Unusual Life

On Christmas eve sand sculptor Sudarshan Patnaik created Santa in sand on the Puri beach in India. Measuring 100 feet by 30 feet and 15 feet high, it is the largest ever recorded image of Santa anywhere in the world.

Sudarshan’s Santa is likely to claim a place in the Limca Book of World Records.

It took 1000 tons of sand, 200 labourers, 40 hours and 15 associates to create the huge piece of sand art.

Every year since 1992, artist Phil Kline has presented UNSILENT NIGHT, an outdoor ambient music piece for an infinite number of boomboxes. It’s like a Christmas caroling party except that people don’t sing, but rather carry the music, each person playing a separate track that is a “voice” in the piece. In effect, they become a city-block-long sound system.

The more tracks that are played, the bigger and more amazing the sound is. In recent years, UNSILENT NIGHTs in New York and San Francisco have attracted crowds of over a thousand people, with hundreds of boomboxes… it’s spectacular. If you’d like to participate, just check the schedule in your city. If you’d like to participate but don’t have a boombox or a music player with speakers, you can just show up and join the parade. Everyone is an important part of the procession.

Un-Silent Night

Now with Christmas just around the corner, here’s a list of the 25 most baffling toys from around the world.

Photos from the 2006 Mashed Potato Contest

The New Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas was imploded to make way for The Plaza, a multi-billion dollar resort which will open in 2011. Elvis made his Las Vegas debut at the New Frontier in 1956 in the futuristic new showroom - the Venus Room.

From the Western-themed hotel that had opened as the Frontier in 1942, the resort was re-modelled in 1955 and renamed the New Frontier with a décor that encompassed the nations growing curiosity with space travel, featuring planets and flying saucers in the Cloud Nine dining room and celestial chandeliers hovering over the casino, where six alien figures headed towards its entrance.

The Venus Room, where Elvis appeared, was a circular showroom and could seat up to 972 people, who surrounded the revolving stage, but Elvis’ appearance did little to excite the stuffy Vegas clientele, when he was used to performing to screaming teenagers. Elvis was reportedly paid $12,500 a week, during an era when headline acts could command double that amount in other resorts.

It was at the New Frontier where agent Bill Miller, who was booking acts for the Dunes at the time, spotted Elvis and is quoted as saying ‘Boy, some day I’m going to fire up this guy’s career.’

So, at the close of the next decade as the booking agent for Kirk Kerkorian’s International Hotel, Bill Miller booked Elvis for his famed Las Vegas comeback in 1969 and the rest, they say, is history.

Cool set of New Frontier Hotel photos from LeavingLV.net

Scarabike, a bicycle producing company - which offers customized products -presented a sofa and a stool made of bicycle seats.

From 2007 Tokyo Designer’s Week.

A meatloaf cake with mashed potato frosting. And gravy between the layers and melted cheese for garnish.

Mmmm Mmmm Good!

Meat Cake

From international delicacies to homegrown yummies of delight, feel free to digest this online photo gallery of the most curious goods found online.

Though street crime is relatively low in Japan, quirky camouflage designs like this vending-machine dress are being offered to an increasingly anxious public to hide from would-be assailants.

Fearing Crime, Japanese Wear the Hiding Place

Sock Monkey Dress

A New York man retired. He wanted to use his retirement money wisely,
so it would last, and decided to buy a home and a few acres in Portugal.

The modest farmhouse had been vacant for 15yrs.; the owner and wife both had died, and there were no heirs.

The house was sold to pay taxes.

There had been several lookers, but the large barn had steel doors, and they had been welded shut. Nobody wanted to go to the extra expense to see what was in the barn, and it wasn’t complimentary to the property anyway……so, nobody made an offer on the place.

The NY guy bought it at just over half of the property’s worth, moved in, and prepared to tear in to the barn…….curiosity was killing him.

So, he and his wife bought a generator, and a couple of
grinders…….and cut thru the welds.

What was in the barn……………?

…….and start wishing you had bought the place.

Rice Art

Just in from Steve Bard: Amid all the 787 roll-out hoopla last weekend, perhaps the coolest event went unnoticed. On Saturday night, Boeing had all of the 787 airline representatives at an event at the Museum of Flight. At 7:07 PM, an Omega Air Refueling Services 707 landed in front of the crowd (after taking off from Paine Field in Everrett). At 7:17, an AirTran 717 landed. This continued until 8:17 when an Air France 777-300ER landed. In the end, the 707, 717, 727, 737, 747, 757, 767, and 777 were lined up nose-to-tail on the taxiway. It is the first time Boeing has had every 7-series airplane in the same place (not counting the 787, which couldn’t make the flight, of course).
Also visible in the picture are various aircraft at the Museum of Flight, including the Concorde, Air Force 1, etc.

Thousands Welcome the 787 Dreamliner

Over the weekend, 7-Eleven Inc. turned a dozen stores into Kwik-E-Marts, the fictional convenience stores of “The Simpsons” fame, in the latest example of marketers making life imitate art.

Those stores and most of the 6,000-plus other 7-Elevens in the U.S. will sell items that until now existed only on television: Buzz Cola, KrustyO’s and Squishees, the slushy drink knockoff of Slurpees.

It’s all part of a campaign to hype the July 27 opening of “The Simpsons Movie,” the big-screen debut for the long-running television cartoon, which loves to lampoon 7-Eleven as a store that sells all kinds of unhealthy snacks and is run by a man with a thick Indian accent, our friend Apu.

Says Bobbi Merkel, an advertising agency executive with 7-Eleven’s advertising agency Freshworks, “It shows they get the joke.”

7-Elevens Become Simpsons ‘Kwik-E-Marts’

These uncredited photos just in from Steve Bard: