Stephen Colbert’s guest last night was Bre Pettis, inventor of the MakerBot:
Look at this awesome thing
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Category Archives: Culture Jammin’
Sandwich song
Apparently the main criteria for getting a job producing television for children is doing a ton of drugs. Works out pretty well here. Via Brian Bassett:
I don’t play the bass with a pick myself, but I wholeheartedly endorse playing the bass with a sandwich for a pick. Only problem is that’s going to get the strings really greasy, and that’s a real pain in the ass. Take it from a guy who has a lot of experience playing the bass with greasy fingers.
What song are you listening to?
Via Michael, a good YouTube video. This guy asks random New Yorkers what song they’re listening to:
I’ve always said that a fun superpower would be the ability to know what people are listening to on their iPods. It obviously wouldn’t be my top-choice superpower because it’s a stretch to come up with even one practical application for it, but it’s one I wish I had every time I’m on the subway.
Sometimes I try to listen real closely or look over people’s shoulders. Turns out a whole lot more people than you’d expect listen to the Beach Boys. Or maybe that makes sense; the Beach Boys are pretty awesome.
In my office building elevator last week some guy was very audibly listening to Billy Ocean’s “Get out of My Dreams, Get into My Car.”
British accountant addicted to sausages
I genuinely cannot bear the thought of living without sausages.
– David Harding, sausage addict.
I mean, I guess it’s not funny. Via James K.
Dawn of the Zubaz
When we think of Zubaz today, “utilitarian” probably isn’t the first word that pops into our heads. However, friends Bob Truax and Dan Stock actually had a practical purpose in mind when they created the garish pants. Truax and Stock owned a Minnesota gym that was popular with bodybuilders. The bodybuilding clientele had a problem: the hardcore weightlifters couldn’t find pants or shorts that comfortably fit their massive thighs while offering the flexibility they needed in workouts.
This link comes from our man @dpecs, and man, there’s a lot here. First things first: How is it possible that the dudes responsible for Zubaz are named “Truax and Stock”? Why did they bother coming up with a name for their pants besides “Truax”? To me, the name Truax perfectly befits wide-legged, zebra-striped pants with elastic waistbands aimed at weightlifters. In fact, I think if they’d have gone with a slightly different approach, Truax and Stock could be as synonymous with competitive bodybuilding as Abercrombie and Fitch are with lacrosse. Totally failed business opportunity there, if you ask me.
You should click through and read the rest of the Mental Floss piece. It turns out the history of Zubaz is precisely as fascinating as you’d expect.
I myself owned a pair of L.A. Raiders Zubaz in the early 1990s. They had silver lightning bolts on them and they were totally sweet. I can’t find a picture online. I should note, I guess, that I played pee-wee football for the East Rockaway Raiders, so even though I was always a Jets fan I had a ton of Raiders gear when I was a little kid. I must have looked pretty badass for a fifth grader, decked out in black and silver all the time. Probably not, actually. But I sure thought I did.
Anyway I’m pretty sure I trashed the Zubaz with the rest of my sweatpants when I hit sixth grade. For some reason — and chime in here if this happened in your town too — there was some strict but unwritten rule that you were absolutely not to wear sweatpants to middle school. It sucked. Sweatpants are great, and in fifth grade I must have worn sweatpants to school every day from October to April. But apparently if you ever dared show up at middle school in anything besides jeans you’d be forever ostracized. I never took my chances.
Everything was fine until [expletive] here shut off the power grid
The still-operating New York City firehouse used to film Ghostbusters in 1984 is one of the companies on the chopping block due to budget cuts.
Does the pole still work?
Via Jeff McVideo.
Jose Canseco would marry Lady Gaga
Jose Canseco took to Twitter to profess his love for Lady Gaga.
Fun fact
At an orientation event in the first week of my freshman year of college, they had some guy come and play music by sliding his moistened fingers over glasses he had arranged on a table in front of him and tuned with a turkey baster. It was mesmerizing. I watched him for like a half hour, and somewhere in there all the guys I thought I might become friends with realized I was weird and ditched me to go check out what else there was to see.
Anyway, it turns out ol’ Ben Franklin saw a similar performance in England in the middle of the 18th century, but instead of just standing there guffawing like a goon, he went home and built an instrument that improved upon the same premise. He called it the armonica, and it became popular in Europe both for its music and its purported medicinal benefits. Among others, Franz Mesmer, who gave his name to a verb I used in the second sentence of this blog post, played the armonica.
You can read much more about the fascinating story of Franklin and the armonica at Out of This Century, which came via Josh R. And you can learn why the armonica fell out of favor. In short: It makes you crazy!
Holy DHARMA Initative
Via Seth, 25 abandoned Yugoslavian monuments that look like they’re from the future. Click through, read the backstory and check ’em all out; these are unbelievable:
Mothership to anchor in DC
The Smithsonian has landed P-Funk’s Mothership — the second iteration, at least — for the forthcoming National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Tedquarters 