Sellin Pier, Island of Rügen, Germany | Image: elbfoto
An ocean view is one of the most beautiful on the planet, and the price of any real estate that offers such a perspective is valued accordingly across the globe. Combine that view with a striking piece of architecture built to function and interact with the water, and you have an even more spectacular sight.
Included in this article are photographs of notably beautiful piers all over the world, accompanied by a bit of information and/or history of each structure. Having spent vacation time at one of these piers, I can attest to the gorgeous views it provides. Check out the article and enjoy the photos. Perhaps it will add entries to your "travel to" list, as it has to mine.
Umhlanga Pier, Umhlanga, South Africa | Image: Leon Homan
Clevedon Pier, Somerset, England | Image: Chris Frewin
Lisa Marcus's Blog Posts
Handy Polygraph Chair
Occasionally it can be fun to peruse the oddities that the general public accumulates and ends up selling on craigslist or eBay. Or, as it turns out, if you'd like to get a little weirder than that, you can hit the U.S. government's answer to eBay, G.S.A. auctions. Its full name being General Services Administration, the entity's mission as stated is to provide “the best value in real estate, acquisition and technology services to the government and the American people."
Goodies like the one pictured above can be found for sale: a polygraph chair. Absent that bulky, results-non-court admissible piece of machinery, just imagine the possibilities for those two roomy armrests!
Coastal Park, Elizabeth City, NC
But that's not all, shoppers. Pictured above is another tempting parcel one can purchase for a mere several million: the Coastal Park area of Elizabeth City, North Carolina. Located on this piece of land are 82 apartment housing units, basketball courts, a tennis court, a playground, a gazebo, and according to the ad, tons more room on which to build recreational facilities. But just one catch: everything's liberally coated with layers of lead-based paint. Which may or may not even represent a problem to you as a consumer! What myriad opportunities.
If you take a moment to think of some of your favorite movies and then identify a memorable prop from each, you can begin to put into perspective how many millions of treasures from movie sets get lost in the shuffle and may now be in landfills or misidentified and sitting in attics or thrift shops.
The article linked below lists pieces of movie sets, backgrounds or props that were either lost for a time and then found again, or disappeared and were never recovered. One such piece is pictured above and below.
4. THE DEATH STAR // STAR WARS (1977)
While George Lucas and Lucasfilm would later have the resources to curate the extensive number of props and costumes from the Star Wars trilogy, not all of the models used in the original film were so lucky. After filming was completed, the single Death Star created for screen use was moved to a storage facility. Fox soon decided they were tired of paying rent, so the contents were ordered to be thrown out. A storage unit employee noticed the Death Star, plucked it from the trash, and hung on to it for the next decade before displaying it in his mother’s Missouri antique shop. The store sold it to a musician who used it as a trash can, stuffing waste through a hole where the radar dish had been. A collector later rescued it, giving the planet-destroying superweapon a life of dignity as a public display.
Though I love most animals, elephants are one of my favorite species, in part because of their intelligence, compassion, and frequent expressions of love to their herds and families. An example is this cautious elephant mother who unfortunately is aware of reasons that it's best to keep her baby beyond trunk's length from strange humans. In this sweet clip, she extends her trunk to gently hold the baby back from a group of tourists approaching them on the road near Malelane in Kruger National Park in South Africa. Via Daily Dot
Image: @andreknot
Some photographers, artists and film auteurs — the late, great Stanley Kubrick, for example — have made careers in part upon bringing the beauty of symmetry to film technique. Some of the best examples are elegant and striking in their simplicity.
On a smaller scale, such are the shots appearing on the Instagram account Symmetrical Monsters. Contributors are steadily showing up with arresting shots such as the ones featured here. Enjoy and then check out Symmetrical Monsters on Instagram for more. This is certainly a feed to follow for photography enthusiasts. Via My Modern Met
Image: @astorsvensson
Image: @tacatci
Image: @daviclujan
Image: @davidjshulman
Image: CBC.CA
In a now-archived thread from last summer, Redditors weighed in on the strangest questions or comments they received from agents while crossing the Canadan border. A few are quips from American personnel, some are Canadian. Some of the funniest bits are the responses to the guards' questions and not the questions themselves. A few examples are included here; read the rest at Reddit.
Going To A Funeral
A favorite response I saw was from a man who was going to Canada for a funeral. They had a floral arrangement in the car and were dressed in dark clothing. When they told the border guard they were going to a funeral, the guy said, 'for what purpose?
Got Gas?
About 25 years ago I get pulled off for a random check. The agent roots through the items in my trunk and pulls out a gas can that had a few drops in it. Enough to tell that there was a small bit of liquid in there.
Agent opens the can and takes a huge whiff. Looking slightly light-headed, the guy says, "Is this gas in here?"
The smart-ass in me alllllmost said something, but I caught myself.
Un-AmericanThey're finally able to wake her and drag her inside into a very bright room and she's not happy at all.
'What's your name?'asks the guard. She says her name and the guard says, "That doesn't sound American!"
Well, she was a mean drunk and replied, "What the f*** do you mean that doesn't sound American?!" as my friend winced.
"Oh, you can go," said the border guard, figuring only a real American would cuss out a border agent.
Bear sighting:
After I had gotten a bear in northern Quebec and was coming back across into detroit, my dad explained that we had a bear in the back. the boarder guard... "is it alive?"
Via Mandatory
Gordon Ramsay, aside from crafting his take on haute cuisine, has also carved for himself an image that's more rough and tumble than most celebrity chefs. If you think he's the chef that's most likely to cuss you out in any given scenario, you're likely right.
But that way of living has apparently kept him on the receiving end of some rough surprises himself. The linked listing of fourteen different facts about Gordon Ramsay spills at least one, such as the time he was threatened at gunpoint during a shoot:
5. He Was Once Threatened at Gunpoint While Filming.
While working on The Big Fish Fight in Costa Rica, Ramsay and his crew devoted an episode to investigating fishermen who were illegally killing and selling sharks to make shark fin soup. The crew climbed aboard a fishing boat, only for Ramsay to find a sack of shark fins hidden under the ship's hull while he was swimming. When he threw the sack on board and called the fishermen out, an argument erupted, leading some men to point rifles at them when they got to the dock to pressure them to stop filming. Ultimately, the police urged them to leave the country. "They said, 'if you set foot in there, they'll stab you,'" Ramsay recalls.
But that doesn't mean Ramsay isn't in touch with his "softer side." For example:
3. He Believes in the Power of a Good Cry.
"I think crying is important," he told Fox News. "Not crying, not showing that emotion, bottling it up can lead to dangerous things." Ramsay has no problem with the contestants—who are often as young as 8 or 9 years old—on Masterchef Junior crying on the show, though he admits that it's hard to see them get upset over their mistakes.
Cherry chocolate macarons | Image and recipe: Annie's Eats
I could say that one sure way to both a woman and a man's heart is through their stomach. And you could argue with me. But tell me... if you surprised your significant other with a plate of some of the sweet offerings pictured here, would it put them in a bad mood? Unless there are special circumstances in the mix, the answer is likely "no." In fact, if a guy who rarely took he lead in the kitchen gave me a batch of these (generally easy-to-whip-up) cookies, I'd probably look at him as if he just moved heaven and Earth. So in case you're looking for a way to sweeten Valentine's day for you and your sweetie, or even if you're flying solo and you want to sweeten that deal, take a look at some of these delicious cookies. Visit this page to get all of the recipes.
Peanut butter sweethearts | Image and recipe: Sally's Baking Addiction
Red velvet cream cheese thumbprint cookies | Image and recipe: Something Swanky
Red velvet oreos | Image and recipe: Something Swanky
Original Image: THE Picture of Goat Defiance
It could be Kim Jong-Un bending over. Perhaps it has to do with Kim Kardashian's latter (and fatter) parts. It could have to do with Putin's chesty breastal regions. Or it may just be a goat. The goat above, in fact. Some think this little guy's expression says "smug." Some think it's proud. Personally, I think it vaguely resembles a goat version of success kid (one of my favorite memes).
Just how Redditors interpret the goat's countenance is currently being expressed in a Reddit photoshop battle thread. The results are rich; a few are pictured here. Check them all out at Reddit. Via Daily Dot
Wutchoo talkin' about Reddit?
Skeptical goat
We've all seen the credits of movies roll by, and in them various job titles. But unless we've worked on a movie set, it's not likely we know what each of those titles means. Let this video enlighen viewers as to the range of job titles on film productions and what duties they entail.
In November 1957, shortly before her marriage to actor/bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay and just ten years before her death in a car accident, actress Jayne Mansfield bought a 40-room Mediterranean-style mansion at 10100 Sunset Boulevard in the Holmby Hills neighborhood of Western Los Angeles.
Jayne was intent on making the mansion, mostly paid for by an inheritance from her maternal grandfather, her own. She had the house painted pink, adorned it with statuary of Cupids, added pink fluorescent lights, installed a pink heart-shaped bathtub and a fountain filled with pink champagne, and put (in some rooms) pink wall-to-wall carpeting. She called her manse the "Pink Palace." After writing to manufacturers and requesting free samples of furniture and deorations, Mansfield received $150,000 in free merchandise with which to decorate ($1,263,803 in 2016 dollars). After she and Hargitay married, he helped her with the mansion, installing a pool.
