“THAT’S METAL!” – BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC: A VIDEO INTERLUDE

 That's Metal -- But It's Not Music  17 Responses »
Dec 112012
 

This isn’t a full-fledged THAT’S METAL! post. I just saw three videos this morning that I thought would brighten your day, because they brightened mine.

ITEM ONE

The first one relates to that photo above. I’m a sucker for cats, large or small, and I’m a particular sucker for cheetahs. If you don’t give a fuck about cheetahs, you’ll want to move on to our second item. But if you do, I found a video that you need to see.

It was made at the Cincinnati Zoo by National Geographic using a Hollywood action crew and a Phantom camera filming at 1200 frames per second. Using an installed track, they kept pace with five different cheetahs, from both alongside and in front, as the cheetahs hit speeds in excess of 60 mph chasing a lure. At that frame rate, they were able to create a crystal-clear, super slo-mo film of the cheetahs in action. If you hang in ’til the last part of the video, you’ll see how they did this, and you’ll see how fast the cheetahs were really moving.

To me, this is amazing to watch. There’s only one problem with the video: the soundtrack. It’s one of those angelic, ultra-gooey things that Hollywood uses to over-dramatize things that are already dramatic enough. I mean come on, a cheetah is a fuckin’ predator. If there’d been something alive in front of it instead of that lure, there would have been blood spray at the end of the chase.

In other words, this video needs music that’s more appropriate to the subject matter. I think Krisiun will do nicely. Continue reading »

“THAT’S METAL!” – BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC (NO. 68)

 That's Metal -- But It's Not Music  7 Responses »
Dec 092012
 

 

In this series we feature photos, videos, and news items that we think are metal, even though they’re not musical. Today we have seven items for you:

ITEM ONE

As usual we’ll start with a photo, the one at the top of the post. It was taken by the Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn on November 27, 2012. It shows a vortex of swirling clouds near the north pole of Saturn. To get a sense of how big this cloud formation is, Cassini was about 230,000 miles away when it took the photo.

This cloud formation lies at the center of an enormous, rotating hexagonal cloud formation that is unlike anything seen by humans anywhere else in the solar system. A pic of that, also taken by Cassini, is at the right.

Cassini took 14 pics of this swirling cloud formation, and those photos have been combined to create a smooth animation that can be seen here. Follow this link to get more info. This thing is so huge, strange, and scary looking that I think it qualifies as metal. (thanks to Mike Yost for turning me on to this) Continue reading »

REJOICE! THE PENIS SPAM 2013 CALENDAR IS NOW OUT!

 That's Metal -- But It's Not Music  7 Responses »
Dec 012012
 

This post probably belongs in the “THAT’S METAL” – BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC category. Here’s the scoop:

Beth Winegarner, whose web site is here, is a journalist, novelist, poet, and proud lover of heavy metal. Among other things, she has a blog that examines how so-called “controversial” teen interests, including violent video games, goth culture, heavy metal music, and paganism, can be a healthy part of growing up. She has also written and been interviewed about the place of women in metal culture (see this, for example).

Her latest creation, however, is a calendar with the title The Lengths You Go To – Poems From Penis Spam. There had to be a pretty damned sweet “Eureka!” moment behind this concept. I’ll let Beth explain it in her own words, via an e-mail I received today:

“Spammers love us and want us to be happy. Specifically, they want us ALL – men and women, young and old – to have bigger, longer, harder penises. That’s why they send us so many ridiculous emails, right?

While most of you have been hastily deleting all the “c1al1s” and “vaigra” spam from your junk-mail folders, I was combing through them for the juiciest, most unbelievable phrases – and turning them into poetry. Trust me, there were plenty to choose from.

The result? Twelve poems, coupled with slightly suggestive, slightly psychedelic artwork (think elephant trunks, hoses, and massive trees) in a month-by-month calendar for 2013.”

Continue reading »

WANNA WATCH AN ANACONDA REGURGITATE A COW?

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Nov 272012
 

Yeah, I knew you would, you sicko.
 


 

I didn’t know anacondas were picky eaters.  Maybe this one was strictly into free-range, grass-fed beef. Or this cow was too much hoof and not enough haunch. Or the fuckin’ snake had a rough night at the local anaconda bar. Or it could just be that this anaconda violated my own personal rule: Never eat anything bigger than your head.

As interesting as this video was, what I’d really like to see is film of how the snake got a whole fuckin’ cow inside in the first place.

Actually, I don’t really want to see that. I didn’t really want to see this one either, but Ben C (Church of the Riff) sent it to me, and I fell under a horrible compulsion to watch it. I bet you watched it, too. You sicko.  For the record, Ben C is sick, too, though I’m stealing his words for the post title and first sentence. Continue reading »

“THAT’S METAL! – BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC: THE MOST METAL METAL

 That's Metal -- But It's Not Music  17 Responses »
Nov 212012
 

(Here we have a guest post by NCS reader/commenter Old Man Windbreaker.)

Come, join One to gaze at the red hot glow of… uh… never mind. “Hot blonde blacksmith lady pounding hot metal” is all that needs to be said.

Old Man Windbreaker greets you over the worldwide web, in the manner that you imagine yourself being greeted over the worldwide web by a stranger (or Ziltoid). Greetings.

One recently found Oneself fascinated with the thought of metals – metallic chemical elements, that is. After all, if anything is metal, a metal surely is. With this in mind, One attempted to examine what it means to Oneself when One describes something as metal. One found that anything One considers metal deals with themes of death, destruction and darkness; or at least induces thoughts of such. So, one should simply examine history for the metal most closely associated with death. For reference (and annoyance) here is a picture of the periodic table of chemical elements.


Continue reading »

“THAT’S METAL!” – BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC (NO. 67)

 That's Metal -- But It's Not Music  31 Responses »
Nov 182012
 

You know it when you see it — things that are metal even if they’re not music. And that’s what we collect in this series of posts — photos, videos, and news items I think are metal.

It’s been a couple weeks since the last time I did this, so today I’ve got a whopping ten items for you: striking photos from an Australian rainforest, a trouser snake from the Amazon, sexual horrors of the insect world, the world’s largest collection of penises (in Iceland), dumb ways to die, Finnish hockey commercials, mind-blowing video of the new world record for holding your breath, a couple of dudes wearing medals, and a new Oz movie that’s got me pretty excited. Here we go:

ITEM ONE

The first item is a series of photographs that appeared in Australian Geographic. They were taken by Kaisa and Stanley Breeden in a northern Queensland rainforest for their book Rainforest Country, which was published earlier this year. One of the photos is at the top of this post — a close-up of a Boyd’s rainforest dragon (Hypsilurus boydii).

Right after the jump, in the following order, you’ll see a cassowary (a bird that’s covered in black feathers everywhere except for the skin on the head and throat, which are brightly colored); a small patch of wet rocks on a beach (they are only brightly coloured when wet); and a pygmy possum (lol).

The Australian Geographic article about the Breedens and Rainforest Country can be found via this link, and you can click here to see even more of these eye-popping photos. Continue reading »

“THAT’S METAL!” – BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC (NO. 66)

 That's Metal -- But It's Not Music  25 Responses »
Oct 282012
 

Hey, happy Sunday. It’s THAT’S METAL! time. Time for pics, videos, and news items that I thought were metal even though they’re not music.

I have seven items for you today.

ITEM ONE

The first item is that horrifying creature at the top of the post. Actually, it’s not really a monster. It’s an Old English Bulldog named Coraline. Sexy beast, isn’t she?

I’ve used some pics by photographer Seth Casteel in a previous THAT’s METAL! installment. He takes photos of people’s pets. But he also takes pics of dogs like Coraline underwater, usually while they’re going after a tennis ball. Dogs are like that. If you threw a tennis ball into a pool for a cat to chase, the cat would look at you as if to say, “Really? You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me.”

Since the last time I used some of Seth Catseel’s photos from his Underwater Dog series, he’s come up with some new ones, and he also now has a book of them for sale. In addition to the fact that the quality of the underwater photos is amazing, they continue to capture man’s best friend looking really scary and really alien, which of course makes them really metal. Continue reading »

“THAT’S METAL!” – BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC (NO. 65)

 That's Metal -- But It's Not Music  12 Responses »
Oct 212012
 

It’s time again for another installment of THAT’S METAL, where we take a brief break from the headbanging to collect, images, news items, and videos that we thought were metal, even though they’re not music.

It’s worth reminding everyone, especially for this installment, that things can be metal for a bunch of divergent reasons — ranging from the blindingly awesome to the brutally destructive to the disgustingly grotesque to the utterly ridiculous. Of course, like beauty, what’s metal is in the eye of the beholder . . . and I’m kinda cross-eyed.

ITEM ONE

The first item, as usual, is the photo at the top of this post. I saw it at the amazing Big Picture at Boston.com, which is one of the best photo-collecting places on the web. It’s a shot of a Great White shark taken from below, by a photographer who was perched on top of a submersible cage just after he released a breath through his respirator. It’s one of thousands of photos that are currently being submitted in The National Geographic’s 2012 photo competition. More can be viewed here.

ITEM TWO

I’m indebted to Ben C from The Church of the Riff for this next item. It’s a collection of photos of intricate wax anatomical models created by anatomists and biological sculptors from the late 1600’s to the mid-1800’s.

The models are creepy as fuck, and many of them seem to be women. In fact, during the 19th century the dissected anatomical statues of reclining women came to be known as “Venuses”. Sexy. Continue reading »

“THAT’S METAL!” – BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC: STRATOS SUCCESS FOR FELIX BAUMGARTNER

 That's Metal -- But It's Not Music  13 Responses »
Oct 142012
 

In one of our THAT’S METAL! posts back in early August (here), we included an item about the plans of Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner (a/k/a “Fearless Felix”) to make a parachute jump from a height of 120,000 feet and break the sound barrier with his body as he was in free-fall. The project, called Stratos, was being funded by Red Bull. And earlier today, Fearless Felix achieved his goal.

He ascended 24 miles into the sky via a gigantic balloon (55 stories tall) filled with 30 million cubic feet of helium and then jumped — from a height of 128,000 feet above the Earth, reaching a top speed of 833.9 mph. That amounts to Mach 1.24, which is faster than the speed of sound. No one has ever reached that speed wearing only a high-tech suit.

In one of those coincidences of history, Baumgartner did this 65 years to the day — Oct. 14, 1947 — after pilot Chuck Yaeger (of “The Right Stuff” fame) broke the sound barrier in an aircraft. If it had been me 128,000 feet up, looking down at the planet through an open door, my final words would have been “FUCK THIS!  I’VE CHANGED MY FREAKIN’ MIND!” Instead, Baumgartner’s words before he took the plunge were these:

“Sometimes you have to go really high to see how small you are.” Continue reading »

“THAT’S METAL!” – BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC (NO. 64)

 That's Metal -- But It's Not Music  34 Responses »
Oct 052012
 

(Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

Welcome back, one and all, to this latest installment of THAT’S METAL!, in which we collect recent sightings of photos, videos, and news items that we thought were metal, even though they aren’t music.

ITEM ONE

The first item is really multiple items, just a few photos that caught my eye. The one above is a picture of Rex, one of the world’s largest crocodiles, as he prepares to chow down on some beef ribs at WILD LIFE Sydney Zoo on October 3, 2012, in Sydney, Australia. Rex weighs more than 1500 pounds and he’s more than 16 feet long, and this was his first meal after three months in hibernation.

I didn’t know that crocodiles hibernated. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to come within 10 miles of a 1500-pound reptile that hasn’t eaten in three months. Fuck.

Of course, Rex has his own Facebook page. I like the status he posted there on Christmas Eve last year: “Dear Children of the world. I ate Santa last night. Sorry about that.” This sounds like my kind of zoo.

The next photo is Neptune. Not the god, but the planet. I haven’t seen photos of the god that are good enough to share. I don’t know what was done to produce the colors in the photo of the planet, but the pic is really fuckin’ cool. Continue reading »

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