Blog: The Sly Oyster

"There are crazy days and then there are days like yesterday. Kickstarter has experienced some frantic hours but nothing like what happened in the 24-hour span between Wednesday at 6:54pm and Thursday at 6:44pm . Two million-dollar projects, a major political speech involving Kickstarter, an amazing band launching a project for a comeback 20 years in the making... the list goes on." Kickstarter might be the most important and disruptive web company in existence today. There's nothing else like it.

White Rabbits are back on March 6th with their third LP, Milk Famous , via tbd Records . I loved the band's first album from first track to last. Their second album was great in moments, but the sum of the whole was less than the parts. Interesting to see how the third records unfolds. [via MFR ]

"The idea behind Halfsies is that participating restaurant-goers are only served a dish that is half the size of the normal menu items, and that the remaining value in the dish is put to a better purpose. What restaurants don't put on the table, they donate as cash to groups working on food insecurity, homelessness, and hunger," writes Fast Company Exist . The company, started by four friends in Austin, Texas, is still trying to workout how the donations will work with restaurants. Spokesperson Linsey McNew says about 60% of proceeds will go to local charities, 30% [...]

Fast Co. Design took a tour of the Lego offices in Denmark . It's safe to say its office is better than your office. These are folks who play for a living, after all. (Lucky jerks.) So for Lego PMD in Billund, Denmark-where the toy giant develops new products-Danish designers Rosan Bosch and Rune Fjord created a 21,500-square-foot big-kid funhouse. There's an aerial walkway covered in blue padding to resemble a puffy cloud. There are cartoonishly oversized wall graphics, including one of the Lego man, and lush bonsai gardens built into the tables. There's even [...]

The Awl has an interview with the street artist Hanksy , who takes images from Banksy and incorporates Tom Hanks into the mix. It's fairly cheeky and fully awesome. The interview was done by EA Hanks, who, if I'm correct, is actually Tom Hanks' daughter. It's just an extra layer of awesome. EA : Regarding your work, Tom Hanks sends the message, "I don't know who Hanksy is, but I enjoy his (her?) comments via the semi-chaos of artistic expression." Do you know if Banksy knows as well? Hanksy : [...]

The Phantom Menace came out 13-years-ago! Thirteen! Amazingly, people are still upset about Jar Jar Binks. Honestly, to think the lasting legacy of the prequel trilogy is an entire generation of adults pissed off that Lucas ruined their childhood is sour milk funny. Anyway, it's insane, but kind of awesome that Lucas managed to create something that pissed people off so much. Movieline asked 13 writers to write about their memories of the first time they saw TPM back in 1999. It's clear the wounds are still open [...]

Google is planning on launching a cloud storage service named "Drive." The infamous "Gdrive" has been rumored in the pipeline for years and years and now that services like Box and Dropbox are sexy, of course Google's trying to get in on that action. The Wall Street Journal cites sources familiar with the matter, which state that Drive will facilitate the storing of photos, documents and videos on Google's servers, allowing them to instantly share them with other people. Google Drive is tipped to launch in the 'coming weeks or months' [...]

The one nice thing about Kristen Bell being on House of Lies is that she gets to use her deceptively great comedy chops while working a tiny bit of her drama skills. The new Funny or Die skit is full of great lines.

The Darren Aranofsky flick still haunts me to this day. Retelling the tale of drug addiction and woe isn't made any better with puppets. Actually, it might even be more terrifying. Still, this is an amazing Virgin Radio fake film fest entry and it only lasts 60 seconds. [via vulture ]

The music in the video above was created by Bartholomäus Traubeck by slicing a tree in cross-section, sticking it on a turntable, and dropping a tone-arm with a PlayStation Eye Camera in the head, and processing its output through Ableton Live . It's perhaps the most mesmerizing thing I've heard in a long, long while. It's also the sound of a tree slice! [via Clusterflock ]

Do you have ten minutes to spare? I certainly hope so, because I'm imploring you to watch this incredible piece The Wall Street Journal produced on Iraq War Veteran Ian Welch, who was diagnosed with PTSD and traumatic brain injury after his convoy was attacked. The video was filmed by Brandon Thibodeaux. It's an intimate look over a two month period of the problems Ian deals with and the effects on his relationship with his girlfriend and caretaker Katie Brickman. This is kind of the unknown told story of the Iraq [...]

My first thought was this has to be photoshopped, which would be hilarious in its own right. The fact that Arnold and Sly actually met up at the hospital to have surgery together somehow seems even more ridiculous than a simple photoshop job. Schwarzenegger posted this photo of him and Sylvester Stallone at the hospital along with the following caption: After all the action, stunts & physical abuse shooting The Expendables 2 and The Last Stand, it was time for a little tune up on my shoulder. Look who was coincidentally waiting in [...]

So this guy is clearly king of the nerds and has my undying affection for proposing to his lady while wearing a paper-mache Futurama Bender mask, sitting in front of a suspended remote controlled shark. What really takes the cake, however, is he does the entire proposal in binary. As the story goes, according to Gizmodo , this guy posted the video above to his lady friend's Facebook wall. She spent half an hour watching, transcribing, and then decoding the message, which turned out to be "Rachel, you are awesome. Will you marry me?" [...]

The FBI has released Steve Jobs' 191-page FBI file, which consists of a 1991 background investigation conducted when Jobs was being considered for a "sensitive position" in the Bush I White House. Read it here .

Janet Morrissey looks at the myriad and creative ways air travelers take to avoid baggage fees : To avoid it, some travelers stuff as many items as possible into a carry-on bag and then fight for space in the overhead bin. Others, like Eileen Ogintz, will drive 50 or 100 miles to an airport served by Southwest Airlines or JetBlue. Southwest makes the first two checked bags free, and JetBlue allows the first bag. The article article reads like a laundry list of people sick and tired of [...]

Dr. Dog is out supporting their seventh LP, Be The Void , (out now via ANTI-Records and can be streamed here ) and to that end, the group dropped by Conan for a rendition of "That Old Black Hole". The new record strikes me as much better than their last, Shame Shame . It somehow manages to capture that raw energy of their live shows, while still being very polished. The band has always excelled with the interplay between Beatles-esque pop songs full of soaring harmonies and the darker, bombastic, psychedelic songs. "The [...]

The Brewcycle is a 15-passenger bicycle that tours Portland's breweries. For a two hour tour it's $20 per seat during the week; on Friday and Saturday it's $25 per seat. Also, it's available to rent the entire bike by the hour for $150 per hour during the week and $170 per hour Fridays and Saturdays. That's all. Just keepin' it boozy, green and weird. Photo by LaValle PDX .

From Coudal : "Werner Herzog talking about anything is great. Werner Herzog on Chickens is perhaps the best." It really is.

The University of Alberta claimed the Guinness World Record for largest game of dodgeball for the third year in a row . The game featured 4,979 competitors, who probably practiced dodging wrenches for hours leading up to the actual game. The opening volley is above, more photos of the match at Gateway Photography . [via colossal ]

I had entirely forgotten there was going to be a fourth installment in the Bourne franchise released this summer and it would be the first post-Matt Damon entry. It's just one more movie to get excited about for the summer of 2012. The Bourne Legacy stars Jeremy Renner as our resident messed-up secret agent. It's hard to tell how much Tony Gilroy's direction of the film will differ from Paul Greengrass', however this trailer still has that kinetic spirit of the previous entries. As much as I like Jeremy Renner, this trailer [...]