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2014/06/11

Neatorama

Neatorama

The Birth of Tarzan

Posted: 11 Jun 2014 05:00 AM PDT

The following is an article from Uncle John’s All-Purpose Extra Strength Bathroom Reader.

Tarzan was the first modern superhero -the first pop icon whose fame spread to every corner of the globe. That makes him the forefather of Superman, Batman, Star Wars, Madonna, and Michael Jordan. “Before Tarzan,” writes one critic, “nobody understood just how big, how ubiquitous, how marketable a star could be.” Here is the inside story of how -and why- Tarzan came to be.

OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD

In 1911, a paunchy, balding, 35-year-old named Edgar Rice Burroughs took a job selling pencil sharpeners. He wasn’t very good at it; for that matter, he didn’t seem to be very good at anything. As a young man he was denied admittance to West Point, and from there he’d gone on to fail at a number of professions, including cow punching, gold mining, selling lightbulbs, running a news stand, advertising, and peddling quack medicine door-to-door.

“Two decades later,” John Taliaferro writes in Tarzan Forever, “when Burroughs drew up an outline for his autobiography, he summarized the period between 1905 and 1911 with a simple, dreary statement: ‘I am a flop.’”

KILLING TIME

A few years earlier, while selling a “remedy” for alcoholism door-to-door, Burroughs had been responsible for reading magazines to make sure the company’s ads appeared as promised and were error-free. “After our advertisements were checked,” he recalled later, “I sometimes took the magazines home to read” -a habit he kept up even after he switched jobs and began selling pencil sharpeners.

“There were several all-fiction publications among them,” Burroughs remembered, “and although I had never written a story, I knew absolutely that I could write stories just as entertaining, and probably more so, than any I read in those magazines. If people were paid for writing such rot as I read, I could write stories just as rotten.”

BEDTIME STORIES

Coming up with story ideas was no problem; the troubled Burroughs had become an insomniac. To distract himself as he lay in bed each night, he had developed the habit of telling himself adventure stories featuring heroes whose lives were nothing like his own. “While drifting through the unsatisfactory real world, Gabe Essoe writes, “Burroughs would console himself with a fantasy world in which he was handsome, virile, and capable of success, the idol of whole civilizations, beyond the limits of credulity.”

“Most of the stories I wrote,” he later admitted, “were stories I told myself just before I went to sleep.”

OUT OF THIS WORLD

Burroughs started work on his first story in July 1911, and by mid-August he’d completed a 43,000-word manuscript he called A Princess of Mars, about a Civil War veteran who falls into a trance in Arizona, wakes up on Mars, fights a war against the Martians, and then marries a Martian princess.

Burroughs was actually latching onto a popular topic of the early 1900s. In 1879, Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli detected what he though were canali (“canals”) on the Martian surface; and in 1906 another astronomer, Percival Lowell, wrote a book that proposed that the canals were irrigation ditches built by an advanced race of Martians. People were excited by the prospect of life on the Red Planet …which was probably why Burroughs decided to write about it. He couldn’t afford typing paper -he had a wife and two babies to support and had just lost his job selling pencil sharpeners- so he wrote on the backs of old letterhead that he’d picked up at his brother’s stationery company.

PAYDAY

Burroughs finished the story and sent the manuscript to Argosy magazine, and with a few changes, A Princess of Mars was accepted for serial publication in Argosy’s sister publication, the All-Story. Price: $400. “I shall never make a million dollars,” Burroughs wrote in his autobiography, “but if I do it cannot possibly give me the thrill that that four-hundred dollar check gave me.”

Thomas Newell Metcalf, managing editor at All-Story, invited Burroughs to submit another story, “a serial of the regular romantic type, something like, say, Ivanhoe.” Three weeks later, Burroughs turned in a short story called “The Outlaw of Torn,” a 13th-century tale about a fictitious son of England’s King Henry II. But Metcalf didn’t like it, so it was shelved.

GOING APE

In March 1912, Burroughs wrote back to Metcalf that he was already at work on his next tale.

The story I am now on is of the scion of a noble English house -of the present time- who was born in tropical Africa where his parents died when he was about a year old. The infant was found and adopted by a huge she-ape, and was brought up among a band of fierce anthropods.

