We knew the folks at NASA had brains and courage, but who knew they had a sense of humor, too? Turns out the National Aeronautics and Space Administration celebrates every mission that gets sent out into space with its own poster, and some of them are amazing!

The show sometimes seems custom made for HDTV viewers and PVR-pausers.

For all y’all out there who think that the iPad leaves much to be desired, we’ve got the video for you. This parody, made as an assignment for a Comm 340 class (I hope they got an A), highlights all that’s lacking in the mythical device.

It doesn’t have a camera, you can’t use it to make a phone call, and the name itself has spawned countless parodies — not to mention throwbacks to ‘90s television — that’s basically this video’s beef with Steve Jobs’s newest shiny, shiny baby.

Check out the video below and let us know in the comments: What changes would you like to see in the iPad 2.0? Personally, I’m still waiting on Spice 2.0.

[via TUAW]

Tags: apple, humor, ipad, viral video

2010 is coming up roses for Christoph Waltz. The once unknown actor is not only the Oscar-winning charismatic highlight of Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, he's also setting out to become a feature film director. The Hollywood Reporter posts that the Austrian actor is gearing up for his directorial debut with the German-language flick Auf Und Davon (Up and Away).

Loosely based on the book by Meike Winnemuth and Peter Praschl, the story focuses on a ruthless female dating show host who "finds herself in over her head when the show's romantic storyline bumps into her own feelings for a contestant." Waltz has been writing the script for some time, and Fox International's Gabriela Bacher says it "reflects Christoph's formidable sense of humor." Heck, he might even star in the film as well.

Unfortunately, there's some bad news. First: "The film will not necessarily be seen outside of German-speaking countries." Second: He has so many projects on the way that there's a good chance he won't get to this one until next year (at the earliest). Here's to hoping he finds a way to slide this in between his other higher-profile work. In the meantime, look out for him in The Green Hornet and Water for Elephants.

Filed under: Comedy, Foreign Language, Romance, Casting, Deals, Scripts

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would love to meet you for a drink...tease and taunt you subtly....haunt you with my gaze...expose you a quick sighting of my lingerie strap....kill you with charm

you are extremely handsome, sexy, clever, and with some kind of great style (no bobos, pls) . a good sense of humor is nice too

if we click, we can go back somewhere and i'll show you the possibilities of my sensual nature ;-)

be cool, safe, sane, and passionate in all the good ways though....i am

x

What the crap? A French comic? Are the French even allowed to make comics? Aren't they too busy being snooty and smoking Gauloises and wearing inappropriate swimwear? Where do they find the time to make comics, anyway?*

Well, the French can do all those things as long as they keep making comics this good, I tell ya. West Coast Blues is a cracking good crime comic, not really noir but definitely a tale of bad people doing bad things to each other. It's also, oddly enough, very wryly humorous, in a way we don't often see in crime comics here in the States. It was a novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette in 1976, and in 2005, Manchette's old collaborator, Jacques Tardi, finally adapted it to comics (and then Kim Thompson translated it into English). Presumably, had DC's association with Humanoids continued, this would have been a DC book. As it is, Fantagraphics has published it in the States. Good for them!

The plot is deceptively simple, as for most of the book, we have no idea what's going and Manchette simply follows his main character around. We begin in the present with George Gerfaut, cruising around in his Mercedes in the middle of the night listening to West Coast style jazz (hence the name of the book - George digs the jazz!). After a few pages, we're introduced to another man, Alonso Emerich y Emerich, a Dominican of German descent who used to be in military intelligence. We have, initially, no idea what his purpose is, because we quickly get back to George, who is passed by two cars, one chasing the other. The first car crashes, the second car takes off, and George helps the first driver to the hospital. Then he returns to his house. A few days later, his family heads out on vacation. It takes us a few pages to realize that this is happening in time well before the opening scene, because Manchette doesn't give us any indication that we've flashbacked. That's okay, though - the transition between the "present" and the "past" is interesting because Manchette links them through George driving late at night. While we may be a bit lost initially, we quickly regain our footing.

