The New Year’s Eve Ball

All about the New Year’s Eve Ball that descends every year from atop One Times Square, including the newest high-tech incarnation that is both brighter and more energy efficient than previous balls.

The new Times Square New Year’s Eve Ball is a 12 foot geodesic sphere, double the size of previous Balls, and weighs 11,875 pounds. Covered in 2,668 Waterford Crystals and powered by 32,256 Philips Luxeon Rebel LEDS, the new Ball is capable of creating a palette of more than 16 million vibrant colors and billions of patterns producing a spectacular kaleidoscope effect atop One Times Square.

The organizers also announced that the new Ball will become a year-round attraction above Times Square in full public view January through December.

12.31.2009Tagged with:    

Times Square to Art Square

The aim of the Times Square to Art Square project is to replace all advertising on billboards in Times Square with works of art. If it pans out, artists will upload artwork to the website and visitors will donate money to the artists that impress them. How much money an artist has donated to them will determine how much exposure time they get in Times Square.

12.31.2009Tagged with:    

Dissertations on His Dudeness

The Year’s Work in Lebowski Studies is a collection of essays on Joel and Ethan Coen’s 1998 movie The Big Lebowski.

As a new generation of “Lebowski” fans emerges, Dude Studies may linger for a while. In another of this book’s essays, “Professor Dude: An Inquiry Into the Appeal of His Dudeness for Contemporary College Students,” a bearded, longhaired and rather Dude-like associate professor of English at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va., named Richard Gaughran asks this question about his students: “What is it that they see in the Dude that they find so desirable?”

One of Mr. Gaughran’s students came up with this summary, and it’s somehow appropriate for an end-of-the-year reckoning: “He doesn’t stand for what everybody thinks he should stand for, but he has his values. He just does it. He lives in a very disjointed society, but he’s gonna take things as they come, he’s gonna care about his friends, he’s gonna go to somebody’s recital, and that’s it. That’s how you respond.”

12.30.2009Tagged with:    

Nation’s Pride

Nation’s Pride is the fictional Nazi propaganda film screened for the German high command at the end of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds. It was filmed by Eli Roth, who played Sgt. Donny Donowitz in Basterds.

Also available, and just as ficitonal, is the Making of Nation’s Pride, with Roth as director Alois Von Eichberg.

12.30.2009Tagged with:    

Alma

Alma is a short animated film directed by Rodrigo Blaas, an animator at Pixar.

12.27.2009Tagged with:    

The Making of the Grinch

In 1994, TNT aired this holiday treat, hosted by the great Phil Hartman, that featured some of the extraordinary talent that brought “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” to life: Thurl Ravenscroft (the voice of Tony the Tiger, who sang “You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch”), Albert Hague (who wrote the music), and Chuck Jones (animation legend of Bugs Bunny fame).

Thurl Ravenscroft had the best face. I could watch him talk all day.

Don’t miss part 2.

12.25.2009Tagged with:    

Ulysses: Fast Track to 1934 Best Seller

While James Joyce was still writing his novel Ulysses in 1918, the journal The Little Review began serializing it for the American audience. When they got to the episode that portrays the novel’s protagonist Leopold Bloom masturbating, an obscenity charge was leveled at The Little Review, and Ulysses was subsequently banned in the United States. Random House was committed to publishing it, though. They went so far as to have a French edition of the book imported, and then informed customs of its arrival so that it would be seized – all so they could contest the ban in court.

Imagine you’re a big American publisher, and there’s a book infamous for its subject and language that you want to publish — but first, you have to go up against the US government to prove it should no longer be banned. And, given the publicity of the court case, you want the book in the bookstores as soon as it’s legal.

This describes the situation facing Random House in 1933 as they waited to publish James Joyce’s Ulysses, which had not been allowed into the US for 12 years. How they got the ban dropped and delivered the book at just the right moment is a short tale of legal, design and production choreography.

Don’t miss the slide show. I’d love to get a closer look at this spread published by Random House in Saturday Review of Literature:

12.24.2009Tagged with:    

Ms. Pac-Man Was Once A Man Named Otto

One wonders if this news has any effect on her relationship with Pac-Man.

You may not know this, but Ms. Pac-Man was once a dude. She also used to eat monsters instead of ghosts and run around on giant legs.

