Whether you are able to even see the total solar eclipse next week will be a matter of preparedness. Where are you going to go? How will you get there? Do you have your eclipse goggles yet? If you want to take pictures of the event, you'll need to prepare ahead of time for that, too. You won't have more than a couple of minutes to shoot during the totality. 

To take images as the Sun is being eclipsed, you’ll need to use a special solar filter to protect your camera, just as you’ll need a pair of eclipse glasses to protect your own eyes. However, at totality, when the Moon completely blocks the Sun, make sure to remove the filter so you can see the Sun’s outer atmosphere — the corona.

Having a few other pieces of equipment can also come in handy during the eclipse. Using a tripod can help you stabilize the camera and avoid taking blurry images during the low lighting. Additionally, using a delayed shutter release timer will allow you to snap shots without jiggling the camera.

Mara Johnson-Groh of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has some instructions for getting the best solar eclipse photos, but don't wait until the last minute to read them. -Thanks, WTM!

We got a lesson in how to peel a banana in the recent video on Victorian Banana Candy. But there are other methods you can try, as published in the Newton Record of Newton, Mississippi, on February 8, 1940. They might not work quite as well. This clipping was found at Yesterday's Print. -via Pallas Athena

Top actors have a way of becoming their characters that allows us to forget they are movie stars for a little while. How they inhabit someone else's skin can be a real wonder, at least to those of us who will never have that skill. Each actor has their own way of preparing for a role, and sometimes they end up preparing in a way you'd never guess in a million years. Take, for instance, Tom Cruise in the 2004 film Collateral.

You might not remember this film but that’s okay because it really kind of flew under the radar for the most part. To prepare for the part of the unknown assassin though Tom Cruise actually delivered for the UPS for a short while to get the feel of being able to get into and get out of a place without being recognized. That was the whole point of the movie to be quite honest, to go unnoticed until it was too late.

Read about how four other stars got into character for a movie role at TVOM. 

Okay, to be technical, the carrot found a lost diamond engagement ring in the garden, and decided to wear it. Mary Grams of Camrose, Alberta, lost it while working in her garden in 2004.

"We looked high and low on our hands and knees," she said. "We couldn't find it. I thought for sure either they rototilled it or something happened to it."

She has had the ring since 1951, a year before she married her husband, Norman. After it was lost she quickly replaced it.

"I didn't tell him, even, because I thought for sure he'd give me heck or something," she said.

In 2017, her daughter-in-law pulled up a carrot that was wearing the ring.



Read the story of the carrot and the ring at CBC News. -via Peter Lindelauf

PS: It's not the first time this has happened.

The Scottish band Belle and Sebastian had a concert scheduled in St. Paul, Minnesota, last night. It almost didn't happen. They had performed in Missoula, Montana, on Sunday, and were traveling by bus. They stopped at a Walmart in Dickinson, North Dakota, Monday night to get some water, and their drummer Richard Colburn took the opportunity to use the restroom. The bus left, everyone went to sleep, and Colburn was left behind, without his phone.

Shit, we left Richard in North Dakota. Anyone want to be a hero and get him to St Paul, Minnesota somehow. The gig hangs in the balance..

— stuart murdoch (@nee_massey) August 15, 2017

In an radio interview Tuesday morning, singer Stuart Murdoch told the story.  

STUART MURDOCH: It's been a morning. It feels like a whole day that we've had already.

MARY: Just give us the little synopsis version of what went down.

STUART: Well, when I woke up a few hours ago, we realized we left our drummer in North Dakota.

MARY: Yeah, that happens.

STUART: What happens, or what?

MARY: That's just one way to get rid of a drummer, I'm thinking.

A flurry of phone calls Tuesday resulted in a volunteer fetching Colburn and delivering him to the Bismarck airport, and he made it to St. Paul in time for the show. -via Metafilter  

(Image credit: Karl af Geijerstam)

Check out this couch monster! Someone's playing with their dog under a blanket. But wait -that's not a dog! What kind of critter is this?

