Category: Friday Linky

Some concept art from Alien 3 that even I haven’t seen before. This is for the wacky “Vincent Ward wooden planet of monks” version.
Jeremy Bulloch. Gold bikini. Well.
Dude makes Doctor Who anime. Is surprisingly awesome.
More Sesame Street 70s goodness: Stevie Wonder does Superstition. Rock it out!

Beloved leader has screenshotted the panorama from the new high-def Simpsons opening. Hail beloved leader!
Dash Shaw’s wild Bodyworld has just finished. Begin here with the prelude. If you are like me, you will want to read more.
And finally… AHHHHHHHH WRONG

This seems like a crazy-fun toy: xtranormal‘s web app lets you make movies by clicking options and typing dialogue.
Flickr’s Growing Up Star Wars pool, consisting of many photos of 70s kids in Star Wars t-shirts holding their Chewbacca action figures. And lots of weirder stuff too. Love it.
Newish Kiwi politics blog (of lefty persuasion), Kiwipolitico, is getting some good discussion of some tricky issues. Occasional commenter here Anita is one of the key bloggers there. Worth checking out if you’re interested in the big Kiwi conversation but want to avoid the sewers.
These popped up in a couple of places lately, including from beloved leader, because they are that awesome they deserve to be seen by many. Retro book cover designs for 80s films (and more recent films too). Example:

An incredible collection of photos of New York through the 20th century. There’s heaps of them all on the page so it’ll take a while for all of them to load.
The new Scott Pilgrim is out: and now Scott, Ramona, Knives et al. are in Cubecraft form! Cubecraft is an amazing little place where you can print out and fold up box-type models of all your favourite characters. It’s really quite something. Check out the range!
Off-Black explains the greatest drinking game of all time.
And finally… the MIghtyGodKing explains levels of nerdity. With helpful examples.

Tomorrow is another celebration of Bob Marley’s birthday (also NZ’s often vexed national day). So your linky come one day early! ZAH!
If movie posters were honest
Typically thoughtful new blog by Nandor Tanczos, recently retired-from-politics rasta MP: Dread Times
Sex in Advertising, interesting blog for those who can’t turn away from the ongoing spectacle of our grand cultural car crash.
A very cool piece of fanart depicting all the Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV heroes from the 70s! (h/t Jamas)
Classic 70s Sesame Street: Cookie Monster does the theme from Shaft:

And finally… aieeeee! The teeth!

She owns half these linky.
El Gorgo issue two! In which the erudite Mexican wrestler who is also a gorilla takes on Lovecraftian cultists who are alien dinosaurs who are in the FUTURE! Bonus: he says Khaaaaaan when he is struck down! Free to read online, and you can order the print copies too.
40-minute interview with Chris Onstad of Achewood. I haven’t watched this yet myself.
Frederik Pohl has a blog! That would be Frederik Pohl, aged 89, science fiction legend and winner of countless SF awards for his writing and editing. Awesome.
An episode of the Bill & Ted cartoon voiced by Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves, with George Carlin in the Rufus role! WYLD!
An extraordinary oral history of the Bush years courtesy Vanity Fair.
And finally… the most convincing ad for D&D ever published.

Abandoned places: a Russian nuclear-powered arctic lighthouse; a ruined amusement park about Jesus; the soundstage for The Wire.
Rediscovered – the wonderful Edward Gorey’s book of early-60s etiquette, The Recently Deflowered Girl, giving correct advice for the aftermath of that delicate moment.
Galactus’ Kirby-helmet conceals sekret funny face
Classic Far Side cartoons recreated as real photos
Designheads will love this, because I sure do: the Book Cover Archive. All those beautiful lookin’ books!
The ever-delightful Kate Beaton turns her attention away from historical folk to discuss the behaviour of young women today.
Lego as urban intervention
The Wire’s five seasons summarized in a 5 minute rap (er, spoilers):

