Check out the sweet, sweet work of Greg Patillo, who is somehow able to both play a flute and beatbox at the same time. Kind of similar to Yuri Lane, the beatboxing harmonica player I brought you last August, Greg is like Rahzel meets Bobby Militello, with a splash of Kōji Kondō. Pretty damn impressive:
(via Ralph Lucent)
Feast your ears on this: Muxtape.
And this: my Muxtape demo.
The up sides to Muxtape:
• You can make a virtual mixtape, to let everyone know that you have better musical taste than they do.
• It’s free.
• It is elegantly simple, super-user-friendly, and setting up an account is free of ass-pain.
The down sides:
• To create a Muxtape, uploaded music must be in mp3 format.
• I miss putting stickers and homemade artwork all over mixtape cassettes.
• If you were born after 1980, you won’t truly understand the nostalgia of mixtapes.
Bonus Round: The book “Mix Tape” by Thurston Moore.
FirstShowing.net has a flash video of the alternate (and original) ending to “I Am Legend” (2007) (can also been seen on some versions of the DVD).
(via Garry)
This past Saturday, I got a chance to go see The Striking Viking Story Pirates, an awesome improv/theater troupe here in New York City that takes stories that real children have written, and turns them into hilarious shorts, usually with a musical flair. While I prefer the stage version, here is a hilarious short film based on a sentence written by an 8 year old:
The Story Pirates are great, but have dueling personalities. By day (well, all the time actually), this is a non-profit charity that travels around New York, doing important educational work with the aim of improving creativity and literacy in area schools. And by night, The Story Pirates bring a more risqué version of their show to an adult crowd at The Drama Bookshop on West 40th Street, which, if you can get out to see it, is well worth the price of admission.
Check these guys out and donate if you can; or get tickets for one of their shows…while it’s still possible! The Story Pirates are not going to be small potatoes forever.
New York’s famous Magnolia Bakery has been serving up legendary cupcakes for over 12 years. And now the rest of the nation is finally catching up with a good idea: everybody digs cupcakes. Be prepared, the cupcake tsunami is coming this Summer - “cupcakeries” are cropping-up everywhere.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, a bzillion new cupcake joints will be opening their doors this Summer. In my neighborhood, Festin’s Bakery will be setting up cupcakety goodness in the Stanford (University) Shopping Center. And our hopes are that the more established local cupcakeries, such as Sibby’s Cupcakery (photo above), will ride this trend and expand to new locations (like next door to my house).
The rockstar of the cupcake world:
The elusive “red velvet” cupcake. Try to find one, you will thank me.
Perhaps the internet cupcake authority:
Cupcakes Take The Cake - an entire blog dedicated to the magical sprinkley world of cupcakes.
That’s right folks….bacon and cheese flavored crickets. These are made by a company called HotLix, a specialty candy company that has an entire line of insect candies, such as Chocolate Insects, Real Scorpion Suckers, and Larvets. Any takers for a Tequila-flavored Worm Sucker?
Big shout out to Blogadilla reader billb, who sent us what is definitely our weirdest Bacon Product of the Week to date. Can any of you out there one up him? Keep posting your bacon finds in the comments!
This sport is common throughout several east and southeast Asian cultures, usually involving the large horned beetles of the Rhinoceros beetle subfamily (Dynastinae), whose members include the awesome Hercules beetle (Dynastes hercules) and the Atlas beetle (Chalcosoma atlas). The large “horns” of the males are used for territorial fighting, where they will wrestle in an attempt to topple one another, until one submits, retreats, or is knocked-off a perch. Fighting these beetles is a popular gambling sport throughout Asia, from Thailand to Hong Kong (another link).
In Japan, collecting and fighting these beetles is common among boys - Rhinoceros beetles are easy pets to care for. These fighting pets are common enough in Japan that one can even buy Rhinoceros beetles from streetside vending machines (photo from the Photomann gallery of Japanese vending machines), and there are many Japanese toys and models that relate to Rhinoceros beetle collecting. Also, this practice is the likely origin of the Japanese game Pokémon, which gained world popularity in the late 1990’s, and which focuses on the collecting, husbandry, and fighting of supernatural creatures.
There are also dire “blood sport” forms of bug fighting, involving more dangerous insects, arachnids, and crustaceans - as seen on the website Japanese Bug Fights! (sadly, sometimes the matches end in fatalities).
I saw this at an import grocery store today.
I had to buy it because the packaging mystified me: why the hell is this amorous couple on the package?!?
Will pumpernickel get you laid?
Is there something about pumpernickel that I should know?
Sexy pumpernickel moments:
I was excited to stumble across the custom printed M&Ms site - print your own stuff on an M&M.
The potential for evil made my head spin.
Sadly, their list of Dos and Don’ts shut-down all of my juvenile M&M fantasies.
Consider this: their list of Dos and Don’ts had to be made because people tried these following stunts:
•“Please don’t use obscenities.”
•“No business names, product names, celebrity names, . . . landmarks, and names of schools or institutions.”
•” . . . we will not print any reference to drugs or prescription items . . .”
•” . . . the only single letter we print on our candy is the letter M.”
Rolling Rock Beer recently rolled out an interesting and cool interactive advertising MOONVERTISING campaign, allowing users to create their own advertisements on the moon. Blogadilla reader Ben sent me this cool one, designed specially for us– thanks bro!
