Album cover photos help create a band's image by showing members of the band as super cool, super tough or super sexy, but if we could see what's happening outside the frame the facts wouldn't measure up to the fiction.
Russian photographer Igor Lipchanskiy has been busy destroying the carefully cultivated images of famous musicians by giving us a peek at what's happening outside the frame of the album cover, and it's a real mess.
Sometimes Igor's additions take the musician's sexiness down a notch or two, other times his comical off-screen antics leave the artists looking all wet, but when he added to John and Yoko's cover the story became straight scandalous!
Don't you hate it when a salesman approaches you in a place where there's no escaping their sales pitch? It makes you feel like a sheep being sized up by a hungry wolf, and once they've hit you with the product demonstration it's almost impossible to turn them away.
But before you turn them away you should really see what they're offering, because it could be something amazing that will make your life worth living again. (NSFW language)
Cosmos Laundromat: First Cycle is an awesome looking and really far out 3D animated short by the Blender Institute in Amsterdam. The film, and all the artwork files used to make the film, are free and open source and available for digital artists to play with here.
Super Bowl ads are really big business, and companies pay millions for the chance to get millions of people talking about their ads, but this year Skittles is skipping the Super Bowl and going ultra exclusive with their ad.
Skittles has decided to change things up a bit by creating "the most exclusive Super Bowl ad ever made" which will be seen by only one person- a 17-year-old from Canoga Park named Marcos Menendez.
“We’ve been a big part of the Super Bowl and continue to be a big part of the NFL," Matt Montei, marketing VP, fruit confections at Mars Wrigley Confectionery explained. “We really felt like we wanted to continue to reinvent ourselves around this timeframe and one way to do it is to just try a completely new way in.”
Montei elaborated that Menendez was chosen because he’s a true Skittles fan. Menendez will get to watch this “exclusive” commercial during the Super Bowl, while everyone else will just get to see Menendez’s reaction to the ad, streamed on Facebook.
The death of a television network can cause quite a stir in the TV world, especially when that network is beloved by fans, but Spike TV has died and I don't think anybody really cares.
The channel once billed as "the First Network for Men" is now the Paramount Network, so the person running Spike TV's Twitter account bid the channel a not-so-fond farewell by revealing the network's darkest secrets.
I was baked when I pitched 1000 Ways to Die. Those episodes are mostly based on my nightmares.
The embittered employee spent January 16th tweeting all kinds of wacky stuff about the network that is still up on the SPIKE Twitter page, because apparently Spike is dead so nobody gives a crap about their Twitter page.
I clogged up the 4th stall in the 7th floor men’s room over 30 times last year.
Most kids wonder what it would be like to grow up overnight, because they think the life of a grown up means no school, no set bedtime and no rules, but these thoughts are usually fleeting because it's fun to be a kid.
But when they inevitably transform into young adults their childhood seems to float away on the wind, leaving nothing but memories and the trappings of youth- like their favorite teddy bear.
However, some kids don't want to let go of their childhood years, so they hang on as hard as they can until life forces them to let go...
Lili is an absolutely stunning stop motion short film by Hani Dombe and Tom Kouris, with music by Gil Landau, that will make you want to get back in touch with your inner child.
When we see something we've never seen before we tend to think of the creator as an innovative and creative individual, and yet many of these creators should probably be referred to as appropriators rather than creators.
Most fans know George Lucas drew inspiration for Star Wars from the samurai films created by Akira Kurosawa, but did you know he also adopted many elements of the franchise from Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter series?
And Princess Leia's "totally unique" hairstyle was inspired by the twin buns worn by female Mexican Revolutionary fighter Clara De La Rocha.
People used to praise Michael Jackson for his "totally original" signature moves, but it appears the smooth criminal stole many of his signature moves from Broadway choreographer Bob Fosse.
Epic NPC Man (previously at Neatorama) takes a cockeyed look at the nuts and bolts of gaming, using real people instead of computer graphics. In this video, he explores the moment after the player has fulfilled his quest to rescue the damsel in distress. She's been the prisoner of the villain for ten years. Our hero escorts the fair maiden to her home, but now what? Will he marry her and live happily ever after? Will he gallantly consider her freedom and happiness as his only reward? Will he at least get a kiss? Let's find out.
Remember, this is a video game, in which the player controls the action. The player is a gamer, so his priorities might be different from whatever you, the viewer, would like to see. -via Geeks Are Sexy
Most people who watch the A Nightmare On Elm Street films see Freddy Krueger for what he is- an evil bastard who enjoys killing innocent people and turning life in Springwood into hell on Earth.
But some twisted fans see Freddy as a dream come true, a guy worthy of worship and the inspiration for a legion of fans who call themselves "Fredheads".
They have good dreams about Freddy, dress up like him at Cons and idolize him, and now these Freddy superfans are the focus of an upcoming documentary by Venn Pictures and Northgate Pictures called FredHeads: The Documentary.
