Posts Tagged ‘links’
Hungry for Linkage: Free Coffee, Sandwiches and the Return of Restaurant Weeks
Posted by Stefanie Gans / Friday, January 6th, 2012
Drink up: Virginia named top 10 spot for wine lovers. [Wine Enthusiast] Roti Mediterranean lands on this side of the river and celebrates Tuesday, January 17th with FREE sandwiches from 11AM – 1 PM in Arlington. Nice charity tie-in too. [Roti] Is the cupcake trend dying: DC pioneer Cake Love closing shop. [Washington City Paper] So you can join it or avoid it: Alexandria Restaurant Week runs from January 13th to 22nd. [Visit Alexandria] DC’s RW bleeds into Virginia from January 9th to 15th. [Open Table] Guide to grocery store labels. [Lifehacker via @bitchinkitchen] FREE coffee at the new Dunks on Liberia Avenue. Complimentary caffeine valid through January 18th. [ManassasPatch] Will Crispy & Juicy keep its lease…dunn dunn… [Falls Church Times] And I just realized that Rachael Yamagata is from Arlington. [h/t The L Word and @duresport's tweet] Photo by Stefanie Gans, Cheesetique’s check comes with nibs of chocolate
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009
Like trickery and transfiguration in your fairy tales but not villainy and rescue? Russian scholar Vladimir Propp boiled fairy tales down to their basic plot points, and this fairy tale generator allows you to pick your storylines and see what you get. For use as templates: “Cinderella,” “Snow White” and “Hansel & Gretel.”
A lot of people think Michael Jackson is a bit creepy. I’m not one to judge, although I also do not choose to wear only one glove at a time. This blogger takes a funny look at the recent Jackson auction collection and makes some entertaining insights.
There’s nothing like watching an animated dude falling down a mountain and hearing “AAAAARRRGH!” set to a techno beat.
I had no idea that Simon Cowell hated owls or was a leader of beavers. I’ve just had some knowledge dropped on me.
Japanese toy companies love reimagining our pop-culture franchises. Here, see what happens when you monkey with “Sesame Street” characters and turn them into tchotchke with suction cups.
This one’s for the time nerds: a graphical representation of minutes passing us all by. Carpe diem!
The geek-friendly site Great White Snark offers a cake of the week as one of its regular features. This week’s treat is a Jabba the Hutt cake that’s really quite cool but looks hella unappetizing.
“Snakes on a Plane” is just not a movie made to be edited for TV. Why? Because then you get problems like this.
I am all about a Twitter, but this post looks at several Tweets that may just get you fired. Lying to your boss, calling him an idiot and publicly hating your job are not great ways to keep it.
This random pic is for fans of Queen and the New Gods: Freddie Mercury vs. Darkseid!
Sure, Earth Day may have passed but that’s no reason to not proclaim both your eco-friendliness and your “Star Wars” geekdom. Throw on one of these shirts, grab your green lightsaber and you’ll be ready to save the world. Or at least the ozone layer.
Got a great link? Send it over to novapoppin@gmail.com. Here’s your video of the week:
A cheat sheet for your next trip with Doc Brown
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Wednesday, April 15th, 2009
If, say, you ever find yourself piloting a DeLorean powered by 1.21 jigawatts or befriending this guy on the left, make sure you print out this handy-dandy cheat sheet for time travel. Scoff if you’d like, but it’s got some important stuff contained within. For example, it would be helpful to know pasteurization if you somehow find yourself in a time pre-pasteurization. (It also suggests you take credit for something like this when it happens. So I guess it should be brianization now, huh?) Quite a few topics are covered, from chemistry and flight to health and technology. Hang it up in your time machine and if you head back to the future, remember to pick up a sports almanac.
Mario, that lovable Nintendo plumber, is a proud member of the proletariat. Check out this very cool animation featuring the People’s Mario laying the smack down on Goombas, Marxist style.
Along the same cartoony lines, you will seriously waste countless minutes randomly taking out clouds on this site. Simple yet effective. Make sure your speakers are on — the popping sound is half the fun.
Sometimes the artistry that goes into web design truly amazes me. This is one of those sites where I have no idea how they did it, but they make the simple action of moving a ball between the hands of seven different figures pure artistry. Another site to play with as a midday stress reliever.
For those wondering what exactly to do in an emergency, follow this list. Thankfully, I’ve been practicing my door-opening karate chop.
I like this page, as it allows one to find out exactly what song topped the charts on your birthdate. It’s C.W. McCall’s “Convoy” for me. Ah, you have to lve any song that includes CB radio chatter.
For those like me who love both “Star Wars” and “MacGyver,” this is a must-see.
