Ten Pool Toys Adults Can Enjoy Too

By: Molly Man

From: http://www.divinecaroline.com/

Introduction |
Adults love playing in the pool as much as kids do, but most of the pool accessories out there are geared toward those twelve and under. That doesn’t mean “adult swim” can’t come with loads of fun accessories, though. The following ten products will up the “wow” factor at any rockin’ pool party or during an afternoon of poolside lounging. Children optional.

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Splash Sounds

The Excalibur 145 SoundMaster Satellite Floating Wireless Speakers with Universal Dock for iPod is a tiny device that emits a huge sound. The water-resistant speaker floats in your pool or hot tub to ensure your time in the water has the perfect soundtrack.
($78.47, Amazon)

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Decorative and Fun

This floating LED pool fountain sprays decorative streams of red-illuminated water up to sixteen feet in the air. It features a variety of water patterns and simply attaches to the pool’s return line without any special wiring or plumbing required. It’s the perfect addition to a romantic evening in the water.
($75, Opulentitems)

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Aquatic Art

Turn your pool into a work of art with this Underwater Light Show Kool-Light-O-Scope. Rotating LEDs emit continually evolving patterns of light and color on the bottom and sides of your pool and automatically shut off after two hours to save battery power.
($29.77, Toysplash)

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Take a Dunk

The NBA Logo Portable Basketball Game allows you to enjoy hours of pool-basketball games. It’s made of durable steel and has a steel-framed polycarbonate backboard. It’s fun for the whole family, or just for the adults.
($329.99, Toysplash)

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Pool Volleyball Is the New Beach Volleyball

Get your game on while staying cool in the water. The Anaconda Pool Volleyball System is easy to set up and is guaranteed to last for a “lifetime” of use, even in the water and sun. So bring on the heat!
($249.99, Toysplash.com)

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Get a Bikini Bod ... in Your Bikini

A pool workout can be more than swimming laps. The Super Soft 6-Piece Fitness Set includes two barbells, a pair of ankle wraps, a swim bar, and a foam flotation belt to work all major muscle groups. It’s fun and, because you’re in the water, safer for your joints than working out in the gym.
($149.99, Toysplash)

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A Lounge That Goes from Patio to Pool

This armless Sonoma Chaise Lounger is two chairs in one. It’s made of solid foam with an all-weather PVC rattan surface that fits as well on the patio as it does in the water. And when you’ve had enough sun for the day, just fold it up for easy storage.
($159.99, Toysplash)

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Make the Pool Your Outdoor Living Room

The Solstice Aqua Sofa is as comfortable as your living room couch, but it floats! It features a luxurious fabric top and pillows and inflates easily with a high-capacity rechargeable air pump.
($149.99, Amazon)

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Kick Back and Relax

The Poolmaster Rio Sun Adjustable Floating Chaise Lounge automatically adjusts from a full upright position to a full reclining position and everything in between. It’s cushioned and supportive and has built-in drink holders and side trays for sunglasses, sun block, snacks, or your summertime reads.
($199.99, Amazon)

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Pool Time Is BYOB

It’s not summer without a cold drink nearby, so keep your cooler with you in the pool with the RiverRough Cooler Raft. It’s large enough to hold a full-size cooler, and it also includes four cup holders on the sides. Four strong vinyl handles and two rope ties ensure that your drinks won’t end up in the pool.
($39.77, Toysplash)

LeBron Makes Surprise Visit to Cleveland to Play with HS Teammates

No one has felt the wrath of a scorned city like LeBron James this past season after he left for Miami. But maybe not all hope is lost for LeBron in Cleveland as there were plenty of cheers for James as he played in a Chris Chambers City League Classic in Cleveland, OH this past week. LeBron made a surprise visit to play with his old high school teammates. Check out his amazing performance:

Taiwan’s funeral strippers dance for a dead crowd

From: http://io9.com/

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Cyriaque Lamar —Should you meet your demise in Taiwan, a funerary option open to you is the Electric Flower Car (EFC), a wheeled, neon-lit platform upon which pulchritudinous women strip down to their skivvies for the benefit of audiences...both living and deceased.

