May 6, 2015
"We're gonna be a great TV star."
In the pilot episode... Welles goes beard to mustache with Burt Reynolds on the Constipation School of Acting, does magic tricks with Angie Dickinson and discusses the cosmic importance of puppetry with Jim Henson. It’s all coated with Welles’ eccentricities and indecipherable profundity. Once again, it’s impossible to know whether he’s genuinely bizarre or wholly self-aware of the display he’s putting on. My money is always on the latter.To celebrate the 100th anniversary of his birth, please enjoy the bizarre and wonderful never-aired 1979 pilot of The Orson Welles Show. (Via)
She has one job, and it is to offer the hero a flower.
Baked Siberia
What happens when you actually bake Ben & Jerry's cookie dough?
12 angry men discuss whether Amy is hot enough for TV
12 Angry Men Inside Amy Schumer Pitch-perfect reenactment of the Sidney Lumet classic. (SLYT - 21 minutes, and worth every one) [more inside]
"It’s a class I teach once a year; it fills within 24 hours"
Orange Crush: NDP victory in Alberta
"I think we might have made a little bit of history tonight." Alberta, Canada's most conservative province, the home of the oil/tar sands, and most of Canada's oil and gas industry, has elected a majority NDP government. And one run by a woman, at that. [more inside]
Wellness is New Age for the Instagram era
"Wellness is New Age for the Instagram era. Amethysts and incense have been replaced with kale and balayage; tie-dye and velvet with bamboo cotton and designer yoga pants. It’s the alternative lifestyle but with better design. It is a movement defined by its minimalist, feminine aesthetic – pastel homewares, bright vegetable smoothies, slim legs in clean, expensive exercise wear. It’s not really about health – health does not have to be beautiful, thin and tidy in designer crop tops, but wellness does. It’s an aesthetic of wealth, a sort of gentle, palatable capitalism. There’s a dizziness to its beauty: it is light, weightless, transcendent. It probably feels this way thanks to the restricted calories as much as the calm from appropriated Eastern meditation."
[more inside]
I said, hey, you’re good at combat and people need you here; why not go?
Many American, Canadian, and British military veterans opposed to the actions of ISIS in Iraq have been, individually, going over to fight with the Kurdish Peshmerga for some time now, bringing thousands of dollars of military gear and irreplaceable training. There have been so many of them fighting that the Peshmerga are now actively recruiting military veterans online. Not to be internet-outdone, military veterans have begun investigating forming units of their own to fight ISIS -including notable and controversial science-fiction author John Ringo, who suggested trying to crowdfund for 'a brigade of soldiers'. [more inside]
Larry Wilmore Keeps It 100-Plus
We talked about The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore (Comedy Central's time-slot replacement for The Colbert Report soon after it premiered, and the show has been busy working out a lot of the bugs we talked about -- in particular, taking the panel down from four participants to three and occasionally focusing an entire show on the panel without Wilmore's standard-issue monologue or wacky skits. Then Wilmore left the studio entirely, sitting down in a Baltimore diner with Crips and Bloods to discuss their truce during the protests, which one reviewer is calling TNS finding its voice.
I Was An Undercover Uber Driver.
After months of trying to investigate what it's like to be an UberX driver, Emily Guendelsberger of the Philadelphia City Paper decided to become one herself. She also picked up some tricks on how to do it along the way.
I see you are writing an academic article while being female...
...can I help you with that? PLOS (The Public Library of Science) gets rid of reviewer and editor as a result of sexist statements, from Science Insider; Retraction Watch's summary. Here's the direct link to the apology and update on peer review policy from the PLOS ONE blog. Finally, this story gets the BuzzFeed treatment, plus some of the scientific community's responses using the hashtag AddMaleAuthorGate (additional examples: 1, 2, 3, 4, and the Microsoft Assistant paperclip: 5)
The Wonder Of The Age
The Edison Talking Doll is just what it sounds like: a doll, with a small phonograph in its body, mass-produced by Thomas Edison’s lab in the 1890s -- and it … shrieks. It’s like an unearthly Carol Kane screaming in a wind tunnel, trapped in the body of a lifeless totem. Listen at your own risk. Even more Edison Talking Doll recordings.
Just rub these two wires for the doorbell.
"Yo, who remembers my episode of MTV Cribs? You remember that guy who was asleep on the floor?" An oral history of the infamous Redman episode.
There's A Song About it
But if you’re not a fan, this probably seems absurd.
Battering the Batter
For too long, MLB has tolerated the 'tradition' of pitchers intentionally hitting the other team's players. That needs to change.
