star wars – Museum of the Weird

Posted on June 29, 2015 by MOTW Admin

The Copenhagen Nose Memorial

The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek museum in Copenhagen features a number of Greek and Roman portrait busts and statues. These are very fragile and a number of them ended up with broken noses. In the 19th century there was a restoration trend, where museums attempted to restore classical art. New noses were fashioned out of marble or plaster and affixed to the statues to make them whole. In the 20th century, this idea was revisited and they decided that the works should be shown in their natural state, brokenness and all.

Nasothek-2 — Diagram Lajard derivative work: Hic et nunc (Nasothek.JPG) [Public Domain, CC0], via Wikimedia Commons

During this “de-restoration,” a strange collection of noses and other parts was assembled. Rather than throw them away they were used to create a new piece of art called Nasothek. The purpose of the exhibit is to call to mind the sins of artistic curators of the past so that we may never be tempted to do such a thing again.

One might wish that Steven Spielberg or George Lucas had been given the opportunity to see this monument before they were tempted to revise their own art.

Steve Spielberg infamously used CGI to replace any appearance of a gun in E. T. with a walkie-talkie (Kids, that’s a device used to communicate by radio before everyone had a mobile phone). Spielberg ultimately admitted regret for this decision.

George Lucas made numerous alterations to his Star Wars films, but the most notorious was the “Han shot first” controversy. This is where the later release of Star Wars was altered to make it look as though Han Solo shot a bounty hunter in self defense rather than preemptively. Peter Mayhew, the actor who played Chewbacca in the the films, settled the matter once and for all by posting a picture from his shooting script on Facebook. Lucas also saw the light and released the original edit in 2006.

No matter what your art, Nasothek is a reminder that art can and should stand on its own. Imperfections or politically incorrect elements cannot be washed away without wiping the original purpose of the art. We have some of the weirdest art in the land for sale at the Lucky Lizard. We wouldn’t change a bit of it.

Posted on December 13, 2014 by MOTW Admin

Collect ‘Em, Trade ‘Em: New Star Wars Characters Revealed in Throwback Trading Cards

Now how cool is THIS?

Star Wars director J.J. Abrams and Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy have released the names of all the characters from the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer in the most novel, fun and inspired way imaginable — they’ve released a set of retro Topps-style trading cards!

Can you say… Freakin’ AWESOME!!??

Anyone who was lucky enough to have grown up in the late-seventies and remembers all the Star Wars mania of those days — myself included — will instantly recognize the heartwarming feel of nostalgia these cards bring back. They are almost identical to the original set of Star Wars trading cards put out by Topps back in 1977, even down to the starbursts and numbering system (and yes, according to Abrams those numbers DO have some significance — could they be in chronological order of events from the film?).

Here’s a couple of scans of the original 1977 cards for comparison:

Entertainment Weekly broke the story yesterday with their exclusive release of eight cards, which we have reproduced here in numeric order for your speculative enjoyment.

Now for my next question: will we be seeing the rest of the cards?

Anyone interest in picking up some of the original trading cards should come down to our sister store, Sfanthor! at 1101 South Congress! We have almost the complete set!

SOURCE: ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ character names revealed (in coolest way possible) — exclusive

Posted on August 29, 2012 by MOTW Admin

THE HOVER BIKE OF THE FUTURE AVAILABLE TODAY

The Aerofex hover vehicle looks a little familiar.

If we weren’t living in enough of ‘The World of the Future” as we’ve seen in novels, movies and television for your liking, it looks like someone has taken a step in the right direction… up.

Space.com writes:

A resurrected hover vehicle won’t fly through dense forests as effortlessly as the “Star Wars” speeder bikes from “Return of the Jedi,” but its intuitive controls could someday allow anyone to fly it without pilot training.

The aerial vehicle resembles ascience fiction flying bike with two ducted rotors instead of wheels, but originates from a design abandoned in the 1960s because of stability and rollover problems. Aerofex, a California-based firm, fixed the stability issue by creating a mechanical system — controlled by two control bars at knee-level — that allows the vehicle to respond to a human pilot’s leaning movements and natural sense of balance.

“Think of it as lowering the threshold of flight, down to the domain of ATV’s (all-terrain vehicles),” said Mark De Roche, an aerospace engineer and founder of Aerofex.

Such intuitive controls could allow physicians to fly future versions of the vehicle to visit rural patients in places without roads, or enable border patrol officers to go about their duties without pilot training. All of it happens mechanically without the need for electronics, let alone complicated artificial intelligence or flight software. [See Hover ‘Bike’ Fly (Video)]

“It essentially captures the translations between the two in three axis (pitch, roll and yaw), and activates the aerodynamic controls required to counter the movement — which lines the vehicle back up with the pilot,” De Roche told InnovationNewsDaily. “Since [the pilot’s] balancing movements are instinctive and constant, it plays out quite effortlessly to him.”

PLANET HAS DOUBLE SUNSETS LIKE TATOOINE OF “STAR WARS”!

I remember watching Star Wars for the first time and thinking how beautiful it would be to live on a planet just like Luke Skywalker did with his Aunt and Uncle, cruising the dunes and watching both suns set. Now it looks like that will be a possibility for my grandkids’ grandkids!

Discovery News writes:

If you could stand on the surface of Kepler-16b, you’d have two shadows. At sunset, you would see an orange star about the size of the sun and next to it a much fainter red star. As the stars slipped toward the horizon, they would change places in the sky, like partners in a square dance.

You would not need to be Luke Skywalker visiting his home planet of Tatooine in the movie “Star Wars” to watch the twin sunset. The only science fiction in this story is how to make the 200 light-year journey to Kepler-16, a binary star system jointly sharing the Saturn-sized planet, Kepler-16b.

WIDE ANGLE: Age of the Exoplanet

The finding, reported by scientists on NASA’s Kepler planet-hunting space telescope team, adds a new page into Mother Nature’s recipe book for extrasolar planets.

“It’s the first one that circles two stars, so it’s a fundamentally different kind of planet,” lead researcher Laurance Doyle, with the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., told Discovery News.