New Year's Present!!*

HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!  Last day of 2011 and everything's fine!

So Danielle Fricke released "Hello Little World", her first indie album, this morning and I've listened to it several times throughout the day.  Her music is so beautiful and vulnerable - as though each verse were spun of spiderwebs and blown glass and other fragile things like hearts - I'm IN LOVE with her songs.  The whole album is a story and each song is a chapter.  Crafting an album is practically a lost art but here we have an excellent example.  Join me after the jump to learn more!!

The Toyota Yaris Has Cupholders

Michael Showalter could sell me anything.

Click through the jump for his whole series of Toyota Yaris commercials. There's a whole bunch, at 15-30 seconds each, and all filled with signature Showalter goodness.

The Pyro Board

Fire makes everything better

It works by transmitting sound waves through a flammable gas to create flame patterns.

Jeff's 2011 Music Roundup

Since I came on board a little late in the year here, I didn't keep track of a lot of the stuff I normally would have. One thing I have done, however, for 11 years running, is keep track of my favorite music of the year. I'm one of the dozen people left who still purchases music legally, I went to college for music, etc., so it's a big, erm, fruitless pursuit in my own life. With that said, if you're looking for something new or different to listen to, this might be a good starting place for you. If you only listen to nerdcore or 8-bit reimaginings, this list might not be for you, and you'll find some quick hits on movies and books on the bottom. For the rest, my top of the year is beyond the jump:

Cat in Christmas Hat

AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Kim Jong-Il Dropping The Bass

Oh how funny a little Photoshop can be! Just throw a bundled up Kim Jong-Il into some DJ shots, and it's instant hilarity.

A bunch more at: http://kimjongildroppingthebass.tumblr.com/

And now for a completely un-Photoshopped image of Kim Jong-Il's funeral. This man does not mess around. Even in death.

Fresh Push Play

Here's a promo of a new app that comes from the Japanese beatmakers, Hifana called "Fresh Push Play"

It comes with some already recorded samples from Hifana. It has a little turntable section that you can do your "wika-wika" plus another section where you can do your left, rights, tempos and some large orange thing that I'm not sure what it does but it makes the sound cwwazy (technical term). You definitely need some lighting reflexes to play live like these guys but you can also create a loop by viewing the overall pattern and choosing at what point the samples come in.

It is definitely going to take some time to get used to it as turns out the skills don't come with the app but it does have a sort of guitar hero section where you hit the buttons when they flash. THIS IS WAY HARD!!! I assume if you can master it (and it allows you to tweet how well you did for bragging rights) you'll feel like you are this rad

I'm not sure if this is the best of this type of app out there. I do know that I would probably use the Garageband app more than this but I do really like the Hifana guys and honestly they can make anything sound cool even a few pairs of Nikes

Oh what?!?! Now I just bought a pair of Nikes. Dam you Hifana and your beats

Akira Kurosawa - Chintu Ji

How good are you with your movie directors? Well let Bollywood remind you of a few names

The song is called Akira Kurosawa and it is from the Bollywood movie Chintu Ji

Thanks to Twitchfilm for this one. Head over there to find out more about the movie

Street Fighter x Tekken Cammy/Chun - Li Vs. Asuka/lilli

They have been rolling out some stunning cinematic trailers for this Streetfighter Tekken crossover.

Check out this one

I love where they went with these games in not going super realistic (mortal kombat) and just making it over the top with cartoony/anime sensibilities. I'll be honest I'm rubbish at fighting games so I don't really enjoy them but I do love me some cool trailers

I have a few more after the break

What's Out? 28th of December 2011

The final New Stuff Day of the year. Maybe you need some materials for your hangover nest this weekend? Here are your possibilites:

Rifftrax + Gears 3 = Crazy Delicious

IGN had the guys from RiffTrax (headed up by Mystery Science Theater 3000's Mike Nelson) do some riffing on the cut scenes from Gears of War 3. The end result is honestly funnier than I had anticipated, and is worth a few minutes of your time. If you haven't seen/heard RiffTrax before, they offer downloadable mp3s to act as MST3K commentary tracks to recent movies. I recommend the ones for Twilight in particular - it's the only way to make that hot mess watchable. Hat tip to Topless Robot.

J. Tagmire's Top Ten Lego Minifigures of 2011

Forget movies! Forget video games! It's time for the Top Ten Lego Minifigures of 2011!

Lego took things to a new level once again in 2011, with Series 4 and 5 of the Lego Minifigures Series, old favorites like Star Wars, and new licenses like Pirates of the Caribbean and DC Super Heroes. Click through the jump to see the best of the best.

