It's a sign of success when your movie, or film franchise, gets poked fun at. No one does that for movies that aren't widely seen, because who would get the joke? Well yeah, people do make jokes about lesser movies, but they don't get much traction or go viral if half the audience needs it explained. Not so with Wolverine. With the success of the latest movie Logan, the internet is full of Wolverine jokes and memes, whether they involve the comic book character or Hugh Jackman in his many incarnations. Check out a selection of Wolverine image macros and jokes at TVOM.
Miss Cellania's Liked Blog Posts
Just ahead of the release of Disney's live-action Beauty and the Beast remake this weekend, Screen Junkies takes a close look at the 1991 animated feature film. They explain how this children's movie shows young girls the very worst way to fall in love, plus why no one in this movie is at all likable and the plot makes no sense. While the movie may have been for children, the Honest Trailer is not.
I guess the movie was okay as long as you never, ever believe that the bad boy you find so appealing will change for the better just because of the magic of a woman's love.
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.
Johann Peter Weissmuller, the son of Peter and Elisabeth Weissmuller, was born on June 2, 1904, in Freidorf, Austro-Hungarian Empire (present day Timisoara, Romania). Johann and his parents immigrated to the United States in 1905, before he was even a year old. The three Weissmullers were steerage passengers on the boat to Ellis Island and were listed as "Germans." (Although there is some dispute about Johann's exact place of birth, his birth date seems to be mutually agreed upon by all sources.)
The family settled in a town called Windber, Pennsylvania, where Peter found work as a miner. Another Weissmuller son, Peter Jr., was born in 1905. By 1910, the family had moved and settled in Chicago.
At the age of nine, Johann contracted polio. His doctor recommended he take up swimming to battle the disease. Johann took to the new activity like a fish to water (sorry) and soon had a spot on the local YMCA swim team.
He had been a student at the Lane Technical College prep school, but soon dropped out and found work as a lifeguard at Lake Michigan Beach. Johann had several odd jobs during this period, including working as both a bellboy and an elevator operator at the Illinois Athletic Club.
A swim coach named William Bachrach spotted and was impressed by Johann's aquatic prowess and became his trainer in August of 1921. Soon, Johann had won two national swimming championships.
It was during this period, that Johann adopted the more Americanized named of "Johnny Weissmuller." He also took on the birth date of his younger brother (November 5, 1905) and "adopted" a new birthplace- Tanneryville, Pennsylvania. These factors were necessary when he needed an American passport to be able to compete in the 1924 Olympics. His younger brother's Pennsylvania baptism record was enough to convince authorities. The whole new identity scheme for Weissmuller was supposedly cooked up by his mother.
Math whiz Vi Hart makes a pie for Pi Day, even though she doesn't like pi, finds it boring, and prefers tau. But she likes to cook. This year, she's been thinking about Venn diagrams, so she made a Venn "pieagram."
Okay, she started out to make a fruit pie, and ended up with a fish pizza. Read the chain of thought that led Hart to make this pie at her blog. -via Boing Boing
See more videos from Vi Hart.
Canine Freestyle Dancing has come a long way since we last posted a routine. At the Cruft's Dog Show over the weekend, Lucy Creek and her dog Skiffle King performed a spooky little act to "Danse Macabre" flawlessly. Skiffle not only dances, but sets up the props, too!
Creek and Skiffle King took top honors in the Freestyle Heelwork To Music competition. And then there's Flyball, a competition that's new to me. It's competitive relay fetch with hurdles! Here are the final four teams competing at Cruft's; skip to about 5:30 to watch the dogs fly.
That's a bunch of good dogs! -via Metafilter
Jane Fonda opened up a big can of worms when her workout videos became such big hits in the 1980s. Suddenly celebrities of all kinds were releasing their own workout videos, and it didn't matter what was in them as long as the star on the cover had fans who would buy them. A gallery of those workout video covers might make you feel nostalgic, but more likely will just give you a laugh. Remember Marky Mark? He and his group The Funky Bunch entered the hip hop music industry in 1991 on the coattails of his big brother, Donnie, who was a member of New Kids on the Block. Marky Mark was known for performing in his tighty whities. Young people probably know him better as actor Mark Wahlberg. See the collection of superstar workout videos at TVOM.
A guy invents a way to travel through time and doesn't consider all the ways it could go wrong before he jumps into history to make some changes. No, it's not about a timeline paradox, this is about more immediate, practical considerations you should work out before you even start.
This video from Tom Ska does have some mildly NSFW language. And an unbelievable amount of "not thinking ahead." -via Geeks Are Sexy
Happy Pi Day! Don't forget to wear your Pi Day t-shirt! March 14 is celebrated as Pi Day because the date, 3/14, is the first three digits of pi, the ratio of a circle's circumference to it diameter. Of course, the number is not "round" at all, and the digits go on to infinity. In that long sequence of numbers, you'll eventually find any other sequence of numbers, like your birthday. Time made a handy calculator to find where your birth date falls in the pi sequence. Mine starts at digit 977.
That's pretty far in, but yours may go further. Albert Einstein's birthday starts at the very first digit of pi, because he was born on March 14, 1879. Einstein's birthday gives math and science nerds another reason to celebrate Pi Day, traditionally by eating pie. Pizza pie is included. Some restaurants and other businesses are offering special deals for Pi Day.
