Even thought the Will Ferrell movie Elf seems fairly recent among classic Christmas movies, it is eleven years old now. You may enjoy watching it again this year, but you’ll enjoy it even more when you learn a few things that went on behind the scenes. Such as

3. Director Jon Favreau favored practical effects.

Inspired by the Christmas specials he grew up with, Favreau explained in the film's commentary track that he employed “old techniques” instead of CGI whenever possible. This included stop-motion animation, and using forced perspective to make Buddy look like a giant among his elf peers. For North Pole scenes, two sets were built—one larger scale for the actors playing elves, the other smaller to make Buddy and Santa look big. These elements where then carefully overlaid in camera, using lighting to blend the seams.

14. Will Ferrell broke James Caan.

The Academy Award-nominated Godfather star was hired to play Walter in part because Favreau wanted a stern persona to play against Ferrell's giddy Buddy, and Caan took the comedy of Elf seriously. He knew it was crucial for Walter to be annoyed—never amused—by his supposed son's antics. But when it came to the blood test scene where Buddy bellows when pricked by a needle, Caan cracked. Watch closely and you'll see he turns away from the camera so as not to ruin the take.

Now, see, these are things you'll notice and appreciate the next time you watch the movie. Read the rest of 21 trivia tidbits about Elf at mental_floss.

You may have heard the story of how chocolate chip cookies were invented: in the 1930s, Ruth Graves Wakefield chopped up chocolate and added the bits to cookie dough without melting them, mistakenly thinking the chocolate would spread in the oven and produce chocolate cookies. It’s an interesting story, but it’s just not true. Wakefield was a renowned and accomplished baker who would never make such a mistake, nor would she take a shortcut with her cookies.

Back in 1930 Ruth Wakefield and her husband Ken bought what would become the Toll House Inn, intending to open a restaurant. It was in a good location, on the road between Boston and Cape Cod. With Ruth Wakefield’s experience as a Home Economist and her skillful cooking, high standards, and favorite family recipes, they were successful their very first year. Former employees attribute that success to Ruth Wakefield’s strict attention to detail and insistence on providing excellent service in addition to delicious meals. She had rules about every little thing, including the exact distance from the edge of the table the silverware should be. (She has a whole chapter on setting the table in her book.) In countless interviews, former customers raved about her sticky pecan biscuits (recipe below) that were set on every table for guests to nibble on while they decided what to order. Famous food critic Duncan Hines (yes, the cake mix guy) was particularly fond of her Indian pudding. Joseph Kennedy Sr. was said to drop by frequently for Boston Cream Pie. The restaurant was such a family favorite that Rose Kennedy had the Toll House Inn send weekly care packages to her sons overseas during WWII (JFK was partial to their Mary Jane Gingerbread.) In numerous newspaper articles from the forties on, customers and employees interviewed praised the gracious service and the wonderful desserts (they had their own separate menu!) Does this sound like the kind of place run by a woman who didn’t know what she was doing in the kitchen?

There are other tales of how the Toll House cookie recipe was invented, before we could ever buy chocolate chips at a grocery, that belittle Wakefield’s skills or even shift the credit for the cookie to a man. But Wakefield knew what she was doing. You can read the whole story of how the Toll House cookie came about, and see plenty of recipes for the cookies, its later variations, and even instructions for making Wakefield’s sticky pecan biscuits, at The Toast. -via Metafilter

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Eric Hunter got a Cyr wheel, which looks like a lot of fun. But you have to learn to use it: stay in contact with the wheel at all times, control your center of gravity, don’t fall, and whatever you do, don’t roll over your fingers! All it takes is practice. You know and I know that putting in that practice, every day, without fail, can be exhausting -but it’s the only way to become good at something. And he did just that! -via Digg

You probably never thought about kitty litter as a world-changing invention, but it made #73 on a list of The 85 Most Disruptive Ideas in Our History. Before 1954, some people would use a sandbox for their cat to do their business in during cold weather. But then Ed Lowe introduced kitty litter, and it changed everything. Everything?

