Did you know it’s National Dog Week? Neither did we. But in light of the the 83rd annual observance, we thought we’d bring you a few of our favorite cartoon canines. As rabid fans of four-legged, furry creatures, we’ve given you 10 Famous Weird Pets in History, Dramatic Photos of Dogs Shaking, and 10 Great Musicians Photographed With Their Dogs. Now, to go along with our recent roundup of Cartoon Parents We Always Wondered About, we pay tribute once again to man’s best friend.
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MTV.com is premiering Ben Stiller’s Fake Trailer Project, which determines whether phony trailers can be made into hit movies. After all, the original trailers for Hobo With a Shotgun and Machete were bogus, but they both ended up being made into actual big-screen releases. With this in mind, we decided to pick a few of our own favorite fakes. Some are online classics while others are relatively new, but we think they all seriously deserve to be made into feature-length films.
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Nine-time Grammy-winner, singer and songwriter John Legend is also a TV producer, now that NBC bought Mixed Blessings, a comedy executive-produced by Legend, NBC exec Teri Weinberg, and Rob Pearlstein of Medium. He may be known for his music collaborations, most notably with Kanye West, Jay-Z, Alicia Keys, and the Roots, but he’s no stranger to the world of Hollywood: Legend appeared on the season finale of Curb Your Enthusiasm, a campaign video for Barack Obama, and in an episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, among dozens of other film and TV appearances. Now, he’s closed a deal that will bring Mixed Blessings to the small screen. Reportedly shot with a single camera, the series is about a hip-hop artist who reconnects with a teenage son and his white suburban family. [via Deadline Hollywood]
His work may look like it’s made from Lucite, gold leaf, or even silk, but grad student Greg Dunn actually makes screen prints of his favorite subject: neurons. Dunn studies neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania, and a series of his biologically-inspired creations has been commissioned by the neuroscience department at the University of California, San Diego. An amateur artist and PhD candidate, Dunn makes paintings that are often indistinguishable from landscapes, with branches, leaves, and flowers that are actually cortical neurons, retinal neurons, and parts of the hippocampus. More of Greg Dunn’s incredible work after the jump.
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Beloved fake-newspaper The Onion may be packing up and moving from its home base in New York City all the way to Chicago. The news Tuesday shocked The Onion‘s writers, who were “blindsided” by the decision and, by all accounts, appear to be resisting the unconfirmed move. The announcement followed an internal disagreement over the writers’ proposal that they join the Writers Guild of America in order to receive better pay and benefits. Of course, seeing as how it’s The Onion we’re talking about, this could all be a giant hoax. But somehow, asking talented writers to move 800 miles away or quit just isn’t funny. [via Huffington Post]
In conjunction with the 20th anniversary of Nirvana’s Nevermind, Universal is reissuing a deluxe edition of the album, complete with a DVD and live recording of the band’s 1991 Halloween performance at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle. Click through to watch a clip of Nirvana performing “Territorial Pissings” from the live show, which also airs on VH1 September 23 at 11pm Eastern and Pacific.
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UK artist Debbie Smyth uses pins and thread instead of ink and paper in her odd-yet-unique drawings. The self-described textile artist bridges the gap between embroidery and illustration, adding a multidimensional component to the otherwise 2D medium of hand-drawn art. Smyth lifts and stretches threads, tightening them and pinning them down to add or decrease tension, effectively creating a new hybrid art form that’s neither fine art nor crafting, but both. Watch a video and see more of Smyth’s work after the jump.
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First published in 1973 and now back in print, Idols by Gilles Larrain is a visual account of New York City’s art-and-music subcultures from 1969-72. The book comes with nearly a hundred studio photographs of gender-bending performers, underground musicians, and Warhol luminaries, including David Johansen, Harvey Fierstein, Taylor Mead, Holly Woodlawn, and more. After interviewing Gilles Larrain in VICE, photographer Ryan McGinley wrote the foreword to Idols, describing it as an “incredible time capsule” while marveling at its subjects’ inherent sense of style: “The greatest fashion always originates with drag queens,” he writes. “The outfit you’re wearing today was probably invented by a drag queen ten years ago.”
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As we mentioned earlier today, President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign pledge to repeal the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy has finally been fulfilled. Monday evening, a two-hour ceremony in Atlanta’s Piedmont Park marked the last day that the policy was in effect, featuring performances by the Atlanta Freedom Marching Band and the Our Song gay and lesbian chorus. Approximately 200 people attended the ceremony, including about two dozen veterans. In support of the American Veterans for Equal Rights, World War II Army vet Jack Strouss said “good riddance” to the policy. (Strouss was openly gay when he served in the military.) Watch Strouss’ stirring speech after the jump.
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Ken Jennings holds the record for the most wins on Jeopardy!, scoring a total of $3,172,700 after 74 victories on the show. After writing Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs and Ken Jennings’s Trivia Almanac: 8,888 Questions in 365 Days, Jennings has written a third book, Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks, out today. But even though he has millions of dollars, dozens of TV appearances, and three books under his belt, Jennings made an online appeal to find help writing his newest book. Click through to read his open letter to the Internet.
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