Sunday, August 7, 2011

Crushable

Crushable

Have You Ever Wondered What Happened To Lady Gaga’s Meat Dress?

Posted: 07 Aug 2011 10:20 AM PDT

I know I have. And now we know the answer: It’s been taxidermied! (Is taxadermied a word? Well, if it isn’t, it is now. So there.) And what’s more, you can visit it!

One of the things I love about Gaga is that she wears whatever the hell she wants, and if people don’t like it, well, tough. I use image of her infamous meat dress, which she wore at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, a lot, mostly because the dress represents pretty much everything that Gaga is. That doesn’t mean, though, that I don’t occasionally look at what she’s doing and go, “Whaaa?” This is another thing the meat dress represents, and while there are many meaningful lenses one can use to analyze it, I’m always left with the more practical questions– questions like, how much does it weigh? Or, isn’t it kind of cold? Or, perhaps most importantly, what on Earth did she do with it when she was done wearing it?

And now we have an answer to that question. First, her handlers stuck it in the freezer as soon as she was done wearing it. Bits of it may already have been rotting– that’s what happens when you put a whole bunch of raw meat under very, very hot stage lights– but into the freezer it went, because as we all know, if you freeze your leftovers, they will last FOREVER. Around that time, the curators of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland contacted Gaga’s managers and asked if they might be able to exhibit the dress. Her managers said sure, why the hell not; but obviously, something had to be done to the dress to make it displayable, since the idea of making museum patrons walk into a giant freezer to view the dress seemed like a bad idea. So, off the dress went– to Sergio Vigalato, a taxidermist who works at a place called American Taxidermy in Burbank, California. Four months and a whole lot of chemicals later, the dress has been dried out, painted to make it look more like fresh meat than beef jerky, and shipped off to Cleveland, where it joins the museum’s current exhibit, Women Who Rock: Vision, Passion, Power. The exhibit will run until February 26, 2012.

Gaga’s own explanation of the dress is actually pretty in depth:

“It was actually inspired by my makeup artist, Valium Garland. She wore meat in the 70s, to go out to parties, and we were talking about it, then as she was telling me the story I was actually in the middle of writing my speech for Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal, I did a big rally in Maine. And I called it the prime rib of America…the prime rib of the American Constitution is equality. The best cut of meat this country has to offer. So I wore the meat dress as a statement about equality, wearing the best cut meat and arriving and taking as my dates with me discharged soldiers, under the enforcement of Don't Ask, Don't Tell in the military. So it means something to me for many reasons, one, it was a very big night for myself and the Haüs of Gaga, winning all those amazing awards at the VMA's, and feeling like the cool kids, but more importantly, the power of young people– the power of the young generation to use their voices to mobilize change. That meat dress represents part of, a very small, small part of the movement towards equality, and for it to be honored in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is the shit.”

Sometimes I wonder whether she’s totally right or really reaching; pretty much everything she does is carefully calculated for maximum impact, though, so I kind of buy it. Whether or not you do, though, I know you want to see what the dress looks like now, so here you go:

Yum.

[NY Daily News via The Frisky]

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12 Board Game-Inspired Movie Ideas That Are Just As Ridiculous As ‘Battleship’

Posted: 07 Aug 2011 08:45 AM PDT

The trailer for the Battleship movie hit the web last week, and while it looks better than one would expect, given that it’s a movie based on a board game which, at its most exciting, involves sticking a peg into a hole in a plastic ship, I’ll be honest with you: I’m a little baffled. How exactly do we get from “A…4″ to “OH GOD ALIENS!”? No idea. And honestly, if this is the direction Hollywood is going these days, I’m a little terrified to find out where this Candy Land movie I keep hearing about is going to go. But hey, since I may as well capitalize on this weird let’s-turn-board-games-into-movies trend while I can, here are 12 other possible board game-inspired movie ideas to pitch. Call me, Hollywood. I’m waiting.

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Sunday Cute: Cat vs. Toy Frog

Posted: 07 Aug 2011 07:15 AM PDT

Coming soon to a front lawn near you: Cat vs. Frog, an epic battle of good versus evil. Who will walk away triumphant? And who will be forced to hang their head in defeat? Only time will tell….

Happy Sunday!

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Creepy Things That Seem Real But Aren’t: EverymanHYBRID

Posted: 06 Aug 2011 02:40 PM PDT

Creepy Things That Seem Real But Aren't is a new series that explores modern urban legends, bringing you a new tale each week.

There’s an amateur fitness series on YouTube called EVERYMANHYBRID that isn’t really much of a fitness series. Created by the titular “EverymanHYBRID” (whatever that means) Vincent, “Nutritional Correspondent” Evan, and cameraman Jeff, it likes to call itself “your go-to guide for health on a budget.” But there’s something hiding behind this series– and you may not like what you find.

When I say that it isn’t really much of a fitness series, I do mean that– mostly, it’s just a bunch of goofy videos of Vincent and Evan sitting around and shooting the shat about such no-duh fitness advice as making sure you stretch before and after working out and utilizing a long, hot soak in a tub for sore muscles. Ground-breaking stuff!… Or not. Vincent himself doesn’t really seem to be much of a health nut. The series’ first real video, geared towards the art of nighttime jogging, features a clip of him jogging around the one-minute mark; and you know, I’m not usually one to make fun of people who work out, given that I’m so bad about actually doing it myself– but I have friends who are pretty hardcore runners, and they definitely don’t look like this when they run:

Note the lack of appropriate running gear, as well as the fact that he appears to have only run as far as it took to get this shot– no more, no less.

Evan’s “nutritional advice” isn’t much better. It’s all pretty standard “don’t eat junk food” stuff, although he doesn’t really seem to know what he’s talking about:

Don’t eat cookies all the time? Well, duh. Trail mix is a healthy snack? Well, it’s got more nutritional value than some of the alternatives, but you could be reaching for something better. Reach for the aforementioned trail mix instead of for chips when you’re sitting in front of the TV and hit by an attack of the munchies? I’m not sure which is worse: Feeding the munchies, consuming copious amounts of trail mix, or parking in front of the telly for hours at a time. I suspect our friends over at Blisstree might have a little something to say about that.

Anyway, the whole series is laughably bad, though not particularly scary (unless you happen to be an actual fitness or nutrition expert). But if you’ve been looking closely, you may have noticed a few odd occurrences: Some audio distortion here and there; a elongated shape or something hanging out in the corner of the shot. We’ve seen things sort of like this before, so they probably didn’t phase you that much.

You may also have noticed that those occurrences look sort of fake.

And you would be absolutely correct, because hey, guess what? That’s our buddy Slender Man hanging out in the background! What these three guys did was enlist a fourth friend to pose as a fake Slender Man in an attempt to ride the Slendy gravy train as far as it would take them. The whole “fitness series” thing was just a premise, a template into which Vincent, Evan, and Jeff could insert their friend Daniel dressed up in a black suit, skinny tie, and face-obscuring mask. What can I say. College guys are willing to do weird things for a laugh.

But then this happened:

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‘Game of Thrones’ and the Art of the Visual FX Reel

Posted: 06 Aug 2011 01:15 PM PDT

Even if you don’t know much about filmmaking, odds are, you’re aware of the mark of good special effects: If the effects are reeeeeeally good, you don’t actually notice them. This is one of the reasons why the Lord of the Rings trilogy is so good; it’s one of the reasons why Black Swan was so good; and it’s one of the reasons that HBO’s Game of Thrones is so good. This is also why it’s so much fun when special effects reels detailing how all of those so-spectacular-you-didn’t-even-notice-them things were accomplished pop up on the Internet. Hoorah for the Internet!

Things that I hadn’t realized before watching this just-released Game of Thrones visual FX reel include the fact that all of the big architecture strewn around Westeros and the lands across the Narrow Sea is added in after the fact with CGI. This isn’t a ground-breaking discovery– even though Lord of the Rings may have gone out and built the whole of Edoras on a hill somewhere in new Zealand, I don’t expect the same from a television show (not even an HBO show)– but somehow, it just hadn’t occurred to me that the huge and ancient-looking buildings would be CG. You know why? Because they looked so real that they didn’t draw attention to themselves. Take a look-see here and prepare to do some ooo-ing and aaah-ing:

The reel’s reveals (hey, that rhymes!) work in either of two ways: 1) It shows you the before followed by the after, or 2) It shows you the after followed by the before, which is then followed by an even bigger after. Usually, it relies on the first method, which has mostly to do with how the reveals impact the audience. Which makes you go “Whoa!” more: Seeing a weird wooden cage-like thing hanging out alone in front of a green screen become a tiny, rickety elevator traveling up a massively tall Wall of ice, or the other way around? My guess is you’d pick the first option; when you see something small turn into something huge, it can literally take your breath away. Occasionally the GoT reel does use the second option; notably, this occurs during the reveal of how Tyrion’s prison cell in the Vale was done: It starts with the familiar shot of Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) peeking over the edge as the camera pulls back; then shows the cell as a solitary set piece on a sound stage; then finishes off with the full shot of the cell looking over the edge of a gigantic mountain range. What this does is give you a frame of reference beforehand so you can track what’s going on during the reveal– then, when the final big after makes an appearance, you’ve now gotten two take-your-breath-away moments for the price of one.

All in all, it’s pretty awesome. Who else can’t wait for season 2? Or for George R. R. Martin to finish the rest of the book series, for that matter? I know I can’t!

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