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It's one of the great What Ifs of cinematic history. David Lynch was George Lucas' first choice to direct Return of the Jedi, but he (probably wisely) turned it down. As my tipster/contributor Christian Lindke has pointed out, Jedi made by Lynch at that time would probably have resembled Dune more than Eraserhead. But what if the modern Lynch had made it? YouTuber C-SPIT has put together a rather brilliant concept trailer, using not just repurposed footage, but also canny digital insertions and excellently impersonated additional dialogue that highlights all the Lynch hallmarks - dark corridors, rumbling, eerie-sweet singing, crying, unnaturally fast or slow camera moves, weird reversal footage...and Robert Blake, of course. It wouldn't fit the Star Wars canon at all, but we'd love it (and perhaps be the only ones who would). Continue reading "David Lynch's Return of the Jedi" >

As redditor Tomcruiseama points out, the $70 Ikea PS 2014 lamp is basically a Death Star: it's a Hoberman-sphere-like lampshade that can be mechanically expanded or contracted to control the amount of light it emits.

If you saw this weekend's Game of Thrones, you saw the episode close with one of the best, bitterest, and most badass speeches ever made on the show, by Tyrion Lannister, to his shitty family and all the assholes of King's Landing. I did not think this scene could be any better. And then I saw this video.

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There may come a day when these videos are no longer funny, but this is not that day.

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From the moment the initial tapes emerged , people have remarked on the similarity between Clippers owner Donald Sterling's voice and that of the character Master Shake on Aqua Teen Hunger Force. We did some searching through old ATHF episodes, and discovered these similarities are more than uncanny.

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James Kerr aka Scorpion Dagger is a GIF artist from Montreal who puts a comedic twist onto the traditional scenes of renaissance art. When asked to describe his inspiration, he explains: “most of my inspiration comes from these odd and mundane scenes that I see being played every day. I really like the idea of taking these grand works of art, and using them to create a twisted ‘behind the scenes’ look at what their life is like once they leave the painting. In a sense, what would they would be up to if they left the museum after their shift was up on the painting, and went home to a world much like ours.”

The post Renaissance GIFs from Scorpion Dagger appeared first on MASHKULTURE.

Stop what you are doing immediately and watch this!!! Dinosaurs are real and they are playing baseball. This Raptor threw the opening pitch at the Padres game. GAME OVER, ALL OTHER TEAMS.

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Cheap to implement, and a win for everyone:

It’s such a great, simple idea: Young Brazilians want to learn English. Elderly Americans living in retirement homes just want someone to talk to. Why not connect them?

FCB Brazil did just that with its “Speaking Exchange” project for CNA language schools. As seen in the touching case study below, the young Brazilians and older Americans connect via Web chats, and they not only begin to share a language—they develop relationships that enrich both sides culturally and emotionally.

Found it on the facebook thingie, and thought it was wonderful, but this comment made me laugh out loud:

a whole generation of brazilian teens are going to be calling a couch a “davenport” and saying “isn’t that darling” instead of “omg cuuute.”

Snicker.

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If you're an NFL fan, you know the draft drill by now.

The names, hats and suits change but the same themes remain every year. We'll hear the same draft buzzwords, except this time "explosive first step" will apply to Khalil Mack instead of Clay Matthews. There will be the same jokes and same cliches. The draft from 2014 won't feel all that different than the draft from 1994, except that the battle between ESPN analyst Mel Kiper and Colts general manager Bill Tobin was live back then but inevitably shown from the archives this week.

So why don't we make a game out of it? Get your markers out and let's play some NFL draft bingo this week, shall we?

OMNI THROWBACK: THE FUTURE OF GAMING AS ACCORDING TO THE JANUARY 1991 ISSUE OF OMNI MAGAZINE

Flailing about with a Wii remote playing virtual tennis or yelling profanities through the small mic attached to your headphones while attempting the perfect kill shot in Halo, do not compare to the suave style of these gaming products featured in this 1990s OMNI article. These excerpts and images come straight from the original article. Believe it or not- most of the phone numbers still connect to the corresponding headquarters. I wouldn’t suggest ordering any of these considering the price may now be incredibly higher or lower then originally listed.

ISSUE: January 1991

PAGE: 108,109

TITLE: Star Tech Fashionable Accesories

TAG LINE: If your video game system doesn’t do enough, try adding on the latest refinements.