And finally… Robocop really really likes chicken

SANTA HE SAY YOU SHALL HAVE ALL THE LINKY YOU NEED THIS CHRISTMAS, PUNY HUMAN
BEHOLD:
Tigers and leopards like to play with pumpkins. Who knew?
The Anomalies make amazing hip-hop recaps of 80s sci-fi action films Predator and Robocop!
The great Tom Lehrer on video
The most inspirational short you will ever see
Andy Kaufman: Live From Hollywood – the comedy channel doco about Andy Kaufman’s stint as a wrestling heel, chopped up into YouTube-friendly pieces. I watched it with my hands over my face. Incredible. (Also: Robin Williams doing something you’ve never seen anywhere else – perfectly deadpan comedy.) (Bonus: That Letterman show incident, uncensored. Has Jerry Lawler ever broken kayfabe on the record and admitted it was all a big work with Kaufman? Apart from in the Carrey movie of course?
Bully watches and blogs Love Actually in realtime as the story counts down to Christmas. (Warning: Keira Knightley appreciation zone.) (Second warning: Richard Curtis adored here.) (Still fun though.)
How it should have ended – some dudes create alternative endings for films that ended in a way that they didn’t like.
I’m embedding this one because I like it lots: Playing For Change gets musicians around the world to contribute to a brilliant rendition of Stand By Me.

Also this one: Derren Brown does my all-time favourite Psyc experiment. A few years ago this was replicated at my university, and weirdly enough, older Maori people noticed significantly more than other ages/ethnicities.

Virtual sitting in a den watching old television. You need to adjust the aerials to get a good picture. It is called Betamaxmas, which is the winningest name of Christmas.
This will make sense to anyone who lamented Forry’s passing, and probably no-one else: dude makes boxes for imagined lines of Aurora Model Kits, like modern monsters and Lovecraft. And he sells them, shrinkwrapped, so you can have your model box sitting on your shelf unopened with an imaginary product inside.
The worst Christmas music ever created!
Some serious things:
Noam Chomsky explains why broadcast media fails in 3 minutes
Clive Thompson at Wired explains why we need more torture in our videogames
And finally: the first Mattel officially licensed Barbie in which Barbie is in the process of having her eyes plucked out of her face and devoured.
(There. That should keep you busy for a while.)

Instead of working, I trawl my bookmarks to give you some lovely Friday linky. Er, I may have linked to some of this stuff before but I don’t think so.
Continuing the Watchmen parody theme: Blotchmen. Involves that poem about plums. You know the one.
Kiwi expat and comics genius Roger Langridge does Spongebob Squarepants in the styles of various old-time cartoonists. Delightful!
Mashed in Plastic: the David Lynch mash-up album. Haven’t listened to this yet.
Kamikaze Cookery continues. Featured in a recent entry: friend of this parish Johnnie Ingram, taking on f-in’ Gordon Ramsay.
And finally… oh lordy. I’m sorry. Donny and Marie Star Wars.

Man, Lucas woulda sent those Vader and Chewbacca costumes to the opening of a supermarket, wouldn’t he? And I’m sorry to say this, but there’s more after that one.

Y’know there’s the service in the UK where you text a question, any question, and someone on the other end texts back an answer? It’s kinda like google only you’re actualy interacting with a human being and the human being uses google instead of you and then texts back what google says. Anyway, d3vo revealed this linky – a live feed of the questions and answers as they happen. Heh.
Some very groovy architectural optical illusions.
Kate Nepvu at Tor.com is rereading all of Lord of the Rings and blogging about each chapter
I keep meaning to make a full post about this because it is so insightful and funny and revealing. But I’m busy. Anyway, it’s about why the finance world is in such bad shape, and the reason seems to ultimately be… well, that’s down to the Big Swinging Dicks. And I don’t mean that as in Cheney on the dancefloor. Go read and have your eyes further opened to the sheer insanity that is modern life.
And finally, via AG in da UK, here’s fun with stop motion – brilliant stuff it is too:

I’m busy over in NotRodney land, plus real life OMG, but here’s some linky to waste those precious Friday hours:
Visual essay comparing Star Wars imagery to contemporary art at the time. A bridge too far, perhaps, but still interesting.
After the 2004 US election came Sorry Everybody. Now, this. Which is nice. Although Glenn Greenwald would no doubt see it as another appeal to centrism. (via talula, I think it was?)
Excited/afraid to see Watchmen thanks to the second trailer? Want a recap of the entire 12-issue original series to refresh your memory? Want that recap to be drawn entirely in MS Paint with shaky stick figures? The internet can supply! (this one’s been in a half-dozen places this week)
Serious timewasting marvel: Deletionpedia, which is where pages deleted from Wikipedia for being “not notable” end up. It is a cornucopia of the most trivial stuff. Love it. (via Nexus, originally, but then the site went down for two months)
And finally… random recipe generator!

Time sink: Museum of Online Museums
Sense out of nonsense: best essay on Steampunk ever
Worthy of entire blog post in itself: The Onion on Christianity
No T-series thus far: Cyberdyne is real
And finally: Evan Dorkin goes to a bad comic convention and rants about it, gloriously