Thursday, May 31, 2007
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Friday, May 25, 2007
Dr. Martens Fires Ad Agency Over Tasteless Campaign
Ad agency used images of dead rockers, Kurt Cobain, Joe Strummer, Joey Ramone, and Sid Vicious to sell shoes.
"The Daily Swarm has learned that Airwair Ltd., the creators of Dr. Martens famous footwear, has fired its advertising agency, Saatchi and Saatchi London, in the midst of an ongoing uproar over a poster campaign featuring the images of deceased musicians wearing their shoes in heaven.
David Suddens, CEO of Dr. Martens’ parent company AirWair Ltd., told The Daily Swarm in a phone interview that the posters were never intended to see the light of day. “We said no. It was creative that was put to us, but we didn’t like it. It doesn’t represent the company at all.”
Saatchi later released a statement standing by the ads. Kate Stanners, executive creative director, Saatchi & Saatchi said, “We believe the ads are edgy but not offensive. There has been blog commentary both for and against the ads, but it is our belief that they are respectful of both the musicians and the Dr. Martens brand.”
Saatchi later released a statement standing by the ads. Kate Stanners, executive creative director, Saatchi & Saatchi said, “We believe the ads are edgy but not offensive. There has been blog commentary both for and against the ads, but it is our belief that they are respectful of both the musicians and the Dr. Martens brand.”
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Jackass: The Game
"May 23, 2007 - It was floating around retailer pre-order lists for ages and even had its own website, but after more than a year of silence, Red Mile Entertainment has finally announced that Jackass: The Game is coming to PS2, PSP and Nintendo DS this fall.Sidhe Interactive (GripShift) is handling production duties on both Sony platform versions, while Sensory Sweep Studios (Marvel Nemesis, Justice League Heroes) develops the DS edition.
Classified as a "mission-based action/ adventure," Jackass takes its inspiration from the MTV television series and allows players to try out 35 different scenarios with digital incarnations of Steve-O, Johnny Knoxville, and the rest of the cast. However, word on the street is that Bam Margera didn't make the cut."
More at IGN.com
The Vader Project
"Presented by DKE Toys and Masters Replica, the Vader Project features 75 1:1 scale Darth Vader helmets customized by a who's who of lowbrow, graffiti, and designer toy artists from around the globe. The touring show wil debut at Star Wars Celebration IV to be held from May 24th through the 28th at the Los Angeles Convention Center. "From vinylpulse.com
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Banksy Revealed
"Recently we dug up some photos of world renowned graffiti artist BANKSY in Jamaica (thanks in part to a clue from an article in the New Yorker) but were ordered to take them down by a law firm in London. The whole affair is a bit sordid, but here’s the deal. We received cease and desist letters from Finers Stephens Innocent on behalf of notorious spinmeisters Meena Khera PR. They claim that Meena Khera owns the BANKSY photos, since they bought the rights from Jamaican photographer Peter Dean Rickards in June of 2006. Which seems odd considering BANKSY’s manager denied the authenticity of the photos to the New Yorker in the first place:
Steve Lazarides confirmed to the Standard that Banksy had been in Jamaica, but said that Rickards had the wrong guy.
If that’s the case then why the cease and desist blokes? Peter Dean Rickards is not allowed to disclose the deal, but as he said in the New Yorker piece, “they don’t call him BANKsy for nothing.”
From (edit dead link) complex.com Via: gawker.com
Not what I expected at all.
Related: previous posts of Banksy here.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Gay Flamingos Raise Chick
"A pair of flamingos have become proud foster parents after they took an abandoned chick under their wings at the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust, in Slimbridge, Gloucestershire, Great Britain. But this probably doesn't sound unusual, until you know that the birds, Carlos and Fernando, are two male Greater Flamingos. Despite both being male, they had resorted to stealing eggs from other pairs as they sought to fulfil their desperate desire to start a family of their own.The facility's staff were so impressed with the pair's incubating abilities that when a Greater Flamingo nest was recently abandoned shortly before the egg hatched, Carlos and Fernando were the number one choice to "adopt" the resulting chick.
"Fernando and Carlos are a same sex couple who have been known to steal other Flamingos' eggs by chasing them off their nest because they wanted to rear them themselves," said WWT spokeswoman Jane Waghorn. "They were rather good at sitting on eggs and hatching them so last week, when a nest was abandoned, it seemed like a good idea to make them surrogate parents..."
More at scienceblogs.com
Video of the story at liveleak.com
Friday, May 18, 2007
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Han Solo In Carbonite Chocolate Bar
"You may have been a good smuggler, but now you're dark chocolate."The making of at instructables.com
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Armed Police Raid Home After Mistaking Lara Croft Dummy For Gunman
"When police spotted a gun-wielding suspect lurking in the shadows of a suburban front room, their response was swift.Armed officers burst into the house, shouted at the owner to lie on the floor, and ordered him to surrender his weapon.
