I can’t believe the last episode is this Friday. There are rallies being held all over the country.

Conan Blasts NBC Over Tonight Show Shake Up

Leno Announces Cancellation, Slams NBC

Conan the Ho

Conan: If NBC Doesn’t Want People to See Me, Just Leave Me on NBC

Conan and Leno Joke About Each Other in Monologues

Letterman on the NBC Debacle

Jimmy Fallon Weighs in on Conan and Leno

Conan Puts The Tonight Show on Craigslist

Letterman Slams NBC Executives

Conan Ponders Career in Porn

Seth Meyers: NBC is Killing Conan

David Letterman: Leno Victims Unit

Saturday Night Live on the Leno/Conan Shuffle

Conan Puts Himself on Craigslist

Letterman Rips Leno

Leno Rips Letterman

Jimmy Kimmel as Leno

Conan Trashes NBC Execs in Monologue

Kenneth the Page Interrupts the Tonight Show

Jimmy Kimmel Goes After Leno on His Own Show

Howard Stern Warned Conan Three Years Ago

Conan/Leno Animated in Hong Kong

Conan Blasts NBC’s “Incompetent Morons” in Song

Ed Helms Sings Farewell Song to Conan

Letterman on Leno: “A Look Back”

Jay Leno: “I Told NBC That Prime Time ‘Will Never Work’”

Conan Spends 1.5 Million Dollars in One Sketch as Revenge Against NBC

Adam Sandler Sings to Conan

Hundreds Arrive at Conan Rally, Conan Appears with Free Pizzas

Obama Supports Conan

The Return of The Masterbating Bear

This article from Vanity Fair adds some very interesting background to the story.

Is Conan the Victim of Harvard’s Crimson/Lampoon Rivalry?

As O’Brien once told Business Week, “My first meeting with Jeff Zucker was in handcuffs, with a Cambridge police officer reading me my rights.”

One very positive aspect of the I’m With Coco movement is that, self-aware of how ultimately silly it is, it has doubled as a fundraising effort for Haitian relief. Click here, here, and here for a few different ways that you can help.

I’m With Coco on Facebook

The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien

Late Night with Conan O’Brien

Late Night With Conan O’Brien: 10th Anniversary Special/The Best of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog

The Max Weinberg 7

If They Mated

Andy Richter Controls the Universe

All hail Conan.

Norm MacDonald Declares Conan the King of Late Night

See also:

Andy Richter is Back on Conan

Andy Barker, P.I.

Comic Con Coverage Part 4: Robin Vs. Triumph The Insult Comic Dog

UPDATE: NBC has scrubbed all of it’s Conan footage from the net. If you’re looking for Conan videos, I would suggest going to The Pirate Bay to download them illegally.

UPDATE: Conan O’Brien is now on Twitter.

News, Revolution | No Comments »

A man in Nepal is threatening to shut down an airport with thousands of crows if the government does not help him get into the Guiness Book of World Records.

Bird terror threat from record-breaking crow summoner

Speaking at a press conference in the eastern Nepal town of Dharan on Friday, Mr Sapkota gave a three month ultimatum to the government of Nepal asking them to help him get his name registered with the record book.

“If the government does not listen to my request, I will gather thousands of crows from all over the Kathmandu valley at the Tribhuwan International Airport , the only international airport of Nepal and bring the air services to a halt. This would indeed cause a chaos,” Mr Sapkota warned.

. . .

Last year, Mr Sapkota had surprised hundreds of people by reportedly gathering thousands of crows at the Tundikhel Open Ground in Kathmandu and making two way conversation to them. Mr Sapkota can make sounds like crows, which makes the birds come and fly at his own will.

(via Damn Data)

In other news. . . It turns out ravens know how to talk.

Cryptozoology, News | 1 Comment »

The Gumball 3000 is a semi-legal international street race that has been happening every year since 1999. It’s wikipedia page goes out of it’s way to make the race sound legal, and if one were to only see their start and finish lines that would certainly appear to be true. Watch the videos though, and you’ll see things getting fantastically criminal in-between.

This is amazing.

Gumball 3000 Crazy Illegal Street Racing on the Freeway

Gumball 3000 2008 San Francisco Start

Extreme TV Gumball 3000 2004 Episode 1

“This is one sound cop!” Team Pollezi gets a surprise police escort

Extreme TV Gumball 3000 2006 Episode 1

Even KITT from Knight Rider has participated in the rally.

Even cooler and more outlaw than the Gumball though was the original race that inspired it – The Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash.

The Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash, widely known simply as the Cannonball Baker or Cannonball Run, was an unofficial, if not outlaw, automobile race run four times in the 1970s from New York City and Darien, CT, on the US Atlantic (east) coast, to Redondo Beach, a Los Angeles suburb on the Pacific. Conceived by car magazine writer and auto racer Brock Yates and fellow Car and Driver editor Steve Smith in 1971, the run was not a real competitive race with high risks, but intended both as a celebration of the United States Interstate Highway System and a protest against strict traffic laws coming into effect at the time.

. . .

The object of the Cannonball Baker was to leave the Red Ball Garage on East 31st Street in New York City, later a venue in Darien, CT, (the now defunct Lock, Stock, and Barrel restaurant) usually after midnight, and drive to the Portofino Inn in Redondo Beach, California in the shortest time possible. Those were the only rules. Nothing was specified as to the route, type of vehicle, or maximum speed permitted. (There was a gentlemen’s agreement that the vehicle entered would be driven the entire distance – no having it transported on another vehicle, nor having an identical second vehicle stashed away, etc.) Speeding citations received along the way were the driver’s responsibility and did not disqualify the vehicle (although having to stop to receive a ticket increased the vehicle’s overall time).

Link

The Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea was inspired in part by films like Two-Lane Blacktop, and went on to inspire more films such as Cannonball, Gumball, Cannonball Run, Cannonball Run 2, and Speed Zone. Speed Zone, the third of the Cannonball Run films, has not yet been released on DVD in the United States, so I present it to you below in YouTube form.

Bonus links:

Cannonball 1971

Cannonball 1979

Extreme Custom Japanese Cars

The Fireball Run

32 Hours 7 Minutes

(Full movie playlist)

John Candy is the man.

News, Revolution | No Comments »

Wired’s Manhunt for Evan Ratliff

On August 13, 2009, Evan Ratliff wrote a feature article for Wired entitled Gone Forever: What Does It Take to Really Disappear? In the article, Ratliff profiles the disappearance and subsequent hunt for family man Matthew Alan Sheppard as well as the stories of other infamous missing people including Marcus Schrenker, the money manager who attempted to fake his death by crashing his plane in Florida. The article goes on to note that every year, thousands of adults decide to abandon their lives: according to a British study, two-thirds of missing adults make a conscious decision to leave.

The article inspired Evan Ratliff and Wired editor Nicholas Thompson to stage a manhunt of their own. Starting on August 15th, Evan Ratliff disappeared and challenged Wired’s readers to find him. The first person to find Ratliff, pass on the codeword “Fluke”, the name of Matthew Alan Sheppard’s black labrador, and email Ratliff’s response to nicholas_thompson@wired.com will receive $5,000.

Link

The search continues at the links below:

Wired
Facebook
Twitter

Let’s find him.

News, Travel | 1 Comment »

Yes!!! It has officially been confirmed by 20th Century Fox and Comedy Central that Futurama is returning for an all-new sixth season!

The new episodes are scheduled to premiere in 2010.

The universe likes us.

Liks:

Futurama Techno Remix

Futurama Remix

If Futurama Was Real

Fry and Leela – Goth

Futurama – Synchronicities and Symbolism (I can’t believe they know about the magic “M”!)

(Image via The Stygian Port)

See also:

The Futurama Language

Futurama Walks Among Us

(more…)

Movies, News, Supernatural | No Comments »

Kyle MacLachlan Wants to Return to Twin Peaks

Actor KYLE MACLACHLAN plans to resurrect his quirky TV drama TWIN PEAKS in short installments on the Internet.

The Desperate Housewives star played an FBI agent on the show between 1990 and 1991, working with legendary director David Lynch on the cult series.

The show was eventually cancelled after a decline in ratings, but returned in 1992 with a prequel movie Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.

MacLachlan is desperate to reprise his role once again and hopes to utilise the web to help fulfil his ambition of a return to Twin Peaks.

He says, “I have a crazy idea to bring back Twin Peaks on the net as five minute webisodes.”

(via Dugpa)

This has to happen.

Whether it’s done as a comedy or a drama, there is nothing that could stop me from seeing it. Whatever Kyle MacLachlan has planned for this series, I’m in.

One idea I will mention. . . In the first episode of the series, when we see Agent Cooper in the Red Room for the very first time, we are told by the text that this is taking place “25 Years Later.”

That date is not too far away.

(In high school, I always thought it was interesting that the events in that scene would be happening after the hyperdimensional time shift of 2012.)

Movies, News | 2 Comments »

An excellent article has been posted at Twilight Language regarding the weird synchronicities and unanswered questions around the death of David Carradine, including his quest in Thailand to expose ancient kung fu secret soceities.

The mystery continues to deepen with every revelation.

Carradine killed by “Kung Fu” Illuminatus?