George doesn't realize he's being tailed by two hitmen in the employ of Alonso, who goes by Mr. Taylor. Again, we don't know why they want to kill George (we can figure out it has something to do with the driver of the car, but we don't know what), but that's part of the fun. Because as the follow George to the seaside, the plot kicks into high gear. It's rather humorous - the hitmen can't kill George. Through, really, very little effort on his part, he manages to elude them. In their first attempt, he manages to grab one of the killer's balls, which of course tends to put him off. This attempt switches something on in George, and he abandons his wife and returns to Paris. The killers can never quite catch up with him, and when they do, he escapes again, killing one of them almost accidentally. Then he flees into the forest and ends up in the foothills of the Alps, where he's found by a slightly eccentric woodsman. And he simply stays there. He becomes someone else completely, learning how to be self-sufficient, hooking up with a woman, and changing his appearance by growing a beard. But the second killer tracks him down, and George ends up back in the world, ready to find out exactly why these two men were sent to kill him.

The fascinating thing about this story is the character of George. Actually, Carlo and Bastien, the two hitmen, are pretty interesting as well, but George is the central character, so he ought to be fascinating. As I pointed out, he doesn't escape from the killers because he's tougher than they are; he might be a bit smarter, but he's also really lucky. Manchette doesn't make it a ridiculous, corny kind of luck, but he does show that George happens to do things that throw them off the track without knowing he's doing it. This makes the pursuit rather odd and darkly humorous. The book is full of violent death, and it's definitely not a comedy, but just the fact that these two professional killers have such a tough time blowing away this rather inept sales manager makes it border on the surreal. Then, we think the book will be about George becoming more of an independent dude and less of a simpering whiner, as he's forced to live in the wild for so many months. But Manchette doesn't quite give us that, either. George is a complicated guy who realizes certain things about the way society is structured but still yearns for other things. By the end of the book, we're back on the freeway, but Manchette has made us see that George has changed, just maybe not enough that we would expect. West Coast Blues is, in my mind, very "European" in that regard - this is a broad generalization, but Europeans are more bound by history, both societal and personal, than Americans, so if this book had been written by a Yankee, it probably would have ended much, much differently. That it doesn't is a testament, I think, to Manchette's storytelling - he never takes the easy way out, even if George's fate might seem like he does. George has been affected by what happens to him, but in not so overt (American?) way.

Tardi's art is quite stellar, as well. He's amazingly detailed, but he doesn't pull any tricks on the reader - his work is very straight forward. He relies on very strong storytelling skills, as he simply takes us through George's story. We get a great sense of place from Tardi, either in the urban settings or, even more impressively, in the rural interlude George experiences. Tardi does masterful work with the characters, too - they look and move like people, stumbling when you might expect it, breaking bones when you'd expect it, acting like human beings. His best work might be with Carlo and Bastien, as George remains very low-key throughout (except for one brief scene). Carlo and Bastien, however, have a fun relationship, and Tardi helps with it. Manchette gives them good banter, but Tardi manages to portray their care for each other even as he keeps their faces impassive. It's a very verbose comic, but Tardi matches Manchette with panels that demand a great deal of attention - this is a visual feast as well as a literary one.

I suppose the only problem one might have with the book is its somewhat excessive narration, because often Manchette simply tells us what the pictures already do (and Tardi adapted it to comics, so why he didn't cut some more of it is beyond me). Occasionally, the narration is absurdly excellent - when Manchette lists all the weapons Carlo and Bastien have in their car, for instance, it's a comic mini-masterpiece - but occasionally, we can tell exactly what's going on and don't need to be told. Again, this is a comic adapted from a book into French and then translated into English, so there are many filters for it to go through. I don't have too big an issue with the words, but I should caution you that it feels bloated every once in a while.

