darn it - i missed stretch monster week over at neatocoolville! yes, neatocoolville is where everything and anything stretch monster related can be found. everything from a stretch monster coloring book (with such sexy poses!), the stretch monster box art, stretch monster anatomy, a stretch monster birthday cake baked by yours truly, and a lot more. check it out when you get a chance.
Monthly Archive for February, 2007
fishermen off the coast of new zealand caught a 990 pound (450 kilogram) colossal squid. wow. measuring a wee bit over 33 feet in length, the colossal squid is the largest cephalopod captured intact. read about the differences between the giant squid and the colossal squid on the giant squid and colossal squid fact sheet at tonmo.com.
so, yeah, we just ordered 12 new wampa suits. perfect for spring! i hope to have them here before easter. that way i don’t have to rent a boring old easter bunny costume for the giantmonster family easter egg hunt. photos of old school wampa rad-ness found via michael heilemann’s flickr set titled classic star wars.
it’s friday. time for a music comparison, with the same song sung by two vocal heavyweights. the song? ‘It Was A Very Good Year‘ (links to lyrics). the singers? only the finest. frank ‘chairman of the board’ sinatra VS william ‘james t kirk’ shatner. for mr. francis albert sinatra, the song comes from his great 4-disc complilation album the reprise collection. for bill shatner, the song is one track from his experimental album titled the transformed man. powerful stuff, yes. but who will win? i leave that for you to decide (in the comments, if you please)…
Frank Sinatra - It Was A Very Good Year
William Shatner - It Was A Very Good Year
wow. the 2007 san francsico pillow fight held on february 14th was a total feather inhaling blast! for those of you too busy to have fun (meaning: why you gotta go and miss the pillow fight?) the giantmonster staff went to great efforts to over-document the event. please take a look at our flickr set titled pillow fight san francsico 2007 containing no less than 304 photos (yikes). even eeyore got in on the pillow fighting action. so much fun! and there’s video too (posted below). other sites for great pillow-fight recaps: laughing squid, somegirlwitha, the pillow fight club sf flickr pool, & meshmagazine to name a few.
and, oh yes, the pillow fightin’ videos …
San Francisco Pillow Fight 2007 - video 1 (00:51)
San Francisco Pillow Fight 2007 - video 2 (01:10)
San Francisco Pillow Fight 2007 - video 3 (00:25)
San Francisco Pillow Fight 2007 - video 4 (00:34 - posted above)
San Francisco Pillow Fight 2007 - video 5 (00:30)
San Francisco Pillow Fight 2007 - video 6 (00:31)
there’s a really great article written by former gizmodo editor joel johnson posted on gizmodo (of all places - oh the irony!) titled Consumer electronics are a joke. It’s everyone’s fault but mine. You assholes. it’s spot on. and worth a read if you’re eyeing any technology of late (ipods, zunes, phones, you name it) or relying on awful marketing sites like gizmodo for the latest and greatest. so read it already! linky from boingboing. quoting a small portion of the article by mr. johnson:
Stop buying this crap. Just stop it. You don’t need it. Wait a year until the reviews come out and the other suckers too addicted to having the very latest and greatest buy it, put up a review, and have moved on to something else. Stop buying broken products and then shrugging your shoulders when it doesn’t do what it is supposed to. Stop buying products that serve any other master than you. Use older stuff that works. Make it yourself. Only buy new stuff from companies that have proven themselves good servants of their customers in the past. Complaining online about this stuff helps, but really, just stop buying it.
in 14 hours and 13 minutes from now, something very fun and very similar (but on a much larger scale) to the video posted below will be taking place in san francsico. yes, the pillow fight returns to SF! more info on last years pillow fight here. what can i say? see you there ….
in light of the current and growing fake news reports and bogus claims to hype up and ‘justify’ a new war with iran, please be sure to watch this amazing video by margo guryan titled Margo Guryan / 16 words. brilliant animation and political commentary. these are the same 16 words from bush’s 2003 state of the union speech to justify a war with iraq. lies, lies, and more lies.
my friend fon over at foncocreative just posted pictures from yoda: a restrospective art show held way back in the day (1995 to be more accurate) at skellington productions. with some left over silicone on the james and the giant peach set and a yoda puppet nearby, the mighty yoda mold was created. born from that mold were dozens of plaster yodas that eventually transformed into elvis yoda, dr. zaius yoda, styrofoam yoda, piss yoda, and many others. thanks for posting the pics fon!
