters whose disappearances are still a mystery. 

See more images from this photo collection at Urban Ghosts.


Image: fish95th


Image: True British Metal

Image: True British Metal

Grant Snider of Incidental Comics takes on the inevitable occurrence in life of being disappointed. Whether it's disappointment as a result of the actions of significant others, friends or family, disappointment in the workplace or in other life circumstances, it's unavoidable. But as Snider points out, trying to avoid disappointment at all costs only makes your world smaller, with few opportunities, and thus, more disappointing. 

This is part one of "Theories of Disappointment." See part two at Incidental Comics.

The all-female K-9 Angel team saving hundreds of stray dogs in Romania http://t.co/aMvqtJVLnA ♥ pic.twitter.com/Q7KBnaG0Sz

— Animals1st (@Animals1st) April 4, 2015
 

The Britain-based K-9 Angels are a trio of blond models dedicated to rescuing stray dogs. Yet these pretty ladies aren't just figureheads who have others do all the grunt work. Their efforts in "the trenches" of stray dog territory have saved 700 dogs thus far from terrible fates on the streets of Romania, Cyprus, Thailand and the UK, and they plan to expand the operation to include other countries.

The K-9 Angels was founded in 2011 by Pola Pospieszalska, television personality Anneka Svenska, and former Playboy model Victoria Eisermann. One of the main objectives of the group since its inception has been tackling the outcome of a 2013 Romanian law that made euthanasia legal in response to a stray dog problem. The Angels say the law has led to the killing of dogs in horrifying ways such as clubbing and being set on fire. Pospieszalska told the Daily Mail,

"Romania's stray dog situation is probably one of the worst in Europe and sad, neglected, hungry animals are a part of Romanian landscape... It is common in Romania for them not to use a euthanasia injection, but instead dispose of dogs in cheaper ways such as injecting paint thinner into the heart, strangling, and clubbing to death.

What an awful situation, and what a relief to know that this group is saving some of these dogs as well as calling worldwide attention to the problem.

Read more and see additional pictures and a video of the Angels here.

Via: The Daily Dot | Images: @TheK9Angels on Twitter
 

Nelson rescued out of public shelter in #craiova is up for adoption #AdoptDog !! ❤️ pic.twitter.com/pJcw4z50XZ

— The K-9 Angels (@TheK9Angels) November 22, 2014

Bella (now Lucy) in a new home. She was tied up to the fence and left to die in a heavy snow, now living in UK <3 pic.twitter.com/OUdMWimFBk

— The K-9 Angels (@TheK9Angels) May 20, 2014

This tired German Shepherd mama is having a rest when her exuberant pup comes over and gets pesty. She obviously has had enough and thinks it's time to put the puppy down for a nap. Her herding instincts are on display as she guides him over to the bed and gives him her soundless, albeit effective, instructions. 

Via: Bark Post  

YouTube Link

In this video footage filmed at Burgers' Zoo in the Netherlands, a chimp has more frustration toward the annoying, buzzy thing in his face than he can shake a stick at. Fortunately, shaking a stick seems to eradicate the problem. The drone was killed, but the camera lived on to provide cautionary tales to other humans pulling the ol' drone trick on their captive animal species.

YouTube Link

Via Daily Dot | Screenshot via Burgers' Zoo/YouTube