The Shining shrinky dinks.

"it's not people you want to find you. He draws some weird people."

First paragraph of Rolling Stone's profile of Stephen King:

Stephen King's office building sits on a particularly dreary dead-end road on the outskirts of Bangor, Maine, just down the street from a gun-and-ammo store, a snowplow dealership and, appropriately enough, an old cemetery. From the outside, the anonymous building looks like a new branch of Dunder Mifflin, a very deliberate choice meant to keep King and his tiny staff safe. "We can't be on a main road because people would find us," says one of his assistants. "And it's not people you want to find you. He draws some weird people."

On his heavy use of cocaine:

But the books start to show it after a while. Misery is a book about cocaine. Annie Wilkes is cocaine. She was my number-one fan.
...
Yeah, it did. I mean, The Tommyknockers is an awful book. That was the last one I wrote before I cleaned up my act.

Simple Minds - Promised You a Miracle

Winner. #OculusRift pic.twitter.com/1bFEOnET8H
— Scott Kerr (@scott_kerr) October 31, 2014

Figma Solid Snake available for preorder.

How to turn jeans, a t-shirt, and a belt into a Sub-Zero costume.

Playing GTA as a horror movie slasher:

This dude plays GTAV on passive mode, so he can’t kill or be killed. He also plays creepy music through his mic and slowly, wordlessly stalks people across the city. 

At which point he turns passive mode off and stabs his victim to death.

From an interview with Guillermo Del Toro:

We unfortunately were involved on a game that took about two and a half years’ pre-production with THQ that was called Insane, and then THQ went under before we could make the game, but I learned a lot there. 

With Hideo we are still in the early stages. I don’t think the game will come out for another couple of years.

So the bad news is Silent Hills is years away. And the worse news is that his prior game history indicates the game may never come out. I suppose the silver lining is there will be plenty of time for more demos like PT.

Today we’ve had some little friends playing the all new expansion levels that nobody has seen yet. Good critics. pic.twitter.com/FiKckPjUWx
— ustwogames (@ustwogames) October 30, 2014

The latest Monument Valley tease.

ALL THE BEERS! pic.twitter.com/wfp8bbY82N
— nick pants (@nick_pants) October 30, 2014

Seinfeld episode cosplay.

Painted water tower for The Art of the Tag. Opening night: sat nov 1 7-10pm @myplasticheart #boundlessbrooklyn #watertower

A photo posted by Chris Buzelli (@chrisbuzelli) on Oct 10, 2014 at 4:48pm PDT

Sideview #watertower @boundlessbrooklyn @myplasticheart

A photo posted by Chris Buzelli (@chrisbuzelli) on Oct 10, 2014 at 5:20pm PDT

"Cornell University Research Team Devises a Miniscule 3D Printed Spider Harness"

Trapped in a Room with a Zombie:

Prepare to be locked in a room with up to 11 other people and a Zombie that is chained to the wall! Hidden in the room is a key that will unlock the door to your freedom. To find the key you must locate numerous clues and solve riddles. Every five minutes the hungry Zombie’s chain will be released another foot. Within an hour, the Zombie will be able to reach you. You have 60 minutes to the find clues, solve the puzzles, unlock the door and escape the room without getting eaten!

(Here's a review of the downtown LA experience.)

10 bits of interesting Star Wars costumes trivia

Some interesting bits of trivia I learned from the gorgeous new coffee table book, Star Wars Costumes:

1. George Lucas insisted on all costumes having no visible fasteners.

2. Luke's Tatooine pants are colorless Levi's.

3. One of the Duros in the Cantina scene is wearing a costume from Escape from the Planet of the Apes.

4. Lucas ordered that the Hoth Rebel uniforms be destroyed so that they could not be reused on other films.

5. Children were dressed in Hoth Rebel uniforms and placed in the back of the hangar to make it look bigger.

6. Yoda's face is partially based on Albert Einstein.

7. A stuntman suffered a broken arm when he accidentally fell into the Sarlacc.

8. Leia's slave bra was modeled in wax, kept in a ice chest, and then placed on her body to be formed as it warmed with her body heat.

