My roommate found this flyer on a trip to Milwaukee last week. It’s just so spectacular — I have no idea where it comes from or what it means. It doesn’t even seem to be referring to a specific location. But man, I love just THINKING about what kind of a crowd this things draws. There’s nothing like the idea of a bar full of drunk furries to get the imagination going.
If anyone can shed any light on this, please let me know in the comments section.
Jeff sent me a link to an awesome, fun, faux-vintage sci-fi short film a while back, and I mean to share it with y’all, but it slipped my mind… until I was flipping through a sketchbook and found this hastily scrawled list of cultural references that I saw while watching it for the first time:
She-Ra, Princess of Power. Lord of the Rings. American Apparel advertisements. The Neverending Story. Mario Bros. Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future. “The Clapper”. Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Space Invaders. Silverhawks. Batman. Thundercats. Tron.
These things, in no particular order, sprung to mind immediately for me. Some of them are obviously intentional, others perhaps unintentional but likely to be seen by anyone who grew up when I did and watched the same stuff. Still others were triggered by a small detail or action in the video that other folks might not notice or associate in the same way. Anyway, here it is!
As we near the one-year anniversary of Jeff’s McDonalds-as-pizza-toppings post that the internets loved so well, the Universe has seen fit to bestow upon us a sequel of sorts. While traveling through Nebraska, Flickr user matthewnstoller and one of his friends happened upon a food cart touting this lovely piece of work:
By the mid-’80s, there were two types of kids: kids who got hurt by imitating pro wrestling in the yard, and kids who hurt other kids by imitating pro wrestlers in the back yard. No matter how hard it is to pull off a Camel Clutch without injuring someone in real life, imitating the Kalamari Wrestler’s even tougher — he’s got eight arms and a giant bulbous head.
There’s not a lot else to say about this trailer for Japan’s Kalamari Wrestler, except what everyone already knows — as a people, the Japanese are out of their freaking minds. Every last one of ‘em:
This is the story that I would have told last night at The Moth for the theme “Making Peace.” I don’t think I’ve run it here before. Any constructive criticism is greatly appreciated.
I’d been dating this girl who was confident and cool with beautiful tattoos, so gorgeous she’d make a whole room turn and feel ugly whenever she walked in the door. I’d just lost a pile of weight and was giddy with the sudden attention — giddy enough to miss the warning signs and get my newly narrowed ass dumped in about three weeks. I had no idea why, didn’t see it coming at all.
I lived in tired little termite buffet painted the color of dingy Band-Aids. A small community of grizzled vagrants in electric wheelchairs would commune around a trash fire in the alley behind my house most afternoons, drinking Thunderbird. Sometime around twilight most nights, one guy with a blurry swastika tattooed on his forehead would rev up out into the road, barreling upstream against one-way traffic. I had decorated the interior of the place myself — carpeted the entire house in Astroturf, green for the living room, the stairs, and upstairs hallway, my bedroom in neon blue with a giant American flag for a bedspread. Waking up each morning was like a Lego funeral at sea.
All the furniture in the downstairs was inflatable — a couch and two easy chairs. There was a sculpture on the front porch that I’d made myself out of several deer carcasses and a giant head covered in glowing white war paint.
In hindsight, I may have been dumped for aesthetic reasons.
All kinds of dorky hobbies are out of the closet now that the geeks have inherited the earth. Sci-fi’s a big enterprise now (har har) … now that “Lost” and computer programming is big business, all the nerds like me are out of the closet and partying in the light, blinking while our eyes adjust to the brightness of the pop-culture spotlight.
Loving comic books was once an express ticket to a lonely lifetime in Mom’s basement. Now they’re big, big blockbusting big business. I dated an actual human woman once who took me to see “300″ and “Spiderman 3.” It was her idea. Here in New York, a grown man can wear a Batman t-shirt out in public without shame. It’s a beautiful thing.
Now that all us nerds are out basking in uncloseted comfort, we owe something to the rest of the world. We shouldn’t forget what it was like to be punished for something as simple as liking things the rest of the world didn’t get. We got to be respectful, got to be patient with strangers’ weird obsessions. Even when it’s really, really tough to get.