I don’t know really what to say about this site, other than it will keep you busy for a while.
Got a great link? Send it to me at novapoppin@gmail.com. And here’s your video of the week, a new classic:
Catching up on Internet superstars you missed
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Wednesday, April 8th, 2009
When I first saw “Dramatic Chipmunk” on YouTube a couple years back, I thought it was the funniest thing ever. Thing is, it was already old by that time and I was late for the pop-culture train. So while you’re keeping up with the viral Joneses, this site gives you the rundown on 99 Internet sensations that you may have missed. They’re all here: “Chocolate Rain,” “Boom Goes the Dynamite,” “Peanut Butter Jelly Time,” “Charlie the Unicorn” and “George Lucas in Love.” My personal favorite: “G.I. Joe Porkchop Sandwiches.” Just remember — some are pretty NSFW so wear the headphones, kids!
Fairfax’s own ThinkGeek is again the place to get your ’80s on with some of their newest items. Impress your video-game pals with some “Space Invader”-inspired ice cubes in their mixed drinks. But you must serve them wearing neat-o medieval steel gauntlets and an official Adams Atoms shirt just like the one Ogre wears in “Revenge of the Nerds.” NERRRRRRRDDDDSSSS!!!!
This is pretty amazing: the lowest-tech version of “Star Wars” ever.
“Back to the Future II” seemed pretty far out when it set the adventures of Marty McFly in 2015. We’re still six years away, but here’s a list of what the movie has already accurately predicted.
For web-based baseball games, this one’s pretty fun — and morally challenging. “Baseball Juiced” lets you choose between taking steroids or just hitting the gym naturally before swinging for the fences. But what out for random drug testing!
Courtesy of my new favorite website Topless Robot, this list checks off the 10 most likely serial killers among cereal mascots. OK, Count Chocula I can see, but Sugar Bear?!
And those looking for a serious time-waster as well as channel your inner Neil Peart will want to bang these virtual drums to back your fledgling synth band. (Thanks to Warren for the tip.)
Got a great link you want to share? Send it on over to novapoppin@gmail.com. Here’s your video of the week, a tremendous mash-up of “Star Wars” and “Snatch” (again, with saucy language):
A prank that could turn out to be a nerdtastic treasure
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Wednesday, April 1st, 2009
I have spent many a keystroke showing the love for my favorite pop-culture store, Fairfax’s own ThinkGeek. And it, like many sites on the Interwebs today, pulled April Fools’ pranks on their readers. (Hey, Google — mucho props for the Gmail “Autopilot.”) In all its geektasticness, ThinkGeek put up a joke product today reminiscent of a classic scene from “The Empire Strikes Back”: a Tauntaun sleeping bag for your little “Star Wars” nerd. (The Unicorn Chaser and Squeez Bacon were also ingenious.) The thing is, a LOT of people fell for this fake cool product and a LOT of people really want it to be very real, so ThinkGeek is promising its peeps that they’re getting on the horn with George Lucas’ peeps to see if they can actually make it happen. Stay tuned. I don’t have any kids, but I’ll totally keep it around for when I show them “Star Wars” for the first time.
I have no idea who came up with this entertaining animated video, but the Kenyan tourist bureau should hire them post-haste.
Movie-quote junkies can appreciate this: the 100 best movie lines in 200 seconds.
Who isn’t driven crazy when you need to call some company’s customer service, and are forced to talk with a computer to get the job done. (Oh, if they only somehow understood obscenities.) This hand-dandy link for Dial a Human! is a must for those who love to speak with an actual person, giving you the 411 on what numbers to dial to get somebody real on the phone.
Chances are, most of us will never have to deal with a zombie attack. Yet if you ever find yourself in this apocalyptic scenario, these are the first people you’re supposed to kill. Dang it, nerds are fifth on the list!
Cooking by Numbers takes cooking and turns it right round, baby, right round. Whereas normally if you’re gonna get your chef on, you find a recipe and THEN go get the needed ingredients, this interesting site takes what you already have in the fridge and the cupboard — like, say, beef, butter, chocolate, coffee and eggs — and tells you what you can make. Of course, you have more options with the more stuff you have lying around. Thankfully, noodles and sauce is always a choice.
Got a great link? Send it to me at novapoppin@gmail.com. Here’s your video of the week. Watch it and you’ll never hear Katy Perry the same ever again.
