We're indebted to all forms of intelligent life for the best of this latest edition of Crazy Talk.
Way Back Home(page)
We knew that trial biker Danny MacAskill was popular, but this week it became apparent just how popular, when the Scotsman answered questions from fans in a live webcast. As well as possibly his youngest fan, five-and-a-half-year-old Ayla, online to ask questions, so were one fan who asked if they and Danny could have babies together and another who put: “Hey Danny, people say we look the same. Does that mean we should get married or what?” Alas, both were male, hence Danny’s reply: “No. Nay Chance!” Another fan let Danny know that her school project about him earned her an ‘A’, which MacAskill confessed was, ironically, a better mark than he’d ever managed. Someone else on the webchat could perhaps have corroborated this fact – one of Danny’s old teachers, Mr Turner, who also posted… If you want to read the best of the questions and answers from the chat, click here, and watch the brilliant Way Back Home video below (67,000 Facebook ‘Likes’ and counting!).
I didn’t do it on porpoise, Mary Poppins
Oh, it’s a jolly holiday with… you berk. Famous for his bloody awful ‘Cockney’ London accent as Bert in the classic children’s movie Mary Poppins, in which he played chimney sweep/busker/kiteseller (etc), for his role in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and more recently as Dr Mark Sloane in Diagnosis: Murder, veteran actor Dick Van Dyke has added to his own legend by falling asleep on a surfboard and waking up in open water. “I started paddling with the swells and I started seeing fins swimming around me and I thought, 'I'm dead!' They turned out to be porpoises," said the 84-year-old, whose previous flights of fancy have included having adventures with a nanny and her two charges in his own pavement chalk painting. "And they pushed me all the way to shore." While Dick has no reason to lie, we wouldn’t have believed that if it had happened to Dr Sloane offshore from his fancy beach condo. And Diagnosis: Murder is pretty unbelievable. As one waggish report put it: “The porpoises were unavailable for comment.”
watchwithkristin
I fly like paper, get high like planes
From someone who travelled further than expected to something that did. Remember Red Bull Paper Wings, the paper aeroplane contest that broke all records? Well, a group of British scientists devised an even more radical project which yielded some quite amazing results. Their paper plane (actually a very fancy model plane made from paper straws and covered in paper) was attached to a helium balloon and released near Madrid with the gracious permission of Spanish authorities. At 90,000ft (27,400m) altitude, the pressurised balloon burst, releasing the plane, Vulture 1, which sailed down, taking fabulous photographs on the way, and came to rest some 20 miles (36km) from the launch site, where it was tracked down with GPS. The mission, while expensive in normal sphere of paper aeronautics, was cheap for upper-atmospheric travel – about £8,000 (€9,400/US$12,700). Take that, Virgin Galactic.
It takes guts to send these as gifts
With Christmas on the way for many of us, thoughts turn to the kind of gifts we can’t wait to see our loved ones open on the day of the nativity, and ones we’d like to receive ourselves. Then there are the ones from Roadkill Toys. As their name would suggest, Roadkill’s products have a recurring theme: fluffy animals that have met their deaths in an unfortunate accident. Such lovable soft toys as Splodge the Hedgehog and Twitch the Raccoon are available, each with a bodybag, popping bloodshot eye and removable internal organs made of the kind of plush materials your kids will love to snuggle up to at night. Then you can accompany them with one of two Christmas cards, the first picturing Santa Claus running down some poor creature with his sleigh and another of Rudolph having met a violent death on the highway. It’s not our idea of guaranteeing a silent or a holy night, but if it’s yours, head over to www.roadkilltoys.com. ‘Your loved ones will wish there’d been a postal strike!’ boasts the website…
roadkilltoys.com
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