The psychological scars of rejection can last for years to come. Is there someone in your life with a strange behavior you can't figure out? It's probably a remnant of that terrible memory from long ago. Or at least you can tell yourself that. Pretending there's a heartbreaking story behind a daily annoyance beats the realization that they are just annoying. From Lunar Baboon.
Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
The latest video from Devin Supertramp follows a group of adventurers as they BASE jump from a tall bridge. But that's not enough! Next, they go up in a hot air balloon for even more insane stunts. THe POV shots may make you a little woozy, but stay with it.
You might notice the cars they get into are unnaturally clean for such an outing. That's product placement. -via Viral Viral Videos
A few weeks ago, Jon Negroni offered a theory that tied all Pixar movies together in one unifying story. Now, the same has happened for Tom Hanks movies. Well, not all Tom Hanks movies -there's no women's baseball team or death row prison guard- but the biggest ones, including Captain Phillips, which opens this weekend. Actually, they missed a fine opportunity to put the mermaid from Splash in the ocean scenes, but I guess Hanks was awful young in that movie. In any case, I'd go see this movie. -via The Daily Dot
The band Badfinger had some great songs in the late 60s/early 70s that were reminiscent of Beatles tunes. That was no coincidence -their first hit was written and produced by Paul McCartney, and they recorded under the Apple record label.
Forty years later, they were discovered by a whole new generation when their song "Baby Blue" was played in the final episode of the TV series Breaking Bad. The song was downloaded 5,000 times by the Monday morning after the show! The band's other hits are seeing renewed interest as well. The downloads are expected to bring in quite a bit of cash to the remaining members of Badfinger.
The karma has been a long time coming. The group fell victim to an unscrupulous manager named Stan Polley who put their income in escrow and paid out a salary to each member. They saw very little of the money they earned. Things got so bad that singer/songwriter Pete Hamm committed suicide in 1975. And their situation didn't get better for a long time after that. Read the whole sordid story at Bloomberg Businessweek.
Listen to the song at Dangerous Minds.
You've heard the joke plenty of times. Person A says something totally innocuous, but person B gives it an entirely different slant by responding with, "That's what SHE said!" The joke is most likely too old for the actual origin to ever be found, but we may now have the earliest recording of it, or a reasonable facsimile that means the same thing. It was a young Alfred Hitchcock, helping actress Joan Barry Anny Ondra through a screen test with sound in 1929. "Talkies" were brand new, and the switch from silent films was not simple.
As production for Hitchcock’s early thriller Blackmail began, his studio, British International Pictures, decided to convert it. While all of Hitchcock’s classic film techniques made the transition easily, Czech actress Anny Ondra’s accent didn’t.
Enter Barry. A veteran of silent films in the Twenties, Berry had a bubbly, merry voice that made her attractive to Hitchcock as a vocal stand-in for Ondra. In an early sound test, which the British Film Institute (BFI) shared on YouTube four years ago, Barry confesses herself to be “terribly frightened,” while “Hitch” puts her at ease with a series of racy jokes.
And part of it was Hitchcock saying the line, “Stand in your place, otherwise it will not come out right—as the girl said to the soldier.” You can guarantee it wasn't the first time Hitchcock used that joke. It wouldn't have made it into any script of the era, but as a document on film, it's a classic. -via The Daily Dot
One of the bestsellers of 1538 was a book of woodcuts by Hans Holbein the Younger called The Dance of Death. Later editions were also popular (more illustrations were added), and at least six copies were actually bound in human skin. Two of those are now at the John Hay Library in Providence, Rhode Island.
The woodcuts portray Death as an entity in the form of a skeleton or a corpse. The theme is that death comes for us all, whether rich or poor, young or old, deserving or undeserving. Sometimes death is waiting in the wings; other images show him surprising the one he comes for.
If you'd like to see more, there are 27 illustrations from The Dance of Death at Atlas Obscura. It's part of their 31 Days of Halloween series.
Jen Cornwell made Halloween more fun for the whole class by donning some over-the-top costumes.
1986 and 1987 were good costume years for me. I enjoyed walking in our elementary school parades as a box of McDonald's fries and a California Raisin (I carried a boombox that played "I Heard It on the Grapevine"). My mom's awesome!
I think she means her mom made these costumes. She did an amazing job! The students must have loved these. Thanks, Jen!
If you remember the amazing Daft Hands video we posted six years ago, you can see where this new one is going. The Cube Dude "dances" the lyrics to Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" using a Rubik's cube! As in the earlier video, the skills this took become more evident as the song goes along. He swears there are no edits in the video, except for the "normal cube" intro he tagged on. -via Geeks Are Sexy
You often hear philosophy used as an example of a college major that will not land you a job. That's not been the case for Bennett Foddy, who studied philosophy through the postdoc level and considered it his profession. But success in other areas kept pulling him as well.
