Angelina Jolie
It's been a while since we last featured Worth1000, but their "let's photoshop celebrities into Renaissance paintings" contest is full of all sorts of win. Check out the rest of the winning entries: Link - via Co.CREATE
Hugh Laurie
Steve Carrell
Natalie Portman
... and how could we not see this one coming?
Honey Boo Boo's Mama June
All it takes is a mention, and that song is stuck in your head …again. This Twaggie was illustrated by Ricardo Costa from a Tweet by Tony. See all the funniest illustrated Tweets at Twaggies. Link
Richie Trimble rides tall in his 14.5-foot bicycle. He sees the world from 17 feet above ground, which gives him a unique view. It can't be easy balancing on a bicycle that has to be up against a building just to climb on!
As a cinematographer in Los Angeles, it’s rare for Richie to make it out to bike rides. Two weeks ago, his calendar clear, he rode on The Safari Bike Ride where he met up with friend and fellow bike builder, Rick Hill. Richie tells me that “Rick makes the most awesome bikes.”
Richie challenged Rick to the tallest bike in LA – two weeks later, STOOPID TALL would be constructed. Richie was building it for Saturday night’s bike ride, C.R.A.N.K. MOB, to take it to the next level. It took him twelve hours to build, the final eight hours on the day of the bike ride.With only one Huffy beach cruiser frame, crank, handle bars, seat post and the fork as the rest of the bike is made by round and square steel tubing. The curves in the the round tubing were created from an upside down shopping cart and log on top. The chain alone is six and a half bicycle chains, that’s thirty-two and a half feet. With no real tools or a flush surface, Richie used c-stands (usually seen being used on film sets), levels and small wedges, built by eye-ing it in his back yard. “I was skeptical it would even ride at all.”
But it did, as you can see from this POV video. Warning: may induce vertigo.
Read more about the bike called STOOPID TALL at L.A. Streets Blog. Link -via Blame It On The Voices
Although colloquially known as the AT-AT or Imperial Walker, this device is properly titled Captain Bayley's Infernal Mechano-Perambulator. Mark crafted this incredibly detailed work of steampunk technology for his fiancée, Caroline L. She writes:
Each one of those rivets was cut out with a punch and applied with tweezers, and we both lost track of the number of coats of spray paint he used to get that gorgeous patina before washing it down and creating the stains and drips. He made the narwhal horn on the front as well. It's hard to see but the legs and feet are covered in seaweed and barnacles - I can just imagine it tramping up and down the coastline, or standing in a harbour next to a crumbling pier.
Forward to Hoth, then Omdurman!
Link | Photo: Broken Journalist
Will in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air died on that basketball court in West Philadelphia. Alien and Blade Runner take place in the same universe. Batman Forever and Batman and Robin are actually movies made within the Batman universe after Bruce Wayne's secret identity was revealed.
These are theories that fans have developed about adult television programs and movies. But inventive and somewhat crazy fans have also spun out hidden connections and explanations for children's television programs. Here are eight good ones.
1. The Count, a vampire, rules Sesame Street. He feeds upon the children and enslaves the adults. Here are some of the arguments that Mighty God King makes to advance this theory:
FACT. The child cast of Sesame Street changes frequently and widely. You rarely see the same kids on the show for more than three or four episodes.
FACT. However, the adult cast of Sesame Street changes very, very rarely.
FACT. Everybody seems to take the fact that a vampire is wandering a New York City street with surprising calm.
2. Alternatively, Sesame Street is actually an exploration of Plato's Republic and, specifically, his Allegory of the Cave. Here is part of the argument made by redditor theterrorofmuffins:
Plato uses the sun and light to represent knowledge, truth, and reason many places in his works -- light allows us to see objects for what they really are rather than in the darkness, and the sun is the source of all light. Plato also emphasizes that true reason is something humans can never fully obtain, but it is something we can work for -- Kallipolis, the ideal city he envisions, is a fantasy that we can move towards, but we can never achieve. As imperfect rational beings, we don't know how to get there.
"Sunny days, sweepin' the clouds away. Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?"
Now, what about the philosopher ruler who must pass on his wisdom in order to educate and enlighten the world not overtly, but subtly. In the allegory, the enlightened individual who saw the light of the sun can only achieve this through creating shadowy illusions on the cave wall. However, there are many other "puppet masters" making shadows on the wall for the prisoners to watch, and they deceive and conjure things untruthfully and without reason. The enlightened one, however, because of the inevitability of his rejection were he to convey his reason directly, must use this shadowy mode of illusory puppeteering to get his message across by meager demonstration.