Nerd History: The Toynbee Tiles

One of my favorite weird mysteries (and I have many) are the weird "Toynbee Tiles" that are all over the place in major cities worldwide. It's tough to say exactly what's going on with these, but here's what we know:

All indications are that the first sightings of these happened in the early 1990s. On a street in Philadelphia, a tile was inserted into the street with the text "Toynbee Idea in Kubrick's '2001' Resurrect Dead on Planet Jupiter." The statement itself has some logic to it - Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey implies rebirth on Jupiter, there are some cultural connections between the religious historian Arnold Toynbee and 2001, but the tiles are more of a mystery because of what they are - tiles applied to busy streets without anyone noticing, often with crazy conspiracy theories attached to them.

Obviously, there's not a ton more to say about them. A lot of people have tried to figure out authorship, and a documentary was released this year about them, but for a holiday week, it's a good diversion. More at Wired, Damn Interesting, and NPR.

Luke's Top Ten Movies 2011

2011 was a huge year for sequels and blockbusters but not a whole lot of it lived up to the hype. I adore shallow, pop culture, genre junk, but not even I was sated with many of the year's offerings. Green Lantern, Transformers 3, Cowboys and Aliens and Battle LA were all pretty godawful. Captain America was meh, and I couldn't even bear to sit through Pirates of the Carribean 4. Your Highness was like Danny McBride took a shit in my brain. 2011 was a year where not even the geniuses at Pixar could get it right! Cars 2? WTF was that all about? How did those cars build a city when they have wheels instead of hands?

So an odd year calls for an odd list with some odd choices. These are the movies I enjoyed the most. Not the best made, or the best written, or most likely to win an award - just my personal favourites. I didn't see Tree of Life if that's what you're wondering. I only saw films where the major characters were invited to join S.H.I.E.L.D. by Samuel L. Jackson at the end. Although I did see Jane Eyre. And no, it's not on the list.

Join me after the jump to read all about my Top Ten Films of 2011...

Tim's Video games of 2011

Tim's Games of the Year for 2011 as part of the Obligatory Online Faux Awards Season (OOFAS)

It has bean a wonderful year of games. Hit the jump to find out what were my favourites for 2011

Comics Face: End of Year Boss!

And that's that! After a making a Comics Face strip every week this year I'm going to give it a bit of a rest. There'll still be a monthly one (at least) starting from February. If there's any other news i'll be sure to post about it here.

Thanks for reading!

Comics Face archive.
Comics Face on Facebook.

Luke's Top Ten Video Games of 2011

Ladies and Gentlemen, break out your formal finery because I am here to heartily welcome you to Obligatory Online Faux Awards Season (OOFAS)! The shiftless team here at Fruitless Pursuits are dangerously dedicated to bombarding you with our ill-educated, frustrating, and sometimes controversial opinions on the bestest pop entertainment of 2011. Many of us will be posting our own Top Ten (or thereabouts) lists, and that will culminate at the end of the month with the inaugural Fruitless Pursuits Awards where we will be picking the very best of the best as a site.

Well, I am going to kick things off with my biggest and most important list - my Top Ten Video Games of 2011. I played A LOT of stuff, much of which I enjoyed so this was a really tough one to whittle down. I have put far too much time and thought into this, so you are both a bounder and a vagabond if you do not join me after the jump to read my iron-clad judgements of the year!

A Quick Christmas Rescue

If you're anything like me, you're probably already burned out on your holiday parties. You know you have Skyrim sitting at home, the warm embrace of an arrow to your knee. Perhaps that new tablet you've always wanted is still charging, and you're listening to your grandmother chastise your cousin for the outfit he wore to the dinner table, and you're saying to yourself "man, I wish I had some funny and/or disturbing content on the internet to watch." Well, never fear, because I'm happy to help. Merry Christmas to all, the videos beyond the jump are there due to language and suggestive papercraft:

12 Days of Arbor Christmas - Day 12: Til' Next Christmas Eve by Jon Montague

For the past 12 years, musicians from South Jersey, Philadelphia, and beyond.. have gathered to record a compilation album and live play called the Arbor Christmas Show. It's inspired by "the old Christmas TV specials that had the celebrity host "at home" and all of their celebrity friends would stop by and hang out and maybe perform a song." The songs have been amazing year after year, so I wanted to share my top 12. But feel free to explore for yourself! All of the compilations are available for downloaded/stream at http://www.arborchristmas.com.

Day 12: Til' Next Christmas Eve by Jon Montague

"Christmas comes just once a year, I know this much is true. But only once a year to be with you my dear is just too hard to do."

Jon Montague created the show, and sadly he was only here for the first two years. His perfectly written, closing of the Christmas season song was the one to start it all off in 1999. Without him and this song, the Arbor Christmas show and compilation wouldn't be what it is today. The bar was set high, right from the start. Check out both versions of the song below.