Goodbye Yellow Brickle Road

The Rocket Man just hooked up with the ice cream guys.

Elton John has joined the rarified and rather delicious ranks of Stephen Colbert, Jerry Garcia, Monty Python, Dave Matthews and Phish, becoming the latest celebrity inspiration for a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor: Goodbye Yellow Brickle Road.

The limited-edition treat will be rolled out for one week only later this month to coincide with John’s first concert in the pint purveyors’ home base of Vermont, the last state in the U.S. the Brit rock star has yet to perform in.

Proceeds from the flavor will benefit the rocker’s own AIDS foundation.

“I can’t think of a more fun way to celebrate playing my 50th state, Vermont, than having Ben & Jerry’s create a special ice cream, Goodbye Yellow Brickle Road, with all my favorite flavors and ingredients,” John said.

“I’m especially pleased that they will be donating the proceeds to the Elton John AIDS Foundation.”

The custom flavor was concocted with input from John himself and consists of “an outrageous symphony of decadent chocolate ice cream, peanut butter cookie dough, butter brickle and white chocolate chunks.”

“We’re thrilled with the final combination, plus we’ve got the Rocket Man’s seal of approval,” Ben’s partner-in-crime (and business), Jerry Greenfield, said.

The flavor will be available in Vermont Scoop Shops for just one week only, July 18-25, in anticipation of John’s Vermont show on July 21.

Further sweetening the pot, the coneheads will also play tunes from John’s latest album, Rocket Man: The Definitive Hits, as well as the DVD of his recent 60th birthday concert at Madison Square Garden, in their stores that week.

GigaPan Technology – Amazing Zoom

Please click on this panoramic view of Yankee Stadium which was shot using GigaPan technology. You can zoom in on any detail – from Alex Rodriguez approaching the plate in the first inning against the Red Sox to the façade of the new Yankee Stadium beyond leftfield. Taken by a robotic camera, the photo was shot over the course of 10 minutes and consists of 124 frames stitched together. Carnegie Mellon developed the GigaPan technology last year in collaboration with NASA.

Neil Gaiman Celebrates Sandman Anniversary With New Comic And More

Sandman’s 20th anniversary is this fall — and to celebrate there are tons of new Sandman stuff coming out.

First, the commemorative poster. “What we’re doing right now is proving to be a logistical nightmare right up there with invading Normady,” Neil Gaiman said. “We’re doing a poster with every ‘Sandman’ artist trying to draw more or less every ‘Sandman’ character. Mark Buckingham designed it, so all over the world, you have people drawing characters.”

Then, the collectible object. Buckingham also designed cold-cast porcelain bookends — sturdy enough to hold all ten volumes and/or the Absolute collections — in the form of Dream and Death.

And finally, the new story. “I got a call from Craig Russell,” Gaiman said, “saying he’d always wanted to do ‘Dream Hunters’ as a comic.” Russell, who did the “Ramadan” issue, persisted, despite Gaiman turning him down, thinking the prose work (with illustrations by Yoshitaka Amano) was fine as it was. But it’s also out-of-print as a hardcover, so Gaiman reconsidered, after seeing what Russell did with a “Coraline” graphic novel adaptation.

“When he said, ‘I want to adapt ‘Dream Hunters’ the same way I’ve done for operas and Kipling. What would you say?’ I said it would be wonderful,” Gaiman said. “I think it’s going to be four comics in all. I’ve seen a lot of the pencil work and it’s astoundingly beautiful. It’s like reading a Sandman story I haven’t read before.”

November will also see the release of the final Sandman Absolute — Volume 4. (Though there’s always wiggle room for a Volume 5 as a supplemental, to include “Dream Hunters,” “Endless Nights,” and more).

The Prisoner Remake

It’s one of the most beloved cult television shows of all time, and it’s about to get a high-profile remake.  The Prisoner was a very strange 1960’s cult sci-fi classic starring Patrick McGoohan.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the “Prisoner”, it told the story of a former British secret agent held captive in a mysterious village, as authorities tried to break his will. The trippy storylines often included hallucinations, mind control, and a lot of references to “hooks” and “crooks.”

The 6 part miniseries will be released next year on AMC and will star Jim Caviezel as Number Six and Ian McKellan as the village overseer known as Number Two.

McDonald’s Giant Hatching Egg

Created by Leo Burnett, Chicago, the Giant Egg was installed across from Wrigley field in Chicago last week.

As you can see in the images, the egg starts ‘hatching’ in the early morning hours. By breakfast time, the billboard is fully hatched, displaying ‘Fresh Eggs Daily’ on the egg’s yolk. The egg stays open between 6:00AM and 10:30AM, indicating the availability of fresh eggs for breakfast during that interval. Later, the egg starts closing up again and returns to its ‘whole’ state. The next day, the same cycle is performed and the egg billboard starts hatching again.

Keanu Reeves as Plastic Man?

 

A reader by the name of Ballack writes in from Berlin saying that Joel Silver was on German radio recently talking about Ninja Assassin, the James McTeigue-directed, Wachowski-produced martial arts movie. Ballack claims that Silver also spilled the beans on what the Wachowskis would be directing to follow-up Speed Racer – Plastic Man.

 

You’ll remember that a pre-Matrix Bros W wrote a Plastic Man script, which Ballack claims Silver said would be the basis for this new film. Our scooper also reports that Silver said they want the movie to have a global release at the end of 2009.

 

And if that’s not a big enough story, Ballack further claims that Silver says that Keanu Reeves will be playing Eels O’Brien (the real name of Plastic Man). Apparently this is the start of a new love period between Reeves and the Wachowskis, as Silver said that the brothers want to work with him on all their future projects. (Reprinted from CHUD.com)

 

Come Visit Tenderloin Beach and Tri Tip Peak, The Strange New Beef Landscape Ads

  

 

 

These ads are bizarre and actually make me want to consider becoming a vegetarian.  I’m really not sure what the Beef Council was thinking when they created this campaign.  Did they even consider that global warming could create an au jus flood of terrible proportions?

The Smallest House In The World

Jay Shafer is the creator and resident of the smallest house in the world, which he has proudly named Tumbleweed. Jay is an artist and architect, who lives in his home near San Francisco. He sells plans for, and builds, tiny homes in sizes ranging from an extremely small 50 square feet to a practically roomy 500 square feet.

Jay has been living in a house smaller than some people’s closets since 1997.

Jay’s decision to inhabit just 96 square feet arose from his concerns he had about the impact a larger house would have on the environment, and because he does not want to maintain a lot of unused or unusable space.

20 Examples of “Geek Art”

Please click here to see 20 examples of “Geek Art”.