This edition of the wild and the wacky is dedicated to Loyal Citizen Jason, who nagged me about posting another NSRT. I’ve been collecting these links that amuse or interest me for a while, but just hadn’t put them together in a post. The nagging was successful.
* Let’s get something out of the way right now. That image over there is just my favorite picture in the world, that’s all (full size).
* The White Stripes broke up this week, and I’m not happy about it. Great band. Fortunately, Jack White is one of the most prolific artists out there, so there will be no shortage of good stuff coming from him in the future. Still…the Stripes were just brilliant.
* Oh yes…two new Angry Birds games are coming. First, a Valentine’s Day edition, then Angry Birds Rio in March (see the trailer down at the bottom of this post). My entire family is hopelessly addicted to Angry Birds. We need another hit.
* If you’ve gotten into Twitter (here’s RN’s feed!), you know that it is becoming an essential source for news, opinion…and can’t miss items like this: Who’s Pooping On Twitter?.
* Since we’re on the subject, how about this guy who admitted that he pooed on himself during a match at the World Cup. Yes, disgusting, but we’re all about hard-hitting news stories here at RN.
* The Times had this list of their top 100 books of 2010, and it’s worth a look. The other day, Joe Posnanski was talking about books, and I ended up ordering a bunch of his suggestions for my Kindle: Me Talk Pretty One Day (David Sedaris), Summer for the Gods (Edward Larson), The Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafon), The End of Baseball (Peter Schilling). Those go along with the books I’m currently reading on dead tree: Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West (Cormac McCarthy), The Terror (Dan Simmons), and Endgame: Bobby Fischer’s Remarkable Rise and Fall (Frank Brady).
Yes, I have too many books in the queue, but I’m always up for suggestions. Let’s hear them.
* These pictures of Chernobyl 25 years later are breath-taking.
* This can’t be real, can it? If so, it’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.
* This kid likes Erin Andrews. (Andrews’ hotness rating, by the way: way overrated.)
* The Academy Awards are rapidly approaching. I’ve seen almost all the Best Picture contenders (and will be seeing the final three in the next week). So far, The King’s Speech wins my personal award, narrowly edging True Grit. Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush were both superb in TKS (as well as Helena Bonham Carter, who was almost unrecognizable in a role where she wasn’t playing a weirdo), and it was a gripping story.
True Grit is probably the most rewatchable movie I saw in the last year; can’t wait to get that one on Blu-Ray. If I never got to watch another movie in my life other than Wes Anderson and Coen Brothers films, I think I’d be very happy indeed. A sidenote to True Grit: it’s going to be a crime when fourteen year-old Hailee Stansfield doesn’t win the Oscar for her performance.
I haven’t seen The Social Network yet, but I’m looking forward to it, despite my increasingly rabid anti-Facebook stance.
* I would love to do this to the morons who program those robocalls from our school district.
* I think I’ve linked this examination of auto-correct screwups before, but it never fails to make me laugh out loud. I especially loved this one. That site is pretty much the funniest thing on the interwebs.
* Yeah, we’ve been hammered by snow lately, but your lame snowman pales in comparison to this epic Jabba the Hutt snow sculpture.
* My favorite restaurant in NYC. A friend introduced me to Patsy’s, an Italian restaurant frequented by Sinatra back in the day, on my first-ever visit to the City. We’ve tried to eat there every trip since, and I’ve made the unfortunate discovery that it’s nearly impossible to get really good Italian food in most cities (or at least, I haven’t found the right restaurants).
* I have many pet peeves; near the top of that list are unnecessary quotation marks, such as those collected at this brilliant site. Why do people do that?
* I’m not a gamer, but I’m looking forward to Uncharted 3. If you’ve ever played the Uncharted games, you have seen the best of what video games can bring to the entertainment table. More enjoyable (and more profitable) than most movies, with a great story and wonderful graphics.
Do we have any gamers out there? I have a PS3, but the Uncharted (one and two) and Bioshock (one and two) games are really the first games I’ve ever played other than the sports titles (and every Lego Batman, Indiana Jones, and Star Wars game that my kids can get their hands on). Any suggestions for other ones I should try? Of course, with baseball season rapidly approaching, I’ll be surprised if I have much time for such leisurely pursuits.