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Wednesday, February 2, 2011

White Stripes Call It Quits

Enlarge Ewen Spencer/Courtesy of the artists
White Stripes.
Ewen Spencer/Courtesy of the artists
Meg and Jack White of White Stripes broke two years of silence within the band and announced on their website today that the duo is splitting up.

The release says that their decision to end a 13-year run isn't attributable to classic reasons like artistic differences, lost interest, etc. Instead, the Whites cite conservancy as the main rationale. "It is for a myriad of reasons," the note reads. "But mostly to preserve what is beautiful and special about the band and have it stay that way."

Jack White's Third Man Records, however, will continue issuing previously unreleased White Stripes material from throughout the band's history.

The band had this to officially say in the news release:

Source: YouTube

Keep Warm with a Nice Sweater (Form-Fitted on a Hot Girl)

Sometimes covering up is just as sexy as showing off - for example, check out these 50 insanely hot girls wearing sweaters, including some famous faces.



By  K. Thor Jensen

Minka Kelly
Credit: Photobucket

Minka Kelly

The lovely Minka Kelly has just been announced as one of the Angels in the upcoming Charlie's Angels reboot, which means we'll be able to watch her kicking high, donning disguises and generally being her irrepressible foxy self every ding-dang week of the TV season. I support these decisions.
Tricia Helfer
Credit: Imageshack

Tricia Helfer

Will we carry a burning nerd crush for Tricia Helfer until the very end of time? The former Number Six from Battlestar Galactica has also appeared on Chuck and Burn Notice, but we'll always think of her as our favorite genocidal Cylon who may or may not be imaginary.
Denise Milani

Denise Milani

It seems impossible to make a hot chicks list these days without the presence of Denise Milani - the ultra-popular Internet model with the massive cans loves to put her picture out there. But you know what? I'm not complaining. I'm doing what ever the opposite of complaining is. Proclaiming?
Christina Hendricks
Credit: Imageshack

Christina Hendricks

Let's kick this off with a bang - how about some of the most famous sweater puppies in Hollywood today? As Joan on Mad Men, Christina Hendricks barely wrestles her gorgeous mammaries into severely constraining 60s business suits, and the audience loves it. It's nice to see a ginger make it big - they've endured so much.
Charlize Theron
Credit: Photobucket

Charlize Theron

You'll notice a theme running through some of these pictures - when a hot chick decides to barely wear a sweater, she'll often do it at the beach. I don't know what inspires this bizarre behavior, but it's well documented. Case in point: the gorgeous Charlize Theron, possibly shucking her winter wear to take a dip.
Vanessa Hudgens
Credit: Imageshack

Vanessa Hudgens

I haven't been keeping track - did Vanessa Hudgens ever get her act together? I know she's inSucker Punch, which looks awesome, but next up is a Disney adventure movie with The Rock, which isn't really the sign of an actress trying to rise up the ranks.
Jenna Dewan

Jenna Dewan

Am I admitting to seeing Step It Up in public? If I didn't, how would I ever know who Jenna Dewan is? I mean, it's either that or the Rob Schneider movies she did, and I blocked those out of my memory with hours of very expensive therapy.
Britney Spears
Credit: Esquire

Britney Spears

Oh, Britney. You burned so bright, and so crazy. But when you were on the top of your game, nobody could touch you. I defy any human being alive to not spring a little feelings about this incredibly iconic image.
Rosario Dawson
Credit: Photobucket

Rosario Dawson

What ever happened to that comic book Rosario Dawson was supposed to be writing? Maybe she just got too tangled up in her oversized sweater to get to the typewriter. People still write comics on typewriters, right?
Mysterious Stretching Girl
Credit: Flickr

Mysterious Stretching Girl

Okay, so this list is mostly celebrities, because celebrities are the hottest people on Earth, but I decided to spice things up a bit with some mystery girls. I don't know who this lovely lassie having a nice sweater stretch is, but she looks very, very comfortable. I'd like to be comfortable too.

Click here for the rest of the GALLERY:

Make Girl Scout Cookies at Home!

In a little less than a month, it'll be Girl Scout cookie season again--that delightful time of year when you shell out $4 for a box of Thin Mints and devour half the pack before arriving home. Maddeningly, Girl Scout cookies are only sold for a three-week period during the end of February and the beginning of March. Unless you possess an iron will, the last box is usually gone before the first April showers.
Recently it came to my attention that cookie connoisseurs finally found a solution to the nearly 11-month absence of Girl Scout cookies from the average American household: online recipes. Turns out there's no shortage of home-tested Girl Scout cookie recipes floating around the Internet.

