It’s been almost three weeks since our last “THAT’S METAL!” post. We don’t put up installments in this series on any kind of regular schedule, but that’s still way too fucking long. As regular readers know, for these posts we look for news reports or photos or videos that make us think, “shit, that’s metal!” — even though it’s not music.

For this installment, we’ve got a few news items that relate to intoxicants — or in one case, to what some Darwin Award candidates thought were intoxicants — plus the best beer commercial we’ve ever seen.

And then, for the fuck of it, we’re interspersing among those items some random photographs that are all kinds of awesome which we found at Boston.com. They’re from an amazing collection of 120 news photos from 2010 — a “best of the year” round-up that’s worth checking out in full if you’ve got the time (here).

The one at the top of this post is a shot of lightning streaks across the sky as lava flows from an Icelandic volcano in Eyjafjallajokul on April 17, 2010. You might remember that this volcano spewed ash into the air for weeks, wreaking havoc on flights across Europe and fucking up plans by various metal bands for European tours.

For the rest of our items, plus our usual tasteless commentary, continue reading past the jump . . . Continue reading »

Time for another edition of THAT’S METAL!, where we attempt to entertain you with things that aren’t music but are still metal — as in items that would make you say, “Shit! That’s fucking metal!” — at least if you liked the words “shit” and “fucking” as much as I do.

Usually, we pick wacko news stories for these posts, but today we got on a video kick. In fact, three of our four items are videos. Two of those are visually stunning, and the third one is . . . fucking funny as shit. And the fourth item consist of drink recipes. I just know you’ll want to try them out for yourselves without delay, and then write us with photos and descriptions of the tasting experience. I really encourage you to do that, because there’s no fucking way in hell I’m doing it.

ITEM ONE

This first item is a short film by Carl Erik Rinsch called “Parallel Lines – The Gift”, which I first saw on the consistently awesome TYWKIWDBI blog. It was made for the promotion of the Philips Cinema TV. Philips gave six lines of dialogue to five filmmakers at Ridley Scott Associates, and commissioned each of them to create short films using those lines. All five were released by Philips last April. “The Gift” is one of them, and the one I thought was the best.

It’s a futuristic piece set in Moscow that involves a robot on the run from the police. It’s amazing to watch, and reportedly spawned a bidding war between several big Hollywood movie studios, including Warner Bros and Fox, who want to turn the short film into a feature. Rinsch is currently developing a remake of Creature From The Black Lagoon and is in preproduction on an “epic period samurai film” titled 47 Ronin starring that great thespian Keanu Reeves.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

We haven’t run one of these THAT’S METAL! posts since Thanksgiving, what with our fixation on all things Finnish since then, and we thought it was time once again to check in with the world as it exists outside our metallic island. (Finland Tribute “Week” isn’t done. We’re just taking a short, one-day break while we work on the wrap-up to that series — one more post tomorrow and the final installment on Friday.)

Some of today’s items we saw a while ago and squirreled away for future use and some we just discovered. But they all made us say, “Fuck — that’s metal!”, even though they’re not music. Well, a couple of them do involve music, but it’s not the music that makes them metal.

Because we haven’t done one of these posts in weeks, we’ve got quite a lot of goodies in the grab bag — a trifecta of stories which prove that cars are fun for people of all ages; an eye-popping video that vividly reminds us, “yes, it does snow in Minneapolis in the wintertime”; and an unusual medley of tunes from The Wizard of Oz.

But first, we have a story about the perils of French kissing. All this, plus our typically tasteless commentary, after the jump . . . Continue reading »

Catching up. That’s what I’m doing this weekend. In the place where I spent my vacation, the net connection was too slow for video-watching, so much of my catching up involves watching videos I wanted to see over the last 10 days but couldn’t. A slew of them were featured on a web site called TYWKIWDBI. It’s an absolutely awesome site, even though it’s got nothing to do with metal music. I don’t have the time to browse that site every day, but without fail, whenever I do, I find fascinating shit.

I hadn’t planned on adding any more NCS posts today, but I couldn’t resist sharing with you this collection of items I found on TYWKIWDBI over the last week. All but one of the items are videos — and all of them fit the profile of this NCS series — things that are fucking metal, even though they’re not music.

So, after the jump, we have for you a trailer about a forthcoming movie that looks awesome, a video of a parotta-maker which proves that practice does make perfect, some eye-popping images of an opium factory from 160 years ago, and a final, very eloquent video about you and me and our connection to the cosmos.  (all these rip-offs from TYWKIWDBI, plus some of our own embellishments, after the jump . . .) Continue reading »