Carla, Cory, David, Jason, Xeni, and I are still giddy from our Weekend of Wonder extravaganza in association with Baby Tattoo, held at the Mission Inn resort in Riverside, California on September 18-20. In three fun filled days we and about 75 other folks learned how to make juggling balls (and juggle them), drank weird coffee concoctions, dined at a printing company and an outsider art garden, learned how to pick locks, escaped from straitjackets, created trick card decks, toured the catacombs beneath the 19th-century hotel to view macabre automata, enjoyed a musical performance by stars of Adventure Time, played a cooperative alternative reality puzzle game, and mingled until the wee hours of the morning while enjoying cupcakes and ice cream. Phew! We can't wait to do it again. The best part of the event was meeting and hanging out with Boing Boing readers and their families.
LA Weekly's Star Foreman was there for the entire event, and the paper has posted a gallery with 80 photos of the event. Enjoy the sampling below:
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Boing Boing's Weekend of Wonder in association with Baby Tattoo was tremendously fun. One of the many highlights of the 3-day event was a tricked-out coffee station that we set up on Saturday morning. I brought my Rancilio Silvia espresso machine with a retro-fitted PID temperature control system and pulled about 75 shots in on hour. John Edgar Park brought a device that carbonates beverages and used it to make fizzy cold brew coffee. He also brought a little sack of xanthan gum (a food thickening agent), which he mixed into coffee using an immersion blender. It was really good!
Above, a video from ChefSteps with the recipe for a xanthan gum latte. Read the rest
Our friends at TRNDlabs, who generously co-sponsored our fabulous Weekend of Wonder extravaganza last weekend, have a new throw-to-fly Nano Drone that comes in black. Check it out here. Read the rest
Last chance to join us at our 3-day extravaganza this weekend in Southern California!
Meet the SKEYE Pico Drone, the smallest drone in the world
Some special elements are coming together in these final days leading up to the event that are just-- well, wonderful. And you should not miss them.
Starry Kitchen, the fun-loving pan-Asian pop-up restaurant darlings of social media, will be joining us at Boing Boing's Weekend of Wonder. Om nom nom!
Our friends at Plugable, maker of the super-cool 250X USB microscope I reviewed in July, are sponsors of our upcoming Weekend of Wonder. (Attendees will be very happy that they are.)
I just found out that Plugable's design intern made a 3d printed stand option for the USB microscope. He wrote a post about the project with links to the files on Thingiverse. Bob Boerner of of Plugable told me, "The short version is we wanted an option with something more stable than the goose-neck in the box that looks like the microscope stands of old. Since I saw that you were having fun with your Printrbot I thought you might want to give this a shot."
I'm looking forward to making it!
Register here to join us at Boing Boing's Weekend of Wonder!
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In the garden behind Tio's Tacos, the owner has created a phenomenal folk art installation.
Our Weekend of Wonder extravaganza in Riverside, CA is a just couple of weeks away! Attendees are going to be treated to all kinds of cool stuff, one of which is a signed, limited-edition print by the artist Coop.
Coop's art will be printed on panels of wood at Prints on Wood, where we will all get to see this unique printing process first hand when we have dinner there. Coop will be with us, signing prints as they come off the press.
We'd love to have you join us for Weekend of Wonder. Here's how to register. Read the rest
Comic Book Resources gives our new “extravaganza” a thumbs-up. Come join us for the fun Sep. 18-20, at Southern California's historic Mission Inn Hotel and Spa.
Artist Thomas Kuntz constructs fantastic animatronic mechanisms that recreate scenes from the best nightmares you've ever had.
The Weekend of Wonder will be held at Riverside, California's incredible Mission Inn. Often compared to the Winchester Mystery House, this amazing resort has everything a Happy Mutant could need, from engineering marvels to secret passageways!
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The editors of Boing Boing have always wanted to create an event where people can enjoy a weekend of wonderful, magical, mindblowing, inspiring experiences. Guess what? We're doing it, and you're invited.
Andrew Mayne's Name of the Devil is available from Amazon.
Andrew Mayne is a magician, author, and TV show host. He's also coming to our Weekend of Wonder (September 18-20) to teach us all how to escape from a straitjacket. Andrew just wrote an intense true story for The Life Sentence about the time he was seventeen and invited an adult man who was selling a used straitjacket to come to his house so Andrew could try it out and possibly buy it. His parents weren't home at the time, and when Andrew was strapped in and helpless, he had an "Oh shit" moment:
I was unaware of the “handcuff tricks” employed by Corll and Gacy when I was being strapped by a stranger into a straitjacket, a restraint that made me extremely vulnerable.
“This came from St. Elizabeth’s Hospital,” the man explained as he yanked on the leather buckles, cinching them tight around me. “That’s where John Hinkley, Jr., the guy who shot Reagan, is held.
“One more strap.” I couldn’t feel my arms. “They’ve got lots of serial killers there. You ever heard of William Minor?”
“No … Was he a killer?” I nervously asked while trying to see if there was any slack at all in the jacket.
“No. He helped write the dictionary while he was there. Ended up cutting his own dick off because he had bad thoughts about children.”
“Huh … ” I replied, attempting to slide one numb arm under the other.
“Can you get out?”
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We are thrilled to announce that our friend
Coop, famous rock poster illustrator and fine artist, is joining us at our
Weekend of Wonder extravaganza, September 18-20 in Riverside, California.
We've got an incredible lineup of special guests coming to Boing Boing's Weekend of Wonder in September. In the coming weeks, we'll introduce them here. This week, meet Olivia Olson and Martin Olson!
Olivia is a singer-songwriter and actress, known for her voice roles as Vanessa Doofenshmirtz in Phineas and Ferb and Marceline the Vampire Queen in Adventure Time. In 2003 Olivia sang "All I want for Christmas" in the movie Love, Actually. She was 11 years:
Here's Olivia singing as Marceline from Adventure Time:
Martin is the author of the Adventure Time Encyclopaedia and the Encyclopaedia of Hell (published by our friends at Feral House and designed by the great Sean "Craphound" Tejaratchi). He was the lead writer for the first season of Phineas and Ferb and is the voice of Adventure Time's Hunson Abadeer (a.k.a. the Lord of Evil), Marceline's father and ruler of the Nightosphere.
Together Martin and Olivia made full-length CD of songs called The Father Daughter Album of Unspeakable Beauty. They will perform songs from the CD at Weekend of Wonder as well as sign copies of their upcoming book Adventure Time: The Enchiridion & Marcy's Super Secret Scrapbook. Everyone who attends of Wonder will receive a copy of the book.
Tickets to Boing Boing's Weekend of Wonder in association with Baby Tattoo are selling at a brisk clip. You can still get the 20% early bird discount off the registration price by using the word BOING. Read the rest
