Sunday, September 30, 2012

When Adam Savage from Mythbusters went as No-Face at a convention





Adam Savage from Mythbusters is famous for the homemade costumes he wears to conventions.  One year, he went as No-Face from Spirited Away:
Funny thing happened at Comic-con when I wore it. I had a satchel of gold coins in my robe to give to people I was taking pictures with. But the Otaku (who were the most freaked out and happy to meet No-Face) kept putting the coins back into my hands. Took me awhile to realize that it's because it's bad luck to take coins from No-Face. I got chills. The cosplay that happens at the cons is like a new kind of theater that only the participants understand. I love diving into that world.
It's really pretty incredible watching him perform as No-Face in the second video.

*Buy Spirited Away toys at eBay.

The latest Super Best Friends Forever short



Super Best Friends Forever #5: Solomon Grundy No Fight Girls.

*Buy Teen Titans toys at eBay.

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Friday, September 28, 2012

Kaiju from Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot


Super7.

Link roundup


2.  Before every screening at the upscale Arclight movie chain in Los Angeles, an usher introduces the film and talks about Arclight's high standards.  Looper director Rian Johnson posed as an usher during a midnight screening of the movie.

3.  From GQ's oral history of Cheers:
Kirstie Alley: It was a boys' club, and I do well in boys' clubs. Woody and I instantly hit it off. I was married, but he would show up at my house sometimes and stay over. One night he brought this girl to bang, and then in the middle of the night he decided he didn't want to, so he was knocking on my bedroom door: "Kirs? Kirs? Can you talk to me a minute? I'm just not into this chick." I said, "Woody, you have to take responsibility. I can't coach you into sleeping with her, but you need to go back there, dude." I think she was in the bedroom crying while we were chatting about this. I had the halfway house. I can't tell you how many nights I spent around my kitchen table, soothing broken hearts.  
Bebe Neuwirth: Kirstie saved me, in a way. [At the time], I had a terrible marriage, and I stayed at her house. She was wonderful—just a kind, big-hearted, filthy girl. Somehow she could be vulgar without being vulgar.
*Buy Looper posters by Mondo at eBay.

Aliens-themed travel poster



Art from Dave Parillo's and Tom Whalen's show at Gallery 1988 is going very fast.

*Buy travel posters at Amazon.

Sculptures by Juan Balandran.



Sculptures by Juan Balandran.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Third parties can now attack overbroad patents

Wired:
Hunting season is now open on software patents, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Stack Exchange and Google are teaming up to make it easy for geeks to shoot down overbroad and ridiculous patents. Thanks to a change in patent law that went into effect this month, third parties who think a patent application is flimsy or invalid due to previous art or obviousness can now file evidence and comments to the USPTO, starting Thursday morning. Previously, it was illegal for the USPTO to take outside parties comments into account when evaluating a patent application.

Warhol, Picasso and Lichtenstein facepaint



Warhol, Picasso and Lichtenstein paintings turned into Halloween costumes.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Vintage advertising zine



Jim Rugg details how he assembled a zine featuring old comic book advertisements.

New Super Best Friends Forever teaser




It's the Super Best Friends Forever vs. Solomon Grundy this Saturday.  Via.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

The Silence plush



The Silence plush by Suzannah Ashley.

Monday, September 24, 2012

Can you crack the code on Wieden + Kennedy's new site?



What is W+K's Society of 12?

Chainsword for sale



Entertainment Earth now has a steampunk section, including this chainsword.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Video game screenshots



226 wallpaper-sized screenshots from Alice: Madness Returns, Mass Effect, Portal, Mirror's Edge and much more.

Scab official trips Cowboys receiver with his hat



Video of Cowboys receiver Kevin Ogletree falling down after stepping on a hat thrown by a scab official into the endzone.

Trompe-l'œil house painting



Ciaran-Brennan:
Painting on the house for real this time, painted this optical illusion for a party we have at our house each year. I didnt get to finish it completely ,I wanted to paint the inside of the house through the hole in the wall but I ended up just making it dark. Some of the front baloons are real baloons, they shrunk a bit before I took the photo so they seem a bit out of scale with the painted ones.

Friday, September 21, 2012

Link roundup

1.  TLC's Amish reality show is apparently heavily, heavily fictionalized.  SyFy's Collection Intervention is also supposedly seriously misleading.

2.  Major League Baseball had to make a last minute rule change to stop a cheater from winning the batting title.

3.  Dungeons and Dragons Kickstarter collecting homemade modules

There was almost a The Cabin in the Woods video game

From an ask me anything session with The Cabin in the Woods director Drew Goddard (I don't think he was joking):
We actually were going to do a downloadable L4D2 expansion pack, where you'd fight in the Cabin world, but then MGM went bankrupt so the delay squashed it. But the people at Valve were still cool enough to let us use some of their monsters to fill the cubes in the background (I had a lot of cubes to fill.) 
By the way -- the game was gonna be amazing. You were gonna be able to play in both the upstairs "Cabin in the Woods" world and the downstairs "facility" world with all the monsters. Believe me, I HATE all video games based on movies, they always suck, but porting Cabin into Left For Dead felt like the right fit. It pains me that it didn't happen.
Also, he names The Suffocators as the most disturbing monsters in the movie:



He answered questions at io9 earlier this week.