The mental development of this ape-man in spite of every handicap, of how he learned to read English without knowledge of the spoken language, of the way in which his inherent reasoning faculties lifted him above his savage jungle friends and enemies, of his meeting with a white girl, how he came at last to civilization and to his own makes fascinating writing and I think will prove interesting reading… The boy-child is called Tarzan, which is ape-talk for “white skin.”

Metcalf was impressed: “I think your idea for a new serial is cracker-jack and I shall be very anxious to have a look at it. You certainly have a most remarkable imagination of anybody whom I have run up against for some time.”

SIGN OF THE TIMES

Again, Burroughs’s story was built around popular topics of the day. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and the mysterious continent of Africa, which had only recently began giving up its secrets to Western explorers.

It also reflected his interest in another popular theory of the day: eugenics. In 1869, ten years after Darwin published On the Origin of Species, his cousin, Francis Galton, wrote Hereditary Genius. In it, he argues that some human bloodlines were, by the law of natural selection, more advanced than others. According to Galton, the way a person could tell how advanced their bloodline was was to count the number of distinguished ancestors they had in their family tree: If you were descended from kings, Pilgrims, or the Founding Fathers, you were a member of a very advanced bloodline. If you were descended from criminals or peasants, you weren’t very evolved at all.

This book make Galton the father of "eugenics," the theory that “selective breeding” could be used to improve the bloodlines of the human race. By 1912, the eugenics movement was so strong that universities all over the country offered courses in it; one organization called the American Breeder’s Society had even begun compiling a list of "America’s Most Effective Blood Lines," literally a Who’s Who of natural selection.

Perhaps in response to his own personal failings, Burroughs liked to brag that he came from exceedingly "good stock" -he shared a common Pilgrim ancestor with American Red Cross founder Clara Barton, Morse code inventor Samuel Morse, and (future) president Calvin Coolidge. The greatest gift his mother gave him, he later wrote, was "the red blood of the Puritan and the Pioneer, bequeathed… uncontaminated."

It was this fascination with bloodlines and natural selection that drove the new story. Could good breeding triumph over adversity?

GOING TO PRESS

In May, Burroughs finished work on Tarzan of the Apes and sent it to Metcalf. “I did not think it was a good story,” Burroughs recalled, “and I doubted it would sell.” As he’d done so many times before, Burroughs was also beginning to doubt whether he really wanted to be a writer. “I was sort of ashamed of it as an occupation for a big, strong, healthy man,” he admitted later.

Metcalf disagreed with Burroughs’s appraisal of the story: Tarzan was good -very good, he wrote to Burroughs later that summer:

If you will stop and realize how many thousands and thousands of stories an editor has to read, day in, day out, you will be impressed when we tell you that we read this yarn at one sitting and had the time of our young lives. It is the most exciting story we have seen in a blue moon, and about as original as they make ‘em.

Neither Burroughs nor Metcalf had any idea just how good Tarzan of the Apes was until October, when the Tarzan issue hit the newsstands. Within just a few days, Tarzan letters began pouring into the All-Story offices praising the story …and begging for more.

CHECKS AND BALANCES

Burroughs was just getting started as an author, but his years of business experience, though financially disastrous, had given him a surprising amount of business savvy.

When the $400 check for his first story, A Princess of Mars, arrived from All-Story magazine in 1911, he noticed that the words “For All Rights” were typed on it. As far as Burroughs was concerned, he’d only sold the magazine the right to publish his story in their magazine -and for that matter, only once. “What other rights are there?” he wrote back before cashing the check (which would have implied that he accepted All-Story’s terms and was indeed signing over “all rights” to the story). Few authors -let alone first-time authors with an unbroken, 15-year string of business and career failures- had the sense to ask that question.

OVER A BARREL

All-Story could not publish A Princess of Mars without Burroughs’s consent, and after a flurry of correspondence, the magazine finally gave in. It sent Burroughs a letter agreeing that he would retain all rights to his characters and story after they published it once.

Refusing to cash that check until he’d won back the rights to his story -and then doing it again when he sold his first Tarzan story a few months later- were probably the most important business decisions of his entire career. They would earn him millions of dollars in the years to come. “Had Burroughs’s innate genius not guided him at this crucial stage,” Gabe Essie write-in Tarzan of the Movies, “he would have had nothing to sell to film in later years.”

In 1913, Burroughs made another smart move: he registered the name Tarzan as a trademark.

SHELF LIFE

Burroughs understood that the real money from Tarzan was in books, not magazines. Magazines disappeared from the newsstands after only a month or two; but books might stay on the shelves for years. Now, armed with a pile of fan letters and strong sales of the Tarzan issue of All-Story magazine, he pitched Tarzan of the Apes to book publishers.

They weren’t interested. Every publisher Burroughs contacted turned him down, so he put the idea aside and signed up with a newspaper syndicator to publish his stories in newspaper serial form instead. It was a huge success- and convinced A.C. McClurg and Co., one of the publishers that had originally turned Burroughs down, to publish Tarzan of the Apes after all.

In the years to come, that very first Tarzan novel would sell more than three million copies, earning a fortune for both Edgar Rice Burroughs and his publisher. But it was only the beginning: In his lifetime, Burroughs would write 66 more novels, 26 of them Tarzan novels; and by the time he died in 1950, he’d sold more than 36 million books in 31 different languages all over the world.  This made him the most successful author of the first half of the 20th century.



JACK OF ALL TRADES

Burroughs was mores than just the most successful writer of his age: He was a pioneer in the art of marketing a character in every possible medium. After succeeding in magazines, newspapers, hardcover books (paperbacks had not been invented yet), and movies, in 1932 Burroughs formed a radio division of his corporation. He created a 364-episode “Tarzan” radio serial that was sold to radio stations all over the country. (Burroughs’s son-in-law, Jack Pierce -who played Tarzan in the 1926 film Tarzan and the Golden Lion- and his daughter Joan Burroughs Pierce, provided the voices of Tarzan and Jane.)

In creating the “Tarzan” radio show, Burroughs actually “introduced the pre-recorded radio show,” Essoe writes. “Up to this time, all radio programs had been aired live. Tarzan’s pioneering success in this field prompted a major trend toward ‘canned’ broadcasts.”

The following year, Burroughs signed a deal with United Features Syndicate to create and distribute a “Tarzan” comic strip to newspapers. At its peak in 1942, the strip appeared in 141 daily papers and 156 Sunday papers all over the world. Then in 1936, Burroughs took those same newspaper strips and relaunched them as comic books.

PUT A TARZAN IN YOUR TANK

Meanwhile, as Tarzan conquered one mass medium after another, Burroughs was busy licensing his hero’s name and image to several hundred different manufacturers. They flooded the nations with hundreds of Tarzan products, including sweatshirts, wristwatches, masks and “chest wigs,” candy, peanuts, bubblegum, trading cards, rubber toys, leg garters, bathing suits; and even Tarzan brand coffee, bread, and gasoline. In Japan, Tarzan fitness magazine told people how to stay in shape just like Tarzan.

In 1939, Burroughs even founded the Tarzan Clan of America, which he hoped would one day rival the Boy Scouts. (It didn’t.)

Perhaps the most interesting use of the Tarzan name was in 1928, when Burroughs subdivided the Southern california ranch estate he’d nought nine years earlier and began selling off parcels. On July 9, 1928, the U.S. Postal Service granted the former ranch its own post office and official recognition as a town, giving it the same name Burroughs had bestowed upon it when he bought the property in 1919: Tarzana.

KING OF THE JUNGLE

Before Edgar Rice Burroughs came along, no one had ever tried to market a fictional character this way. For that matter, in creating so many different competing forms of the same character, Burroughs had done precisely the opposite of what the brightest business and marketing minds of his day would have recommended. Not just the inventor of one of the most enduring fictional characters of the 20th century, he was also the inventor of an entirely new way of doing business, John Taliaferro write in Tarzan Forever:

Though marketing experts ands syndication agents warned that Tarzan on the radio would compete with Tarzan in the comics or that serial motion pictures would steal audiences from feature motion pictures, Burroughs was convinced that the total would exceed the sum of its parts. As he saw it, there was no such thing as overkill, and well before Walt Disney ever hawked his first mouse ears or Ninja Turtle “action figures” became film stars, Burroughs was already a grand master of a concept that would one day be known as multimedia…

In short order, Tarzan became a superhero, the first pop icon to attain global saturation. As such he was the forefather of  Superman and more recent real-life marvels such as Michael Jordan. Before Tarzan, nobody understood just how big, how ubiquitous, how marketable a star could be.

