Police in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia arrested a man wanted for an assault and a string of car thefts. His last victim gave him a lot of trouble.
The owner pumped gas and went inside to pay for it. The thief then got inside the car and tried to drive away. The owner jump kicked through the open car window into the car. After some fighting, he was able to get fully inside.
The No Pants Subway Ride is a yearly tradition started in 2002 by New York's Improv Everywhere that now takes place on train cars all over the world, from Los Angeles to Bucharest, Romania.
Participants in the No Pants Ride may cause fully clothed passengers to stare and sneer, and occasionally leer, but mostly this "international celebration of silliness" just makes people smile.
The No Pants Ride tradition is sure to keep spreading across the globe like the infections now spreading across the legs of the pantsless, and it will be interesting to see which country drops trou next!
The Price is Right, with former host Bob Barker | Image: CBS Television
The Price is Right is more than just a long-running game show. At this point, it's a piece of somewhat kitschy Americana. From 1956 to present day, from Bill Cullen to Drew Carey, every generation of Americans has seen one of the show's incarnations since its inception.
Mental_floss has a list of trivia about the show that's a pleasant, "blast-from-the-past" sort of diversion. A few items follow; see the list in entirety here.
1. THE SHOW’S RATINGS IMPROVED WHEN BOB BARKER WENT GRAY.
In 1987, Barker had to get approval from the head of daytime programming to stop dyeing his hair, becoming one of the few TV hosts with gray hair. “I was prematurely gray,” Barkers told the Los Angeles Times. “I began to gray at my temples, and I guess it could be that technology at that time was not what it is today, but I didn’t look good. It looked like I had no hair at my temples, so they suggested I tint it.” Barker went on vacation and stopped tinting, and people complimented his gray locks so he decided to keep the look. “We taped ahead. So let’s say on the Wednesday show I had dark hair, but when we taped the next show I had gray hair, and that show aired on Thursday. I got a letter from a fellow who said, ‘Bob, you must have had one hell of a night.’
What else might have improved the ratings? Perhaps the following:
5. ONE TIME A CONTESTANT GOT SO EXCITED, HER TOP FELL OFF.
Before the term “wardrobe malfunction” was coined, a female contestant in 1977 had just that in the middle of an episode. When Yolanda was told to “come on down,” she got so excited that her tube top slipped and, for a brief second, revealed way more than is appropriate for a daytime game show. “She began jumping up and down and out they came,” Barker told Larry King about “the most talked about single incident in the history of the show.” When Yolanda finally got to her podium, Barker quipped, “I’ve never had a welcome like this.”
United States of Japan by Peter Tieryas, available March 1, 2016
In this list compiled by i09, readers who are enthusiasts of the science fiction and fantasy genre are presented with 40 titles that will become available in 2016. Whether they are new offerings from promising authors or they're highly anticipated titles that are the next in well-written series, these books are worth keeping an eye out for. Some of their descriptions follow:
Billed as a spiritual successor to Philip K. Dick’s Man in the High Castle, this novel depicts a future in which the United States has lost World War II. By the late 1980s, the Japanese Empire rules over the Western US with a fleet of giant mecha. When a video game emerges that depicts an alternate history, a government agent discovers some hard truths about his world.
What happens when you bring a Navy SEAL back from the dead? Myke Cole’s novel Gemini Cell asked that question when Jim Schweitzer was resurrected using magic, to do the jobs that no living man could do. He’s escaped from the hands of the government, and he and his family are on the run from his former unit. Cole’s writing is engaging and exciting, and we can’t wait to devour the next installment of this series.
The town of Black Spring is haunted by a 17th Century ghost who enters people’s homes for nights on end. The town quarantines itself with high-tech surveillance to contain the curse, but when the town’s teenagers rebel, they risk spreading it far beyond the town limits. Thomas Olde Heuvelt recently won the Hugo Award, and we’re excited to finally read this novel in English.
From what we’ve heard about this book, it involves Vampires and Mexico City. After reading Moreno-Garcia’s debut, Signal to Noise, that’s all we need to know.
Read the list of 40 titles and their descriptions in entirety here.
(Photos: Scott Hein/Gothamist)
There are no signs or doors. You don't get a menu or a place to sit.
The mysterious proprietor known only as "Papa" has occupied the old newstand for several years. Knock at the right time--he has no posted hours--and he'll give you the best Caribbean food, such as this:
People in the know use Papa to get their fix of curry goat and chicken. Scott Heins of Gothamist visited and learned more about the secretive source of top-end Caribbean cuisine:
"Six or ten?" Papa asks each customer—his dishes of curry goat, marinated chicken, oxtail, and sauteed fish comes in only two prices, and are sized to match. Rice, beans, and chopped vegetables accompany each, and everything arrives piping hot in a styrofoam container. Your dining options are, of course, limited, but then the benches of Brower Park are only a 5 minute stroll away. […]
Despite a total lack of advertising and promotion in a neighborhood brimming with West Indian eateries, the chicken cavern has managed to keep its simple and tasty operation running. Papa opens the window when his morning prep work is finished, and closes up shop when the day's stock runs out.
-via Messy Nessy Chic
Imagine, if you will, working with George Lucas on a new character for a film in the Star Wars franchise. During the project, you borrow key parts of your life and personality — including a character and voice that you use to read stories to the children in your family — as a basis for the character's template.
Then envision, once the film hits theatres, being subjected to a backlash over your character that is worse than any other in the franchise history. That is the story of actor Ahmed Best, who was heavily involved in the shaping of the Jar Jar Binks character.