it’s friday. end of the week. i hope you are wearing a half-shirt today. yes, it’s time to turn gay. yes, truly. and giantmonster wants to help! how? simple (way more simple than you think!). apparently & according to love god’s way ministries you can put all this pent up heterosexuality behind you and turn hella gay by listening to specific bands & music that will make you a gay. amazing. elton john is so gay he’s mentioned twice. and very little disco. wow - who knew? well, not just ted haggart, but donny davies too. donnie seems to know a thing or two about gayness. if this offends anyone, please just relax, let the spirit of andy kaufman fill your heart and say ‘meet the new borat.’ and, if you like, you can also bolster your heterosexuality by listening to non-gay ( a.k.a. ’shitty’) bands too. save that for later. for now, just access those music mix below (sorry, no elton john) and get onto turning gay! you’re welcome.
download:
music-to-turn-gay-by.zip (39.6 megabytes)
track listing:
Bjork - All Is Full Of Love
David Bowie - Ashes To Ashes
Culture Club - Time (Clock of the Heart)
Queen - Play The Game
Judas Priest - Turbo Lover
Depeche Mode - Never Let Me Down Again
Interpol - Not Even Jail
Le Tigre - Deceptacon
the brilliant minds at graffiti research lab (GRL) have come up with another cool way to tag. going beyond their very simple & cool LED throwies (which have gone beyond simple), GRL has made what looks like a laser-tagging/writing system using high end projectors. the system projects laser light onto the sides of buildings in a repeated pattern which spells out words. in the picture, the phrase ‘free berd’ is a word play on the lynyrd skynyrd song and also applies to ‘free berdovsky’, an appeal for the arrest of the 27 year old artist behind the aqua team hunger force LED signs that gave boston reason to descend into madness.
note: about the GRL laser tagging system, it looks like the projectors GRL uses are the very pro yet pricey panasonic PT-D5600’s (please feel free to correct me on that - i recognized the projectors immediately from the pic). these projectors come in at around $6,500+ each. outfitted with a lens, that’s an additional $2,000+ per projector. that would make the complete 2 projector laser tagging system cost around $15,000+ each. the economics of graffiti are definitely changing. AV nerds are taking over! had to happen. link via boingboing.
from the beautifully twisted wonder-showzen (and i suspect the same smart & twisted minds that animated the extra special he-bro) comes a new sheriff in town. half wino + half machine = 100% winobot.
wow. amazing. incredible. i am clearly not using my brain enough or i have devoted too much of it to remembering movie lines from star wars (actually, both are true). stephen wiltshire is an amazing individual and accomplished artist. he is also autistic and in the world of savants, he known as the human camera. his first words, spoken at the age of 5, were ‘pencil and paper.’ watch this clip of stephen wiltshire drawing the city of Rome, Italy from memory. just from memory and after only having seen Rome from a 45 minute helicopter ride. drawn in 3 days as a panorama on over 5 yards of paper. accurate down to the windows. fascinating. what a gift! here’s an additional clip of stephen wiltshire drawing the city of tokyo just from memory (clip of drawing rome embedded below).
ha! anthony bourdain’s post on michael ruhlmans’ blog titled guest blogging: a bourdain throwdown about the food network and food network chefs is just too damn accurate, biting, and to-the-point hilarious. so true that you really should check it out. giantmonster recommends putting down your drink prior to reading, otherwise you will spit it out from laughing. the post begins with ‘nobody asked me, but …’ and then doesn’t let up. great chef and a great writer too. thank you, mr. bourdain, for phrasing things so well! on a different tone is an equally well written and poignant article by anthony bourdain titled watching beirut die, written when bourdain’s ‘no reservations‘ film crew was trapped in beirut during israel’s bombing of lebanon. check that out too if you like. food network post found via metafilter.