And that is what Sesame Street is -- the shadows on the wall, demonstrations of how we might live in a harmonious society. It's given to us at a young age through television by it's enlightened creators so that we might adapt to and absorb its positive message. Thank you, Sesame Street.
3. Do you remember Gargamel, the archnemesis of the Smurfs? He has a spell that will let him turn Smurfs into gold--provided that he has at least six Smurfs. This is among his motivations to hunt them. At other times, he wants to destroy them just to rid the world of their happiness or to eat them. Why would Gargamel want to eat the Smurfs? Because their flesh is an addictive hallucinagenic. CoCoa explains:
The Smurfs live in houses made og hollowed out mushrooms, they hollow out the mushrooms by eating the insides of it.
Psilocybin is the chemical compund in mushrooms that causes hallucinations. [...] Garagamel wants to eat the Smurfs because they are pure concentrated Psilocybin.
Gabriel Dishaw, who created the Darth Vader's Mask from Old Machinery we told you about on Neatorama a while back, is back with another neat creation. This time, C-3PO got the honor of being made from discarded parts of adding machines, calculators, check printers, and typewriters. Human-cyborg relations have never looked so good!
Link - via Geeks Are Sexy
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.
The term "break a leg" is unique to actors. Actors often tell each other to "break a leg" and the term is also commonly used by non-actors, who wish the sentiment on actual actors. It means, of course, "Do well!" or "Have a great show!" The term can be used before a stage performance, a show, or an audition. I have never heard it used before filming a movie, but I guess it can be used on that occasion, too.
Interestingly, stagehands do not use the term, just actors. Stagehands will often tell each other "Don't mess up" or the more graphic "Don't f*** up" before a big or important performance.
Like many popular sayings and terms, the origin of "break a leg" is nebulous and disputed. The term "break a leg" was used originally, some say, to discourage evil spirits from deliberately causing one's performance to suffer. According to this theory, wishing someone "good luck" would be invoking the "evil eye." So "good luck" would actually cause bad luck for the actor. This, "break a leg," by this logic, would be a wish for good luck.
The term "break a leg" may be traced back to the Elizabethan language. To "break a leg" in Shakespeare's time meant, literally, to bow -by bending at the knee. Since a successful actor would "break a leg" onstage and receive applause, the phrase would, in effect, be a wish for good luck. However, in the 16th century "break a leg" also meant to give birth to an illegitimate child, which is hard to connect to the theatrical world.
Allison Keene, who writes about TV for Collider and mental_floss, grew up without ever watching a Star Wars film. She sat down and watched every one of them in release order, and wrote up her impressions as a 21st-century newbie. What's interesting is that she thought she knew a lot about the series, because she knew what people talked about on the internet. But that's completely different from seeing the films. She says after the first one:
A-ha! Moment: I was floored by how many pop culture references come out of this movie alone, are there any in the other movies? “These are not the droids you are looking for,” “a great disturbance in the Force,” “may the Force be with you,” “the Force is strong with this one,” etc.
WTF? Moment: I think I’ve always conceived of Darth Vader as being some all-powerful evil villain, and to see him just hanging around the council, running his own errands and in fact getting in a fighter jet to go out on an attack run himself confused me greatly. Doesn’t he have minions for that sort of thing? Also I expected his voice to sound like something in between Christian Bale‘s Batman and Tom Hardy‘s Bane, but he was quite normal, which disappointed me a bit.
And even that's funny, that the voice of James Earl Jones may sound "quite normal" now that everyone has heard him so much. In 1977, it stood out from every other voice on the planet. Keene wrote up all six movies, which are posted at Collider in reverse (blog) order. Link
Here is a Link for you guys. Ganondorf hates Link, I still don't get why, but that means he probably hates this.
Honestly though, I think there need to be more cantaloupe in this fruit-mosaic. Cantaloupe is by far the best fruit. I know what you are thinking, and I am glad you wholeheartedly agree.
-Via Nerdalicious
When I first saw the headline, I suspected--I hoped--that it would link to an Onion article. But no:
Disney is paying $4.05 billion to buy Lucasfilm Ltd., the production company behind ‘‘Star Wars,’’ from its chairman and founder, George Lucas. It’s also making a seventh movie in the ‘‘Star Wars’’ series called ‘‘Episode 7,’’ set for release in 2015, with plans to follow it with Episodes 8 and 9 and then one new movie every two or three years. [...]
Lucas said in a statement, ‘‘It’s now time for me to pass ‘Star Wars’ on to a new generation of filmmakers.’’