We spoke with University of South Carolina anthropologist Marc L. Moskowitz about this practice, which is detailed in his recent documentary Dancing for the Dead: Funeral Strippers in Taiwan. Moskowitz told us about the societal role of EFC entertainers, who often perform their titillating trade in front of the bereaved family and neighborhood passers-by.

In your experience, how common would you say it is for strippers to entertain at funerals? As Dancing for the Dead pointed out, other entertainers — like singers and musicians — are also hired to perform.

It's not at all common for urbanites, but in rural settings, most people have seen these performances. Actual full stripping has gone underground because there were laws enacted against full nudity in the mid-Eighties, so that isn't as popular as it once was. I didn't see any full stripping — though it is likely that this was in part because they knew I was filming at that time — but almost everyone I spoke with had seen full stripping. Most people in Taiwan categorize both the strippers and the singers as one group — as Electric Flower Car performers — the only people I spoke with who made a clear delineation between strippers and singers were the performers and managers themselves.

On average, how raunchy do these funeral stripteases get? It seemed like some routines were more cabaret/burlesque style, whereas other dances were more salacious.

In general, what I witnessed was two stages of performance. One was in the equivalent of a miniskirt and a dress top that ranged from something you might see average people wearing on their way to a friend's house to a bit more revealing. The second stage was inevitably bikinis. It's absolutely true, though, some of the performers emphasized their singing ability whereas others gyrated in fairly risqué ways. The third stage, that of full nudity, is something that everyone I spoke with had seen, but since that is now against the law the performers were careful not to do that when I was filming.

What's the strangest funeral striptease you've ever witnessed?

The two most surprising events both happened at celebrations for temple birthdays, not at funerals. On one occasion a performer walked into the audience to rub men's crotches and on another occasion a performer went into the audience to give men a lap dance, sitting on their laps and pressing the men's heads into her shaking breasts. I didn't include either of these scenes in the film because there was no way of doing it without revealing the women's identities and I didn't want to get them in trouble with the law.


How did you come to study this particular cultural phenomenon?

  My first book was on religion and my second book was on pop music, so in some sense this project combined these two interests. When I decided to make a documentary this seemed like a wonderfully visual practice that would work well in a film. I also became interested because the Chinese press almost always attacked the practice, but no one I spoke with really seemed to care all that much so there was an immediate issue to deal with there.

In the documentary, you mention that EFCs are associated with lower gods. Are there any particular deities that associated with stripping EFCs?

I don't think there is a specific god that is associated with this practice, but you are absolutely right that it is in the domain of the lower gods. Lower gods are usually ghosts of real people who became gods because people worshipped them. Many of the higher gods were originally real people as well, but it happened centuries ago and these gods are more established. It's generally thought that higher gods, like Guanyin or Matzu, are more moral but that lower gods have all the vices that real people have, such as gambling and womanizing. If someone wants to pray for things that help others, such as protecting one's loved ones, one is more likely to ask a higher god for help. If one wants something that isn't quite so moral, such as help with gambling or prostitution, then one might go to lower gods for this.

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There seems to be a tension in Taiwanese society — EFC entertainers are both celebrities and casually accepted, but they're also assailed as low culture and bad for public morality. Are there certain regions in Taiwan that are more accepting of EFC stripping?

  In the early 1980s, when the practice came to public attention, it was pretty popular everywhere but in Taipei, Taiwan's capital in the north. Since laws were passed against it, it's rarer to find it in larger urban centers throughout Taiwan, though one can find the practice in the outskirts of most urban centers and in smaller cities and towns. It definitely has the association of being a working class form of entertainment. And you are absolutely right that it often becomes part of a discourse of the north and south in which the north is associated with more affluence, education, and participation with global culture, and the south is more associated with the working class, lack of education, and more local traditions. In some sense this isn't so different from stereotypes about the north and the south in the United States, I think.

Do people appreciate the supernatural component of the striptease and the way it relates to funeral traditions, or has it become mostly a secularized practice?

