Listen to a medley of the best love songs from the past 50 years, performed by Eric Thayne, David Osmond, Ashley Hess, AJ Raphael, and Maddie Wilson. You’ll find a list of the songs at the YouTube page, along with the musician’s links. -via Buzzfeed
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Gordon Deacon of Llanedeyrn in Cardiff, Wales, passed away at age 58 from pancreatic and liver cancer. He was an avid Star Wars and Liverpool Football Club fan, so his widow gave him the funeral that reflected both interests. His four children and many mourners wore Liverpool shirts, and the horse-drawn hearse was escorted by four Storm Troopers. Deacon’s widow Caroline had asked that mourners wear red shirts for Liverpool or Star Wars costumes, but banned Darth Vader, because the family wanted no one to wear black. See more pictures, and video clips from the funeral procession at Buzzfeed.
(Image source: YouTube)
These profiles are so typical -for cats, dogs, and other animals. They’re all looking for a connection, although certainly not the same kind. And I think we can figure out what kind of snake LEGOLAS_SS is. This is the latest from Kelly Angel at the webcomic Anything About Nothing. She hears that lemurs and flightless birds prefer to hang out on 4chan.
There’s an award for just about everything, as you’ll see in this week’s mental_floss List Show. Join guest host Paige for a roundup of the weirdest awards you can win. Do you take pictures of meals to post online? Do your feet smell? Do you promote preposterous piffle? Are you a poor writer? Do you file stupid lawsuits? Maybe you’ll be a winner someday!
Life is not a romantic comedy. If it were, the Grand Romantic Gesture would not tend to get one arrested. You can get away with some really creepy stuff in movies, however. The difference is that the audience knows these two people are ultimately meant for each other, while in real life all you have to go on is the fact that one person is pursuing another. When that behavior become stalkerish, the real-life response is to run far away. Take, for example, The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
Much of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 finds Peter Parker doing battle with that most formidable of foes: his girlfriend’s desire to live her own life. After breaking up with Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy, Peter adds her photos to his crazy conspiracy wall (with the unnerving note, “Do I have to lose you too??”), then uses his Spidey powers to stalk his ex-girlfriend all around Manhattan. And just as Gwen’s in mortal danger of pursuing her career at Oxford, he scrawls, “I LOVE YOU” on the Brooklyn Bridge, snatches her to the top of it, then insists he’s just “going to follow [her] everywhere,” forever. See, it’s sweet, because she’s literally powerless to resist!
Not all of the examples in this list at the AV Club are movies; there are also TV shows, songs, and plays. And you could probably think of more stories that aren’t on the list. Altogether, it’s a lesson in what not to do for Valentines Day. -via Metafilter
Dan Riordan and Dana Saint are childhood friends and partners in Gnarly Bay Productions. Dana Saint got married last year, and his gang of old friends wanted to do something special for his bachelor’s party. Saint is a real fan of the Rambo movies, so the guys threw him a surprise Rambo Day party on July 26, 2014, in which Saint became John Rambo.
Everyone had a part to play -just like when they made movies together as kids. The surprise began when Saint was “arrested.” That led to escape, battles with paintballs and water balloons, a POW rescue, chase scenes, explosions, and more. Oh yeah, they had cameras rigged everywhere.
It ended as an epic action video that's ultimately about the value of friendship and fun. It may seem long, but there’s not a minute wasted -and there's an extra surprise at the end. A good time was had by all. Contains NSFW language. Read more about the project at the Gnarly Bay blog. -via Uproxx
In western Iran there lives an endangered snake that preys on birds, and carries its own lure at the end of its tail. The Spider-tailed Horned Viper (Pseudocerastes urarachnoides) has an appendage that looks just like a spider. The rest of its body is camouflage colored, particularly the thin end of its tail leading to the “spider,” as you can see in the above video.
The first specimen was collected in 1968, but the spider tail was thought to have been a defect or a tumor. Then in 2001, another was found just like it. The new species was finally described in 2006. Let’s get a closeup view, shall we?
Just one more reason to be scared of spiders and snakes, now that they’re combined into one animal. -via Yonatan Zunger
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.
Tina Blacker was born to a Jewish family (she was the only Jewish cast member of Gilligan's Island) on February 11, 1934. The surname name “Louise" was reputedly added by Tina herself. During her senior year in high school, she mentioned to her drama teacher that she was "the only girl in class without a middle name.” She chose the name “Louise" and it stuck. “It's entirely my name. To me it means joy. Nobody in any family can be hurt if anything happens to this name because it's my name only,” she says.
After high school, Tina attended Miami University in Ohio. By the age of 17, Tina had began studying acting, singing and dancing. By the late Fifties, Tina was quickly becoming a fast-rising young actress/sex symbol.
She possessed a great natural beauty and charisma, had wonderful comedic timing, and had an amazing amount of sex appeal. She displayed her versatility in 1957, when she recorded an album It's Time for Tina.
In this period, she had also appeared in several broadway shows, most notably Li'l Abner. It was in Li'l Abner that she played the role of femme fatale Appassionata Von Climax. (in the play, the sexy Apassionata is hired to vamp Li'l Abner. Hmmmm......sound familiar, Gilligan's Island fans?) Although Tina didn't realize it at the time, her character Apassionata was to be the template for her later role as Ginger Grant.