very cool to read this: scientists at Purdue University have developed a portable generator that turns garbage and trash into electricity. the generator, referred to as a ‘tactical refinery’ (yes, it was developed for the US military) is the roughly the size of a moving van (larger, hi-res picture here). the tactical refinery converts different types of waste and garbage to fuel via two parallel processes and burns the different fuels it creates in a diesel engine. quoting Michael Ladisch, scientist and lead on the tactical biorefinery project: “At any place with a fair amount of food and scrap waste the biorefinery could help reduce electricity costs, and you might even be able to produce some surplus energy to put back on the electrical grid,.” also, much of the generator’s combust/exhaust is carbon neutral. from the article:
The tactical biorefinery first separates organic food material from residual trash, such as paper, plastic, Styrofoam and cardboard. The food waste goes to a bioreactor where industrial yeast ferments it into ethanol, a “green” fuel. Residual materials go to a gasifier where they are heated under low-oxygen conditions and eventually become low-grade propane gas and methane. The gas and ethanol are then combusted in a modified diesel engine that powers a generator to produce electricity.
on a greater scale, i could see these tactical refineries set up in housing districts where people can go to convert their garbage into electricty for their neighborhoods and home. i want it now!
as valentines day approaches, you may be inclined to send someone a law and order valentine (here too). in that case, you’d be checking out some of the art of brandon bird. great paintings and illustrations with a lot of humor and style. me likey. where else is your mind going to catch a glimpse of abe lincoln (umm, whhat?) in a cage match, james woods’s last supper, video games with harrison ford, or bea arthur fighting velociraptors? thanks brandon!
it’s not wise to upset a wookie. otherwise the wookie may head-butt you. chewbacca arrested in hollywood. the news story comes with video (embedded in page). yes, a prime example of either a failed news media or slow news week or both. the video clip is also complete with important interviews with spiderman, pinhead, and captain jack sparrow. fine journalism! meanwhile global warming is likely man made and possibly unstoppable, habeas corpus is dead, and “we probably gave (colin) powell the wrong speech.”
amazing story of claudia mitchell, the woman who was fitted with the first bionic arm, and how she has now regained her sense of touch with the bionic arm. “I just think about moving my hand and elbow, and they move. I think, ‘I want my hand open’ and it happens.” incredible! as with previous posts on all things bionic, we must dedicate this moment to sci-fi becoming reality (or what you can imagine becoming real) by again posting the opening and closing theme music to the Six Million Dollar Man.
The Six Million Dollar Man - Main Titles.mp3
The Six Million Dollar Man - End Credits Theme.mp3
more fun with LEDs to be had here, especially with this link from brad: the silicone ‘nerve’ bra! part fashion, part flashlight - 100% bra. made by enlighted.com, where they have more light-up bras, pants, vests, suits, and other ready made LED light up gear.
according to cnn money, exxon earned a record breaking $377.6 billion dollars last year. wow. that registers as making $75,000 per minute in 2006. again, that’s seventy five thousand dollars per minute. holy crap. in the time it took for you to read this post, the kids at exxon would have earned over $10,000. wow.
feeling the frost? the freeze? the winter? the chill in the air? i don’t know about you, but this weather lately … it’s been very … um … how do you say ? … kKOHLDdd. yes.
a marvelous event happend last year around this time. and today, the giantmonster headquarters got an anonymous tip (thank you!!!) with great news: the pillowfight is returning to SF for 2007! yes! choose your pillow wisely and come out and prepare to eat feathers! are you down with that? the same pillow fighting arena of justin herman plaza has been chosen. the date? february 14th (of course). and the rules? they are simple and very much like last years:
1) Tell everyone you know about PILLOW FIGHT!!!
2) Tell EVERYONE YOU KNOW about Pillow Fight !!!!!! (done!)
3) Nothing in your pillow but pillow
4) Do not hit anyone with out a pillow
5) Do not hit anyone with a camera
please note: last years rules of Wait for the Ferry Building clock to strike 6:00pm and Have Fun still apply. see you there! please spread the word!
how do you deal with a truly bullshit media circus? the same media that gives a cake walk to our political leaders on pretty much everything but gets irate when their own dumb dialouge and faux discussion format is spun back at them? simple: talk about hair. just hair. and take talking about hair seriously. very seriously. then watch the press get mad. brilliant. i love these guys! also, does this look like a bomb to you? then how about this? ‘dude, there’s a light-up LED thingy with a bit-map character flipping me off on the overpass … must be a terrorist bomb plot.’ are we that far gone? then we have become too paranoid. or is only the city of boston (or boston’s mayor) that lame? good photo gallery of the event. and a great video of the making of the LED signs on youtube too. the hair-raising press conference is below.