One of the things that I found to be really interesting about this practice was that people's explanations for why people hired Electric Car Performers varied tremendously. One person I interviewed told me that it was because a new ghost would get picked on by older ghosts so the performance was to distract the older ghosts to give the newer ghost time to get used to his environment without being harassed. Other people told me that the lower gods liked this kind of entertainment so that it was for them. Yet others said that the deceased liked that kind of activity when living so they wanted to send him off in style. Most people agreed that an important component of this is the Chinese and Taiwanese emphasis on hot and noisy (renao) which is the excitement of public events. In the West, we have this in rock concerts or amusement parks, in that the noise and the hustle and bustle is part of the fun. In Taiwan, all public events need to be hot and noisy to be a success, ranging from going to the beach to funerals, so temple events that we filmed frequently had Chinese Opera performing on one stage, Electric Flower Cars singing on another, and people noisily selling stuff all around them. It's really a sight to see.


I've noticed that American's first reaction to this is either laughter or outrage but I have to say I've come to be a fan — overall the level of singing was much better than I thought it would be and although there is something quite pleasing about wanting to celebrate someone's life rather than mourn their passing at a funeral. It seems to me that part of what is going on here is that in urban centers most people can afford to pay for entertainment but in poorer areas a concert ticket or even a movie ticket is outside of most people's budgets. The Electric Flower Car performances, and temple events more generally, are the only chance many of these people get for live entertainment. It's really striking that the songs that Electric Flower Car performers sing are often pop songs — some in English, Mandarin Chinese, Hokkien Chinese (Taiwanese), and Japanese. So in many ways the practice speaks to a conception of the world in which the living and the dead are not really that far apart. But these events are providing live entertainment for a group of people who would normally be excluded from, say a live performance of Taiwan's latest pop songs, because they couldn't afford to buy a ticket.

When I was making the documentary part of what I was trying to do was to provide the other side of the story since almost all of the Chinese press coverage attacked the practice. On showing it to Western audiences there has been a small but vocal minority who are upset by the practice. The film is a good lesson in cultural relativism, then, in deciding what is acceptable cultural difference and what should be a global limit. I don't have the answer about where to draw the lines on these issues, but I'm glad I could help to ask some of the questions with this film.

You can read more about Dancing for the Dead at Moskowitz's website, and the film is currently for sale on Amazon. All photos in this article courtesy of Marc L. Moskowitz.

Trent Reznor Calls 'Pretty Hate Machine' Reissue 'A Record Label Bulls--- Move'

by Jason MacNeil

from http://www.spinner.com/

 

Steve Granitz, WireImage

At a time when artists seem to release a deluxe version of an album even before the actual studio album hits shelves, it's refreshing to see some musicians not sugarcoat what some reissues truly are. Today, that musician is none other than Nine Inch Nails singer Trent Reznor.

Earlier today (July 14), Reznor took to his Twitter account to tell fans to ignore purchasing a new reissue of Nine Inch Nails' 1989 album, 'Pretty Hate Machine.'


"NIN fans, don't waste your money on this version of PHM that was just released," he wrote, linking to the reissue in question, which has a disclaimer stating this is "very similar to original TVT version. This is not a remastered release."

"...a record label bulls--- move repackaging the old version," Reznor tweeted shortly after. "Ignore please."

Nine Inch Nails gave the album the reissue treatment last November with all of the tracks remastered by Reznor and engineer Tom Baker while also including a cover of Queen's 'Get Down, Make Love,' the B-side to the 1990 single 'Sin.'

In related news, on July 12, Reznor's side project, How to Destroy Angels, posted a new photo labeled "recording" on their site. The group released a six-song self-titled EP for free just over a year ago, so let's hope this means more tunes are on the way, and soon.

Finally, Reznor also shared his excitement over the digital download system Spotify reaching American shores (which Spinner reported earlier today) by tweeting a link offering people a special celebrity invitation to try the service.

So, fans, please don't use Spotify to purchase the new 'Pretty Hate Machine' reissue. There's no use in getting on Trent Reznor's bad side.



Watch Nine Inch Nails' 'Head Like a Hole' Video

Work of art or a pervert's paradise? Risqué 26ft statue of Marilyn Monroe is unveiled in the Windy City

By Amy Oliver
From: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

That pose, that dress, the blonde hair, the luscious lips ... 


A 26-foot tall statue of Marilyn Monroe towering above tourists in the middle of Chicago was unveiled on Friday to much applause.


Bemused shoppers stopped and stared, a boy tried to crawl up her leg and the men from a wedding party could not resist taking a few photos from all angles.


