Abbey Doo the Great Dane is not only happy, she knows it, and she’s ready to show it! -via Daily Picks and Flocks
Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.
The Monkees were one of the strangest stories in both musical and television history.
The story's genesis was actually in July of 1964, when the Beatles first movie A Hard Day's Night was released. The film's smash hit success inspired producers Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson to cook up a very interesting idea for a new TV series.
The two had the idea of a musical group, sort of like the Beatles, long-haired- yes, but not successful, rich or famous like the Fab Four. The original idea was to cast either the Dave Clark Five or the Lovin' Spoonful as the series leads, but the concept was soon changed to assembling a cast of four unknowns. The fictional rock band, and their TV series, were to be called The Monkees.
The name “Monkees" was derived from a 1957 Elvis Presley movie called Loving You, a movie whose plot featured Elvis as a singer being exploited by an unscrupulous manager. In one overly dramatic scene in Loving You, Elvis confronts his manager and says, “That's what you want isn't it? A monkey in a zoo!" (The double e's in “Monkees" was a semi-pun, like the "beat" in “Beatles.”)
On September 8, 1965, open ads appeared in the two show biz bibles, Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, seeking "folk and musicians-singers for acting roles in a new TV series.” The ad stated that they were looking for "insane boys".
A total of 437 applicants answered the ad, including later-to-become-famous musicians Paul Williams, Stephen Stills, and Harry Nilsson. (There is no truth to the later urban legend that Charles Manson was one of the applicants, as Manson was incarcerated in federal prison at the time.) Four young men, two musicians and two actors, were finally chosen.
The first one cast was Davy Jones, a good-looking British actor, already under contract to Screen Gems. Jones, a former jockey, had recently been touring in the musical Oliver! and, by an amazing coincidence, had actually appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964, the night of the Beatles legendary appearance.
George Michael “Micky" Dolenz was an actor who had starred as a child in the TV show Circus Boy in the fifties. Micky was making the rounds at local auditions and had played guitar in a band called the Missing Links.
Robert Michael “Mike" Nesmith, having served briefly in the U.S. Air Force, was a musician/composer/singer who had made a handful of recordings under the alias “Michael Blessing." (Mike was the only member of the Monkees who actually saw the ad in the trades.)
Peter Tork, the last Monkee to be cast, was suggested for the audition by Stephen Stills, his roommate, and was currently a musician playing gigs in the Greenwich Village area.
The four young men took a six-week course in improvisational comedy (taught by director James Frawley) and it was soon discovered that all four displayed real humor, talent and chemistry in front of the camera. On the show, the four would be playing a rock band and, in an unprecedented move, would actually be recording songs, which would be released as records and albums. The songs would be premiered and promoted in videos that would be featured every week on the show.
Lesley University assistant professor Elizabeth Stringer Keefe came into the possession of a wedding photo that was picked up in the rubble of the World Trade Center after the buildings collapsed on 9/11. Every year for 13 years, she posted the photo on the internet, hoping to find the owner of the picture. This year she posted it on Facebook and Twitter.
Every year on #911 I post this photo hoping 2 return 2 owner. Found at #groundzero #WTC in 2001. Pls RT pic.twitter.com/mZ9LdQqE7x
— E. Stringer Keefe (@ProfKeefe) September 12, 2014Keefe told the story to Boston magazine.
She had hoped this year would be the year, but as the anniversary of the September 11 tragedy came and went, still, she heard nothing back.
“I have always said to myself about the photo that I try not to think about what the story behind it is, and that I just want to get the photo back,” said Elizabeth Stringer Keefe.
However, the photograph went viral in Twitter and then on reddit, and the next day, Fred Mahe saw it -and responded.
@ProfKeefe I KNOW THE PEOPLE IN THE PICTURE! I was at the wedding.
— Fred Mahe (@FredWMahe) September 12, 2014In fact, it was Mahe’s picture. It was on his desk on the 77th floor of Tower Two. Read the entire story of the wedding photo at Boston magazine. -via Buzzfeed
Ophir Kutiel, who goes by Kutiman, is a musician and editor who took lots of YouTube clips of amateur music performances, from different people, different years, different places, and different songs, and edited them together into a new song. The vocals are by KarMaRedd, singing a cappella. Kutiman listed the source videos at the YouTube page. You can check out some of his other edits in this playlist. Kutiman’s YouTube editing projects will be available in an album next month. -via reddit
See also: Kutiman’s edit of “Black Dog.”
When a volcano erupts, the conventional wisdom is that you evacuate, because there’s nothing you can do to stop the destructive power of the heat, ash, and lava that comes from it. But conditions vary. If a lava flow is some distance away, you might have quite a bit of time before it arrives. And in the past, some have even tried to stop or divert it.
Before he was a general in World War Two, George S Patton designed a different kind of military campaign - a bombing run on Hawaii's Mauna Loa, the largest volcano on Earth, as it erupted in 1935.
As the lava began flowing at a rate of one mile (1.6km) a day towards the city of Hilo, then-director of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory Thomas Jaggar suggested bombing lava tubes.
Lava tubes are cooled and hardened outer crusts of lava which provide insulation for the faster-flowing, molten rock inside. Such a conduit enables lava to move farther and faster.
In theory, bombs would destroy the lava tubes, robbing lava of an easy transport channel and exposing more of the lava to the air, slowing and cooling it further.
But in practice, while bombs created craters in parts of the tubes, they were soon filled again by the lava. Hilo was instead saved when Mauna Loa stopped erupting.
