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"Have I taken things from it for my films? I wish! They don't make 'em like that any more. I would love to, but I don't think people would buy that kind of 50s melodrama. There are sequences that are intimate, one-room scenes, but then there are beautiful crescendos, like the one at the end - he can deliver that too. Minnelli's sensibilities were perfect for it - the sensitivity and the bravado. It hits all the notes." Richard Linklater talks about Vincente Minnelli's great widescreen Technicolor melodrama Some Came Running in The Observer's "The film that changed my life" column. An often overlooked film, especially in the Frank Sinatra/Dean Martin "canon."
posted by saltykmurks at 11:03 PM PST - 14 comments

"When we found out Bobby Jay was gay, we was terrified we'd lose our beautiful home." Because having a gay child can be very expensive.
posted by hippybear at 10:59 PM PST - 82 comments

New York Magazine has crunched the numbers, Park Slope has taken the title of most livable neighborhood of New York. [more inside]
posted by minkll at 10:46 PM PST - 84 comments

A Heavy's 2fort Adventure. A Team Fortress 2 Choose-your-own-adventure SLYT thing.
posted by juv3nal at 9:18 PM PST - 13 comments

Sarantos Studios acting demo tapes...261 of them. (via Dangerous Minds)
posted by madamjujujive at 7:29 PM PST - 35 comments

MAPfrappe - a simple Google Maps mashup that lets you compare landmark sizes by outlining a part of the world and overlaying it on another. Iraq vs. Texas; Greenland vs. India; Tiananmen Square vs. Red Square; Devils Tower vs. White House.
posted by Paragon at 7:06 PM PST - 38 comments

"Seventy two specimens of castes in India". This illustrated manuscript made in southern India in 1837 consists of 72 full-colour hand-painted images of men and women of the various castes and religious and ethnic groups found in Madura, India at that time. Search or browse (recommended) all the images, in very good resolution, from Yale's Beinecke Library. [more inside]
posted by Rumple at 6:35 PM PST - 14 comments

In a 1999 grade school performance of The Wiz, eleven year-old Jazmine Sullivan (whose 2008 hit song "Bust Your Windows" was memorably featured on Glee) sent her classmates over the rainbow.
posted by hermitosis at 6:14 PM PST - 32 comments

Yahoo is releasing a new service: Firehose, a real-time, searchable index of social content aggregated from around the web. Accessible via YQL, Yahoo’s SQL-like query language, the Firehose will gather data from status updates, user ratings and reviews, comment threads, Google Buzz, Flickr, Delicious, Twitter, YouTube, Last.fm and a range of other sites and apps. [via] [more inside]
posted by netbros at 5:16 PM PST - 34 comments

'New employees at World Relief have to prove they are Christians'.. 'They sign a statement of Christian faith and must get a letter of recommendation from their minister before being hired. At most workplaces, that would be illegal. But religious nonprofits, even those that get government grants, get special exemptions. They can hire and fire employees based on their religion or sexual orientation — something other employers can't do.' 'Nationwide, World Relief receives about two-thirds of its $50 million budget from state and federal governments.' Those 'who disagree with the exemptions had hoped President Barack Obama would support the cause. In 2008, as a candidate, Obama promised to overturn the Bush rules.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 3:49 PM PST - 106 comments

“Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are God killers." And also, according to an Italian bishop, the culprits behind the Catholic Church's sex scandals. [more inside]
posted by LittleMissCranky at 3:32 PM PST - 267 comments

The Jónsi and Alex (Recipe) Show: join Jónsi Birgisson (frontman of Sigur Rós), Alex Somers and their very loud blender to make raw food recipes. They made three videos from their Good Heart recipe book, for Macadamia Monster Mash, Raw Strawberry Pie, and Nammi Nammi. If coconut, almonds, dates and agave (heavily featured in their three recipes) aren't your thing, enjoy a couple dreamy videos from the couple's album Riceboy Sleeps: All the Big Trees and Daníell in the Sea. See also: Sometimes I Get Scared (a distortion-heavy non-album track), and Jónsi and Alex talk about their album, with parts of the tracks in the background. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 2:12 PM PST - 8 comments

The Pulitzer Prize winners have been announced. The Pulitzer Prizes have been awarded since 1917, "honoring excellence in journalism and the arts". This year's Prizes are no different, going to a variety of journalistic and artistic endeavours which have stood out for their excellence in the past year. The New York Times summarises the winners. [more inside]
posted by WalterMitty at 1:11 PM PST - 63 comments

Opened yesterday, the Philadelphia Zoo's Lego-made exhibit, called ''Creatures of Habitat: A Gazillion-Piece Animal Adventure," features the work of world-renowned Lego artist Sean Kenney. According to Kenney, the 34 animals he created for the zoo took him over one year to complete--the largest project he's undertaken. Included in the exhibit are sculptures of endangered birds, frogs, tamarins, and a polar bear made with 95,000 Lego pieces.
posted by alynnk at 1:03 PM PST - 6 comments

Often ignored when critics talk about the history of electronic dance music - "booty music" has long played an important role. Raw, bass-heavy, hyper-sexualized, its the exact opposite of the androgynous, slick techno and house that gets most of the attention. (all links NSFW, probably) [more inside]
posted by empath at 1:00 PM PST - 52 comments

The Story He Was Offered $16,000 Not to Tell: A young quant, fresh from MIT, joins the world of international business consulting, is duly scandalized, and returns from the mountaintop to tell of the terrors beheld. Via Reddit.
posted by darth_tedious at 12:46 PM PST - 95 comments