On Friday, June 5th, the Carradine family lawyer Mark Geragos spoke on Larry King Live and dismissed claims of suicide, stating instead that David Carradine could have been murdered by a “secret sect of kung fu assassins,” after it was revealed that Carradine had been attempting to uncover groups working in the martial-arts underworld.

The Carradine family released further comments suggesting that David Carradine was killed because he was investigating “Kung Fu crime lords’ secret societies.”

His ex-wife, Marina Anderson, who has been shopping a book contract about David Carradine, told the media, “If he was involved in secret societies, it was a secret that even I didn’t know about. But he did have some big secrets.”

Why Thailand, which would mean he was looking into the Muay Thai gangs, right? Or was he doing a more broad-based bit of research on the Hung Society (Society of Heaven and Earth), Chinese Triads and Japanese Yakuza?

The comment section for that article should definitely be read through as well.

More on Carradine:

Carradine’s body to return home, while questions remain

“I do not know if you want to call it accidental,” Chuck Binder, Carradine’s manager, told CNN’s Larry King on Thursday. He said Carradine’s career was on a roll.

Binder said a producer of the movie, “Stretch,” which Carradine was to act in, called him from Thailand to tell him what was happening there.

“I do not want to get in the middle of this whole investigation, but this guy said to me for sure there was foul play,” Binder said.

Actor Michael Madsen told King that the one thing Carradine’s wife, Annie Bierman, wanted everyone to know is, “David was not suicidal.”

Second autopsy of Carradine suggests no suicide

A forensic pathologist who oversaw a second autopsy on “Kung Fu” star David Carradine’s body at the direction of his family suggested on Friday that the death was not a suicide but declined to say why.

Dr. Michael Baden told Reuters that the actor’s family wants to withhold details until a full investigation is completed.

Video interviews:

Larry King, Quentin Tarantino, Michael Madsen, Chuck Binder, and Rob Schneider discussing David Carradine

Larry King Live – More on the death of David Carradine

One thing I think is interesting about all of this is the links people are making between the death of David Carradine and the death of Bruce Lee. There are still those who claim that Bruce Lee was killed by these same sort of groups. Some even say he was the victim of a Dim Mak strike that takes several weeks to fully manifest.

Adherents of Dim Mak say that its practitioners are capable of inflicting serious harm to an individual by disrupting their qi or energy flow throughout their meridian channels, causing stagnation of qi, which in turn can lead to injury or death.

The technique depends on the ability to strike precise locations along an appropriate meridian at an appropriate time of day during which specific points are “open” and are thus vulnerable to attack. In these circumstances, certain vital points move throughout the day, and must be struck in relation to their position in the body at that particular time of the day, taking into account the circadian rhythm and associated changes in blood flow on or near the skin surface to have the desired effect. Thus, it is an easy matter for a novice to learn the stationary vital points, but to understand and use the “fatal” moving points in combat is akin to a relatively inexperienced person who can see the electronic elements in a diagram, but without the deep understanding of what they do individually or with each other.

Whether or not Bruce Lee died from a Dim Mak, the fact that some believe it is still a perfect excuse to discuss the legendary move.

Bonus link:

The Music of David Carradine

News | No Comments »

A Petition to Allow Marriage Between Humans and Anime Characters

While there are many folks who prefer warm blooded humans, some just prefer the 2 dimensional – so much in fact that they would rather marry one. A petition will be submitted to the Japanese government upon the collection of one million signatures asking for law to be passed making it legal to marry a 2 dimensional character.

(From Danny Choo, via BoingBoing)

Sounds like a party.

(Of course, there are those who say these fictional characters are actually 5-dimensional.)

Click here to sign the petition!

News, Revolution | No Comments »

Reagan and Gorbachev Agreed to Defend the Earth Against Alien Invasion

“From the fireside house, President Reagan suddenly said to me, ‘What would you do if the United States were suddenly attacked by someone from outer space? Would you help us?’

“I said, ‘No doubt about it.’”

“He said, ‘We too.’”

“So that’s interesting,” Gorbachev said to much laughter.

He then said to Shultz, “I’m sorry for having interrupted you, but it was an interesting moment.”

Rose concurred.

Link

News, UFO | No Comments »

Apparently there is a need for science to find a way to make puppies/animals glow. For a “good” cause though—the Scientists in South Korea said they created dogs that glow red by using a cloning technique that paves the way for research into human diseases (hmmmm). In the vein of my childhood toy, the ever-beloved, “Glo-Worm”. Now we can have snuggly glow in the dark puppy dogs….What next? I wanna glow, damn it….. Check it

News, Science, Technology | No Comments »