Perhaps there's nothing to worry about. After all, Disney has done well with Marvel since acquiring that company.
Link -via Ed Driscoll | Photo: Pop Culture Geek
Update: Congratulations to user TeamHubble for being selected from our random drawing and receiving a free copy of the book! Thanks to all that participated!
by Shepard Fairey: Untitled
Nothing tastes more like iconography than Hello Kitty. The character has been printed and copied over generations through culture, pop art, graphic design, toys and pretty much any other way imaginable. Conceived by the Japanese company Sanrio, Hello Kitty first appeared in 1974 and made its American debut in 1976. Together with Sanrio, Roger Gastman has compiled a collection of some of the most beloved works of Hello Kitty by contemporary artists in a new book Hello Kitty, Hello Art!
"Hello Kitty is the ultimate muse, a blank canvas upon which for years people have projected their dreams and fantasies, and increasingly, artists too."
-Caroline Ryder
by Caia Koopman: Gato Muerto
The artists that comprise the book include Gary Baseman, Ron English, Luke Chueh, CRASH, RISK, Anthony Lister, Eric Joyner, Camilla d’Errico, Amanda Visell, Colin Christian, Huck Gee, Kozyndan, Deph, Caia Koopman, Yosuke Ueno and many others.
"About two years ago, my wife and I went to check out an art show at Santa Monica airport in a huge hanger. It was a Sanrio show and we didn’t know what to expect. It just sounded cool. When we pulled up, we were not disappointed. It seemed like a carnival atmosphere. As we walked in, we passed a chuck wagon of food trucks with a variety of assorted pleasures. Then I saw a Ferris wheel. It was really cool! We were really surprised and we wandered through a maze of great art. We had no idea what to expect and we were hooked. We caught the Hello Kitty fever!”-RISK
by RISK: East Meets West
Sanrio celebrated its 50th Anniversery in 2010. The brand prides itself in leading a lifestyle they define as a "small gift, big smile" philosophy. There are over 50,000 Sanrio brand items in 70 countries world-wide.
Since she has been around for so long, I feel like I know her; I’ve been with her through her various stages and products and she has been with me through my life.”-Natalia Fabia
by Natalia Fabia: I Heart Hello Kitty
Sanrio paired with artist POSE, a Chicago based street artist, and launched a gallery show on October 14th under the same name Hello Kitty Hello Art. The show was at the Known Gallery in Los Angeles.
Roger Gastman, the compiler of the book, has been in the art and graffiti scene since his teenage years in Bethesda, Maryland. He has founded two pop-culture magazines- While You Were Sleeping and Swindle (co-published along with Shepard Fairey) and has published more than 30 art books. He is the founder and creative director of R. Rock enterprises.
You can buy the book over at Abrams Books or from Amazon
Check out all the Hello Kitty items at our Kitty Shop.
Photo: Bill Ingalls/NASA
Got traffic jam? Not like Los Angeles, I bet, where the latest traffic jam was caused by a shuttle crossing ;)
From NASA:
The space shuttle Endeavour is seen atop the Over Land Transporter (OLT) after exiting the Los Angeles International Airport on its way to its new home at the California Science Center in Los Angeles, Friday, Oct. 12, 2012.
Endeavour, built as a replacement for space shuttle Challenger, completed 25 missions, spent 299 days in orbit, and orbited Earth 4,671 times while traveling 122,883,151 miles. Beginning Oct. 30, the shuttle will be on display in the CSC’s Samuel Oschin Space Shuttle Endeavour Display Pavilion, embarking on its new mission to commemorate past achievements in space and educate and inspire future generations of explorers.
Via the Neatorama Facebook Page
Fifty years ago, the rugby team of the Portsmouth Grammar School in Hampshire, UK posed for a photo. They went their separate ways, but all sixteen members survived the years and returned to update their picture. The odds were astronomical:
The odds of all of the original first team being alive to meet for the milestone anniversary was worked out at 256,000 to one. [...]
The old boys met the school's current first 15 rugby team and watch them play against Churchers College, from Petersfield, Hants.
In a bid to create a legacy and encourage current teams to stay in touch, the 1962 team presented the current team with a trophy - a rugby ball which they had all signed.
Link | Photo: Portsmouth Grammar School Archive/Solent News
Is there any parent who hadn't tried this trick? Only my kids gave up long before the niece in this Twaggie. Wobbly Goggy illustrated a Tweet by Sixth Form Poet to create it. You'll find a new illustrated Tweet every day at Twaggies! Link
