The most mesmerizing videos are those in which someone seemingly selected elements pulled from different hats and put them together. Here, we see a man in a long-neck giraffe mask lip-synch to Marvin Gaye’s song “Let’s Get It On.” You can’t turn away from it. Puppeteer/mask maker Sebastian Mayer made this for “all the lonely long-legged lovelies.” -via Tastefully Offensive
Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
Terminator 2: Judgment Day was an awesome movie, but of course, it wasn’t perfect. It’s only from the vantage point of 24 years and three sequels later that we can see the glaring faults in the film. Or if you didn’t, Screen Junkies will be happy to point them out to you. No, this Honest Trailer will not ruin the memory of Terminator 2 for you, but on the off chance you haven’t seen it yet, it does contain spoilers. And NSFW language.
Two yellow belts practicing their moves in the park see a girl, and the instinct to impress makes them kick it up a notch, stop-motion style! Somehow, I don’t think this is exactly the way Bruce Lee did it.
If you want to see more about how they did it, there’s a behind-the-scenes video, too. It looks really silly from a wider angle. -via Boing Boing
Office workers on the 40th floor of the building next to Bryant Park in Manhattan watch the beginning of the Bryant Park Summer Film Festival. The first movie on Monday night was Ghostbusters. I didn’t quite understand it the first time I saw this, but apparently they wouldn’t let anyone stake a spot out on the lawn until a certain time. When the signal was given, it took all of about five seconds for the field to fill up. Commentary contains NSFW language. -via Laughing Squid
The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research.
(Image credit: Flickr user Jeff M for Short)
by Ella Rotman
Department of Microbiology
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Here I demonstrate that bacteria can be used as low-cost, “guinea pig” substitutes for human beings for testing new (or old) food products. I tested the ability of an Escherichia coli bacteria strain to grow in a Coca Cola medium. I then determined whether the bacteria preferred Coke or Pepsi.
Getting E. coli to grow on Coke
E. coli are finicky eaters. To grow them under laboratory conditions sometimes involves following elaborate recipes. To test E. coli‘s preference for one versus another cola product, I first had to create a suitable growth medium. I adapted a well-established formula, similar to that for Gatorade. It provides sugar for energy and various salts and metabolites required for growth. I added a solidifying agent, so the bacteria could be purified to single colonies in a Petri dish. Because the two main ingredients of Coca Cola are water and high-fructose corn syrup, I simply replaced the formula’s prescribed water and sugar components with an equivalent volume of soda.
My “soda medium” had an additional benefit: E. coli cannot grow in pure Coke because of the acidity (pH of ~2-3). In my medium, the salts buffered the solution to the nearly neutral pH of approximately 6.5-7.
Figure 1. Training E. coli to like Coke. PLATE A: E. coli struggling on a caffeine-free Coca Cola plate. PLATE B: E. coli adapted to Coca Cola (streaked on the lower half of the plate).
I still had to coax the E. coli to grow, though.
On the surface, you might think that the game Super Mario World and the HBO series Game of Thrones have nothing in common to lend itself to a mashup. But the TV show intro has many art elements that would easily be adaptable to a video game world. Make the GoT theme into a chip tune and voilà! Mashup. The video is from Steven Jase, with music by Paul LeBlanc. -via Uproxx
What a treat -a new remix from Eclectic Method featuring Captain Jean-Luc Picard! The rhythm of this video reminds me a bit of The Picard Song, does it you? -via Boing Boing
There was a time when fashionable ladies knew how to capture attention when they came into a room -by taking up all the room! The era of crinolines meant difficulty squeezing through doorways, getting into carriages, and even getting dressed. In the image above, two maids on ladders lower a dress onto a woman and her crinoline.
The name is a combination word of "crin" — a stiff material made using horse hair — and "linen." But it wasn't the stiff fabric that gave the crinoline its remarkable silhouette; it was the under-hoops, made of bone or even steel, which formed a cage. A patent for a metal crinoline cage was first awarded in 1856.
Such was its popularity — described by satirical magazine Punch as "Crinolinemania" — that some steel factories catered exclusively to the crinoline market, churning out around 3,000 every day. Crinoline-only shops offered them for sale to an eager public. Yet it was, as is obvious, a very difficult object to wear.
It was also a deadly fire hazard. From the late 1850s to the late 1860s, around 3,000 women died in crinoline fires in England.
The crinoline style eventually was replaced by the more understated bustle, but is revived in the form of the petticoat now and then. Mashable has a collection of stereocards lampooning crinoline styles from the National Museum of Scotland. -via the Presurfer
This kitty’s layin’ down some sweet beats and dropping’ the bass for ya in this Vine from TripTrapChill™. He's lucky the cat didn't do an all-scratch riff. -via Everlasting Blort
Musician Matty Mac has a new album called The Proposal. There’s quite a story behind it. The title track was written specifically for his cousin Sam Maccarone to propose to Jessica Burzichelli. The two had been together for years and years and it was time.