But efficiency turned to embarrassment when the "gunman" turned out to be a life-sized model of the video game character Lara Croft, complete with
trademark outsized pistols.
Computer shop owner David Williams, 42, had taken the dummy home to put it up for sale on the auction site eBay.
As the source of the confusion dawned on all concerned, it might have been the moment for an apology from the police.
Instead, however, Mr Williams was taken to the cells and held for more than 13 hours before being released.
He is now on bail for a suspected firearms offence, and Lara Croft remains impounded as evidence.... "
More at dailymail.co.uk
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Friday, May 11, 2007
Loose Dog Told Where To Go
Idaho vandals paint message on furry coat of unleashed pooch
"MAY 3--Police are seeking the vandals who spray-painted the words "Go Home" on a Samoan Shepherd who enjoys wandering, unleashed, though its Idaho neighborhood. As seen in the below evidence photos, the dog, named Wiley, had one word painted on each side of his body. According to a Bannock County Sheriff's Department report, Wiley's owner called cops late last month after discovering her dog "had been spray painted with gang graffiti." Actually, it appears that the ambulating animal wasn't tagged by an Idaho Blood or Crip, but rather by some annoyed neighbor or juvenile delinquent. A sheriff's deputy advised Wiley's owner, Marilyn Hardenbrook, to keep the dog in her own yard (and under her control while the pooch was "out and about")."From thesmokinggun.com
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Art Student Dresses Up Roadkill
"EDWARDSVILLE --The next time you drive by a dead animal on the side of the road, take a closer look. It might just be wearing a purple dress, a green vest or have its "nails" painted.About three weeks ago, Jessica May, who just completed her first year of graduate studies in the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville art and design program, started dressing roadkill in pet and baby clothes to catch people's attention near campus.
The 24-year-old from West Lafayette, Ind., said the idea stemmed from a year's worth of work dealing with nature. She said she was interested to see whether people would give more thought to the "wild animals" if they were personified by being dressed in human attire, such as a Polo from Baby Gap.
Although she has dressed, and given some manicures, to three raccoons and three possums, she said she is not trying to make a political statement: "I'm not trying to be any sort of militant activist for animals' rights or anything like that..."
More at bnd.com
Banksy Was Here: The Invisible Man Of Graffiti Art
"The British graffiti artist Banksy likes pizza, though his preference in toppings cannot be definitively ascertained. He has a gold tooth. He has a silver tooth. He has a silver earring. He’s an anarchist environmentalist who travels by chauffeured S.U.V. He was born in 1978, or 1974, in Bristol, England—no, Yate. The son of a butcher and a housewife, or a delivery driver and a hospital worker, he’s fat, he’s skinny, he’s an introverted workhorse, he’s a breeze-shooting exhibitionist given to drinking pint after pint of stout. For a while now, Banksy has lived in London: if not in Shoreditch, then in Hoxton. Joel Unangst, who had the nearly unprecedented experience of meeting Banksy last year, in Los Angeles, when the artist rented a warehouse from him for an exhibition, can confirm that Banksy often dresses in a T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers. When Unangst is asked what adorns the T-shirts, he will allow, before fretting that he has revealed too much already, that they are covered with smudges of white paint."The creative fields have long had their shadowy practitioners, figures whose identities, whether because of scandalous content (the author of “Story of O”), fear of ostracism (Joe Klein), aversion to nepotism (Stephen King’s son Joe Hill), or conceptual necessity (Sacha Baron Cohen), remain, at least for a time, unknown. Anonymity enables its adopter to seek fame while shielding him from the meaner consequences of fame-seeking. In exchange for ceding credit, he is freed from the obligations of authorship. Banksy, for instance, does not attend his own openings. He may miss out on the accolades, but he’ll never spend a Thursday evening, from six to eight, picking at cubes of cheese...."
Continued at newyorker.com
Artistic License Didn’t Include Rabies Tags
Strolling mice-on-cat-on-dog act busted over tags, poop bags, neuter proof
"SANTA FE, N.M. - When Gregory Pike was told he had to have a busker's license for his strolling act consisting of mice riding on the back of a cat riding on the back of a dog, he figured it would be no big deal to get the $35 license.
But Pike said that when he came out of city hall with the itinerant vendor license, he walked into city animal control officers. They gave him citations for $500 because Booger, his Rottweiler-Labrador mix, and Kitty, the gray-and-black cat, had no tags proving they had their rabies shots and had been spayed or neutered.
Pike also was not carrying the required poop bags.
