Just when I think there couldn’t be any weirder mashups, comes a version of The Avengers that stars the characters from The Wizard of Oz. Darren Wallace casts the Cowardly Lion as Thor and the Scarecrow as Captain America, but the real star is the Tin Man, who embodies the role of Ultron.
Just like the beginning slate said, this makes no sense, but it is a masterful edit. -via reddit
This Japanese movie trailer doesn’t exactly scream “blockbuster,” but the premise is too precious. Kyutaro Madarame is an accomplished but criminal samurai who is hired to assassinate Tamanojo. Tamanojo is a cat. Really. But he can’t kill the cat because it’s so adorably cute! Still, he has to make the cat disappear to fulfill his obligation, which leads to a comedy of errors along with the samurai action.
I’d go see it. -via Dorkly
Isaac Eddy was a Blue Man in the the Blue Man Group for twelve years. It’s not a typical job, even among performers. He tells us how he got the job, how the show is put together, the philosophy behind the performance, the makeup process, and some other tidbits you didn’t know about the Blue Man Group.
In a given production, how many Blue Men are there? Are the just three leads and a couple of stand ins or are there 20 guys who rotate in and out?
In the smaller shows there is typically seven full time guys. In the bigger shows, like Vegas, there are upwards of nine guys full time. The reason is because we do so many shows. In New York, the typical Broadway run is eight shows a week, and we will often do much more than that. On a slow week we’ll do 12, and on a high week we can do upwards of 20. So we need those extra guys to do those shows. This is also another reason why guys stick around for so long, because there is less of a grind that way. There will be slow weeks and you can take leaves of absence to do other artworks. Its just a much more stable, supportive environment that way. And for a theater gig… it was 12 years with 401K, full benefits for me, my wife, and my kid, a really stable setup.
The fascinating interview with former Blue Man Isaac Eddy is the first in a new series of articles about people with the most interesting jobs in the world, at Atlas Obscura.
(Image courtesy of Isaac Eddy)
A 32-mile stretch of road between the towns of Gladstone and Regent, North Dakota, is called the Enchanted Highway because it’s filled with huge scrap metal sculptures depicting wildlife, Western scenes, and even historical figures. The artist is retired schoolteacher Gary Greff.
Small towns in the country were slowly being deserted and Gary Greff was worried about this growing trend. So beginning in 1990, he started creating massive metal sculptures that he planned to place along the Regency-Gladstone Road every few miles to arouse the curiosity of drivers and tourist using the road. Gary wants to create ten sculptures. So far, he has completed seven and the eighth one is reportedly in progress. All the sculptures face north, toward the oncoming traffic from the interstate, and each one is accompanied by a pull-out area with place for picnic and tourists to unwind. It was Gary’s idea to rename the road the Enchanted Highway.
Greff gets a lot of help from local farmers, volunteers, and even the Boy Scouts. If you can’t make it to North Dakota anytime soon, you can take a pictorial tour of the sculptures lining the Enchanted Highway at Amusing Planet. -via the Presurfer
(Image credit: USDA Farm Service Agency)
Just a couple of days ago, we showed you how Alexander Fredriksen can’t lie on the couch without his cat Nala wanting to snuggle. In this video, Texan Roy Field had the same problem, but his cuddly pet is a Great Dane that’s as big as he is! Bodie Gene just wants to lie down and snuggle with his human like any good lap dog. The pup is only a year old. If Bodie Gene gets any bigger, Roy may be squashed flat! -via Daily Picks and Flicks
Science confirms it: we cannot resist bacon. There are volatile organic compounds and animo acids involved, so of course we love it.
AsapSCIENCE explains the many factors that make us love bacon, but whether we understand it or not, this video will make you crave a BLT. Especially if you have backyard tomatoes ripening already, as I have. -via Tastefully Offensive
At the turn of the 20th century, Helena Rubinstein was a poor but ambitious Polish woman peddling skin cream in Australia. While her skin care business grew, she encouraged women to experiment with makeup. It wasn’t easy, because women who wore makeup were pegged as either actresses or prostitutes, or French- because stylish French women loved makeup and used too much! While Rubenstein developed cosmetics to bring subtlety to France, she marveled at the different ways women in other countries used -or didn’t use- makeup. She moved to America in 1914 to escape World War I.
