Allee Willis is a fantastic and accomplished songwriter by day (she wrote the Friends theme song I'll Be There For You, for example) and a kitsch collector by night.
Thanks to the Interweb, we can now marvel at her extensive collection of kitsch. As a bacon afficionado, it's my sworn duty to bring you these Bacon Shoes:
Nothin’ tastier in the morning then to slip on a nice pair of bacon shoes and go about your day. As someone who loves the meaty stuff, this is the perfect way to avoid all that grease and and keep your feet looking crisp and scrumptious all day. I have bacon bandages, bacon scarves, designer bacon everything, but the printing is so cheap on most of it it just looks like pink and red wavy stripes. But on these Keds it actually looks like the real thing.
http://www.alleewillis.com/blog/2009/09/25/allee-willis-kitsch-o-the-day-bacon-shoes/ | More at Kitsch O'The Day and her new website, The Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch
I don't have time to watch one TV, much less several all at once! HBO Imagine is a new website that aims to tell a story through interconnecting short clips as opposed to the linear format of today's TV show as well as different angles. And I mean that literally - you can change the camera angle of the clip and see "hidden" parts of the story. The more clips you watch, the more you unlock clips and clues.
It's a new way of watching a show - kind of edgy, I suppose. Maybe too edgy for old fuddy duddy like me, and therefore perfect for today's teens with short attention span, but very entertaining nonetheless: http://hboimagine.com/ - Thanks Nathalie!
*Be sure to "spin" the first clip, titled The Affair, to see what's hiding behind the door...
The next time you break a bone, your doctor may just reach for the sandcastle worm. Actually, not the actual worm itself but a bone glue made by the animal:
The worm creates a complex water-based mortar to create a home from grains of sand and bits of shell. The adhesive can stick to wet surfaces and doesn't dissolve at certain pH levels, making it ideal for medical applications. Once it has done its job, it can become water-soluble and dissolve.
The traditional method of healing broken bones by using metal nails, pins and screws is difficult with smaller bones, says Russel Stewart, one of the creators of the synthetic sandcastle worm glue, and scientists have been looking for a suitable adhesive substitute for decades.
The beautiful Casio Databank 2888JA over at Tokyoflash - pre-order at $112.28; (R) The cheaper yet still geeky chic Cal-Q-Tek 2000 Calculator Watch at the Neatorama Shop - $14.95
I have a soft spot in my heart for geeky wristwatches. Maybe it's all those childhood conditioning (Dick Tracy's wrist phone, anyone?) but when Tokyoflash came out with their limited time offer of the Casio Databank 2888JA, I'm all over it. It's a bit pricey, so for the budget-conscious geek, may I suggest our retro-fun Cal-Q-Tek 2000 wrist watch over at the Neatorama Shop?
Remember Muto, the "animated" or time-lapse graffiti by Blu that took the InterWeb by storm? Well, here's the sequel: a collaboration by Blu and David Ellis called COMBO (with music by Roberto Lange)
It was produced by Studio Cromie and released at the Fame Festival 2009
What would He-Man and the rest of the Masters of the Universe look like if they were into fashion? No need to imagine, as artist Adrian Riemann had re-drawn them as if they were Hipsters of the Universe:
What would He-Man look like if he was really into fashion and indie rock? What if Skeletor was an American Apparel model living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn? What if She-Ra was an art school dropout that spent her time bar-hopping in the Lower East Side?
For the past few months artists Adrian Riemann has been creating a master work that answers these questions. Essentially, Riemann has remixed the characters of the popular 1980s "Masters of the Universe" cartoon series as highfalutin, Justice and Kid Cudi listening, circa 2009 hipsters. On top of that, he styled the characters in designer clothing as if this was a fashion spread in a magazine.
By the way, He-Man wears Dior Homme Jacket, April 77 Jeans, and Pierre Hardy shoes; Skeletor was no slouch himself with Loopwheeler Hoody, Cheap Monday Jeans, and YSL Shoes. I can safely say I've never even heard of such brands ...
What do you get when you combine "honesty is the best policy" with "Do as I say, not as I do"? Here's an interesting study showing that parents lie to children surprisingly often:
"We are surprised by how often parenting by lying takes place," said study researcher Kang Lee of the University of Toronto, Canada. "Our findings showed that even the parents who most strongly promoted the importance of honesty with their children engaged in parenting by lying."
Lee and colleagues acknowledge that their work is preliminary, bringing to the forefront an issue that is rarely studied. They are not sure the implications of parental lying, but suggest such tall tales could give kids mixed messages at a time when they are trying to figure out how to navigate the social world.
Lies could also harm parent-child bonds, said study researcher Gail Heyman of the University of California, San Diego.
It could even keep children from learning certain rules. "If I am always lying to the child in order to get the child to do X, Y, or Z, then they have never learned why they should do X, Y, or Z," said Victoria Talwar of McGill University in Montreal, who was not involved in the current study. "If it's constantly being used, [lying] may be preventing learning opportunities for the child."