FredHeads is a pet project of director Paige Troxell, who wanted to show her fellow Freddy fans they're not alone:
“In my darkest times I have turned to Elm Street. It is a survival story, it is my best friend, it is my comfort, and it is my home,” gushes Troxell. “I knew that there were others out there who saw this film for more than just the typical slasher. It is my goal to bring to life each and every story; to show the world that this community stands together, that we are a support team for each other.”
When we fall in love with pop culture characters like The Simpsons, Jack Bauer of 24 or the Belcher family from Bob's Burgers our crush makes us overlook the bad stuff about them and their show.
We stop paying attention to how many people Jack Bauer kills and all the smokers in Springfield, and those wacky Belchers do a great job of distracting us from how broke they are, even when it's the plot of an episode.
So now you're probably asking yourself "how broke are the Belchers?", a question which dedicated fans have answered:
According to one study, Bob's Burgers LLC is probably bringing in a little less than $70,000 a year, while only actually taking home about $43,000 in true annual profit. Given that the average cost for an apartment like the Belcher's runs at about $20,000 a year, the Belchers are left with a paltry $23,000 (before taxes). And that, according to the state of New Jersey, puts the Belchers at about 50 percent less than the maximum to receive food stamps.
As for Jack Bauer's scorecard, the guy killed 309 people in about nine days!:
Over the course of eight days, plus the two hours of 24: Redemption and the half-day of Live Another Day, Jack Bauer kills 309 people. 309. That rounds out to 1.5 guys an hour, for a whopping 36 guys a day. It's not evenly spread, either; Bauer started the first day only killing ten guys, but really took the gloves off during Day Six, with 52 individual murders. By contrast, the Korean War killed about 31 Americans soldiers a day. On some days, that was Bauer's quota before he let himself take lunch.
And how many smokers live in Springfield? At least two per episode:
In 400 reviewed episodes, there were 795 unique instances of characters riding the nicotine dragon. Around the 2002-2004 era of the show, Springfieldians were averaging some five smoking characters per episode. And while the show typically only focuses on a few characters at a time, Springfield only has an estimated 60,000 residents, which means the percentage of smokers in the town must be incredibly high. Writers presumably drew the line at the episode in which Apu personally lit the cigarettes of a dozen fifth-graders that wandered into his store, preferring instead to leave it implied.
Even though I'm enjoying every minute of my son's infanthood I also can't wait to watch him grow up and become an awesome little kid, and I hope I live long enough to watch him grow old and gray...but I probably won't because of my poor diet and lack of exercise...plus the booze ain't helpin...*sniff* I miss him already! (NSFW)
As soon as 3D printers went from costing thousands of dollars to hundreds people started bringing them home so they could get busy creating cool stuff.
But where most people used their 3D printers to print out practical items or printable stuff they found online the geeks got busy creating replicas of their favorite props, weapons and armor so they could live out their nerdy dreams.
However, they soon ran in to one big problem- the stuff they wanted to print was too big to print as one solid piece.
So they used their creative minds to figure out a way to print their props in pieces, and now when it comes to how big the prop they create with a 3D printer can be the sky's the limit!
In the beginning we believed video games would someday have such great graphics we would actually feel like we're in the game, and with these improvements would come cheaper home console gaming and deeper, more engaging games.
Well, we have the cool graphics that are almost totally realistic, and we have lots of deeper, more engaging games, but we also have mobile games that should be amazing but really aren't.
Because, as this Clueless Hero comic shows, even though mobile games are usually free to download and play they suck in one particular way- all the cool bonus content costs a bundle to unlock!
Rick Moranis was almost always typecast as a nerdy character in the movies and TV shows he starred in, but when it came to comedy the Second City TV alum was super cool, like swanky lounge singer cool.
Check out the cool side of Rick Moranis as he sings a swingin' version of "Turning Japanese" by The Vapors in this classic clip from SCTV. It's ring-a-ding-ding for the New Wave generation, dollface.
The Death Star is the most iconic space stations in the history of sci-fi and one of the most recognizable symbols of Star Wars, and yet Luke and the Rebel Alliance figured out how to destroy it with two well-placed proton torpedoes.
They knew about the Death Star's built-in flaw thanks to some stolen plans, but we never got to see how the massive space station was built in the movies.
But now thanks to the hard work of two geeky and talented brothers named Benjamin and Isaac Botkin we can see how hard it would be, and how many pieces it would take, for the Empire to build a Death Star.
And with Benjamin's epic score accompanying the complex timelapse animation it's a mesmerizing look at the making of a legend.
Finding out humans are the real monsters is one of the saddest discoveries we make as we grow up, well, that and the fact that monsters of myth, legend and the movies aren't real, because at least then they'd even the score.
Instead we are faced with humans who hide behind masks, pretending they have our best interest at heart when all the while they're just trying to imprison us and drain us dry.
No Monsters is a scary little animated short by David James Armsby of Dead Sound, a sequel of sorts to Armsby's previous Autodale short Being Pretty. They aren't exactly what you'd call feel good animation!