I spy (a brand new junk portrait of) Pee-wee Herman at the :29 mark

Exciting news: Jason Mecier, the artist who makes celebrity mosaic portraits in junk (or other objects like candy or cereal) has announced his first book. It's called Pop Trash: The Amazing Art of Jason Mecier and it's due out July 17, 2018.

...Here is Amy Sedaris assembled from her own trash, David Bowie made out of cosmetics and feathers, Snoop Dogg sculpted out of weed, Justin Timberlake and Miley Cyrus crafted out of candy, Kevin Bacon bespoke in bacon, and many, many more. Fun process shots offer behind-the-scenes insights into the meticulous work required to create these candy-colored—and literally trashy—spotlights (how much licorice does it take to make Harry Potter?). With mesmerizing tributes to icons ranging from Stevie Nicks to Farrah Fawcett to Honey Boo Boo, this gallery of the famous and infamous is a visual treat for fans of pop culture and pop art alike.

You can pre-order it now for $29.95. Read the rest

Based in Barcelona, DJ and music producer Eclectic Method has pulled in the Star Wars universe once again for his newest remix, "Han Solo Song."

He writes:

With the Han Solo movie on the horizon and The Last Jedi in the rear view mirror I thought it was time to remix everyone's favorite space rogue pirate smuggler war hero. Han Solo Song is a rhyming remix through the 4 movies of Han so far. Rhymed mostly by Han himself with a Han Solo solo on laser blaster. This is my 10th Star Wars Remix.

You can check out all 10 of those remixes here. Read the rest

Before he contributed his writing talents to Animal House and Caddyshack, National Lampoon's co-founder Doug Kenney spoke at UCLA in March 1972. He talked, in a sort of stream of consciousness, about the popular publication and his half-finished comic novel, Teenage Commies from Outer Space.

Kenney had taken a year off from the magazine to write that manuscript and, as the story goes, threw it in the waste basket when his Lampoon partner Henry Beard indicated that it sucked. Beard clarified, "What he was trying to do was capture this global inanity of the American experience... What it turned into was the high school yearbook parody. It was just a question of finding the right format."

I came across this nearly-hour long interview last night after watching Netflix's new biopic on Kenney, A Futile and Stupid Gesture, and wanting to learn more about him.

Kenney was found dead at the age of 32 in August 1980 at the bottom of Hawaii's Hanapepe Lookout. It was deemed an accidental death by the police but as Harold Ramis once quipped, "He probably fell while he was looking for a place to jump." Read the rest

Pop culture historian Charles Phoenix, the culinary kitsch king behind the Cherpumple, accidentally created this Astro-Weenie Roast Tom Turkey Dog in his test kitchen a few years back.

His space-agey "bird" is made of "turkey meatloaf skewered and studded with turkey wieners, turkey kielbasa, ‘lil turkey smokies and fresh cranberries."

He writes, "I didn’t mean to do this, it just happened. I didn’t think about it, I just did it."

Previously: 'Addicted to Americana,' Charles Phoenix's new book on 'classic & kitschy American life & style' Read the rest

Stranger Things is a huge pop culture phenomenon, no matter how you look at it. Case in point, Newsweek is reporting that thousands of the show's fans crashed the Science Museum of Minnesota's website on Tuesday morning trying to score a purple Brontosaurus hoodie. The sweatshirt, a replica of a retired one the museum sold in the 1980s, was worn in the first episode of Season 2 by one of the main characters, Dustin Henderson.

...The St. Paul-based museum noticed the costume choice right away, calling attention to the sweatshirt on its Facebook page: "Stranger Things fans: Check out what Dustin is wearing in Season 2, episode 1! Yes, we want one too. Working on it!"

The hoodie finally went on sale Tuesday morning on the museum's website. But museum staffers underestimated demand: It wasn't long before the influx of web traffic crashed the website, leaving disappointed fans shut out.

But the site's back up and more than 80,000 purple hoodies have already been sold, at $36.95 a pop.

In addition to the hoodie, tee-shirts and sweatshirts with the "Thunder Lizard" art are now also available.

The museum stated in a Facebook post that proceeds from the sales of the line will support their educational outreach programs. Read the rest

Creator of the Cherpumple (and other retro-fabulous foods) Charles Phoenix has a new book that celebrates "classic & kitschy American life & style." It's titled Addicted to Americana and it looks amazing!

Here's a look inside the book (click on image to embiggen):

The book is available for $22.32 on Amazon.

Charles is also on a book signing and comedy slide show tour (mostly in California). If you've never seen him perform, please do yourself a favor and get thee to one of his shows. They are a hoot. Read the rest

For art teacher Michael Fry of Mamaroneck, New York, certain 2017 trends need to be dead and buried. So, for the past few Halloweens, he's made tombstone lawn decorations that lay specific trends to rest.

