Weird anti-drug PSAs

My personal favorite of these anti-drug PSAs is The Chicken Club - here's the youtube info:

This is a legitimate anti-drug music video (from the 80''s) conceived and created to let youngsters know that if they were confronted with the temptation to do drugs they could say "no" with confidence. Even if the person propositioning the child called them a "chicken" (as a last ditch effort to persuade the kid to change their mind) the youth could fire back with the completely unexpected answer, "That's right, I am a chicken and it's OK because there is this sweet music video that told me that it's cool to be a chicken. So your taunts, jeers and name calling will not make me change my mind, in fact they only strengthen my resolve. I'm not only a chicken...I'm in the Chicken Club!"

I would really like one of these Surfing Monkey Banks, please - story below the video:

Dangerous Minds had a post about the Surfing Monkey PSA in 2012 and heard from the creator, Greg Collins:

I’m one of the creators of that surfing monkey spot you threw up on Dangerous Minds this afternoon. Thanks for doing that.

Apparently you can buy these now.

That spot actually dates back to 1999. A buddy of mine and his wife totally smoked out one night. The next morning, they woke up on the sofa, their ribs and stomach muscles were hurting. They didn’t remember much of anything, other than laughing their asses off.

About a week later, a UPS guy knocked on their door, bearing some boxes from QVC. While they were all gassed out, they bought a Star Trek collector’s plate, a Chi-Wash-Wa home car washing system and a Michael Jordan in-flight pewter statuette. All in all, about $400. That must’ve been some great weed.

When they told me the story, I thought that’d make an awesome commercial, but all of that was too much to put into a :30 spot. We needed to drill it down to one item for simplicity and comedy’s sake. My buddy Greg hit on the idea of something really ridiculous like a surfing monkey coin bank. We shot the spot for like $300 and sold it through to the Partnership For A Drug-Free America. It ran in 1999-2000, and, to this day, remains one of their most beloved and recalled commercials.

And once you've moved on from the madness of reefer, here's LSD, A Case Study (turn down the sound - there's a very loud screaming hot dog):

via Flavorwire, where you can find more.

Video: The Science of Fireworks, some 18th century fireworks illustrations, and photographic advice

Washington College professor John Conkling, who is the former director of the American Pyrotechnics Association and the co-author of Chemistry of Pyrotechnics, breaks down the science of fireworks and offers a laboratory demonstration of various color fuels in action.

Atlas Obscura has an excellent gallery of antique illustrations of fireworks. Here are a couple, but go to the link to see the whole set:

This hand-colored etching illustrates a 1749 show celebrating the Aix la Chapelle peace treaty, which also featured the first performance of George Fredric Handel's "Music for the Royal Fireworks." Sadly, three spectators were killed during the show when a lit rocket shot into a stack of reserve fireworks and blew up a pavilion. (Image: Public Domain/WikiCommons)

A”Grand Display” over New York’s Hudson River illuminated the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge on May 24th, 1883. This celebratory chromolithograph was published by Currier & Ives. (Image: Library of Congress)

And there's this:

Designs for "pyrotechny," engraved by Andrew Bell
for the 1797 edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica. 

Related, National Geographic has some pro tips on how to take good pictures of fireworks. 

Fixing a broken traffic light by poking it with a stick

A car's dash cam captured this footage in Kemerovo, Russia of a guy attempting to fix a broken crosswalk signal light by poking it with a stick. Watch to see the result.

via tastefully offensive

Video: Pulling a loose tooth with a live squirrel

As we all know squirrels are not known for being helpful; there's no indication that this one intended to be so, and the war with squirrels still continues. In this case, though, the outcome was positive.

David Freiheit of Montreal plucked his daughter down on a park bench, tied one end of a ~6 foot long piece of dental floss to her loose tooth and the other end to a piece of granola, and waited:

Not many people get to say they are the first people in the history of human kind to do something. Today, my kid and I get to say it. For the first time, in the history of human kind, we pulled a tooth using a live squirrel! We attached some dental floss to the loose tooth on one end, tied the dental floss to a piece of granola bar on the other, and the rest... is internet history.

A few related posts/links:

Map of power outages caused by squirrels.

Video: The Narcoleptic Squirrel Song.

I'm pretty sure this flesh-eating-squirrels-because-fracking movie never got made, but if it ever happens, I'm in: Squirrels - Pre-production Sales Trailer.

Killer Squirrel has World's Bushiest Tail.

January 21 is Squirrel Appreciation Day - more squirrel-launching videos here.

Riverside County squirrel tests positive for exposure to Bubonic plague.

Time to think of squirrel pie.

Thieving squirrel hilariously stymied by vaseline-covered pole.

A fire that heavily damaged an apartment complex was started by a resident using a propane torch to remove a squirrel's fur.

The First-Ever World Champion Squirrel Cook Off.

Cool: Kung Fu Physics brought to life (video)

German digital artist Tobias Gremmler decided to portray Kung Fu in an entirely new light through the use of motion capture.

Creator's Project:

Gremmier’s complex digital scan measures the fighter’s movements in terms of velocity, time, and space, altering the parameters of its visual manifest through a number of variations. It's fabric woven by time, velocity transformed into matter, expansion out of emptiness.  

Kung Fu Motion Visualization from Tobias Gremmler on Vimeo.

