The bikes from New York City's Citi Bike bike-share program are heavy as shit and slow as all hell. Our friends at Animal NY wanted to see if it was possible to have a little fun while riding one, so they put BMX pro Tyrone Williams to the test. Watching this makes me want to be 13 again.
Not to be outdone by Starz and their fancy new Fresh Prince/Entourage-y sitcom produced by LeBron James, Showtime is teaming up with former Lakers coach Phil Jackson and director Ron Shelton to develop their own executive-produced-by-basketball-people television series.
Set to write, executive produce and, should it go to pilot, direct is Ron Shelton. The sports-centric filmmaker’s most notable movies include Bull Durham, Tin Cup and White Men Can’t Jump. Serving as executive producers alongside him on the project are several members of the L.A. Lakers family, including assistant coach Kurt Rambis, retired coach Phil Jackson and team execs Jeanie Buss and Linda Rambis — the latter two doing so under their shingle Street Reason Entertainment.
The untitled project is a behind-the-scenes look at a professional team, focusing on the family that owns the franchise. [THR]
The involvement of current Lakers executives — including Jackson’s fiancee, Jeanie Buss — really decreases the odds that Jackson and Shelton will produce a thinly-disguised pilot about the wise, noble coach of “the Los Angeles Ponders” struggling to deal with his evil sociopath shooting guard “Bobe Kryant,” and that right there is a crying shame. I would have watched that show forever.
Of all the reasons you can never say no when offered tickets to watch a filming of Late Night with Jimmy Fallonnumero uno is that there’s a one out of ten chance Justin Timberlake will make an impromptu appearance. There will be singing and dancing and JT and you would have passed on the opportunity.
Last night, for instance, Timberlake dropped in to help Jimmy walk us through the evolution of end zone dances as the return of football is obviously warming their cold, dark hearts as much as it is ours. No vocals, but there is Jimmy Fallon doing the worm and a take on the football spin celebration all you diehard Swayze fans out there are sure to be replicating at home.
The “Justin Timberlake” (N’Sync) > The “Mante Te’o on a Date”
There are considerable legal hurdles to getting the Avengers and the X-Men together on the big screen, but there’s no reason why we couldn’t some day see the director of The Avengers take a vacation from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to visit the X-Men, maybe even to showcase a character that he focused a significant amount of his comic work on. And that character’s actress, Ellen Page, is totally down with it.
Page (who also may be appearing in another comics adaptation soon) was interviewed by Vulture about her current work in the X-Men movies, and the future of Kitty Pryde. On revisiting the character after eight years (I feel old) and working with returning X-Men director Bryan Singer:
Maybe because the first one was so long ago, maybe because it was like an eight-year difference, but it didn’t feel like there needed to be an adjustment period. Bryan, I don’t know how he pulls off everything he does in a day, I really don’t! He is really great with actors and really wants the truth of the performance to exist, to sort of elevate that kind of a film, which I feel he did with the first two X-Men movies. He was sort of the first to take that kind of a spectacle of film and tell a deeply, deeply human story.
And on Joss Whedon‘s open declaration of wanting to do a Kitty Pryde movie?
Well, I’m available! [Laughs.] I love that. Kitty Pryde’s awesome. I’m super grateful to be the actress who’s gotten to be her, and you only desperately hope that the true fans who have a right to demand what they want and who have been passionate about these stories for a really long time, that you can pull it off for them. I would be so thrilled to play Kitty Pryde again. I really would.
Ball’s in your court, 20th Century Fox. And don’t pretend you wouldn’t put “from the director of The Avengers” in all the advertising.
(You can read the whole interview with Page at Vulture.)
Glee will open its fifth season on September 26 with a two-part premiere featuring the music of The Beatles. Glee is doing The Beatles. There’s a trailer and everything. And a tracklist. Wanna see it?
