Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
The following is an article from Uncle John's Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader.
If you're a fan of cheesy films like Manos: The Hand of Fate, Plan 9 From Outer Space, and Troll 2, you'll love this one. Uncle John saw it last when our local Bad Film Society screened it, and as he was watching, it occurred to him that it actually gave new meaning to the word "bad." (But somehow he couldn't stop talking about how great it was.)
THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN
On June 2003, a film called The Room premiered in a handful of Los Angeles theaters. It's the story of a love triangle between Johnny, a banker; Lisa, his girlfriend; and Johnny's best friend Mark. The film was the brainchild of Tommy Wiseau, the actor who plays Johnny. Wiseau wrote, directed, produced, and distributed the film. He financed The Room, too, shelling out $6 million of his own money to make it, plus thousands more on print and TV ads and a single giant billboard overlooking busy Highland Avenue in Los Angeles.
The Room was Wiseau's first feature film. He hoped to use it to launch a Hollywood career... but all he succeeded in doing was blowing $6 million in record time. The Room played to nearly empty theaters for just two weeks before it was yanked from the screen; in that time it had grossed only $1,900, not enough to cover even one month's rent on the Highland Avenue billboard. Put another way, for every million Wiseau spent, The Room earned less than $320, making it one of the worst box-office flops in history.
CITIZEN PAIN
Is there anything about The Room that isn't bad? The acting is stunningly incompetent- none of the actors had ever had a major film role before, and Wiseau was incapable of providing decent direction. And the love scene between Johnny and Lisa is creepy (picture a Troll doll having its way with a seat cushion, except that Lisa is the cushion). Wiseau recycles the footage in a second love scene 20 minutes after the first, so you get to watch it twice.
As a screenwriter, Wiseau was even worse. New characters appear out of nowhere and aren't properly identified, so it's never clear who they are. A number of subplots -such as drug abuse, unrequited love, and bad real estate deals- are introduced, then quickly abandoned. ("I got the results of the test back. I definitely have breast cancer," Lisa's mother tells her, and the subject never comes up again.) And though the thickly-accented Wiseau refuses to this day to say where he comes from, English is clearly not his first language. The Room is full of clunky, confusing, and unintentionally funny dialog: When a (never-identified) character catches Lisa and Mark kissing at Johnny's birthday party, and confronts them, Mark yells, "Leave your stupid comments in your pocket!"
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If you're a fan of cheesy films like Manos: The Hand of Fate, Plan 9 From Outer Space, and Troll 2, you'll love this one. Uncle John saw it last when our local Bad Film Society screened it, and as he was watching, it occurred to him that it actually gave new meaning to the word "bad." (But somehow he couldn't stop talking about how great it was.)
THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN
On June 2003, a film called The Room premiered in a handful of Los Angeles theaters. It's the story of a love triangle between Johnny, a banker; Lisa, his girlfriend; and Johnny's best friend Mark. The film was the brainchild of Tommy Wiseau, the actor who plays Johnny. Wiseau wrote, directed, produced, and distributed the film. He financed The Room, too, shelling out $6 million of his own money to make it, plus thousands more on print and TV ads and a single giant billboard overlooking busy Highland Avenue in Los Angeles.
The Room was Wiseau's first feature film. He hoped to use it to launch a Hollywood career... but all he succeeded in doing was blowing $6 million in record time. The Room played to nearly empty theaters for just two weeks before it was yanked from the screen; in that time it had grossed only $1,900, not enough to cover even one month's rent on the Highland Avenue billboard. Put another way, for every million Wiseau spent, The Room earned less than $320, making it one of the worst box-office flops in history.
CITIZEN PAIN
Is there anything about The Room that isn't bad? The acting is stunningly incompetent- none of the actors had ever had a major film role before, and Wiseau was incapable of providing decent direction. And the love scene between Johnny and Lisa is creepy (picture a Troll doll having its way with a seat cushion, except that Lisa is the cushion). Wiseau recycles the footage in a second love scene 20 minutes after the first, so you get to watch it twice.
As a screenwriter, Wiseau was even worse. New characters appear out of nowhere and aren't properly identified, so it's never clear who they are. A number of subplots -such as drug abuse, unrequited love, and bad real estate deals- are introduced, then quickly abandoned. ("I got the results of the test back. I definitely have breast cancer," Lisa's mother tells her, and the subject never comes up again.) And though the thickly-accented Wiseau refuses to this day to say where he comes from, English is clearly not his first language. The Room is full of clunky, confusing, and unintentionally funny dialog: When a (never-identified) character catches Lisa and Mark kissing at Johnny's birthday party, and confronts them, Mark yells, "Leave your stupid comments in your pocket!"
From the guys who brought you the Engineer's Guide to Cats and Christmas Laser Beam Cats, comes instructions for making festive mechanized holiday accessories for your cat. -via Laughing Squid
The Silver Snail featured a family of AT-ATs opening their gifts on Christmas morning in the storefront window. See more pictures at Star Wars: The Old Republic. http://www.swtorstrategies.com/2010/12/at-at-family-xmas.html -via Buzzfeed
(YouTube link)
As told by the children of St Paul's Church of New Zealand, in adorable Kiwi accents that defy imitation. It ends with a party!
Earth is a blue planet that has red sunsets. Mars is a red planet with blue sunsets!
See the video and other images of and from Mars at Discovery News. Link -via Holy Kaw!
From its vantage point on the surface of Mars, NASA's rover Opportunity relayed a spectacular series of images of a blue-hued sunset on the red planet. Scientists then stitched the pictures, taken over a period of 17 minutes, into a 30-second movie simulation.
The bluish glow around the sun is due to the same dust particles that make Mars' sky appear red. The pictures were taken on Nov. 4 and Nov. 5 using three different filters on the rover's panoramic camera.
See the video and other images of and from Mars at Discovery News. Link -via Holy Kaw!
Jim and Dylan live in the Chelsea area of New York City -nowhere near the North Pole. They don't know how so many children got their home address, but for years they've received letters to Santa Claus at their apartment. The number of letters has grown into the hundreds this year. Many of them are from children seeking basic supplies instead of toys.
This year, instead of wondering why they get them, Jim and Dylan are trying to fulfill the children's wishes, with the help of friends, neighbors, and anyone who wants to lend a hand. Tom Mason and Sarah Klein produced a video about the letters. Link
-via Metafilter, where a commenter may have found a clue as to the origin of the address in a 1998 article.
Hi Santa,
My name is Jennifer and my little sister’s name is Stephanie. I’m 8½ years old and Stephanie is 7 years. Santa our behavior this year have been excellent. You can ask my mom if you want. Please Santa bring me some clothes. I’m 10T and my shoe size is 4 and Stephanie is 8T shoes size 2½. Please make my dreams come true for Christmas.
This year, instead of wondering why they get them, Jim and Dylan are trying to fulfill the children's wishes, with the help of friends, neighbors, and anyone who wants to lend a hand. Tom Mason and Sarah Klein produced a video about the letters. Link
-via Metafilter, where a commenter may have found a clue as to the origin of the address in a 1998 article.
Merry Christmas from all of us at Neatorama! May your holidays be all you hoped they would be. And many thanks for making this site a part of your daily routine! During your breaks from family gathering and activities, we've got plenty of links to keep you amused.
National Geographic shared some awesomely large photographs of The World's Biggest Cave for us to share on the Spotlight Blog.
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader gave us the lowdown on the origins of some old familiar candies in Sweet Starts.
From the Annals of Improbable Research, we learned How to Write an Interdisciplinary Research Paper: Planning for Retirement by Solving Time Travel Paradoxes Using Open Book Management in Nearby Disk Galaxies, which might win an award for the longest title of a post yet.
John Farrier brought us 15 Facts You Might Not Know about Stargate SG-1.
New at the Museum of Possibilities: My Awkward Attempts to Design A Hands-free Phone.
From mental_floss magazine, we had Tongue Depressors, or Great Moments in Shutting Your Piehole.
It was a great week for giveaways! On Tuesday, David Israel led a bunch of folks on a hi-tech treasure hunt in New York City and awarded a new Ford Fiesta to this tech-savvy couple.
Monday we had Name That Weird Invention! Congratulations to qwhacker, who called this “The Long Arm of the Law”. Qwhacker wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! The second place entry was from cs, who did not specify a t-shirt:
The What Is It? game popped up on Thursday. Congratulations to commenter Just a guess came the closest to knowing these are for the ends of bulls horns -supposedly for decorations during a show, but seem also to be a safety factor. Okkent wins for funniest guess when he said, "My wife requested this as her engagement bracelet. The attachment of my jewels was a condition of us getting married." Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop!
And you can still play Neato-Puzzle #11.
If you're looking for more distraction over the weekend, remember we have features going back years in the Best of Neatorama, and there's always the Neatohub! Merry Christmas, everyone!
National Geographic shared some awesomely large photographs of The World's Biggest Cave for us to share on the Spotlight Blog.
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader gave us the lowdown on the origins of some old familiar candies in Sweet Starts.