Of course, without the successful series of films, Tarzan might never have become the mighty pop force he still is today. The story of Tarzan in the movies is coming soon.  

_______________________________

The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John's All-Purpose Extra Strength Bathroom Reader.

The 13th book in the series by the Bathroom Reader's Institute has 504 pages crammed with fun facts, including articles on the biggest movie bombs ever, the origin and unintended use of I.Q. test, and more.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!

Laughter: A Scientific Study

Posted: 11 Jun 2014 04:00 AM PDT

Vimeo Link

Dr. Robert Provine, behavioral neurobiologist at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, has been studying social and neurological origins of laughter for 20 years. In this Vimeo Staff Pick from the Vimeo channel of The Atlantic, Dr. Provine explores laughter in humans and other species from a variety of perspectives. Read more about the scientific study of laughter in this article at The Atlantic.

Spam-Filled Donuts

Posted: 11 Jun 2014 02:00 AM PDT

(Photo: Mister Eaters)

If I know one thing about haute cuisine, it's that Spam goes well with everything. John Clarkson, the owner of Mister Eaters, a chip shop in Preston, Lancashire, UK, agrees. He loves Spam so much that he invented the Spam-filled donut.

To make this culinary marvel, he slices open an ordinary glazed donut, adds a layer of spam, then re-assembles the components and deep fries them. They're ready just four minutes later. The donuts are a big hit with Clarkson's customers:

He said: 'They have flown off the shelves and I am so pleased that people are waking up to how good it tastes.

'We are always experimenting and will always bring our ideas to life, we definitely aren’t your average fish and chip shop that’s for sure.

-via That's Nerdalicious!

Tree for Three

Posted: 11 Jun 2014 12:00 AM PDT



These three Koala joeys at Sydney, Australia's Taronga Zoo first peeked out of their mother's pouch in 2013. Females Milli and Sydney are 18 months old, and the male, Tucker is 12 months. The zoo staff says the trio spends their days snuggling together in the trees. According to their keeper, Laura Jones,

"Tucker is usually the poor guy on the bottom. I think he goes to sleep first and then the girls find a comfy spot on top of him. He seems to quite like it at the moment though, as it may remind him of cuddling with his mum."

The zoo staff says the three joeys have banded together ever since being separated from their mothers.

After a gestation period of only 35 days, the female Koala gives birth to one to two joeys. The hairless, blind babies immediately seek the warmth and comfort of their mother's pouch, which faces backwards and has strong muscles to keep them secure. A Koala joey stays hidden in the pouch for six months.  At 12 months, the joey emerges from the pouch permanently. At the age of 18-24 months, Koalas are independent and spend most of their time resting in the upper canopy of trees.

Strangely enough, the Koala is one of the only animals known to have evolved a smaller brain in order to preserve energy in the species. They are nocturnal animals that spend 18-20 hours sleeping each day. With the vast majority of their time alive spent napping and cuddling, Milli, Sydney and Tucker may have a smaller brain than their ancestors, but it sounds like they have the right idea about how to live!

Images Credit:Taronga Zoo
Via Zooborns




 

The Garbage Bag Alien

Posted: 10 Jun 2014 11:00 PM PDT

(YouTube link)

Looks like someone built a homemade Alien xenomorph as a Halloween decoration. It’s not much to look at, but it moves, so it could be scary in the dark. But no… 

In this Stan Winston Studio ALIENS test footage, James Cameron directs SWS puppeteers as they manipulate a rough "proof of concept" Alien Queen made out of garbage bags, foam core, and ski poles.

So what we are really seeing is the birth of the Alien queen! I did not know they did this, but I’m glad it’s available for all to see. I learned about it in the post 15 Secrets of the Hollywood Creature Feature at mental_floss.

Unusual Interest Club Photos

Posted: 10 Jun 2014 10:00 PM PDT

       Coffee Creamer Lids Swap Meet

Meet a number of people who will be thoroughly unsympathetic in response to the sob story about how your membership in the high school chess club lost you a prom date. Swiss photographers Ursula Sprecher and Andi Cortellini captured images of people who belong to interest clubs that are offbeat. The photographers' series, entitled Freizeitfreunde (Hobby Buddies), playfully poses members of organizations such as the Santa Claus Group and the Coffee Cream Lids Swap Meet. The photographs have been turned into a book, a bound testament to the notion that, eventually, we all find "our people."  Via Beautiful Decay (NSFW, artistic nudes).

