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Some Russian online communities like to take on unusual challenges. Courtesy of English Russia.
posted by Lord_Pall at 11:29 PM PST - 30 comments

Polite Dance Song by The Bird And The Bee, directed by Eric Wareheim, co-creator of Tim and Eric Nite Live, Episode 5 and Mahanahan's Child Clown Outlet.
posted by slogger at 10:48 PM PST - 19 comments

Hitchcock on Hitchcock: Alfred Hitchcock reflects on his career in movies, discussing among other things, the origin of the term "MacGuffin", his creative process and what his earliest fear was.
posted by empath at 10:48 PM PST - 7 comments

Prior to his critically acclaimed program The Wire, creator Edward Burns wrote the HBO miniseries The Corner, which also focused on the drug trade in Baltimore. Charles S. Dutton, an African-American Baltimore native and former convict probably best known to most as TV's "Roc," was chosen to direct the miniseries. Who Gets To Tell a Black Story?, part of a Pulitzer-prize winning NYT series on race in America, examines Dutton's take on how to make a TV program which portrays a mostly African-American cast of characters, the struggles and differing perspectives of Dutton and Burns, and how race is portrayed in Hollywood. [more inside]
posted by whir at 10:02 PM PST - 24 comments

OPENhulu has copied many of the shows featured on hulu, the NBC/Fox joint internet television service that is still in closed beta. While it lasts, watch all of Firefly, the first seasons of Buffy and Arrested Development, and the second season of Heroes. There are also several recent episodes of The Office, Family Guy, House, 30 Rock, The Simpsons, and more, plus new shows from hulu's list will apparently soon be added. For bonus points, compare the original Battlestar Galactica to the new series, or just watch every darn first season A-Team episode.
posted by blahblahblah at 9:55 PM PST - 26 comments

Astronaut Candidate Program. "The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announces the opportunity to apply for the position of Astronaut Candidate to support the International Space Station (ISS) Program." [more inside]
posted by banshee at 9:11 PM PST - 25 comments

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Fish-Men. Brought to you by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society
posted by JHarris at 9:08 PM PST - 13 comments

Curious about what creepy crawlies your kids might be bringing home? Follow the real-time trends for all of the best respiratory and enteric (GI) viruses! [more inside]
posted by scblackman at 8:46 PM PST - 11 comments

Nestle claims that it now puts it's water in ecobottles. "But how much lighter is the bottle?" Fiji also claims a commitment to the environment, but it's still "Bottled in Fiji. Shipped to you". Couldn't we just drink from the tap? Previously.
posted by Airhen at 8:25 PM PST - 54 comments

How Many Five Year Olds Could You Take in a Fight? [cached via]
posted by Avenger50 at 6:44 PM PST - 87 comments

IGN traces the visual evolution of Batman’s iconic nemesis, the Joker, from his origin in print in 1940 to his newest transformation in Heath Ledger.
posted by inconsequentialist at 6:08 PM PST - 48 comments

The White Noise Supremacists: Lester Bangs on race, words, post-punk, and society. [more inside]
posted by koeselitz at 4:32 PM PST - 57 comments

New York No Wave Archive. "No Wave was a short-lived but influential music and art movement in downtown New York in the late 1970s and 1980s. The name was a reaction to the sanitized Punk Rock trading under the name 'New wave' for those people who wanted a sanitized version of punk." Also, outside of "No New York."
posted by Joey Michaels at 4:18 PM PST - 31 comments

The Losers Cover Gallery showcases the bold design sense and unique art style of UK comics artist Jock, who also produced much of the interior art for the VERTIGO series. Losely based on a WWII comic of the same name it became a fast paced action caper with a political edge under writer Andy Diggle, and the covers reflect both the themes and the cinematic style of the comic.
posted by Artw at 3:57 PM PST - 17 comments

It was 30 years ago today that Elvis Costello and the Attractions appeared on Saturday Night Live. They'd wanted to play Radio Radio but SNL said no as it was thought to be 'anti-media.' So they started playing Less Than Zero, but stopped eight seconds in and played Radio Radio anyway, which led to them being banned from SNL for 12 years. Tip o' the hat to the Post Punk Progressive Pop Party.
posted by carter at 3:07 PM PST - 85 comments

Forced to fight for other's amusement, it's a sad world for pandas. Either scuffling or denigrating themselves for food sources, are they approaching the downward slide of species extinction?
posted by Sparx at 2:43 PM PST - 15 comments