Tina's image as a guy magnet was pushed even farther when she and another upcoming starlet named Jayne Mansfield both posed for the 1958 Frederick's of Hollywood catalogue. To further her sex symbol image, Tina did a pictorial layout for Playboy magazine in May of '58.
But Tina also landed her first movie role in 1958 in God's Llittle Acre. This role was a dramatic one, not the usual "girly eye candy" gig for Tina. By now, Tina seemed to have wanted more serious roles, trying to slightly distance herself from her sex symbol image (she turned down the movie Li'l Abner in 1959).
Boston Dynamics has done it again- they’ve unveiled a robot that approaches the uncanny valley to give us the heebie jeebies. This robot is called Spot, because he’s kind of like a dog. In fact, he’s the little brother of their BigDog robot. The difference is that Spot runs on electric power instead of gasoline, so he can be used indoors as well as outside. And he, I mean it, weighs only about 160 pounds. Spot joins BigDog, AlphaDog, Atlas, Petman, RHex, Wildcat, Sand Flea, and Cheetah (all from Boston Dynamics) among our new robot overlords. -via Geeks Are Sexy
See also: More terrifying robots from Boston Dynamics.
Lithuanian artist Modestas Malinauskas paints lush, multi-layered oil paintings. Many of them depict fantasy landscapes and fabulous boats and airships, the kind that could inspire dozens of stories. Take a look at a selection of Malinauskas' paintings from the Paveikslai Internet Art Gallery.
The chalky little candy hearts that say something sweet like “kiss me” or incomprehensible like “me too” are ubiquitous this time of year. You’ve seen them all of your life, but did you ever wonder when they became a thing?
The story of conversation hearts began in 1847, when a Boston pharmacist named Oliver Chase longed for a way to get in on the apothecary lozenge craze. Lozenges were quickly gaining steam as the medicine conveyance of choice, and were also popular remedies for sore throats and bad breath. But making lozenges was complicated and time-consuming—the process involved a mortar and pestle, kneading dough, rolling it out, and cutting it into discs that would eventually become lozenges.
There had to be a better way, and Oliver came up with it. Inspired by the new wave of gadgets and tools that hit America as it industrialized, he invented a machine that rolled lozenge dough and pressed wafers into perfect discs. Oliver had inadvertently created America’s first candy-making machine, and before long, he had abandoned his pharmacy business to crank out miles of what would become New England Confectionery Company (NECCO) wafers.
The candy was just the first step. The message came later, and the heart shape even further in the story, which you can read at mental_floss.
Back when war, ocean travel, or prison sentences meant lovers would be separated for a long time, they left each other with love tokens -real coins sanded down and engraved with names and sentimental messages and symbols. The engravings had different meanings, and could in domes cases be used as a marriage proposal. The custom started hundreds of years ago, but reached it apex in the 1800s. Collectors Weekly talked to Sid Gale of the Love Token Society about the history and popularity of love tokens.
Gale explains that as chromolithography became more affordable and started to replace the letterpress in the late 1800s, wood-type engravers turned to hand-engraving coins as a way to survive. By 1870s, their elaborate, beautifully engraved love tokens became a full-on obsession for Victorians, in both the United Kingdom and the United States.
“If you went to a fair in Victorian England, someone would be scraping off the side of a coin and selling love tokens,” Rosin says. “A fellow walking arm-in-arm with his girlfriend would take her to buy a little love token. I don’t know if it necessarily meant their love would last, but it was a big thing with young people.”
Read the rest, and see a great variety of these types of tokens that have survived, at Collectors Weekly.
(Image credit: The Love Token Society)
Freddie Wong (previously at Neatorama) finds himself in another situation where he inexplicably has to fight his way out, action hero-style, this time with only an umbrella as a weapon. But of course, this is no ordinary umbrella. It’s not even his! -via Tastefully Offensive
It didn’t happen on purpose. You just have to figure out a way to label your files so that you know which one is the latest iteration of the project that you thought you finished. In reality, a project is never really finished. And who knows that better than Doghouse Diaries?
As Valentines Day nears, British life insurance company Beagle Street commissioned a poll to find out which of the world’s great love letters is the best. The list of the ten that participants selected from included letters from poets, politicians, and kings, and they are full of love. The letter voted the best was written by Johnny Cash to his wife June Carter Cash on the occasion of her 65th birthday in 1994.
June 23 1994
Odense, Denmark.
Happy Birthday Princess,
We get old and get use to each other. We think alike. We read each others minds. We know what the other wants without asking. Sometimes we irritate each other a little bit. Maybe sometimes take each other for granted.
But once in awhile, like today, I meditate on it and realize how lucky I am to share my life with the greatest woman I ever met. You still fascinate and inspire me. You influence me for the better. You’re the object of my desire, the #1 Earthly reason for my existence. I love you very much.
Happy Birthday Princess.
John
Read excerpts from all the contenders at The Daily Mail. -via Uproxx
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