Neatorama

Wedding Processional Pays Off
The Ready Meals Quiz
The Pentatonic Scale
Spiderman Saves the Day!
National Mustard Day
Pictograms
A Floating Apartment Building
Malaria Vaccine Spread Through Mosquitoes Themselves
Movie Trivia: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Thomas the Tank Engine Transformer
Pet Heads Toothpaste Caps
The Highest-grossing Movies of All Time
25 Unusual Russian Nesting Dolls

Posted: 31 Jul 2009 09:13 PM PDT

The video of Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz and their attendants dancing down the aisle at their wedding has over 13 million views on YouTube. Neither Chris Brown, whose song “Forever” served as the processional music, nor Sony Music demanded a takedown of the video. Rather, they requested click-to-buy links to Amazon and iTunes from YouTube, and sales of the year-old song skyrocketed. But what about Jill and Kevin? They appeared on morning TV to talk about the video, but haven’t made any money. Instead, they are using their sudden fame to raise funds for charity. From their website:

We have been through a lot in life, but have come through each experience stronger and more in love with each other. Our experience since we posted the video has been incredible. We would never have expected this response to our wedding entrance in a million years.

We hope to direct this positivity to a good cause. Due to the circumstances surrounding the song in our wedding video, we have chosen the Sheila Wellstone Institute.

Sheila Wellstone was an advocate, organizer, and national champion in the effort to end domestic violence in our communities.

There is a donation button on the site. Link

The Ready Meals Quiz

Posted: 31 Jul 2009 07:10 PM PDT

Microwave dinners usually don’t look like the picture on the front of the package. In this quiz, you’ll be given a picture of what the food actually looks like. Can you tell which box the pictured food came out of? In the second part of the quiz, you select which meal is homemade and which is a microwave meal, which just proves that real food doesn’t photograph all that well, either. I scored only seven out of 15. Be warned, this is British food. Link -via b3ta

The Pentatonic Scale

Posted: 31 Jul 2009 07:08 PM PDT

(Vimeo link)
Bobby McFerrin involves the audience in a music lesson during the 2009 World Science Festival. The seminar was called “Notes & Neurons: In Search of the Common Chorus.” I love how he knew exactly the way the crowd would follow along. -via Metafilter

Spiderman Saves the Day!

Posted: 31 Jul 2009 07:05 PM PDT

I don’t know where this photograph originated, but I love it! How can you beat the implied story of Spiderman holding back a van full of kids to protect a flock of ducklings? Link to full size version. -via Buzzfeed

Update: This award-winning photograph was shot by Deviant Art member Samlim. (Thanks, inebriator!)

National Mustard Day

Posted: 31 Jul 2009 07:03 PM PDT

The first Saturday in August is National Mustard Day, sponsored and promoted by the National Mustard Museum. The celebration tomorrow will be in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, but afterwards the museum will move to its new home in Middleton, 18 miles away.

For the final time, people will gather here Saturday on two closed-off blocks of Main Street to celebrate National Mustard Day. There will be free hotdogs with mustard — there’s a $10 surcharge for those who dare to request ketchup — mustard painting and music by the Poupon U Accordion Band.

The Mustard Museum draws up to 30,000 visitors a year. Link to story. Link to Mustard Day website. -via J-Walk Blog

Pictograms

Posted: 31 Jul 2009 07:00 PM PDT

Are you familiar with the International System of Typographic Picture Education? It’s what we call pictograms. The system featuring a round-headed man was invented by Austrian philosopher Otto Neurath and German artist Gernd Arntz, who called them “Isotypes” for short. The round-headed man became popularly known as “Helvetica Man”. By 1974, there were so many variant signs that the US Transportation Department looked at them all and came up with a single cohesive system for their use. Read more in this explanation of the history and usage of pictograms, particularly in the US National Park System. Link -via Metafilter

A Floating Apartment Building

Posted: 31 Jul 2009 04:12 PM PDT

Dutch architect Koen Olthuis responded to the rising sea level by designing a floating apartment building:

The Dutch are uniquely accustomed to dealing with fluctuating water levels; much of the Netherlands is below sea level, and vast swaths of land, known as polders, are continually pumped free of the accumulating rainwater that threatens nearby homes and buildings. The Citadel will simply rise and fall with the changing water levels, making it impervious to flooding, tides, and sea waters inching upward as a result of global warming.

Built atop a floating heavy concrete foundation, The Citadel will house 60 luxury apartments, a parking garage, a floating roadway, and boat docks. Each apartment will naturally have waterfront views via a garden terrace, and greenhouses will be interspersed throughout. But the greenest feature of the Citadel is its cooling system: submerged pipes will pump water throughout the structure to cool it, reducing its energy use by 25 percent compared to a conventional building.

Link

Malaria Vaccine Spread Through Mosquitoes Themselves

Posted: 31 Jul 2009 11:26 AM PDT

Medical researchers are developing an innovative way of delivering malaria vaccine:

In a daring experiment in Europe, scientists used mosquitoes as flying needles to deliver a “vaccine” of live malaria parasites through their bites. The results were astounding: Everyone in the vaccine group acquired immunity to malaria; everyone in a non-vaccinated comparison group did not, and developed malaria when exposed to the parasites later.

Link via Instapundit

Movie Trivia: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Posted: 31 Jul 2009 10:28 AM PDT

Johnny Depp is everywhere lately, isn’t he? Public Enemies is in theaters now, the trailer for Alice in Wonderland was just released, and now it’s been announced that he is going to be starring in Dark Shadows. I love Johnny Depp (and Tim Burton), so I’m thrilled about all of this. In fact, it made me want to revisit another one of their collaborations.