AUTHOR: Erin Murphy

A NEW WAY TO PLAY

The hands free system opens up Nintendo video games to a new lesion of users by using air pressure and chin movements to control the system. Cost: $175. Contact L Nintendo of America, Inc., Box 97032, Redmond, WA 98073-9732; (800) 255-3700.

NO QUARTER

SNK’s Neo-Geo: for the look of the best arcade games. Cost: $649. Contact: SNK, Los Angeles, CA; (800) 253- 6665.

TALKING HEADS

Line up your target and destroy it with a word. The LaserScope communicates with Nintendo systems and Zapper games. Cost: $39.95. Contact: Konami Inc., Buffalo Grove, IL: (708) 251-5111

AN’A ONE AN’ A TWO

Learn to play the piano by watching TV with the Miracle Piano Teaching System. Cost: $349.95. Contact: The Software Toolworks, Novato, CA; (415) 883-5157.

AT YOUR FINGERTIPS

Let your fingers do the walking, driving, and punching with Power Glove. Hand movements control the action. Cost: $90. Contact: Mattel Toys, Hawthorn, CA; (800) 421-2887.

GETTING CARRIED AWAY

Now you can carry your hand-held Nintendo GameBoy when it’s not actually in your hands. Cost: $9.95. Contact: Nintendo, Redmond, WA; (800) 255-3700.

The post OMNI Throwback: The Future of Gaming appeared first on OMNI Reboot.

…and I like much of what is distinctly RPGish in them.

I like that RPGs attract introverts but punish the boring ones.

I like that RPGs create kinds of stories you don't really find in older things like books or movies or TV shows.

I like that RPGs might force you to talk about anything.

I like that RPGs upset peoples' assumptions about what's supposed to happen to heroes.

I like that RPGs undermine peoples' assumptions about how stories are supposed to work.

I like how RPGs force people to cooperate to have fun.

I like that RPGs reveal peoples' character and preconceptions--and that they can force people into dialogue about them.

I like that learning the rules better than the next player can't make you better at playing than them.

I like that RPGs force you to fill in blanks and if you aren't creative enough you fail and suffer and have a bad time.

I like that the writing in RPGs doesn't read like a textbook or a pop fantasy novel.

I like that the design in RPG books can't look like the design in a magazine.

I like that there is great charm in RPGs and that sometimes it isn't on purpose.

I like that the art in RPGs doesn't have to look like Disney art or a comic book or a production drawing.

I like that in order to play with someone, they have to want to play with me, not just want to play.

I like that so much of what I use at the table was made by hand.

I like that so much of what I use at the table was free.

I like that RPGs can scare off people uncomfortable with sex or the devil.

I like that almost the only people who make RPG stuff are people who love RPG stuff.

I like that RPGs force you to think of solutions that can't be found in the rules.

I like that using an RPG ruleset forces you to think about how the world works.

I like that RPGs require people to find people they trust and like and can communicate with.

I like that RPGs frustrate the immature and the hypocritical.

I almost even kinda like that published modules are almost uniformly an object lesson in how much worse published modules are than what you could invent at home.

I like that RPGs are unpredictable and you don't know what the theme or tone or focus of a session will be.

I like that RPGs allow people who will never draw or write or sculpt or graphic design for a living a chance to draw and write and sculpt and graphic design things and by doing that make other people happy.

I like that neither you nor your character can get better than everyone else at the game without actually sitting and playing with other people.

I like that in order to play the character you want you have to be pro-active and do things in the game.

I like that players trying to fulfill power fantasies so often can't and get mad and cry about it and hopefully stop.

I like that you have to learn to play the cards you're dealt.

I like that sometimes other people get dealt way better cards.

...and I like how many of these (still) aggressively cutting-edge things were present or at least possible in RPGs on day one.

I think it's dumb when people who have ideas about progress in RPGs start by walking back from the most progressive and new things about them as an experience and as a medium.

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Meanwhile, down under...

Queensland dogs are getting high by licking the poison off cane toads. Vets are warning some pooches may become addicted to the hallucinogenic and are risking their lives trying to get their next toad fix. It's being reported the dogs have worked out how to lick the toad just enough to get high. "This phenomenon of animals deliberately getting intoxicated by cane toads, it's fascinating," says veterinarian Megan Pickering. "It just seems unbelievable that an animal will go back for a second try.