(YouTube link)

It's Loki, the red fox! He loves playing games with his humans. -via Tastefully Offensive

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.

Alan Hale MacKahan was born on March 8, 1921 in Los Angeles, California. He was the son of two actors. Alan's father, Alan Hale, had been a legendary journeyman supporting actor in over 200 films, both silent and talkies. His mother, Gretchen Hartman, was also a screen actress. Under the name Grace Barrett, she was a silent film actress in the 1920s. Alan thus grew up around show business personalities (he was a classmate of Mickey Rooney and the two remained lifelong close friends).

Alan caught "the bug" early and started acting at the age of 10. Alan made his Broadway debut in Caught Wet in 1931 (the show ran for less than two months). He was to appear in five or six more plays in his checkered career, before devoting himself full-time to films and later, television. His film debut came in 1933 in Wild Boys of the Road, where he was billed, but was edited out of the film's final release.

After being educated and graduating from Blacke-Fox Military Academy, Alan soon began a steady career as the classic "working actor" in motion pictures. Alan appeared in scores of other films before world war ii, including Dive Bomber (1941) with Errol Flynn, Time Out for Rhythm (1941) with Rudy Vallee and The Shores of Tripoli (1942) with Harry Morgan.

It was probably during this period that Alan, to supplement his income, also found work as a vacuum cleaner salesman. While it is known that Alan did sell vacuums, no specific dates for this alternate employment are given.

In 1943, Alan married Bettina Doerr, who was to have four children with him- Brian, Chris, Lana and Dorian. Alan and Bettina were to be married for 20 years, until 1963. During World War II, Alan enlisted and served in the U.S. Coast Guard. After the war, in 1946, Alan signed a contract with Monogram Studios, Hollywood's "bargain basement" studio, where he proceeded to churn out dozens of films.

This lecturer must have a PhD in "completely missing the point." She assumes that the only reason a child could resist a marshmallow is because they don't like marshmallows. It's an even greater leap away from logic to assume that the dislike of marshmallows has any link to superior intelligence. Or she's just into conspiracy theories.

The Stanford marshmallow experiment tested children's ability to delay gratification in exchange for a larger reward. Those who were able to control their temptation later had better SAT scores, educational achievement, and were healthier than those who succumbed to the lure of immediate gratification.

This is the latest comic from Zach Weinersmith at Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

A movie that's barely off theater screens gets the Honest Trailer treatment. Guardians of the Galaxy 2 never quite lived up to the original, but we rarely expect a sequel to recreate the magic of the first movie. We keep hoping, though. Oh, yeah, this contains spoilers.

(YouTube link)

Oh yeah, there's plenty of action, and comedy, or at least an attempt at comedy. And plenty of hints at what will be in stores in the Christmas toy aisles, despite the fact that the movie was totally inappropriate for children. 

An article earlier this summer hinted that the defining factor in the development of Texas chili is chili powder, but the ingredient that makes chili a Tex-Mex dish is cumin, a spice imported from the Old World. Chili con carne is the crowning achievement of San Antonio cuisine. Most historians date its origin to 1880, with the rise of the "chili queens" that sold the dish to the public in outdoor stands. But that date is an function of the name chili con carne existing in published sources. A stew of meat and chili peppers had been around long before that. So how do you define chili con carne in order to find its origin? An article at Texas Monthly gives some of the conflicting origin stories, including one that goes back as far as an uprising in 1813. It was another in the long line of wars fought over Texas.

Most of that, save for the two post-San Jacinto Mexican incursions, is well known. Far fewer people remember the troubles of 1811 and 1813, even though the latter of those conflicts featured the bloodiest battle ever fought on Texas soil, and, according to San Antonio tradition, produced the first Chili Queen.  

Were it not for the fact that the (partially) American side lost in ignominious fashion, movies would have been made about the Gutierrez-Magee Expedition of 1812 to 1813.

