Kevin Church found many of the various ways the original Star Wars trilogy was advertised in far-flung countries of the world. Above is a rather inexplicable Star Wars poster from Russia.
The three posters for Japan were illustrated by Noriyoshi Ohrai.
The three gorgeous posters for Hungary were illustrated by Tibor Helényi. Also see the posters for Poland in the Twitter thread. -via Boing Boing
The 1984 film The Natural starred Robert Redford as a talented baseball player working against a corrupt team owner. That's a major simplification of the complicated plot that resulted in a totally satisfying sports film. And Redford looked really good in it. But the story that inspired the book and then the film was insane.
1. The movie was inspired by a real story
In 1949 a woman who was stalking one of the baseball players in Chicago, actually shot a player with a gun. This inspired Bernard Malamud to write a book about it in 1952. The book and the story served as the inspirations behind the 1984 film “The Natural.”
2. The woman who committed the crime disappeared
For many years, the woman who committed the crime of shooting the ball player seemed to disappear off the radar. The incident seemed to be forgotten until somebody noticed that her obituary appeared in a Chicago Tribune Newspaper. Ruth Ann Steinhagen passed away at the age of 83.
Although it is formatted as a numbered trivia list, this is really the story of the crime that inspired The Natural. Read the rest of it at TVOM.
At first glance, you'd think that these dogs recognize one of their own kind. Boy, will they be disappointed when he takes that mask off!
But no, in this video from Sakon Nakhon, Thailand, the pack of dogs recognizes the man underneath. It's their owner, and they are giving him their customary enthusiastic greeting as he returns home from work. It's very possible, though, that they appreciate his attempts at fitting in with them. -via Tastefully Offensive
Jenn, who has more than 8k followers on Twitter, asked people to "Please show me pictures of weird stuff in your parents house." She followed up with "I want to see the seashells in the bathrooms people". To be honest, seashells in the bathroom is not all that odd for older folks, just an outdated decor style. But soon, submissions got really weird, like Karen Cravens Karen's pictures of a guest bathroom above. Oh, we saw a lot of seashells, and quite a few bizarre collections on display. Like this set of animal traps from The Blogess.
Dozens of antique animal traps. For decoration. pic.twitter.com/0UCcrqZRCF
— TheBloggess (@TheBloggess) November 24, 2017
This one has a story behind it.
Aunt Matilda. pic.twitter.com/XthxnMLB9z
— Tate (@_GLITTEROUS_) November 24, 2017
Her body was donated to a medical school in the late 1800's early 1900's. Through our friends at the Lemp Mansion we've obtained her.
There are more replies being added to the thread, so check them all out at Twitter. -via Metafilter
OK Go has a new song. For this group, the song itself is pretty much an extraneous detail, just a reason to put together an innovative video that will make people say, "How'd they do that?" The gimmick of this one is printers, which they use for intricately-programmed background choreography. The video comes with a warning for those susceptible to seizures due to flashing lights, and a recommendation to watch it in high definition.
Watch this, and think about all the trouble you've have with printers in your life. It's a miracle the paper feeds worked as well as they did. Oh, yeah, the name of the song is "Obsession." It's a pretty good song, but like their other songs, overwhelmed by the visuals. -via reddit
See more of OK Go's awesome videos.
In this holiday cartoon from Simon Tofield, the cat and the kitten double-team Simon when he's merely trying to enjoy his Thanksgiving meal. They've adapted the methods of a gang of common street thieves: distract the target and swipe the goods.
You might think it sad that he's eating alone with just his cats, but this one is not based on a real Thanksgiving meal- Tofield is British, after all. That doesn't mean he can't make a treat for his American fans. But an aromatic savory bird is attractive to cats all over the world. I hope he cooked enough for all of them!
