For 25 years, millions of loyal fans have enjoyed UncleJohn’s Bathroom Readers from the comfort of their thrones. Now, you can take these great books with you wherever you go, thanks to these eBook titles, as well as the Uncle John’s Bathroom Readermobile app.
Backstory: New York-based gossip website Gawker says it was approached by someone trying to sell a video of Toronto mayor Rob Ford apparently smoking crack cocaine in a glass pipe. Gawker editor John Cook says he’s seen the video (two reporters from the Toronto Starsay they have, too) – but the person who has it wants money for it. A LOT of money.
Gawker has published a photo they say is a screengrab from the video:
That’s all crazy enough on it’s own – but here’s where it goes into overdrive: Cook has started an IndieGoGo fundraiser he’s titled “Rob Ford Crackstarter” (a takeoff of fundraising site KickStarter), saying:
This tiny film doesn’t feature any big stars like Brad Pitt, or even any littler stars—because there literally wasn’t enough room for them. Instead, A Boy and His Atomstars, amazingly, just a few microscopic particles. Guinness World Records has declared the stop-motion-animated short film “the world’s smallest movie.” The 90-second film consists of a “boy” bouncing an atom-sized ball while dancing and jumping around. There’s not much of a plot but given the methods involved, it’s pretty incredible.
IBM scientists created the film with a “scanning tunneling microscope” that manipulated a few dozen carbon atoms placed atop a copper surface. First they had to chill the microscope to just above absolute zero (-450° F) because at a higher temp, the “excitable” atoms would have ignored their stage directions.
On May 19th, The Simpsons will conclude its 24th season with its 530th episode—an adventure set in Iceland. Since its debut in 1989, the show has amassed lots of records, including “Longest-Running American Primetime, Scripted Television Series” and “Most Guest Stars Featured in a Television Series.”
Needless to say, The Simpsons has also netted its creators millions, a good chunk of which has come from lucrative commercial tie-in and product endorsements. Over the years, the characters have appeared in TV ads around the world for everything from candy to cars. Here are a few examples of when the Simpsons sell out.
Name the bestselling solo male musician of all time. Elvis Presley? Bing Crosby? Elton John? Nope. It’s country superstar Garth Brooks, who has sold more than 128 million albums in the U.S., which is especially remarkable because unlike those other guys, he didn’t have a recording career that lasted decades. His first record came out in 1989 and his last one in 2001. Why’d he retire? He wanted to try new things, particularly starring in and making movies.
Brooks is one of the most popular musicians of all time, and if a new lawsuit filed by a former business partner is to be believed, one of the prickliest. Former business partner Lisa Sanderson is taking Brooks to court because his bad behavior and pattern of bridge-burning resulted in a number of movie projects that never saw the light of day, and thus prevented Sanderson from earning a great deal of money.
Here are some of the movies Sanderson alleges she and Brooks worked on that never made it to the big screen:
Though it does closely resemble our ducky mascot, we swear that we are not behind this.
For the past few weeks, a gigantic, inflatable rubber duck has sat in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour and drawn thousands of onlookers. How big is it? Pretty big—16.5 meters tall, or 54 feet of inflatable ducky goodness.
Lauryn Hill was one of the most promising singers of the late ’90s. As part of the Fugees, she sang on a smash hit cover of Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” and then in 1998 released her solo debut The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Hill wrote and produced most of the album, which sold 19 million copies and won five Grammys, including Best New Artist and Album of the Year.
It looked like Hill would be one of the biggest pop stars of the new millennium…but then almost nothing happened. The only album she’s released since was a live performance in 2002, which was marked by emotional breakdowns and bizarre stage banter. After that she retired from music to raise her five children.
