[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bmhjf0rKe8&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1] :)
It's right up there with tickling the slow loris. Tickling the gorilla, however, seems a little weird.
Digging through LIFE Creative Commons, and there are some serious goodies in there (via The Best of Life blog).
In 1954, LIFE sent reporters to the Bahamas to cover the filming of Walt Disney’s first live-action picture, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The movie went on to win the Oscar for best special effects. Many of the photos in this gallery never ran in the magazine and have never been seen before now. There are more pictures from this gallery on LIFE, which are worth checking out in their original size (All pics are by Peter Stackpole, 1954).
These images are crazy - it's bad enough getting the tube to work, imagine spending weeks under water in a serious diving suit, communicating only through notes scribbled on slates, probably really freezing most of the time too. And the production team looks massive - safety divers, props men, all working upside down and all over the shop.
Movie Director Richard Fleischer, in diving suit during filming of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”
These distinctive suits, as the original captions noted, were a technical problem because they “had to be invented to clothe the fabled Nautilus crew— Victorian-looking yet practical and self-contained… the way Jules Verne imagined it for his mythical hero, Captain Nemo.”
Director of operations writing instructions to the cameraman on slate during the underwater filming of Walt Disney’s production of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”.
Propman with Crayfish during the underwater filming of Walt Disney’s production of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”. A propman waits for the proper moment in the scene to release two more crayfish into view of the camera.
Shooting the Underwater Burial of Walt Disney’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”. Actors prepare to shoot a big scene involving an underwater funeral procession while a scene coordinator hovers above them. The actors had to wait four weeks to shoot the scene, because bad weather made the depths too murky.
Here's the communications chief napping during the underwater filming of Walt Disney’s production of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”. Salvage Man Frank Higgins grabs some shut-eye underwater. As the only member of the team whose suit had surface air-lines and a built-in telephone, Higgins was underwater for most of the day and had to grab rest whenever he could.
A propman carries a 9-foot wooden wrench during the underwater filming of Walt Disney’s production of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”. The wrench will be used in a scene where the Nautilus crewmen leave the submarine to repair a crippled propeller.
Propmen —off-camera and wearing woolen underwear for warmth— drag a 400-pound net of Bahama crayfish across the sea floor for use in a later scene of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”.
Scene from the underwater filming of Walt Disney's production of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea". Big lead boots!
If you don't remember the film, here's the old trailer:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBBcdGDLLRo&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
Read the whole thing here. It's worth it, but to whet your appetite, here are the first few mails in this genius exchange, also known as "It's like Twitter, but we charge people for it":
From: Simon Edhouse
Date: Monday 16 November 2009 2.19pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Logo Design
Date: Monday 16 November 2009 2.19pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Logo Design
Hello David,
I would like to catch up as I am working on a really exciting project at the moment and need a logo designed. Basically something representing peer to peer networking. I have to have something to show prospective clients this week so would you be able to pull something together in the next few days? I will also need a couple of pie charts done for a 1 page website. If deal goes ahead there will be some good money in it for you.
Simon
From: David Thorne
Date: Monday 16 November 2009 3.52pm
To: Simon Edhouse
Subject: Re: Logo Design
Dear Simon,
Disregarding the fact that you have still not paid me for work I completed earlier this year despite several assertions that you would do so, I would be delighted to spend my free time creating logos and pie charts for you based on further vague promises of future possible payment. Please find attached pie chart as requested and let me know of any changes required.
Regards, David.
From: Simon Edhouse
Date: Monday 16 November 2009 4.11pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Re: Logo Design
Is that supposed to be a fucking joke? I told you the previous projects did not go ahead. I invested a lot more time and energy in those projects than you did. If you put as much energy into the projects as you do being a dickhead you would be a lot more successful.
From: David Thorne
Date: Monday 16 November 2009 5.27pm
To: Simon Edhouse
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Logo Design
Dear Simon,
You are correct and I apologise. Your last project was actually both commercially viable and original. Unfortunately the part that was commercially viable was not original, and the part that was original was not commercially viable.
I would no doubt find your ideas more 'cutting edge' and original if I had traveled forward in time from the 1950's but as it stands, your ideas for technology based projects that have already been put into application by other people several years before you thought of them fail to generate the enthusiasm they possibly deserve. Having said that though, if I had traveled forward in time, my time machine would probably put your peer to peer networking technology to shame as not only would it have commercial viability, but also an awesome logo and accompanying pie charts.
Regardless, I have, as requested, attached a logo that represents not only the peer to peer networking project you are currently working on, but working with you in general.
Regards, David.
Welcome to Wordpress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!
As James Harrison says, I heart XKCD.
So it's that time of year again. The Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction awards. Snarky cynics pee on the bonfires of writers' most extravagant gestures, causing great sizzling plumes of wee steam. The victims authors have bashed away at their typewriters for months, forging the next great novel. The one outlet for the characters they have created? Shagging scenes. Oh what a poisoned chalice. Writers get to exercise their fantasies and exorcise their imaginations yet, in the cold light of day, find themselves ridiculed for their red wine-fuelled Mills & Boon featurettes. What seemed lust-ridden, horny and steamy now just looks... well, judge for yourself. Here's the list (in three stripes, like Zorro):
Villages by John Updike (Hamish Hamilton)
A flock of crows, six or eight, raucously rasping at one another, thrashed into the top of an oak on the edge of the square of sky. The heavenly invasion made his heart race; he looked down at his prick, silently begging it not to be distracted; his mind fought skidding into crows and woods, babies and Phyllis, and his prick stared back at him with its one eye clouded by a single drop of pure seminal yearning. He felt suspended at the top of an arc. Faye leaned back on the blanket, arranging her legs in an M of receptivity, and he knelt between them like the most abject and craven supplicant who ever exposed his bare ass to the eagle eyes of a bunch of crows.
A flock of crows, six or eight, raucously rasping at one another, thrashed into the top of an oak on the edge of the square of sky. The heavenly invasion made his heart race; he looked down at his prick, silently begging it not to be distracted; his mind fought skidding into crows and woods, babies and Phyllis, and his prick stared back at him with its one eye clouded by a single drop of pure seminal yearning. He felt suspended at the top of an arc. Faye leaned back on the blanket, arranging her legs in an M of receptivity, and he knelt between them like the most abject and craven supplicant who ever exposed his bare ass to the eagle eyes of a bunch of crows.
Faye took him in hand. He slipped in. He became an adulterer. He went for the last inch. She grunted, at her own revelation. His was that her cunt did not feel like Phyllis's. Smoother, somehow simpler, its wetness less thick, less of a sauce, more of a glaze. It was soon over. He could not help himself, he was so excited, proud, and nervous. When he was done, he opened his eyes, and saw this stranger's face an inch from his, seemingly asleep, the closed eyelids showing a thin pulse, her long lips curved self-lullingly.
Fan Tan by Marlon Brando and Donald Cammell (William Heinemann)
In a moment Annie was on his side, Madame Lai was like a plant growing over him, and her little fist (holding the biggest black pearl) was up his asshole planting the pearl in the most appreciated place.
"Oh, Lord," he cried out. "I'm a-comin'!"
She could not answer. It is the one drawback of fellatio as conscientious as hers that it eliminates the chance for small talk and poetry alike. But nothing is exactly perfect in this life, and for Annie Doultry the delicate but firm pressure on his rear parts was in perfect harmony with the eruption of his cock. He came and he came - we are dealing with a hero here. At one point his lover backed away to inspect the unaltered gush of it, like a plumber saying to a customer, "Don't blame me. This water supply will stop when the dam's empty."
The bed creaked and its old springs twanged as he levered into action with his hungry stomach and his big slippery mouth. Annie was at work again. With a practiced flick of the wrist designed for heavier work, he eased the cheongsam's slit wider to expose the entire butterball thigh. Without perceptible movement, her legs were now definitely farther apart, and their musculature was unresistant and frothy, as if they were no longer bearing her weight. In a sense, she seemed to float upon the musty air like an arrangement of balloons. Evidently the dexterous licking of the inside of her left knee was contributing to her support, as it would soon to her downfall.
When it came, it was a float rather than a fall. Annie's left hand was completely occupied, each finger playing a separate tune upon the delicate complexities of her pussy, so it must have been the right one that slid under her ass and elevated her and floated her onto the bed - or more precisely, onto Annie, onto his broad stomach, the sturdy muscles beneath expressly relaxed to provide the comfort of a mattress of familiar Celtic flesh. An unintelligible muttering sound came from Yummee as she subsided on top of him. It could have been a prayer to one of her goddesses, or a threat. ...
Winkler by Giles Coren (Jonathan Cape)
And he came hard in her mouth and his dick jumped around and rattled on her teeth and he blacked out and she took his dick out of her mouth and lifted herself from his face and whipped the pillow away and he gasped and glugged at the air, and he came again so hard that his dick wrenched out of her hand and a shot of it hit him straight in the eye and stung like nothing he'd ever had in there, and he yelled with the pain, but the yell could have been anything, and as she grabbed at his dick, which was leaping around like a shower dropped in an empty bath, she scratched his back deeply with the nails of both hands and he shot three more times, in thick stripes on her chest. Like Zorro.
The First Casualty by Ben Elton (Bantam Press)
He stood there, his head thrown back with the rain falling on his face, as he felt fingers reaching into his fly and searching for a way into his long johns. Murray was a nurse and used to undressing men; it was not long before she had found what she was looking for and liberated his straining manhood, and then he gasped out loud. The warmth of her mouth on him was almost too much to bear.
"Oh Jesus. Yes!" he gasped as her lips and teeth closed savagely around him and he felt the tip of her tongue poking and probing. Then, just when he was beginning to think that he must explode, her mouth was gone and in its place he felt her hands once more and he smelt the unmistakable smell of oiled rubber.
"Glad this wasn't hanging on the line to dry when you saw my room," he heard her say. "I think even I would have been embarrassed."
She slipped the big thick rubber sheath over him and then pulled him down to her. Kingsley soon discovered that beneath her skirt she was wearing nothing. He felt the thick, luxuriant bush of soft wet hair between her legs and in a moment he was buried inside it.
"Ooh-la-la!" she breathed as he smelt the clean aroma of her short bobbed hair and the rain-sodden grass around it. "Oooh-la-jolly well-la!"
And so they made love together in the pouring rain, with Nurse Murray emitting a stream of girlish exclamations which seemed to indicate that she was enjoying herself. "Gosh", "Golly" and, as things moved towards a conclusion, even "Tally ho!"
Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie (Jonathan Cape)
" ... Let's, you know, caress each other in five places and kiss in seven ways and make out in nine positions, but let's not get carried away." In reply, Boonyi pulled her phiran and shirt off over her head and stood before him naked except for the little pot of fire hanging low, below her belly, heating further what was already hot. "Don't you treat me like a child," she said in a throaty voice that proved she had been unsparing in her drug abuse. "You think I went to all this trouble just for a kiddie-style session of lick and suck?"
Lovers and Strangers by David Grossman (Bloomsbury)
She touched it and her fingers were light and became excited at once, and he started mumbling, "Good, good, good." She listened with wonder. This wasn't like the moans she had heard from thousands of others, but like someone suddenly recognizing something they had previously only heard about, like a boy who sees an airplane in the sky for the first time, not in a story-book, and he stands and cries out: Airplane, airplane! When she looked at him, a sigh escaped her. He was so beautiful at that moment, as if a boy and a girl were twisting inside him like two ropes or braids, intertwined, like something you see only in dreams, she thought, or in the Indian shrines, and even there it's not like this, not this pure and whole and glowing. She whispered to him eagerly, "You can do everything, you'll see, nothing will stand in the way of your courage."
Memories of my Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Jonathan Cape) On the night of her birthday I sang the entire song to Delgadina, and I kissed her all over her body until I was breathless: her spine, vertebra by vertebra, down to her languid buttocks, the side with the mole, the side of her inexhaustible heart. As I kissed her the heat of her body increased, and it exhaled a wild, untamed fragrance. She responded with new vibrations along every inch of her skin, and on each one I found a distinctive heat, a unique taste, a different moan, and her entire body resonated inside with an arpeggio, and her nipples opened and flowered without being touched. I was beginning to fall asleep in the small hours when I heard something like the sound of multitudes in the sea and a panic in the trees that pierced my heart. I went to the bathroom and wrote on the mirror: Delgadina, my love, the Christmas breezes have arrived.
Blinding Light by Paul Theroux (Hamish Hamilton)
She was racing ahead, reading with emphasis.
The sound of his pleasure came slanting from deep within his lungs and seemed like an echo of a softer sighing in her throat. Her breasts were in his hands, his thumbs grazing her nipples. Her touch was surer and so finely judged that she seemed to feel in the throb of his cock the spasm of his juice rising - knew even before he did that he was about to come. Then he knew, his body began to convulse, and as he cried "No" - because she had let go - she pushed him backward onto the seat and pressed her face down, lapping his cock into her mouth, curling her tongue around it, and the suddenness of it, the snaking of her tongue, the pressure of her lips, the hot grip of her mouth, triggered his orgasm, which was not juice at all but a demon eel thrashing in his loins and swimming swiftly up his cock, one whole creature of live slime fighting the stiffness as it rose and bulged at the tip and darted into her mouth.
The Olive Readers by Christine Aziz (Macmillan)
We made our way to the summerhouse and hid in its shadows. We lay on the cool floor and I twined my legs around Homer's body, gripping him like a hunter hanging on to its prey. He made love to me with his fingers and I came in the palm of his hand. He stroked my breasts and neck. "Don't wash it away" he said. "I want to be able to smell you tonight."
Lobster by Guillaume Lecasble (Dedalus Ltd)
She reached the staircase and climbed the first step but the cold was numbing her mind. She fainted, upright and motionless with seawater up to her belly. Lobster swam to her purple feet. Cut off the bloodless hand with his pincers, and climbed up the inside of the leg as far as the clenched knees. He was amazed at the pleasure he felt from being held in this way. His pincers slipped between the thighs, prising them gently apart. His feelers were just able to reach the satin of the panties. They fluttered, made the labia quiver. Under the shimmering material a hint of life was returning. Angelina's thighs relaxed. Lobster pulled back his feelers. Tensed and released his tail. His strokes were fast and powerful. He was making headway. He sank himself into her warming muscles; his tail did not falter. He moved forward, a centimetre at a time. Yes! Suddenly he could see the fabric clearly, glistening, pearl-like.
The Alchemy of Desire by Tarun Tejpal (Picador)
Leaving everything else for later, I went looking for where her hair began and worked my way through its musky trails to where there was none. And having found her burning core, and having drunk of it, I left it, and wandered her body, only to keep circling back to it for sustenance.
We began to climb peaks and fall off them. We did old things in new ways. And new things in old ways. At times like these we were the work of surrealist masters. Any body part could be joined to any body part. And it would result in a masterpiece. Toe and tongue. Nipple and penis. Finger and the bud. Armpit and mouth. Nose and clitoris. Clavicle and gluteus maximus. Mons veneris and phallus indica.
The Last Tango of Labia Minora. Circa 1987. Vasant Kunj. By Salvador Dalí. Draughtsmen: Fizznme.
Fizz screamed silently through it all - through gritted teeth, through wide-open mouth - and only those who have known a woman screaming silently in orgasm know how loud it is. It ripped through the room and set me to pounding frenzies.
---
So there you have it. Some luminaries in there, so to speak. But what language! Talk about show don't tell. Wowsers. I'll post the winner here later.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vUhSYLRw14&rel=0&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1&w=700]
Dock Ellis. He was the baseball player who in 1970 pitched a no-hitter for the Pittsburgh Pirates while tripping his balls off on LSD. Ellis died last year. In his honor, James Blagden and Chris Isenberg did this hysterical animation to Ellis's retelling of his acid adventure on the mound. "Dock Ellis's Legendary LSD No-Hitter animation" (Dangerous Minds)
Here's a bit from an article about him:
Thirty-five years ago, on June 12, 1970, Pittsburgh Pirate and future Texas Rangers pitcher Dock Ellis found himself in the Los Angeles home of a childhood friend named Al Rambo. Two days earlier, he'd flown with the Pirates to San Diego for a four-game series with the Padres. He immediately rented a car and drove to L.A. to see Rambo and his girlfriend Mitzi. The next 12 hours were a fog of conversation, screwdrivers, marijuana, and, for Ellis, amphetamines. He went to sleep in the early morning, woke up sometime after noon and immediately took a dose of Purple Haze acid. Ellis would frequently drop acid on off days and weekends; he had a room in his basement christened "The Dungeon," in which he'd lock himself and listen to Jimi Hendrix or Iron Butterfly "for days."
A bit later, how long exactly he can't recall, he came across Mitzi flipping through a newspaper. She scanned for a moment, then noticed something.
"Dock," she said. "You're supposed to pitch today."
Ellis focused his mind. No. Friday. He wasn't pitching until Friday. He was sure.
"Baby," she replied. "It is Friday. You slept through Thursday."
Ellis remained calm. The game would start late. Ample time for the acid to wear off. Then it struck him: doubleheader. The Pirates had a doubleheader. And he was pitching the first game. He had four hours to get to San Diego, warm up and pitch. If something didn't happen in the interim, Dock Philip Ellis, age 25, was about to enter a 50,000-seat stadium and throw a very small ball, very hard, for a very long time, without the benefit of being able to, you know, feel the thing.
Which, it turns out, was one of the least crazy things that happened to him on that particular day....
(read the full story in the Dallas Observer here)
ps - A no-hitter (also known as a no-hit game, or colloquially, a "no-no") is a baseball game in which one team has no hits. In Major League Baseball, the team must be without hits during the entire game, and the game must be at least nine innings. A pitcher who prevents the opposing team from achieving a hit is said to have "thrown a no-hitter". Throwing a no-hitter is a rare accomplishment for a pitcher or pitching staff: only 263 have been thrown in Major League Baseball history since 1875, an average of about two per year. In most cases in MLB, no-hitters are recorded by a single pitcher who throws a complete game.