Other than that, West Coast Blues is a very good crime comic. The fact that it has a slightly different sensibility than most American crime fiction makes it refreshing, and the fact that Manchette has a wry sense of humor about the material works well, too. And it looks great. And Ed Brubaker thinks Tardi is great. Dare you go against Ed Brubaker????

* Before you jump my shit, I'm joking. I am well aware of the long French tradition of comics, and cut my teeth on Asterix and Obelix before I had even heard of the X-Men when I was but a lad. Chillax, people!

Next: Can it be more Tardi? Well, of course it can!

The Onion has come out with a parody video in which YouTube entreats its users to make a “good” video — the incentive? A $100,000 prize.

As someone who spends much of her day wading through the chaff of the online video realm, can I just say: Could this be a real thing now please?

Check out the video below and be sure to share some of your favorite YouTube vids in the comments.

That’s what you’re doing at the moment, no? Watching YouTube videos? Don’t front — it’s Friday.

Tags: humor, the onion, viral video, youtube

Friday Five : ’frÄ«-(,)dÄ,-dÄ“ ‘fÄ«v : On the sixth day of every week, I hit the shuffle button on my iTunes, then share the first five tracks and thought for each track. Sometimes there is a playlist involved, occasionally we’ll have a guest, but most of the time it’s just me. The rest is up to you, our friends and readers! Fire up your media player of choice and share the first five random track of your shuffle in the comments.

Editor’s Note: It doesn’t happen often, but I’m actually going to be away from all forms of internet today so I’ve asked my Popdose cohort, Rob Smith, to watch the shop for me today. I’m sure you will all make him feel right at home, and I’ll be back next week! – Michael

The Five:

Huh?  Wha?  You want me to do what?  Lead off this week?  Sure, dude.  Absolutely.  Anytime.

Here goes:

Gowan, “Moonlight Desires.”  Cool live version, solo piano.  I like this a lot better than the original studio version, with Jon Anderson on guest vocals.  Gowan, of course, has been the new Dennis DeYoung in Styx for the last 11 or so years.  I know a few Styx fans who can’t stand Gowan, but it’s not like he won a Rock Star: Styx competition to get the gig or anything. He had a solid, though unspectacular career prior to joining the band.  I recommend this live record (called Solo Live: No Kilt Tonight) for Gowan’s voice and chops, certainly, but also his humor (he performs a 30-second snippet of Monty Python’s “Lumberjack Song”) and this most excellent ballad.

Escape Club, “Wild Wild West.” Jesus freakin’ Christ, I have Escape Club on my iTunes?  Damn that Like, Omigod box set.  On the rare occasions I hear this song, I think about doing radio in college, freshman and sophomore years.  We had a Top 40 show I’d DJ on occasion, and this one was in the stacks and played pretty much constantly [I also think of Information Society's "What's on Your Mind (Pure Energy)" when I hear this, cuz both tracks were more or less ubiquitous].  We could play Escape Club once an hour with no complaints from management, but when I tried to squeeze in Thomas Dolby’s “Airhead,” I got in trouble.  I did win once, though — I was the first to play Fine Young Cannibals’ “She Drives Me Crazy,” got yelled at, but was eventually vindicated when it became, oh I don’t know, the Number One song in the country. I had fucking EARS back then, man!  But I hate Escape Club.  Shit.  Next?

Van Halen, “Unchained.” That’s more like it.  My fave Van Halen song, whether performed by Roth, Hagar (on the ‘04 tour — fucking awesome), or Cherone.  I just think the riff is tops — one of the simplest and best Eddie VH ever conjured. Big fail, though — having Wolfie do the “C’mon Dave, give me a break” line on the most recent tour. Roth could eat that kid alive, and on occasion did. You’d think Ed would want to protect his only child from wiseacres like Roth. Perhaps ye olde parental instinct got burned out during one or another evening with the Schlitz Malt Liquor tallboys.

