Check out these fantastic pumpkins from carver extraordinaire, Nathan Weslin - Pumpkinway.com
Comic book heroine Batwoman is to make a comeback as a "lipstick lesbian" who moonlights as a crime fighter, a DC Comics spokesman has confirmed. - BBC News
Blacklight tattoos at TattooArtists.org
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Bob Barker: "I have been told that on The Price is Right, the ONE DOLLAR BID is Mean but that the Two Dollar Bid is THE MEANEST!
Best Headline of the Day - Strippers Fight Outside Burning Club - with great video of flames engulfing a building, followed by a close up of stiletto heels, the hearty sun blocked out by choking black smoke, a fireman draining his hose, and handcuffed bare-belly wig-strappin booty-licious trash getting hauled off to the pokey - Link Here
Six years old, four foot seven, 210 pounds. No, it's not Bobby Chrstina, it's Dzhambulat! The next generation in Russian tanks! Link Here
The Girl Next Door! The Dreamer! The Partier! The Career Girl! Right now, they only hate themselves, but soon, thanks to ABC's "How to Get the Guy, we'll learn to hate them as well. Tick tock tick tock... who will get the guy? Who will achieve a greater sense of self-respect. Who will be the first to end up at the bottom of the pool???? Link Here
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Gay Catholic school teacher fired in Las Vegas for his MySpace profile. He's attracted to baseball-cap wearing, Wrangler-drivers into meditation, progressive politics and and hiking. How they ever figured out he was gay is beyond me. Click here for the Aritcle. Click here for the profile, or if you know of any open teaching jobs.
The Human Clock - Humanclock.com shows a photograph of the current time, with the photo changing every minute of the day (all 1,440 occuring minutes on Earth!) Thus you end up with a rotating picture clock sorta deal.
There are clock pictures from all over the world ranging from Outback Australia to Canada to Pakistan to Antarctica to Italy to Brazil. Other people travel around the American Southwest and end up taking a clock photo on a corner in Winslow, Arizona. There are even enough clock photos now to have pictures from Phoenix Arizona, Tacoma, Philadelphia, Atlanta, LA, and Northern California.
This guy has no real explanation as to why this site exists, but I have no real explanation for receommending it other than I was at it for half an hour today.
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The panelists were not able to see the paintings within which they were framed. The five used that night were Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini, Goldilocks and the Three Beats, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Pocahontas Resuces John Smith and (pictured) The Burlesque Beef Trust Girls.
Gleason would give the panel a single clue as to the identity of the painting and the panelists would, in turn, ask questions about what he or she was doing in the picture.
The show was clearly cooked up to suck off some of the success of established panel shows I've Got a Secret and What's My Line. However, the lack of an average joe contestat to root for, panelists being virtually imprisoned behing the wall of a set, unable to gesture or create any physical funny business, plus the fact that Gleason had never warmed to the concept himself, led to a painfully pitiful half-hour of television.
But Gleason was still at the top of his game in 1961, and what he did the following week probably saved his career. Read the full story here.
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Accepting that which is out of my control.
Thank You for Being a Friend...
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One of the tried-and-true jimmies of the trade is to outbid a competitor by only one dollar, thus shutting them out completely save for the slim chance they actually bid the exact dollar amount of the prize, which we all know, happens only rarely.
Early in the run of the show, this never happened, but somewhere along the lines, a contestat came on down, figured out this was an effective way to shut out at least one of his competitiors and increase his own odds of the big win. It's been going on regularly ever since, for years now, and generally the contestant who's been victimized by this dirty but acceptable practice, will be very respectful and sportsmanlike about the whole thing.
Until this week...
The producers don't even have time to display the dude's bid of $651 before the girl who bid $650 is all over him like a cat on a canary
Click here to see the dirty deed in all it's glory!
The dude actually makes it to stage with this bid and wins a new car! The girl gets up to the stage on the next bid, and wins a crappy dinette set. So goes the world!
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From Neatorama, Sato Shintaro’s Twilight Zone (Tokyo and Osaka at Night). "These shots were taken in the streets of Tokyo and Osaka at night , and in them I have avoided the more aesthetically pleasing locations such as seaside areas and the well-known "subcenters" in favor of the everyday disorder of the streets. Take a brightly-lit busy street bustling with people and remove the people: the purpose of the lighting is lost and only the glow remains - providing a glimpse of the streets we know well from a less familiar perspective." For more, click here.
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Should YouTube drop the links, you can check out the skit at Crooks and Liars. Long live Commissioner of Baseball George W. Bush!
