Friday links

For Dr. Seuss's birthday, his little-known book of nudes: The Seven Lady Godivas (SFW), plus Private Snafu: The World War II Propaganda Cartoons Created by Dr. Seuss, Frank Capra, and Mel Blanc, and This is Ann... she drinks blood! Dr Seuss Does Malaria.

A Restaurant in Madrid That’s the Oldest in the World Has Had the Same Fire Burning for 293 Years.

Mystery of 500-year-old secret code used by Spanish king finally solved.

From 1799, a list of risk factors for spontaneous combustion, plus more recent science.

Why Do Ballet Dancers Turn Clockwise?

Pedaling pictures: The art and science of GPS doodling.

ICYMI, Wednesday's links are here, and include that time Columbus tricked the Jamaicans out of supplies using knowledge of an upcoming lunar eclipse, why cats meow, and Abraham Lincoln's terrible blind date.

It's Fred Astaire's birthday - here are clips of some of his best dancing

Today is the anniversary of the birth of the legendary American dancer extraordinaire, Fred Astaire (wiki) (1899-1987), in Omaha, Nebraska. Born Fred Austerlitz, Astaire made his vaudeville debut with his sister, Adele, at the age of five; by the 1920s, they were dancing on Broadway and in London.*

After Adele's marriage in 1932, his search for a new partner led him to Hollywood, where he teamed up with Ginger Rogers for ten classic song-and-dance films, including Top Hat (1935) and Shall We Dance? (1937). Cool, sophisticated, and rakishly elegant, Astaire gave the illusion of effortless ease to the most technically exacting routines, notably with subsequent partners like Cyd Charisse (in Band Wagon, 1953).  His remarkable potential was not always obvious - early in his Hollywood career, a casting director (who must have been drunk) famously wrote, 

“Balding. Can’t act. Can dance a little.”

Astaire fundamentally changed the way dance was portrayed on film. Utilizing extended takes, Astaire, whether solo or with a partner, performed uninterrupted, intricate dance sequences that kept audiences captivated for decades.

Top Hat (1935):

Swing Time (1936):

Too Hot To Handle:

Related: 

Here's an excellent compilation of Rita Hayworth dancing (much of the time with Astaire), set to Stayin' Alive:

*Fred and Adele:

Want some inspiration? Watch this 70 year old Japanese woman pole dancing

In, apparently, the Italian version of _____'s Got Talent, a 70 year old woman named Tomoko, who told the judges she came to Italy 43 years ago to study opera, didn't reveal what she was up to before she stripped off her robe to reveal a red bikini.

Daily Mail:

She wraps herself around the pole as more modern music kicks in, showing incredible strength and flexibility, to the astonishment of the judges and audience.

Tomoko finishes her dance to the sound of thunderous applause and the impressed judges give her a standing ovation.

'Who are you?' Littizzeto says afterwards, thoroughly stunned, 'What about sciatica and osteoporosis? You have a very beautiful body too.

'These days we are obsessed with that in a bad way and we believe that when someone is old they shouldn't show off their bodies any more, but your body is beautiful and full of harmony,'

Includes English subtitles - watch full screen:

How People In The 60's Thought We'd Dance In The Future

Hard to imagine why this show (the first ever German ScFi series) lasted less than three months. In English, the title was Space Patrol Orion. Here's Wikipedia:

Raumpatrouille – Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffes Orion (literal translation: Space Patrol – The Fantastic Adventures of the Spaceship Orion), also known as Raumpatrouille Orion, and Space Patrol Orion in English, was the first German science fiction television series. 

First episode date: September 17, 1966

Final episode date: December 10, 1966

Here's more:



h/t Joanne Casey.

This high school teacher is so much cooler than any you had

Scot Pankey is the theater teacher at A. Maceo Smith New Tech High School — and the co-star and director of the video you’ll find below, in which Pankey and his students dance around the school to Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars’ "Uptown Funk".

He decided to make this their first project of the new year. And he told his students — from six different theater classes — that he’d do it with them … if they’d let him.

Original music video from the song. if you're interested:

More at Dallas Morning News

Guardian of the Galaxy DVD extra outake: the Star-Lord and Ronan dance-off actually happened

Guardians of the Galaxy fans, the Blu-Ray version of the movie (to be released on December 9th) has an outake of a dance scene between Star-Lord and Ronan the Accuser, with Gamora and Drax joining in:

Buzzfeed interviewed Chris Pratt:

“We were filming what was essentially, you know, the climax of the entire movie … and I was dancing,” he said, still laughing. “I was standing there … in front of 200 extras in full alien makeup. And none of them knew what the hell was happening either. They thought they were on a serious movie because of all the time and the effort that had been put into their makeup. So I just had this energy of, like, What am I doing?!”