Scroll down for videos

High and mighty: The curious gather around Seward Johnson's 26ft sculpture of Marilyn Monroe in Chicago

Desperate to keep her identity a secret until Friday, workers who put the statue in place on Thursday had to put a rather unsightly cloth bag over the poor girl's head, albeit it one in red, white and blue.

The statue, by artist Seward Johnson, replicates the actress's famous subway scene in 1955 film The Seven Year Itch and was unveiled on Chicago's Pioneer Court.

In the scene Monroe stands over a subway grate as a breeze from a train passing below blows her skirt over her panties.

It was shot in New York but as the Windy City, Chicago seems like the second best location for such an art work.

Cameras at the ready: While their wives and girlfriends were not there, the men from a wedding party took scores of photos from all different angles 

Now THAT'S a Kodak moment! Or at least an iPhone moment

Simply irresistible: A cheeky boy tries to scale her leg while some really enjoy the rear views

It will be on show through the Spring of 2012.

The stainless steel and aluminium sculpture, which weighs a whopping 34,000lbs, has raised more than a few eyebrows.

Not least because visitors to the plaza are at once confronted with Monroe's pert bottom in gleaming white panties and her perfect pins bedecked in white, open-toe kitten heels.

Covered up: A worker puts the finishing touches to the statue on Thursday

What did you do at work today darling? One man touches up the statue's under carriage with paint

Breathtaking views: A worker is seen spraying the statue's panties before the great unveiling on Friday

You missed a bit: Well, Monroe always did have men at her feet

Men have been spotted gawping while their wives get cross and attempt to shield their eyes and lots of people have stopped to take a quick snap of the giantess before she goes public tomorrow.


Not all are happy of course. Abraham Ritchie wrote on Art Chicago Blog the statue was a 'creepy schlock from a fifth-rate sculptor that blights a first-rate public art collection.'
But the Zeller Realty Group, which owns the plaza and now its statue, wants Marilyn to make people think.

...And the real thing: Monroe cools off via the subway in front of Tom Ewell in The Seven Year Itch

'(Paul Zeller) likes to bring in things that cause a conversation,' said a spokesman from the company. 'They might be controversial, but he likes art that makes people think.'

And if that fails at least her skirt will be a good place to shelter from the rain. 

Watch the statue midway through construction

Now watch Monroe in that subway scene

Trailer for The Thing Prequel is Awesome

From: http://furiousfanboys.com/

Later this fall a movie called The Thing will be unleashed in theaters. This isn’t a blasphemous remake of the classic John Carpenter movie (which itself was a remake), but rather a prequel to the Carpenter film showing what happened to the researchers prior to that movie. It’s an awesome idea for a prequel, and it’s looking as if they pulled it off perfectly.

The movie will be R rated, and from the trailer below it looks like its doing a very good job replicating the tone of the Carpenter version. You heard of the research team in that movie, and this one will show how they discovered the Thing and how they were wiped out. It’s been too long since we’ve had a scifi/horror movie like this and hopefully it’ll revive the genre.

Rare Phenomena: Photo of Frozen Bubbles Trapped Beneath Lake Surface

From: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/

A rare phenomenon which appeared on a frozen lake in Canada has been captured by landscape photographer Emmanuel Coupe. Coupe explained that seeing a frozen lake this spectacular is rare as they are usually covered in a thick blanket of snow. In this area, however, there is little precipitation which allowed for stunning views of the frozen surface and beneath.

Photographer Emmanuel Coupe's stunning shot of bubbles underneath a frozen lake won over the judges in the 2011 National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest.

 

 Click here for the Full gallery: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/

7 Awesome Images That Will Make You Mourn The Space Shuttle

From:  http://www.cracked.com/

Last week marked the final official mission of the Space Shuttle. It's over: No more manned space missions on the agenda. As of now, America is pursuing a "flexible path" space-flight program, which essentially means we have nothing. They'll say the program died because of funding cuts and age, but that's not the whole story. Astronauts and the Space Shuttle used to reign as the unquestionable rulers of badass, but then somewhere along the line, cultural opinion shifted, and somehow wrapping a man in a giant metal bullet and firing him into the face of the void became thought of as stuffy and boring. The space program didn't die because of budgetary concerns; it died because we forgot how goddamn awesome it was. And that's something we had no excuse for doing, as these images will prove:

#7. Burn Down the Sky

This is the Saturn V rocket, carrying the Apollo 11 moon mission:

This is the Discovery launch:

This is the Athena II:

These images bring up an important question: At what point did we forget that the Space Shuttle was, essentially, a program that strapped human beings to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math? How jaded do we have to be to lose collective interest in that? We celebrate the 4th of July every year, all across the nation. If explosions are that important to us, why don't we just channel a third of our yearly fireworks budget into one big bastard of a shot -- one mad, screaming, man-made asteroid hurled right back up into the face of nature, just to prove to the bitch that she doesn't have a lock on that kind of thing?

The Endeavour, mankind's polite rebuttal to the meteor strike.

#6. What Void?

With most photographs being taken in the contextless void, it's easy to forget that astronauts are just human beings wrapped up in fancy clothes, floating miles up in the air, surrounded on all sides by a lethal nothing. And then you see an image like this:

An image that really drives home the fact that these are people -- tiny, fragile beings that die if they swallow a pretzel wrong or slip in the shower -- and they're existing so far removed from the planet they could be saying, "Oh excuse me, New Zealand, I didn't see you there."
Space is a vast and frightening thing; it is an extreme and murderous absence; it's the closest physical metaphor for the disturbing unknowns that follow death; space is a villain from a children's book -- it's the Nothing from The NeverEnding Story. And now, here's Bruce McCandless, an astronaut on the Challenger, taking the first untethered spacewalk.

He had no ties to any earthly bond whatsoever, he was hundreds of miles beyond the point where the sky gives up, and he said, "No, thank you," to a lifeline, then went for a bit of a constitutional ... into the abyss.

#5. Battle Tanks are GO!

Remember those famous pictures of the Mars rovers, where they looked like tiny, plastic, chintzy little toys?

Well, this is what the new model, Curiosity, looks like:

It looks like something that should be laying siege to G.I. Joe Headquarters. It looks like it's about to call Optimus Prime a pussy and then kill John Connor for good this time.
The NASA PR campaigns showed us the rover looking tiny, flat, kind of bland, and nobody cared. No matter how crazy awesome it was that we were playing RC cars on Mars, the public didn't have a catchy visual, so everybody wrote it off as more dry science stuff. But look at that thing again: Every kid in the world needs a toy version of that, and they need it right now, because that's how kids need everything. Release a scaled down RC car of Curiosity, call it something like "CrushStomper," slap a couple of ads up on episodes of Bakugan, and there you go: You've got NASA funded for the next 10 years.

#4. He's Got the Whole World ... in His Face.

Odds are you're at work right now, reading this instead of collating or conglomerating or whatever adults with real jobs are supposed to do. Also, odds are your cell phone has a camera in it. So let's perform a quick social experiment: Fire it up, and take a self-portrait of you just doing your job, right now.
How'd that picture turn out?
Does that gripping image of you making crude pixel-tits in Excel fill onlookers with awe and wonder? Does that photograph of you quietly mourning the death of the last Red Bull capture the insanity, beauty and existential terror of mankind's progress?
No?
Funny, because when Clay Anderson, flight engineer for Expedition 15 tried this same experiment at his job ...

... it totally did all of those things like a motherfucker.

 

 

#3. Thrust Diamonds

That's the engine of an SR-71 Blackbird being tested, but you can be forgiven if you panicked just now and slapped at the button that calls James Bond into your office. (Also, hey, thanks for reading, Q! Big fan.) The shapes in that Death Ray up there aren't tricks of the camera, either -- they're called Thrust Diamonds, and to NASA, that shit ain't even a thing.

Brother can't take a dump up in NASA without firing off some Thrust Diamonds.

#2. The Crawler-Transporters

If you're the kind of person that skips right to the moneyshot when watching porn, you've probably only seen the actual take-off portion of a shuttle launch. And hey, if a missile being fired into the throat of the unknown armed with a warhead of "dudes who just don't give a fuck" doesn't impress you, surely nothing else about the launch process will.
How about the world's largest tank?