Crew members Danielle and Graeme of the Queensland Ambulance Service in Australia reported a detour they took on the way to deliver a patient to hospice care. From the Facebook post:
A crew were transporting a patient to the palliative care unit of the local Hospital and the patient expressed that she just wished she could be at the beach again.Above and beyond,the crew took a small diversion to the awesome beach at Hervey Bay to give the patient this opportunity – tears were shed and the patient felt very happy.
Sometimes it is not the drugs/training/skills – sometimes all you need is empathy to make a difference!
It's not the first time the ambulance service has granted a last wish. The top-rated comment underneath from Darren Booker is also worth sharing.
Years ago a fellow crew member and I had a situation where the patient was taking her last ride home. She asked to see the beach one last time. After going tthe beach and opening the rear door, we asked her if would like an ice cream, to which she replied yes with a giggle of delight. A short time later the hardly licked ice cream fell to the floor. The patient had passed away. As she lay there still smiling at the last view that she ever saw, we had a minutes silence for her. Although the memory is an old one, it is still vivid. Great work by this crew, well done guys and girls.
-via Buzzfeed
(Image credit: Queensland Ambulance Service)
The Thanksgiving episode of The Dick Cavett Show in 1971 featured Jim Henson and his Muppets through the whole show. This clip has Cavett's monologue, some ads from 1971, a musical number, and an interview with Henson at nine minutes in.
You can watch the entire special at Laughing Squid.
The name of the video is The Poop in My Pants, but don't let that preventing you from watching, it's SFW. The Rick and Morty character Mr. Poopybutthole is going over the events in his life and all the things he has to be thankful for.
You don't have to be a Rick and Morty fan, or even watch the show at all, to find this video from Adult Swim charming. However, if you do watch it, you'll see a lot of references to season three of the show. -via Uproxx
The Disaster Artist is a movie opening December 1, based on a book about the experience of making a very bad movie. Tom Wiseau's opus The Room premiered in 2003 and proved to be so poorly made that a film buff (Michael Rousselet) made all his friends go see it. Word spread, and eventually it became a phenomena in the vein of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. A writer (Tom Bissell) was fascinated and convinced Harper's Magazine to let him write an article on The Room. Meanwhile, Greg Sestero, who played Mark (Oh, hi Mark) in the film, was considering writing a book, and teamed up with Bissell. Also meanwhile, Simon & Schuster, whose vice-president was a fan of The Room, was trying to get a book deal with Tommy Wiseau. That didn't work out, but Sestero's book, The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside ‘The Room,’ the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made, did.
Three weeks after his book came out, Sestero remembered, Bernstein called to tell him that Franco and Seth Rogen were interested in turning The Disaster Artist into a movie. “My mind was blown,” Sestero said. After all, even before the memoir was written, he’d told Bissell that he wanted it to become a film in the vein of Ed Wood.
Sestero and Wiseau soon joined Franco on a conference call. Sestero recalled Wiseau asking Franco, “What is your vision?” Wiseau also emphatically suggested that he should be played by Johnny Depp. When an amused Franco softly shot him down by explaining that Depp was one of the biggest actors in the world, Wiseau responded with this: “So what? You will try even harder.”
But Franco wanted the role. He is also the producer and director of The Disaster Artist. Read the fascinating story of how a series of improbable events coalesced to produce The Disaster Artist, told by those who lived the story, at The Ringer. -via Digg
There are few feature films specifically about Thanksgiving, the best of which is the 1987 film Planes, Trains and Automobiles. It stars Steve Martin as a businessman trying to get home for the holiday and John Candy as the goof trying to help him. Meanwhile, everything about their trip goes wrong. It was sort of based on a true story.
1. JOHN HUGHES ONCE HAD A HELLISH TRIP TRYING TO GET FROM NEW YORK CITY TO CHICAGO.
Before he became a screenwriter, Hughes used to work as a copywriter for the Leo Burnett advertising agency in Chicago. One day he had an 11 a.m. presentation scheduled in New York City on a Wednesday, and planned to return home on a 5 p.m. flight. Winter winds forced all flights to Chicago to be canceled that night, so he stayed in a hotel. A snowstorm in Chicago the next day continued the delays. The plane he eventually got on ended up being diverted to Denver. Then Phoenix. Hughes didn’t make it back until Monday. Experiencing such a hellish trip might explain how Hughes managed to write the first 60 pages of Planes, Trains and Automobiles in just six hours.