For too long, MLB has tolerated the 'tradition' of pitchers intentionally hitting the other team's players. That needs to change.
Elton John: Prisoner of New York
In 1976 Elton John was one of the biggest superstars in pop music. His album from the previous year, Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy was the first album to enter the Billboard charts at #1. The follow-up album, Rock of the Westies, was the second album in history to enter the charts at #1. But behind the outrageous costumes and garish glasses was a lonely man whose fame had grown to the point where he and songwriting partner Bernie Taupin started referring to it as "The Beast". Thousands of adoring fans all over the world wasn't enough; as Elton confided to interviewer Cliff Jahr, "I crave to be loved".
The auteur of Black Widow is Scarlett Johansson
The Black Widow Conundrum - how Black Widow being the most popular female superhero of the decade is both exciting and disappointing. Also Ike Perlmutter thinks female-led films bomb, The Mary Sue discusses Joss Whedon leaving Twitter.
Put a Rang on it.
George Lucas x Bill Medley & Jennifer Warnes
"Ich frage euch: Wollt ihr den totalen Krieg?"
Colour footage of Berlin, July 1945. Aerial colour footage of the destruction of Berlin, 1945 (II, III.) Colour footage of Trümmerfrauen in front of the Reichstag.
"Femininity, as it turns out, can be a barrier to enlightenment."
The psychotherapist Carl Jung, after seeing a photo of the Arctic explorer Augustine Courtauld, remarked that Courtauld's was the face of a man 'stripped of his persona, his public self stolen, leaving his true self naked before the world.' For women, this is doubly true: a woman's life is one lived under surveillance, a system of inner and outer regulations even more restrictive than a man's. Even a simple stroll down the sidewalk becomes an exercise in self-loathing. Suck in your stomach. Straighten your hem. (What if it rides up, exposing you?) Every shop window offers a glimpse of your own reflection. Adjust, adjust, adjust.So where are all the women hermits? [more inside]
It's enough to drive a woman crazy (and isn't this what we're always being accused of?). It's enough to drive any woman to the woods.
Bizarre Batman
The 1000 Most Bizarre Batman Images EVER! The title says 1000 images, but I think there's just 100. I haven't counted. (some images nsfw)
Gush.
It is not polite to say that I have no uterus. People react as though I’ve bullied them, stepped over a line. But they are the ones who pushed themselves into my body to begin with, assessing its suitability as habitation for an embryo. I’m only pointing out that, no matter how nice the curtains, how lovely the paint scheme, there’s no actual house there at all. No place to put a potential human.--Positive I Don’t Have a Uterus
The Rat Paths of New York
It's common to frame ecology as a science that gets practiced in wild, untraveled areas. But cities have an ecology all their own, and the design of a given city contributes to the diversity of animals that make their homes there. Rats are particularly good at navigating cities, but other species might have a tougher time getting around.
I think that splotch was Tabasco
" “I tell my daughters that when I go, they’ll know the good recipes from the dirty pages.” [NYT]] A group of Nashville writers mounts an exhibit of the dirty pages from their own family cookbooks.
Aerosmith. Drugs. Video. Dream On.
"What we have here are Steven Tyler and Joe Perry at the height of their 'Toxic Twins' indulgence, zonked completely out of their minds, barely able to stumble through their signature tune. Perry delivers so many clams he could open a seafood shack, sounding like a fumbling teenager’s first visit to a Guitar Center President’s Day sale. Tyler fades in and out, struggling to keep it together. At times the other band members look on with some confusion. The band starts to gel by the crescendo, and then allows the fizzle-fart ending to put a cap on how much of a shit they don’t give about being onstage."
Pay-to-troll: infamous troll "weev" deploys paid Twitter ads
Infamous troll, Andrew "weev" Auernheimer, has annoyed Twitter users by using purchased Twitter advertisements to bypass blocks and target controversial political messages at selected groups. By focusing ads at specific user demographics, he was able to spend very little money while optimizing for outrage. [more inside]
Ichi
ICHI's song GO GAGAMBO opens with a universally recognisable mosquito hum, then proceeds with a catchy, familiar-sounding bass line, strummed out on a long, thin insect-like home-made instrument, while the vocals are punk-like, small and high-pitched, in the language of the insect itself. It’s a song about mistaken identity - (gagambo is an insect unfortunate enough to be mistaken as a big mosquito, resulting in probable death by angry clapping hands), and it is a clever blend of the familiar and the bizarre. [more inside]
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