Images Credit: Ursula Sprecher and Andi Cortellini

      Santa Claus Group

   Swiss Garrison (Serving the 501st Legion) 

   St. Brandan Scout Section

      Pigeon Fancier's Club

       Butchers' Friends Society

      Tupperware Party 

 

Just a Little Trick

Posted: 10 Jun 2014 09:00 PM PDT

Some people go above and beyond the call of duty just to impress their kids. This one should be in the Dad Jokes Hall of Fame. It’s the latest from Lunarbaboon.

Game of Rogues - Darkest Fantasy Knight

Posted: 10 Jun 2014 08:00 PM PDT


Game of Rogues by Ninjaink

When you play a game of chess you try to think three moves ahead, play a game involving thrones and you try to outwit those who would usurp you, but when you play a game of rogues it's all wild cards, riddles and jokers trying to bring your empire of justice down.

Add a little darkness to your geeky wardrobe with this Game of Rogues t-shirt by Ninjaink and show your support for your favorite brooding superhero's war against crime.

Visit Ninjaink's Facebook page, official website and Twitter, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more superheroic designs:

Rocket NouveauVitruvian CopPrime HunterWhat Does McCloud Say?

View more designs by Ninjaink | More Funny T-shirts | New T-Shirts

Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!

The Marathon Inspired by a Prison Break

Posted: 10 Jun 2014 08:00 PM PDT

Vimeo Link

The races known as the Barkley Marathons are considered to be some of the toughest in the United States, if not the world. There are 60-mile and 100-mile versions of the Barkley. Participants of the 100-mile race climb over 59,200 feet of rugged, mountainous terrain in Frozen Head State Park near Wartburg, Tennessee.

In its 28-year history, only 14 runners out of approximately 800 have finished the Barkley within the 60-hour time limit. Barkley Marathons registration is limited to only 35 runners, openings which generally are taken within one day. 

This video by Denver-based filmmaker Brendan Young informs viewers about the race. Founder Gary Cantrell came up with the idea for the race after watching a news item on a failed prison escape by James Earl Ray, assassinator of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Via Laughing Squid. 

 

How Many Of These <i>Speed</i> Facts Do You Know On Its 20th Anniversary?

Posted: 10 Jun 2014 07:00 PM PDT

It was twenty years ago today that the movie Speed opened in theaters. You know the story of the runaway bus, driven by Sandra Bullock, threatened by Dennis Hopper, and saved by Keanu Reeves. But there’s a lot you don’t know about the movie. It took a lot of work to make it more than just another Die Hard.

7. Fox executives cried about Keanu Reeves’ haircut. Jan de Bont told Reeves that he needed to get a haircut that would reflect his character before shooting began . The executives at 20th Century Fox were so upset that Reeves had buzzed his hair that they threatened to postpone the start of production until his hair grew back.

10. Speed originally had a very different cast. Bullock’s biggest competitor for the role of Annie was Ellen DeGeneres. Before Bullock was cast, DeGeneres was offered the role of Annie with the promise that it would be a comedic action role. DeGeneres passed on the part in hopes of scoring a gig on the newly developed sitcom Friends, and we all know how that turned out. And the role of Jack was offered to Jeff Bridges before being passed on down to Johnny Depp and then Keanu Reeves.

Read about how they made the bus jump, how they made the train crash, and how they made the script work in a trivia list at Uproxx.

Owl on Hand

Posted: 10 Jun 2014 06:00 PM PDT


YouTube Link

A Japanese artist, who uses the name Satsuma professionally, works with the aid of a wise assistant. One of his pets, a Northern White Faced Owl, perches on his hand as he draws on his tablet. There's nothing like wide-eyed appreciation of one's craft!

Northern White Faced Owls have an interesting characteristic: they change their posture as a defense mechanism when confronted by other animals in the wild. If their enounter is with a smaller animal, the owls puff their feathers in order to appear larger. When they come upon a larger animal, they pull in their feathers, elongate their body to appear thinner and narrow their eyes to slits.

