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Fox steals cell phone. Fox sends texts with stolen cell phone. Cuteness ensues. [Cached version] [more inside]
posted by gingerbeer at 10:21 PM PST - 45 comments

Offenses attack; defenses react. This is a truism, but it's a truism on which almost all sports strategy is built. In the NFL today, no tactic more pressingly requires a swift, strong reaction than the so-called "read-option." Defending the Read-Option sends coaches back to college. If the read-option is dead, the next great offensive strategy may also be one of the oldest, it was good enough to beat Sean Payton and a bevy of NFL coaches.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 8:46 PM PST - 57 comments

The annual World Bodypainting Festival is now over, but that means there are a ton of new images online, with galleries for each of the award categories, including brush/sponge bodypainting, airbrush bodypainting, special effects bodypainting, and facepainting. (Note: painted [mostly] naked bodies; previously, a decade ago)
posted by filthy light thief at 8:42 PM PST - 10 comments

What Canadian bears do when no one is looking
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 8:14 PM PST - 50 comments

Mark Knopfler takes his former Dire Straits band mate John Illsley on a journey to discover the six guitars that defined his sound and music. [SLYT 44min]. An excellent documentary from SkyARTS.
posted by Long Way To Go at 7:26 PM PST - 14 comments

The Old Reader is back up again (scroll down for updates), after several days of being down when the servers crashed. But many users are not happy and some are bailing.
posted by anothermug at 5:49 PM PST - 120 comments

2001: A Space Odyssey - Discerning Themes through Score and Imagery: As Ligeti's music ends, the first image we see is a celestial alignment of the sun the earth and the moon as Richard Strauss' exhilarating Also Sprach Zarathustra begins. It's critical to note that Thus Spoke Zarathustra is also a novel by Friedrich Nietzsche. This musical choice thus signals that the film deals with the same central issues in this book. [via]

[more inside]
posted by troll at 4:31 PM PST - 18 comments

One of the last remaining copies of Schindler's List has been posted for sale on Ebay, with a starting bid of $3,000,000 USD. [more inside]
posted by Strange Interlude at 2:56 PM PST - 50 comments

Gary Bolton has been found guilty of selling fake bomb detectors to countries including Iraq. In May James McCormick was sentenced for 10 years for committing a similar fraud (previously, previously, previously). The original fraud is now 20 years old.
posted by dogsbody at 2:29 PM PST - 29 comments

With a Super 8 camera and a keen eye, young “Deek” Deekma documented himself, his brother and their neighbouring friends in the summer of 1971 as they created new forms of raw stunts daily. Using 8ft toboggans fitted with rollerskate wheels they sledded and surfed the rolling pastures of their family farms. Other inventions include a flying squirrel suit, a fleet of unusual home made bicycles and the ‘road ski’.

posted by edgeways at 2:15 PM PST - 16 comments

'Life on Moss' is a short nature film, filmed from noon till sunrise. [SLV, Via]
posted by homunculus at 1:50 PM PST - 8 comments

Poet Kenneth Goldsmith writes in praise of dumb art.
posted by chrchr at 1:44 PM PST - 40 comments

Boris Johnson unveils a giant blue cock in Trafalgar Square, causing an outbreak of terrible puns. Hahn/Cock is the work of Katharina Fritsch, better known for her Rat-King sculpture. The colour is (probably) an homage to (NSFW) Yves Klein's favourite colour.
posted by elgilito at 11:33 AM PST - 44 comments

Starting on September 22 last year, Professor Robert Fuller of the University of North Georgia spent four months paddling down the Chattahoochee River system, from the Chattahoochee's headwaters in northern Georgia down through the Apalachicola into the Gulf of Mexico, studying water quality along the way. Then he paddled 200 miles through the Gulf, turned at the mouth of the Mobile River, and paddled another 750 miles upstream on the Mobile, Alabama, Coosa, and Etowah Rivers all the way back to northern Georgia—a total of just over 1,500 miles of solo paddling in his Kruger Sea Wind. Along the way, he kept a blog, "ate a lot of Beanie Weenies", and faced difficulties including cold, hunger, injuries, and river obstructions. Incidentally, he did all this while living with leukemia. [more inside]
posted by Orinda at 11:30 AM PST - 10 comments

Swedish farmer drops a turbo into his tractor.
posted by vansly at 9:29 AM PST - 52 comments

Bankrupt By Beanies - A short documentary about what happened to people after the "Beanie Babies as investments" fad wore down. (YouTube, 8:30)
posted by The Whelk at 9:18 AM PST - 170 comments

Sadly true, at 74. (JJ Cale previously, and Wikipedia.) Otherwise best to just let the man and his guitar speak for themselves via classic albums such as Troubadour, Grasshopper, Naturally, Okie and Shades.
posted by Pouteria at 8:50 AM PST - 56 comments

Every movie reference in "The Simpsons": Seasons 1-5
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 6:21 AM PST - 27 comments

"Beijing-based music critic Wang Xiaofeng says that when he heard Lao Qiang for the first time about 18 years ago, it reminded him of heavy metal: very physical and somewhat operatic."
posted by deathpanels at 6:00 AM PST - 6 comments

The Food Bank for New York City is the country’s largest anti-hunger charity, feeding about 1.5 million people every year. It leans heavily, as other charities do, on the generosity of businesses, including Target, Bank of America, Delta Air Lines and the New York Yankees. Toyota was also a donor. But then Toyota had a different idea. Instead of a check, it offered kaizen.
posted by destrius at 1:54 AM PST - 69 comments