Neatorama |
- An Incredibly Realistic, Life-Sized Groot Costume
- Every Year, This Penguin Swims 5,000 Miles to Visit the Man Who Saved His Life
- Guy Who Claims He Quit Smoking Caught By Google Street View Camera
- Life With an 8 Foot Tall Dog
- This Incredible Chair Was Carved from a Single Tree Stump
- Never Give Up
- Darepool - Talk About Your Blind Adoration!
- Edible Cup Is Made of Squid Meat
- The iMom
- Marco Rubio Sitting In A Giant Chair: The Photoshop Battle
- Text-To-Speech in 1846 Involved a Talking Robotic Head With Ringlets
- Beautiful Animal Drawings Made with Multicolored Dots
- Best of <i>Mythbusters</i>
- How to Care for Your Pet Human
- Waiting for a Cat Birth Livestream
- The Struggle Is Still So Real
- 23 Facts about U.S. Cash
- Tick Tracy - Here's Looking At You, Chairface
- Drag Queen Phi Phi O'Hara Does 90s NickToons Cosplay
- 10 Awesome Music Videos Directed By Film Directors
- Actual Job: Cheese Librarian
- Moving to “America’s Worst Place to Live”
- The Alternate Versions Of Wonder Woman
- The Rise of Bootlegged Content
| An Incredibly Realistic, Life-Sized Groot Costume Posted: 10 Mar 2016 04:00 AM PST Sure, "We are Groot," but it takes a special person to actually become Groot -especially in a full-sized costume. On Instructables, you can learn how to become just such a special person by making your own cosplay. Note that when I say "life-sized," I mean life-sized based on the film, not human-sized -meaning 7'7". Of course, the project won't be easy, but you might be surprised at how cheap something this incredible can be. And, the end result is certainly well worth the effort.  | ||||||||
| Every Year, This Penguin Swims 5,000 Miles to Visit the Man Who Saved His Life Posted: 10 Mar 2016 02:00 AM PST
5 years ago, Joao Pereira de Souza, 71, of Brazil found a penguin lying on the beach near his home near Rio de Janeiro. He was covered with oil and severely malnourished. So de Souza took him home, cleaned his feathers, and nursed him back to health. He named his new penguin friend Dindim. After Dindim had recovered, de Souza took him back out to the beach to let him go. The penguin swam away. Then, a few months later, he came back! Now Dindim swims about 5,000 miles every year from his habitat on the southern tip of South America to spend time with de Souza. The Daily Mail reports:
-via Jackie Rivera and Marilyn Bellamy | ||||||||
| Guy Who Claims He Quit Smoking Caught By Google Street View Camera Posted: 10 Mar 2016 12:00 AM PST When you tell your friends and family that you're trying to quit smoking they can become like your own personal secret police, shadowing your every move to make sure you don't try to sneak a smoke. This can lead to some awkward moments when they sniff your face and fingers, some shameful moments when you give in to temptation and a regressive moment or two when the smoker is caught red-handed. Most of the time getting caught doesn't result in a funny story to tell, but when you get caught smoking by the Google Street View car the tale gets told to the entire internet. Julie Ryding's husband Donald said he wasn't sneaking smokes after his heart attack, but along came that sneaky camera car to expose his secret in the most ridiculous way possible. -Via Daily Dot | ||||||||
| Posted: 09 Mar 2016 11:00 PM PST Many of us remember reading about Clifford the Big Red Dog when we were kids and longing for a monstrously huge dog friend of our own. But the problem with Clifford was that he was quite possibly too big -he couldn't even fit in your house. But Juji, on the other hand, is just the right size. He's big enough to ride on -like a horse, but still small enough to fit on a couch (though just barely). Juji was adopted by Christopher Cline and his girlfriend when Chris was going through a hard time. The pup brightened his spirits and soon enough, he started Photoshoping his regular-sized goldendoodle as a jumbo-sized pooch and the results are pretty much amazing. You can keep up with Christopher and Juji's pictures over on Chris' Instagram. Via Design You Trust | ||||||||
