Using sheer brute force, a Disneyland guest successfully removed Excalibur, the "sword in the stone," from its anvil in front of the King Arthur Carrousel. It was first reported that the sword was removed as part of a planned refurbishment but then a guest stepped up to share what really happened.

WDW News Today:

The sword is not removed for refurbishment. My friend Sam broke it last week on the 8th when we went to Disneyland. He literally ripped it out. The staff said that it was really old and that’s why he was able to do so. It was his first time at Disney and he’s a pretty buff dude, I told him if he pulled it out he’d win a prize and he just used brute force I guess lol. It was broken and jagged. The staff said they taped it off so no one would stick their fingers in and cut it on the broken piece left inside.

Unfortunately, the poor fellow didn't become King, as legend dictates. And a brand new sword has already been placed in its (freshly polished) anvil in its central Fantasyland spot. See photos of it at WDW News Today.

screengrab via Disney's Sword in the Stone Read the rest

I'm absolutely charmed by Fred & Friends' Pick-its, clever little picket signs made for boozy beverages.

Unite with your fellow party-goers to take on the establishment and CHOOSE BOOZE! PICK ITS will mix it up and make a statement with 12 clever sayings fit for any picket line. This set of 24 cocktail picks is perfect for your next martini march or spritzer sit in.

A pack of 24 (12 different sayings) is available for just $5.

(RED) Read the rest

This Hooghuys organ is over 100 years old but that didn't stop self-proclaimed Hustler Alexey Rom from making it play pop music. To get this 1914 fairground organ to pump out ABBA's "Dancing Queen," Rom had to create a custom player scroll which is no easy feat!

His first viral organ hit was playing Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" (8.7M views and counting!) on a 1905 Marenghi organ. This is how he describes making that happen:

The arrangement was made in Ableton Live using MIDI and was then punched into the cardboard book using an automated punch.

I can only assume the process to make the scroll was similar for this organ.

You may remember this is the same guy who played Boney M's disco hit "Rasputin" on a 1905 Marenghi organ.

(The Awesomer) Read the rest

Get ready to go directly to gross-out because a Garbage Pails Kids-themed Monopoly game is on its way! 2020 marks the 35th anniversary of the delightfully disgusting trading cards that parody the Cabbage Patch Kids dolls. According to Bloody Disgusting, Topps has "all sorts of plans in motion for the big celebration," starting with this $39.95 board game.

Relive the totally awesome 80’s with the MONOPOLY®: Garbage Pail Kids game! This game has the classic sticker artwork and new custom illustrations for a new generation of fans. Comes with 6 custom tokens.

Hey, while we're talking about Garbage Pail Kids, do watch the 2016 documentary 30 Years of Garbage: The Garbage Pail Kids Story.

image via ACD Distribution Read the rest

Watching the Big Bear Bald Eagle Cam is really quite a thrill!

It's pointed at a nest near Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino National Forest (Southern California) occupied by Jackie and Shadow, a bald eagle couple waiting for their two eaglets to arrive. One of their eggs was laid on January 8 and the other just on Saturday. Jackie sits on the eggs the most, typical for paired eagles because the females are bigger and heavier. They simply provide more warmth and protection. But Shadow is doing his share, feeding Jackie, fluffing the nest, and, as in the past years, sitting on the eggs for stints in the daytime hours when it's not as cold. The incubation period for eagle eggs is 35 days, so the first eaglet is expected to hatch around Valentine's Day. My friend Heather was the one who showed me the cam and told me to gird my loins because (spoiler alert!) for the last two years, "the second / smaller chick always dies." Arggggghhhhh!

Here's a peek at the mother's first peek. You can always tune in to the live webcam here, thanks to the Friends of the Big Bear Valley: https://t.co/CxVUU6yVf9 pic.twitter.com/SanBnsi6i7

— San Bernardino National Forest (@SanBernardinoNF) January 12, 2020

The Friends of the Big Bear Valley are doing a bang-up job on Facebook of narrating the day-to-day activities of these majestic raptors.

screengrab via Big Bear Bald Eagle Cam Read the rest

If my vagina smelled like "geranium, citrusy bergamot, and cedar absolutes juxtaposed with Damask rose and ambrette seed," I'd go see my doctor. But, then again, I'm also no Gwyneth Paltrow. Her shop Goop recently introduced a $75 candle named "This Smells Like My Vagina."

Described as having a "funny, gorgeous, sexy, and beautifully unexpected scent," the overpriced candle is not meant to actually smell like Paltrow's private parts (thank goodness). The original description, now removed, explains, "This candle started as a joke between perfumer Douglas Little and GP. The two were working on a fragrance, and she blurted out, 'Uhhh..this smells like a vagina'..." The rest is votive history.