The argument of Mac vs PC (or more accurately, Mac vs Windows) is as old as time itself - that is, if time started in 1984, the year that the Mac was introduced.
Sure Windows is bad. Awfully bad (I'm looking at you, Vista) but according to Charlie Brooker of The Guardian, there is something worse than Microsoft's operating system: the cult of Mac worshippers!
Consequently, nothing pleases them more than watching a PC owner struggle with a slab of non-Mac machinery. It validates their spiritual choice. Recently I sat in a room trying to write something on a Sony Vaio PC laptop which seemed to be running a special slow-motion edition of Windows Vista specifically designed to infuriate human beings as much as possible. Trying to get it to do anything was like issuing instructions to a depressed employee over a sluggish satellite feed. When I clicked on an application it spent a small eternity contemplating the philosophical implications of opening it, begrudgingly complying with my request several months later. It drove me up the wall. I called it a bastard and worse. At one point I punched a table.
This drew the attention of two nearby Mac owners. They hovered over and stood beside me, like placid monks.
"Ah: the delights of Vista," said one.
"It really is time you got a Mac," said the other.
"They're just better," sang monk number one.
"You won't regret it," whispered the second.
But never fear, dear Mac lovers, Microsoft is trying to brew its own cult by using Windows 7 Launch Parties propaganda: Link
Did you know that today is World Rabies Day? Well, now you do. Our pal Asylum blog has a neat post about rabies trivia, including these gems:
People who get rabies don't go vampire. Somewhat surprisingly, we could find no evidence that the spastic delirium brought on by this horrible plague has caused a person to start biting others with his suddenly deadly teeth/saliva combination. (This may be because rabid patients are often tied down.) However, in the low-budget horror flick "I Drink Your Blood" a band of hippies are tricked into eating rabies-infected meat pies. They proceed to turn the table on the townsfolk by wreaking delirious havoc that would seem by the film's title to include vampirism.
The only person who has ever really survived rabies may simply be immortal. There is only one fully-documented case of a person surviving rabies without severe brain damage. In 2005, a teenage girl from Wisconsin was induced into a coma right after the onset of symptoms in hopes that partially shutting off her brain (and feeding her medication) would give her immune system time to produce antibodies to fight the virus. After six days under, and many more in the hospital, Jeanna Giese emerged with only slight brain damage, and now lives a normal life. Subsequent attempts to replicate this procedure have failed.
The species found in these underground habitats were mostly blind and lacking pigment due to the environment in which they live. Above is an amphipod, a shrimp-like crustacean. Of the water-dwelling creatures found, crustaceans represented about seventy-five percent of the new species.
These otherworldly inhabitants of the subterranean outback have adapted to their light-less environments, sometimes by evolving past the need for eyes. They navigate using vibration and chemical senses.
Above is captioned: a crustacean that has fangs connected to secretory glands, from the stygofauna at Cape Range, Western Australia. This is a very primitive group of crustaceans, previously only known from the northern hemisphere.
So. Three decades after he fled Los Angeles, director Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland.
In 1977, Polanski pled guilty of "unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor" to avoid being charged with rape by use of drugs (he gave alcohol and quaaludes to the then-13-year-old female model he was doing a photo shoot with) and sodomy, amongst other charges. He fled the United States before his sentencing and has been avoiding traveling to countries that could extradite him ever since. The victim has since forgiven him and settled a civil suit against Polanski for an unspecified amount.
Granted, the Polanski case was tawdry. It was filled with celebrity, sex, drugs and violence (not to mention charges of ethical misconduct of the judge presiding over the case). In short, it was the stuff of Hollywood. So the media frenzy of the arrest was not unexpected. But what surprised me was the diplomatic row that ensued when both France and Poland (Polanski is a dual citizen of both countries) protested Polanski's arrest.
Is rape of a minor not a serious offense in those two countries? How about fleeing and being a fugitive from the law (while not exactly hiding - Polanski continued to direct award-winning films even with warrants outstanding)? Was the arrest outrageous, as journalist Anne Applebaum wrote in a column for The Washington Post? Or was it justice finally being served?
What is it about one-take video clips that capture our imaginations? Perhaps
it's because we've become so cynical about video editings that the pure,
raw form of a single, uninterrupted shot truly stands out.
Well, whatever the reason, one-take video clips sure take the Interweb
by storm. Here is Neatorama's list of the 7 Most Amazing One-Take Video
Clips:
Let's start with one that's making the rounds on the Internet: a lip
dub by the students of the Université du Québec à
Montréal (UQAM). In this video clip, co-directed by Luc-Olivier
Cloutier and Marie-Eve Hebert, 172 communications students lib-synched
the song I Gotta Feeling by the Black Eyed Peas. The whole thing
was shot in a little more than 2 hours.
In an interview with Canada
AM, Cloutier gave a little background:
Cloutier says it was difficult to coordinate 172 students in one
take. "The problem was we didn't know before how many
people should be there for the dub so we cannot plan," he said.