Super Furry Animals live at the Highline Ballroom, NYC, 9.11.2009. (Previously)
posted by Crane Shot at 12:32 PM PST - 10 comments

"'Fucking huge,' said McLaren. He told us what sort of a film he had in mind. His ideas didn't involve a plot or a story line. As I recall, his only concern was that it star the Sex Pistols. Russ proposed 'Beyond the Valley of the Dolls' meets 'A Hard Day's Night.'" Roger Ebert reflects on the Sex Pistols film that never came to be, "I wrote one scene which I particularly liked, involving Johnny Rotten encountering a storefront Church of Scientography, and being persuaded to be "clocked" on something called an H-Meter. This was a device hooked to a steering wheel and an accelerator, which somehow..."
posted by geoff. at 11:41 AM PST - 25 comments

Disabled traveler Rachel D. took a harrowing flight with United recently. Despite their stated policy, she was told repeatedly that "It's not in our contract to assist passengers with their luggage and we reserve the right to refuse assistance to anyone." This is not the first time United has had a problem with disabled people. (For reference, the federal Air Carrier Access Act that prohibits discrimination towards disabled passencers.)
posted by restless_nomad at 11:35 AM PST - 103 comments

Though most were betting on the former Tonight Show host to end up with a show on FOX, Conan O'Brien has confirmed today that he will do a late night show for cable network TBS at 11pm, starting in November. There was no word on the status of the masturbating bear.
posted by kyleg at 10:55 AM PST - 73 comments

'It's time to let you hear the song which earned me a juvenile restraining order' : Andrew WK, famous for being a) a one-hit wonder party-rock meathead b) a Baudrilladian enterprise undertaken 'in the spirit of commerce' to deliver one-hit wonder party rock, reveals the song he wrote for a crush when 17.
posted by mippy at 10:26 AM PST - 42 comments

Earth Day is soon approaching. Ecofoot has put together a "quiz" to determine your ecological footprint.
posted by deacon_blues at 9:56 AM PST - 65 comments

Theory: If someone posts a video that has any behaviour even remotely unusual it will become viral, remixed, twisted and parodied to the point of absurdity.  New evidence continues to amass. [more inside]
posted by Hardcore Poser at 8:59 AM PST - 27 comments

The 8th meeting of the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement member countries is now underway. PublicACTA has issued the Wellington Declaration in response, which is available for signing online. Also, Michael Geist discusses ACTA and what it might mean for the future of intellectual property, in the following interview with Radio New Zealand and TVO's Search Engine (mp3)
posted by acro at 8:53 AM PST - 8 comments

Palm is up for sale. Brief history and influence of this award winning maker of handheld devices. Does it have a future? [more inside]
posted by infini at 8:18 AM PST - 90 comments

William Gibson has been taking questions on his long-dormant blog since March 31st and continued until today. Some favorites, Gibson talking about: how writing is hard, that he started watching The Wire because of the shipping containers, George Bush's raincoat and his first attempt at fiction.
posted by Kattullus at 8:02 AM PST - 22 comments

Hallucinogens have been making a comeback to the research table. [more inside]
posted by cmoj at 7:57 AM PST - 76 comments

You know that guy cortex? He has lots of ideas. (F'rexample, the WTF LOL flier has a little life of its own now.)
posted by cgc373 at 6:23 AM PST - 63 comments

"What happened here in Jefferson County would turn out to be the perfect metaphor for the peculiar alchemy of modern oligarchical capitalism: A mob of corrupt local officials and morally absent financiers got together to build a giant device that converted human shit into billions of dollars of profit for Wall Street" - "Looting Main Street" Matt Taibbi takes an in-depth look into how finance, deregulation, corruption, synthetic rate swaps, and greed decimated Birmingham, AL. [more inside]
posted by The Whelk at 6:15 AM PST - 42 comments

Clash of the Bearded Ones. New York Magazine's neighborhoods issue covers some of the social dynamics in play during last December's clash over the Bedford Avenue bike lane. One man is trying to bridge the gap with an unkosher bike shop. "The Hasidim will soon be biking all over Williamsburg. My prediction is that in two years every Hasid without hemorrhoids will be commuting via bicycle in the warmer months." Baruch Herzfeld is loaning bicycles to Williamsburg's Satmar Hasidim.
posted by availablelight at 5:29 AM PST - 45 comments

American soldiers wounded in the Pacific War recuperate in New Zealand (and check out the women). American Marines mop up in Guadalcanal. US Marine baseball players put on an exhibition game for New Zealanders, to everyone's apparent bemusement. WWII propaganda films made by the New Zealand Film Unit, curated and digitized by Archives New Zealand. [more inside]
posted by Sonny Jim at 5:27 AM PST - 6 comments

John McLaughlin plays "Cherokee" backed up by the Carson-era Tonight Show Band (SLYT guitar porn) [more inside]
posted by bardic at 2:30 AM PST - 32 comments

The once-segregationist National Review recently ran an all-white "symposium" on the problems of black America, titled Really a racial recession? (subtitle: "Discrimination is an insufficient explanation for black unemployment"). Meanwhile, racist NR contributor John Derbyshire, at the invitation of University of Pennsylvania Black Law Students Association, delivered the following address on Why the Government Should and Can Not Make Us Equal. [more inside]
posted by moorooka at 12:47 AM PST - 201 comments

Ukulele. And Hula Hoop. (SLYT)
posted by RegMcF at 12:41 AM PST - 4 comments