I dunno, stopping lava with bombs seems like trading a hot frying pan for fire. Other methods have been tried, with similar results. When the lava stops, it might have been because of human effort, or it might have been because they all stop sooner or later. Read about some of the schemes used to deal with lava at BBC Magazine. -via Smithsonian
What does the most interesting man in the world do in his spare time? When he’s not drinking Dos Equis, Jonathan Goldsmith works with MAG, or Mines Advisory Group. He’s raising money to fund the clearing of land mines in Cambodia. To make a donation and enter the raffle to spend a day with Goldsmith, go here. He doesn’t always blow things up, but when he does, it’s to save lives. -via reddit
Oh, you think you know what a sandwich is. After all, we’ve eaten so many of them all our lives, from peanut butter and jelly in our lunch bags to foot-long hoagies. But along the edges, the definition can be blurry. Is an ice cream sandwich really a sandwich? Or a corn dog? How about a burrito? A s'more? The Atlantic turned to the legal definition (yes, there is such a thing) to give us the lowdown once and for all. It turns out that even some of the things named sandwich aren’t legally sandwiches! -via Buzzfeed
YouTube member Павел Сутырин says his cat does this regularly.
This happens almost everytime the cat sleeps or just rests. It also answer to sneezing. It's of particular fun when you are ill for real :)
No, I do not pull his tail behind the scenes. =))
It seems to me that the cat is responding in its own way. Maybe something like, “I am listening to you, despite the fact that I’m asleep. Please continue.” Or more likely, “Shut up! I’m trying to sleep!” Then there’s an off chance that he may be doing the feline equivalent of “Bless you.” -via Tastefully Offensive
High School students Andrea Gonzales and Sophie Houser developed the video game Tampon Run as a sort of shoot-em-up game in which you throw tampons instead of shooting. The point of the game is that a natural process like menstruation should be just as acceptable in a video game as the shooting and violence that are so common.
Gonzales and Houser produced the game as their final project in the Girls Who Code program. Go play it now -it’s a hoot! -via Daily of the Day
(Image credit: © Nathan Pask 2014/Tattooed Bakers)
This time of year, as Halloween candy starts to show up in stores, you have to wonder what Miss Emmylou Cakehead is planning for Halloween. Her productions are guaranteed to raise eyebrows, and this year is no exception.
Miss Cakehead and company will present Cakeaggedon, the very first edible horror farm!
What is a horror farm you ask? Well don't pry too much because we all know how the curious cat ended up... If you do want to come and investigate the strange goings on here though, you might do well to bring a friend - we don't want anyone picked off. Those select few brave enough to venture into the woods will witness, gorge, and be hunted through the world's most terrifying cake installation, and those that make it out will ensure it is THE most talked about scare attraction of 2014. Your mistress of misery for this symposium of sweet slaughter is the infamous and eccentric MISS CAKEHEAD. Her latest reinvention is as far from a convivial cake connoisseur as The Big Bad Wolf is from a vegan food hall. Think cakes are all sunshine and rainbows? You couldn't be further from the tooth....
Remember Noah Ritter, the 5-year-old who gained the nickname Apparently Kid after a county fair interview? FreshPet hired him to do an ad for them, and they wisely recorded him free-associating instead of following a script, because Noah has plenty to say! You can see more of Noah in an adorable behind the scenes video if you are interested. -Thanks, Kyle Coats!
This map, interactive at the site, shows the vaccination rates for schools in Los Angeles. Thirteen schools in Los Angeles have opt out rates of 50% or more. That means more than half the children who attend are not following the prescribed schedule of immunization against measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, diphtheria, or pertussis (whooping cough). Many more schools have opt out rates just under 50%. That means that there is insufficient herd immunity at these schools, and children can contract these diseases and transmit them to babies and those with compromised immune systems -the people most likely to die from them. Children who have been vaccinated are also at risk, because some vaccines take years to gain peak immunity, and even then it’s not 100%. Being vaccinated will reduce the risk, however, and the best way to reduce the risk of disease is to vaccinate as many children as possible to reach herd immunity -the point where diseases hit roadblocks in contagion.
Keep in mind that the statistics on the map are for the percentage of parents who filed a “PBE,” or Personal Belief Exemption for immunizations. In many cases, that doesn’t mean the child is completely unvaccinated, but instead means that certain vaccines are skipped or delayed from the standard immunization schedule. But the current outbreak of pertussis is real. So far this year, almost 8,000 of cases of pertussis have been reported in the Los Angeles area, 267 people have been hospitalized, and three babies have died of the disease. The rate of measles is higher than it’s been for 20 years. The Hollywood Reporter has an extensive article about vaccinations and the parents who opt out. -via Metafilter
Have you ever noticed how some cats just want to slap everything? It’s a way of exploring, but it doesn’t do much good against inanimate objects. This pretty calico cat named Hime is confronted with an unfamiliar thing with a distinctive smell. What to do? Slap it! Slap it again! Will she ever get around to sniffing it or even tasting it, or will it be just slap, slap, slap? -via Daily Picks and Flicks
I honestly did not realize that the Major League Baseball season was 162 games long, but I’ve often been impressed at how many games they play. There aren’t too many days off for a player between April and October! But why 162? The reason involves math, the history of baseball, and a little more math. But it’s unlikely that the number will change anytime soon -no team wants to give up home games, because that’s where they make money. And if you had more games, you’d have to pay the players more. Read about how the formula for MLB schedules came about at mental_floss.
(Image credit: Barrel Man Sammy)
It’s hard to get every letter right when you’re Tweeting from a phone. For some people, even large keyboard keys and small words will trip you up. So it was inevitable that a site dedicated to Twitter typos would come along. Illustrated Twitter Typos not only showcases the funniest typos, but shows the “Freudian typos” illustrated. Misspellings are included as well as typos, as long as they’re funny. The results are unintentional puns, like these:
-via Geeks Are Sexy
Email This Post to a Friend