This guy was gassing up his car in Center Line, Michigan, when he saw a spider. He wanted to kill it. The first weapon he thought of was his lighter. Imagine what happened then.
The gas station clerk immediately hit the pump cutoff button and called the fire department. The guy who started it all (whose name has not been released) grabbed a fire extinguisher and put out the flames. It could have been so much worse. Strangely, the only thing destroyed in the fire was the gas pump. The car was barely touched, and no one was injured. -via Arbroath
Kathleen Siegle made a batch of cupcakes that resemble a Sarlacc -the horrible, man-eating monster buried in the sands of Tattooine in the movie Return of the Jedi. The sand is really graham cracker crumbs, the tentacles are chocolate, and the teeth are almond slivers. Yum! The recipe and instructions are at Yummy Crumble.
The Sarlacc cupcakes look fairly doable for an ambitious Star Wars fan, but Siegle also has some really artistic creations that are bit more intimidating, like the Sarlacc Bundt Cake, Tusken Raider Cookies, and a Wampa Cake. -Thanks, Kathleen!
Artist Simon Koay created a super geeky alphabet called Superbet, with each letter modeled after superheroes and super villains who have that letter in their names. Get a better look at each letter at Koay’s website. In case you can’t identify them all, here’s the cheat sheet:
A - Captain America B - Batman C - Cyclops D - Daredevil E - Elektra F - Flash G - Ghost Rider H - Hulk I - Iron Man J - Joker K - Killer Croc L - Loki M - Mystique N - Nightcrawler O - Omega Red P - Poison Ivy Q - Quicksilver R- Riddler S - Spiderman T - Two-Face U - Ultron V - Venom W - Wolverine X - Professor X Y - Yellowjacket Z - Zatanna
You can get a print of each individual letter, perfect for a child’s room, or a print of the Superbet A to Z at Society 6. -via Geeks Are Sexy
Climbing the world’s most famous mountain appears on many lists of things people want to do before they die. But there are some very good reasons not to.
REASON #1: IT’S HARDER THAN YOU THINK
Most people don’t realize how recently it was that Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay made the first successful climb to the top. That was 1953. Before that, starting in the 1920s, there were many unsuccessful attempts by highly qualified western climbers, and many fatalities. Today, even with expert assistance and canisters of oxygen, a lot of people don’t make it up the mountain… and a lot don’t make it back down again.
The Great Lakes Bat Festival was held on Saturday at the Cranbrook Institute in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. It’s sponsored by the Organization for Bat Conservation. Here you see biologist Rob Mies talking about bats and exhibiting a Malayan Flying Fox. As you can see, the bat is gesturing to a kindred spirit in the audience. -via reddit
If so many people are tuning into the Republican debates only to see Donald Trump in action (which is what he claims), then an all-Trump debate would garner the highest ratings of all!
Ellen Degeneres has the right idea. If there were an all-Trump 24/7 channel, some people would tune in all day -while others would wait for the highlights to hit YouTube. Some would be cheering, and others would be laughing. -via Boing Boing
In 1966, Hal Warren made a movie called Manos: The Hands of Fate. He used one cheap camera that couldn’t even record sound. He talked a local theater group into acting for a cut of the profits, but there weren’t any. The premiere audience laughed at it! And then they forgot it for 26 years.
A flimsy horror story centered on a vacationing family who run afoul of a polygamist cult leader and his henchman, Manos played a handful of drive-in theaters before slipping into obscurity. Decades later, Mystery Science Theater 3000, a television show specializing in the mockery of misguided films, unearthed the movie like a fossilized turd. The 1993 episode devoted to Manos became an instant cult classic. Fans marveled at the seemingly endless footage of Warren driving around the desert, the inability of the Filmo 70 to focus and frame shots at the same time and the utterly bizarre performance of John Reynolds as the character Torgo, portrayed as a twitchy, knobby-kneed groundskeeper while Reynolds himself was often baked out of his face on LSD.
“It seemed like it was maybe a crime against humanity, but you couldn’t be sure,” says MST3K writer Frank Conniff, who had pulled Manos from a stack of tapes at the show’s offices. “It has an atmosphere, a vibe. Why did people latch on to it? I don’t know. It’s like the Supreme Court’s definition of porn: You’ll know it when you see it.”
MST3K gave the movie what it needed: jokes to fill the voids. But the film the show used was a poor copy of a copy. Then in 2011, a film buff discovered an original print. He immediately set about raising money to restore it to its “original glory.” The question arose: who has the rights to the movie? It was thought to be in the public domain, but Hal Warren’s son disputes that. And then a mysterious third party, a man who once tried to film a sequel to Manos, emerged to get involved in the copyright saga. You can read the whole sordid story of Manos: The Hands of Fateat Playboy. The article is SFW. -via Metafilter
Billy Crystal’s character Miracle Max has a small part in the movie The Princess Bride. In fact, he’s only onscreen for about five minutes. But he still ended up being a major character in our memories, because he crammed a half-hour of comedy into that small role. The story of Crystal’s participation is cobbled together from an oral history, various interviews, and Cary Elwes’ book about the production of The Princess Bride, directed by Rob Reiner.
Reiner wanted the scenes with Max to be outrageous and Crystal didn’t disappoint. In an interview included with a later edition of the movie, the director says that the part of Miracle Max was written in a voice similar to the classic Mel Brooks character, The 2,000 Year Old Man (a bit that he performed with Rob Reiner’s father, Carl Reiner). Brooks’ was a crotchety, kvetching Jewish caricature in the old Catskills tradition, and Crystal had no problem leaning into the part. “I had relatives like him,” he says in the documentary.
