famous car chase in shopping mall recreated

If you start with a car chase scene inside a shopping mall (which sounds awesome), and it features the Blues Brothers (which makes it definitely awesome), then recreate the original classic movie clip with stop-motion video using LEGO blocks, you have a YouTube video worth watching.

At the end of the video, they link to a side-by-side comparison of the original scene in the movie, so you can see how close they got to it.

An interesting trivia tidbit about the mall chase scene is that it was actually filmed inside a mall.  There was no CGI trickery going on — it was 1980, after all — and it wasn’t on some fake Hollywood set or made with miniatures.  They found a mall that was scheduled to be demolished, so they helped with the demolition on the inside.  🙂  Also interesting is that the other car chases were actually filmed in and around Chicago, Illinois.  It would’ve been neat to be around for that!

If you haven’t ever seen the Blues Brothers movie, I’m not sure what to say.  Wait, never mind, I know — you need to see it!  The Blues Brothers is one of the best movies of all time.  I’m not kidding.  It has a great story, great acting, awesome music, many car chases (including setting the world record for most car crashes in one scene), and many quotable lines.  It also features many famous actors and musicians: John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Carrie Fisher (who played Princess Leia in Star Wars, but wields a flamethrower and rocket launcher here), “the band”, John Candy, Frank Oz, Steven Spielberg, James Brown, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, and more.  (Let me add that the movie contains some explicit language, but if you can find the TV version it has all that edited out.)

Here’s an idea — someone should make a video game of the movie.  You’ve got music making, car chases, lots of military to evade — there’s potential here.  Sure, the storyline might have to be somewhat linear, but there are retelling games of Star Wars, Batman, Indiana Jones, Lord of the Rings, Marvel Super Heroes, etc. by LEGO.  It could be a lot of fun.  Someone should make this happen.  LEGO Blues Brothers would rock!  I would buy it.

when words aren’t enough…

When words aren’t enough…

Say it with bacon!  If only this would work with women… but in reality, it would likely result in disasterousness (which may not be an actual word, but it would be bad).  Ironically, this would impress guys.  A girl could give cooked bacon to a guy and he would think she must really like him.  (Who ever said men and women are the same?  Maybe someone should write a book similar to “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus” but include a chapter about food.  Men can relate to that, and would be more interested in reading the book.  Well, since most men don’t read, maybe it should come with bacon…)

Jetman, flying cars, the future

In the news recently was someone called Jetman, who built his own jetpack with four rockets on it.  Supposedly he can go 190 mph.  Here’s a video:

That would be awesome to have.  I wonder if we’ll ever have flying cars or something like that.  There are still companies working on it, and every few years there’s news that it’s almost ready.  I’m thinking it won’t happen until computers are controlling them.  That may seem kinda scary, but even more scary is bad drivers and drunk drivers in a flying car.  Crashes would be even more dangerous, causing much more collateral damage.

He uses a parachute to land, which might seem lame for a jetpack, but I bet landings would be really tricky to maneuver, as well as extremely dangerous.

FYI, computer-controlled cars are already on the road — just not available for purchase yet.  Google has been testing them in certain areas.  So far, with hundreds of thousands of miles, they appear safer than the average human driver.  I’m not sure how I feel about that.  I actually enjoy driving; however, if I’m able to do other stuff during road trips, like video games, reading, sleeping, etc., then that would be awesome.

world record birthday Cheetos

I figure at some point most everyone thinks it would be neat to somehow get in the Guinness Book of World Records.  Today I had a random thought along those lines, but not for that purpose.  I recently had a birthday (which was cancelled, BTW, for everyone who keeps bringing it up), and I was craving Cheetos.  (We have some baked Cheetos here, which are good, though not quite the same… more like cheese popcorn than Cheetos.  But I digress…)  Anyway, if only I had a bag of Cheetos for every time someone said I was getting old…  🙂

Then I wondered what the world record would be for the most bags of Cheetos received as birthday gifts.  That would be a fun record to break.  🙂  The concept could also be applied to Oreos…

Cheetos - many industrial sized bags, $65 per bag supposedly

I searched for a picture to go with this post and found this one.  Supposedly the guy in the picture bought these industrial-sized bags of Cheetos direct from the factory for $65 per bag and bought 28 bags.  I’m not sure I have sufficient space to store that many Cheetos in my house, and I’m most certain that the WAF (Wife Approval Factor) of that would be near 0.  So maybe I won’t be chasing this world record after all… (though I still must admit it would be fun to try).