EX ASTRIS SCIENTIA: Truly glorious Trekkie nit-picking

Ex Astris Scientia is an absolutely exhaustive Trekkie site. The site features encyclopedic entries on virtually every aspect of the Star Trek universe(s) - including the designs for every Star Trek starship bridge ever - and plenty of thoughtful, nit-picky analysis. For instance: what color is Vulcan's sky?

(He's also even more ticked than I am about all the continuity BS in the 2009 JJ Abrams reboot movie.)

Vincent Price on THE MONSTER CLUB

A nice little bit of random, vintage horror camp, as Vincent Price sits down in a sinister nightclub setting and chats with an English lady reporter about a now-obscure 1980 picture called The Monster Club. He really was a charming old lizard. Who else could possibly get away with the line, "Your veins stand out so beautifully?"




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Emily Bode's amazing ALICE cupcakes

Emily Bode's (Disney-esque) Alice in Wonderland cupcakes are so beautiful and tasty looking, you don't even care if eating one will shrink you to the size of a caterpillar.

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FRAGILE AND FEARLESS

Start your Sunday morning off right, with a big helping of scrambled (and NSFW) eggs. In David Commander's 2007 short film Fragile and Fearless, a neurotic little egg lady (voiced by Ish Klein) is ready to crack, when her shrink advises her to grow a thicker shell. But is her new outlook on life a little too eggs-treme?

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When Janeway met Solo

In this dorky yet eerily beautiful clip, the USS Voyager encounters the Millennium Falcon in fluidic space, as two remote controlled spaceship models gracefully circle each other at the bottom of a swimming pool.

What I want to know is, if Voyager contacts the Falcon, will Voyager's universal translator actually translate what Chewbacca says, so it sounds like he's speaking Federation Standard English? (Something tells me that Chewbacca isn't a great conversationalist. Most of his dialogue in the original trilogy probably consists of variations on the phrase, "Uh-oh! This is scary! Let's get outta here!" Plus the occasional, "Oh no, something just exploded!")


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Photo series with adults replicating their childhood portraits

Irina Werning's Back to the Future is a fascinating photo project in which Werning has her subjects recreate snapshot portraits taken of them when they were much younger. You would think everybody would look really silly doing the stuff they did when they were little kids (and indeed, some of them do) but it's surprising how often recreating the poses, clothes and attitudes of their childhood photos can make people look rather chic. The woman in this photo looks like she's in an American Apparel ad. (Note that some photos are mildly NSFW.)

DONNIE DARKO burlesque tribute

Those scamps at Phillie's own Peek-a-Boo Revue (the same fine folks who brought us that unlikely Watchmen burlesque show a while back) have returned with a cheeky new tribute to Richard Kelly's sci-fi, emo cult classic, Donnie Darko. This clip should be safe for work, although it does feature jiggly ladies jumping around and a singing Frank the rabbit who turns into a tranny caveman for reasons I won't pretend to understand. Also: the Donnie has an inexplicable neck-beard and looks a lot more like Shaggy from Scooby Doo than Jake Gyllenhaal.

Yeah. It's a mad world, indeed.


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Hello. She's Shelly Duvall.

This Youtube clip features celebrated character actress Shelly Duvall introducing herself at the beginning of various episodes of the cable TV anthology series Fairy Tale Theater. Really, that's it. She just says "Hello, I'm Shelly Duvall" over and over again. It sounds stupid - and it is - but I can almost guarantee that once you start watching you won't be able to stop.

Idle doodles by famous authors

Flavorwire has a fun post looking at cartoons drawn by some of our most celebrated authors and poets. Seen here, a surprisingly silly little drawing by Sylvia Plath.

ROCK ODYSSEY

Back in the 1980s, the Hanna Barbera animation studio produced a lavish, feature-length oddity called Rock Odyssey. Intended to be a kind of rock n' roll Fantasia for adult audiences, Rock Odyssey took viewers on a surreal journey through the music of the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s - a journey hosted by an anthropomorphic jukebox voiced by Scatman Crothers. While Hanna Barbera was and is best known for family-friendly cartoons like Yogi Bear and The Flintstones, Rock Odyssey featured some surprisingly dark and disturbing imagery. The film was never released, but the clips available online are impressive. The opening sequence seen above is totally creepy and disorienting, in a sort of Ralph Bakshi way.

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JUMP/IMAGINE mashup

The Walrus meets Diamond Dave in a "Van Lennon" mashup that works much better than it should.

New webcomic from HITMEN FOR DESTINY's Øyvind Thorsby

Øyvind Thorsby's fantastic online comic series Hitmen for Destiny wrapped up last summer, and since then fans have been aching for more of Thorsby's wonderful weirdness and weird wonderfulness. Well, I'm pleased to report that Thorsby has finally launched a new comic series, The Accidental Space Spy. Check it out.

No Shatner Sunday this week

... And to be honest, I'm thinking about putting the feature on hiatus for a while. Between his CBS sitcom, his many, many endorsement deals and his upcoming (real) heavy metal album, I kind of feel like the guy doesn't really need any extra PR. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm dangerously close to reaching my Shatner saturation point.

A Japanese monkey waitress wearing a human mask

No, you did not fall asleep at your keyboard and dream this incredibly creepy clip featuring a monkey waiting tables in a Japanese restaurant while wearing a little woman mask. It is real. All too real.

Thanks(?) to Io9 for the clip.