Asked here.

Here’s the canonical video that’s the backstory for this question:

@slugnads @wslaton @rjallain funny.. I was just calculating the pressure inside an exploding whale yesterday!!

— Aatish Bhatia (@aatishb) April 30, 2014

@slugnads @wslaton @rjallain so I analyzed the recent famous exploding sperm whale video & found that the water shoots out at about 17 m/s..— Aatish Bhatia (@aatishb) April 30, 2014

@slugnads @wslaton @rjallain which if you use bernoullis principle works out to a pressure imbalance of about 1.5 atmospheres IIRC — Aatish Bhatia (@aatishb) April 30, 2014

@slugnads @wslaton @rjallain then I spent hours looking up the breaking strength of whale blubber (I love BLURP btw), and it was 10x higher — Aatish Bhatia (@aatishb) April 30, 2014

@slugnads @wslaton @rjallain ..so I feel like the sperm whale wasn’t ecenise to exploding if the dude didn’t puncture it with a harpoon!— Aatish Bhatia (@aatishb) April 30, 2014

And there you have it.

Come to Balloon Juice for news you can use….and more open thread.

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I could delve deeper into some of the points Bomani Jones made yesterday on the Dan Le Batard Show, about how fundamentally silly this whole Donald Sterling affair sounds when you really listen to what's being said, about how exasperating it is for those of us who see the everyday effects of race to have to deal with the performative sanctimony of those who deny race's continuing impact in all but the most obvious, largely inconsequential situations, or about the collective failure of the NBA, the media, the players, the coaches, and just about everyone else to comprehend, condemn, and take action against the actually harmful things Sterling has done over the years, but instead I think the flamethrower Jones uses is plenty hot enough.

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What he said:

President Barack Obama, asked to respond at a news conference with Malaysia’s prime minister during his visit to the country Sunday, called the reported remarks “incredibly offensive racist statements.”

“I don’t think I have to interpret those statements for you, they kind of speak for themselves,” Obama said. “When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance, you don’t really have to do anything. You just let them talk. And that’s what happened here.”

Can you imagine what the last 6 years would have been like with President McCain. Horrifying.

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peterfromtexas:

You have to let the fear go, Neo

The osprey, Pandion haliaetus, is a bird of character. The ancient poets knew this, and the Maryland Transportation Authority is discovering it the hard way. Last week, a pair of ospreys decided to build their nest on a platform overlooking the approach to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, where the MDTA keeps a traffic camera.

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Watch … just watch.

fjordism

Let this be a warning to all American presidents, past, present, and future: You've got your own damn holiday, stay the hell out of the Easter Bunny's.

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Japan makes the best bourbon, denim and burgers, writes Tom Downey.

It’s easy to dismiss Japanese re-creations of foreign cultures as faddish and derivative—just other versions of the way that, for example, the new American hipster ideal of Brooklyn is clumsily copied everywhere from Paris to Bangkok. But the best examples of Japanese Americana don’t just replicate our culture. They strike out, on their own, into levels of appreciation and refinement rarely found in America. They give us an opportunity to consider our culture as refracted through a foreign and clarifying prism.

Jason Kottke points out that the same is true of coffee.

And it's not just stuff; consider Kazuo Ishiguro, who moved to England as a child and gained a startlingly clear view a particular kind of Englishness. These are all things that never truly existed until something new was inspired by the idea of them—a process as conservative as it is creative.

And now your day is a better one.

Back in 2011, I posted that one of John Lennon's teeth was up for auction. Canadian dentist Michael Zuk bought the molar for approximately $34,000 and says he would eventually like to use it to clone Lennon and raise him as his own son.

"He would still be his exact duplicate but you know, hopefully keep him away from drugs and cigarettes, that kind of thing," Zuk said.

Zuk has all kinds of other plans involving the tooth, including a DNA pendant, fine art photos, a documentary film, charity fundraising... It goes on and on over at JohnLennonTooth.com. (NME)

Is there a word for when a player tries to take a charge, only the ballhandler never actually makes contact, yet the defender hits the floor anyway? It's Rondoing, now.

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The Hound is the perfect spokesman

A young boy feels powerful when he pretends to play the wicked sorceress in his backyard games, but the laughing of his next-door neighbor leaves him feeling powerless. Can he convince her to join in on the gender-bending fun?

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