Seeing a guy on a unicycle just breaks my heart. I imagine him in a completely empty apartment, empty save for a pile of burger wrappers and dust bunnies … and a unicycle lying in the middle of the floor. He says aloud, “Well, that’s it. Everything’s gone, all of it. The worst is over, but one thing’s for sure: I’l never get laid again. Might as well learn to love this unicycle …” Heartbreaking. But it’s not my place to judge.
A Segway — that’s the unicycle 2.0. It’s even more pathetic than a unicycle because it doesn’t even require any physical skills to operate. Cops that ride Segways around might as well be on My LIttle Pony big wheels for all the respect they inspire. But I digress.
On one level it’s pretty easy to keep an open mind. Live and let live and just work for the weekend, and it’s all gonna be cool.
However, ferret lovers exist on an entirely different level altogether. Ferrets are kinda cute, I’ll give them that. But so are subway rats. Ferrets are long rats, plain and simple. And there’s something about die-hard ferret lovers that really, really creeps me out:
I keep watching this thing, over and over, and I’m trying to stop judging, trying to get beyond to a higher place. But man, NOTHING’S gonna make that okay.
Here’s a little treat for you, folks – a Japanese man wearing only a horse mask and several different thongs (including one that goes over his freaking shoulders) picks, cooks, and eats wild mushrooms. There are title cards in Japanese that may explain what’s going on. I can’t read Japanese, so I could be wrong here, but I highly doubt the words on the screen can adequately explain what’s going on here.
This may be NSFW — his “riding crop” is thoughtfully pixellated, but the whole thing is just too nuts to be safe. Stick around for a little part at about 6:05 that really makes the whole thing:
Eating mushrooms is freaking redundant for this guy. (Tip of the hat to Ectomo)
I just love these photos. LOVE. They’re terrifying and weird and I so do not get the idea behind them … and really, I don’t need to. These are like Altoids of insanity, a quick, sharp dose that clears away everything that came before and makes everything after seem a little flavorless.
If you happen to be in Belgium in the next month or so (and have not yet clawed out your eyes), check out many more original prints in the group exhibition “Status Questionis” at Annie Gentils Gallery in
Antwerp, Belgium from December 19th – January 19th 2008. There’s an opening on Thursday, December 6th from 6 to 9 PM. If any models are present, especially in costume, please do send pics.
I don’t make a single dime off this blog, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t pay off big-time. I don’t have ads or a large readership, but apparently my influence is enough that people are imitating things they see on here … something that might get them hurt or killed slowly through sheer fat absorption.
Take Bret Wallin, for example. He and literally hundreds of thousands of other people saw the post a little whole back about that ridiculous Franken-fast food pizza. And while some folks thought “yeah, I’d taste that,” Bret said “who’s got a Boboli crust” and MADE one. Actually, he made several:
My friends and I definitely tried our hand at making a couple McDonald’s pizzas. The first was exactly like the pictures you posted – each fast food kept to it’s own kind. The second, though, we chopped up the fries, nuggets, and burgers to spread out the toppings more traditionally.
A really fun time, for sure. We felt that the pickle was surprisingly one of the emergent tastes (as well as the ketchup and mustard to some degree). I first saw a link to your post (I think) on the site Kissing Suzy Kolber. I was visiting some old college friends and I knew right then – “we have to make that… we have to make it TONIGHT!”
And we did. Like I said, a great time. Most everybody felt fine except a couple guys had three slices. That sort of knocked them out for a little bit.
Understandably.
So wait. They made one of these things, ate it, then turned right around and made ANOTHER one. You know, to get it right.
This is why I use my fingers and eyes to make love to the Internet all day long.
I was deep in the horse latitudes of the afternoon, fighting off lunchtime burrito coma and trying not to spend money online. It had been quiet for hours when Rob banged his hand on the card table that serves as our shared desk in the mutually understood signal for “take out your headphones.”
Dude, this is serious,
he said.
Would you rather have one testicle or three?
I thought about it for a second.
Three, I guess,
I responded.
See, everyone always says that! I’d go with one. I’d rather be a little sad than creepy and freakish.
He makes a good point. But I’ve always had this irrational fear of being chased over a chainlink fence in a junkyard while wearing a pair of Umbros — getting torn open and leaving something behind. As an innate packrat, I like the idea of having a spare handy.
At its essence, the issue is this: would you rather be pitiful or terrifying? What about you guys? Which would you rather have — or encounter?
