Back In The Day - The 50 Greatest Discontinued '90s Foods and Beverages

Time for some nostalgia.  Who remembers Vanilla coke?  How 'bout Crystal Pepsi and Spice Girl Lollipops?  Ahhh, the memories.

 Check out the other 42 discontinued products from the 90's here.

Opening a Soda on the Ocean Floor

So before Chris Hadfield showed us what wringing a wet towel in space was like, he was at the bottom of the ocean showing others what happens when you shake a soda can under sub-sea pressure.  

I'm assuming he didn't try this test on the International Space Station.

The Evolution of "Star Trek" (Infogrpahic)

This is absolutely terrific.  Especially if you're a Star Trek fan or just curious about the franchise in general.  Thank you Space.com for sharing this amazing piece of work!

Source: SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration

On Sept. 8, 1966, an American science fiction icon was born. The “Star Trek” television show lasted only three seasons, but spawned a lasting legacy that has stretched across decades and led to four spinoff live-action shows, a cartoon series and a dozen feature films.

Gene Roddenberry and his team set their show aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise, a sophisticated starship with a competent crew of professional astronauts.

A pilot episode starring Jeffrey Hunter was rejected by the NBC TV network as “too cerebral” for a general audience. The show was retooled with William Shatner in the starring role of Captain James T. Kirk. Leonard Nimoy was featured as the alien officer Spock.

After its cancellation in 1969, the show grew even more popular, appearing several times per week (or even daily) in syndication. 

The Star Wars phenomenon of 1977 led Roddenberry to consider bringing the show back to television. Soon the plan changed, and “Star Trek the Motion Picture” appeared in 1979 to lukewarm reviews. Not wanting to waste their investment, the studio replaced Roddenberry at the helm and made several sequel films with much lower budgets.

In 1987, Roddenberry created a new TV show from the ground up with an entirely new cast led by Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard.  “Star Trek the Next Generation” debuted directly into syndication, not appearing on any of the major TV networks. Its popularity grew slowly but eventually it became successful enough to spawn its own set of feature films.

Three more TV series would follow: “Deep Space Nine,” “Voyager” and “Enterprise.” When the latter went off the air in 2005, an unbroken run of 18 years of Star Trek on television was ended.

By 2009 Star Trek had faded from pop culture prominence, but a reboot movie, called simply “Star Trek,” changed all that. Director J.J. Abrams reimagined the original TV series, casting Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto in the lead roles of Kirk and Spock. The film became the highest-grossing of the franchise.

In 2013, Abrams’ sequel “Star Trek into Darkness” features Benedict Cumberbatch as a terrorist villain.

Cyanide and Happiness: Some Math

It's Purely Animal - Issue No. 63 - Dog Gets Emotional Watching The Lion King

This video is both adorable and sad at the same time.

Watch this cute pug get emotional as Simba mourns over the death of his father, Mufasa in The Lion King.  This dog may actually bring you to tears.  No joke.

Zac Efron in Townies

Can someone please tell me what this movie, Townies is about?  I find myself a little distracted at the moment. LOL.

Gay of Thrones: Game of Thrones Episode 6 Recap

Your funny gay hairstylist, Jonathan, is back. He's here to give you a recap of last week's Game of Thrones episode. 

"WHERE ARE MY DRAGONS???"

If you're behind on the episodes, this a spoiler.  Then again, you could probably cheat and just catch up on the show. Lol. 

Warning: The following video contains vulgar language and may not be  suitable for children.

Feel free to catch the previous Gay of Thrones recaps here.  They are absolutely hilarious!

Poster of the Week - Issue No. 63 - Attitude

As I have completed posting all 62 original Posters of the Week over the course of 62 Sundays; I now bring you a new collection.  This group will not be not be in any particular order.

 

This week's poster is "Attitude".

  These are meant to be funny, and in no way meant to be taken seriously. 

What a Hot Mess: Obama Appoints Judge Judy To The Supreme Court

Ready for a good laugh?  "See Judge Judy, she, she, she, she a gangsta, Judge Judy is a gangsta, you gotta give her that." LMAO.  What a Hot Mess!

Jimmy Kimmel sent his crew out to the street a few days ago to ask regular folks what they thought of President Obama appointing Judge Judy to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the answers they gave were absolutely hilarious.

