Cherry Blossom Festival

This weekend at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. There are only so many chances to see a big group of New Yorkers looking unreservedly happy. This is one.

TV in Japan

This is what TV is like. In Japan.

Ernie Cline

Ernie is the equivalent of coffee made with caffeinated water. Oh, and he wrote a sequel to The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension.

Cattyshack

Extremely good-natured and well-appointed lesbian bar on the less obnoxious side of Park Slope in Brooklyn. DJ Sancho hosts a trivia night with dry wit and appropriate songs to match the questions.

Plus, ya gotta love the fact that Boys' Night at the place is called Oink.

Cigarette Package Warnings

Physicians For A Smoke-Free Canada has a nice archive of cigarette package warnings from around the globe. I recently saw Thank You For Smoking, which featured a tobacco industry lobbyist trying to prevent the FDA from slapping a big skull and crossbones on each pack of cigarettes. Actually, that would be tame compared to some of the graphic (fair warning) imagery required by some countries. Here's our favorite (not as graphic).

Cereal-Flavored Milk

1) Eliminates that pesky fiber from your cereal experience.
2) Hex will be all over this.

The Easter Bunny Hates You

Whose eggs are painted now, bitch?

Bent

The 3rd International Circuit Bending Festival features lots of homebrew electronic noisemaking gadgetry. One highlight: build your own square wave tone generator (which may be turned into a simple synth) for $15. Also features nightly performances by the pros. Now through Sunday in NYC.

Peart Goes Hollywood

You gotta love Aqua Teen Hunger Force. After five years of on-air weirdness, they finally get their shot at a real hollywood budget, and what do they spend it on?

The Neal.

More of a geek footnote than a high recommendation (seeing as the movie hasn't actually been released yet), it proves once again just how much writing songs about trees can do for your career.

Chew By Numbers

This is pretty damn gross, and likely to be a hit with any grade-schoolers you know.

Zunafish

Well someone will want to trade for your vintage Mary Kate & Ashley VHS tape. Just don't count on it being the guy with the complete Godfather collection. Or maybe it will be, which would be pretty interesting right there.

The Perry Bible Fellowship

Chuckle-worthy evil hidden behind randomized clicks.

Meanwhile, in Riven...

If you have to have arrested development, I suppose you could do worse than to get stuck at the treefort stage.

The Brandon Hardesty Re-enactments

His name is Brandon Hardesty. He's a college film major who messes around with film on the side.

Specifically, he re-creates scenes from his favorite movies using household props and lighting, himself as all the actors, and an eye for detail that makes this collection of clips a heck of a lot more entertaining than they probably should be.

The first in the series is his take on a scene from the end of the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, (which really should be a lot funnier considering the mustache).

Then if you dig a little deeper you'll find a whole series of these things on his YouTube page, including scenes from The Breakfast Club, The Shining, and Pulp Fiction.

A couple of notes:
* Although he is also a huge fan of film, the guy in these clips is not the infamous Cliche Monster (who is a better actor and rarely sports hair)
* The scene from Star Trek: First Contact is perhaps the most unintenionally funny of the bunch, as an attempt to delve into a captain's psyche dissolves into a campy version of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" (or The Jeffersons, depending on your point of view)
* In what's probably the best film of the series overall, Hardesty does an awesome imitation of Wallace Shawn, all the way down to the way he crosses his arms.
* That being said, his Cary Elwes? ...eh, not so much.

Either way, it's a fun little collection of clips to waste time with on a Sunday morning (And who knows - if he keeps up like this, dude might even end up with his own film credit page on IMDb).

Pest-Machine Interfaces

Don't worry. The frogs were already dead.

But Is It Graffitti?

By definition, yes, but probably not to the cops, which is all that counts to some. Still, this is nifty. I'm thinking they should tackle some Calders next. "No Corporate Art," maybe?

Science Facts For The Immature

With apologies to Ruben Bolling.

The Brick Testament

Somewhere out there right now, a man is recounting the entire Old Testament. In Lego.

Optus Tennis

1) Ok, I'll just see what this little flash game thingy is all about for a minute and then I'll get back to the work I am supposed to be doing.
2) ..Ok, well I didn't really know how to play it there -- so let me try it again.
3) Ok, I get it (say -- this is kinda cool).
4) Ok, I know I can beat that score.
5) Ok, I slipped there -- didn't mean to mess up.
6) Ok, now the computer is cheating.

..Ok, the human body can go a couple
of days without food and water, right?