Eventually, Hargitay and Mansfield split, the mansion was sold and she went on to marry and divorce again before her death in 1967. The Palace was owned by Ringo Starr, Cass Elliot and Engelbert Humperdinck before it was demolished in November of 2002.
See a video of Mansfield and Hargitay poolside at the Pink Palace and additional pictures of the mansion at Messy Nessy Chic.
Images: Allan Grant / Life
Sure, maybe your tux wasn't the best, but at least you weren't pulling the full fedora-to-toe Boy George. Perhaps you wore pink pumps, but at least they weren't Keds. You skipped prom altogether? Consider it a perfect guarantee that you won't show up in a collection like this. See it in entirety here.
Images: All selected from a grouping at Vintage Everyday
Last February, the very month that Atlanta couple Michael Saba and Christina Lee moved in together, they received a visit from a disturbing group of visitors. A furious family of people arrived at their house and demanded the couple return their lost smart phone.
Since then, a dozen more people have showed up to Lee and Saba's suburban home looking for their lost phones, despite the fact that the couple cannot -- nor can anyone else -- explain the multiple signals from smartphone tracking apps leading them to that particular location. Adding to the mystery, the phones have been of all different makes and carriers. The angry visitors have shown up at all hours of the day and night, and sometimes with the police. Said a concerned Sada,
“My biggest fear is that someone dangerous or violent is going to visit our house because of this.” (Such as this man, in a separate incident.) “If or when that happens, I doubt our polite explanations are gonna go very far.”
See additional photos and read more about this tech mystery here. Via Esquire
Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze in Ghost | Image: Paramount Pictures
Ghost, a Paramount Pictures release in July of 1990, starred the late Patrick Swayze as Sam, a banker married to Demi Moore as Molly, his loving wife with whom he moves into a New York apartment. After Sam is murdered, Molly is tortured by what she thinks is Sam's ghost inhabiting their home. Whoopi Goldberg plays campy, claiming to be psychic Oda Mae Brown. The film was a box office success, grossing over $500 million and made on a budget of $22 million.
In the article linked below, mental_floss features fourteen bits of trivia of which fans of the film may not be aware. Two of them follow; read all fourteen facts here.
14. PATRICK SWAYZE’S SPECTER INFLUENCED HIP-HOP MUSIC.
Because Patrick Swayze’s surname rhymes with “crazy,” there was an influx of rappers rhyming the two words together. Marley Marl’s “The Symphony Part II” features the line, “Reach for the pistol and you’re crazy / Try to blast and I’ll be spinnin’ that ass like Patrick Swayze.” Eventually the word “Swayze” became associated with his Ghost character and became slang for “gone” or “leaving”. On 2Pac’s “Runnin’ (Dying to Live)”, Notorious B.I.G. raps: “That’s why I bust back, it don’t faze me / When he drop, take his glock, and I’m Swayze,” and in 2005’s SNL Digital Short “Lazy Sunday,” Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell sing, “Throw the snacks into the bag and I’m a ghost like Swayze.”
4. DIRECTOR JERRY ZUCKER SAID HE’D CAST PATRICK SWAYZE “OVER MY DEAD BODY.”
In a video that appears on the Ghost DVD, screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin—who won an Oscar for his script—talks about how Zucker was at first against casting Swayze as Sam. 'Jerry wanted to see him on film, so went out and saw the movie Roadhouse, and we walked out of that movie and Jerry said to me, "Over my dead body,” recalls Rubin. Swayze really wanted the role, and because Zucker appreciated Swayze’s gusto, he let Swayze audition. After Swayze read the end of the script aloud, Zucker changed his mind. “We all had tears in our eyes, right there in the office—and we knew how it ends,' Zucker told People in 1990. 'I saw a side of Patrick that I never knew existed.'"
Bob Dorough, now 92-years old, is a charismatic and talented musician who has performed with names such as Miles Davis. Yet perhaps Dorough is best known as the composer for many of the songs from Schoolhouse Rock!, the classic animated educational series that ran from 1973-1985.
Many of us fondly remember Schoolhouse Rock!, which provided lessons on everything from elementary math to the basics of English and government. The songs were so memorable and fun that some people remember them to this day. If you were ever a fan, refresh your memory below with a few of the series' "greatest hits." Via Laughing Squid
"Three is a Magic Number"
YouTube Link
"I'm Just a Bill"
YouTube Link
"The Preamble"
YouTube Link
"Adverbs"
YouTube Link