From the Annals of Improbable Research, we learned How to Write an Interdisciplinary Research Paper: Planning for Retirement by Solving Time Travel Paradoxes Using Open Book Management in Nearby Disk Galaxies, which might win an award for the longest title of a post yet.
John Farrier brought us 15 Facts You Might Not Know about Stargate SG-1.
New at the Museum of Possibilities: My Awkward Attempts to Design A Hands-free Phone.
From mental_floss magazine, we had Tongue Depressors, or Great Moments in Shutting Your Piehole.
It was a great week for giveaways! On Tuesday, David Israel led a bunch of folks on a hi-tech treasure hunt in New York City and awarded a new Ford Fiesta to this tech-savvy couple.
Monday we had Name That Weird Invention! Congratulations to qwhacker, who called this “The Long Arm of the Law”. Qwhacker wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! The second place entry was from cs, who did not specify a t-shirt:
“The future of traffic enforcement – The Self-Service Ticketing Lane Response Vehicle and Revenue Generator. No longer will officers have to be inconvenienced by weather or in danger from other vehicles on the highway. They will be able to work comfortably from the nearest coffee shop and use Facetime to issue tickets while sipping their latte.
The What Is It? game popped up on Thursday. Congratulations to commenter Just a guess came the closest to knowing these are for the ends of bulls horns -supposedly for decorations during a show, but seem also to be a safety factor. Okkent wins for funniest guess when he said, "My wife requested this as her engagement bracelet. The attachment of my jewels was a condition of us getting married." Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop!
And you can still play Neato-Puzzle #11.
If you're looking for more distraction over the weekend, remember we have features going back years in the Best of Neatorama, and there's always the Neatohub! Merry Christmas, everyone!
(YouTube link)
A video performance by the Kuinerrarmiut Elitnaurviat 5th Grade of Quinhagak, Alaska, with assistance from the entire village. The kids spent ten hours shooting the video, and more time preparing it. The teacher plans a lesson on apostrophe use when school is back in session. -via Metafilter
(YouTube link)
Geocaching is a hobby that's really "caching" on! Neatoramanaut E6C and his team launched a balloon from North Carolina last Saturday.
After reaching the max altitude of 101,001 feet up, the balloon burst and Sputnik 2010 drifted back down to earth and landed at Plymouth, NC nearly 124 miles away from the launch site and became the first East Coast Geocache into space AND back and is available for logging right where it landed.
Link -Thanks, Scott!
(YouTube link)
The Fine Brothers put together an interactive YouTube experience that offers you five video games with themes pertaining to the year 2010. Choose your game: the BP Oil Spill, Bed Intruder, World Cup, Chilean Miners, or the TV show Lost. Clicking any of them will take you to YouTube to play. -Thanks, Benny & Rafi Fine!
Some albums on this list will not surprise you, but who knew that Roseanne Barr recorded an album of Christmas songs? Or Rue Paul? Or Colonel Sanders? See them all at Buzzfeed. Link
(YouTube link)
Workers from the Thames Water company in east London plead with customers not to pour grease down the drain, because it clogs the sewers. That message is sing the tune of "Good King Wenceslas". From the YouTube link:
Thames Water will donate 1p to WaterAid for every hit the film gets on YouTube (up to a maximum of 200,000 views, ending on 31 January 2011) to support the charity's life-saving work to improve access to safe water and sanitation to the world's poorest people.
Link -via Arbroath
I remember when a carton of cigarettes was considered a nice Christmas gift. After all, they were three or four dollars a carton! Flickr has tons of old ads like these that might bring back memories or put you in the holiday spirit or possibly horrify you. Link -via J-Walk Blog
(Image credit: Flickr user clotho98)
Archaeologists find them; linguists try to read them, but even after years of study, some writings are indecipherable. Some are from unknown languages, others were written in code. All are baffling. An example is the Rohonc Codex.
The Rohonc Codex is just one of seven untranslated manuscripts in this list at Environmental Graffiti. Link -via the Presurfer
This most peculiar script is written from right to left, and seems to mix up runes, straight and rounded characters in the style of Old Hungarian – but it defies all attempts at translation. This bamboozling manuscript was given to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences by Count Battyany in 1852, and is is believed to have been written in medieval times. Appearing to be hand-scripted, and illustrated with crude black and white sketches, the writing is simply not decipherable in any way. However, code-breakers have managed to at least ascertain that the language involved consists of 42 letters and over 200 different symbols, some non-alphabetic, as well as other symbols which see only occasional use.
The Rohonc Codex is just one of seven untranslated manuscripts in this list at Environmental Graffiti. Link -via the Presurfer
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