Francois Brunelle photographs look-alikes. Does everyone have a double?
posted by Soup at 2:39 PM PST - 48 comments

Interactive Features at the Children's Hospital Boston's Website. [Via Mind Hacks.]
posted by homunculus at 1:54 PM PST - 4 comments

Punk Guitar Heroes - Television's Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd Television, and its guitar pas de deux between Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd, fit into the punk scene only because they are the ones basically responsible for CBGB becoming a punk rock club. Verlaine convinced Hilly Kristal to let them practice there and play shows, and the rest is history. [more inside]
posted by psmealey at 1:27 PM PST - 32 comments

Jan Terri, an enigmatic outsider musician from Chicago, became a dubious celebrity in her own right after releasing a number of self-produced songs and accompanying videos on VHS in the 1990s. Among her "hits" were Losing You, Baby Blues, Get Down Goblin and the must-see Rock-'n'-Roll Santa (which has been covered by Yo La Tengo). Her music videos were so earnest and popular for their camp value that Marilyn Manson eventually enlisted her to sing at a birthday party of his and the Daily Show invited her on. However, she hasn't really been heard from since. Has Jan Terri given up her dream?
posted by Lillitatiana at 1:26 PM PST - 20 comments

Snowclones (as you may know) are "some-assembly-required adaptable cliché frames": for example, "X is the new Y," "He's a few Xs short of a Y," or "If Eskimos have N words for snow, X surely have Y words for Z." The Snowclones Database collects and traces the origins of lots of these.
posted by tepidmonkey at 1:12 PM PST - 28 comments

"It serves 125, takes eight hours to cook and is stuffed with 12 different birds..." [via Cynical-C]
posted by Chrysostom at 12:56 PM PST - 43 comments

Three AI researchers:
Hugo de Garis: Home - Wiki
Jürgen Schmidhuber: Home - Wiki
Marcus Hutter: Home - Wiki
posted by sushiwiththejury at 10:34 AM PST - 28 comments

Magic Highway U.S.A. Disney's May 1958 view of the future of transportation. Some recaps at 2719 Hyperion and Paleo-Future. [IMDB; via]
posted by kirkaracha at 10:20 AM PST - 28 comments

Resolver One looks and feels like an Excel clone, except that it stores all the data and formulas as a Python program. You can add more code, or export the whole thing. It's in public beta now, and the commercial release will be free for open source and personal projects.
posted by signal at 9:38 AM PST - 38 comments

The other day, I overheard someone marveling at this story: Impatient jack-ass in Starbucks drive-thru (no, not always synonymous) honks and shouts repeatedly at driver in front of him, a tai-chi master who decides to "change the consciousness" of the jerk by paying for his coffee. The jerk is so moved, that he pays for the coffee of the person behind him, and this "chain of kindness" winds up lasting all day, with everyone paying for the drink behind him. Nice story, right? How odd that the same thing (minus the Jewish zen-master) ccurred almost simultaneously in another part of the country. In this version, the "cheer chain," as the Starbucks employee calls it, was a near-perfect (except for this guy) example of holiday cheer. I guess pre-caffeinated Starbucks customers must possess a surprisingly high amount of holiday spirit. Or maybe it's just the red cups.
posted by ericbop at 7:34 AM PST - 207 comments

MetaFilter: A small city in Albania? This is, to be perfectly clear, a link to a site designed primarily with the intent of getting people to link to it.
posted by Wolfdog at 7:04 AM PST - 41 comments

net.art generator [via William Gibson] The art is created through a Google image search and some automatic image manipulation. For examples, go here.
posted by Kattullus at 6:57 AM PST - 21 comments

He was born in 1980, during a risqué Groundlings show. After cameo roles (NSFW/language) in two Cheech & Chong movies, he earned his own HBO special. Four years later, Pee Wee Herman made his first feature film. Love him or hate him, his tv show won 22 Emmys... it seemed he was the luckiest boy in the world. Until one fateful day. Since then he's kept busy, and has regularly started and then nixed rumors of the bow tie's return. Recently he's changed his mind though, and in June a middle-aged Pee Wee made a surprise appearance after 15 years. Now he's promising two upcoming Pee Wee films... but will Johnny Depp take over his giant underpants? [more inside]
posted by miss lynnster at 1:39 AM PST - 105 comments