Pomplamoose is helping YouTube spread the word about their new independent music initiative, Musicians Wanted. We love Pomplamoose, so we thought we'd help out by doing our part to spread the word. The basic idea: if you're a musician, you can upload your stuff to YouTube and share in the revenue, while keeping the rights to your songs. Check out the fun Pomplamoose vid below for details!



And if you don't know the music of Pomplamoose yet, be sure to check out their "Single Ladies" cover (thanks to GeekGirlDiva for reminding us how much we LOVE this version). Oh, and the idea here is that if you hear it in the song, they'll show you it in the video. Every instrument, every sound, it's all there at one point or another...

Here in LA, a skeletonized Oscar-esque statue suddenly appeared atop Runyon Canyon days before the awards show last week. For those who don’t know it, Runyon Canyon is a park in Hollywood that’s very popular with joggers, hikers and dog lovers (dogs can go unleashed and run up the canyon trails).

No one knows who sculpted the giant Oscar, but clearly there’s a message behind it. Has plastic surgery taken over Hollywood? The world? Is there anything wrong with plastic surgery? (via Los Anjealous.)

Have you recently met someone you like through an online dating site? Now you can date in virtual worlds before dating in person! (And it's free!) Check out weopia.com.

We're going to be running a FUN contest over on our Facebook page this coming Friday! You won't find it here on the blog, just on the Facebook page. So if you haven't yet, please become a Neatoramanaut Fan now: www.Facebook.com/neatoramanauts. The contest will have something to do with our pals, nerdfighters John and Hank Green. If you don't know anything about the famous brotherhood who vlog back and forth daily, you can get to know them a little in the below video. And check out all their action here on their YouTube page.

Oh, and if you haven't heard, we've disabled the auto-update on our Twitter account and are accepting new followers @neatorama.

Our friends over at BoingBoing.net published my Video Game Quiz today. If you're a hard-core gamer, or just like strolling through the short history of video games, take a walk down yonder and then come back and let us know how you did!

If you're a fan of the longest-running comedy in television history, you probably already know Bill Morrison's name. Guess what? We've got an exclusive interview with him and will be giving away more copies of the new hardcover book The Simpsons Futurama Crossover Crisis. More details on the giveaway contest soon, but first we want to know if you've got a question to put to Bill.

Anything you've ever wondered about Simpson's Comics, Radioactive Man, Bartman, Bart Simpson's Treehouse of Horror, Roswell - Little Green Man, or Futurama, etc. etc, etc.? Now's your chance to ask the main principal writer and artist/editor. (Also the editor of this new book!)

So go ahead and leave your question in the comments below and we'll select some to put in front of Bill!

Today, I'm starting a new feature... YMON... or, Your Moment of Nerd. First off, apologies for reposting the OK Go video from yesterday. I have been in a Big Bang cloud the last 24 hours, which is finally wearing off. Now then: your OFFICIAL MON for today, which is certainly a neatorama exclusive find:

In honor of our Big Bang Theory contest tonight, here's an awesome interview from Geekerati (blogtalkradio.com) with one of the show's writers, David Goetsch. (There's a really awful ad you have to sit through, but eventually the interview starts... wait for it!)

Official Rules

click here >>

I'm going to be microblogging from the set of Big Bang Theory this coming Tuesday night. The taping starts around 6:00pm PT, so tune in to our Facebook and Twitter pages starting a little before then. So long as my iPhone isn't confiscated and there's reception in the soundstage, we'll be holding at least one contest, perhaps two. Details as they unfold, but I already know what the prizes are going to be:

1. A 2-Disc Collector's Edition of Disney's Atlantis - The Lost Empire
2. Matt Groening’s The Simpson Futurama Crossover Crisis, a deluxe slip-cased hardcover
3. Any t-shirt from our the Science T-shirt section of our store.

If you want a chance to win, make sure you've Fanned us over on our Facebook page and are following us on Twitter.

We're popping the tops off our Facebook and Twitter accounts this weekend with some cool contests. Think of it as our official social media coming out party with a chance to win some neato door prizes. We've disabled auto-update over on our Twitter account so go follow us @neatorama to stay up-to-date with all the neatoramanaut activity. We're running a contest already! If you get a friend to follow us using your own hashtag + @neatorama, we'll enter you into a drawing to win a T-shirt from our store. (Use your twitter handle as your hashtag.)

But that's not all! Fan us on Facebook over on our new page: www.Facebook.com/neatoramanauts and watch for another awesome contest coming real, real soon for a chance to win even more!

Yes, we're getting serious about our community and we want you to have a voice.

Our pals over at boingboing have just unveiled their latest masterboing: a full-page feature page. Kicking off the feature is our friend Maggie Koerth-Baker with an amazing post on NASA's Cassini space probe.

In 1997, we aimed a rocket towards Saturn and sent a 13-foot-wide satellite off on a mission to explore the strange worlds in our own (relative) backyard. This month, NASA announced plans to extend the Cassini space probe's Saturn sojourn until 2017—nine years longer than its original end date of 2008. Why, exactly, does Cassini need those extra years? Most people probably know the mission best for the spectacular space photography it's produced. But NASA is hoping to get more than just a gallery of beautiful images out of extending the orbiter's lifespan. Armed with an array of 12 instruments—more than twice the number of science tools included on normal missions—Cassini is sort of a Swiss Army Knife in the sky. As its mission continues, it will gather data that could help us pinpoint life-sustaining planets, or power our own with clean energy...

Read the full story and then drop Maggie a comment telling her what you think of the new full-page layout!

There's an awesome posterous blog up this year called the3six5. It's a crowdsourced project wherein every day in 2010, a different author gets a chance to write about what's going on in his or her life that day -- 365 days, 365 authors. When the project first started, authors were asked to keep their entries to 250 words. I suggested to Len Kendall, who co-runs (and co-created) the site with Daniel Honigman, they should switch the word limit to 365 to fit in with the theme. So now bloggers get an additional 100 words or so. What's really neat about the site is that a time capsule of 2010 is starting to emerge, as each author has been instructed to try and make the post somehow relevant to what's going on in the world on their post date, in addition to what's going on in their personal lives.

Definitely worth checking in with each day, as they've got some really fabulous authors, bloggers and media-savvy thinkers participating. They might even have a few spots left this year if you're interested in penning a post. Check out the blog here.

Well, maybe you didn't know... but...

you can WIN a Vado HD flip cam by showing off your smarts in a week-long trivia contest hosted over on mentalfloss.com. And there are other cool prizes too, like premium subscriptions on motionbox.com and mentalfloss tees! Just gather all the correct answers as the challenges are presented, day by day, and submit them next Monday at 8pm ET. For all the rules and to get started playing Day 1, today, take a stroll down yonder.

What if Luke missed? Neatoramanaut Mark Dury edited this fun clip together. Wait for it...!