The introduction of Kitty Litter meant that after millennia of scratching at the door cats could come indoors and stay there. They had long been visitors in American homes; now they were residents. In some ways it has been a hostile takeover: There are millions more cats than dogs in the U.S. This also means that Lowe is the indirect father of countless Internet cat memes. Anyone who sells recreational laser pointers, fuzzy mice, scratching posts, cat furniture, or electric-fountain cat water dishes should thank him, too.

A simple idea that began the pet cat revolution. Read how it happened at BloombergBusinessweek. -via Digg

Chef David Varley outdid everyone with his Thanksgiving feast at Michael Mina's restaurant at Levi’s Stadium in San Francisco last month. The “Roast Beast” (or "Lambpigcow”) consisted of 24 quail, 12 chickens, eight ducks, six turkeys, two lambs, and a pig, rolled up in a side of beef and stuffed with chestnut-turkey sausage. It was roasted on the restaurant’s giant rotisserie and served to guests with access to a gravy fountain. Varley joked that after this holiday tailgate party, he might take a few years off from working on Thanksgiving. See plenty of pictures at San Francisco Eater. -via Fark

(Image credit: David Varley)

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Hebocon is a battling robot tournament in Japan that focuses on low-tech, crappy robots. In fact, entrants are penalized for any hi-tech features- and there’s a trophy for the lowest-tech robot in the competition! What remains are conglomerations of cheap toys and motors made for other purposes. The fun of the contest takes precedence over winning, and the entrants even help each other out. The resulting video is a joyous celebration of failure.  

For the English captions, the robots were introduced with descriptions: Pole Dancing as a Weapon, Sweeping Foes with a Dust Pan, Addressing the Stupidity of Fighting, Sushi-go-round of the Future, Speeds Up as the Cow is Lowered, and more. My favorite was the soup-packet-shaking robot we first see at about 2:10. -via Daily of the Day

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Once a month, in an exclusive Philadelphia dining room, the greatest minds in criminal justice gather to crack the nation's coldest cases.

On a brisk day last November, law enforcement professionals and forensic scientists crowded into a dining room at the Union League in downtown Philadelphia to eat lunch and stare at photos of dead bodies. The contrast was startling: fine steaks served on white china, sumptuous wallpaper dimly lit by elegant candelabra, and blood and limbs projected onto a screen. Tucked into the back of the room, I struggled to keep down my coffee. My tablemates, most of them graying and austere, clad in smart, dark suits, seemed unbothered.

“Can you make the picture a little bigger?” shouted one.

“It’s hard to see the hands,” added another.

The hands in question belonged to David Hayes, a retiree from a small town in Nebraska. Two years earlier, in the fall of 2010, an intruder had broken into the back door of a condo owned by David and his wife, Joan.* David was savagely shot and bludgeoned to death; Joan was stabbed repeatedly in the chest and face. A pocketknife emblazoned with the logo of the Nebraska State Police was found buried in Joan’s sternum.

The details mystified police. Nothing appeared stolen. Joan was posed in a sexual way—her nightgown jimmied up around her neck, her legs splayed apart. Rings of table salt were spread in careful circles around the bodies. The pages of a rare edition of the Bible were scattered over David’s corpse, and there were multiple, careful stab wounds around his eyes.

After two years of investigation, the case was ice-cold.

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The Simpson’s Christmas episode, "I Won't Be Home For Christmas," is this Sunday, so the opening couch gag is holiday-themed. Homer and Marge are elves, cats and dogs pull sleighs, and Lisa stars in a tribute to the Disney movie Frozen. There’s a lot more going on in this short clip; you may have to see it twice to catch all the references. -via Warming Glow

Brandy Melville is one of many stores that now sell clothing in one size, but the size is not named, just that “one size fits most.” Buzzfeed took five women of all different sizes and heights in to try on clothing and see if one size will actually fit all, most, or any of them. Each woman gave her opinions on several different pieces of clothing, and it’s hilarious. That said, a lot of the pieces worked on a wider variety of women’s sizes than I expected. -via Metafilter

(Images credit: Macey J. Foronda/BuzzFeed)

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The fifth Terminator movie Terminator: Genisys marks the return of Arnold Schwarzenegger to the franchise. It is a retelling of the events of the first film surrounding Sarah Conner, now rendered in a  parallel timeline that has been altered by other time travelers the principles weren’t aware of when they set things in motion. You can’t really call it a reboot, since it is a different story, just set in the same time, and believably connected to the original timeline by the weird but familiar temporal distortions the story is based on …except for a few pesky things like the actors being different and Arnold being 30 years older. The movie could be either a shot in the arm for the franchise, or as terrible as our worst fears. Either way, we have to wait until next summer to see it. -via Gamma Squad

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Guess what Simon’s Cat is getting for Christmas! You guessed it: catnip. And like all of Simon Tofield’s cat animations, this one is brilliant in the way it portrays one cat as representative of everyone’s cat. Give a cat a catnip toy, and eventually it will be rolling around in the mess they made all over the floor. I may be wrong, but I believe this is the first time I’ve heard Simon’s Cat purr. -via Tastefully Offensive

The Pantone Color Institute has announced the Color of the Year for 2015: Marsala 18-1438, as shown above. The color is named after the wine, which is descriptive enough. They sure make it sound attractive.

The Versatility of Marsala

    Equally appealing to men and women, Marsala is a stirring and flavorful shade for apparel and accessories, one that encourages color creativity and experimentation
    Flattering against many skin tones, sultry and subtle Marsala is a great "go-to" color for beauty, providing enormous highlight for the cheek, and a captivating pop of color for nails, shadows lips and hair.
    Dramatic and at the same time grounding, the rich and full-bodied red-brown Marsala brings color warmth into home interiors
    An earthy shade with a bit of sophistication, texture is the story in print and packaging. A matte finish highlights Marsala’s organic nature while adding a sheen conveys a completely different message of glamour and luxury.

So in 2015, I will finally be a stylish decorator because this color matches the living room wallpaper border that came with my house, and is just a bit lighter than the maroon couch I bought for it. As you can see from the pictures at Pantone, it is supposed to pair well with light blue. It sure beats the outlandish colors they selected for previous years. -via Design Boom

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In his newest comic, Grant Snider celebrates the confidence of adulthood, in which you are free to express yourself in your own way without the self-consciousness of your younger days. That’s wonderful. But it gets even better. As I tell my kids:

When you’re young, you worry about what people think of you.
When you’re middle-aged, you no longer care what other people think of you.
When you’re old, you realize that no one was ever thinking about you anyway.

So you may as well live life on your own terms. This is the latest from Incidental Comics. Like all of Snider’s comics, this one can be purchased in poster form.

You know how hindsight is 20/20. Three decades later, Julia Lepetit and Andrew Bridgman have figured out how to shorten the plot of the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark in a way that makes perfect sense. It probably wouldn’t have sold quite as many tickets, though.* See the rest of the story at Dorkly.     

* I would have bought one anyway because Harrison Ford.

As people upgrade to flatscreen TVs, their old model cathode-ray tube cabinet sets can be bought for a song. Matt Davidson got one of those old TVs and used the cabinet to enclose an aquarium. But to make it a proper TV aquarium, he outfitted it to exactly resemble Jerry’s apartment in the TV show Seinfeld! The fish are named Jerry, George, Elaine, Kramer, and Newman. He says it only took a few hours work over a period of a couple of years. Follow the project step-by-step at Awesomeness Projects, including how he made the furniture and closeups of each fish. There’s even a video of the fish in action. Now Davidson can choose to watch his regular TV or watch his pets recreate his favorite bygone show. -via reddit