(via coudal)

12.24.2009Tagged with:    

The Known Universe

The Known Universe is a new film created by the American Museum of Natural History that begins over Mount Everest and pulls back through space to the edge of what we have been able to observe and map of the universe. Every detail of scale and location is accurate, as it’s based on data from the Digital Universe Atlas, a continually updated four-dimensional map of the universe.

12.22.2009Tagged with:    

Pixar’s Up Trailer Recut

Mashup of the Gran Torino and Up trailers. Well done.

12.21.2009Tagged with:    

70 Minute Phantom Menace Review

Divided into 7 bite-size chunks, it’s a long review, but funny and spot-on in its comparison of the original trilogy its first prequel.

The unfortunate reality of the Star Wars prequels is that they’ll be around… forever. They will never go away. They can never be undone.

Painfully true.

12.18.2009Tagged with:    

Cecilia/Amanda – Previously Unreleased Elliott Smith

Available for free download from indie record label Kill Rock Stars is “Cecilia/Amanda,” a unreleased Elliott Smith song recorded in 1997 (scroll down to the bottom for the download link). On April 6, 2010 Kill Rock Stars will add Roman Candle and From a Basement on the Hill to their catalog, giving them the full set of Smith’s independent releases.

12.18.2009Tagged with:    

Manageable Tongue Twisters

Tongue get tied easily? The good folks at McSweeney’s have you covered. Try this one:

Fuzzy Wuzzy had been a bear.
But he was bald.
So, if this was the case,
He couldn’t have been very fuzzy, right?

Or maybe this one:

James bifurcated corn,
Although I don’t really give a shit.

12.17.2009Tagged with:    

Solar System Scale Model

Finding all the planets can be a bit tough on this scale model of our solar system, but that’s because the page is over a half-mile long.

This page shows a scale model of the solar system, shrunken down to the point where the Sun, normally more than eight hundred thousand miles across, is the size you see it here. The planets are shown in corresponding scale. Unlike most models, which are compressed for viewing convenience, the planets here are also shown at their true-to-scale average distances from the Sun. That makes this page rather large – on an ordinary 72 dpi monitor it’s just over half a mile wide, making it possibly one of the largest pages on the web.

(via coudal)

12.17.2009Tagged with:    

We Three Kings – New Video from Blondie

Brand new song and video from Blondie. Apparently there’s also a new album due out next year.

You can download the song for free on Blondie’s site.

12.16.2009Tagged with:    

Iron Man 2 Trailer

The Iron Man 2 trailer is out.

12.16.2009Tagged with:    

Christmas Tree Fire

Check out this PSA video of a dry Scotch Pine catching fire and setting the room ablaze. Scary quick.

12.16.2009Tagged with:    

Effort to Remove Atheist From City Council

Cecil Bothwell could be in for a long legal battle after taking the oath of office for the Asheville City Council in North Carolina because of his lack of religious beliefs.

Asheville City Councilman Cecil Bothwell believes in ending the death penalty, conserving water and reforming government – but he doesn’t believe in God. His political opponents say that’s a sin that makes him unworthy of serving in office, and they’ve got the North Carolina Constitution on their side.

Bothwell’s detractors are threatening to take the city to court for swearing him in, even though the state’s antiquated requirement that officeholders believe in God is unenforceable because it violates the U.S. Consititution.

“The question of whether or not God exists is not particularly interesting to me and it’s certainly not relevant to public office,” the recently elected 59-year-old said.

Bothwell ran this fall on a platform that also included limiting the height of downtown buildings and saving trees in the city’s core, views that appealed to voters in the liberal-leaning community at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains. When Bothwell was sworn into office on Monday, he used an alternative oath that doesn’t require officials to swear on a Bible or reference “Almighty God.”

That has riled conservative activists, who cite a little-noticed quirk in North Carolina’s Constitution that disqualifies officeholders “who shall deny the being of Almighty God.”

(via cynical-c)

12.15.2009Tagged with:    

LucasFilm’s 2009 Christmas Card

This years holiday card from the folks at LucasFilm, featuring gingerbread cookie Clone Wars characters.

12.14.2009Tagged with:    

Wall of Knowledge

Stockholm Public Library Concept

Concept for the Stockholm Public Library International Architectural Competition.

12.13.2009Tagged with:    
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