"Get him, Santa!' And Santa Claus does do, tackling a suspect while an elf drew his handgun. This scene took place in Riverside, California, on Friday. Two police officers working undercover outside of a Target store spent their day arresting shoplifters as they left the store. Then they noticed three men stealing a car in the parking lot. NBC 4 News quotes Detective Paul Miranda about the incident:

The elf cornered one very perplexed suspect.

"When I looked over my shoulder I saw Santa running by me going after the second subject," Miranda said.

The driver got away but detectives say they know who he is.

As for the other two suspected thieves...

"They were apologetic and Santa is currently deciding whether they stay on the naughty list," Miranda said,

-via Dave Barry

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Pictured above is a tripod that rests on top of the frozen Tenana River in Nenana, Alaska. People all over Alaska place bets on when they think the ice will break and the tripod will tip over, marking the reopening of the river in the spring. The person who gets closest wins the Nenana Ice Classic and a portion of the pot. Last year, the winner got $311,000. The rest of the proceeds went to charities.

The lottery began in 1917 to encourage town residents to watch the river during construction of a railroad across the river when broken ice could endanger the work. Now anyone in Alaska can buy a ticket for $2.50. Bailey Berg of Atlas Obscura writes about what this tradition means to the people of Nenana:

For two months a year, people place their bets in special red cans that are returned to Nenana in early April. There, teams of locals sort the guesses by hand, entering the tickets into an elaborate analog database that’s checked and cross-checked by myriad workers for accuracy. Even though there are roughly 100 employees working six- or eight-hour shifts, it’s so time consuming that in recent years the contest has been over well before the tickets are all accounted for. [...]

The Classic is a hold-over from Alaska’s more Wild West, pre-statehood years. Before becoming the 49th state in 1959, Alaska had a robust gambling culture. Membership in the union changed that. The Alaska Legislature legalized charitable lottery-style games in 1960, largely to allow the Classic to continue (and making it one of the oldest continuously running betting events in the country). Sixteen percent of all ticket sales are used for scholarship programs, local causes, and sporting groups, and a handful of larger medical charities. Last year the Ice Classic was able to donate $90,000.

Sitting in front of a fireplace on a cold winter night is one of the special joys of winter life. Yule log videos are a substitute for those of us who lack a functional fireplace. You can try videos with Lil Bub the cat, Nick Offerman, or the corpse of Darth Vader.

But this is 2020.

So it's more appropriate that this dumpster fire of a year feature a dumpster fire celebration. That's why AM/FM, an advertising agency in Edmonton, Alberta created this symbolic view of the year with Christmas carols playing softly in the background. The materials burned are themselves representative of 2020: CTV News quotes a partner in the agency:

"We filmed it for an hour straight and just threw stuff in a watched it burn," said Anderson. "It was interesting for sure."

Each of the 2020-related items were handpicked by the team and had its own backstory.

"Struggling with puzzles, not wearing ties, the White Claw craze. They were all just little inside things I think that our team shared and went through and it was a good laugh for all of us," said Anderson.

"The sourdough starter was hilarious to me because I couldn't get mine started for the life of me."

-via Dave Barry

Do you want to look sharp? McDonald's of Sweden knows that means that you're heading to the McDonald's branded barbershop in Stockholm. There, you can get the "Golden M" haircut.

Which looks like this. Fox News quotes a McDonald's representative:

“When we realized that people were wearing our Golden Arches, we had to act," said Staffan Ekstam, the marketing director at McDonald’s Sweden. "We started the M Barber Shop not only to guard our Golden M, but also to claim it once and for all. The salon is a celebration dedicated to our beloved ambassadors — a helping hand to guide them on how to keep their M’s in perfect trim, even when we can’t move around as freely as we usually can."

I look forward to a response by the hairstylists at Whataburger.

-via Dave Barry | Photos: McDonald's

Two friends were cutting a path in the woods to a hunting stand near Mallie, Kentucky. When they cut down one particular tree, the cut in the trunk poured out water for three to four minutes. And it's not just dripping water out; there's a lot of pressure behind that flow.

-via Born in Space

Here it is: the beloved bloopers from Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas, now with subtitles. 🎄

Enjoy the comedic genius of Frank Oz and Jerry Nelson. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/pXrmjdLWxK

— ❄️ Muppet History 🎄 (@HistoryMuppet) December 10, 2020

It's March 30, 1977. Jim Henson and his colleagues at what would eventually become the Creature Shop are filming Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas. The script calls for a drum to roll past Emmet and Ma Otter. It's not rolling correctly, though. But, in take after take, muppeteers Jerry Nelson and Frank Oz, stay in character.

-via Super Punch

Among the Thousand Islands (actually more than 1,500) at the headwaters of the St. Lawrence River between Ontario and New York is a tiny island named Just Enough Room Island. It's a privately owned summer resort that has just enough room for the single house that was built on it. Atlas Obscura describes it:

[..] Just Room Enough Island was purchased in the 1950s by the Sizeland family who were looking to create a holiday get away. They built a house on the tiny speck of land placing the walls right up to the edges of the island, creating a home that was just big enough to fit, and giving the island its quirky name. A pair of bench chairs were placed in front of the home and there was also a tree growing on one side. And that is all the room the island had.

Photo: Omegatron

Simone Williams of New York City has clenched the Guinness World Record for the largest afro on a woman. It has a circumference of 4 feet and 10 inches, beating out the previous record by 6 inches. The New York Post describes her nearly decade-long project:

It took Williams nine years to grow her now unmatched afro, after years of getting perms and straightening her hair from middle school up through college. “I chose to transition [to natural hair] around the age of 23. It began because I wanted to save the money spent at the hair salon to help with the costs of moving into my first apartment,” she said.

Appropriately, this stylish woman works as a fashion designer.

-via Oddity Central | Photo: Simone Imaani

Viewed a flat today and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stop thinking about the back door... pic.twitter.com/uscUF7pLH9

— Jamie Wilkes (@jamwilkes) December 8, 2020

Jamie Wilkes, an actor on the TV series His Dark Materials, is shopping for an apartment. He viewed one with a hidden and ingenious back door. Entering the home from it may be hard, but exiting is quite straightforward.

-via Unnecessary Inventions

Hoops Désolé is an acrobatics troop tha consists of six men who jump through hoops in a manner more literal than you and I do. Each choreographed show demonstrates astonishing strength, agility, precision, and teamwork. You can watch some of their training sessions on their Instagram page.

-via The Kids Should See This

Never mind the Skittles. This is how you taste the rainbow. Sora News 24 reports that the Dosanko ramen restaurant chain is offering ramen with rainbow-colored sauce. Here's what it's made of (besides happiness):

If the broth looks incredibly thick, that’s because the Happy Rainbow Ramen’s list of ingredients is almost as long as its list of colors. Dosanko starts with a miso broth base, since miso is the preferred ramen style in Hokkaido, the chain’s home prefecture. After combining Hokkaido and Nagano miso varieties, the chefs add curry to the mixture, and the Happy Rainbow Ramen broth gets a fourth contributor from cheese fondue sauce, which is what holds the special colors.

Photo: PR Times

Twitter user @kikai_RGB sends out this image of what appears to be a shiitake mushroom claw machine game in the prefecture of Shizuoka. That's just the appetizer. Elsewhere you can find an onion claw machine and a live crab claw machine.

-via Super Punch

The International Olympic Committee would like to make the games "more gender balanced, more youthful and more urban." So it has decided to add breakdancing as a sport, along with surfing and skateboarding. Top contenders in those sports will journey to Tokyo next summer to prove their skills. The Guardian reports:

Breakdancing – or breaking as it is known – evolved in New York in the 1960s and 70s as a way for rival street gangs to fight for turf. It made its Olympic debut at the 2018 Summer Youth Games in Buenos Aires. The IOC has confirmed it will be staged at a prestigious downtown venue, joining sport climbing and 3-on-3 basketball at Place de la Concorde.

Personally, I would like to see the return of cannon shooting to the Olympics.

-via Althouse | Photo: M. Johnson

Alice Springs lies in the middle of the Australian desert. The Todd River has water only during the occasional rainfall. But that doesn't stop residents from enjoying a good boat race there. The Henley on Todd Regatta is perhaps the world's most unusual boat race because the participants have to carry their boats on foot through the desert sands.

There are several boating events, such as the team race embedded above. There's also land surfing, hamster wheel racing, and sand shoveling.

-via Amusing Planet | Photo: Alli Polin

And I mean that literally. 20 Slices consists of twenty slices of American cheese wrapped in plastic sheets.

It's the work of Ben Denzer, an artist and designer who is fascinated with book production. He makes books out of unusual materials and content sources, such as fortune cookie fortunes, ice cream, and ketchup packets.

Some libraries have acquired 20 Slices. At Atlas Obscura, Abigail Cain writes about Denzer's works and how libraries have processed it and made it accessible to patrons. Jamie Lausch Vander Broek, a librarian at the University of Michigan, who bought it for her library, describes student reactions:

“One student was like, ‘Well, you know, I think the cheese was already a book,’ and I thought that was a really astute observation,” Vander Broek says. “I think that what [Denzer] is doing is elevating things that already want to be books because they formally exhibit the characteristics of a book. There’s so much there to talk about that really gets at the nuance of ‘What is a book, exactly?’”

I wonder if could request a copy of 20 Slices through interlibrary loan after the pandemic subsides and ILL service reopens. Currently, I can get only digital ILL materials, so I could probably request a photocopy the pages of 20 Slices.

Photo: Ben Denzer