Rubinstein was dismayed by the appearance of American women, who were at least a decade behind their European counterparts, fashion-wise. They still emulated Charles Dana Gibson’s fictional Gibson Girl, who narrowed her waist in a tight corset. They would only wear light powder and blush to lunch, but not dinner, believing they could attain beauty by a healthy lifestyle and positive thinking. However, the women’s suffrage movement had been going strong in America for years, and early feminists like Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Inez Milholland were holding meetings and discussing sexuality, contraception, and abortion. The May 6, 1912, Suffrage Parade in New York drew 20,000 women and 500 men, dressed in white. Many of the women shocked onlookers wearing lipstick, “a mark of sex and sin,” according to Edward Bok of the “Ladies Home Journal.”
Those first-wave feminists were rebelling against the constraints of conformity, and testing the freedom to look the way they wanted to. Rubinstein would never call herself a feminist, but she insisted on controlling her own life and business. She believed every woman had the right to look her best, and made millions by helping them to do it, with much more than makeup. Rubinstein invented the “Day of Beauty” spa package, encouraged woman to eat well and exercise to improve their appearance, and trained beauty consultants to not only sell products, but teach women how to use them. Read about Helena Rubinstein’s amazing rise to the top of cosmetics industry, her life of collecting art and fashion, and her rivalry with Eve Arden, at Collectors Weekly.
(Image source: Girlboss)
The Blobfish Cafe sounds like a seafood restaurant, but this is more like Japan’s cat cafes or the temporary Owl bar in London. The Blobfish Cafe is an opportunity for you to get up close and personal (but no touching) with the world’s ugliest animal!
According to the Blobfish Cafe’s website, the pop-up has acquired three blobfish—named Barry, Lorcan, and Lady Swift—that will be on display when the business opens next summer in 2016. With three blobfish in their possession, this could not have been a cheap or easy project to conduct for the cafe’s creators, as one blobfish alone costs $100,000, with its large tank coming in at $500 (meaning that with three of them, these unnamed individuals have probably paid over $301,500 alone just to obtain blobfish).
This is definitely an endeavor taken on by those who are committed to showing the world blobfish in a new light, a goal not only reflected in the estimated price paid for these creatures but in the words expressed on the cafe’s site, which promise that the cafe’s creators “have been working with some of the world’s top marine biologist.”
Read more about the upcoming Blobfish Cafe at Worthly.
(Image credit: Flickr user Grufnik)
Our friend Rob of the What Is It? Blog has been traveling, but he's back for a limited time, with more mystery items!
What is this thing in the picture? Your guess can win you a free T-shirt of your choice from the NeatoShop! Here's how to play:
Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, but you can enter as many guesses as you'd like in separate comments. You have until tomorrow afternoon to enter.
You might know what it is, but if you want to win a t-shirt, you'll have to use your imagination, because we are going to select two winners who give us the funniest incorrect guesses. If you guess right, then good for ya - but you don't win anything, okay? So, it's up to you, creative people: you have twice the chance of winning that T-shirt.
Please write your T-shirt selection alongside your guess. If you don't include a selection, you forfeit the prize. We highly suggest you take a look at the NeatoShop's new selection of Funny T-shirts and Science T-Shirts.
Ready? Go for it! (Don't forget to visit the What Is It? Blog for more clues!)
Update: This item is, indeed, a Morris scissor bench plane, or plow plane. You can see the patent application at the What Is It? blog. Several of you knew that, but as we said, we are giving away T-shirts from the NeatoShop for the funniest answers.
A t-shirt goes to canyourepeatthequestion for this gem:
Although incorrectly displayed laying on its side, it is still easily recognizable as a scissor lift for squirrels performing bird feeder "Maintenance". What appears to be a curved wooden handle is in fact the lateral stabilizer, stylized to resemble a squirrel's tail in the style of famed rodent lift designer Sir UpseeDaisy J Nutter. At auction, I would expect this piece to fetch at least three or four hundred acorns.
and to Berhard for his pun:
It is one of the classic "phrase causes":
If you worked with this pane-tool and placed on a chair and you forget about it... and you later sit down on exactly this chair, you instantly become aware that this tool is the reason for the phrase "pane in the ass"...
Thanks to everyone for playing along! We’ll do it again next week, for a limited run as long as Rob has items to identify at the What Is It? blog.
Sad news from Japan: Tama the Stationmaster Cat, who supervised the Kishi Station of the Wakayama Electric Railway, has died. She worked at the station since 2007. We featured Tama in 2007, 2008, and 2010. Tama served as a loyal employee of the railroad for eight years, and is credited with revitalizing the station and bringing in tons of money. She passed away Wednesday, June 24th from heart failure. Tama was 16 years old, which would be in the 80s in cat years. See a tribute to Tama in pictures at Atlas Obscura. -Thanks, Eric!
(Photo: Takobou/Wikimedia)
Update 6/28/15: At her Shinto funeral today, Tama was elevated to goddess. She also received a posthumous promotion from the railroad company to "ultrastationmaster."