Via Colossal   

The Vampire Deer

Posted: 10 Jun 2014 05:00 PM PDT

Have you ever seen a deer with such fangs? This is the Chinese Water Deer (Hydropotes inermis inermis) also known colloquially as the vampire deer. The fangs, or tusks, are not used for eating and are loose in their sockets, so the deer can move them out of the way while they eat. Both males and females develop tusks, although they are smaller in the female. What are they for? Mainly, they are just for show. Read more about the vampire deer and see plenty of pictures at Ark in Space.  -via the Presurfer

(Image credit: Flickr user Don Sutherland)

5 Great Luigi Tattoos

Posted: 10 Jun 2014 04:00 PM PDT

There's been a lot of press lately about Luigi's intimidating death stare featured in the new Mario Kart commercials, but when you think about it, can you really blame Luigi for being a triffle aggravated? After all, he's been stuck playing second fiddle to his shorter, chubbier brother for over thirty years.

After all this time, I think it's time to show Luigi that he's loved too. And here are some superfans with the ink to prove it.

On a side note: as with most tattoo posts, I rarely have the name of both the artist and the person with the tattoo, so if you have any info on these pieces, let me know in the comments.

This piece by Dorian is a fantastic example of why Luigi is so likable -he's never cocky and he's comfortable in his own skin.

At the same time, Luigi's never one to back down from a fight as this tattoo by Shannon Ritchie proves.

Of course, Luigi knows when it's best to run away as well as Heather Maranda, a reader of Mario Mayhem knows all too well.

That bravery comes at a cost too. After all those fights, Damian James knows that Luigi has suffered just as much in the name of the Princess -but he has to settle for Princess Daisy who is never even locked up in the same castle as Peach.

It makes you wonder, if you were this overlooked, wouldn't you also turn to smoking shrooms or some other substance that makes you see ghosts, monsters and man-eating flowers? Thanks John Gorman of Providence Tattoo for illustrating this point so well.

So maybe next time you see the Luigi Death Stare, cut the guy a break -he's had to deal with a lot of crap thanks to his big brother and he never complains. In fact, I think we should all aspire to be a bit more like Luigi.

17 Great Works of <i>One Week Friends</i> Fan Art

Posted: 10 Jun 2014 03:00 PM PDT

One Week Friends (Isshuukan Friends) is a currently-airing anime series that Kotaku's anime critic Richard A. Eisenbeis calls one of the "Five Anime of Spring 2014 You Should Be Watching."

My rule when encountering anime recommendations like that is to try a series for one--and only one--full episode. I did and was immediately hooked.

It's a sweet, romantic tale that is quickly becoming one of my favorite anime series. You can watch it for free on Crunchyroll.

I'm not the only person to find One Week Friends appealing. It's inspired a lot of fan art, the best of which I've rounded up here. Warning: spoilers.

One Week Friends is a high school romance. Yūki Hase, the lead male character, is a typical if somewhat dorky and awkward teenager. He notices that a girl in his class, Kaori Fujimiya, always seems sad. She never talks to anyone and appears to have not a single friend. Karn Wongprasert shows her pain in this digital image.

One Week Friends is so captivating in part because it's so realistic. The characters are flawed people. Hase doesn't know how to approach Fujimiya. He's not suave. He simply walks up to her at the end of class one day, bows politely, and asks if they can be friends. Hase's approach, as shown by Yogi Park, is direct and clumsy. It's also successful.

(Gilang Fitra R)

Where does Fujimiya disappear to at lunchtime? It turns out that she has a key to the roof of the school building. Hase joins her up there for lunch.

Later, Fujimiya reveals her secret about why she doesn't have friends: she has a memory problem. Every week, on Sunday night, she forgets everything about any friends that she has or makes. Her memory resets, thus preventing her for forming any meaningful relationships.


(Belcorno)

Hase wants to be her friend anyway. If necessary, he'll ask to be her friend every Monday, restarting the relationship every week.

At the beginning, this is their relationship. It pays off. As Forrest illustrates, Fujimiya begins to come alive and find happiness.

Hase has a great idea: Fujimiya should keep a diary so that when her memory resets on Sunday night, she has a written record of the previous week. Candide shows her writing in that diary.