The machine that brings the shuttle to the launchpad is called a crawler-transporter, and it's the largest self-powered land vehicle in the world. They're twin mobile platforms weighing 3,000-tons a piece, 131-feet-long by 114-feet-wide, driven by a crew of 30, and powered by four 1,400 (not a typo) horsepower engines, one on each corner. That big, fuck-all structure holding the shuttle up there? Here it is cruising down the highway.

For scale, here it is next to a human being:

It's like taking an oil rig out for a spin.
It costs the USA $1 billion more than NASA's entire budget to provide air conditioning for the Armed Forces in the Middle East. Clearly, our national priorities are skewed towards conflict. That's kind of messed up, but OK, fine: Objectively, we know the crawler-transporter isn't armed or armored, but next time we start a war, let's do it by driving Hans and Franz up there (their actual names, by the way) right into the other guys' capital. I promise you, that war would be won in an afternoon.
I mean, would you shoot at it?

#1. The Space Shuttle is Metal as F*ck

Here's the Space Shuttle doing its best impression of a Dio album cover.

Large version.
This isn't some lucky fluke shot, either. Lightning loves itself some Shuttle. Here's another:

Large version.
Jesus Christ. That's clearly the tower of some evil techno-wizard.

Holy shit. That's the picture you'd see on the real estate brochure for God's house. Here's another angle:

Large version.
Somewhere, there's a big-haired anime character with a disproportionately large sword who's trying to shut down the shield reactors so he can get in there.
***
All I've really done here is (hopefully) prove that the Space Shuttle was badass, but I'm an adult now, and I understand that we can't keep funding something just because it's bitchin'. That's not how budgets work; there's no spreadsheet column for "badical." We didn't fund these programs to start with because they were cool; it was because we had to get to space before the Russians, and because we had to establish a sense of national identity in a conflicted period in our nation's history. In a nutshell, we went into space because nothing brings people together like shoving something in somebody else's face.
So in the interest of that: I heard Europe talking the other day, America, and I mean -- I don't want to start anything here, so you didn't hear it from me -- but they were saying you don't go into space anymore because you're scared. Then they said that Italy was a much bigger landwang than Florida, and Africa made some crack about how the Gulf of Mexico must be cold this time of the year, and then all the other continents laughed.
Are you really gonna take that?

Meet the Hotties of the U.S Women’s Soccer Team

From: http://newyork.citypudding.com/

 Attractive women are extremely powerful. They can get a man to do practically anything. Guys like me who despise women’s sports and would not be caught dead watching them, are now watching the women’s World Cup.



It is unbelievable how many hot chicks are playing in this tournament. The Swedish team is ridiculous and the U.S team does not need to take a back seat to anyone. It is like watching porn, and yes when they celebrate a goal I am visualizing a girl on girl orgy. Keep the goals coming.

The U.S team will play in the finals against Japan after defeating France 3-1 on Wednesday. Maybe we will get another Brandi Chastain moment.



Not only are the ladies hot, but they have game too.  I have nothing but love for a woman who looks good in and out of uniform.  Additionally, as soccer players, they have the endurance to be animals in the sack, only making them hotter.

Here are my top 3 hotties on the team.

Heather Mitts- The Blonde Beauty   



Alex Morgan- The girl next door



Hope Solo- Definitely a freak in the bedroom

 

By Robert Bonanni
@nypuddingsports

How Much Sunscreen Should You Be Wearing?

From: http://www.visualnews.com/

David McCandless at Information Is Beautiful wanted to answer one simple summer question: just how much sunscreen should a “pale geek who burns” wear? As with many simple questions, the answer was quite complex, but thanks to David’s voracious apetite for information and his equally strong drive for making it readable, we bring you his clarifying “Sunscreen Smokescreen:” an in-depth look (without all the smokey, confusing hype) at how much sunscreen you should be smearing on this summer. Surfs up!

Via: informationisbeautiful.net

Man creates world's only turbine-powered Batmobile [w/video]

From: http://www.autoblog.com/

By Jeff Glucker

Having a real-life Batmobile in your driveway sounds like a fun idea. Upon closer inspection, however, it's not going to be that exciting. Most often, Batmobile replicas are powered by something like a junkyard-salvaged General Motors 350, featuring an interior reminiscent of a hastily cobbled together 24 Hours of LeMons racer. A man by the name of Casey Putsch decided he wanted a Batmobile to call his own, but he wasn't ready to settle for second-rate.