Given the sweet ingredients that go into each cookie--melted chocolate and mint extract for Thin Mints, caramel and coconut for Samoas--it's unsurprising that most recipes receive rave reviews. But the real question is: Are these cookies really as good as the product the Girl Scouts of America put out?
Luckily, I'm not the only person I know who's wild about Girl Scout cookies. I pulled together some friends, we pooled the resources in our cupboards, and we put the recipes to a taste test.

Homemade Samoas
1 cup of butter (softened)
1/2 cup of sugar
2 cups of all purpose flour
1/4 tsp of baking powder
1/2 tsp of salt
1/2 tsp of vanilla extract
2 tbsp of milk (optional)
Begin by preheating the oven to 350 degrees. Stir together the sugar and softened butter until the mixture is creamy, then add the flour, baking powder, salt, and vanilla extract. If the dough seems too dry, add the milk.
Roll the dough out until it's 1/4 of an inch thick. Use a round cookie-cutter to form the cookies, and then take a knife and cut small circles in the dough. (If you like to break the rules, try cutting squares!) Toss the cookies on a baking sheet and cook them in the oven for about 12 minutes.
While the cookies cool, begin making the topping.

Homemade Samoas Topping
3 cups of shredded coconut
12 oz. of good-quality chewy caramels
1/4 tsp of salt
3 tbsp of milk
8 oz. of semisweet chocolate
Turn the oven down to 300 degrees. Shake the shredded coconut onto a baking sheet and pop it in the oven until it turns a golden brown. (Usually this takes about 20 minutes, but if you use a baking sheet without sides, the coconut might cook more quickly. Stir the coconut every five minutes, and keep a close eye on it. Shredded coconut goes from snowy white to golden brown to scorched black in a matter of seconds.) Then let the shredded coconut cool.

Next, melt the caramels with the salt and milk. (It goes without saying that you should unwrap the caramels first.) You can melt them in a sauce pan on a burner, or if you want to speed up the process, nuke the caramel in the microwave for about two minutes. (It goes without saying that, should you choose the microwave option, you should use a microwave-safe bowl.) After the caramels are melted, fold in the toasted shredded coconut and spoon 2-3 tsp of the mixture onto the top of each cookie.

While the cookies cool, melt the chocolate. Again, you can use the stovetop or the microwave to do this. If you choose to use the microwave, melt the chocolate for 45 second intervals to make sure the chocolate doesn't begin to burn. When the chocolate has melted, dip the bottom of the cookies into the mixture. Trail the remaining melted chocolate over the tops of the cookies.

Homemade Thin Mints
1/2 cup of butter (softened)
1/4 tsp of salt
1 cup of white sugar
1 egg
1 1/4 cups of all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp of mint extract
1/2 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder
3 squares of semisweet chocolate (chopped)
1/4 cup of butter
Begin by preheating the oven to 350 degrees. Stir together the sugar and softened butter until the mixture is creamy, then beat in the egg and add the mint extract. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa, and salt. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture.

At this point, my friends and I deviated from the online recipe. The recipe directed us to refrigerate the dough for about five hours. We had no such time, so we left it in for about 40 minutes while we watched an episode of Jersey Shore online. Perhaps this is the reason our cookies did not taste exactly like Girl Scout cookies.
Roll out the dough until it's 1/4 of an inch thick. Use a round cookie-cutter to form the cookies, then toss them in the oven for about 12 minutes. When the cookies are baked, melt 1/4 of a cup of butter (or about half of a stick) together with the chocolate in the microwave or on the stovetop. Dip the cookies in the melted mixture and set them on wax paper until the chocolate hardens.
This recipe makes about four dozen cookies.

Homemade Trefoils
1 cup of butter
1 cup sugar (plus additional for optional topping)
2 eggs
2 tbsp of milk
1 tsp of vanilla extract
2 cups of flour
1 tsp of salt
2 tsp of baking powder
Begin by preheating the oven to 375 degrees;. Stir the butter and the sugar together until the mixture is creamy, then add the eggs, milk, vanilla, flour, salt, and baking powder. For the best results, refrigerate the dough for an hour. (Or for the 40 minutes it takes to watch another episode of Jersey Shore.) Roll the dough out until it's 1/4 of an inch thick. Use a cookie-cutter (the shape can be your choice, because who has a trefoil-shaped cookie-cutter lying around the house?) to shape the cookies and then cook them in the oven for about 10 minutes.