9. Lando's guard helmet was inspired by a baseball glove.

10. The Emperor is played by a woman in The Empire Strikes Back, and her eyes were replaced by a chimpanzee's eyes in postproduction.









The 232-page hardcover is currently 38% off at Amazon and comes out tomorrow.

Classic movies given boring descriptions:

Guy gets a ring gifted to him by his uncle. He doesn't want it so he returns it to the manufacturer. 

Man takes care of a hotel in the winter and writes a dull book 

Old man travels to Venezuela to visit a waterfall 

A rich orphan beats up a clown

Madison Bumgarner tee.

He asked and oh boy did he receive.

Voldemort's name of Tom Riddle was changed in many languages to create an anagram. For example:

French   TOM ELVIS JEDUSOR                     JE SUIS VOLDEMORT
Danish   ROMEO G DETLEV JR                    JEG ER VOLDEMORT
Dutch     MARTEN ASMODOM VILIJN        MIJN NAAM IS VOLDEMORT
Faroese   TOM EVILDO REGER                     ER ERI VOLDEMORT

For obsessives--11 interesting details from the Matrix (just the first movie). Including that the building Neo works at looks like a spinal column, and the spelling of the company's name changes inside.

Plush Hobbes

Available at Amazon.

Eye of Sauron by Jeffrey Alan Love.

The 10 Most Expensive Flops In Television History (mostly failed scifi series).

Marvel's Summer Soldier cosplay.

I would liken Tor to putting on Sauron's ring. The wearer is invisible to ordinary beings, like Men, but highly visible to the Nazgûl.
— Matthew Green (@matthew_d_green) October 24, 2014

Wow, Gawker really did lose Mercedes advertising $ due to GamerGate-mocking Tweets:

Transparent and documented though it was, the obsessive campaign worked. Mercedes-Benz—listed on the site as a former partner, and therefore a target—briefly paused its ads on a network that serves ads to Gawker. I've been told that we've lost thousands of dollars already, and could potentially lose thousands more, if not millions. Consequently, the editorial director of Gawker Media, Joel Johnson, took to the front page of Gawker to clarify that Sam Biddle does not want to bully anyone, and that Gawker Media as a company and institution is not pro-bullying. (Let's note here that the admitted goal of our Gamergate trolls is not to eke an apology out of Sam, or the company, but to literally put us out of business entirely.)

(Compare.)

James Stokoe's pencils for the cover of the upcoming Prophet Volume 4 collection.

The newest Infinite Crisis costume is 'Fearsome Tyrant' Sinestro.

*Buy Infinite Crisis toys at ebay.

The Awl:

I would argue that the reason Amazon's more advanced tablet and phone products haven't succeeded is because the device's priorities were painfully obvious to anyone who actually used them: They weren't better than their competitors at anything other than selling you things from Amazon. They attempted to solve the company's problems without even accidentally solving any of yours.

Gawker Media's ongoing experiment with competing subsites--io9 already had a toy subsite called Toybox, and now Gizmodo has a toy subsite called Toyland.

2014 as scifi thriller:

A passenger jet has vanished over the Andaman Sea. Europe is shrinking before the expanding Russian Frontier. In the Middle East, a cadre of religious fanatics is locked in an endless battle against America's army of ruthless robot drones. And all the while, a deadly virus is creeping its way into urban slums across the world...

Sexy Middle Earth Halloween Costumes.

Secret Six # 2 cover

By Dale Eaglesham.

Block No. 11 - Chimera pic.twitter.com/BNkE5Ympla
— Simon Lee (@SpiderzeroSimon) October 20, 2014

Moon Knight pumpkin.

(Moon Knight by Ellis and Shalvey is really good, btw. 27% off at Amazon.)

Don't be caught unafraid when the Ebola panic dies down. Start transitioning now to fear about the border. Work smart, people. Plan ahead.
— pourmecoffee (@pourmecoffee) October 20, 2014

(All that work on the Disney hotel being put to use?)