(photo from René Rondeau)
Earlier this month, researcher/historian David Giovannoni (at First Sounds) discovered the earliest recording of a human voice, from the archives of the French Academy of Sciences. According to records, this sound recording was made by inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville on April 9, 1860 - 17 years before Thomas Edison. The recording was made on Scott de Martinville’s “phonautograph” which records sound onto a carbon (smoke)-blackened paper. Though his machine successfully recorded a human voice, Scott de Martinville had no means to play back the recording. This recording was scanned, processed, and converted into an audible clip at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
HERE IS THE AUDIO CLIP of Scott de Martinville’s recording - it is a 10 second passage from the French song “Au Clair de la Lune” (I also added a modern recording of the song for comparison).
(via ABC Science)
What’s the point of robots unless you can make them annoying?
The Yellow Drum Machine:
“Like a hyperactive 3 year old, the little Yellow Drum Machine Robot wanders around the house looking for objects to drum on.”
(via Notcot)
Earlier this month I wrote a post about the spectacular theme-blog Stuff White People Like. And, of course, given the amount of attention this site has received, it was only a matter of time until someone did a lame ripoff. That day has arrived: Stuff Christians Like. Holy sh!t. Literally.
There are a few items that have yet to make it to their list:
#97 - Having to take conventional things and make them ‘Christian,’ as if everything in the secular world is just too damn corrupt or dangerous or just not magical enough.
#99 - Incessantly talking about being Christian in a self-congratulatory manner, to the point of making unimaginative blogs about it.
A long, long time ago (1998 to be exact) and in anticipation of the release of the first of three Star Wars prequels, toy maker Jason Deyer and his buddy Steve Ross were approached to design ‘Dealer Loaders’ for promotions and giveaways. But because they were ‘unapproved vendors’ (AKA not part of George Lucas’ monolith) Jason and his friend had to base their designs on the original trilogy.
You can check out the original drawings on Jason’s blog, Action Figure Insider, and you also can hear an interview about his trials and tribulations on NPR. Make sure to check out NPR’s Bryant Park Project page on the Star Wars merchandise, here. (Click ‘Listen Now’ for the interview).
Death Star BBQ Grill Anyone?
So last week I turned 32. Looking at where I am at in my life and where I thought I’d be at 32, I feel pretty good–I’ve started my own business, traveled the world, already had a couple of interesting professions, I have good friends and a cool dog. I am however missing that special someone. I would have thought that at this age I would be getting serious about finding a life partner and have developed a refined list of desired qualities in a mate, such as shared interests, successful career, thoughtful and spiritual, great lover, etc. Instead, I have whittled my boyfriend requirements down to a pretty simple list of minimum standards. At this point my ideal date must be:
Looking back over the past 17 years or so of my love life I have to say that I have actually never been involved with someone who meets all of the above criteria. Sometimes I think it’s just me, but believe it or not I am kind of picky when it comes to men. And I’m kind of a catch. So, if you or someone you know fits the above criteria and lives within 30 minutes of Watsonville, CA, I’d be happy to hear from you! But at this point the next well-meaning person who asks me, “Why don’t you have a boyfriend?” is going to get punched in the mouth.
Dom DeLuise has his own line of seasonings.
Paul Newman has is own damn aisle in the grocery store.
And now Jeff Foxworthy has released his own line of beef jerky.
Saw it in the store and bought a bag. A note to the potential consumer: opening the bag smelled like a giant barbeque fart.
Suggestions for better marketing taglines for this product:
• Stale comedy premise, fresh beef jerky!
• A taste so great, you’ll beat your wife!
• If this is your dinner, you just might be a redneck.
• As seen on COPS!
• Red meat, red states, red necks.
• Free Skynyrd T-shirt offer inside.
• It’s like a trailer park in your mouth!
• Now another reason why you’ll see Jeff Foxworthy at a gas station!
Everyone’s favorite dirty word has become a vandalism movement.
With the use of stickers saying “F•CK,” any public sign can become a punchline.
Behold the four-letter fury of F•ckThisWebsite.com
[language NSFYFW - Not Safe For Your Fucking Work]
Or . . . buyf•ck the book.
In honor of Easter (albeit a day late), and to combine a few favorite Blogadilla themes (Walk It Out, Gwen; Peep Show and Microwave Oven vs. Easter), I present to you this awesome video of our beloved Peeps (who are gluten free, FYI) “Walkin It Out.” Enjoy!
(via Katya; via GlutenFreeNYC)
In what is almost comical enough to be an article from The Onion, The New York Times breaks down a study by none other than “Dr. Grim,” a Czech scientist who correlates beer drinking and a lack of success among scientists in publishing academic papers. What is particularly interesting is that Dr. Grim correlates not just the fact that a scientist drinks beer with his or her success as a publishing author, but finds that the more a scientist drinks, the less success he or she has in publishing. Choice quotes from the article include:
Matthew Symonds, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Melbourne who has also studied factors affecting scientific productivity, called the results remarkable.
“It’s rather devastating to be told we should drink less beer in order to increase our scientific performance,” Dr. Symonds said.
and
In spite of his study, Dr. Grim, who said he would on occasion enjoy more than 12 beers in a night, is not on a campaign to decrease beer drinking among scientists. Why not? His answer: “I like it.”
The quality of writing at the New York Times has clearly never been higher.
(via SteveB; via