He had a chance to become a rock star when the band Cut Copy took him on as a bass player in 2003. But Foddy decided that wasn't the life he wanted.
Foddy designed video games as a hobby. He kept his hobby a secret, because "Philosophers, as a rule, don't play video games." That proved to be impossible after he designed his second game in 2008. That was QWOP, which became a viral hit. By 2010, he decided game design was the direction he wanted to go professionally. Now a professor at the Game Center at NYU, Foddy is teaching the next generation of video game designers.
The story of how Foddy found success in so many different lines of work makes a cool story at Polygon.
Scout at Scouting New York knows more about the geography of the city than anyone else I know, so when I saw he wrote The 10 Most Dangerous Places In New York City, my curiosity was piqued. Some of those places have horrible histories! This is just the beginning of the entry on The Bramford.
Considering the atrocities that have occurred at this building over the years, its nickname, the “Black Bramford,” is well-earned. Once home to the Trench sisters (two proper Victorian ladies who cooked and ate several young children, including a niece), later residents Pearl Ames and Keith Kennedy, with his obscene parties, continued to bring infamy to the place. In 1959, a dead infant was found wrapped in newspaper in the basement.
Another thing you should know, Scout makes a living as a location scout for movies and TV shows that are planning to film in New York City. Not only does he know a lot about city geography, he knows all there is to know about movies that are filmed there. -via Metafilter
Military Working Dog Chef H067 spent most of his life in the U.S. Armed Forces as an explosives detection dog. The Belgian Malinois served his country and is now retired to a forever home with YouTube member Louisa Vaughn. This video shows him meeting a kitten, something he'd never encountered before. Another video taken some time later shows him interacting with an even younger kitten. Chef has so many wonderful things to enjoy in civilian life! -via Viral Viral Videos
The Department of Defense Military Working Dog Center is always looking for potential homes for retired military dogs. If you'd like to give a veteran dog a home, find information and links at pet-zet.
The Twilight Zone premiered on TV in October of 1959, which means the early episodes are now 54 years old. The show was the brainchild of Rod Serling and set the standard for science fiction and horror stories to follow. The tales often had lessons in morality, and they served as a launching pad for many actors who went on to stardom.
When the show turned 50, we asked for your favorite episodes and got a lot of responses. Now Flavorwire has published a list of 10 of the Best Twilight Zone Episodes with a synopsis of each to refresh your memory. Which one is your favorite? the article made me want to watch them all again!
Fahrradhof Altlandsberg is a used bike shop in Altlandsberg, Germany. The building itself makes it clear what is to be found inside. The story goes that once when 40 trade-in bikes came in, the staff asked owner Peter Horstmann what to do with them, he said, "Hang 'em on the wall!" Which they did.
Now, Horstmann is Canadian. It occurs to me that he might possibly have meant to hang them on the inside walls of the store for display, but the German understanding of the phrase may have painted a different picture. In any case, the bikes went up outside. Over the years, the collection grew to 120 bikes on the outside of the building. See more pictures of the bike shop at When On Earth. -via the Presurfer
(Image credit: Flickr user zonenklaus)
The following is an article from Uncle John's Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader.
Because early peoples depended on rivers for survival, they were among the first geological features to receive official names. Many of the origins are so old, in fact, that they're lost to history. Here's what we do know.
MISSISSIPPI
(Image credit: Flickr user Prayitno)
Description: The U.S.'s second-longest river (after the Missouri) begins at Lake Itasca in Minnesota and travels 2,340 miles south, all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.
Origin: The name is believed to be a combination of two Indian words, although experts aren't sure which ones. It may have been the Ottawa mici ("great") and zibi ("river"), or the Algonquin misi ("father") and sipi ("water"). What is certain is that in 1666 French explorers in the Great Lakes region recorded it as Messippi. As they traveled south, that name supplanted all of the other names in use. In 1798 the U.S. Congress officially named the new territory after the Algonquin version, "Mississippi."
THAMES
(Image credit: Gabriel Villena)
Description: Pronounced "tems," it flows through several cities in southern England, notably London.
Origin: The first known reference comes from the Celtic Tamïssa, meaning "dark river." In Latin it became Tamesis and then in Middle English, Temese. The "h" was added during the Renaissance, possibly as an homage to the Thyamis River in Greece, but the pronunciation of the hard "T" remained.
NILE
A Japanese manufacturer is selling a kit from which you can make a gelatin/pudding dessert that looks like a shaking butt. For real.
The dessert is a tribute to the character of Shin Nohara on the Japanese manga series Crayon Shin-chan. The five-year-old Shin apparently shows his butt occasionally. I could not find any source to explain why a five-year-old would wear a red thong, so the tie-in with the character may be window dressing to make the product look respectable.
We can't say how it tastes, but you can watch a video of the process of making it at I New Idea. -via Everlasting Blort
Update: Robert Mungo has more insight into Shin-Chan in the comments.
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