A nerd must-have: the Admiral Ackbar shirt
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Wednesday, March 25th, 2009
As you might imagine if you’re a regular viewer of this blog, I’m a big fan of action figures. And a big fan of “Star Wars.” One of my favorite figures of that line back in the day was a guy you had to send away for, that being Admiral Ackbar. (If you’re at a loss, he was the red, lobster-y leader of the Rebel fleet against the second Death Star at the end of “Return of the Jedi.” Any geek worth their Lego Millennium Falcon knows who I’m talking about.) So, boy, was I psyched when I saw this Admiral Ackbar T-shirt that featured one of his most memorable lines. The Force is strong with this one, yo.
There are a lot of people with too much time on their hands. But this guy is at least doing something entertaining as he’s taking creative liberties with a gang of Stormtroopers. The political-leaning folks will like this post from the same site: a critical look at bad paintings of Barack Obama. (If you like want to see the art sans commentary, go here.)
Maybe the Stormtrooper guy recently got a pink slip. That means he also has one of these.
What’s that saying, about stuff coming from the mouths of babes? This is a pretty funny list of how first-graders filled in the blanks with famous proverbs.
I pity the fool who doesn’t check out this Tuff Talkin’ Mr. T! Pull the string on a real Mr. T or an action-figure version for one of his many “A-Team” catchphrases. I can get behind this jibba-jabba.
Check out The Virtual Piano and its many chords for a quick musical interlude to your day. Word to your diminished 7th!
Anyone besides me recall those Quizno’s commercials from a few years back featuring weird creatures singing, “We love these suuuubs!”? The guy who created that has his own site and there is some wicked cool stuff on there, usually having to do with chinchillas, crabs and cats in viking attire. This video of a Slayer fan is simply priceless.
Got a lead on a neat-o link? Send it to me at novapoppin@gmail.com. For your video of the week, I present … “Kitten War”!!!
Alarm clocks you don’t want as presents. Ever.
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Wednesday, March 18th, 2009
I’ve got a bunch of good links for you today, but first let me tell you how much I love sleep. I love sleep. A lot. I would like to get my man Barack Obama to borrow from Mexico and institute the daily work siesta. That would rock. Here’s something I don’t love, though: my alarm clock. And when it comes to the snooze button, it’s a whole love/hate thing going on. Here is a list of annoying alarm clocks I pray never to have near me. To turn the bugger off, I would not like to accurately hit a bullseye with a laser pointer, or put a jigsaw puzzle together, or try to catch it as it flies by me, or crawl around the floor as it spins around mocking me with its hateful beeping. When someone gives you one of these, run away from them.
Dog lovers sometimes find their pooches in a strange position when they come home from work. Other people like to put their pups in funny positions. Be they accidental or intentional, this is a hilarious tribute to the epic dog “fail.”
I’m still ratcheting up the gumption to create a Facebook page for myself, but I promise you, my profile photo won’t be as lame as any of these. OK, it may kinda be like “The Accidental Self-Photographer Shot” but I’ll try to make it hella artistic.
Test your band knowledge with these animated groups categorized by alphabet. It starts with Abba and ends with Zappa, but it’s up to you to figure out the rest. (If you can’t get all of them, go here to figure out which ones you missed.)
Although I do have an affinity for all things G.I. Joe, I’m not big on firearms. But I am big on high-powered weaponry where you shoot foamy items at your loved ones, so this Nerf Vulcan blaster thingy might be a must-have.
I have NO idea what the heck this film is about or what’s going on, but I have to see it because it looks silly good.
Got a cool link? Send it over to novapoppin@gmail.com. Here is your video of the week, the most awesome thing ever starring sheep.
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Tuesday, March 10th, 2009
Chances are, if you are a fan of those newfangled, plastic guitar-powered video games “Rock Band” or “Guitar Hero,” you’ve seen some of the spoof shirts, such as “Cantina Band,” “Cowbell Hero” and “Recorder Hero.” But “Tuba Hero” is by far the best one yet. Oh, if they only had this back when tuba heroism was my life.
You know how to talk like a pirate. Now it’s time to have yourself a pegleg-worthy pirate name. But first, matey, you have to take this quiz. It’s pretty entertaining, and you get to call yourself something really cool. You can refer to me as Dread Pirate Kidd from now on. (Which is kinda funny because one of my fraternity nicknames in college was Dead Kidd, but I digress. Arrr.)
I’m a big fan of animal shadow puppets, but I can appreciate the artistic bent of these creative creature hand-paintings. They are hella creepy, however.
Sticking with the animal theme is this awesome post featuring a slew of ravenous critters. Take a gander at the many squirrels in there, the crazy-eyed cat discovered in the fridge, the Welsh Corgi caught in the jar and a very cute rabbit raiding the cookie plate.