1. Yesterday
2. Drive My Car
3. Got To Get You Into My Life
4. You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away
5. Help
6. A Hard Day’s Night
7. I Saw Her Standing There
8. All You Need Is Love
9. Get Back
10. Here Comes the Sun
11. Something
12. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
13. Hey Jude
14. Let It Be
Oh man. OH MAN. This is going to be madness. I can see it now. First, Beatles fans are going to absolutely SH*T when they see the trailer, because, I mean, Glee is covering The Beatles. Then after the episode airs all of the Glee versions of all the songs are going to rocket to the top of the iTunes charts. THEN, and this is going to be the best part, teenagers all over America are going to strike up conversations with their floppy-haired, music snob, Beatles fan uncles at their families’ Thanksgiving get-togethers, and explain that they think the Glee version of “Here Comes the Sun” is “like, way better” than the Beatles’ version, and then all of the veins in all of the uncles’ heads are going to start throbbing and bulging with such violence that the pressure will eventually cause their whole entire heads to explode all over the green bean casserole. Families will tear each other limb from limb. Society will crumble. Chaos. ANARCHY.
It’s like the old expression says: When a Jay Z jumps into a pool in one part of the world, it can eventually cause a hurricane of memes in another. Chaos theory was proven once again this week when Mr. and Mrs. Carter, while vacationing somewhere you can’t afford, took a dip into a pool. It was awkward. And history-making: never before have people paid more attention to a male rapper without his shirt on than Beyoncé in a swimsuit.
But mostly, it was a good excuse to make hilarious Hova Photoshops. Take it away, Internet.
Kimberly Hall, Director of Women’s Ministry at a Presbyterian Church in Texas, has a message for teenage girls who take bedtime selfies in their pajamas: stop luring her teenage sons into sin. Why would you devil harlots want to control the Hall boys' minds? Are you whores and witches? She outlines her urgent plea in a blog post that includes half-naked photos of her saintly sons flexing their muscles at the beach. It's not meant to be ironic.
The state of Colorado is the 8th most extensive and the 22nd most populous in the U.S. with Denver as its capital and largest city. Known for its snowy mountains, arid plains, craft beer and microbreweries, high altitude, relatively great living standards and cost, and fit population, Colorado has consistently seemed like a pleasant state. A year ago Governor John Hickenlooper launched the Making Colorado initiative to build a brand for the state. In charge of the new logo was a team of 12 Coloradan designers and writers, who created three options for people to vote on and last week, at the Colorado Innovation Network Summit, Hickenlooper introduced the new logo designed by Evan Hecox.
Like Colorado itself, our new logo combines the familiar with the unexpected. It draws clear influence from our world-famous mountains and beloved license plate. But its shape, an upward facing arrow with rounded corners, also serves as a symbol of Colorado's momentum and a reminder of its friendly and approachable attitude. While our new identity certainly isn't everything Colorado is, it will serve as a constant and consistent reminder of everything our spectacular state can be.
"It's our nature" is at the heart of Colorado's new brand. Serving as the tagline, these three words symbolize the duality of our state--awe-inspiring scenery and life-loving people. It connects adventure with entrepreneurship, beauty with happiness and fresh air with creativity.
Logo introduction video. Explanation of logo begins at the 1:15 mark.
With destination logos it's always beneficial to be a step (or state) removed, since the locals, by default, tend to reject whatever logo is introduced, as has been the case here. (If you think Brand New commenters are snarky and/or mean, just read this 500+ comment thread on Facebook, coming from Colorado locals).
The opening image I used isn't quite accurate as there wasn't a true "before" logo, but the "C" in the flag was commonly used on its own and is the closest thing to an identifying mark for the state. The new logo makes an immediate impact: it's simple, easy to remember, bold, and it says Colorado right away. Does it encompass all the nuances of the state? No. No single destination logo does that. A lot of the complaints are that the logo looks like a road sign — well, that's perfect, isn't it? Driving through the beautiful scenery of Colorado is an experience worth communicating. It's not an outstanding logo and considering the long-haul of the project and the amount of people (designers and non-designers alike) involved it's commendable that something decent and usable came out.
In the spirit of “violent and kinda weird,” our next @Storytime takes place largely in the mind of Metta World Peace, who hopped on Twitter to tell the story of his run-in with a crazy man at a Los Angeles-area deli. I say “largely in the mind” because there’s like a 5% maximum truth to this story, which involves Metta going into a deli, deciding everything was racist, announcing that rules were meant to be broken, breaking everything and getting into a text fight with a guy who was standing in front of him. Then eating lunch.