Heh - 'Language of Love' from Norwegian group Ylvis (of 'What Does The Fox Say' fame)

Language of Love from Norwegian group Ylvis - about love when there's no way to understand what the other is saying:

What Does The Fox Say?:



via Viral Viral Videos

Pro Skateboarder Goes to Skate Park Disguised as Old Man

This is in Spanish, which I don't speak, but you can definitely get the idea. Per Tastefully Offensive:

In this funny segment from the Spanish comedy TV show El Hormiguero, Madrid, Spain-based professional skateboarder Danny Leon pranked a group of young skaters at a skate park by pretending to attempt skateboarding for the first time while disguised as an 80-year-old man.

Weird and completely incomprehensible Norwegian potato chip video du jour: The Potato Chip song

Wow.

Tuesday links

Happy Cinco de Mayo - some history, art and a brief video. And here's an illustrated history of Tex-Mex food.

Why superheroes don't kill.

Seven Of The Most Beautiful Botanical Mazes On Earth.

Watch this 5 year old boy perfectly recreate Bruce Lee's famous nunchaku scene.

21 Dogs Whose Groomers Took Things A Little Too Far.

Man on trial for attacking lawyer attacks new lawyer in court.

ICYMI, Monday's links are here, and include the NSA banning of the Furby, what happens to someone when they get tarred and feathered, lots of chicken related links for International Respect for Chickens Day, and a map of what each state has more of than any other.

Friday links

Physiognomy of eyebrows: lots of eyebrow interpretation information from the 16th century and from the Victorians.

France Is Letting 14-Year-Olds Drive This Tiny Electric Car.

The Inventor of Underwear with Pockets.

Watch this extremely cool 1.5 minute video from the Thai Rocket Festival.

Thomas Jefferson’s 1785 letter outlining the differences between northerners and southerners.

10 Weird Museums From Around The World.

ICYMI, Monday's links are here, and include an infographic on the cost of building your own Millennium Falcon, schematics and drawings for strange vintage inventions, all about the ruthless Pez dispenser underworld, and video of a guy being chased (very slowly) by a pissed off giant tortoise.

Watch this 1.5 minute video - I have no idea what this is but it's extremely cool

Anyone have any idea? The guy who posted it on youtube calls it "3rd world space programme" but I don't think he shot the video.

UPDATE: Per the comments it's from the Thai Rocket Festival.

via Dave Barry

ICYMI - this week's must watch video is Too Many Cooks

I've seen this posted in a few places over the weekend but was too busy to invest 11 minutes in it. Allahpundit at HotAir convinced me:

This would work better as a late-night palate cleanser but I’m already late to it after it broke big online Friday, so late-afternoon it is. There are two rules to watching. One: If you have a weak stomach for gore, even amateurish gore, skip it. You’ll find it hard to believe that a warning like that is necessary when you’re three or four minutes in, but trust me. Two: You must watch to the end. A friend told me he bailed out after a minute or two, thinking he’d gotten the joke. He hadn’t. Again: Trust me.

Here’s eleven minutes of cheese and blood. It’s an act of annihilation three times over, aimed at the nostalgia all of us of a certain age feel for corny 80s TV genres — the family sitcom, the cop show, the cheap sci fi and afternoon cartoons designed to sell toys to kids.

Not my style in music, but OK Go certainly knows how to make a music video. Here's the new one.

Drone cameras to capture the kaleidoscopic choreography from above, robot unicycles and a lot of umbrellas: check out OK Go's latest release, I Won’t Let You Down, from their most recent album, Hungry Ghosts.

Watch full screen.

You could easily watch any of their stuff muted and it would make little difference. I can't remember the names of any of the songs, but I remember the videos - here's Rube Goldberg one and the treadmill one:

The treadmill one was even parodied by The Simpsons:



Much more at their youtube channel. via The Verge.

Brilliant video: Every Customer Service Call Ever (NSFW language)

One minute science video lesson of the day: How A Bean Becomes A Fart

I've always wondered how this worked. This stuff claims to supply the necessary enzyme, and it's got pretty good reviews...

Video: Coke, Nutella, Mentos and a condom

I can't tell what this guy's saying, but someone in the youtube comments left a translation which appears to fit - it's pasted below the video:

New, incredible experiment with Coke and Mentos! But we’re gonna try something new today: the energy and vitality of Nutella! And as always, we’re gonna use a condom, but this time it’s gonna be mango-flavored. Let’s start. First thing: let’s take some Nutella and put it on the top of the bottle, creating some kind of Nutella cap that will be fundamental for the Nutella-Coke-Mentos reaction. Good, now we open our condom and we put Mentos in it. Not just one, two or three, but five Mentos, since we found out during previous experiments that 5 is the best quantity of Mentos in terms of maximum reaction. Now we’re going to seal everything with some tape. Perfect: Nutella, Mentos… now we’re gonna let the Mentos drop on top of the Nutella, and that’s enough for… and here’s the reaction! Incredible, guys! Coke and Mentos are reacting… it’s a world record! Look at it! It’s a world record! Look at it! IT’S A MIRACLE!!! WOOOOORLD REEEECOOOOOORD!!! COKE, MENTOS AND NUTELLA WORLD RECOOOORD!!! GOOOOO ITALYYYYYY!!!!!! NUTELLA, GUYS, IT’S THE PERFECT INGREDIENT!! YEEEEEESSSS!!!! 

Why is your brain in your head instead tucked away safe and warm down with all your other organs

From Joe Hanson at the It's Okay To Be Smart youtube channel:

And this related video: This Is How Your Brain Grows, from Brain Craft:

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

Video: Watch This Guy Put On Pants Without Using His Hands

Impressive.



via Fashionably Geek.