quirk
Stephen Colbert, a practicing Catholic and sometimes CCD teacher, does a "liturgical dance" number to the hymn, "King of Glory." You're welcome.
Top o' aftornune to ya!
Francis Chan recently sat down with the Northern Irish Christian band The Rend Collective to test his Northern Irish speaking skillz. Chan holds his own. Most of the time he mimics his Irish friend well.
But what do I know? I'm not from Ireland.
I do, however, enjoy accents. And hopefully you do too. Enjoy.
"High nigh br-eye-n, K-eye"? Come again? Rend Collective and Bart Millard (of the band MercyMe) give us a lesson in how to speak Northern Irish.
No matter how many times we see the little advert (as the English say) before the movie telling us to silence our phones, the temptation to go for our smartphones — to look up, for instance, the name of the other films that one actor (with the butt chin and beady eyes) was in before he became a superhero — is too much to resist.
Or maybe we just can't not text a friend to tell her how the ending of the Dark Knight legend picked up our expectations and pulled a Bane on them (i.e. broke their huge backs, shattering them entirely).
Whatever the reason for putting down the bucket of popcorn and reaching for the squawk box, the fact remains: cell phones are a nuisance to everybody around us — in a cinema perhaps more than anywhere else.
Which is why a London movie theater recently started employing ninjas to combat rogue cell phone use during screenings.
Yes, ninjas.
Chuck Norris has offered a dire warning to America, claiming that U.S. citizens face "1,000 years of darkness" if President Obama is reelected for a second term in November.
In a two-minute video posted on his official YouTube channel, which also includes work-out tutorials and promotional appearances for "The Expendables 2," Norris and his wife Gena warn of a "growing concern" that the America we know can be lost forever if Obama is reelected.
“If we look to history, our great country and freedom are under attack,” Norris says. “We’re at a tipping point and, quite possibly, our country as we know it may be lost forever if we don’t change the course in which our country is headed.”
Gena then cites the statistic that in 2008 more than 30 million Evangelical Christians stayed home on Voting Day and Obama won.
Johnny Cash's to-do list. Image via Open Culture.
Somewhere along the way (we’re not sure when) The Man in Black jotted down 10 “Things to Do Today!” This list feels almost like something you and I could have written, the stuff of mortals.
King Richard III
The hunt for King Richard III's grave is heating up, with archaeologists announcing today that they have located the church where the king was buried in 1485.
"The discoveries so far leave us in no doubt that we are on the site of Leicester's Franciscan Friary, meaning we have crossed the first significant hurdle of the investigation," Richard Buckley, the lead archaeologist on the dig, said in a statement.
Buckley and his colleagues have been excavating a parking lot in Leicester, England, since Aug. 25. They are searching for Greyfriars church, said to be the final resting place of Richard III, who died in battle during the War of the Roses, an English civil war. A century later, Shakespeare would immortalize Richard III in a play of the same name.
After his death in the Battle of Bosworth Field, Richard III was brought to Leicester and buried at Greyfriars. The location of the grave, and the church itself, was eventually lost to history, though University of Leicester archaeologists traced the likely location to beneath the parking lot for the Leicester City Council offices.
Don't make me stop this beat. I'll do it. I'll pull this beat right over...
The uneven bars is an Olympic event that only women compete in. (Men compete in variations on the event, in the single horizontal bar and the parallel bars.) But back in 1981, U.S. gymnast Paul Hunt decided to surprise a crowd in Madison Square Garden by performing an uneven bar routine while donning a bright pink leotard and bow. Unfortunately the video doesn’t have the greatest audio quality, but one can imagine the burst of laughter as he bounces back and forth. [via Perez]
God bless our media!
Inside the blog, see how Team Coco managed to get dozens of broadcast news anchors to say the same thing ... over, and over, and over again.
"We've gotta get an envelope!" ~ Andy Richter
Johan Huibers' stand in front of his 70-metre-long Noah's Ark replica.Photo by Michel Porro/Getty Images
A wealthy Dutchman builds a replica of Noah’s Ark, following the measurements outlined in the book of Genesis.