Jonatha Brooke, “Because I Told You.” The gods smile upon me. I love Brooke’s music, particularly the stuff from the Story through maybe ‘95 or ‘96.  This is from her first live record, and it’s a gem. A track from Ten-Cent Wings, arguably her best solo record, the melody gives me chills every time I hear it (only other song to do so consistently: Springsteen’s “Bobbie Jean.” Man, when that sax solo kicks in at the end …).  The sorta/kinda middle-eight is particularly beautiful: “You take the wheel for now / I’m too tired to drive this one home anyhow, for now.” Find this if you’ve never heard it — studio version or live.  You’re welcome.

John Denver, “Rocky Mountain High.” Fuck you if you think this is wimpy. Just … I don’t want to hear it. It takes a man — a real man, one not afraid to mow his lawn in the nude — to come up with a chorus like this one. “I’ve seen it raining fire in the sky?” Are you kidding me?  Fucking great image.  I also like the AM radio vibe on this; it doesn’t matter what I hear this song on — computer, earbuds, boombox, or multi-component stereo system — it still sounds like I’m listening to it in my dad’s old Chrysler.  The one with the manual transmission, shift on the column.  But I don’t want to hear that it’s crap, or wussified pap, or unfit for man or Muppet. Great song. “Friends around the campfire and everybody’s high?”  I could go for being around that campfire right about now.

So anyway, now that I’ve defended John Denver by telling you all to fuck yourselves, I suppose that I should ask forgiveness.  But really, all I want to know is this: What’s on YOUR shuffle?

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A group of researchers have proven something we already expected to be the case: your Twitter follower count is somewhat of a meaningless metric when it comes to determining influence. To reach this conclusion, the researchers examined the Twitter accounts of over 54 million active users, out of some 80 million accounts crawled by their servers. They then went on to measure various statistics about these accounts, including audience size, retweet influence and mention influence. The conclusion? Those with the largest number of followers may be "popular" Twitterers, but that's not necessarily related to their influence. High follower counts don't always mean someone is being retweeted or mentioned in any meaningful ways.

Sponsor

The findings from this research project have been published in an research paper available here on the project's homepage.

How the Data Was Analyzed

The data the researchers had access to is astounding: 54,981,152 user accounts, 1,963,263,821 social (follow) links and 1,755,925,520 tweets. In order to collect this massive store of data, the researchers contacted Twitter and asked permission to crawl Twitter's service. Twitter granted them access and white-listed the IP address range for the 58 servers that were used in the data collection. In total, the crawler was able to scan 80 million Twitter accounts during the month of August 2009. Only 54+ million of those accounts were actually in-use at the time, which, in and of itself, is an interesting finding about how many people create a Twitter account and then abandon it. Only 8% of the active accounts were set to private, so they were ignored during the data analysis. The researchers also used the Twitter API to gather additional information about a user's social links and tweets.

The study focused on the largest part of the Twitter network - the "single disproportionately large connected component," notes the paper, that contained 94.8% of users and 99% of all links and tweets. Within that large network of "in-use" accounts, the researchers further narrowed down the data to focus on the "active users." These users where those who had more than 10 tweets and had a valid screen name that could be retweeted by others. (Interesting - it's possible to have an account and not a screen name?) That left "only" 6,189,636 active users out of the initial 80 million to examine.

To measure the influence of these 6+ million users, the researchers looked at how the entire set of the 52 million users interacted with these active users.

The Three Measures of Influence

After examining the data, the researchers found that the most followed individuals spanned a wide variety of public figures and news sources and included accounts like CNN, New York Times, Barack Obama, Shaquille O'Neal, Ashton Kutcher, Britney Spears and others. However, the most retweeted users tended to be content aggregation services like TwitterTips, TweetMeme, and, interestingly enough, they counted the tech blog Mashable as an aggregation service, too. Other heavily retweeted users included Guy Kawasaki, the humor site The Onion and again, The New York Times. Meanwhile, those users with the most "mentions" - not a direct retweet including the original content of someone else's tweet, but just a casual mention of their name - were celebs.