Cloutier said the video was eventually shot in two takes. Despite
some minor glitches, the pair is proud of the final product. "We
decided to keep this take because (of) the vibe," said Cloutier.
If you like that, here's a clip done after work one day by the people
of Connected Ventures (they're the bunch of geniuses behind College Humor,
Busted Tees and Vimeo). Looks like a fun place to work! Oh, the song is
Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger.
A lot of these one-take videos are music videos - and for good reason:
one-take videos are hard to shoot, so those synchronized with music has
got to be made by people with mad skillz.
This music video Let
The Beat Build by rapper Nyle,
directed by Chadd Harbold and produced by Last
Pictures and 194 Recordings,
even did one better: they recorded the audio simultaneously with the film.
Mind = blown.
Austin Hall of Frecklestudios
probably has the most watched hands ever. Since its debut two years ago,
his YouTube clip Daft Hands has been watched over 33 million times!
In that video, Hall played Daft Punk's Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
entirely with his two hands. Maybe it's easier for you to watch the clip
above than for me to explain in words how he did t. (Previously on Neatorama
here)
Since then, the song has spawned countless imitations, including Daft
Bodies and the Daft
Parodies (Erhm, the last one is kind of rude. You've been warned).
5. Forrest Gump in One Minute, in One Take
[CollegeHumor Video
Clip]
Let's take a break from music video clips. Last February, Joe Burgess,
Rocco Sulkin and Will Tribble from the University Of York Filmmaking Society
got friends to act out Forrest Gump in one minute, filming the
whole thing in one take. (Previously on Neatorama here.)
From an interview with NewTeeVee
Station:
The one-take angle would make you assume that there was a lot of
rehearsal and coordination involved, but that wasn’t the case
— according to Tribble, most of it was ab-libbed. “I didn’t
know until the last minute that I was going to be in [Gump],”
Tribble said, “but then they said, ‘OK, you’re Lieutenant
Dan’ and there I was.”
What's even better than a one-take music video? How about a one-take
music video with treadmills! Here's the astounding clip Here It Goes
Again from Ok Go, directed
by Trish Sie of BigBadTrish.
Last on the list is the grand-daddy of all one-take videos. Titled Cog,
the two-minute long Rube Goldbergian commercial for Honda Accord was produced
by the London office of Wieden+Kennedy advertising agency and directed
by Antoine Bardou-Jacquet of Partizan back in 2003. I don't think I'm
exaggerating when I say that this may just be the best commercial of all
time.
To the horrors of Honda engineers, Bardou-Jacquet took apart the seventh-generation
Honda Accord, of which there were only 5 hand-assembled models in the
world (at that time), and made an astonishing commercial out of its parts.
It took 606 takes to shoot Cog and when it was completed, the
video clip was shown to the bigwigs at Honda who remarked that it was
a very nice computer generated imagery. When they were told everything
was real, they were floored - and if you see it, you would be, too.
Need to destroy that top secret memo but got no office paper shredder? Here's the product for you: a strange yet effective combination of scissors and shredders. Behold, the Shredsors - a pair of scissors with 9 blades that will quickly destroy junk mail, bank statements, old credit cards ...
From the Neatorama Shop: http://shop.neatorama.com/product-info.php?shredsors-scissors-shredder-pid566.html
Speechwriter,
author and famous New York Times columnist William Safire has just died
of pancreatic cancer.
I don't always agree with Safire's politics, but I've always found his
writings to be intriguing and worth the read (not to mention rib-ticklin'
when he got going with alliterations)
In memory of Safire, here's my favorite "Rules for Writers,"
from the man who came up with such gems as "nattering nabobs of negativism"
and "hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history":
Remember to never split an infinitive.
The passive voice should never be used.
Do not put statements in the negative form.
Verbs have to agree with their subjects.
Proofread carefully to see if you words out.
If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal
of repetition can be by rereading and editing.
A writer must not shift your point of view.
And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. (Remember, too,
a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.)
Don't overuse exclamation marks!!
Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences,
as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.
Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb
is.
Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular
nouns in their writing.
Always pick on the correct idiom.
The adverb always follows the verb.
Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable
alternatives.
Poor Lulu. When the bovine miscowculated the steepness of the pathway near the German castle of Neuschwanstein in Bavaria, she was stuck down in the valley with moo way back up to the farm. What to do?
Help came in the form of the local mountain rescue who hitched the hapless heifers one by one to the local cable-car used by hikers for a free ride home.
For the mountain rescuers, it was all in day's work.
'It happens quite a lot,' said one, 'but usually we end up airlifting the cows back home via helicopter.
'It just so happened this trio ended up stuck near the cable car station so we were able to use the cable car. They were quite cool about it.'
After some fresh grass and a good milking, the cows were settled in their stall for the evening with the high-life behind them for good.
Allan Hall of the Daily Mail got the story and the super-sized pic: Link
