On the phone. (via Bad Newspaper)
Tuesday, April 22, 2025
A Day with the Saucier At One of New Orleans’s Oldest Restaurants
Arnaud's is one of the oldest restaurants in New Orleans, and one of the biggest, too, as it occupies eleven buildings in the French Quarter. The operation is so big that the chefs specialize to the max. Bobby McNabb is the saucier, meaning he makes sure that there are plenty of the various sauces that give each meal a distinctive flavor. Each one takes hours, or even days, to come to the proper stage. Each is made with care, but made in amounts that would stagger a home cook, or a chef at a smaller restaurant. Even people who never cook will enjoy following what he does for a day. But the camera crew is kicked out at 5:30, because that's when they really get busy! (via Nag on the Lake)
The Cats That Rule Disneyland After Dark
Visitors to Disneyland are often charmed by spotting cats in the park. They aren't trespassing; these cats live there. They serve an important role in rodent control, which is quite necessary when you consider the amount of food purchased (and dropped) and the amount of garbage Disneyland has to deal with every day. But they weren't brought in as pest control experts. When Disneyland was preparing to open to the public, the staff found that a colony of feral cats had set up housekeeping in Sleeping Beauty's castle. Getting rid of the cats would be difficult, so Disney decided to let them stay, and even made them official cast members. Their duties in rodent control was a bonus. The park has an estimated 200 or so cats who mostly stay in areas away from people when the park is open. They are fed and fixed, but are still feral. And in case you are wondering, Walt Disney World in Florida does not have an official feral cat program like Disneyland, but you may well spot cats in the park because Florida just has a lot of feral cats. (Thanks, WTM!)
The Charleston
This film from 1925 shows us how it's done. These are professional dancers. The woman in pink is wearing a showgirl costume; the dancer in dark blue wears the style that was more likely to be worn by the general public.
Earth is Our Home
Domino artist Hevesh5 used 8,000 dominoes for her tribute to Mother Earth for Earth Day. She built a 3D world out of dominoes, complete with continents and a "fragile ecosystem." Then with the magic of video, she put it back the way it was. If it were only so easy for us to do that with the real Earth. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
Monday, April 21, 2025
Monty Python And The Holy Grail
Monty Python And The Holy Grail was released 50 years ago this month. That's the perfect reason to watch this definitive story of King Arthur and his knights of the round table again! And if you have someone watching it with you, you can compete to speak along with the most quotes.
New Ghosts in the Pac-Man Grid
Pac-Man has been avoiding or killing the same ghosts for 45 years now (as if you can really kill a ghost). He's gotten to known them all and their individual quirks pretty well. But suddenly now he runs into a ghost he's never met before. A stranger in the Pac-Man grid? It turns out that one of the ghosts couldn't get out of jury duty and they had to call in a replacement. The problem is that the temp agency sends them ghosts who can't get a steady job for one reason or another. How bad do you have to be to be bad among ghost? We are about to find out, courtesy of Dorkly. The video is only 2:15; the rest is promotional. (via Geeks Are Sexy)
Miss Cellania's Links
RIP Pope Francis.
What we know about Star Wars: Starfighter, the next movie from a galaxy far, far away, so far.
“A Source of Amyuzmint.” On the Use of Bad Spelling in Early American Comedy. (via Damn Interesting)
Librarians are dangerous. (via Metafilter)
Inside The Strange Origins Of Graham Crackers And Why They Were Invented. (Thanks, WTM!)
Musician Who Died in 2021 Resurrected as Clump of Brain Matter, Now Composing New Music. The article does not tell us whether the sounds of Revivification resemble music, or whether that music is good. (via Strange Company)
Trump draft executive order would make sweeping changes to the U.S. State Department. We will be basically ceding Africa to Chinese influence. (via Fark)
Angler Catches 153-Pound Behemoth in Texas Using Ultra-Light Tackle, Likely Setting a New World Record.
Woman Who Can Smell Parkinson’s Disease Is Helping To Pave the Way for a Medical Breakthrough. (via Damn Interesting)
Incredibly Realistic Wolf Animation
This is just one of many wonderfully ridiculous animation tests (and parodies) you'll find in this Metafilter thread.
Sunday, April 20, 2025
"The Perfect Storm"
When French metal band Eons of Decay needed a video for their song The Perfect Storm, they enlisted the talents of Fabrice Mathieu, who has delighted us with his film mashups for years. Mathieu turned to popular science fiction, dystopian, and disaster movies and used clips from more than 50 of them to illustrate how awful a perfect storm could be. Things go from bad to worse as we see war, wildfires, earthquakes, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, urban overcrowding, sandstorms, economic collapse, floods, asteroids, and general mayhem that you would expect from armageddon. If you don't like heavy metal, you should watch with the sound off and enjoy the utter destruction that Hollywood offers us, and tell yourself "It's just a movie..." There's a list of the movies used at the YouTube page. (Thanks Fabrice!)
Easter Parade
Judy Garland and Fred Astaire sing "Easter Parade" from the 1948 movie Easter Parade. I can understand people wearing their very best clothing for Easter, but making it into a public fashion show seems a bit over the top. That custom peaked in the mid-20th century, and while many people still wear either their newest or best clothing to church on Easter, it's not really a competition for the most part.
You might wonder what the "rotogravure" is. That was a printing technique, and in the song it refers to a magazine section that was printed in color. And about the other question in your head, Judy Garland was 26 when this movie was released; Fred Astaire was 49.
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