| This Incredible Chair Was Carved from a Single Tree Stump Posted: 09 Mar 2016 10:00 PM PST In 2014, artist Alex Johnson took a single brown oak tree stump and shaped it into this magnificent chair. It's called the Glenham I. It is a swirl of seemingly moving curls carved into the rigid wood. He unveiled it at the Alde Valley Spring Festival in eastern England. You can see more photos here. -via Twisted Sifter | ||||||||
| Posted: 09 Mar 2016 09:00 PM PST In this kindergarten gymnastics recital, a young boy attempts to clear the vault. He fails. And fails again. But he keeps trying, and eventually breaks into tears. Still not giving up. But he gets an encouraging cheer from his fellow students (“You can do it!”) and that makes all the difference. -via reddit | ||||||||
| Darepool - Talk About Your Blind Adoration! Posted: 09 Mar 2016 08:00 PM PST Deadpool has proven he can do it all, crossing everything from "star in a hit movie" to "go one day without hacking someone to bits" off his list, but the one thing he's never been able to do is to be taken seriously as a superhero. He tries his best to get the job done the way Cap or Spidey would have done it, but in the end things blow up and blood flows by the gallon, so he decided to take a note from his pal the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. And by take a note we mean dress up exactly like Daredevil and go around pretending to be him, only the less attractive and more sighted version, which was fine until he came face to barrel with that gun happy vigilante they call The Punisher... Reveal your love of superheroes with this Darepool t-shirt by The Staziac, it's Wade Wilson approved and so bold you might find yourself with a fan club after wearing it out in public! Visit The Staziac's Facebook fan page, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more geek-errific designs:
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! | ||||||||
| Edible Cup Is Made of Squid Meat Posted: 09 Mar 2016 08:00 PM PST
It's a completely consumable drinking vessel. Rocket News 24 reports that Fujiyahonten, a specialty seafood shop in Hokkaido, Japan, offers this unique goblet made entirely of squid meat. It's ideal for drinking warm sake. Once you're done with your alcohol, then you can heat the cup over an open flame, baking it into a crispy form. Then you can cut it into smaller sections and eat it. Yummy! | ||||||||
| Posted: 09 Mar 2016 07:00 PM PST Technology keeps advancing, to the point where every job will be automated, even that of raising children. The iMom is a robot that can take the place of a mother, freeing parents up to do whatever it is they want to do. What could possibly go wrong? In this award winning short film by Ariel Martin, it doesn’t take the viewer long to get the idea that something will go horribly wrong at some point. And kudos to actress Matilda Brown for making us believe that the robot iMom is not human at all. -via Digg | ||||||||
| Marco Rubio Sitting In A Giant Chair: The Photoshop Battle Posted: 09 Mar 2016 06:00 PM PST We live in an age where people can say something at a debate, or post an embarrassing picture of themselves online, and almost immediate get responses...that are generally satirical in nature. Trump calls Marco Rubio "Little Marco" in a debate and the internet responds by photoshopping a picture of Rubio sitting in a giant chair, revealing what he'd look like as a tiny man trying to survive in a big, scary world. It's a time of technological wonder and sociological horror, as presidential candidates are subjected to all kinds of cruel and unusual stuff online, because the internet is like Thunderdome. See more images from the Marco Rubio PsBattle here (contains NSFW language) -Via Gizmodo | ||||||||
| Text-To-Speech in 1846 Involved a Talking Robotic Head With Ringlets Posted: 09 Mar 2016 05:00 PM PST Professor Joseph Faber spent 25 years perfecting his “talking machine,” which he called the Euphonia. He unveiled the Euphonia in 1846 at London's grand Egyptian Hall before a crowd of people who paid a shilling each to see it. The contraption was essentially a keyboard and bellows attached to a automaton of a woman’s face.
