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People overuse the word “amazing” — especially in the hour of Facebook and Twitter and the world-wide blogodrome, everything gets chalked up to “amazing”. But, seriously you guys, this is fucking amazing.

Darth Vader robs a bank - photo via nydailynews.com

Apparently the Lord of the Dark Side took some time off of his usual galaxy-conquesting last week to rob a bank in Long Island. Hey, all the money for those Death Star repairs have to come from somewhere, right? And it’s not like the fucking Ewoks have anything of value… all they care about are berries and dancing.

A gun seems a little pointless when you can just Force choke a mother fucker, but I guess to the uninitiated, pointing a crooked finger at the teller is way less intimidating than pointing a Glock 9. Maybe the light saber was out of batteries.

Despite the fact that it’s liquefying our brains, destroying healthy human social interaction, and full of some of the most worthless, asinine stuff the world has ever borne witness to, the Internet still does have its fair share of pros to outweigh the cons. Like this, for example.

I think that’s supposed to be an impossible, but I’m not sure. Honestly, I’m less concerned with the actual trick than I am with the fact that The Joker is riding for Tracker. Dude really is deranged.

My ongoing love affair with Sean Daley, aka Slug, aka Seven, aka the vocal half of underground hip hop darling Atmosphere, has been pretty well documented on this blog. The rest of my experience with Slug can be found buried in public records. That restraining order doesn’t stop me from listening to the music, Sean — shoulda thought of that!

Anyway, like so many rap wunderkinds, Slug has dabbled with as many side projects as substances… which can have addictive results — for both him and his listeners, depending on which half of that comparison you’re talking about. Such is the case with Felt, Slug’s ongoing collaboration with Murs of Living Legends, who’s not too shabby at putting together a good 16 either.

Murs and Slug - photo via urchicago.com

To date, the duo have released three separate albums, each featuring a different producer stirring their own distinct mixture of loops and instrumentals into the brew. This keeps things fresh, by occasionally forcing the emcees out of their comfort zone, and simply by hearing them rap over beats that may be atypical of their usual style. Felt’s first album was produced by The Grouch (of Living Legends), their second album was produced by Ant (of Atmosphere), and their third album was produced by Aesop Rock (of… himself), so each release has an individual sound, which makes them a lot like Lucky Charms or Pokemon — a golden recommendation I dare any critic to best.

Each album has been named after a different female actress (Christina Ricci, Lisa Bonet & Rosie Perez) and each features two songs named after other celebrities (Suzanne Vega, Rick James, Morris Day, Marvin Gaye, Kevin Spacey & Paul Reubens). I have to imagine this is intentional, if only because a coincidence of that magnitude would split my brain in half almost immediately.

Originally, the title of the first album was decided based on a wager between the two rappers over who could sleep with Christina Ricci first — to date, neither has been successful. Which, I suppose, is why they move on to new actresses every couple years. Like Rosie Perez for example… who you may know as that “adorable little cop” from Pineapple Express:

To be clear, the only real reason I posted that clip was for the two seconds when Rosie Perez shoots the hapless bystander in the arm. That’s what you get for wearing an over-sized windbreaker, dickbag!

I’ll leave you with one last track, from The Hood Internet’s recent mash-up album of Felt 3 and Tobacco’s latest journey into the realm of psychedelic indie rock, Maniac Meat. Thanks to the mind-bending beats, the 5 track EP is pretty much complete insanity and boy, does it ever have its hooks in me.

That was a music pun, I don’t know if you guys got that or not, what with the super obvious italics all up in your face. But I couldn’t bear to see it go to waste in case you’re less of a nerd than I am.

One of the hallmarks of segueing into crusty-old-dude-skater status is when you can’t keep track of all the new up-and-comers anymore until they have a monumental video part about to drop and the hype consumes the entire industry. Guys like Cory Kennedy and Shane O’Neill, due to their sponsorships and bonkers trick-selection, are pretty hard to ignore. But guys like Think’s latest addition, Lee Yankou, often fly under the radar, and to all of our detriment. The dude’s been crawling up the ranks from the frozen depths of Canada for a couple years now. And he might not be doing Gandalf Flips or whatever the latest craze is, but this guy still goes big in his own, much more literal, way.

Hey Lee, if you like wallrides so much, why don’t you just fucking marry one already?

Annnd YouTube never fails to entertain:

Damn right. Sure beats the go-to, good-vibes, iPod-commercial soundtrack choices of late, at the very least.

Another day, another skull.

Oooh, imagery evoking mysticism, the occult, and space monsters and shit? Man, I’ve got this “cool” shit down to a science.

Yeah… hard science. Like, literally, it’s hard work. Does that mean I’m doing it wrong?