Check out the costumes the kids are wearing during Willy’s Halloween flashback - three of them are wearing costumes that look like Lock, Shock, and Barrel, Oogie Boogie’s evil helpers in A Nightmare Before Christmas. You have to look quick though - they run by at the very beginning of the scene from the left side of the screen to the right side of the screen.

When the gang is riding down the chocolate river just after they see the “Whipped Cream” room, they pass a room labeled “Jelly Beans.” If you pause it and go into slo-mo, you’ll see that the next room is labeled “Beetle Juicing.”

If you love bad puns, you’ll love this one - you probably remember the scene where the group is touring the factory and they make a brief stop at the secretary, who is also an Oompa Loompa played by Deep Roy. The title plaque on her desk says “Taste Accountant.” It’s a silly little reference to the phrase, “There’s no accounting for taste.” Apparently, there is!

In the edible meadow scene, the tube that vacuums the chocolate up from the lake is stuck into a flying saucer-looking thing, which is because it is. It’s actually one of the saucers from Burton’s Mars Attacks.

People who were considered for the role of Willy Wonka: Nicolas Cage, Jim Carrey, John Cleese, Robert DeNiro (can you imagine?!), Michael Keaton, Marilyn Manson, Leslie Nielsen, Bill Murray, Mike Myers, Brad Pitt, Christopher Walken, Patrick Stewart, Ben Stiller, Will Smith and Robin Williams.

A bunch of famous T.V. dads were considered for the role of Mike Teavee’s dad - Dan Castellaneta (Homer Simpson), Tim Allen (Tim Taylor), Ed O’Neill (Al Bundy), Bob Saget (Danny Tanner), and Ray Romano (Ray Barone), among others.

Some of the other buttons in the Glass Elevator: Fragile Egos, Spewed Vegetables, Root Beer Googles, Nice Plums, Secretarial Poodles. Heart-Shaped Lungs, People Poo and Blackberry Sausages.

When Willy and the kids are checking out all of Wonka’s various candy-making rooms, they pass one with a bunch of pink sheep. “I don’t want to talk about it,” Wonka remarks. This is a reference to Ed Wood, another Burton and Depp collaboration - real-life director Ed Wood had a thing for wearing pink angora sweaters.

The actress who plated Grandma Georgina said she had her pick of which grandma to play. After reading the whole script, she picked Grandma Georgina because she’s the one who gets to kiss Johnny Depp. I like the way that lady thinks.

Willy Wonka’s cane is filled with Nerds candy.

The little boy who played Augustus Gloop wore a fat suit for the role.

A bunch of people saw the similarities between Willy Wonka and Michael Jackson after the movie came out. Tim Burton begged to differ. “Michael Jackson likes children; Willy Wonka can’t stand them. To me that’s a huge difference.” Depp agreed and said that his inspiration was somewhere between Howard Hughes in his later years and Mr. Rogers.

Martin Scorsese almost directed the film, but ended up doing The Aviator instead.

Mr. Bucket works for a company that makes Smilex toothpaste, which you can see early on when it shows a shot of him taking the misshapen toothpaste caps from the assembly line. “Smylex” is also the name of the poison the Joker releases on the city in the Burton-directed Batman.

The squirrels in the Nut Room scene are real - at least, 40 of them are. The animals were trained every day for nearly three months so that the close shots in that scene would look realistic. It also provided reality for the kids instead of forcing them to work with a green screen and CGI.

Johnny Depp ad-libbed the line where he’s talking to Mike Teavee about the types of people who would want to have long hair and slips into jive talk. To be exact, it’s “It’s in the fridge, daddy-o! Are you hip to the jive? Can you dig what I’m layin’ down? I knew that you could. Slide me some skin, soul brother!” The first time he did it, the actor who plays Mike looked at him like he was nuts and said, “That’s not in the script.”

Deep Roy is the one who suggested that the Augustus Gloop dance scene be like a big Bollywood musical scene.

The chocolate river was originally going to be CGI, but they tried that and Burton didn’t like the way it looked. So after testing nine different chocolates for their color, 192,000 gallons of it were used to make a real chocolate river. It looks great, sure, but apparently after a couple of weeks it started to smell quite bad.

Johnny Depp tested out Wonka’s slightly lispy, aloof voice on his daughter while they were playing Barbies. She liked it, so he went with it.

What do you like better - this version or Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the Gene Wilder version?

Thomas the Tank Engine Transformer

Posted: 31 Jul 2009 09:29 AM PDT

Or perhaps this toy is inspired by Voltron, rather than the Transformers. Either way, when the island’s railways are threatened, Thomas and his friends unite to form a devastating weapon. I don’t know who makes this toy, but it’s on sale at eBay in Singaporean currency.

Link via Oh Gizmo!

Pet Heads Toothpaste Caps

Posted: 31 Jul 2009 09:08 AM PDT

Have you ever wanted to brush your teeth with cat vomit? Well then, good news! Slip these dog and cat head caps on top of your toothpaste tubes to simulate the experience.

Link via Nerd Approved

The Highest-grossing Movies of All Time

Posted: 31 Jul 2009 08:47 AM PDT

You might read about how much money a certain movie makes and gasp at the numbers. But can you name the highest-grossing movies of all time if the ticket prices are adjusted for inflation? In this mental_floss quiz, you have five minutes to name the top 15 -if you can! I only guessed ten of them. Link

25 Unusual Russian Nesting Dolls

Posted: 31 Jul 2009 06:40 AM PDT

GadgetHER has pictures of 25 unusual Russian Matryoshka nesting dolls, including crocheted robots, Super Mario Bros., and Left 4 Dead video game characters. The picture above is of a set that illustrates the evolution of the cell phone over time.

Link via Crunch Gear

Previously on Neatorama:
Russian Matryoshka Dolls
Geeky Matryoshka Dolls
Star Wars Matryoshka Dolls