(The Cabin in the Woods is a $4 rental at Amazon and whaddya know, there's also a novelization.)

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Vintage BBC logo




Vintage BBC logo.  Siggi Sigbjornsson is working on turning it into a t-shirt.

Cars of the Rebellion



Gallery of photos from Star Wars Celebration 2012.

Mistral from Metal Gear Revengeance

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Meet L.A. schools superintendent John Deasy

The article starts with a lot of detail on how fast he walks and how he shakes hands, but keep reading the lengthy LA Magazine profile of John Deasy, the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, and you get to this:
During the spring of 2004, while at Santa Monica-Malibu Unified, Deasy managed to earn his Ph.D. in education from the University of Louisville. One semester was all he needed to enroll, complete a research course for nine credits from out of state, and submit and defend his dissertation. Robert Felner was dean at the university’s College of Education and Human Development as well as Deasy’s adviser and the chairman of his dissertation committee. He granted his student a series of waivers. One enabled Deasy to apply 77 credits he’d taken at other schools—including 44 he’d earned studying under Felner back in Rhode Island—toward his degree. Felner had also been a beneficiary of Deasy’s: During the three previous years, Santa Monica-Malibu Unified had paid $375,000 to a research center headed by Felner to conduct surveys of parents, students, and teachers, on the superintendent’s recommendation. 
[p] 
Between the test score victories of summer and his resignation from Prince Georges in early fall, Deasy had been faced with questions about possible improprieties in his own education. The University of Louisville had initiated an investigation into Robert Felner’s financial misdoings as well as into the legitimacy of the doctorate Deasy had been awarded under his supervision. Felner would plead guilty and serve prison time for defrauding the university as well as another higher-learning institution of $2.3 million. But after the eight-month investigation, Deasy’s Ph.D. was upheld. When I ask Deasy about the controversy, he tersely focuses on outcomes. “I have a doctorate, given to me by the university,” he says, “and two additional ones since then—albeit doctors of humane letters, of course. I’m remarkably proud of my work.”
"Doctors of humane letters" are honorary degrees.

Blog devoted to MUSCLE




If you like MUSCLE, you'll like this blog.  Via.

*Buy MUSCLE Men at eBay.

Starro and the Space Dolphins parade float diorama




Bbased on Art Baltazar's Starro and the Space Dolphins.

The Most Incredible Volcano Video of ALL Time





The Most Incredible Volcano Video ever shot ! Geoff Mackley, Bradley Ambrose, Nathan Berg, after an epic struggle with the weather for 35 days, we became the first people ever to get this close to Marum Volcano's famed lava lake on Ambrym Island, Vanuatu. Coming within 30 metres of the lava lake down a watercourse, it was possible to stand the heat for only 6 seconds. With Fire Brigade breathing apparatus and heat proof proximity suit it was possible to stand on the very edge and view the incredible show for over 40 minutes.
This should be available as a screensaver.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Prometheus + Beats by Dre





The Engineer stars at the Prometheus Blu-Ray launch event at The Beats Store in New York.  (No video yet.)   I imagine the special edition headphones will be up on eBay shortly:



You can buy the movie at Amazon.

Logo



via.

Monday, September 17, 2012

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Batman stickers



Batman stickers by Hamish Steele on sale here.

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Link roundup

1. If you've seen the billboard comparing Jesus to Mithras, here's Wikipedia on the topic.

2. Too clean:
It's a paradox of public health that being too clean can sometimes lead to disease. For centuries, infants were routinely exposed to the poliovirus in their unsanitary living conditions. Polio rarely causes paralysis in infants, partly because of the maternal antibodies still present in their systems. In the 1900s, many countries cleaned up their water and sanitation systems, and houses in more affluent communities were routinely cleaned, reducing exposure to microbes. By the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, new mothers, especially those in the middle class, had no antibodies in their immune systems to pass on to their children. When children were exposed to the poliovirus in later years, they were defenseless against the disease.
3. Politics
Two Wall Street analysts point to that conclusion in reports this morning that examine the estimated $2.8B being spent on local TV this presidential election cycle from different perspectives. Only about 800,000 voters are even persuadable this year, Wells Fargo Securities’ Marci Ryvicker notes citing information from Kantar Media’s authoritative Campaign Media Analysis Group. Even more startling, she says, “the BEST way to reach such voters is through ‘fringe’ programs such as Jeopardy and Wheel Of Fortune.”

Friday, September 14, 2012

The Lost Boys poster



Poster by Dean Reeves for a screening of The Lost Boys.

This is cake




By Karen Portaleo/Highland Bakery, "Zelda is half Peach Cake soaked in bourbon, the other half is vanilla cake with a salted caramel buttercream."