This is a really funny and comprehensive list of really bad stuff that can happen to you, ordered in terms of badness. Things such as sneezing three times in a row, writing a terrible haiku and bumping your shin into the coffee table are pretty low on the bad scale, while getting keelhauled, skinned alive and finding that you “step through a time warp sending you back to the age of the dinosaurs, and step on a bug, resulting in the human race never evolving, causing a paradox ripping reality open at its seams” all qualify as “epic.”
Got a stupendously awesome link you want to share? Send ‘em to novapoppin@gmail.com. If you’ve watched and/or read “Watchmen,” you’ll laugh heartily at the video of the week:
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009
Before we get to the nifty links I’ve got for y’all this week, I did want to mention a notable music show. Especially if you’re into women who will rock your socks, gloves, hat, glasses and other accessories off. Hailing from Massachusetts, the girls of Vagiant are true patriots of punk — like Abigail Adams with a mohawk. They’ll be playing a private birthday party in Tysons on Saturday, but catch them the night before at an all-ages show at BlondeShells in Silver Spring with fellow Boston band, Razors in the Night. Plus, they have a bassist named “Ivahna Rock.” How can you not love that? Also Friday: the “Glory Journal” CD release party for a friend of NoVa Pop, Shane Hines, at Jammin Java.
OK, linkage time. I ran across this recently and it is crazy comprehensive: Cover Browser. There are over 250,000 book, album, magazine, movie and other assorted covers, but there is a real emphasis on comic book covers. Nearly 90,000 of the suckers. The A to Z list is cool, but there are a lot of other neat aspects to the site: lists of cool and weird covers, games, superhero collages, cover evolutions for guys like Batman and Superman, cover gadgets and lots of miscellaneous covertastic fare.
People love messing with other people using signs, and this link is a tribute to such shenanigans.
If you’ve ever perused the Yahoo! Answers site, you’ve seen that there are a lot of weird questions asked. For example, someone might want to know where the hottest place on Earth is, or how to keep their guinea pig from knocking over its food dish. Fascinating stuff, really. This list of 11 actual Yahoo! questions — and their equally absurd answers — is absolutely hilarious. There is some adult sauciness, however, so watch opening it around kiddies or the boss.
I love the “Evil Dead” series as much as the next guy, so I was glad my buddy Warren pointed out this next cult horror-comedy-in-training coming out soon. (And after you check out the trailer, go and peruse his foodie movie scenes post on our new Gut Check blog.)
Got a great link or time-wasting site? Send it over to novapoppin@gmail.com. Here’s your video of the week, a good one for lovers of ’80s tunes:
Head Over Heels: Literal Video Version – watch more funny videos
She-Hulk says goodbye for now *sniff*
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Tuesday, February 24th, 2009
This is a slooooow week for local book signings. What, now that Obama’s in office, no one wants to come around anymore? Not cool, man! That’s one of the many reasons why comic books are so cool. They come in every week, and there’s always something interesting going on! However, it’s sad day for all She-Hulk fans as her current series ends with numero 36. No worries, though, True Believers: The rumor mill is saying she won’t be out of commission for too long. The old Defenders lineup is back together in “Hulk” No. 10.
Also, for those who’ve just come across Marvel’s “Dark Reign” storyline — a pretty good one thus far, I must say — you may want to pick up “Dark Reign Files” No. 1, as it doles out important info on everything your favorite power-hungry bad guys are doing now that they’re in charge. And so you’ll know what the heck is happening when even though supposedly Norman Osborn is in charge of things, the Green Goblin takes a shot at assassinating the president on Air Force One in “Thunderbolts” No. 129. (Osborn is the Green Goblin, by the way. And also the Iron Patriot. So maybe he’s not the new Green Goblin? Sigh, even us nerds get confused with all this sometimes.)
Let’s start this week’s look at awesome sites sticking with the comics oeuvre. You’ll spend a good amount of time on these 50 WTF moments in comics over the years. Fanboys will remember a lot of them, such as Colossus getting resurrected by Joss Whedon, no memorial for the deceased Spoiler (she came back, too), the Ultimate Universe of Marvel and that one-time Lex Luthor got elected president of the United States. (And you thought George W. Bush was bad!)
This list is also pretty entertaining: a report of sorts of the worst video game consoles of all time. I am glad to say I’ve owned none of them. Score!!
They say that some food is art, and I’ve had some dishes over the years that looked way too nice to eat. Yet these are true works of food art. I like the exceptional use of veggies in there. As long as I don’t have to eat ‘em…
It’s a little bit more than a month away, but it’s never too early to start planning your April Fools’ Day prank. Just know that yours will probably come nowhere close to these historic ones.
Got a neat link? Email it to me at novapoppin@gmail.com. Here’s your video of the week: