“THAT’S METAL!” – BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC (NO. 63)

 That's Metal -- But It's Not Music  10 Responses »
Sep 232012
 

How the fuck are you today? Are you in the mood for some images, videos, and news items that are metal even though they’re not music? Well if so, you came to the right place. Here’s what I’ve got for you in this installment:

A human hovercraft, a skull flower (accompanied by a weird coincidence), a flight through the universe, cigarette magic, a tornado of fire, a musical prodigy from Hong Kong (okay, this one is music, but it’s not metal, except it’s metal), and Singapore “in miniature”.

ITEM ONE

A little over a week ago, the Lake Union Boats Afloat show started on — where else — Lake Union in Seattle, where I live. On the opening day of the show, a dude named Brandon Robinson put on a demonstration of a device called the “FlyBoard”. It’s a water-powered contraption that allows the “pilot” to hover 20-30 feet in the air and do assorted acrobatic tricks, with the propulsion supplied by a jet ski.

Our local paper ran an eye-catching series of photos of the demonstration, one of which you can see above. You can see a couple more of the pics at this location.

The FlyBoard was invented last year by two-time world champion jet skier Franky Zapata from France. After seeing these photos I had to see if I could find some video of this thing in action, and I succeeded. I found a promotional vid by Zapata’s company, which is selling these FlyBoards for $6,500. A lot of the video consists of Zapata and others speaking in French. I don’t understand French, but I sure as hell got a charge watching the parts of the video that show Zapata getting a workout on his invention. Watch it next . . . Continue reading »

“THAT’S METAL!” – BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC (NO. 51)

 That's Metal -- But It's Not Music  4 Responses »
Mar 062012
 

I think this is the first installment of this series in which I didn’t lift a finger to find any of the items myself. Every one of them came my way either through an e-mail suggestion from one of our readers or via a post on FB by one of my friends. Having other people do your work for you is definitely the way to go. It allows you to spend more time not working.

For new readers, the focus of this series is not music, but photos, videos, and news items that we think are metal. However, in this installment, I’m cheating at the end: The last items does involve music, but it’s not really the music that makes it metal. It’s the spark of creativity. You’ll see.

ITEM ONE

The first item is the photo you see at the top of this post. I saw it through a FB post by JZ. It turns out that it’s one of many created by a photographer named Seth Casteel in a series called “Underwater Dogs”. He seems to spend much of his time photographing pets for people who can afford to have pet portraits made, which seems kind of ridiculous, but then again all sorts of things undoubtedly seem less ridiculous when you have the money to do them without sacrificing something else important like food or beer. But this “Underwater Dog” series is not ridiculous. It’s metal.

In addition to the fact that the quality of the underwater photos is amazing, they capture man’s best friend looking either really scary or really alien or both. Go here to see the whole series, and check out one more right after the jump. Continue reading »