The Wandering Marionettes’ Gorgeous Masked Performances: “
Photo: Shannon Cottrell/LA Weekly from ‘Hello Kitty’s Bats and Cats Masquerade @ Royal/T’

The Wandering Marionettes are a performance troupe based in Los Angeles who have become an important part of the city’s nightlife. They appear frequently at clubs and other events (like Labyrinth of Jareth) across L.A. dressed in black and white and wearing sleek masks, using music and dance to tell a story of mysterious dolls.

I wrote about The Wandering Marionettes when they put together their own party, Kabinet Theatre, in Hollywood last year. (They’ve hosted Kabinet Theatre nights since then, as well, but moved it downtown.) I like The Wandering Marionettes for a reason similar to The League of S.T.E.A.M.: both emphasize audience interaction in their work.

Typically, The Wandering Marionettes will do a few dance numbers on stage, but that’s only part of what they do. The members of the troupe are in character all night and much of their performance revolves around their interaction with the crowd. They might be on the dance floor or hanging around the bar with everyone else, but they don’t speak and how you react to them more or less prompts what happens next. Check out the video below to see The Wandering Marionettes on stage.

Link:
The Wandering Marionettes

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Intensely psychedelic “fractal” architecture animation: “

Welcome to the Mandelbox. Over at Dose Nation, the creator
Hömpörgő says, ‘I wanted to go further too, but at the end part a single frame took 18 minutes to render, and the whole 1:27 minute video needed 12 days nonstop rendering. I felt thats more than enough at the time. It was just my first experiment with Mandelbulb 3D, a freeware program, I’m not a film director or something…’

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Toddler fails at hula hoop, but remains blissfully ignorant of said failure: “In this uncredited, random video, a toddler fails at hula hooping, yet succeeds at the art of making you and millions of other strangers he will never meet laugh. [Thanks, Tara McGinley!]

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Tortura: “

A glorious find from A Sound Awareness, who say:

Here’s an odd record. Basically it’s a recording of people screaming, moaning, crying, groaning and laughing while being whipped. It was released in 1965 which is odd in itself. What is even odder is that some people will pay a lot of money to own a copy...

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DeepSurplus: “

Deep Surplus is a fantastic source for an encyclopedic array of cables.

For example, Apple sells a mini to mini cable for connecting your iPod to your stereo for $24.95. The same cable can be had for less than a dollar from Deep Surplus.

For work I buy all of our networking patch cables, USB cables, etc. for 10% of the cost of buying them at Staples, Microcenter, or Best Buy. I recently bought some rather hard to find white, two-lead speaker wire, which elsewhere was as pricey as $80, for $12 for a 25-foot length. I also bought a 6-foot mini (iPod) to dual RCA (for my older audiophile amplifier) cable for $2.75, compared to $24.95 at the Apple store.

I rely on them whenever I need essential cables affordably.

DeepSurplus

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Terrific 180-square-foot shack houses family of four plus dog: “

Tammy and her husband John built this fantastic 180-square-foot shack on Gambier Island, British Columbia. They spent about $7,000 in materials. Tammy wrote a great article about it at Apartment Therapy, which includes the mistakes they made. But as you can tell from the photos, it’s bright and happy, and filled with just the right amount of furniture and other neat stuff.

Before I get started with this tour, I cannot emphasize this enough: My husband and I are not rich and we are not particularly handy. Heck, we’re not even all that smart. This latter fact was probably the driver behind why two people with little money and even fewer skills would even attempt to build a cabin on an isolated island with no amenities. But armed with a hacked $25 shed plan and an incredibly generous friend with actual skills, we gave it a shot.

Four People (and a Dog) Living in 180 Square Feet

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[Aw hell yeah. -egg]

What it’s really like to work in a music store (a series of superb reality-comedy videos): “

Tara McGinley points us to this seemingly real series of funny videos on YouTube documenting the Kafkaesque hell that is the daily life of a music store employee.

Not only are you laughing at the ‘musicians’ testing out instruments at the store, but when this guy makes his cameo appearance, the look on his face will have you in tears. He doesn’t have to say anything at all and it’s side-splitting. When you make eye-contact, you know what he’s thinking!

It’s all the creation of a YouTube vlogger named Avery Ellis, aka ‘Mostly Harmless.’ He lives and plays music in Alabama, in a band called The Exhibits. Guy’s a genius.

Dangerous Minds has collected a series of his videos for you to enjoy here.

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Macro photos of eyes: “

Our boy Dean Putney spotted a series of gorgeous macro photographs of eyes by Suren Manvelyan. ‘Your beautiful eyes‘ (Photography Served via Reddit)

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Intricately carved vintage vinyl records: “

By artist Scott Marr, who is based in Australia: ‘Records revert to time.’ Carved record and ochre, 25cm. View more from this series of artwork. He explains that these are all carved by hand using a dremel, which sounds awfully time-consuming and delicate. Really beautiful stuff. (via Bibliodyssey)

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