Mac asked the couple to star in a music video for him. While they filmed, he played the song “Under the Stars” so that Jessica wouldn’t know the true purpose. They'd done things like this for cousin Matty before, so it was no big deal. The final scene was in a restaurant, and Mac played the true version of “The Proposal” for the real proposal. You can read Jessica’s version of the events at How He Asked. A good time was had by all. -via Buzzfeed
Mike Wilson is a professional freerunner and parkour athlete. He’s also a father. His son Jayden developed a passion for Spider-Man, so Wilson became SpiderDad! Jayden was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer just after his 4th birthday. For his 5th birthday, Spider-Dad came to visit! The event last fall was captured on video, which eventually got over ten million views. Wilson had further plans to make a Spider-Dad movie to show Jayden, but Jayden died on Christmas Eve, 2014.
The SpiderDad Film was inspired by my son Jayden who sadly lost his 18 month battle at Christmas to a Grade 4 Brain Stem Tumor called, Glyoblastoma Multi-Forme. Before he died, we began filming with the full intention of giving Jayden his very own Premiere at home, with drinks and popcorn. Just like at the cinema. I was very passionate about making this look and feel as real as possible for our little super hero. Even to the finest details of webbing effects, stunts, the Spiderman suit and generally providing a feel good energy about the film.
Sadly, the little fighter became very ill, and his very own Premiere wasn’t able to happen. It became a dedication project to the bravest, and most courageous little boy we know, always willing to give a smile and thumbs up at even the most difficult of times. In addition, we wanted this to also raise awareness and money for the charity who gave our family so much support whilst caring for Jayden, as well as the continued after care for our entire family and his big sister Ella.
All proceeds from the YouTube video will benefit Naomi House hospice. You can learn more about the story at Wilson’s SpiderDad website. -via Geeks Are Sexy
Don Featherstone of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, passed away Monday morning, a victim of Lewy body disease. A couple of years ago, we featured Featherstone and his wife Nancy, who wore matching outfits every day for the last 37 years of their marriage. But Featherstone is best remembered as the man who invented the plastic pink lawn flamingo.
Don created the flamingo when he was freshly graduated from art school, and newly employed at a plastics factory. One of his first assignments was to create three-dimensional plastic lawn ornaments (up to that time, most plastic lawn ornaments were more or less flat). The flamingo was one of his earliest efforts for the factory.
Eventually he became president of the company. After Don retired, dire things were done, by his successor, to the flamingo, triggering a worldwide protest, which eventually led to a more or less happy rallying of the forces of Good, and a restoration of the plastic pink flamingo’s status. In 2011, the flamingo attained new heights, when the Disney movie Gnomeo and Juliet featured a plastic pink lawn ornament named “Featherstone”. Don and Nancy were feted at the film’s premiere.
Featherstone was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize in art for his creation in 1996, and later appeared in several of the Ig Nobel ceremonies. Don Featherstone was 79. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Harbor House Flamingo Festival)
Neil Landman is the curator of invertebrate paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History. When he got a call about a 30-foot giant squid that was offered to the museum, he said yes. But how does one go about getting a giant squid from New Zealand to New York? And even if you ship it, how would you preserve it? After all, you just can’t plunk a 30-foot-long specimen into a jar!
Hey, if you’re a museum curator, it’s your responsibility to figure out how to get the job done! -via Digg
The Disney animated feature Lady and the Tramp opened in theaters on June 22, 1955, which makes the movie 60 years old today. How long is that in dog years? Maybe you saw it in theaters; it was re-released every six years or so, as the custom was before home video. Maybe you grew up with it on videotape. But no matter how much you enjoyed it, you probably don’t know what went into the making of the movie.
1. It was inspired by a real dog named Lady.
In 1937, Disney writer Joe Grant showed Walt Disney some sketches he had done of his Springer Spaniel, Lady. Walt was impressed, and encouraged Joe to create a full storyboard. Like her fictional counterpart, the real-life Lady was learning how to deal with her owners’ new baby, which served as the main inspiration for Grant’s plot. In the end, Walt wasn’t thrilled with the storyline, and the idea was scrapped. Several years later, Disney came across a story by Ward Greene in Cosmopolitan titled “Happy Dan, the Whistling Dog." He believed that the two ideas could be combined into one to create a stronger story, and asked Greene to come up with one.
3. The real Tramp was a girl.
The writers and animators had plenty of inspiration for Lady, as some of the people involved with the film had spaniels they brought in as models. But the perfect mutt proved to be more elusive. One of the writers spotted the perfect happy-yet-bedraggled dog roaming around his neighborhood and tried to coax it over, but the dog was too quick. After failing to spot the dog again, the writer eventually checked with the city pound, where he found his perfect Tramp. Disney adopted the dog, who had apparently been just hours away from “taking the long walk,” and let her live in a private area behind Disneyland.
Those are interesting facts, but why did an idea that started in 1937 take so long to get to the public? That’s explained in the article 14 Things You Might Not Know About Lady and the Tramp at mental_floss.
Michael Jackson’s music spanned about 40 years, even though he died at age 50. Acclaimed a cappella group Pentatonix strung a bunch of his hits songs together in chronological order for a medley that spans The Jackson 5 and every album of Jackson’s solo career. This will evoke some memories for you, no matter who you are. -via Buzzfeed
Email This Post to a Friend