In 1938, a Detroit street sweeper named Joseph Figlock saved the life of a baby falling from an apartment building. A lucky moment, indeed. It was also an odd coincidence, because, according to Time magazine, the same man had performed the very same act just a year prior. Even more astounding? It was reported to be the same baby.
Astonishing tales like this make us laugh in disbelief. But behind the laughter lurks fear: Humans have a deep psychological need for the universe to feel controllable—or at least predictable. “People are much more relaxed if they feel in command, whether they really are or not,” says David Hand, a British statistician and author of The Improbability Principle. “The notion that events might happen just by chance can be terrifying.”
As a species, we persuade ourselves that we can influence random events, a fantasy psychologists call “the illusion of control.” Casino gamblers throw dice more gently when they want lower numbers, according to one study. In another, 40 percent of subjects believed they could get better outcomes from tossing a coin the more they practiced. It’s little wonder, then, that people sit up and listen when self-help gurus claim to offer techniques for learning to be luckier. The good news is that, in some sense, you really can “make your own luck.”
For starters, forget about influencing the outcome of truly chance-based events, like coin tosses or lottery draws.
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.
All of the following are actual injuries to major-league baseball players.
Babe Ruth knocked himself unconscious by running headfirst into a coconut palm tree in spring training, chasing after a fly ball.
Walter George “Jumbo" Brown, a 255-lb. pitcher for the Yankees, injured two of his teammates, putting them on the disabled list, when he played leap frog with them.
Tom Glavine broke a rib vomiting, after eating bad airplane food.
Denny McLain, a Detroit tigers pitcher, was trying to win his 30th game of the season. When he saw his team score the game-winning run, McLain excitedly jumped up, hit his head on the concrete dugout roof and knocked himself unconscious.
“Fat Freddie" Fitzsimmons smashed the fingers on his pitching arm when he fell asleep in a rocking chair. His fingers fell under the chair and he rocked over the hand, smashing his fingers.
Steve Sparks hurt himself ripping a phone book in half. He was out for the entire season from the injury.
Jim Palmer was removed from the pitching rotation because he hurt his neck sleeping on a pillow that "was too soft.”
The Minnesota Fair has announced a whole slew of new fair foods for 2015 you can try out -and if people like them, you’ll no doubt see them at other fairs, too. Pictured above is the SPAM® Burger, available in five flavors: Jalapeño, Hot and Spicy, Bacon, Hickory Smoke, and Black Pepper. What to eat with a SPAM® Burger? How about a Mac & Cheese Cupcake? It’s the macaroni and cheese you love in a breadcrumb crust topped with Cheez Whiz.
Many of the new offerings are international fusion recipes, like the Kimchi 'n' Curry Poutine, Sweet Potato Taco, and the Italian Dessert Nachos. Minnesota is well-represented, too with Grandma Deb’s Snicker Bar Salad. Don’t miss the Sriracha Balls and the Meatloaf-on-a-Stick. See all 39 new dishes and 11 new frozen treats at the Minnesota State Fair site. Click on a picture for a description. The Minnesota Fair will run from August 27th to September 7th. -via Buzzfeed
There is a peculiar tradition among the people of Australia’s Northern Territory of dressing up termite mounds to make them look more distinctive, or at least more humorous. This custom is most notable along the Stuart Highway between Darwin and Alice Springs. Ian Hance is working on documentaing the mounds and painting their portraits for his master’s thesis in visual art at Charles Darwin University.
Mr Hance said there was a high concentration of dressed mounds along the highway between Katherine and Larrimah, along with large clusters around Threeways Roadhouse and Alice Springs.
"Many have a sexual element to them, while others appear to be brandishing a political statement or were created by tourists to commemorate their travels in the region," he said said.
He said among his 350 photos were mounds dressed as soldiers with sticks for guns, tradesmen wearing hi-visibility clothing, and even a biblical reference to Michelangelo's Madonna and Child sculpture.
Hance also has a website where people are encouraged to send in pictures of dressed termite mounds they’ve photographed. -via Arbroath
(Images credit: Ian Hance)
Have you noticed that in the past couple of decades people try to come up with weird things to make world records out of? The most nickels stacks on the back of a hand is not anything that would ever have happened if there were no Guinness Book of World Records. The most interesting records are the ones that just happen with no world record intent, but that’s not going to stop people from trying to beat the record for the most marshmallows caught with chopsticks. John Green tells us about some of the weirdest ways people dream up to get into the record book in the latest episode of the mental_floss List Show. Along the way, he tries out some of the stunts he talks about. No records were broken.