Pike contends he is being harassed. But Carla Lopez, a spokeswoman for the city, said buskers who make their living with animals have to have the tags and have to pick up after themselves.
"That makes it so it works for everyone," she said.
Pike had moved from Santa Fe to St. Johns, Ariz., for the warmer weather but said he came back to Santa Fe to make a little money.
However, he may not be walking around the Santa Fe Plaza for long with Booger, Kitty and Mousies (all the white mice in the act are named Mousie) if he has to come up with $500 in fines, he said.
"I have a court date coming up, and we'll see," he said."
The story at msnbc.com
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Robot Chicken Star Wars Special Trailer
"30 minutes, stop-motion animated, Lucas approved, Seth Green directed, featuring the voices of George Lucas, Mark Hamill, Conan O’Brien, Seth MacFarlane, Robert Smigel, Malcolm McDowell, Hulk Hogan, James Van Der Beek , Donald Faison, Abraham Benrubi, Breckin Meyer and Joey Fatone."
The Robot Chicken: Star Wars special which will premiere on Adult Swim on June 17th at 10:00pm.
Related: More Star Wars Robot Chicken. More on youtube here and here.
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Saturday, May 05, 2007
The 86 Rules Of Boozing
1. If you owe someone money, always pay them back in a bar. Preferably during happy hour.20. Drink one girly drink in public and you will forever be known as the guy who drinks girly drinks.
28. If you can't afford to tip, you can't afford to drink in a bar. Go to the liquor store.
29. If you owe someone twenty dollars or less, you may pay them back in beer.
33. The only thing that tastes better than free liquor is stolen liquor.
35. Learn to appreciate hangovers. If it was all good times every jackass would be doing it.
The 86 rules of boozing at moderndrunkardmagazine.com
Via Friday, May 04, 2007
LOL Trek
"Let’s talk about lolcats. Lolcats, or cat macros, are a subset of image macros. They’re pictures of cats with captions typed across them. In essence they’re the “Hang In There Baby” posters gone feral. Anil Dash has a great post about them, in which he identifies a number of lolcat subclasses and discusses kitty pidgin, the mangled English used in many lolcat pictures. Kitty pidgin is surprisingly regular, which I suppose means, as Anil Dash puts it,
that cats can has regular
grammar.
While this is nice and all, I quickly realized that there are no long-form lolcat works. The closest is Spatch’s wonderful Cat Town, and it’s only a relative to lolcats.
The answer is clear: they would show Star Trek."
The entire Tribble episode in LOL cat at granades.com
'General Lee' Auction Ends At Nearly 10 Million
"NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- If the bids are real - and the eBayMotors.com auction was stopped once for fake bidding - a modified 1969 Dodge Charger, painted to look like the General Lee from the TV Show "The Dukes of Hazzard," nearly became the most expensive car ever auctioned.The auction closed at $9,900,500 at 1:00 pm Friday. That puts it just $1.1 million away from the $11 million paid for a 1931 Bugatti Type 41 Royale Sports Coupe sold by the auction house Christie's in 1987. To date, that is the highest price ever paid for a car at auction, according to Christie's.
The car was used in the show, which typically went through several cars per episode during its 6-year production run in the early 1980s. But this one is owned by John Schneider, who played Bo Duke in the series, a role that was only slightly less central than that of the car.
"I'm excited as I can be but I'm not going to believe it until my banker calls and says 'buy me a beer'," said Schneider after the auction ended."
More at money.cnn.com Link to ebay auction.
I'm not sure why the high bidder paid so much. It's not an original General Lee. The Plaque says:
From John Schneider's
Personal Collection
"Bo's General Lee"
Completed 12/97
#4 of 4
426 HEMI
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Why You Don't Hear 'Happy Birthday To You' In Movies Or Restaurants
Copyright issues and public performances:"Due to the copyright issue, filmmakers rarely show complete singalongs of "Happy Birthday" in films, either substituting the public-domain "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" or avoiding the song entirely.
One of the popular audience lines in The Rocky Horror Picture Show alludes to this. After Dr. Frank N. Furter has captured Brad, Janet and Dr. Scott, he hosts a dinner for them. At the beginning of an apparent birthday celebration, the audience calls out "Start to sing 'Happy Birthday' but don't finish it", and indeed, Dr. Furter cuts it short midway through the song."
More on wikipedia.com
Darth Vader Hot Air Balloon
" 'Up, up and away in my beautiful balloon,' proclaim the serene lyrics of that famous old song summing up the splendor of soaring high in a hot-air balloon.But sing these charming words with the ferocious face of the most evil man in the galaxy hovering above your head and the experience takes on an altogether more sinister tone. "
More at dailymail.co.uk and starwars.com
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
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