(Image generated at Hetemeel)
High school hockey players across the state of Minnesota spend months getting their hair in shape for a unique competition, including practicing their hair toss for the camera. John King, who posts as Game On! Minnesota has unveiled his annual Minnesota State High School All Hockey Hair Team.
Nothing says "I play high school hockey in Minnesota!" like a beautiful head of long flowing hair. The video also contains musings on New York, poetry, and Justin Trudeau. -via Digg
See also: The 2016 All Hockey Hair Team.
Haruo Nakajima was an actor and stunt man in Japan when he was tapped to play a new movie monster called Godzilla. It wasn't clear what the monster would be like, or how difficult making that movie would be. But Nakajima made the role his own, and ended up in a dozen Godzilla movies. Now 87 years old, he is quite proud of the work.
And what a lot of work it was! Nakajima tell us what it was like to play Godzilla in this video from Great Big Story. -via mental_floss
The world is getting more and more accessible, but there are still places that are difficult to get to. The reasons are varied: rough terrain, difficult or dangerous conditions, politics, lack of facilities, and just plain distance.
Some places are doable, but the trouble and expense mean it's not really worth it. RealLifeLore explains the reasons no one -or hardly anyone- goes to these places. -via Viral Viral Videos
The British Natural Environment Research Council christened a research vessel the RRS Sir David Attenborough last year, even though a internet poll to name the ship indicated that Boaty McBoatface was the runaway favorite. The Science Ministry instead gave that name to the ship's unmanned research submarine. A year later, that little yellow submarine is ready for its first mission.
The high-tech remote-operated yellow submarine, bearing a name that began as a joke, will begin its first mission this week through a deep current that starts in Antarctica and goes through the Southern Ocean.
Boaty will navigate through underwater waterfalls and rapids on a two-month mission, collecting data to help scientists understand how global warming affects oceans. It will depart on Friday aboard the James Clark Ross, a British polar research ship, from Punta Arenas, Chile, and will head to the Southern Ocean.
Read more about the internet's favorite submarine at the New York Times.
(Image credit: National Oceanography Center)
The Walking Dead takes place in a zombie apocalypse, which is not fertile ground for levity. The show is full of fear, doom, and general unhappiness. That doesn't mean it isn't a good time for the audience, as perverse as that may sound. But it's just a TV show, made by real people in a small town in Georgia. When the cameras aren't rolling, zombies and zombie-killers alike drop the apocalypse and turn into regular folks at work. To see them smiling and having fun, still in costume and makeup, is downright weird. See a collection of behind-the-scenes photos of The Walking Dead cast, zombies and all, at TVOM.
This is a story of two fast food outlets in Nijverdal, Netherlands. Raymond Nijland runs a Subway shop in the Dutch town. In February, he put up a sign on private land that looks like a traffic sign. You can see that if you drive straight ahead, there's a McDonald's.
The sign pointed out that traffic had only one option: turn left to the deli. It was not Nijlands intention to react against McDonald's burger joint, or to propagate the Subway is a better restaurant. "I just wanted to do something that is frivolous."
Tom Thomson of McDonald's noticed the sign too. He laughed at the idea, then approached Nijland about it. The two came to an agreement and amended the sign to "make it even more fun."
The second photo also proved to be very popular. The story is in Dutch. -Thanks, David Meyer!
The skeleton of Merengo, a magnificent white stallion, will go on exhibit this spring at the National Army Museum in London. Mderengo's claim to fame is that he was Napoleon's charger that he rode in several campaigns, the one pictured in Jacques-Louis David’s painting “Napoleon Crossing the Alps." The official story from the time was that Merengo was captured from the Egyptians after the Battle of Abukir. But the Irish know that the horse was purchased in County Cork for the French army. That's where the horse is causing some argument. The small villages of Buttevant and Bartlemy both lay claim to Merengo.
According to Bernard Moynihan, a local councillor, the skeleton ought to be in Buttevant, where the horse that became Marengo was sold many midsummers ago at the Cahirmee Horse Fair. He calls Cahirmee “the oldest horse fair in the world”; it continues to this day, held every July. “There’s a strong oral tradition in these parts, and the story of how the horse was sold to one of Napoleon’s officers – it’s well known,” he told me. Along with several other councillors, Moynihan has sent a letter to the National Army Museum, elaborating their claim. “We’ve recently had a round of archaeological excavations in Buttevant, and found a huge amount of historical artefacts. We’re hoping they can all go into a new museum, with Marengo as the centrepiece.”
John Arnold, a farmer and a historian of Bartlemy, will have none of that. Marengo was sold, he’s convinced, at the Bartlemy Horse Fair. “When you talk of evidence, it all begins to sound like a court case,” Arnold told me, with a laugh. “But I do have a couple of things that strongly suggest this. Buttevant don’t have a leg to stand on.” As far back as the 1830s, a village pub named Fitzgerald’s displayed a lithograph. “It was of a white horse, and the caption read: ‘Marengo, Napoleon’s famous horse, Bartlemy Fair, Middleton, County Cork,’” Arnold says. “That pub closed down, but the lithograph is still here in the village. Now, it’s possible that an entrepreneurial printer ran this lithograph off for many local fairs. But so far no other town has claimed to own a copy of it.”
So they are fighting about where the young horse was sold 200 years ago. There is some question as to whether this was Napoleon's horse at all. We know he didn't ride him across the Alps; he just requested that the painting show he was riding a great horse instead of a mule. Read about the muddy history of Merengo at 1843 magazine. -via Damn Interesting
(Image credit: Michel Streich)
Email This Post to a Friend