Encouraged by the near-success of the 1811 Casas Revolt in San Antonio, and with covert support from Washington, D.C., Spanish Texan revolutionaries traveled to Louisiana and enlisted Anglo and Louisiana Creole soldiers of fortune in a joint “Republican Army of the North” to sever Texas from Madrid for good. (The Spanish and Anglo contingents had different plans—the former wanted Texas as part of a free Mexico, while the latter preferred annexation to the U.S., or perhaps an independent republic as envisioned by Aaron Burr. It seems both sides agreed to set that matter aside until they had seized Texas.)

And from there is born a love story, when a wealthy young Louisiana Creole fell for a teenager from a prominent San Antonio family. Read that story and how Jesusita de la Torre became the first of the "chili queens" at Texas Monthly. -Thanks, Tim!

A bathroom is a wonderful thing to have in your home. You must admit they are very useful. But normal people don't spend a lot of time hanging around in them. Bathrooms are small, full of hard surfaces, and sometimes very humid. It's different in the movies and on TV. It's possible you've noticed some Hollywood tropes about bathrooms, or maybe they've never crossed your mind. If that's the case, you'll be surprised by the many times the same weird thing goes on in a bathroom across different fictional worlds.

The only reason you should ever be fully clothed in a bathtub with other people is if you've been murdered or you're training your Olympic bobsled team, yet for some reason it tends to happen in movies quite a bit. Characters love to sit fully clothed together in a bathtub and bond as they talk about their lives, hopes, dreams, and how they don't even own enough towels to get them dry now.

That's followed by an unreasonable number of examples. (However, if you are in the path of a tornado and don't have a basement, it is recommended that you get into the tub fully clothed.) Other weird bathroom events concern testing a shower's temperature, rinsing one's teeth after brushing, and more odd things that only happen in the bathrooms of Hollywood, at Cracked.

My town is undergoing the wettest August in memory, or at least since I began growing a garden. Too many days I've skipped my morning walk, because it takes some special circumstances to be happy while getting soaked. Movies are great for illustrating special circumstances, though. If you've forgotten how joyous a rainfall can be, check out video clips from five movies that will remind you at TVOM. They will leave you in a better mood all around.

PS, looking at the bright side, this is another day I won't be mowing the lawn.

Google search term statistics are good for detecting trends. Sometimes they can be a harbinger of disaster. If the predictions are correct, there is the possibility for traffic gridlock all across the United States. Due to her summer job schedule, my daughter is moving to her new college on August 21 instead of move-in day this week. At first I was quite disappointed, as the path of totality is only a couple of hours away from me in normal traffic, but now I see that decision as a blessing in disguise. This is the latest comic from Randall Munroe at xkcd. Go to the comic page to see the hover text.      

Take a trip through Muscle Beach at sunrise with the world's smallest drone. Robert McIntosh brings us an amazing continuous shot that draws you in as it zooms out.

(vimeo link)

While watching this, I bet you started to wonder how he did this. It becomes clear when you watch the raw video that was taken that morning.

(vimeo link)

That was before it was reversed and stabilized with ReelSteady for Adobe After Effects. But in some ways, the raw video is more impressive. I especially liked the part where the drone approached Jim Morrison. -via reddit

The two Voyager probes have been traveling through space for 40 years. Voyager 2 launched on August 20, 1977, and is now over ten billion miles from Earth, yet it is still sending signals back. When we try to picture the space probe leaving the solar system, we imagine the models we used in school that showed us where the planets are in relation to the Earth. But those models were not made to scale, because that wouldn't be practical -they wouldn't fit in a classroom. To give us a more realistic idea of what that distance really looks like, Vox set up their own scale model and made a video.

(YouTube link)

So, Voyager 2 was barely started on its journey when it passed Pluto. And it's just now leaving the heliosphere. Cosmic. -via Digg