This world map of cannabis legality is pretty interesting. To me, anyway. To non-stoners and xXxDRUGxFREExXx losers… probably not so much.

What I wanna know is WHAT ABOUT ANTARCTICA? Do penguins smoke? Lol

Welcome to Chicago’s famed prison of eternal sadness — the Lincoln Park Zoo!

Their diverse collection includes the cutest animal mankind has ever discovered. Although I’m pretty sure if you gave it the chance, it would slash you in the jugular and lap up your blood while you still struggled for breath.

Meanwhile, this fucking giraffe was all “No more pictures!” Diva.

Dude seems a little depressed. Don’t worry little guy, Lindsey will be out soon.

My final conclusion based on my trip to the zoo? Penguins are hard to shoot.

Of course I got to thinking… wouldn’t it be weird if our planet was really just a giant zoo for alien tourists to observe with kryptonite-lens binoculars on a galactic safari? Consider this: animals in zoos often display repetitive behavior. For example, I watched in silent agony as an armadillo ran in a circle for 10 minutes straight, which is as long as I could muster before tearing myself away from the grim spectacle. Now, on a cosmic level, wouldn’t your routine look a bit like you running around in a circle all day, every day? Anyway, it’s best not to dwell on that too much, dumpling, just eat your food pellets.

Veteran Blockhead rider and filmmaker Laban Pheidias came together with Lowcard’s Rob Collinson to make this short film for the 2007 Underskatement Film Festival. And it’s no underskatement that this video is funny — and I mean that both as “humorous” and “rather strange.”

Nonetheless, it’s really hard to go wrong with a combination of beer and jump ramps. Even the most unproductive of sessions are still practically destined to be a good time… unless someone ends up in the hospital. But that’s a condition that can be tacked onto the end of pretty much anything good to spoil the fun, kind of like “Yes, you can see the movie, but your parents have to come along and sit behind you the entire time.”

It’s rare for me to actually want rain, but after weeks of 90-degree weather an epic summer monsoon is sounding like a great relief from the brain-scrambling heat.

Feelin’ the heat this week? According the the nerds over at NASA, 2010 is, so far, the hottest year since 1880. Granted, on a geological-history-of-the-Earth scale, that’s kind of like saying “It’s hotter than it’s been in the past 5 seconds” so… I’m not saying the earth’s crust is about to boil (yet). But in any case, it’s hotter than it’s been in a fucking while for us humans. Not like I needed to tell you that, though.

Anyway, there was a time, not so long ago, when Earth was a raging fireball besieged by meteors and volcanoes and shit. In light of that, 93 degrees and humid as balls is sounding pretty comfortable to me.

Super Mario Bros. is eternal — an icon woven into the fabric of pop culture, or perhaps etched into its sidewalk anyway. Though at times it almost becomes a cliche, particularly due to the YouTube nation, there are still some clever, and maniacally hard-working, people out there applying Super Mario in really fucking amazing ways.

Andreas Heikaus made this video for his bachelor thesis at the University of Applied Science and Art Hannover. He used some incredible… things… I don’t understand to cast a nearly flawless run through the game on a city sidewalk covered in graffiti scrawls. Without the bounds of a television screen, the levels stretch on down the curb, and basically it’s super fucking cool.

In Andreas’ words:

I stitched the entire level together that I got a huge panorama… after this I made the animation with the original sprites from the game for the whole thing in the areas you normally won’t see…

He’s German. Anyway, fuck all that nerdy shit anyway — he completed the game in six minutes, sick!

The sting of getting home at 4 AM on a Monday morning after a 10-hour, trauma-inducing bus ride can only be eased with a sunrise like this one. Sunsets tend to be more dramatic, like the teenage daughter who insists on painting her fingernails black and shaving only one side of her head, while sunrises are the quieter, more demure sibling. They’re less of an attention-starved showoff, but when they get dressed up everybody’s still all like, “Damn… sunrises are hot.”

Another successful BKFST:

For those that didn’t pick it up — that line is a reference to Wet Hot American Summer, surely the greatest summer camp film ever crafted. Three years ago, when my pot-smoking became, how you say, “extremely regular”, that movie was basically my Bible. Like Virgil’s Aeneid, I could jump to any point in the film and find answers to the problems that had plagued my day. Tough problems — like what to do when you’re hurtling down Moose River with a bunch of young campers and are about to be pitched into the rapids. And Wet Hot American Summer never let me down.

Also, this bit of trivia was unknown to me 15 minutes ago and is awesome:

The owners of Camp Towanda (where the movie was filmed) were told that this was going to be a family comedy. They were mortified when they saw the final cut of the film.

And just for good measure…

The behind-the-scenes photos on IMDb are also fucking incredible. Check ‘em out after the jump if you can appreciate what this movie really is — a treasure. Read More