Over just three days of shooting in the tightly packed set of Max’s hovel, Crystal’s performance managed to nearly shut down the production. Given pretty much free reign by Reiner, Crystal became a show-stopping gag factory. In his book, Elwes remembers, “For three days straight and ten hours a day, Billy improvised thirteenth-century period jokes, never saying the same thing or the same line twice.”
Which caused a problem: it was impossible for everyone around Crystal to keep a straight face, so take after take after take was ruined. Read about how they worked around the problem of Miracle Max at Atlas Obscura.
While winter is defined by temperature, and summer is defined by activities, autumn means smells and tastes. It’s harvest season, after all, and spices are added to preserve food for winter. That means great recipes! Even alcoholic beverages can have a taste of autumn when you use ingredients like cinnamon, pumpkin, cranberries, ginger, cloves, caramel, and lots of apple cider! And considering the holiday parties coming up the rest of the year, you might want to snag some tasty cocktail recipes from a big list at Buzzfeed. Shown here is caramel apple sangria, fromA Night Owl. A toast to autumn!
Twenty years ago, it was rare to run into an adult who hadn’t seen Star Wars. Now, 40 years on, there have been two generations come of age since George Lucas released his space fantasy, and some folks -and their parents- find that watching six movies to catch up is a bit of a hassle. Charley Locke knew some things about the story, or thought he did, without ever seeing the movies. Now he’s finally watched Star Wars, or as they call it these days, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. And he has some revelations to share.
• “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for”—a quote that I have heard for years—IS A LIE. Those were the droids they were looking for! (The greatest trick Obi-Wan Kenobi ever pulled was convincing the stormtroopers they didn’t exist…)
Lingering Questions:
• Will Leia and Han Solo have a romance? She deserves so much better than his sexist bravado: I hope she’s always as dismissive as when she orders him “Into the trash, Flyboy!” Also, I know Luke has his little crush, but I can’t imagine anything happening between them besides that lovely kiss on the cheek. (I am not going to look up what happens ahead of time, even if it makes me look like an idiot to the whole internet, so don’t ruin this for me in the comments, please.)
• If Darth Vader isn’t in charge of the Galactic forces, who does he report to?
His reactions to the experience are a hoot, but it may also make you feel old. Locke delights in the “hokey visual effects” that astounded us in 1977. Read his account of the movie at Wired. Locke will watch the other five movies in order of release, one per week, and report his reactions to each of them. -via Digg
Matthew Buchinger was born in Germany in 1674 with no hands or feet and only parts of his arms and legs, but he did not grow up as an invalid. Instead, he learned to walk, perform everyday tasks, and even fashioned his own devices to facilitate writing and other skills. Buchinger became an accomplished artist, calligrapher, magician, and musician. In 1716, he went to to England to meet the king, and began performing for audiences.
At the time, England had a fierce appetite for "monsters," with dwarves and limbless attractions of all varieties drawing crowds. Buchinger appeared in multiple places in the London area and promised to demonstrate his mastery of 13 unique skills for one shilling per attendee. In addition to magic, he could deal cards and play dice; load and shoot a firearm; and play instruments, often with the addition of a device that modified it for his needs. Such adaptation was part of Buchinger’s appeal: his mind was innovative, and his physical limitations were circumvented by his intellect.
England was charmed: the shows were popular and there was even demand for him to make house calls for private performances.
Buchinger supplemented his performing income by selling artworks that included ships in bottles. Meanwhile, he married four times and fathered a slew of children. Read about his amazing life and see some of those artworks at mental_floss.
The real Saint Nick (who lived in ancient Greece and had a penchant for secretly giving gifts) was buried in the town of Myra, now a part of Turkey. In 1087, authorities in Bari, a rival town in Italy, hired pirates to steal the saint’s bones. The pirates managed to make off with about half of them, which are still stored in Bari. The rest of the bones were stolen by Venetian sailors ten years later during the First Crusade and deposited in a church there. In 2009 Turkey demanded the bones back from Italy; it’s still waiting.
Avery is out fishing with her dad with her pink Barbie fishing pole. Not only does she catch a fish, it’s a 5-pound, 20 inch bass! And she did it all by herself.
People across most of North America and Europe, a large part of Africa, and all of South America will be able to follow the total lunar eclipse this Sunday night and Monday morning. The earth will move directly between the sun and the moon, throwing a shadow across the moon. The eclipse will start at 9:07 PM for those living in the Eastern time zone, and reached full eclipse at 10:11. The moon will begin to emerge again at 11:23 Eastern and the shadow will be gone at 12:27 AM.
When the Moon is fully eclipsed it usually turns red, though sometimes the effect is more subtle than other times. This is because from the Moon’s point of view the Earth is blocking the Sun, and sunlight gets filtered through the thin layer of Earth’s atmosphere, reddening it. If you were standing on the Moon, it’s like you’re seeing every sunrise and sunset on Earth all at once!
Redditor Penguinz90 underwent spinal fusion and has to wear a collar for six weeks. She decided to dress it up a bit, and in the process, made it unobtrusive, steampunk, and downright cool. Now it looks more like an accessory than a medical device! She said,
I had spare foam inserts do I dyed those so I didn't have to take the collar off to do it as I'm supposed to wear it 24/7 with the exception of showers. I did cheat and took it off to color the overall plastic brace with a black oil based paint Sharpie (I rested my head on a recliner while I did it), I then kept it on and hot glued the gears on while looking in the mirror.
That’s what you call taking a pain in the neck and turning it into a fashion statement.