But she pronounced more than that, as the Euphonia held conversations with the crowd, slowly but understandably. It was certainly a technological wonder, but people were put off by the creepiness of the face that spoke -a view of the uncanny valley. The machine might have been a sensation without the face, but it was not to be. Read the story of Faber and his Euphonia at Atlas Obscura. | ||||||||
| Beautiful Animal Drawings Made with Multicolored Dots Posted: 09 Mar 2016 04:00 PM PST | ||||||||
| Posted: 09 Mar 2016 03:00 PM PST After twelve years and 282 episodes, Mythbusters is gone for good. In honor of the show, Thomas Crenshaw put together a tribute using only the best clips without any context. That means lots of explosions. And with Mythbusters goes the last vestige of educational content on the Discovery Channel. Boom de yada. -via reddit | ||||||||
| How to Care for Your Pet Human Posted: 09 Mar 2016 02:00 PM PST Giving your child a pet is a great way to teach him responsibility. The child must become disciplined enough to study how to care for the animal and to consistently provide that care. Not every child is up to that task. But don't worry. There are always more humans. In fact, there's one planet that almost crawling with them. Of course, those are wild humans. They have different temperaments than those in pet shops. -via reddit | ||||||||
| Waiting for a Cat Birth Livestream Posted: 09 Mar 2016 01:00 PM PST TinyKittens (previously at Neatorama), a cat rescue service, has teamed up with Langely Animal Protection Society in British Columbia to run a TNR (trap, neuter, return) program for feral cats. Unfortunately, life is not great for feral cats. Kittens born in the wild have abysmal survival rates, and kitten survivors that aren’t used to humans are difficult to rehome. So the project takes in pregnant feral cats and cares for them as best they can, in order to acclimate the kittens to humans and find homes for them as their mothers are spayed and released. Right now on their livestream, TinyKittens has Sable and Neelix, two pregnant feral cats who could give birth to their last litters of kittens anytime. If you miss the events, they will archive them in videos at the site. Read more about feral cats and the efforts to help them at Metafilter. | ||||||||
| Posted: 09 Mar 2016 12:00 PM PST The struggle is all too real for some, while others breeze through life never knowing what it's like to work extra hard at something only to have dirt thrown in your face. Those of us who have learned to struggle with a smile know better than to sweat the small stuff, because a proper bun does not a hot dog make. When struggling becomes a part of daily life you expect to come up short here and there. But at the end of every long day you know your friends and fam are feeling your pain, and some of them have been dealing with the struggle since before you were born. See 12 Real Struggles That Take A Sledgehammer To Your Day here | ||||||||
| Posted: 09 Mar 2016 11:00 AM PST You know what they say, money can’t buy happiness. But it can buy chocolate, plane tickets, college tuition, and freedom from stress, which is about the same thing. Still, that’s true all overt world. Meanwhile there are plenty of things about United States currency that make it different from cash in other countries. John Green tells us about those things in the latest episode of the mental_floss List Show. | ||||||||
| Tick Tracy - Here's Looking At You, Chairface Posted: 09 Mar 2016 10:00 AM PST The Tick found himself reading lots of detective comics while he was on hiatus from fighting crime, and his all time favorite was about a square jawed slugger named Dick. Wishing he could be as cool as Dick the Tick started dressing in a yellow trench coat, walking and talking like Dick and even went so far as to seek out villains with strange names. But, as Arthur pointed out, the Tick was already faced with a wide assortment of weirdos with which to do battle, and while Dick had coolness and clout to spare he didn't have an indestructible body and super strength. This Tick Tracy t-shirt by Mephias takes two classic comic characters and mashes them up into one mighty bold design, slip this shirt on and let the adventures begin! Visit Mephias's Facebook fan page, Twitter and Tumblr, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more mighty geeky designs:
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! | ||||||||
| Drag Queen Phi Phi O'Hara Does 90s NickToons Cosplay Posted: 09 Mar 2016 10:00 AM PST Drag cosplay is a relatively new and niche part of the performance art hobby, not to be confused with gender swap cosplay (crossplay) since those costumes rarely involve all the over-the-top style elements that are an inherent part of drag. If you love drag but aren't familiar with drag cosplay prepare to fall in love with Phi Phi O'Hara, a bright shining cosplay star all dressed up in the colors of your favorite 90s toons. Phi Phi pulled out all the stops to make every 90s NickToon look as authentic as possible, which is utterly amazing in most cases yet truly terrifying when the character being brought to life is Lil DeVille from Rugrats. *shivers* See more of Phi Phi O'Hara's Amazing Cosplay at Fashionably Geek | ||||||||
| 10 Awesome Music Videos Directed By Film Directors Posted: 09 Mar 2016 09:00 AM PST Why would a successful film director take on a music video project? Because they were intrigued with the possibilities of the medium, or because they weren’t doing anything else between projects. There are also music videos directed by unknowns who went on to achieve notoriety as film directors later. In fact, you may not be aware of the famous director behind some of these music videos. One you’ve definitely heard about is Michael Jackson’s "Thriller," which led the way toward making the music video noticed as an art form.
