Cups - Cool Acapella

Youtube Covers:

From the Movie:

The Music Video:

The Original:

Muhammad Ali Speed

Fleet Foot

Beautiful Slips

Fast & Accurate Hands

 

 

The Greatest

Silent Monks Singing Halleluia

Trick Shot Titus - at 3 years old

Dirty Car Art

America's Got Talent 2013 Winner - Kenichi Ebina

X-Factor Australia 2013 - Jai Waetford

The Pixel Painter

"The Pixel Painter" is a microdocumentary about 97-year-old Hal Lasko (aka "Grandpa"), a former graphic artist who started creating in Microsoft Paint when he lost his eyesight. Today, he spends up to ten hours a day shaping 8-bit masterpieces one pixel at a time.

"We got Grandpa a computer probably fifteen years ago," says Lasko's grandson, Ryan. "I knew I had to show him Microsoft Paint. And once I did, he took off with it. It wasn't until years later that we realized how important this thing was to him."

SEXPAND

Lasko leverages Paint's zoom feature to great effect, using it to explore subject matter ranging from autumn foliage to space highways ("a small statement about a big subject," he says of the latter). But the themes of his creations almost don't matter. Directed by Josh Bogdan, "The Pixel Painter" is as much an exploration of technological empowerment as it is a tribute to artistry in general; at its core, it's a poignant ode to passion, life, and the will to create.

How Chinese Ingenuity Destroyed Salad Bars at Pizza Hut

Source

You had one trip to the salad bar. So dammit, you had to make it count.

In China, Pizza Huts are either take-out only or somewhat upscale sit-down restaurants that even serve steak. A while back, it became a fad of sorts to build enormous fruit and vegetable structures at Pizza Hut salad bars. The reason was that customers only got one plate and one trip to the salad bar, so they wanted their visit to be worth it. And was it ever.

The result was truly amazing and wonderfully creative plates of food. Yesterday, Japanese site LabaQ uploaded some classic "salad tower" pics:

There's an art and a craft to good salad stacking that, like with real structural engineering, needs good foundations to build higher and higher. Here, that strength comes from carrots, cucumbers, and croutons.

Here's a how-to:

As The Beijinger first reported in 2009, Pizza Hut actually announced it was removing salad bars from its restaurants as part of a menu revamp. It was believed that salad stacking was to blame. Ya think?

However, according to the Baidu wiki, when Pizza Hut announced it was removing the salad bars, that apparently encouraged people to make salad towers before the salad bars were gone for good! Others in China agreed with Pizza Hut's decision because they felt these food structures were wasteful if people didn't finish eating them.

It's unclear whether Pizza Hut was actually able to remove salad bars from all its restaurants in China. Kotaku's Beijing based writer Eric Jou says there are still salad bars in a Pizza Hut near him. Sadly though, there are no salad towers.

Auctioneer Clucking

Docomo's Touch of Wood

China's Got Talent - Girl With No Fingers

Miyoko Shida Rigolo - Balance Art

Jean Walker, Michael Jackson Impersonating Taxi Driver

Britain's Got Talent 2013 - Attraction

Britain's Got Talent 2013 - Alice Fredenham

Paper War

Six-year-old b-girl destroys the dance floor

This six-year-old break-dancer BGIRL TERRA destroys her opponent in this amazing break dance stunt performance. She may have been half her opponent's size, but that didn't stop this mini break-dancer from showcasing a fiery range of moves. The pint-sized performer was taking part in the Baby Battle division of the Chelles Battle Pro competition held in Paris on Saturday, 2nd March 2013. Kitted out in a mini grey tracksuit with pink stripes, Terra from London, performed an impressive array of moves. Although a dancer called Jalen won the overall Baby Battle - Terra won Best Dancer. 6-year-old b-girl Terra of the Soul Mavericks stunned competitors at the Chelles Battle Pro break dancing competition in Chelles, France. Though she was the youngest in the competition she still earned the title of 'Best Dancer Of The Baby Battle' after taking on b-boys almost twice her age, Final Battle 2013

House of The Rising Sun - Musical Tesla Coils

Shadowland

Danny Macaskill - Industrial Revolutions

2 Year Old Basketball Trickshot Prodigy

Yif Bread Magic

This illusionist is on a "roll!" Yif is a "rising" star in the world of magic. He uses his "flour" power to pull a dough-licious loaf of bread out of nowhere! You "knead" to see it to believe it.

Little girl with great boxing skills

Reshat Mati, 13 year old BJJ, Boxing, Kickboxing & MMA Prodigy

Brooke Raboutou, 11 year old Rock Climbing Prodigy

Video Comic

French Fries Art

Strange Worlds - Mini Dioramas

By day, Matthew is a professional fashion photographer. By night, for the last five years, he’s been creating large dioramas of tiny environments and photographing them. If you knew nothing about his process, you’d think his photographs were of real life places.

He stumbled upon his Strange Worlds idea by accident one day while in the kitchen at work.

“The first Strange World that I created was Paprika Mars,” Matthew details. “I had spilled paprika in the kitchen and instead of cleaning it, I was playing with it. It was the color and the texture and I just had the inspiration to create Mars out of it.”



Ever since he can remember, he has always been a “daydreamer.”

“When I was young I was always very, very obsessed with movie miniatures and movie magic and things of small scale,” he says. “Even just to see a place that I couldn’t see in person, it was a way for me to try to see the surface of Mars.”

Matthew began building his creations in the back of his father’s old warehouse. He has since moved the production of his Strange Worlds to his living room.

“Having these in my living room can be overwhelming most of the time. They take up so much space and so much time to create that I have to literally walk over them, walk under them, and walk around them,” he says with a twinge of frustration. “I don’t have many visitors.”



It can take him anywhere from three to seven months to build one Strange World and he takes thousands of exposures to document the process.

“I’ll make a change, and I’ll make a capture. And, I’ll make another little change and I’ll make a capture,” Matthew says.

When he is done building the diorama, he sets the lighting and prepares the special effects.

“I do minimal digital editing on my work,” he explains. “The most I will do is composite different parts together in order to get the right exposure.”

When he is done photographing scenes, he usually destroys the dioramas because they are not really built to last.



Matthew gets his inspiration from a number of sources.

“‘How to Breathe Underwater’ came around at a time in my life where I was sort of overwhelmed by everything that was happening to me,” he says. In this Strange World, “I used jelly beans carved and rolled by hand to create sea anemones. I used wire coated in fabric glitter to create some kind of sea urchins, and brain coral was made out of walnuts.”



But the process is not always easy, he admits.

“I have been very discouraged many times building these. It can be very frustrating,” Matthew says. “But I found that making mistakes was the best thing for the work because I was able to discover methods and strategies to build future landscapes.”

When people look at his photos, Matthew hopes onlookers see beyond the shock value of the materials that he uses and the result.

“I hope that they see more than just a pretty picture of a landscape,” he says. “I hope they have a strong emotional connection to the work.”



“When I look back on my body of work, I feel a sense of accomplishment,” says Matthew. “The thing that is most fulfilling is knowing that I can inspire someone like me to get out there and create something. If I can create the surface of Mars out of paprika and a tornado out of steel wool, there is nothing you can’t do.”

Matthew Albanese’s first book Strange Worlds, with a text by David Revere McFadden, will be published by Lazy Dog Press in Spring 2013. You can also follow Matthew’s activities on his Facebook fan page.