These three measures of influence - followers, retweets and mentions - has surprisingly little overlap when looking at the top influentials. The top 20 lists from these three categories only had two users in common: Ashton Kutcher and Puff Daddy.

The researchers also examined the ability of Twitter users to influence others. They determined that the most influential users hold significant influence over a variety of topics, as opposed to being experts in just one area.

Examining the 233 "All-Time Influentials"

Out of the 6 million active Twitter users, the researchers picked the top 100 users in each of the three categories. Due to the overlap, there were only 233 distinct users on these lists. These were dubbed the "all-time influentials." Some of these accounts belonged to news organizations or celebs, but others were just regular users. Regarding that last group - it appears that those users who limit their tweets to a single topic are the most likely to increase their influence scores.

In the end, what the researchers found was that follower count alone is not necessarily a worthy measure of determining influence. Other factors come into play as well. Although some heavily-followed accounts are also mentioned and retweeted a lot, just looking at audience size doesn't reveal an account's ability to influence and impact the Twitter universe.

According to the project's homepage, the researchers are hoping to make the data they collected available to the community at large. Before doing so, they will discuss it with Twitter in order to determine that their data sharing plan agrees with the company's policy. They plan to have an update on this situation - possibly the data itself - by May 2010.

Discuss

Soy fan de Luis Guridi (‘Camera Café’, ‘Fibrilando’), así que su vuelta a la televisión me produce entusiasmo y expectación. El proyecto es para Cuatro, una serie de humor diaria que se llamará ‘La isla de los nominados’, que se aleja de la cámara fija pero manteniendo los toques de surrealismo tan propios de sus trabajos. Una oportunidad que veremos si pueden aprovechar porque las series en Cuatro no pasan por su mejor momento, salvo contadas excepciones.

Por ahora se sabe que le acompañarán en la travesía Arturo Valls y César Sarachu, dos de sus iconos favoritos. Está claro que Valls no tiene la suerte de cara últimamente, pero Sarachu es capaz de cualquier cosa, como ha demostrado en todos los proyectos en los que ha participado. Me gustaría ver en esa isla a Carlos Areces, que ya estuvo en ‘Fibrilando’. Para mí es uno de los grandes exponentes de la comedia bufa actual.

Lo malo que le veo a la propuesta es que coincida con la emisión en Telecinco de ‘Supervivientes’. Supongo que serán cosas de la fusión pero este carácter gregario me parece que no puede beneficiarles. También se rumorea que podría encajar en el access diario, antes de ‘El hormiguero’, y no sé si una serie de este tipo podrá frenar el auge lento pero seguro de ‘El intermedio’. El verdadero problema de esa franja son los informativos de Cuatro, que no terminan de cuajar. Recuperarse de eso a base de una serie de humor creo que es contraproducente, pero espero equivocarme.

Vía | Fórmula TV
En ¡Vaya Tele! | ‘Camera Café’ se mudará a un hospital

Una de las comedias de culto y que más reconocimientos ha obtenido en los últimos años es ‘Extras’, la serie que Ricky Gervais y Stephen Merchant crearon después de ‘The Office’, y que le valió a Gervais el Emmy y el Globo de Oro a mejor actor de comedia. Mañana sábado, a las 20, Canal+ la estrena en España, con algo de retraso, para que podamos ver de primera mano el peculiar sentido del humor que se gastan Gervais y Merchant, aplicado aquí al mundo del cine y los actores.