Johan Huibers, who lives in the Dutch town Dordrecht recently opened a public “Bible museum,” inside his 300-cubit wooden vessel. The massive boat, known as “Johan’s Ark,” not only includes life-size plastic animals, but also a theater, restaurant, sleeping quarters, and conference facilities large enough to seat 1,500 guests.
He tells CNN that inspiration for the project came in 1992, after the low-lying Netherlands were flooded by the North Sea. "The next day I bought a book about Noah's Ark. That night while sitting on the couch with my kids, I looked at it and said: 'It's what we're going to do,'" reports CNN.
"Justin Buber" from his twitter account @Justin_Buber
Step aside Reinhod Bieber — there’s a new 20th century philosopher/pop star in town: Justin Buber. That’s right, the Bieb’s popular songs and tweets and Martin Buber’s existential Jewish thought combine in a way that would have the renowned thinker pulling the hairs out of his mountain-man beard.
One of Buber’s notable contributions to modern Jewish thought centers around the distinction of I-Thou (a holistic, infinite relation shared between people or God) and the I-It (a disconnected objectified relation). But if you’re Justin Buber , it might look something like this:
“Tonight I’ma be with u, shawty with u. For the space between two beings is where God may occur.” - October 26, 2011
Not only are they the best athletes of their generation, but they’re also solid lip syncers…
Yes, it’s the video you’ve all been waiting for:
The USA Olympic Swimming Team takes some time off from the pool and does ‘Call Me Maybe’!
Watch it ... inside the blog.
Disgruntled London East Ender, Brick-laying Bertha.
Billions will tune into the Summer Olympics in London over the coming weeks, excited to see their favorite athletes competing for those coveted Gold Medals.
Hundreds of thousands more will brave the wind and rain of the traditional British ‘summer’ (this year, summer will officially be on August 13 if you’re interested) to enjoy the Games in person and literally some people will watch the Trampolining (because those were the only tickets that were left, let’s be honest).
Everyone is anticipating a wonderful event with great excitement, which will display the very best of what Britain has to offer.
Excuse me, did you say excitement? Are you having a bubble? [Editor’s note: “bubble” is Cockney rhyming slang for laugh…]
Hear what "average" Londoner Brick-laying Bertha (with an assist from Monty Python's Terry Jones) has to say about this year's games inside the blog.
Yahoo Sports reports: "If a British newspaper report is correct (and, oh, how we hope it is), Mary Poppins and Lord Voldemort will clash in a tense battle scene during Friday's Opening Ceremony of the London Olympics."
Head over to Yahoo to read the full story.
Using 7,000 Post-it notes, this bored employee takes "playing video games at work" to a whole new level. In this stop-motion animation, Super Mario comes to life around the office, dodging clocks and collecting coins. See the brilliant short below:
If you’re like me you probably haven’t been following the latest scientific discussions about Higgs Boson (a.k.a. “the God particle"). But today I came across a 7-minute video in which Daniel Whiteson, a physicist at the prestigious European research organization CERN, walks through what the particle means, what it is, how it can be found (if it can be found at all).
But the best part about the whole discussion is that it is animated! The folks at PhD comics “a grad student comic strip,” break down the entire talk with clever visuals and an engaging presentation style.
Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-California) & Ursula (The Little Mermaid) via Huffington Post
When you're in the public eye, it's only a matter of time before you're known, not by your name, but as "that guy who looks like Pinocchio." In this hilarious compilation of look-alikes, 26 politicians are paired next to the Disney character they best resemble. And for some the comparison couldn't be more spot on.
See the whole thing HERE on the Huffington Post.
MILFORD, Mass. — A Massachusetts man who pledged to make the last mortgage payment on his home with pennies has fulfilled that promise.
After warning his bank, Thomas Daigle dropped off about 62,000 pennies weighing 800 pounds in two boxes for the final payment on the Milford home he and his wife, Sandra, bought in 1977.
He started saving his pennies when he moved in.
Read the full story HERE.
Marcel Pohl, a student at The School of Economics and Management in Essen, Germany, says he couldn't believe it when he found out the university was suing him for graduating with a master's degree after just three semesters.
"When I got the lawsuit, I thought it couldn't be true," the 22-year-old told Bild. "Performance is supposed to be worth something."