This particular Putsch is the same man behind Putsch Racing, an outfit that restores, designs and appraises all manner of items automotive. When we said that Casey Putsch wasn't going to settle for a low-rent Batmobile, we meant it. Instead, Putsch has assembled what he says is the only turbine-powered Batmobile in the world.

Under the long hood of Putsch's Batmobile sits a Boeing turboshaft engine plucked from a naval drone helicopter. The power output is rated at 385 horses, which is good for a vehicle that weighs around 2,800 pounds.

Besides the engine upgrade, this Batmobile has an interior that would make Bruce Wayne nod approvingly. That's all you can hope for really, since it's impossible to make Mr. Wayne jealous. Putsch strapped an Apple iPad into the center stack of his super(hero)car, which then acts as his avionics system and also supplies GPS information.

We have footage of Casey Putsch driving his creation available for you after the jump, which is worth it for the sound alone. We also have a handful of photos in the gallery below. Be sure to check out Todd Cooperider's website for more information on this mad machine.

The world's 'wildest' and steepest roller coaster

From: http://theweek.com/

A Japanese amusement park introduces a ride with a record drop that leaves thrill-seekers screaming

This Japanese roller coaster sends its brave riders on an inverted, 121-degree free fall, making it the steepest drop in the world. Photo: YouTube

The video: The Fuji-Q Highland amusement park in Japan has unveiled the world's steepest roller coaster. The Takabisha coaster (Japanese for "dominant") sends riders into an S-shaped 121-degree free fall, beating out the British Flamingoland's Mumbo Jumbo ride, which drops at 112 degrees, and France's Le Timber Drop, with its 113-degree plunge. (See video of a demonstration ride below). These attractions can put thrill-seekers under a G force similar to what jet-fighter pilots experience. The Takabisha's sharp dive sends riders hurtling 141 feet down at 62 mph. It takes just 112 seconds to cover the coaster's 3,281 feet of track. It cost $37 million to build, meaning the park will have to sell some 3 million $12.50 tickets to recover its investment. 

The reaction: The Takabisha coaster isn't just steep, says Sky News. It might be "the world's wildest rollercoaster ride," period. Yes, this looks "terrifying," says Rick Chandler at NBC Sports. If you dare climb on board, you'll hurtle through a "maze of crazy twists and turns that will not only cause you to lose your lunch, but perhaps be hit by that same lunch moments later." You'll definitely need "a good head for heights and a strong stomach" to conquer this white-knuckle ride's seven dizzying loops, says Melissa Thompson at Britain's Mirror. "From the screaming faces of thrill-seekers braving its maiden voyage ... it's clearly a scary experience." Have a look for yourself:

Van Damme Friday - Music Video and Red Band Trailer for Assassination Game

"Jean-Claude" Le Clip, Fabrice Lherminez rend hommage à...

 
"Jean-Claude" Le Clip, Fabrice Lherminez rend... by FabbLHER

With the exceptional participation of Claude Goetz, professor and friend of Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Title for sale on legal download platforms ...

www.myspace.com / lherminezfabrice

The Clip "Jean-Claude" A Production LhermineZZz
Fabrice Lherminé, SAMUEL LEROY, STEPHANE DELALIEU, JEREMY DESCAMPS, PASCAL EVANGELISTA, GREGORY LOTTE, sacred olive, LUDOVIC GERVOIS, and the special participation of Claude Goetz. Music and lyrics of the title "Jean-Claude" SAMUEL LEROY. Chief Operator DEGNIEAU STEPHANE PIERRE-RICHARD Heads Machino DINSDALE, JEREMIE VALLON, Head Electro RIVER BRUNO, RICHARD steadycam VANDAL, MARINA CAUDRON Decoration, Special Effects Paskal Dengremont (Blackface) Stage Manager and Assistant Lherminé PERRINE, MATHILDE Dhordain Makeup, Photo VINCENT SCHRICKE displays, mounting Production and MELANIE CAUDRON.

Assassination Game (2011) Trailer - Scott Adkins & J.C. Van Damme [HD]

Red Band Trailer