(via Dark Roasted Blend: Extraordinary Inventions: Victorian-Era Prank Machines)
The Pledge Altar
The candidate kneels before the altar in a darkened room, when—Lo! Up before him jumps a skeleton with large, illuminated, glaring eyes; a blank cartridge is exploded; a stream of water hits him in the face; an electric shock is shot into his knees. $76.00
The Pythagorean Cup
Pythagoras is mostly known for his theorem and not his practical jokes. I want to change this. The Pythagorean cup is a simple device designed to make people look like idiots. It contains a thin pipe that runs from the bottom of the vessel up to the top of a central column. As the cup is filled the level of liquid within the pipe matches that of the surrounding cup according to Pascal’s principle of communicating vessels. If the cup is filled above the turn in the pipe then the liquid begins to pour out the bottom. Not only that but it creates a siphon in the process, which empties the entire contents of the cup right into the gluttonous drinker’s lap. Hilarious.
Lucy: You don’t even know what crow’s feet are.
Ricky: I do too, they’re like pigeon toes.
Lucy: Come here, look. See?
Ricky: Oh, honey are you kidding? You’re beautiful.
Ricky Thinks He’s Going Bald 1x14
yup. just like this show.
:)
Wendy Carlos - Country Lane (A Clockwork Orange: Wendy Carlos’s Complete Original Score)
From the liner notes: Scored, but never used, Country Lane “depicts Alex’s near drowning at the hands of his ex-Droogs, utilizes motifs from Rossini’s The Thieving Magpie plus the medieval religious theme of Dies Irae (Day of Wrath), which is also heard in the title music, plus authentic rain storm sounds, plus a suggestion of Singin’ in the Rain. In its few minutes, this Country Lane manages to sum up the mood of the entire film.”
When Tom Cruise landed in Mumbai this past weekend to promote Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, he was greeted by the typical throng of hysterical fans. Except this time they weren’t the typical throng of hysterical fans. They were paid extras.
For about $3 and a free lunch buffet, the organizers in charge of the Indian leg of the Tom Cruise Ghost Protocol World Tour (Cruise IV: Forever Cruisin’) hired about 200 extras to gather outside of the Mumbai airport’s VIP exit. The extras, holding signs that said things like “We Love Tom Cruise” and “Tom Cruises,” unleashed their incoherent, elated howls when the actor made his appearance. Tom, for his part, tried to ignore the fans as much as possible while plotting a quick and graceful escape.
I’m not sure what sort of counter-reception these extras were expecting, but feelings were not hurt. In fact, most of them have no idea who Tom Cruise is.
“’Tom who?’ one ‘young artiste’ said. “I don’t know who he is or what he does. We were told to come here by 1pm today and wait for a foreign VIP to come out of the airport gate and scream and shout when he came. None of us know who Tom is.”
So why did this happen? Given Cruise’s famed sensitivity/Napoleon complex, that may not be such a difficult question to answer. What’s more baffling is this editorial aside in an article about the event:
“Given that the absolutely handsome Cruise of the disarming smile has a huge fan base in the country, thanks to some really great and popular cinema… it would not have taken much to get more than half the city’s population to converge at the airport or any venue to catch a glimpse of the star they love and adore.”
How, in a city of more than 12 million people, are there not at least 200 fans willing to ambush “the man of the disarming smile” at an airport?
he blows!
| — | William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 1 (via liquidnight) |