In this interesting interview, Best talks about everything from the generally poor audience reaction to Jar Jar Binks, which he admits to taking personally, to meeting Michael Jackson and getting the cold shoulder from him over Issues de Jar Jar, and even the lollipop Jar Jar that went down in horrific movie merchandise history. Said Best,
"The worst one was a lollipop dispenser, that was ridiculous, I saw that thing and ran. That was bad, the head of marketing actually called me to apologize for that one."
Via i09
You sank my noble gases!
Karyn homeschools 4 children. She's devised a brilliantly creative way to teach chemistry. It's a game modeled on the classic board game Battleship. Her materials are simple: 2 folders, 4 laminated copies of the periodic table of elements, and 2 dry erase markers.
The players first mark where their ships are. Then they call out elements, missing or hitting opposing ships. Karyn explains:
The kids can then mark where they want to place their ships by circling rows of 2, 3, 4, and 5 elements on the lower table.. They play by calling out coordinates. If they miss they put an X on the spot they chose on the upper table. If they get a hit, they circle it. They can continue playing until one person sinks all of another person’s ships.
-via Technabob
(Photo: Wicki)
Now, which way do we turn to find Nazis? If you glance quickly at this sign in Kamakura, Japan, you might think that they're everywhere. Johnny of the blog Spoon & Tamago understands your confusion:
When we moved to Japan in the early 80s my dad, a Jewish New Yorker from the Bronx, quickly realized that he had made a terrible mistake. “We’re surrounded by Nazi’s,” he proclaimed, wide-eyed, as we all stared at a map of our local neighborhood in Koenji. He was, of course, looking at the manji symbol (卍), a reverse swastika that could understandably be mistaken for the symbol of Nazi Germany, instead of its intended representation of Buddhist temples.
Once foreign travelers have calmed down about the Nazi menace, they still have problems. A lot of the street signs common to Japan are non-intuitive to outsiders. That's why the country is changing many of its standard navigational signs:
True crime murder mysteries, like Serial and Making a Murderer, are very popular these days. Would you like to compose a murder mystery that appeals to modern audiences? Then you need a hip way to have your protagonist knock off the victim—especially if you’re chasing the advertising dollars thrown at millennials.
Tom Gauld shows you how in this cartoon for The Guardian. I’m glad that my idea—bludgeoned to death by a gluten-free selfie stick—isn’t already taken.
Similarly, if you need to kill a werewolf, shoot him with a silver bullet. If that kills him, then you know that you knocked off a werewolf.
All you need is a command of basic science and logic to dispatch most hidden enemies in your midst. Charlie Higson illustrates this in an everyday life hack.
-via Geek Art Gallery
(Photo: CCTVNews)
Rocket News 24 accurately describes the story as “like something straight out of a Studio Ghibli film.” Kana Harada, a high school student, is the only passenger who uses the Kyu-Shirataki Station in a rural area of northern Japan.
Every school day, Harada’s parents drive her to the station, which is a few minutes from their home. She’s usually 1 of 10 students on the train at the time. From her station, it takes Harada an hour to arrive at her school. She uses that time to study, read, or listen to music.
Japan Rail Hokkaido recently announced plans to close that station. But after learning of Harada’s solitary use of the station, the company has decided to keep it open until she graduates this March.
Does the world glitch like a bad video in front of you? Can you be sure that you’re experiencing reality? Maybe not after looking at the sculptures of Paul Kaptein. He carves real life visual glitches out of wood. His forms are ordinary, but warped in unsettling ways. They’re fascinating juxtapositions of old technology with new and fantasy with reality.
Ross Marquand is an actor and impersonator. When you need someone to pretend to be Matthew McConaughey eating food off the floor, then you call this guy.
In this video for Vanity Fair magazine, Marquand offers 17 quick impersonations of celebrities doing very specific things. Each one is precisely right. If you imagine what Harrison Ford would look like while struggling to finish a sneeze that just won’t go all the way through, it’s exactly what Marquand presents.
He also shows Liam Neeson navigating an automated phone system, Antonio Banderas forgetting a password, and Michael Caine trying to open a jar.
-via reddit
The El Niño winter has brought record breaking rainfall to California after a long drought, resulting in lots of flooding and worryingly wet conditions in normally dry and sunny cities.
These effects are most noticeable when you're driving, which virtually everyone does on a daily basis in San Diego, and those unfamiliar with the city don't realize our roads flood with ease.
One shopping mall parking garage in particular is notorious for flooding, water levels rising to three or four feet at times, yet no signs are posted to warn drivers about potential flooding during rainstorms.
The flooding of Fashion Valley mall has become a yearly tradition in San Diego, one which the man in the video clearly wasn't warned about before he decided to go shopping!
-Via LAist
The world lost a music legend yesterday when it was announced that David Bowie died at the age of 69 after battling cancer for over a year. It's never easy to say goodbye to someone you look up to, so rather than try to say it in words, we opted to say goodbye with the help of some of the many wonderful artists around the web.
This wonderful GIF is quite possibly the most popular image out there right now celebrating David Bowie's long and wonderful career. It was made by artist Dolly Chops to celebrate the musician's birthday just last Friday.
Artist Mauricio Telles has a whole series of artworks made from the boxes of McDonald's French fries. While I doubt Bowie was a big McDonald's fan, this strange portrait seems a delightfully perfect tribute to the singer's wonderfully odd persona.
Art Nouveau is all the rage these days, but whether or not it's trendy right now, it's hard to argue that it seems a fitting style for artwork based on Labyrinth and that this poster art is simply fantastic.
David always managed to have a unique combination of beauty and intensity in his face -something difficult for artists to replicate well, but this pencil portrait of the rock star perfectly captures that striking look.