When I watch One Week Friends, I often feel a knot of tension inside when I see Hase making a mistake. One of the great aspects of this show is that its characters act like real people. Hase is kind and helpful, but he's also anxious, insecure, and has a tendency toward jealousy. In many ways, Fujimiya becomes happier than Hase, as shown in this drawing by Meikitefuka28.

(KeiiiN)

Fujimiya begins to blossom. She makes new friends--friends other than Hase. Hase's response is not always ideal. This is in part because he clearly wants to be more than just friends with Fujimiya. But Fujimiya gives no indication of having a romantic interest in Hase.

(Anindita Sarkar)

Hase is in love. He's also an inexperienced teenage boy who doesn't know what he's doing. In situations like this, there's always a great risk. He can try to form a romantic relationship with Fujimiya. But will his attempt spoil the friendship if she rejects him?

Hase is confused and worried. Much of young love consists of anxiety. Fujimiya, however, seems happy--even blissful--as James Wong illustrates superbly.


(hzrinv)

Should Hase take a chance? Should he try to be not just a friend but a boyfriend? I'd advise against it. But age has made me cautious. I'm not a teenage boy, like Hase.

Here's a simple but elegant line drawing by @kinsanta.

The chibi style is always a fun way to inject playfulness into a series, as Ruda demonstrates here. Giving the main characters furry tails and ears is a cute touch.

Hase loves egg sandwiches. If I understand it correctly (I can't read Japanese and am relying on Google Translate) then a bakery briefly offered sandwiches modeled on those that Hase likes.

Hase and Fujimiya's first outing together takes place in a neighborhood of Tokyo. The backgrounds are taken from actual settings, as one fan diligently photographed.


(Video Link)

The title theme song of One Week Friends is "Niji no Kakera" -- "No Rain, No Rainbow." It's a sweet song. Whenever it comes up in my playlist, it makes me think of my wife's smile. Here's a nice guitar cover by YouTube user Sam P.

Hase and Fujimiya aren't the only potential couple among the characters. Patatao sees a future for their friends, Kiryū and Yamagishi.

An Honest Trailer for <i>The Lion King</i>

Posted: 10 Jun 2014 01:00 PM PDT

(YouTube link)

Screen Junkies rolls back to 1994 to bring us an honest trailer for The Lion King. This breakdown leans heavily on death, predation, sex, childhood trauma, and even hints at incest, so it’s not for children. The reworked song lyrics are goofy and dark. -via Tastefully Offensive

Loyal Service Dog Earns A Place In His Master's Seventh Grade Yearbook

Posted: 10 Jun 2014 12:00 PM PDT

There are lots of ways to show your loyal service dog that they’re doing a good job- you can give them extra treats, let them spend an afternoon unwinding in a dog park, or giving their fur a good brushing, but there’s one service dog whose service has been commended with a portrait.

His name is Taxi Benke, and his loyal service to Rachel Benke landed him a yearbook photo alongside his owner, and a place in the hearts of all his fellow classmates.

Taxi has been faithfully serving the seventh grader from San Antonio, Texas for four years, helping her cope with epilepsy and giving her a furry shoulder to lean on, and now he’s officially headed to the eighth grade with his doting master, Rachel.

-Via Laughing Squid

Purin is Ready for the World Cup

Posted: 10 Jun 2014 11:00 AM PDT

(YouTube link)

Purin the Super-Beagle is ready for World Cup Soccer! She kicks, she tends goal, and she does a pretty good handstand, too. Don’t worry, folks, she’s a professional. Not a professional soccer player, but a canine entertainer. According to her Facebook page, Purin’s tricks made her a YouTube sensation in Japan, which led to jobs in TV and advertising. And she’s cute, which doesn’t hurt a bit. -via Time

Superheroes Are On Neighborhood Watch In Toronto

Posted: 10 Jun 2014 10:00 AM PDT

Toronto, Ontario boasts an extremely low crime rate, so the presence of a Neighbourhood Watch is quite effective in helping manage the slew of petty crimes that happen across the city, even more so now that heroes like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Spider-Man have joined the watch.

But have these heroes actually joined up as indicated by their presence on neighborhood watch street signs across the city, or is this the work of some nefarious jokester?

Actually, they're the appropriated works of Andrew Lamb, who felt the signs made more of an impact with some superheroic pop culture icons added to them.

