Kevin Miller was flying his camera-rigged drone over Rhode Island near Portsmouth Abbey School and spotted this man laying in the sun on top of a wind turbine! Was he napping? Surely not. Rolling over in your sleep could mean death in that situation. A couple of commenters believe the man is a Bendictine monk who climbs the turbine often. -via Boing Boing
Imagine being sent on a round-the-world trip to document public toilets. Cut Video sent Blaine on such a trip, although I have a feeling he had plenty of other assignments as well. That said, he indeed documented public toilets in major cities all over. They may not be representative of all the city’s, or country’s toilets, of course.
Back in 1975, ABC designed a sitcom around a standup comedian named Gabe Kaplan. He had no acting experience at all. He was to play an inner-city high school teacher to a gang of slackers. Where did that idea come from? From Kaplan’s own experience.
1. THE SERIES WAS INSPIRED BY GABE KAPLAN’S STAND-UP ROUTINE.
Kaplan was a star player on his high school baseball team and dreamed of someday playing in the major leagues. When he tanked at the San Francisco Giants’ spring training camp, he headed back east and took a job as a bellman at a resort hotel in Lakewood, New Jersey. After watching the touring comedians who performed there for a few months, he decided to take a stab at stand-up. He eventually developed a routine based on his experiences in a remedial class at Brooklyn’s New Utrecht High School and took his act on the road. Fellow Brooklynite Alan Sacks, who was working in Los Angeles as the producer of Chico and the Man, caught Kaplan’s performance at The Comedy Store at the urging of Freddie Prinze, and a TV sitcom pitch was born.
2. ANY RESEMBLANCE TO REAL PERSONS WAS STRICTLY INTENTIONAL.
Vinnie Barbarino (originally called “Eddie Barbarini” in the pilot script) was a combination of two real-life people: Kaplan’s fellow Sweathog Eddie Lecarri, and a tough kid named Joey Caluchi that Alan Sacks knew in junior high school. Freddie “Furdy” Peyton inspired Freddie “Boom Boom” Washington, and “Epstein the Animal” (as he was known at Kaplan’s alma mater) was transformed into the half Puerto Rican Juan Epstein at the suggestion of ABC’s then-head of programming, Michael Eisner. Only Arnold Horshack’s character retained his real-life counterpart’s name … although the original Arnold was so obnoxious that by the fourth grade, according to Kaplan, even the teachers began calling him “Arnold Horsesh**.”
So that was the genesis of Welcome Back, Kotter. You’ll find out much more, like casting decisions and the rise and fall of the series, in a trivia list at mental_floss.
Across all the parks and hotels of Walt Disney World in Florida, there are 449 places to eat. How in the world will you find what you want and make the most of your time and money? You rely on the advice of people who’ve been there. Eater sent three bloggers to Disney World to investigate all those restaurants and report back.
Eating at the Harambe Market in the Africa section of Disney's Animal Kingdom park, with its pastel walls, quirky hand-painted signs, and sluggish ceiling fans, is about as close to Kenya as many Disney visitors are going to get. Walking out of the blazing heat into the windowless, almost freezing Biergarten buffet in Epcot — complete with a fake evening sky, iron lampposts, and a four-piece polka band — is the Germanic oasis you didn't know you so very much needed. And Danny Meyer wishes he had staffers as committed and empathetic and well-meaning as the (often unionized) waiters, bartenders, ice cream scoopers, and maitre d's that staff Disney's 400-plus joints. By sheer force of will, they will make sure you have a good experience, regardless of whether or not the food's good.
Which is a good segue into the bad news. The food quality at Disney World can often be as mediocre as you might expect for a resort serving 50,000 people a day. Flavors tend toward sweet — in cocktails, in desserts, in allegedly savory items — and accessible. That's great at the ice cream parlor, not so much at the bar or the Chinese restaurant. With some exceptions, the children's menu options trend toward the fried and carb-heavy. Many of the international cuisines represented in the World Showcase are dumbed down, or executed poorly. Prices are often high. The restaurant in the America pavilion is an embarrassment to our nation.
That’s from The State of Disney Dining, which is an introduction to a massive library of 24 articles in The Eater Guide to Surviving Disney World. They cover subjects like authenticity in international foods, the best cocktails, the best coffee, and several ways to plan your Disney World meals ahead of time. -via Digg
At a high school in Robinson, Texas, students are assigned parking spaces, and seniors get the privilege of painting theirs. Redditor andrewalmond10 shows us a picture of his favorite space. What a great idea! My daughter has an assigned space, and would probably pay extra for the opportunity to personalize it.
The discussion at reddit includes many city dwellers who marvel at high schools that have student parking lots, and non-Americans who marvel at students driving to school at all. Outside of big cities, the U.S. is quite spread out, and mass transit is dismal or nonexistent. That goes for school buses, too, as budgets can’t keep up with the number of students. And you don’t have to be rich to let your child drive a car -a vehicle that doesn’t have to last more than a year or two can be had cheaply, and can pay for itself in gas and time saved over ferrying kids to school and back. How did your high school handle student parking?
Continue reading to see a few more painted spaces.
Hey, sweetie, want some chocolate? These kids are expecting the sweet milk chocolate they’ve always had, but this is dark chocolate. The kind grownups eat, without so much milk and sugar. In slow motion, you can see the shock, disappointment, and near panic in their eyes.