If you were hoping to get a whiff of (this) vagina (candle), sorry weirdo, it's already sold out.

image via Goop Read the rest

A housing development project hopes to put people underground in the cavernous depths of San Francisco's Mission neighborhood.

SFGate reports:

Developer Chris Elsey of Elsey Partners in Manhattan, Kansas, has plans to build two apartment buildings in San Francisco's Mission District that would each include two basement-level floors with 88 so-called "sleeping pods," measuring about 50 square feet each, just a little bigger than a king-size bed...

"The contentious part is these below-grade sleeping pods," said Elsey... "When you’re building something, the plans have to be approved by the Planning Department and the Building Department. These below-grade sleeping pods meet the building codes, but there’s this perception from the Planning Department that it’s not something any human being should be exposed to or allowed to do."

...With close living quarters, the underground spaces would likely have "house rules" that residents would need to obey.

"Obviously people don’t like it when people come home drunk and belligerent," he said. "And no pod sex. I think anyone who has been in college or a dormitory, you’ve had experiences where you prefer that people do those things in private."

The project has not yet been approved by the city and it could take years for that to happen. But, if it gets the go-ahead, it's estimated that the individual, windowless sleeping pods would rent for $1,000 to $1,375 each.

Head to SFGate for images of the proposed apartment building, including plans for the sleeping pods.

screenshot via The Mole People/YouTube Read the rest

Oh my gosh, this poor gal is never going to live this down. Eve, a contestant on Family Feud Canada**, screwed up her family's chance to play for $10,000 by incorrectly answering the world's easiest sudden-death question: "What's Popeye's favorite food?" Oof! Let's hope she's at least offered an endorsement deal from a certain fast food chain.

Even crazier, watch these unaired outtakes:

There's more to the #FamilyFeudCanada chicken story - What happens when contestants guess wrong on a sudden death round? Take a look at these behind-the-scenes bloopers and see what you'd never get to see on TV. #bloopers #chicken pic.twitter.com/K7x6V0hpSv

— Family Feud Canada (@FamilyFeudCa) January 10, 2020

**Am I the only one who didn't know there was a Canadian version of Family Feud?

(Twitter) Read the rest

A $10 million donation is allowing The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles to make art accessible to everyone. Beginning Saturday, they will offer free general admission going forward, only charging for special exhibitions. The massive financial gift is from Carolyn Clark Powers, MOCA's Board President.

Klaus Biesenbach, MOCA's director since 2018, was quoted in the Los Angeles Times in May (when the program was initially announced), "We are not aiming at having more visitors or larger attendance, but we’re aiming at being more accessible, at having open doors. As a civic institution, we should be like a library, where you can just walk in."

KCRW talked to Lindsay Preston Zappas of Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles magazine who says it will cost MOCA $2 million yearly to operate under the free program and that they will need to secure funding in the future to keep the program going.

MOCA has two locations in Los Angeles, the one on Grand Avenue and the Geffen Contemporary in the Little Tokyo Historic District, and both will have public celebrations this Saturday, January 11, from 12 to 4.

photo by Elon Schoenholz/The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles Read the rest

Ian Charnas, the inventor of those amazing windshield wipers that "dance" to your car's music, is up to yes good again (the opposite of "no good"). He's made a real-life Mario Kart video game using electric go-karts and augmented reality (!).

Ian explains:

In this augmented reality racing game demo, players zoom around a track in real-life go-karts and pick up virtual power-ups to boost their kart’s speed or slow down the competition.

The virtual power-ups are generated by a Microsoft HoloLens augmented reality headset on each player. The speed boosts (and reductions) are provided by some electronics I created that extend an existing go-kart system with this functionality.

[If you want to know more about it works, he explains it further on Hackaday.]

Ian is hoping that there's a demand for this real-life Mario Kart. He's got all the pieces, including a provisional patent, he just needs the right partner to get it off the ground in a bigger way.

Thanks, Mark! Read the rest

Wow, this is terrific. Bravo to Swiss animators/filmmakers Zita Bernet and Rafael Sommerhalder of Crictor for this delightful short film, simply called "Popcorn."

(swissmiss) Read the rest

Each winter, millions of Christmas Island red crabs mass migrate from the rainforest to the sea to lay their eggs. While the roads are closed during migration season to protect the crustaceans, a couple who live in this Australian territory still needed vehicle access to their two luxury eco-lodges. So, Chris Bray and his wife Jess attached sweeper "shoes" to their Toyota Land Cruiser tires to "gently push the crabs out of the way without harming them."

