They call him the Candy King. Like Michael Jackson, the original King of Pop, David Shtorm is a master dancer. But he's more than that. He's a cotton candy vendor. When you visit his street stand, you get more than just a tasty treat. You get a performance that combines Michael Jackson's music, dancing, and cotton candy spinning. You can see more of Shtorm's videos at Rocket News 24.
-via My Modern Met
Amy of the great food blog Oh, Bite It! offers a recipe that looks both delicious and simple. She cut fresh pears in half, removed the cores, and added canned cinnamon rolls. When baked, they filled the holes to create a piping hot treat with an original flavor combination. Amy then added frosting and cinnamon on top. She also suggests ice cream, which sounds like a great idea!
Austin Crecelius took his girlfriend, Allison Boyle, on The Voyage, a huge wooden roller coaster at the Holiday World amusement park in Santa Claus, Indiana. As they neared the top of an incline, Crecelius turned to Boyle and said:
At one point in time, you had mentioned to me that life is like a roller coaster. And it's got its ups and downs, it's got its twists and turns, and it even throws you for a loop sometimes. And you can go by yourself, but it's a lot more fun to go along with another person. So I wanted to ask you if you wanted to be my roller coaster buddy. Allison, will you marry me?
Boyle said yes! Then, immediately, the roller coaster plunged down.
You have a cat. Now what beer should you get? Not just any cheap party fuel will work for a cat of quality. The Instagram account Beer Cats is filled with pictures of cats next to craft beers. In this case, Rosie the cat is best enjoyed with Prairie Ales Limo Tint, a chocolate beer.
-via That's Nerdalicious!
(You're All Just Jealous of My Backpack/Tom Gauld)
A drunk kung fu Romeo & Juliet on Wall Street would be awesome. The Tybalt and Mercutio fight scene would be the best rendition ever.
But a nude cowboy King Lear in a parking lot? I'll pass on that one.
(Sticky Comics/Christiann MacAuley)
Or to be safe, do the first three: purge your social media, lock it down, then run a dummy. LinkedIn at work, Snapchat at home, and never the twain shall meet.
Every semester, I have my students try to find dirt on themselves online. I teach them my personal rule on the subject: assume that everything that you post online can be read by everyone in your life, or who will ever be in your life.
Rocket News 24 tells us that this is called shokkiri--a comedic sumo performance. This is not a serious match, but a carefully coordinated and rehearsed routine between men who are masters of both sumo and physical comedy. I've selected a few choice scenes and turned them into animated .gifs.
Patty cake, patty cake, baker's man . . . .
Coloring books are a simple way for young children to have fun. Disney Research has developed a sophisticated way to enhance this old form of amusement. A research team led by Stéphane Magnenat developed an augmented reality interface that takes the images that a child is coloring and makes them pop out on the screen in three dimensions. Each pixel on the 2D form represents a portion of the 3D form. When the 2D form is colored, the corresponding part of the 3D form illuminates with the same color.
It's a gloriously, beautifully romantic scene. At the end of The Nightmare Before Christmas, Jack and Sally confess their love to each other. This is the inspiration for a custom engagement ring by Austin Moore. It has a blue topaz as a background for Jack and Sally, who are represented by two white diamonds.
The design studio THISLEXIK makes novel pieces of furniture that attract selective tastes. We've previously seen their stool made entirely of blue jeans and resin. Now designer Vedat Ulgen offers the Peak Series, a furniture line that gives owners a combination of "aesthetics, science, humor, and a touch of surprise." It includes this chair of transparent acrylic that has a planter for a cactus. If you sit in it, you appear to hover over danger.
-via Contemporist
(Photo: Peter Foley/Wall Street Journal)
Harvard's crack debate team was taken by surprise. Its members didn't expect that their opponents, inmates from the Eastern New York Correctional Facility, to offer much of a challenge. But the judges ruled that the prisoners, who are participating in a rigorous educational program offered by Bard College, had won. The topic was this resolution: "Public schools in the United States should have the ability to deny enrollment to undocumented students." The Wall Street Journal reports on the battle:
The audience burst into applause. That included about 75 of the prisoners’ fellow students at the Bard Prison Initiative, which offers a rigorous college experience to men at Eastern New York Correctional Facility, in the Catskills. […]
The Harvard team members said they were impressed by the prisoners’ preparation and unexpected line of argument. “They caught us off guard,” said Anais Carell, a 20-year-old junior from Chicago.
The prison team had its first debate in spring 2014, beating the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. Then, it won against a nationally ranked team from the University of Vermont, and in April lost a rematch against West Point.
-via reddit
Have a heart, Moses. They'll never have a surfing opportunity like this ever again. In fact, since they're facing 40 years in the desert wilderness, so they won't be able to surf at all. Let them have one last ride.
(Image: Fox 2)
Since she was 5 years old, Sharina Jones of Detroit, Michigan has used a wheelchair. When she recently became a mom, she found a new obstacle to overcome: it was impossible to use a conventional stroller while in her wheelchair.
That's where 16-year old Alden Kane stepped in. He designed and built this prototype stroller that clamps onto Jones's wheelchair. Her baby's car seat fits snugly into the top. Now Jones can easily take her baby around by herself. Fox 2 reports:
The young engineer spent months working on the project, making sure it would be comfortable for Mom and for baby. So, using lightweight steel tubing, this baby carrier easily clamps onto the chair and then the baby's car seat seat snugly sets right in.
So far, the prototype is a huge hit.
"After six months of hard work, six months of working in the machine shop designing it up, it was priceless seeing the design on her wheelchair, being used with her child in it," Alden says.
-via Bored Panda
(Photo of Boston by Glenn Beltz)
Charley Locke of Wired suggests that this ad from the Boston missed connections section of Craiglist deserves a literary prize. I agree. This is a fantastic, heartfelt piece of writing:
I met you in the rain on the last day of 1972, the same day I resolved to kill myself.
One week prior, at the behest of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, I'd flown four B-52 sorties over Hanoi. I dropped forty-eight bombs. How many homes I destroyed, how many lives I ended, I'll never know. But in the eyes of my superiors, I had served my country honorably, and I was thusly discharged with such distinction.
And so on the morning of that New Year's Eve, I found myself in a barren studio apartment on Beacon and Hereford with a fifth of Tennessee rye and the pang of shame permeating the recesses of my soul. When the bottle was empty, I made for the door and vowed, upon returning, that I would retrieve the Smith & Wesson Model 15 from the closet and give myself the discharge I deserved.
He went for a last walk through the city before killing himself. On that journey, he met a mysterious woman in a ball gown:
(Photo: Francois G Durand/WireImage)
Never mind how it looks. This is what the cool people are wearing these days. So get with it. You'll need a harness and a second person--preferably a light one.
Fashion designer Rick Owens offered this outfit and others similar to it to visitors of Fashion Week in Paris this past week. Thankfully, he intends for this to be just an artistic expression for the catwalk, not everyday wear at the home or office. Owens's arrangement of one model carrying another upside down is a way of saying that we all have to carry each other's burdens in society. He explained on the extremely poorly designed website Dazed Digital:
Owens's collection also includes menswear. Specifically, the male models are wearing shapeless fabric sacks that cover their entire bodies except for their genitals.
I'll forgo including a picture of that one.