Once they get a bite, we adults don’t have to hide our chocolate stash from the youngsters any more. This is an ad from Splendid Chocolates of Quebec. It’s hard to see how this will sell more chocolate, but it’s awfully cute. -via Buzzfeed
The covers of some magazines stay the same for a hundred years, while others change drastically, even when they seem the same from month-to-month. Vogue went from art to fashion models to celebrities. Cosmopolitan went from literature to sex. Karen X. Cheng and Jerry Gabra put together a gallery and analysis of the cover art of some familiar and long-lived magazines. Looking through them, you have to wonder why National Geographic only started using photos on the covers in the 1960s, and why GQ took until the ‘90s to figure out they should put a woman on their covers. Meanwhile, there’s one magazine using the same style covers now as it did 100 years ago. See them all at Medium.
Target’s new Star Wars ad has no movie clips at all (okay, one tiny one), but will still get you excited about the December premiere of Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens. It relies on nostalgia, with clips of kids (and grownups) all joyously indulging in Star Wars glee.
What’s this all about? Well, it doesn’t say in the ad at all, but the new toys and other merchandise accompanying The Force Awakens will arrive in Target stores September 4th. That gives us all plenty of time to clear the stores of Christmas gifts before the movie even opens. That way, it won’t matter a bit whether the film is any good or not. Still, no matter how you feel about merchandising, enjoy the video for what it is. -via Time
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.
Half a pound of tupenny rice, Half a pound of treacle. That’s the way the money goes, Pop! goes the weasel.
Up and down the city road, In and out of the Eagle. That's the way the money goes, Pop! goes the weasel.
Every night when I get home The monkey's on the table, Take a stick and knock it off, Pop! goes the weasel.
A penny for a ball of thread Another for a needle That's the way the money goes, Pop goes the weasel.
The above are the lyrics to the famous nursery rhyme "Pop Goes the Weasel.”
I’ve always liked the song, mainly because it is featured in the Three Stooges short Punch Drunks (1934). The basic plot revolves around Curly getting super-human strength every time he hears the tune "Pop Goes the Weasel.” Because of my great love for the Three Stooges, hearing "Pop Goes the Weasel" always evokes a happy feeling in my heart.
When a kid knows what she wants, she can get pretty stubborn. When a kid doesn’t know what she want, she’ll take forever to make up her mind. This kid, in the latest from Fowl Language Comics, knows exactly what she wants.
Facebook member Itsjudytime has twin girls. They like to talk and play with each other in their cribs, and Mom keeps an eye on them through a baby monitor. Babies don’t understand remote monitoring yet. Watch what happens when Mom talks to them through the monitor!
They already think they can fool Mom at this age. Mom has a few tricks up her sleeve, too, like a viral video she can show for years to come. -via Buzzfeed
Stop reading now if you are still avoiding spoilers for the final episode of the TV show Breaking Bad. The rest of us well remember Walter White’s remote-control oscillating machine gun hidden in the trunk of his car. If you want to refresh your memory, that scene is on YouTube.
Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman wondered if they could recreate that trick in real life. So they recruited Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan as a witness and tackled the project for Mythbusters. -via Laughing Squid
Sure, you’ve heard of some “secret” societies, like the Illuminati, Skull and Bones, Rosicrucians, and Freemasons. Those aren't really all that secret anymore. But there are plenty of others, some so esoteric that they are rarely mentioned outside their own circle. One only came to light in the past few years from a coded text that was finally translated when a linguist and a computer programmer joined forces.
What they found were the long-lost rituals of a group known as the Great Enlightened Society of Oculists. In the mid 18th century, the esoteric organisation appeared to be made up of ophthalmologists who were performing ground-breaking work in the field of eyesight. They were experimenting with the likes of eye surgeries and cataract removals. At least, that’s how they presented themselves to the public, or even to church and state.
The Great Enlightened Society of Oculists also used the eye as a symbol of knowledge; they seemed to be experts in the eye and gatekeepers to the knowledge that lay beyond it. And while much of the text, even when translated, is still full of code and double-speak, experts were able to make educated guesses as to what was going on behind closed doors.
You should be able to relate to this episode of the mental_floss List Show, because they are about things we all have, or had at one time. Can you imagine using a vacuum cleaner to dry your hair? Razors are older than you think, and toothbrushes are newer than you’d think.
Oh yeah, and tinfoil hats may have some real benefit, we're just not sure what. But you don’t have one of those. There’s a lot more to learn about in this video!
A team at PrakashLab at Stanford University have developed a microscope that can be assembled, origami-style, from a flat sheet of paper. You can put it in your pocket and assemble it when you need it -and it cost less than a dollar to produce! It’s called the Foldscope.
Long story short, this device is amazing. During my time in the Amazon rainforest, I was able to investigate tiny insects, mites, fungi, and plant cells from 140x to 480x magnification without requiring a large and expensive conventional microscope.
Some of the diverse arthropod specimens could potentially be new to science, so it was really exciting to document images and videos of these organisms right there in the field by connecting my phone to the Foldscope.
He connected a cell phone to the Foldscope to record microscopic images. Continue reading to see them!