They call their invention the "crab mobile":

View this post on Instagram

The #crab mobile working a treat! The roads are thick with red crabs migrating to the coast for a refreshing dip in the #ocean. What an amazing time to be on #Christmas Island @christmasisland @parksaustralia

A post shared by Swell Lodge (@swelllodge) on Dec 29, 2019 at 7:44pm PST

(Nag on the Lake)

screenshot via Chris Bray Photography/Caters Clips Read the rest

Give me a fun novelty purse and I'm a happy gal. The kitschier the better. My collection ranges from vintage Enid Collins bags to modern-day Betsey Johnson ones (the whipped cream can is probably my favorite). My most recent acquisition is shaped to look like an oversized box of Chinese food. Now I've learned that Russian Etsy shop KruKru Studio is making leather purses that look like gas cans ($180), and lots of other uniquely-shaped bags. All of them are out of my price range but I still appreciate the heck out of them.

(Neatorama) Read the rest

I'm no coin collector but I'm certainly hoping to get this great new quarter, which depicts the fruit bats of the National Park in American Samoa, as change sometime this year.

CoinNews.net:

Designer: Richard Masters Sculptor-Engraver: Phebe Hemphill

Mr. Masters’ design depicts a Samoan Fruit Bat mother hanging in a tree with her pup evoking the remarkable care and energy that this species puts into their offspring. The design is intended to promote awareness of the species’ threatened status due to habitat loss and commercial hunting. The National Park of American Samoa is the only park in the United States that is home to the Samoan Fruit Bat. Inscriptions are "NATIONAL PARK," "AMERICAN SAMOA," "2020," and "E PLURIBUS UNUM."

This coin, part of the America the Beautiful collection, has a release date of February 3.

Thanks, Kasey!

image via CoinWeek Read the rest

Every year in Japan, animals escape from zoos in a planned exercise. Except they aren't really animals, they're humans in animal costumes. And they aren't really escaping, they're part of an annual drill to train staff on what to do when a real animal does. While funny to watch, escaped animals are no joke in a country known for earthquakes.

Director of Tama Zoological Park, Yutaka Fukuda, told Metro in 2015:

‘In the event of a big earthquake, a tree could fall on a cage, or many other things could occur that may lead to an animal escape.

‘We think it is very important, and it is our responsibility to carry it out with seriousness.’

Look for the real lions, their reactions to the drill are priceless.

Thanks, Julie!

screenshot via The Guardian Read the rest

Rob Sheridan, one of the creators behind DC's upcoming High Level comic series and NIN's former art director, swallowed an unmeasured handful of 'shrooms before heading into see the "disasterpiece" known as Cats. He soon regretted it.

Cannot overstate what a terrible idea this was. Thought it’d be funny but it was HORROR. The shrooms exacerbated every grotesque whisker & furry crotch of this garish atrocity of a film. I still feel dirty from it, like it touched me inappropriately and told me to keep a secret. https://t.co/xEefUMaJ39

— Rob Sheridan (@rob_sheridan) January 3, 2020

Birth. Movies. Death. then interviewed him on the experience:

As a masochistic connoisseur of bad cinema, I knew since the Cats trailer came out that I needed to see this hideous disaster, in a theater, and very high. I was visiting with family for the holidays so I didn't get to see it right away when everyone on Twitter was shrieking in horror about what they'd just experienced. So after New Year's, the full Cats experience became a priority. On Monday I have to dive heavily back into work and start a whole health kick, so this strange post-holiday week was pretty much my last chance, and I decided I was going to go all in. Instead of taking an edible as I'd planned, I remembered some mushrooms someone had given me a while back and felt like if there was any chance I was going to enjoy Cats on any level, it would be melting into a psychedelic trip – just get weirded out and giggle and maybe make it fun.

Nearly ten grand. That's what it will cost to get the STAR WARS Millennium Falcon Hyperspace Jump Experience bouncy house into your life. Magic Jump, the company behind this 1,100 pound officially-licensed monstrosity, also offers financing for $237.38/month. Or you can find an entertainment company with one in their inflatable jumper repertoire to bring you this:

Passengers will encounter a Chewbacca inflatable as they enter and an R2D2 inflatable replica and C-3PO graphic as they jump their way around the ship. Passengers will feel the rush as they imagine piloting the Millennium Falcon like Han Solo and Chewbacca as they explore the cockpit area; pretend to operate the cockpit's master control panel with its gears, switches, and buttons; and eject themselves down a small slide. In the main cabin, they'll come across inflatable pop-up obstacles such as a bunk, storage container, and holo-map where they can see a holographic-like rendering of the Death Star. Passengers can step up to the laser cannon turret where they can pretend to defend against Imperial forces, and they can also pretend to play dejarik at the hologame table. The pièce de ré·sis·tance is the climber/slide in the center of the ship with ceiling hatch graphic showing explosive battle with a Star Destroyer and TIE fighters.

(Geekologie)

images via Magic Jump Read the rest