The recipe makes about seven dozen cookies, so we halved it and had more than enough cookies to go around.

The Verdict

Oh, joy of joys, the Thin Mints tasted almost exactly like real Thin Mints! Which meant the entire batch was devoured before we could take pictures of the cookies. (If I were to be perfectly honest, our Thin Mint creations were gone before the chocolate hardened all the way. I think I'm more embarrassed about this than about the three more episodes of Jersey Shore we watched.)

The Samoas, on the other hand, stuck around long enough for us to take pictures. I've personally never tried Samoas, mostly due to my lifelong aversion to anything coconut, but if these cookies are any indication, I definitely need to reassess. The Samoas were incredibly good, and my friends assured me that they tasted pretty damn close to the real product, so that recipe was a success too.

The only failure was the Trefoil recipe. All three of us agreed that we'd tasted better shortbread recipes before. This lead us to conclude that no one needs new shortbread cookie recipes, Girl Scout imitations or not.

This Is Why Most Women Like To Shop Alone

funny newspaper article

Kaohsiung Marine Gateway Terminal Looks Like A Building From A Tron Movie

Written by Administrator

Building-From-A-Tron-MovieWe’ve seen all sorts of that stand out with their unique design, but I have to admit that we never saw something like this. This building is completely futuristic, therefore, we decided to show it to you.

So what is this amazing building? It’s the Kaohsiung Marine Gateway Terminal and it is being designed by Asymptote Architecture and Artech Architects. One thing that we should mention about this building is that it looks like it came from a latest Tron movie. Kaohsiung Marine Gateway Terminal consists of two elegant towers and element hall that is placed between them. Amazing thing about these towers is that both of them are connected by blue lines of light, so they look like they belong in a Tron movie. As for the hall, it completely white with aluminum or metal pillars that hold the entire structure.

Kaohsiung Marine Gateway Terminal looks like it came from the future, and we’re positive that it will become a part of a future someday.

Fan's Enormous Superman Collection is (Shock and) Awesome

By: Andy Khouri

We're the first to admit that we like to throw around the word "awesome" quite a lot around here, but we think we've found something that truly inspires (shock and) awe. Published over the weekend at Robot 6 as part of the site's ongoing "Shelf Porn" feature, the Superman collection of Jason George is so enormous and even imposing, we're almost at a loss as to how to describe it, with the first reaction being to kneel.

A lifelong Superman fan who started collecting in earnest around 1990, Jason George is someone whose cape you definitely don't want to tug. Containing virtually every form of Superman merchandise except comic books (those are in a room of their own!), George's collection is heavy on statues, toys, cookie jars and other three-dimensional representations of the Man of Steel. It's hard to know for sure, but it appears that George is in possession of every Superman statue created by DC Direct and the much missed Warner Bros. Studio store, as well as a couple that pre-date those institutions, such as the highly coveted Dan Jurgens-designed statue seen on Jerry's in Seinfeld (which I am all too happy to brag about owning myself).

Most intriguingly, George has amassed what must be an unrivaled assortment of Superman watches, which he told Robot 6 was his favorite part of the collection.

I have over 150 superman watches. Over 15 clocks. I also like the four WETA statues that I have although I am afraid to move them because they are so big, heavy and fragile. If I did this all over again the only thing I would change is buying every single superman and superman villain action figure, they take up a lot of space. I have boxes of them in the attic not on display. Another piece that I like is the life size bust I have of Brandon Routh, I wanted to get the full size statue but didn't have the room. I won the superman guitar at a six flags park. I have a part of the room dedicated to just any movie, cartoon or TV show DVD and put them on in my superman DVD player TV. The room itself is yellow with red shelves. The ceiling is blue and has a fan in that has the planet earth. The blades have superman flying around it.

There's obviously an easy path to mockery here, but the truth is you would have done this if you could. And besides, nearly all of Mr. George's collection is displayed proudly out-of-box, which earns the man major points in my book. Tragically, George wrote that he will have to box up the collection to make room for the baby his wife will be delivering imminently --- which of course we think is total bullsh*t. For Rao's sake, man, get your priorities straight. Also, insure that collection immediately.

Many, many more photos at Robot 6.