6. IT WAS ALL MEANT TO BE SHOT IN CHICAGO, BUT THERE WASN’T ENOUGH SNOW.
Some exterior scenes were filmed in Buffalo, New York. Martin said that the cast and crew pretty much lived the plot of the movie. “As we would shoot, we were hopping planes, trains, and automobiles, trying to find snow.”
There's plenty more to learn about the movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles at Mental Floss.
The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research, now in all-pdf form. Get a subscription now for only $25 a year!
Cat- and dog-centric research
compiled by Leslie Muchmore, Improbable Research staff
(Image credit: Claudio Matsuoka)
Cats and a String
“Domestic Cats (Felis catus) Do Not Show Causal Understanding in a String-Pulling Task,” Emma Whitt, Marie Douglas, Britta Osthaus, and Ian Hocking, Animal Cognition, vol. 12, no. 5, September 2009, pp. 739-743. The authors, at the University of Nottingham, UK, report:
This study explored how domestic cats perform in a horizontal string-pulling task to determine whether they understand this case of physical causality. Fifteen cats were tested on their ability to retrieve an unreachable food treat in three different set-ups: (a) a single baited string, (b) two parallel strings where only one was baited and (c) two crossed strings where only one was baited. All cats succeeded at pulling a single string to obtain a treat, but none consistently chose the correct string when two strings were parallel. When tested with two crossed strings one cat chose the wrong string consistently and all others performed at chance level. There was no evidence that cats understand the function of the strings or their physical causality.
Classify Dogs’ Facial Expressions from Photographs
“Classifying Dogs’ (Canis familiaris) Facial Expressions from Photographs,” Tina Bloom and Harris Friedman, Behavioural Processes, vol. 96, 2013, pp. 1-10. The authors, at the State Correctional Institute, Marienville, Pennsylvania and Walden University, Florida, report:
Have you ever seen a paper balloon? The Japanese toy called kamifusen has been around for over 100 years. Japanese mathematician Tadashi Tokieda blows one up, but that's not the only way you can make your kamifusen round. The other way is surprising.
Rocket scientist Ichiro Fukumori wrote about the properties of kamifusen.
Part of the kamifusen’s genius is the paper from which it is made. The paper is not only lightweight and relatively impermeable to air, but it also has a degree of plasticity that allows it to deform easily and retain its resulting shape. Because of those properties, the kamifusen inflates to a volume commensurate with its air content and maintains that volume until additional air is added. As a result, a squashed kamifusen can accumulate air and eventually inflate to its full size from repeated bouncing, even though the net pumping from a single bounce may be small. A balloon made of plastic, rubber, or any other material that does not share the key properties of kamifusen paper would not inflate as the Japanese balloon does.
Well, actually… you're going to think about this comic the next time that friend of yours has to get all pedantic and dissect the fine points of your everyday language. "Fire-breathing dragon" is what we've called that fictional beast for as long as anyone knows. Correcting such a common term is annoying in the best of times, but when there's a life-and-death situation going on, he shouldn't act so pleased with himself. That's as good a time for karma as any other. This comic is from Chris Hallbeck at Maximumble.
Food items you buy at the grocery store have dates on them, but that does not mean that the food expires on that date. What the date really does mean can vary depending on the food, the state, and exactly how it's worded. Stores use sell-by dates so they can make sure they're rotating their stock properly -to sell the oldest stuff first so nothing is wasted. Speaking of waste, you may be wasting food if you are convinced it goes bad by the date on the package.
Adam Conover of Adam Ruins Everything has the lowdown on how expiration dates work in the real world. And spoiled milk, which is a little icky. -via Tastefully Offensive