This year it's "so long!" to ombre hair, the hashtag #roséallday, the "old Taylor Swift," homemade slime, and more.

ABCNews writes:

“Things from that year that have either died, or are dying or are no longer fashionable or no longer hip,” said Fry. “Being a teacher, I get input from my students and friends and family members, and it’s become a collaborative effort.”

The gravestone for homemade slime is “wishful thinking,” though, because “teachers can’t stand it,” Fry said.

Others include paying homage to watching television live and having normal seasons, presumably a dig at global warming.

Adios, dabbing. We won't miss you.

images via Michael Fry

Previously: The world's scariest Halloween lawn decor: 'A Very Very Trump Halloween' Read the rest

Excited to stumble upon this recently-released documentary on a real '80s phenomenon: 30 Years of Garbage: The Garbage Pail Kids Story*.

In the 1980s a bunch of underground cartoonists parodied a popular doll. The resulting commercial product tapped into the international kid zeitgeist. That young generation felt, rather than knew, that this product spoke to the rebellious nature they had for the corporate pop culture that was being fed to them. To quote Art Spiegelman, "We were bringing the counter culture to a new generation of kids, only it was the candy counter."

You can watch it on Amazon, like I will right now.

Update: I just watched it and it's fantastic. It goes deep into the GPK story, from start to finish. As a pop culture nerd, I have to say that I loved every minute of it.

*This is obviously NOT to be confused with The Garbage Pail Kids Movie from 1987. That is a whole 'nother beast. Read the rest

For kicks, Berlin-based designer Tony Futura cranks out simple iconic visual puns and comments on pop culture. Some are a little easy, but many are quite clever. Read the rest

This week on HOME: Stories From L.A.:

Who were we? How did we live, and what did it look like? The vast archive of castoff slides captures, in vivid colors, images of the American family at midcentury. But the stories that go with the pictures are most often lost, and we’re left to create our own, and reflect on millions of conscious decisions to untie the knot of memory.

HOME is a member of the Boing Boing Podcast Network. If you like what you hear, please take a second to leave the show a rating and/or review at the iTunes Store. It's a little thing that means a lot, so thanks. And don't forget to subscribe, at any of the usual places:

iTunes | Android | Email | Google Play | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSS Read the rest

Archilogic, an online architecture viewer/editor designed to be easier for laypersons to use and share from than Sketchup, is spectacular stuff... at least on a fast computer. You can upload plans and convert them to 3D, move and replace furniture, mess around with the layout, push the results to friends or real estate agents, and so on. Some of the demos posted to the company's blog are fascinating: exploring Don Draper's apartment in the first-person is eerily voyeuristic. An unbuilt Frank Lloyd Wright design is more majestic and less, well, sleazy.

Now do the Overlook Hotel! Read the rest

Filmmaker, writer, and trans activist Andrea James on the current state of post-disruption journalism and its unhealthy addiction to Twitter, and LGBT brain drain.

I'm really enjoying Jason Colavito's reviews of The History Channel's hilarious/infuriating hit show Ancient Aliens. What makes them better than the average blog? Colavito is an author who has written extensively about the anthropology of pseudoscience, and the connections between pseudoscience, religion, and science fiction. So his recaps are less about debunking the claims made on Ancient Aliens (because, really, that's just too damn easy) and more about exploring where those claims come from, pop-culturally, and what makes them so appealing, to begin with. Fascinating stuff. Read the rest

Whether you think Tesla > Edison or Edison > Tesla, perhaps you're missing something important. In reality, technology isn't shaped by one guy who had one great idea and changed the world. Instead, it's a messy process, full of flat-out failures and not-quite-successes, and populated by many great minds who build off of and are inspired by each other's work.

The 52 Hertz Whale is the cetacean equivalent of a pop-culture phenomenon — a strange creature, known only through recording of whale songs picked up in the Pacific Ocean, who seems to not be a part of any identifiable whale group. Also known as The Loneliest Whale in the World it is a source of pity and fascination among the general public. At PLOS Blogs, Hannah Cheng has a three-part feature on what we do and don't know about the Loneliest Whale. Why, despite 20 years of tracking this thing in sound recordings, do we not have any direct observation of the Loneliest Whale? She's got the answers. Read the rest

A friend of Boing Boing introduced me to the work of artist Kii Arens this weekend. We visited his studio for a karaoke party. It was great. I love his work. You can buy it in reasonably affordable poster form, through his website: lalalandposters.com. I would like one of everything, please. Kii is on Twitter and Facebook. (Thanks, Alex!)

Read the rest

A gap separates people who do science and the people who make science fiction, but that's no problem, thanks to the people who bridge the two.