It … makes even less sense when you read the tweets.
Big thanks to Weed over at Sportress for the h/t on this. Never change, Metta World Peace.
Wonder Woman saving the day by catching her man-sel in distress and surfing down a gargantuan wave to slap a giant and ride off into the sunset? Yep, that’s the most recent Wonder Woman short by Robert Valley for DC Nation. All three are now up online, so you can watch (and re-watch) an awesome lady taking care of business and look fabulous doing it. Not only is the animation stunning, but Diana has never looked so good. Why can’t we get a Wonder Woman movie like this?
Conspiracy theorists everywhere are having a party right now, shouting and throwing their tinfoil hats to the sky in celebration: a recently declassified CIA report acknowledges Area 51 is, in fact, an official thing.
Want to know more about one of the most mysterious locales in the United States? Head under the cut!
A recent NSA report (about tests of an experimental Cold War-era plane, the U-2), mentions the base by name and gives us some insight into how it was established, and why that tiny plot in the middle of the Nevada desert, of all places. From the report:
On 12 April 1955, Richard Bissell and Col. Osmund Ritland (the senior Air Force officer on the project staff) flew over Nevada with Kelly Johnson on a small Beechcraft plane piloted by Lockheed’s chief test pilot, Tony LeVier. They spotted what appeared to be an airstrip by a salt flat known as Groom Lake, near the northeast corner of the Atomic Energy Commission’s (AEC) Nevada Proving Ground.
“Area 51″ refers to the part of the map the land is located in, but apparently the base was also called by the unassuming name Desert Bluffs “Paradise Ranch”:
The outlines of Area 51 are shown on current unclassified maps as a small rectangular area adjoining the northeast corner of the much larger Nevada Test Site. To make the new facility in the middle of nowhere sound more attractive to his workers, Kelly Johnson called it the Paradise Ranch, which was soon shortened to the Ranch.
The “top-secret” government base can already be seen from Google Maps, but the government itself has never admitted to the base’s existence until now. Rumors of alien remains, UFOs, and other covert tests from a vague-yet-menacing government agency have flown since the base’s inception in 1955, but now that we have some more details there will most likely be a flood of government files declassified that relate to Area 51, and which couldn’t be released until the base itself was confirmed to exist.
For such an icon of American culture to only be admitted now, after fifty years, is pretty amazing. We can only wonder what we’ll find out about the inner machinations of the mysterious base next. The truth is out there.
The Koopas are fighting. Why aren’t you? That’s the questioned posed by these WWII-style Mario propaganda posters by Fro Design. These posters envision a world where Bowser has to drum up support for his endless war against Mario, the red menace.
The posters reimagine Piranha Plants as part of every victory garden and the coin blocks as donation boxes for the war effort. Even the ghosts of Koopas are caught in this battered landscape, still fighting for a nebulous cause. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, y’all.
Fro Design recently expanded the collection to a total of 17 posters available for sale here. We’ve place our favorites below, and you can view the others at Fro Design or Pleated Jeans.
Liquid Lapdance undergarments are "special pants" — "the best strip club invention since the pole" — that make lap dances feel "exactly like sex" for men. The founders are so confident that dudes will be satisfied with/in their product that they offer refunds to those who don't orgasm in their Liquid Lapdance lap dance pants.
We all know women only care about two things: non-fat yogurt and birth control. At least, that’s what advertisements tell me, so it must be right, right? Megan Amram and Yahoo’s sketch comedy series did a fantastic parody of condescending women’s advertisements: a commercial for both yogurt and birth control, at the same time, finally giving us women exactly what we want. Watch for a painfully accurate portrayal of women in advertisements (laughing with salad) and don’t miss the hilarious cameo at the end.
For those of you who missed out on the Super Best Friends Forever merchandise at San Diego Comic-Con this year and don’t want to hunt down the adorably animated figures on Ebay, DC Collectibles is making life a little easier for you. The three Super Best Friends will be sold separately as Super Secret Storage Boxes, and each will come with the added bonus of two extra heads, with adorably fierce and silly expressions. Each figure will be sold for $24.95, starting in December of this year, and while they are not together, acquiring all three is certainly possible. Check out Supergirl and Wonder Girl after the break.