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The song I have not been able to stop playing for the last month has been "If You Let Me Stay" by Terence Trent D'Arby, an artist whose brilliant work was often eclipsed (certainly with me when he first hit radio) by his gratingly obscene ego. If you're not familiar, and like what you hear below, make the worthy purchase of his two best albums, Introducing the Hardline... and Symphony or Damn. Here's the backstory:
D'Arby's debut album, Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D'Arby, released in 1987, is his best-known and, in commercial terms, most successful work. The album, which produced such hits as "If You Let Me Stay" "Wishing Well" "Dance Little Sister" and "Sign Your Name" sold over a million copies in the first three days of its release, and its sales currently total over 12 million. The album also earned D'Arby a Grammy Award in March 1988 in the category Best R&B Vocal Performance, Male.
D'Arby's follow-up was the somewhat more experimental and serious Neither Fish Nor Flesh: A Soundtrack of Love, Faith, Hope & Destruction (1989). It gathered generally hostile reviews from the critics, and was not commercially as successful as its predecessor. With a bloated self-important title like that, one can see why.
It took four more years and a move to Los Angeles until his next project, Symphony or Damn (1993) was released. The record touched many of the issues that had been raised also in Neither Fish Nor Flesh, but was musically more straightforward and rocky than its predecessors (best track - "She Kissed Me"). It gathered favourable reviews and gained much airplay in major music stations.
In 1995 D'Arby released Vibrator, which largely followed Symphony or Damn in its musical direction. Also it was well received, but like the previous album, failed to reinstate the artist back to the public status that he had enjoyed at the time of his first release.
During the 1990s the relations between D'Arby and his record label Columbia Records had became strained, eventually leading to his departure in 1996. This was followed by a four-year spell, during which he recorded Terence Trent D'Arby's Solar Return, which was not released. In 2000, he bought the rights to the album, and left the record company.
In 1999, D'Arby was briefly hired by INXS to replace his friend, late vocalist Michael Hutchence, so the band could play at the opening of facilities for the Sydney Olympics.
Meanwhile the artist, still known as Terence Trent D'Arby, had as a result of a series of dreams, adapted to use the name Sananda Maitreya. His name was legally changed to that on October 4, 2001. Many speculate it was less a dream-state revelation and more an attempt to divorce himself from the controversial and trouble-making reputation he had developed under the "TTD" phase of his career.
2001 also saw Maitreya moving back to Europe and Germany, as he resettled in Munich and started his own independent record label, Sananda Records. The year also marked his first album release in six years, as the unreleased Terence Trent D'Arby's Soular Return was revamped into Wildcard. The album, which received a warm critical welcome, was at first available for free through his website, and later gained also a commercial release through a one-album distribution deal with Universal Music.
In 2002 Maitreya moved to Milan, Italy, and began working on his next project, Angels & Vampires - Volume I. Rough demo versions of the songs were initially released through Weedshare, allowing the fans to get a glimpse of the work as it evolved. In July 29, 2005, the fully mastered album was finally released through his webshop utilizing the mp3 format.
In July 2005 Maitreya started working on Angels & Vampires - Volume II, he released chapter after chapter online as soon he finished recording the songs. On April 29, 2006 he released the fully finished and mastered album in his webshop.
For more information, you can join Maitreya's MySpace page, with music available for sampling.
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The technique was invented by Max Fleischer, who used it in his series "Out of the Inkwell" starting around 1914, with his brother Dave Fleischer dressed in a clown outfit as the live-film reference for the character Koko the Clown.
Fleischer used rotoscope in a number of his later cartoons as well, most notably the Cab Calloway dance routines in three Betty Boop cartoons from the early 1930s, and the animation of Gulliver in Gulliver's Travels.
Walt Disney and his animators employed it carefully and very effectively in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, primarily used in the animation of Prince Charming. Rotoscoping was also used in many of Disney's subsequent animated feature films.
Here, animator Tennessee Reid Norton and company put the rotoscoping to fantastic use on a music video for "Anysound" by The Vines. (t/y Red Hatchet Films)
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MySpace has a new rival - From Towleroad - AIM launched a major competitor to MySpace this week with AIM Pages, a new social networking site. This is huge, since MySpace is one of the top websites on the internet today, and since AIM is the widest-used instant-messaging program on the market. (from Gary - I'm finally just breaking up with Friendster, and now I have to deal with this!)
Am I the only person who a.) couldn't care less about this new Superman movie? b.) is tired of hearing about the digitally-reduced codpiece? c.) is no longer fooled when yawn-zines like The Advocate suggest an element of homosexuality in an upcoming movie on their cover, only to refute it entirely in the actual article with the execption of mentioning that the director, and maybe one of the assistant production accountants, is out and proud?? Despite the years that have passed since its release, very little can be done to improve on the Alexander Salkind-Christoper Reeve Superman and everyone knows it.
Bush approval rating falls to 29%. Any lower, and he'll be tied with New Coke and AYDS Diet Candy
Meet the world's first Grizzly bear-polar bear hybrid. How cool! Let's shoot it!
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