MetaFilter posts tagged with neil

Neil Peart

davebush — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 18:53:30 -0800

When not sitting down at his drum kit, Rush's Neil Peart often sits down to write thoughtfully about his life. A look into the current world of an atypical rock musician, who's moved on after some considerable pain.

Neil Armstrong: One Badass Mother Fucker.

cmchap — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 14:22:07 -0800

Neil Armstrong was a test pilot before he was an astronaut. He had his pilot's license before he had his driver's license. But even he had some trouble getting used to that darned Lunar Excursion Module (LEM). While testing the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV), Neil Armstrong was a second and a half from death, and just walked away. Actually, the guy in that video isn't Neil. That was Deke Slayton, because apparently NASA didn't care if he got maimed while testing the first prototype. No. The Neil Armstrong crashes better, faster, and with MORE FIRE! (Reenactment in "From the Earth To the Moon) Fear not, though, for Neil safely landed the LLRV a few weeks later for the media. Upon liftoff of Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong was a little surprised. When it came time to land on the Moon, just over a year after crashing the LLRV, The LEM's guidance system started giving unforeseen errors. Armstrong ignored the errors, realized that they'd overshot their target landing spot, took matters into his own hands, and found a better, non-bouldered area on which to land. With 24 seconds of fuel left, he landed the Eagle on the surface of the moon so softly that the shock absorbers didn't compress (#6), making his one small step a much larger step than anticipated.

" . . . estimating the $700 billion effort to shore up the nation's wobbly banking system could end up costing taxpayers as much as $23.7 trillion . . ."

RoseyD — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 02:25:11 -0800

"Many banks were concerned about business-sensitive information and requested confidentiality of individual survey responses. Accordingly, pursuant to our legal obligations, SIGTARP is unable in this report to attribute any results or comments to a specific institution. However, SIGTARP is in the process of evaluating recipients’ claims of confidentiality and will provide copies of the individual responses that will include information provided by the banks to the maximum permitted by law. SIGTARP plans to post the responses, redacted as necessary, on its website within 30 days." TARP special inspector general Neil Barofsky

Birth of a 'Horrible' Fandom

WCityMike — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 09:32:11 -0800

A brief look at the Big Bang birth of a fandom: the explosion of 'Dr. Horrible' fandom in just 47 days. Quite a lot of "more inside" follows. First, there's the fanfic videos that try to expand the universe. Such as Dr. Horrible: the Early Years (1 2 3 4 5), and Dr. Dreadful's YouTube Riposte. There's applications for the Evil League of Evil as well, including Average, Yin and Yang, Short Change, the Allergen, the Parasite, the Horse Thief, Custodious Rex, Capt. Shrovewreaker (the Breakfast Pirate), Mistress Paragon, and the Death Giggle. (Ever wonder how Dr. Horrible's application was received at the League?) There's Evil Horse's rival, the Evil Germ-man; Dr. Horrible has the Weapon gunning for him; the Henchman's Union is recruiting; and catDWM's made a musical application to be Dr. Horrible's sidekick (her competition is puppetry). Second, there's the fan creations that take the show and do something adorable or amazing or weird with it — always cute kid covers such as Laundry Day (aw!) or Bad Horse (Preschooler Mumbler Edition), not to mention a few good covers by adults, too. (Speaking of adult covers, rickrolls are so passé ... have you been Bad Horse'd? Felicia Day has. Although she wasn't Bad Horse'd in German.) There's the guy who plays a duet with himself on "My Eyes/On the Rise" — in character — as both the "Penny violin" and the "Dr. Horrible violin", playing his own piano backup as well. There's ringtones, limericks, HALO machinima (1 2 3 4 5), My Little Horrible Ponies (including Capt. Hammer) (which is almost as cute as a commercial L'il Kaylee), and karaoke tracks (soon to be officially touring as a singalong, although the show is already being Rocky Horror-ed). (And there's LibraryThing doing crowdsource research as to what's on Horrible's library shelf.) And the world isn't lacking for official Dr. Horrible material, either. There's Felicia Day, with her own Twitter channel and her own excellent fan production, The Guild; she's caught "twittering under the table", requests that someone post it on Vimeo, and comments there. She does a duet with Jonathan Coulton on "Still Alive", and the Penny Arcade guys want to groom her. The Whedons aren't exactly naifs when it comes to an online presence either; they're Twittering as well (and even passed along this little off-topic gem to their followers) and the world now has a Capt. Hammer comic and the official Evil League of Evil website (e-mail Bad Horse). (Not to mention presences on MySpace and Facebook.) If you've not been over-Horribled by now, you might want to sit down for the 53-minute Dr. Horrible ComicCon panel with Joss and the cast (1 2 3 4 5), read Entertainment Weekly's oral history, read Warren Ellis' comments on the musical, or muse upon what would happen if Capt. Hammer and Mal met. If you're still not over-Horribled, you could go to WhedonFilter (er, Whedonesque, but running MeFi software, I believe) or Wonderflonium (the latter of which was a great help with finding some of the videos), where there's a great deal more singing, fan art, and music videos. All in just 47 days. That's a lot of Wikipedias, I imagine.

Marry Me

growabrain — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 21:53:21 -0800

"What if I could get Neil Gaiman, our most fave author and fantasy writer, to help propose to my girlfriend?" A sweet tale of how Jason got Neil Gaiman to stage the proposal. (Video here. From Gravity Lens)

Remember Slow Bob?

kimota — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 17:40:33 -0800

Anybody remember Slow Bob In The Lower Dimensions? Turns out the short video, once a mainstay of early 90s late-night MTV, was created by one Henry Selick, director of, oh, The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, Monkeybone, and the forthcoming adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Coraline. A lot more on Selick; also, higher quality, alternate format (but slower loading) versions are available here.

How To Talk To Girls At Parties

hoverboards don't work on water — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 03:48:47 -0800

How To Talk To Girls At Parties by Neil Gaiman. Full text and reading by the author: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.

What's harder than rock? Diamond!

srboisvert — Sun, 06 Nov 2005 04:34:58 -0800

Neil Diamond on MySpace "I sang Cracklin Rosie at Kareoke last week and was then inited[sic] to a threesome. Thanks Neil. Your songs are magical." Neil Diamond has 9981 friends.

Neverwhere Comic Adaptation

Saellys — Thu, 23 Jun 2005 09:25:46 -0800

The first issue of the comic book adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere was released yesterday. Mr. Gaiman is credited as a "consultant." So far, the story is fairly intact, but it's the visual element that deviates from the novel--characters look nothing like they were described, and don't even resemble the old BBC miniseries. And for someone accustomed to the phenomenal artwork seen in most of Gaiman's previous graphic novels (which included several adaptations of his short stories), Neverwhere seems downright bland. If a feature film follows in the same vein as this adaptation, will Gaiman pull an Alan Moore and refuse all royalties? (Go easy on me; it's my first post.)