There’s a new trailer out for the final Harry Potter installment. It’s to be released in two parts, with this first one coming out in November.
The Ballad of Steven Slater
Turns out the tirade of Steven Slater makes for a great chorus.
Stonehenge Lit From Above
This beautiful image, taken by Harold Edgerton in 1944, was part of an Allied experiment exploring nocturnal reconnaissance photography.
Tattooed Legos
From a series advertising the Pilot Extra Fine Point ball pen.
Steve Jobs’s Reality Distortion Field
Taiwanese news animation covering recent events at Apple, including the recent iPhone 4 antenna problems. I love many things about this, not least of which that it was made for the ‘news’.
Talking Carl Scream Fight
Talking Carl is an iPhone app that repeats whatever you say, only in a higher voice. Get two of them together and they try to outdo one another.
via kottke
Harvey Pekar, Cleveland comic-book legend, dies at age 70
Pekar was the author of the celebrated comic book American Splendor.
“He’s the soul of Cleveland,” Crumb told The Plain Dealer in 1994. “He’s passionate and articulate. He’s grim. He’s Jewish. I appreciate the way he embraces all that darkness.”
Yet the darkness came with a humorous silver lining. As Pekar said, “The humor of everyday life is way funnier than what the comedians do on TV. It’s the stuff that happens right in front of your face when there’s no routine and everything is unexpected. That’s what I want to write about.”
RIP.
Ringo Starr Turns 70
Short interview with the ex-Beatle on the occasion of his 70th birthday.
Newly Published Mark Twain Essay, ‘Concerning the Interview’
Essay by Mark Twain on being interviewed, published for the first time by PBS NewsHour.
No one likes to be interviewed, and yet no one likes to say no; for interviewers are courteous and gentle-mannered, even when they come to destroy. I must not be understood to mean that they ever come consciously to destroy or are aware afterward that they have destroyed; no, I think their attitude is more that of the cyclone, which comes with the gracious purpose of cooling off a sweltering village, and is not aware, afterward, that it has done that village anything but a favor.
AT-AT Day Afternoon
Very nice short film by Patrick Boivin with the AT-AT as household pet. Well done.
Happy Bloomsday
In addition to the Joyce and Becket video in the previous post, here’s a couple more things in celebration of Bloomsday.
I once heard that James Joyce wrote to his wife Nora that he could pick out her farts in a room full of farting women. Today I finally got to read the entire thing, as well as others of his dirty letters. Filthy, filthy stuff.
Also, check out Eve Arnold’s photo of Marilyn Monroe reading Ulysses.
Pitch ‘n’ Putt with Joyce ‘n’ Beckett
Hilarious.
Touchdown Jesus Destroyed by Lightning
A giant statue of Jesus in Monroe, Ohio, nicknamed the Touchdown Jesus, was struck by lightning Monday night and burned to the ground. The 62 foot statue was on the grounds of the Solid Rock Church near Cincinnati.
With news video.
I will be stopping Calvin and Hobbes
Letters of Note has a copy of the letter Bill Watterson sent to newspaper editors in 1995 announcing that he was no longer going to be drawing the cherished Calvin and Hobbes comic strip.
This was not a recent or an easy decision, and I leave with some sadness. My interests have shifted however, and I believe I’ve done what I can do within the constraints of daily deadlines and small panels. I am eager to work at a more thoughtful pace, with fewer artistic compromises.
That last strip still gets me.
Eri Yoshida secures a place among baseball’s greats
Eri Yoshida is still waiting to start her second game in the US, but has already earned her place in baseball’s Hall of Fame.
It’s unlikely she’ll consider retiring any time soon, but the 18-year-old Japanese pitcher has already secured a place in the Cooperstown, N.Y., museum that documents baseball’s history. The bat and specially cut-down jersey that 5’1″ Ms. Yoshida used when she became the first woman to play professional baseball in two countries — in her May 29 debut for the Golden Baseball League’s Chico Outlaws — will go on display in the museum.
Yoshida, a knuckleballer dubbed the “Knuckle Princess,” is the first woman to appear in an American professional baseball game since Ila Borders in 2000.
Mark Twain’s Autobiography
For the last decade of his life, Mark Twain was at work on his personal memoirs, but he left handwritten notes expressing his wish that they not be published until a century after his death. There is some debate as to why the author wanted to let so much time pass.
“He had doubts about God, and in the autobiography, he questions the imperial mission of the US in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. He’s also critical of [Theodore] Roosevelt, and takes the view that patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel. Twain also disliked sending Christian missionaries to Africa. He said they had enough business to be getting on with at home: with lynching going on in the South, he thought they should try to convert the heathens down there.”
In other sections of the autobiography, Twain makes cruel observations about his supposed friends, acquaintances and one of his landladies.
Twain died in 1910, so whatever the reason Twain had for the delay, his complete autobiography is finally going to be published. The University of California, Berkeley, will publish the work in three volumes, the first of which will be released in November.
Airplane! is a parody of Zero Hour!
Much of the classic movie Airplane! is pulled directly from the 1957 film Zero Hour!, which features a fighter pilot named Ted Stryker who must land a plane after both original pilots are incapacitated by food poisoning, and includes the actual line “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking.”
Super Mario Galaxy 2
The latest chapter in the Super Mario saga looks awesome.
Bookshelves
A subject near and dear to my heart. Portable? No. Beautiful? Yes.
I love the look of statement bookshelves. You know….ones that go wall to wall, floor to ceiling, over doors, around windows. And if there’s a big tall ladder involved that’s even better!
Agreed. It’s one of the (many) reasons I’m not a fan of digital books: you don’t need bookshelves.
Google’s Playable Pac-Man Logo
Google celebrates the 30th anniversary of the release of Pac-Man in Japan by incorporating their logo in a custom, playable version of the old coin-op arcade game.
It’s the first time one of their doodles, Google’s name for their series of commemorative logos, has been interactive. Apparently it is a full 255 level game, including a kill screen at level 256, just like the original.