Well, actually posted at TVOM, where they have ten of these music videos that are worth another look. | ||||||||
| Posted: 09 Mar 2016 08:00 AM PST
The American Cheese Society calls the position "Content Manager." But dig into the job description and you'll see that the organization wants a librarian:
MLS stands for Master of Library Science, the standard degree that credentials a librarian in the United States. There's a lengthy description of the typical job duties, most of which are not directly related to the consumption of cheese. But I'm not taking any chances. If I'm going to be ready for the interview, then I need to eat a lot of cheese. -via Amanda Brennan | ||||||||
| Moving to “America’s Worst Place to Live” Posted: 09 Mar 2016 07:00 AM PST Last year, Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post wrote a story with an interactive map about the USDA’s “natural amenities index,” a data set that ranked all the counties of the United States in various livability parameters. One had to come in last, and that county was Red Lake County, Minnesota. Immediately after it was published, Ingraham heard from indignant Minnesotans, a relatively polite backlash that included an invitation to visit Red Lake County. So he did.
Skipping to the end of the story, Ingraham is moving to Red Lake County, along with his wife and two young sons. He will continue to write for the Washington Post’s Wonkblog. Ingraham received a welcome and a hand-drawn map from Minnesota senator Al Franken, which you can see in the story about Ingrahams’ decision. -via Digg | ||||||||
| The Alternate Versions Of Wonder Woman Posted: 09 Mar 2016 06:00 AM PST I posted a feature article a while back called The Wonderful World Of Wonder Woman Cosplay, which featured a few dozen cosplayers showing off their take on Wonder Woman's signature styles over the years. Now Variant Comics has put together a video detailing "The Alternate Versions Of Wonder Woman", in honor of the Amazonian warrior princess' appearance in the upcoming movie Batman V Superman. (skip to around 1:45 for the variants) Whether you prefer the real life costumed versions found in cosplay or her colorful and curvaceous comic book look you must agree- Wonder Woman looks great considering she's 75 years old! -Via Laughing Squid | ||||||||
| The Rise of Bootlegged Content Posted: 09 Mar 2016 05:00 AM PST Neatorama is proud to bring you a guest post from Ernie Smith, the editor of Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail. In another life, he ran ShortFormBlog. Bootlegged movies and music are fairly common online these days, but it was a guy who worked at an opera who got things going. Last year, a director named Joseph Kahn released the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers film that nobody was asking for—but despite that low ceiling, he more than topped it. The 14-minute short film starred people who have actually been cast in real movies and TV shows (James Van Der Beek and Katee Sackhoff), and took the franchise in a dark, gritty new direction that definitely has nothing in common with the Saved By the Bell-in-costume motif that the franchise was known for in the U.S. Kahn, who is mostly known as a music-video director (albeit perhaps the best-known one of the past decade) reached a new level of quality for an unlicensed product. And Saban, which owns the franchise, was pissed, requiring YouTube to take it down. (It’s back up now.) So, what makes bootleg media so appealing? Let’s analyze. Meet the first music bootleggerDJ Spooky once called Lionel Mapleson ”one of America’s first bootleggers" of music, but that’s something of a misnomer. First off, Mapleson was riffing tracks from his employer, the New York Metropolitan Opera, in an official role as the opera’s librarian. (It’d be like Suge Knight stealing from Dr. Dre. … which, let’s admit it, probably happened.) Second, he technically wasn’t doing anything illegal at the time—because at the time, copyright law didn’t cover recordings at all. And while it eventually did, Mapleson quit while he was ahead—stopping his recording efforts around 1904. The Copyright Act of 1909 came around five years later. Mapleson was putting music to wax in the most literal way possible: He was making wax cylinders of portions of operas, using a machine handmade by Italian audiophile Gianni Bettini. His recordings came at a time when audio recordings were a brand new phenomenon. The rules hadn’t been written yet. But they were about to be—because player pianos were making the whole sound-can’t-be-copyrighted thing a problem. When the Supreme Court decided in the 1908 case White-Smith Music Publishing Co. v. Apollo Co. that mechanical reproductions of sound recordings—both those by folks like Mapleson and player-piano recordings—couldn’t be copyrighted, it directly led to the Copyright Act of 1909, which created the chain of events we know today. Thanks to player pianos, we have bootlegs. The Grateful DeadThere have been approximatly 2,200 Grateful Dead shows that have been recorded in some way, shape, or form. (The band played around 2,350 shows in total.) The Dead’s efforts to allow fans to record whatever the band did—and share it, so long as there’s no commercial gain—have become something of legend. The Internet Archive has so many Dead recordings that they take up an entire section of that website. Five notable moments in bootlegging historyIf the first example of bootlegged music sounds crazy, what does that make the possibility that Shakespeare’s own sonnets were published in a bootleg format? The 2009 book So Long as Men Can Breathe: The Untold Story of Shakespeare’s Sonnets suggests that one of Shakespeare’s greatest works was never actually meant to see the light of day.
