Saint Patrick’s Day is coming up — that means it’s nearly time for one of my very favorite movies: Darby O’Gill and the Little People. Darby O’Gill is a live-action Disney film from 1959. It doesn’t get as much attention as I think it should.

Darby O’Gill fiddles a tune for the Leprechauns, ©Disney

Reasons you should watch the Darby O’Gill and the Little People DVD:

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I got this from Penn & Teller’s very fun 1992 book, “How to Play With Your Food“. I picked up all kinds of neat tricks from that book, but this is far and away my favorite: the glowing pickle trick. I’ve done this dozens of times. It’s pretty simple really: you just plug a pickle into the wall. You’re probably saying to yourself “that sounds dangerous,” and you’re right — it is. As a matter of fact, Penn & Teller’s book doesn’t actually tell you how to do it — they just point out that it’s possible, without giving instructions. I like you better than Pell & Teller do, though, so I’m going to tell you the particulars. But still — this involves exposed wires, which makes it dangerous, so don’t do it. Now that I have that disclaimer out of the way, here’s how to do it:

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Lustlab ad, by Ellen Forney

Lustlab is the kinky personals section for Seattle’s alternative weekly, The Stranger. Ellen Forney is a primo Seattle-based comic & illustration artist, who’s been a fixture on The Stranger’s pages for many years now.

Each week, Ellen takes one of the actual ads running in Lustlab, and turns it into a single-panel comic. She gets really inventive with it — an ad looking for a spanking is in the shape of a handprint, an ad talking about a rather delicate piercing is depicted graphically using the words of the text, and this ad takes the “daddy” and “third wheel” refrerence where it logically needs to go: Ed “Big Daddy” Roth territory. You can see all of Ellen’s Lustlab ads here. Borderline NSFW (more for the text than the images). There’s also a book of her Lustlab ads planned for 2008 by Fantagraphics. [via Robot Action Boy]

[UPDATE: Since this got picked up by BoingBoing, Ellen Forney's web server has seized up; a kind soul has uploaded her Lustlab ads onto Flickr. Besure to check them out on her website once it's back up again, though, because she shares a lot of insight into how she created each ad.]

The Amen Break

The Amen Break is the Wilhelm Scream of modern music: these six little seconds of drum solo have been sampled — in both whole form and in Frankenstein-esque reconstructions — so often that it has practically become an instrument in itself. In 2004, Nate Harrison created an 18-minute documentary about the history of the use of this ubiquitous drum break. It’s a bit long, but at least listen to the first couple of minutes, so you can hear the break, say “oh yeah! I know that!,” and learn where it originally came from. The whole piece is interesting, though; toward the end, the focus turns to the implications of sampling and copyright laws on creative expression and capitalism. I first found it on BoingBoing a year ago, but was reminded of it today when Cynical-C posted it.

Pondering how someone came to the conclusion to have this tattooed on themselves has caused my brain to seize up. [via Booberry Alarmclock]

Waffle House cheat sheet

This is fascinating: Waffle House uses a complex system of arranging condiment packets on plates to communicate order instructions. From nickgraywfu on Flickr, via BoingBoing.

“Protein Synthesis: an Epic on the Cellular Level” is a short film created in 1971 at Stanford University. The intro features Dr. Paul Berg, who would go on 9 years later to win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. As much as I enjoy Dr. Berg’s intro, things really start to get running a bit past minute 3, when the hippies show up, demonstrating protein synthesis “using the dance idiom.” And balloons. And smoke. And a drum circle. It’s actually a very good demonstration of how protein synthesis works, and apparently it’s still shown in classrooms today. I first saw this film a bit over a decade ago, when I was working at ZymoGenetics.

That is all.

This amazing video for Scissor Sisters’ “She’s My Man” was done all in one take — the camera didn’t move, and the speed of the film was not altered. The movement and effects in the video are made possible by black-clad kuroko stagehands. The video was directed by Nagi Noda, who was also responsible for that disturbing exercising poodles video.

There’s a slightly higher-quality version at the Scissor Sisters website, but it’s mired in Flash, so I can’t link directly to it. Bah.

Lionel Richie rendered in lush velvet,
from Walsh on Flickr

I want to share something beautiful with you. I want to share Lionel Richie, in black velvet.

A friend of mine has one of those wonderful homes where it takes you two hours to even notice the plastic Jesus with a cat’s head, because there is just so. much. weird.stuff. She has it all very tastefully displayed, though, right down to the neatly organized wall of Marwal heads.

But her bathroom is where it really all comes together. Lionel Richie is there right over the throne, rendered in lush velvet, casting a loving and watchful eye as you go about your business. From the other side of the room, a red velvet-flocked mini-bust of Mao Tse Tung glowers at the two of you. He’s clearly jealous that Lionel Richie got top billing.

The velvet Lionel Richie masterpiece pictured here isn’t hers, but is one I found on Flickr, posted by Walsh. Small world — in his comment on this picture, he links to an article that makes reference to there being a cache somewhere of Velvet Lionels, and the article appears to have been written by a friend of mine. Lionel, you work in such mysterious ways!