We're thrilled to announce Moana, our 56th animated feature film coming to theatres late 2016! pic.twitter.com/S8x1KkJwYh
— Disney Animation ●—● (@DisneyAnimation) October 20, 2014

Handmade marbles (expensive). Via.

Costcos have very large teddy bears in stock (apparently $179).

Want to know what oysters do for the environment? The water in both tanks is the same. The one on the rt has oysters. pic.twitter.com/jLeZ2RRAqo
— Steve Vilnit (@SteveVilnit) October 18, 2014

Korea's national cigarettes have the single greatest logo I've ever seen on anything. pic.twitter.com/mLlSu93y1M
— Marc Haynes (@marchaynes) September 17, 2014

Roller Derby Art Show

Illustrations by and Vera Brosgol and Mingjue Helen Chen for a roller derby-themed show.

The destruction of Black Wall Street

Wikipedia:

The Tulsa race riot was a large-scale, racially motivated conflict on May 31 and June 1, 1921, in which a group of whites attacked the black community of Tulsa, Oklahoma. It resulted in the Greenwood District, also known as 'the Black Wall Street' and the wealthiest black community in the United States, being burned to the ground. 

During the 16 hours of the assault, more than 800 blacks were admitted to local white hospitals with injuries (the black hospital was burned down), and police arrested and detained more than 6,000 black Greenwood residents at three local facilities, in part for their protection. An estimated 10,000 blacks were left homeless, and 35 city blocks composed of 1,256 residences were destroyed by fire. 

... 

Numerous witness accounts described airplanes carrying white assailants, who fired rifles and dropped firebombs on buildings, homes, and fleeing families. The planes, six biplane two-seater trainers left over from World War I, were dispatched from the nearby Curtiss-Southwest Field (now defunct) outside Tulsa. White law enforcement officials later stated the planes were to provide reconnaissance and protect whites against a "Negro uprising". Eyewitness accounts and testimony from the survivors maintained that on the morning of June 1, the planes dropped incendiary bombs and fired rifles at black residents on the ground.

"Ebola Panic Finally Gets Its Mystery Conspiracy Figure: Clipboard Guy"

Gawker:

yesterday, the Great Ebola Panic of 2014 debuted its own mysterious man photographed from a distance: Clipboard guy, who was spotted on the Tarmac without a hazmat suit when Ebola patient Amber Vinson was transported into an airplane.

Part of a series.

BBC:

'Escaped crocodile' was inflatable toy, police discover
Snare poles, nets and riot shields were deployed to trap the fearsome beast

Just downloaded a copy of the full cast production of Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book at iTunes. Also available on CD from Amazon.

This month's National Geographic with a cover story and photo gallery on parasites

"Bird droppings gathered by the arboreal ant Cephalotes atratus to feed its larvae sometimes contain a hidden menace: the parasitic nematode Myrmeconema neotropicum. Once inside the ant, the nematode turns its host’s abdomen maroon, so that it mimics a ripe berry attractive to birds. To make its unwitting host even more enticing, the nematode induces the ant to walk with its abdomen raised: Come and eat me!"

"Rabbi Barry Freundel, the spiritual leader of one of Washington D.C.’s most prominent Modern Orthodox synagogues, was arrested Tuesday morning on charges that he used cameras to peep on women in the synagogue’s mikvah, or ritual bath."

BATMAN RETURNS (1992) Director of Photography: Stefan Czapsky | Director: Tim Burton pic.twitter.com/nV5RLJpN8p
— Perfect Shots (@OnePerfectShot) October 13, 2014

*Buy Batman Returns Catwoman toys at Amazon.

On the teased update for Monument Valley:

I can honestly say these new levels are the best work we've ever done, and may end up being almost as long as the original game. It will be worth waiting for.

"The Ice Bucket Challenge Is a Satanic Baptism Ritual."

The abandoned mall in Gone Girl is in Hawthorne, in Los Angeles County.

Japanese movie poster for Alphaville available at Amazon. And the Italian version, available at ebay:



Via.