Pratt said he didn’t work with a choreographer on the scene, nor did the script really specify how exactly he was supposed to be dancing. “But I did have a pretty good sense of the era from which I would be drawing dance moves, given that Quill draws all of his pop-culture references from a certain time frame of basically 1985 and earlier.”

He ended up doing a kind of Michael Jackson-esque thing (and did a pretty good job of it, too), while Ronan went with running man moves.

Dancing Baby Groot is still my favorite, though:

Previous related posts:

A conversation between the Lego versions of Peter Quill (Guardians), Han Solo (Star Wars), and Malcolm Reynolds (Firefly), discussing the age old question: when is it ok to shoot first?

Star Wars recut into a Guardians Of The Galaxy style trailer, plus a 3 minute review of the 1st trilogy. (Lucasfilms (or Disney, if they own the previous films) should hire the guy who did this, because it absolutely makes you want to watch Star Wars again (and Guardians))

Peter Quill from GOTG teaching an Gamora about the Legend of Footloose and the great hero Kevin Bacon.

via Buzzfeed

Dance battle between a priest from Hyde Park, NY (my home town) and one from Milwaukee, WI

Rome: A video of a pair of dueling, dancing American priests studying in Rome has gone viral. The Rev. David Rider, 29, of Hyde Park, New York, and the Rev. John Gibson, 28, of Milwaukee, first shot to Internet fame when they were filmed in April during a fundraiser at the North American College, the elite American seminary up the hill from the Vatican.

Via Ed Morrisey at Hot Air:

Fr. David told us a little bit about his dancing at the dinner party. He began life as an entertainer on stage but got the call to the priesthood. He wondered whether it would be appropriate to continue dancing, but was inspired by St. John Paul II to the priesthood and to make his dancing show the joy of Jesus Christ. Catholic News Service linked to this 2012 video of Fr. David (as a seminarian) explaining both his call and how he sees his dancing as part of his evangelization:

Wednesday links

Supercuts of Memorable Dance Scenes in Movies.

Small Typos That Totally Change The Meaning Of Things.

This photo gallery will make you smile: Little Kids And Their Big Dogs.

A new video zombie survival guide made by zombies for zombies, with bonus big roundup of zombie links. Also, zombies.

Hollywood’s Iconic Gone with the Wind Movie Set has been hiding in a Barn for Decades.

How long could the human race survive on only cannibalism?

Pictorial Record of North American Indian Tribes in the Early 1900s.

ICYMI, Monday's links are here, and include the history of air conditioning, how to access someone's home with a picture of their key, reviews for Amazon's listing of Tolkien's One Ring (which they say is a Lord's Prayer ring), and the world's largest aquatic insect (with an 8.3 inch wingspan) discovered in China.

Supercuts of Memorable Dance Scenes in Movies

Part 1:



Part 2:



Part 3: I think they were running out of good stuff, and the background music sucks, but here ya go:



And last but not least, from the archives, this supercut of Christopher Walken dancing in over 50 movies will still make your day:


Christopher Walken supercut : Dance Now by mistersexybuzz

Harry Potter vs Twilight Dance Battle. Also, Twerking Stormtroopers

I've never watched any of the Twilight movies - I prefer adult vampires (specifically Spike from Buffy), to the sparkly teenage version.  I don't know, therefore, how closely these dancers resemble the characters, bit it's pretty good, anyway:

The same guy put together this video of twerking stormtroopers:

Video: This Groomsmen Wedding Dance Surprise is a hoot

A sense of humor goes a long way in a marriage, as does a sense of rhythm:



via GMA

Geek alert: This video of “Final Fantasy” battles as dance-offs is brilliant

This video takes the Final Fantasy franchise and turns several of the epic battles into carefully choreographed dance-offs.  The moves are designed to evoke what happens during various spells. Here's the video (watch full screen!), and below that is a list of the spells, starting at 1:09:

1) Item: Linoleum – Magic: Castle / Shell / Protect
2) Scan
3) Shadow
4) Kick (Class: Monk)
5) Counter Attack (Weapon: Mop)
6) Ryanimay’s Ultimate Self-Sacrifice Attack
7) Summon : Mr. RAYMOND
8) Blitzball Attack
9) Magic : Rear-Ended Hypnosis
10) Summon : Bahamut
11) Magic : Haste
12) Red XIII Limit Break
13) Fire 1000

The video is by Mike Song, and he has a previous video called Final Fantasy Dance Mode:

via NerdApproved.

This is a hoot: check out Kevin Bacon's 'Footloose' entrance on the Tonight Show

Kevin Bacon celebrates the 30th anniversary of Footloose (wiki) with an epic dance entrance:


And here's the original final dance from the 1984 movie, followed by the version from the 2011 remake: