Ladies and gentlemen, prepare to have a crush on one or both of the fine young kids in the band Pomplamoose. A duo based in California, they practice a new art form called the “VideoSong” described by the band as follows:

This cover is a VideoSong, a new medium with 2 rules:

1. What you see is what you hear (no lip-syncing for instruments or voice).

2. If you hear it, at some point you see it (no hidden sounds).

And as far as I can tell, they’re right — they really do film every single bit of the recording process, making for an entertaining YouTube video as well as some pretty killer songs.

“Single Ladies” – Beyonce Cover

Their best work, in my humble opinion (although the Mrs. Robinson cover later in this post is pretty awesome too). My favorite part is when the singer objects to the lyrics of the bridge and skips ahead to the chorus.

“September” – Earth, Wind & Fire Cover

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ATTENTION, ATTENTION:

“Feel Art Again” is now on Facebook!

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If you’ve seen the movie based on Stephen King’s Pet Sematary Two, you probably remember the horrifying scene at the beginning when the actress is electrocuted on set while her son (Edward Furlong, back in his dreamy days) looks on. While that particular incident comes to us courtesy of Mr. King, film set tragedies aren’t unheard of in real life. Here are 10 of them.

1. The Twilight Zone: The Movie. It sounds like something straight out of Rod Serling’s head, but sadly, this accident wasn’t a work of fiction. Actor Vic Morrow and two children were filming a scene for the first segment of the movie that involved a trip in time back to the Vietnam War. Some explosions went off too close to low-flying helicopters, which resulted in “foreign object damage to one rotor blade, the separation of the helicopter’s tail rotor assembly, and the uncontrolled descent of the helicopter.” Sadly, the damaged rotor blade decapitated Morrow and one of the children; the other child was crushed under the helicopter itself.
2. Million Dollar Mystery. A well-known Hollywood stuntman, Dar Robinson, unfortunately plunged over a cliff to his death when filming this barely-concealed advertisement for Glad Bags (the movie was co-financed by Glad and DeLaurentiis Entertainment and featured Glad Lock bags prominently). After 19 years as a stuntman and nary a broken bone, Dar missed his braking point while filming a motorcycle drive-by and sailed right over the edge of a cliff. This movie and Lethal Weapon, which he had just finished filming, were both dedicated to him.

3. Catch-22. The 1970 movie based on the Joseph Heller novel of the same name had its own tragedy, although this was one that probably could have been prevented. Second Unit Director John Jordan was direction a scene out of a vintage airplane and refused to wear a harness to keep him secure while the plane was in flight. He was sucked out of the plane and, of course, didn’t survive the fall.

4. Top Gun. Art Scholl, a seasoned stunt pilot, was hired to do some stunts for the movie and film them from the inside of the plane to make it appear as though Tom Cruise (or Anthony Edwards, or Val Kilmer) had performed them. He was working on a flat spin off the coast Southern California when he radioed, “I have a problem… I have a real problem.” The plane crashed into the Pacific and was never recovered. The cause of the accident is unknown to this day. (more…)

Even if you’re not a fan of old movies, you know the names – Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, Errol Flynn, William Holden. But can you identify them in a picture? It’s more challenging than you think (although there are a couple of easy ones in there).

Take the Quiz: Star Search

Reader Susann writes in to ask, “What exactly is the cause of a brain freeze?”

You may know brain freeze by one of its other names: an ice cream headache, a cold-stimulus headache or sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia (“nerve pain of the sphenopalatine ganglion”), but no matter what you call it, it hurts like hell.

Brain freeze is brought on by the speedy consumption of cold beverages or food. According to Dr. Joseph Hulihan, a former assistant professor in the Department of Neurology at the Temple University Health Sciences Center, ice cream is a very common cause of head pain, with about one third of a randomly selected population succumbing to ice cream headaches.

So what causes that pain?

As far back as the late 1960s, researchers pinned the blame on the same vascular mechanisms—rapid constriction and dilation of blood vessels—that were responsible for the aura and pulsatile pain phases of migraine headaches. (more…)

XLNT news for teachers and parents and a reason for kids to LOL. Despite rumors that texting causes children to be poor spellers, a new study from researchers at the University of Alberta showed that commonly used instant messaging language—otherwise known as simple messaging service (SMS)—doesn’t impact a child’s spelling. Poor spellers remain poor spellers and good spellers remain good spellers.

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Well this just about made my month. This morning, Al Roker, Ann Curry & Natalie Morales spent a Today Show segment discussing Stacy Conradt’s blockbuster story on secret menu items at fast food restaurants. I’m going to celebrate with a Neapolitan shake.

The citizens of many other nations make light of America’s lack of knowledge of the world beyond their borders. And it’s true; few Americans could point to Senegal or the Aral Sea on an unlabeled map. But surely we know the nations on our own continent, right? All 23 of them? Even with a head start of seven countries, we dare you to ace this quiz and name the 16 others.

Take the Quiz: How Continental Are You?

Anyone afraid of heights would most certainly not be interested in exploring any of the 12 viewing platforms featured on this WebEcoist post. The most striking is probably the one shown, found at the Aurland Lookout in Norway. While it looks like a bridge solely made for suicides, it actually has a thick sheet of plate glass at the end to stop eager viewers from getting too close to the edge.

I think I would be willing to walk to the glass, but I would have to have my hand on the railing the whole time. Could you make it to the end of these beautiful but terrifying viewing platforms?

For today’s weird video enjoyment, I bring you this bizarre promotional video for ABB Robotics and Honeytop Pancakes, in which it is revealed that ABB’s robots can sort and stack pancakes at superhuman speed. The repeated shots of the robot’s huge “FlexPicker™ Arms” grabbing and stacking pancakes remind me distinctly of The Matrix, in which gigantic spiderlike robots lumbered over fields of humans…occasionally pulling the plug on one, or picking one out of its pod. Of course, these pancake robots are controlled by ABB’s “PickMaster™ 3.2 Software” (I’m not kidding), which appears to run on a PC nearby. What could possibly go wrong?

Stick with the video for at least a minute and a half; that’s when the real weirdness begins and you actually get to see the PickMaster™ arms in action. Oh, and it should be noted that the system is capable of stacking “in excess of 400 pancakes per minute,” a statistical measurement which one blogger dubbed “ppm.”

Also, not to make this even weirder than it already is, the phrase “the final solution” is in fact used at about the 2:30 mark in the video. (But it is in reference to the robotic system as a business venture, not, you know, the Final Solution.)

(Via Eat Me Daily and Kottke.org.)