In the late 1960s, a bootleg “record label” sprang up around the Los Angeles area, and the records they were throwing out were pretty crazy. The label, Trade Mark of Quality, first made its mark with what’s widely believed to be the first widely bootlegged recording, Bob Dylan’s Great White Wonder. The release became so well-known that Dylan had to release his own version, 1975′s The Basement Tapes. Album leaks are pretty common in the digital age, but the first album leak of this nature is surprising simply because of how early in the game it was. The 1993 Depeche Mode album Songs of Faith and Devotion showed up online somehow, despite the leak literally predating the MP3 format—and also ensuring the file sizes were likely massive. In 1994, a Famicom game that was likely produced in Asia called Somari took the two most popular video game mascots of the era—Mario and Sonic—and combined their key elements into a single game. In other words, it’s a Sonic game starring Mario. That time Brian Wilson rapped for his therapistMost people familiar with Brian Wilson’s descent into mental illness and drug addiction got their basic details from the classic 1991 Barenaked Ladies song “Brian Wilson.” BNL’s early hit, which is arguably as classic as many Beach Boys hits, was a catchy number that offers a knowing but appreciative look at a man who inspired some of the best, most ambitious pop music ever put to tape—but by 1992 had become shorthand for mental illness. But the tune only really scratches the surface of the tale. To give you an idea of how bad things had gotten, you have to get your hands on a copy of Sweet Insanity, the recording Wilson made with Eugene Landy. Now, Landy was his therapist, but like a Marvin Gaye song that was lifted by Robin Thicke, the lines were blurred, and eventually Landy became his business manager, started producing his records, and even held control over a Wilson autobiography that was largely plagiarized from other biographies. Landy got so close to his primary patient that he was eventually stripped of his medical license and was slapped with a restraining order. Anyway, back to Sweet Insanity. This album was rejected by Wilson’s label, Sire Records, in 1990. Part of the reason for that might be the tune “Smart Girls,” in which Brian Wilson raps. When we say Brian Wilson raps, we don’t mean like Ed Robertson of the Barenaked Ladies dropped goofy rhymes in “One Week.” We mean he raps like you would imagine a guy 49-year-old man might if his life was being controlled by a sketchy therapist. It samples some Beach Boy songs, poorly, and includes unfortunate/sexist lyrics like this:
It had interesting collaborators, including Bob Dylan and Weird Al Yankovic, but it’s likely that the rejection was the right decision—because those songs were rough, too. The album was, of course, later bootlegged, and Wilson has gone on to create much better albums since. But it’s evidence that perhaps some bootlegs are meant to stay forgotten. If you can't beat 'em, join 'emApologies to Deadheads, but there’s a band that’s even better at winning the bootleg game than Garcia and company were. Fifteen years ago, the grunge band Pearl Jam decided to release official bootlegs of all of its live shows on its most recent tour. The goal was to ensure the quality of what fans were getting—while preventing ripoffs in the process. Over a six-month period, the band released 72 (!) separate live albums, one for every shop on the tour. At the time, Pearl Jam’s studio albums were flagging sales-wise, but the band’s ability to turn fan club efforts into commercial success was solid: Earlier that year, the band’s live recording of “Last Kiss” became the biggest hit of its career. It was a brilliant, effective strategy. Same deal with the official bootlegs—14 of which charted on the Billboard 200 in the U.S. (Best part? They’re still doing it today.) If you can’t beat the bootleggers, make them redundant by giving them what they want.
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The 1950 film musical Annie Get Your Gun was famous for its troubled production—including the departure of its main star, Judy Garland, who was 
A version of this post by Ernie Smith originally | You are subscribed to email updates from Neatorama. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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