Crimes of the Century - No. 22 - Columbine Massacre, 1999

COLUMBINE MASSACRE, 1999

Just when you think it couldn't get any worse.  Today's crime of the century is another horrific nightmare.  And if any of you have ever watched the movie, "We Need To Talk About Kevin," you would understand where I'm coming from.  Most of you reading this probably recall the incident, because it was only 14 years ago.  What is so sad about this whole thing is that the massacres continue until this day.  Need I remind you of Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook?  And there's countless others I'm sure.  But its just people killing people, not guns killing people, right?  I think both issues need to be addressed, not just one.

While the article by TIME (below) gives insight into the crime, you can also go here to read the drama as it unfolded on that terrible day in 1999.

***

School shootings were already a problem before April 20, 1999. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris knew that theirs had to stand out. So they planned to make every previous incident look podunk, and they videotaped their boast so the world would know what they had set out to do. And so they turned Columbine High School into an abattoir: murdering 12 schoolmates and a teacher, wounding 24 other people and then, finally, killing themselves in a drama seen live on television. It was not quite the 250 they had hoped to kill, but it was enough to make the incident the worst school shooting in American history. This sudden eruption of violence in the middle of one of the most solidly upper middle class communities in America set off months of soul searching. Parents and school officials discussed the prevalence of violent music and video games; a similar concern arose over school sociology -- bullies, outsiders and teen goth culture. Parents asked: what are the warning signs that our children are turning out to be their own enemies? On their tapes, Klebold and Harris talk about anger management but not the expected kind. Rather, they were learning to ratchet up their anger and yet keep it secret from everyone else -- until the day they had to turn it on full blast.

***

TIME Magazine posted this article online several years ago, along with a list of 24 additional notorious crimes that I have been posting and will continue to post every Saturday on my blog.  Hope you enjoy.

***

To read the previous 21 crimes - click my logo below.

 

Saturday Morning Coffee Break: The Closet

Today's Saturday Morning Coffee Break is another great film I posted back in 2009 on Peter's Daily Blog.  At under 3 minutes, the film is really strong and shows how a short film such as this can still make quite an impact.  

I fell in love with it then and still in love with it now.

In the film an old man recalls the moment that defined his life, in which his attraction and friendship with a neighboring boy is crushed by the boy's homophobic father.

If you wish to look back at some previous issues, click my logo below and enjoy.   

Make sure to check out Saturday Morning Coffee Break every Saturday for another classic or current gay short film.

The Excuse Creator [NSFW]

This is for all you folks that love to come up with excuses.  I know, some are really valid, so just take it lightly, okay?. LOL.  Choose your "Lead-in", "Perpetrator" and "Delaying Factor".  Oh, and it's NSFW because of some of the language.  The more you do, the more you'll laugh.  Enjoy.

This Is Water by David Foster Wallace

This video is 9 minutes long, but truly inspirational. If you have some time, I highly recommend watching it.  Bookmark it for another day, share it on Facebook, Pin it, Skype it, do whatever you wish with it, but make sure to watch it sometime in your life.  It doesn't matter if you're in college, high school or an alumni - this video is for everyone.

Author David Foster Wallace was asked to give the commencement address to the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College. However, the resulting speech didn't become widely known until 3 years later, after his tragic death. It is, without a doubt, some of the best life advice we've ever come across, and perhaps the most simple and elegant explanation of the real value of education.

The Scientific 7-Minute Workout

Here you go.  A Scientific 7-minute Workout - so you have no excuse.  I think we all can find 7 minutes out of 1,440 in a day, right?

"The exercises should be performed in rapid succession, allowing 30 seconds for each, while, throughout, the intensity hovers at about an 8 on a discomfort scale of 1 to 10... Those seven minutes should be, in a word, unpleasant. The upside is, after seven minutes, you’re done. "

Courtesy of The New York Times, an article in the May-June issue of the American College of Sports Medicine’s Health & Fitness Journal does just that. In 12 exercises deploying only body weight, a chair and a wall, it fulfills the latest mandates for high-intensity effort, which essentially combines a long run and a visit to the weight room into about seven minutes of steady discomfort — all of it based on science. 

“There’s very good evidence” that high-intensity interval training provides “many of the fitness benefits of prolonged endurance training but in much less time,” says Chris Jordan, the director of exercise physiology at the Human Performance Institute in Orlando, Fla., and co-author of the new article.

A Message For Children and A Warning For Adults

This is pretty cool.  An amazing innovation that could literally save a life.  Considering all the recent events over the discovery of the three women who were kidnapped as young children or teenagers, giving a little to this foundation to help abused children wouldn't hurt.

The ANAR foundation has developed an advertisement that uses a lenticular lens to display two different messages at the same time;  One for adults and one for children.  The one for children urges the child to seek help with a number to call, whereas the adult version has nothing listed.  It uses a technology where only certain heights can see certain messages.  This will give the child a chance to find help without alerting the abuser.

Post Secret Fridays - Issue 116

 PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.

 See More Secrets. Follow PostSecret on Twitter.

Want to see older Post Secret Friday issues?
Click my Post Secret Logo Below.

It's My Friday, and I'm In Love!

I don't know what it's like to work on Friday's anymore.  It's just something that doesn't exist in my life.  So in honor of Thursday being my Friday, I thought I'd share this cute animated video :-)

How I See My Dog

The Oatmeal has given us a couple charts on how we see our dogs and how our dogs see us.  They're pretty spot on. Lol.  You can see the other side, after the jump.

after the jump...

Movies To Watch: The Butler

I'm just loving all these Presidential / White House movies lately.  Last month Ryan and I saw Olympus Has Fallen; This summer in Channing Tatum's new movie, White House Down, we lay witness to almost every national monument being blown to bits, and finally, this fall, Oprah Winfrey, Forest Whitaker, Cuba Cooding, Jr., Robin Williams, James Marsden, Alex Pettyfer, John Cusack, Jane Fonda and many others, star in The Butler.

I'm definitely eager to see this one, not only because of the huge cast, but for the true story of a man who served 4 American Presidents and witnessed 4 decades of American History.  Check out the trailer - it's pretty powerful.  Oscar worthy? Maybe.

 

How I See My FriendBeast by The Dog

So here's the flipside of the diagram The Oatmeal shared with us earlier - this one is by The Dog.  Want to know how it views it's "FriendBeast"?  Take a look. Lol.

Airigami Dinosaur

Man, I thought the balloon twisted Buzz Light Year I posted on Monday was crazy cool, but this has got to cut the cake.  Talk about taking balloon twisting to a whole new level.

Watch this awesome time-lapse video of 20-foot balloon acrocanthosaurus come to life, created alongside plants and insects.

The geniuses behind this tumultuous task are a group of artists who call themselves Airigami. Check out their website, it's pretty darn cool.

Are People Really This Stupid? Issue No. 35 - Facebook is Full of Them - Part II

Ahhh, the lovely world of Facebook.  Are people really this stupid?  Pick one that's not like the other. LOL.

And if you haven't had enough, there's always Facebook is Full of Them - Part I

Do It Yourself Graduation Cap Flask

This is for all you college students of legal drinking age.  Let me say that again.  This is for all you college students of legal drinking age. Lol.  Dominque Zamora over at Foodbeast created a DIY Graduation Cap Flask, and not because her job prospects after graduation look bleak, but because sitting through a lengthy 2-hour ceremony is not something she's looking forward to.

Her words after the jump...

A Song About Immigration, Fiats and Sexy People

I was about to watch a video on you-tube when an advertisement pops up.  My first thought was to skip it, as I normally do, but after letting it play for a minute I got dragged into it.  I'm assuming all you club-goers have heard of the song.  It's titled "Sexy People (The Fiat Song)" featuring Pitbull.

Italian singer-songwriter and actress, Arianna Bergamaschi, better known as Arianna, released the song earlier this year.  She spoke to Artist Direct as to why she made the track: 

I'd made a track for a friend who does music for commercials. I was at home and they called me asking to suggest a song that's like the dance song "Tu Vuò Fà L'Americano". That's a Neapolitan song from Naples. They wanted a song like that because the commercial was about immigration. They wanted to speak about Italian immigration in L.A. I knew the Italian song very well, and they just asked for a suggestion. I said, "Torna a Surriento" is one of the best because it speaks about immigration. I sang it for a little bit since the commercial was 30-seconds. I didn't imagine it would get four million views on YouTube, and we'd do a song [Laughs]. I'm a singer in Italy, and I've done so many things including theater and musicals. It's like a dream for me to be here. I wanted to do a single in the U.S., but I didn't expect it. Everything feels like an unexpected dream."

Check it out, it'll make you dance.