Danny DeVito is having a moment. Break out the gel pens and ride the wave with this "Mermanny DeVito" coloring sheet by Oakland Illustrator Shannon Taylor. It's available to download for free on her website. Read the rest

(Yes, this is an April Fool's joke.)

In 1979, Penthouse founder Bob Guccione produced a big budget feature film about the Roman emperor Caligula starring Maclolm McDowell, Teresa Ann Savoy, Helen Mirren, Peter O'Toole, and John Gielgud. Scripted by Gore Vidal and filled with graphic sex and violence, it was a critical and box office disaster but has garnered cult acclaim over the years. (Original trailer below.) Now, archivist Thomas Negovan and Shadow of the Vampire director E. Elias Merhig have located all of the original footage and are recutting the film into a 40th anniversary edition titled Caligula MMXX. Over the course of their research, they found this bizarre TV commercial produced for a line of Caligula action figures that, of course, never made it into production. Negovan tells Dangerous Minds:

A company named Cinco Toys pitched Guccione, who never met a deal he didn’t like, on them getting a license to do a line of action figures. Star Wars action figures were making millions and apparently they pitched him pretty hard for this. Caligula‘s budget was twice that of Star Wars. They made a handful of prototypes for action figures. They even went so far as to make a spec TV commercial to woo Guccione to let them do this, which is extra insane. They made it like he (Guccione) would be (star) in the commercial himself and had someone do a VO as if they were Bob. And there it was on the shelf with the various drafts of the script.

"[Trump is] so attentive to the scientific literature & the details & the data. I think his ability to analyze & integrate data that comes out of his long history in business has really been a real benefit.” Read the rest

This right here is some seriously weird data from Nielsen today, about the sorts of things Americans have been purchasing as the coronavirus outbreak, and corresponding fear, spread. Read the rest

Keep on doing your part by staying inside and keeping a safe distance from one another. For those who don’t have that option for whatever reason...thank you and stay safe❤️ #FlattenTheCuve #QuaratineLife pic.twitter.com/5OiJf4MvDc

— The Flippist (@TheFlippist) March 21, 2020

The Flippist presents "Social Distancing... A Flipbook," inspired by Kirsten Lepore's wonderful "Hi Stranger" (2017) and Juan Delcan's "Safety Match" (2020). Read the rest

Rosie and the Originals' "Angel Baby" (1960) is a classic doo wop ballad, beloved (and covered) by John Lennon. Lennon was a fan of the flipside of that record too, "Give Me Love," but only because it's wonderfully awful. From Jonathan Cott's book Days That I Remember: Spending Time with John Lennon & Yoko Ono:

"This is really one of the greatest strange records,” [Lennon] remarked. “It's all just out of beat, and everyone misses it. The A side was the hit, 'Angel Baby'— which is one of my favorite songs — and they knocked off the B side in ten minutes. I'm always talking Yoko's ear off, telling her about these songs, saying, 'Look, this is this! This is this... and this... and this!'"

(via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

With more Webcams online than ever before, and the abundance of time stuck inside, you might enjoy conducting your own armchair expeditions in search of Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, UFOs, ghosts, and other strange phenomena. Over at Mysterious Universe, Paul Seaburn put together a list of "webcams with continuous feeds pointed at the sky, the waters, the buildings and the other places where these anomalies may occur." Here are a few:

Popocatepetl volcano UFOs

Mexico’s Popocatepetl volcano is active and well-known for UFO sightings both during and independent of eruptions. The multiple webcams serve a useful purpose of providing officials with advance warnings of eruptions but many UFO hunters watch it religiously. (Watch them here.) In fact, there was UFO activity there just this week. (Video here.) Was it birds, bugs, drones, alien spaceships refueling or ships from the alleged alien base that uses Popocatepetl as a portal?

Bigfoot

For Bigfoot watchers, the U.S. National Parks provide webcams everywhere for capturing glimpses of Sasquatch as well as the many other animals, birds, natural events and lost hikers that inhabit the park. Yellowstone has some, the Old Faithful cam being the most popular, but its greatest service is a list of links to all of the active webcams in other national parks.

"Stuck at Home? Use These Webcams to Hunt for UFOs, Bigfoot, Ghosts and Monsters" (Mysterious Universe)

Above, "The Surgeon's Photograph" of 1934, known to be a hoax. Read the rest

Last week, red wine flowed from the household faucets in the northern Italy town of Castelvetro di Modena. A broken valve at a local winery caused 1,000 liters of wine to flow through the water supply to around 20 homes. Unfortunately the malfunction was resolved in a few hours. From CNN:

The incident provided a moment of levity to the town that's in the midst of the coronavirus crisis -- which has hit northern Italy the hardest.

"At a time where we have very little to smile about, I'm glad we brought some levity to others," (deputy mayor Giorgia) Mezzacqui told CNN. "Hopefully some day they'll remember us and will want to come visit us..."

Fabrizio Amorotti, commercial manager at Cantina Settecani, said the malfunction "was appreciated by many. Some clients in the areas called us to warn us about it, and to share they were bottling the wine!"

Mesmerizingly cool. Read the rest

A South Korean street food treat.

I could watch this 'making of' video on loop forever. Read the rest

What's the world's best cheese? A gruyere from Switzerland, selected from a record-breaking number of entries from 26 countries in the 2020 World Championship Cheese Contest in Wisconsin. Read the rest

In Port Arthur, Texas, a 24-year-old man was sentenced to 30 days in jail for posting a video last August to social media of himself taking ice cream out of a Walmart freezer, licking the ice cream like a complete jerk, then returning the container to the freezer. Read the rest

• Coronavirus fears can't stop the fromage

In Wisconsin today, the world's largest technical cheese, butter and yogurt competition kicked off with a record 3,667 entries from 26 nations. Read the rest

“Say hello to Meeko,” says IMGURian @Lifeisfull12.

“Yeah. He's got jammies...” Read the rest

“Complaints of bees flying out of an apartment’s duct work led to a frightening discovery Monday in Virginia: An 8-foot-long hive was in the living room ceiling, including 100 pounds of raw honey.”

A pest control company in Richmond, Virginia claims to haves removed an 8-foot-long beehive from someone’s apartment. Read the rest