Will his signs make an impact on crime? Maybe not, but you can bet vampires will think twice about touring Toronto with a stake wielding Buffy watching over the city!

-Via Nerd Approved

Yes, Now Quit Asking Me! - Let The Snowman Go

Posted: 10 Jun 2014 09:00 AM PDT


YES, Now Quit Asking Me! by Tom Bancroft

"Do you wanna build a snowman?" sounds like a really benign, normal question, but when you ask the same person the same question over and over again, like a CD frozen on the same song lyric, you just want to grab them by the shoulders and yell "YES, now quit asking me!", but all that seems to come out is "Let it go..."

Stay cool this summer and make a bold statement at the same time with this Yes, Now Quit Asking Me! t-shirt by Tom Bancroft, it's stone cold hilarious!

Visit Tom Bancroft's Facebook page, official website, Tumblr and Twitter, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more chillin' designs:

Lil' GuardiansFro-tastic FourIcey YodalThe OTHER Mermaid

View more designs by Tom Bancroft | More Funny T-shirts | New T-Shirts

Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!

<i>Star Wars</i> Seen Through Fresh Eyes

Posted: 10 Jun 2014 09:00 AM PDT

Jeremy grew up with his grandparents in a remote area without a reliable TV signal. He is 19 now, and recently watched the original Star Wars trilogy for the first time. Oh, he knew some things about it, but was too young to experience the movie hype and never saw it at his parents’ insistence like so many of his peers. He blogs about his experience at Some Wonderful Kind of Noise. For each of the movies, he makes predictions, then records notes during the viewing, then writes a recap. Reading through it is like going back to the first time you saw Star Wars.

This says Episode IV. I am confusion. And we're reading! The evil galactic empire, so I was right!

Oh cool, we have letters of transit. Or will this be more significant? Also clearly DEATH STAR is meant to be in all caps so we're doing that.

I'm missing like half of this because awesome music. Rewinding to catch it all.

Already stoked and nothing is happnSHIP LASERS

Dear god, do you have enough ship there? There's an underdog message in all this, I'm sure of it

Robots!

One talks, one doesn't Alright then

White robots! The Empire

You’ll want to read the whole thing in order (reversed in this archive). The revelation of Vader’s relationship to Luke was particularly hard on Jeremy. You’ll be glad to know that after he wrapped up the trilogy this past weekend, he did not go on to the prequels. Yesterday he watched The Princess Bride for the first time. -via Metafilter

AT-AT Sculpture Made Out Of Broken Skateboard Decks

Posted: 10 Jun 2014 08:00 AM PDT

Skaters know that breaking your deck, or dozens of decks depending on how hard you grind, is an inevitable part of the pastime.

But what do you do with all those broken wooden boards? Some keep them as a record of their skateboarding adventures, but one radical dude named Derek Keenan has come up with a totally gnarly way to recycle those busted decks- he created a large AT-AT sculpture out of the wreckage.

Derek created this incredibly cool wooden AT-AT for an art show put on by Vans shoes and Santa Cruz Skateboards to promote their new Star Wars themed lines, complete with an $1980 price tag that only a Sith lord can afford!

-Via GeekTyrant

The Last Game

Posted: 10 Jun 2014 07:00 AM PDT

(YouTube link)

After the use of clones “perfected” football, everyone lost interest. After all, perfection is only entertaining for a short time. That’s when the world’s greatest football stars (Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Neymar Júnior, Zlatan Ibrahimović, Andrés Iniesta, David Luiz, Franck Ribéry, Tim Howard, and Ronaldo Fenomeno) get together to save the sport. If this happened in real life, the outcome of the game would matter not at all, just how many butts are in the seats. However, since this is a Nike ad, you can place your bets on how the big game will turn out. -via Daily Picks and Flicks

A Simple Way to Get Those Nasty Cable Boxes, Routers and Wires Out of the Way

Posted: 10 Jun 2014 06:00 AM PDT

Everyone needs a cable modem and router these days, but they aren't exactly the most beautiful things to look at. Fortunately, Sweet  Sanity has a solution that helps you hide the boxes and wires inside some simple, white storage boxes.

The solution is incredibly simple and easy to do with a box cutter. Find out more over at Homes and Hues: Hide Your Wireless Router Out of the Way With Beautiful Storage Boxes
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