Su protagonista es un extra de cine que sueña con conseguir algún día un buen papel con diálogo y, eventualmente, con crear su propia serie de televisión. Él y su amiga (interpretada por Ashley Jensen, ahora en ‘Ugly Betty’) participan en los rodajes de grandes estrellas de Hollywood como Kate Winslet (un capítulo imprescindible y divertidísimo), Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Stiller, Ian McKellen o Daniel Radcliffe. Todos interpretan versiones exageradas de sí mismos con resultados hilarantes pero, a veces, también un poco incómodos y de vergüenza ajena. El tercer personaje más habitual de la serie es el desastroso agente del protagonista.

‘Extras’ tiene dos temporadas de seis episodios cada una. Co-producida por la BBC y la HBO, era la última incursión en televisión de sus creadores hasta este año, cuando la HBO ha estrenado una versión animada del podcast que grabaron hace unos años, ‘The Ricky Gervais Show’.

En ¡Vaya Tele! | ‘Extras’

I really like Pentax approach lately to demystify photography by bringing a sense of humor and color to the DSLR world. Sure I may never invest in a Pink or Yellow DLSR, but I would understand others interests in such camera. But today’s announcement of the “Cameraman” is a bit too far fetch for me.

Indeed, in cooperation with a Japanese Artiste, Ossu Syugeibu, Pentax now propose some kind of “kit” that will transform your DSLR or Point & Shoot in a doll like setup. By fixing a rag doll body below your camera and changing your Lens Cap with one where a smiley face is painted on it, you have here Pentax latest weird, but funny approaches to photography.

Even with Jude Law, Forest Whitaker and a perfect sci-fi setup, this movie sputters a bit in the middle, and the whole bloody affair suffers from a lack of black humor. But that's one hell of a knife fight that first-time director Miguel Sapochnik pulls out of his bag of tricks.

Here is the latest in our year-long look at one cool comic (whether it be a self-contained work, an ongoing comic or a run on a long-running title that featured multiple creative teams on it over the years) a day (in no particular order whatsoever)! Here's the archive of the moments posted so far!

Today we take a look at Super Human Resources, by Ken Marcus and Justin Bleep...

Enjoy!

Super Human Resources #1, from writer Ken Marcus and artist Justin Bleep is a delightfully funny comic book.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that it is a remarkable piece of work by Marcus, as he really shows an effortless mixture of amusing dialogue and character-based humor all while advancing the plot in a logical fashion that has a real pay-off at the end of the four-issue mini-series.

The plot behind the series is that a young would-be-accountant named Tim gets a temp job at Super Crises International, the company that bankrolls a bunch of superheroes (paying off damages from superhero fights and hopefully recouping the money from licensing fees). I doubt that the name of the company is unintentional, as if you liked the comedic stylings of Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis' similarly-named Justice League International, then this is the comic for you, as that particular brand of humor is almost exactly the style that Marcus goes for in this series, and remarkably for such a new work, pretty much achieves.

I sometimes felt that Bleep's unique art style did not exactly match Marcus' dialogue-driven, humanistic humor, but it surely did not HURT the comic at all. And Bleep's design sense is impeccable, and I imagine he designed a great deal of the characters who populate the comic, so in that regard, he does a great job.

Here are nine preview pages that the guys have made available on their ComicSpace page.

In just these sample pages, you already get a feel for the offbeat humor Marcus provides, as well as the nifty dialogue and comedic timing (as seen in the scene with the Bog). My personal favorite bit is where the robot makes himself NEARLY invisible so as to avoid paying the money he owes, but, well, nearly invisible is not nearly invisible enough! Classic.

It's also impressive how quickly Marcus establishes personalities for these characters, which is useful when he can then later play against the type he established himself.

As a whole, the series is really a fun read filled with engaging personalities and a lot of interesting comedic plotlines, and not nearly as many as you would think are the standard "making fun of superhero conventions" types.

At the heart of this comic, the humor comes from the offbeat personalities that Marcus establishes - it just so happens that at least half of the personalities are superheroes.

NOTE: This is basically what I said when these issues first came out - BC