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. 🎄
— ❄️ Muppet History 🎄 (@HistoryMuppet) December 10, 2020
Enjoy the comedic genius of Frank Oz and Jerry Nelson. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/pXrmjdLWxK
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.
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.
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
When I first saw this video going around today, I thought that it was a commercial that spoofed the common tropes of Lifetime original movies. But it's not.
Oh, yes, it's a commercial. But the video above is just an ad for the an actual movie that will air on the Lifetime channel on December 13.
Mario Lopez of Saved by the Bell fame stars as Colonel Harland Sanders as the chef in residence at manor filled with beautiful, scheming, murderous lovers. The movie, which is titled A Recipe for Seduction, is 15 minutes long, which is shorter than most films, but longer than most commercials.
By starring in this role, Lopez follows in the footsteps of Sanders, who played himself in several low-budget films, as David Burge notes.
-via Instapundit
Kossan1108, a Buddhist monk in Japan, sings and performs his take on Metallica's iconic song "Enter Sandman" with traditional percussion instruments.
The video is almost 10 minutes long. That's not because Kossan1108's rendition is slow, but because the second half of the video appears to show him meditating after completing his performance.
Or perhaps, as this YouTube commenter suggests, he's just playing another work.
-via Born in Space
Jacquet Droz, a Swiss watchmaking firm created in the 1760s by a craftsman of the same name, makes astonishing works of art in the form of watches. They're playful automata as much as they are luxurious timepieces. Each one tells a story in intricate, precise, clockwork motion.
This one, titled Tropical Bird Repeater, will have a run of merely eight machines. The company describes the wonders of this tiny masterpiece:
The fully hand-engraved and hand-painted dial is showcasing 7 different animation that may exceed 12 seconds allow for up to 4 different scenarios, all the more striking as they contrast with the suspended background of the scene.
The waterfall flows eternally in perfect realistic fashion. A one-of-a-kind animation in watchmaking history, the hummingbird wings beat up to 40 times a second (80 times in real life), adding incredible realism to the scene. The peacock opens and closes its tail, while a toucan emerges from the palm leaves to open its beak. The dancing flight of three elegant dragonflies adds to the magic by day or by night as their tiny SuperLuminova®-coated wings glow in the dark.
-via Nag on the Lake
We all know that, every year, Trekkies gather around the yule log to hear Captain Picard sing "Let It Snow." But they also enjoy other traditional Trekmas carols remixed by John C. Worsley, such as "Enterprise Rock", a take on Bobby Helms's "Jingle Bell Rock" by the crew of the Enterprise NX-01 . . .
