38-year-old Chris Weir is so fascinated with Batman that he spent around $100,000 transforming his large basement into a veritable Batcave, complete with a custom home-theater, a secret entrance and even a life-size Batman suit used by the Dark Knight in the latest trilogy directed by Christopher Nolan.

Chris’ fascination with the caped crusader started at age three, when he and his uncle played Batman and Robin in the yard. Like many other young boys, he spent his childhood years playing with action figures from the Batman universe, and at 14 he bough his first comic book “The Legends of The Dark Knight”, and continued paying for a monthly subscription with his pocket money. Nothing unusual for a young boy, but Weir never really grew out of it. Even as an adult, he kept buying comics, action figures and posters of his favorite superhero, only at one point it just wasn’t enough anymore. He wanted to take his passion for everything Batman to a new level, and when he and his wife decided to look for a new house, Chris got the opportunity he had been waiting for. Weir wanted his very one Batcave so bad that when shopping for houses the deciding factor was always whether their future home would have enough basement space for his dream. In the end, he gave his wife Joanna two options to choose from, one of which happens to be their current home.

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It’s rare for fashion trends to last as long as 60 years. But this one tradition has never gone out of style among generations of youth in Cape Town and other regions of South Africa – dental modification. It sounds odd, but the South African youngsters actually like to sport toothless smiles, after getting their front teeth removed. Dressed mostly in baggy sweaters and caps drawn low over shiny sunglasses, the gummy smile is unique to these young South Africans who like to strike gangster poses. According to 21-year-old Yazeed Adams, “It is fashion, everyone has it.” The trend is often referred to as the ‘Cape Flats Smile’. The name comes from a populous neighborhood where this bizarre body modification is done by a large number of teens. But Jacqui Friedling of the University of Cape Town’s human biology department, who studied the phenomenon in 2003, says that she found fashion and peer pressure to be the main reasons for removing teeth, followed closely by medical reasons and gangsterisms. “It is the ‘in’ thing to do,” she says. “It went through a wave, it was fashionable in my parents’ time.” True enough, the practice has been around for at least 60 years now. Traditionally, dental modification such as filling of teeth and ornamentation was found only in tribal people. In modern Cape Town, it is seen as a rite of passage for teenagers, most often from the poorer families. Some stories say that the tradition started from the fisherman, who couldn’t communicate with each other on boats. So they created the ‘gap whistle’ as an effective means of communication. The men today feel their ‘gaps’ attract women, and vice versa.

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When things mysteriously vanish in real life, sadly, there is always a scientific explanation behind it. And that includes Loughareema, the Vanishing Lake located on the coast road, a few miles from the town of Ballycastle, Ireland.

Irish lakes have always been the stuff legends are made of, and Loughareema is no different. At times, you could be driving down the entire stretch of the adjacent Loughareema road, go right to the middle of where the lake is supposed to be, and still not spot it. That’s because it conveniently vanishes from time to time. The trick to catching a good view of the Vanishing Lake is to be there at just the right moment. The lake actually drains itself out to such a degree that passersby wouldn’t even be able to tell that there was ever a lake in that very same spot. The secret behind Loughareema’s vanishing act is the fact that it sits on a leaky chalk-bed, a topographical feature called the ‘chalk ‘plug hole’. The hole sometimes gets jammed with peat, causing the depression to fill with water, which is when the lake is visible to all. When the plug clears, all the water in the lake drains underground at a rapid rate, so no one could ever know about its existence if they hadn’t seen it before.

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60-year-old Mangas Colaradas, born and raised in Swansea, Wales, has lived as a Native American Indian for the last two decades, after divorcing his wife. He wears traditional Apache clothing and respects their beliefs, but lives in a three-bed suburban house.

Mangas, who was apparently once known as “Mr. Davies”, refuses to disclose his former name and only answers to his Indian one, adopted in honor of a great Apache tribe leader. Regardless of what others may think of him, the British Apache says he’s the real deal, and that he dresses and lives like an Indian all the time. “I dress like this all the time, I’m not just some weekend Indian. I don’t put it on to show off, I put it on because I want to wear it”, Mangas was quoted by This Is South Wales. The father of six divorced his wife during the 1990s and embraced the Apache Indian lifestyle. In 1997, he even traveled to the US and tried to live on a Red Indian reservation, but wasn’t allowed to by the American Government. He then moved to Spain where he live in a tepee, in the mountains and forests around Torremolinos. “I prefer being out in the wild, watching the wolves or bats or spiders going by”, Mangas says.

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Parkour is cool when performed by humans, but when it’s a dog that doing the stunts, it’s simply amazing.  TreT, a 5-year-old Staffordshire bull terrier from the Ukraine jumps over railings, climbs walls and sprints, proving he’s a Pakour master on four legs.

TreT is one of only two known Parkour dogs around the world. His owner, Evgeny Elchaninov, says he knew nothing about the other dog from Hawaii when they started training, and that TreT’s moves are much more spectacular, anyway. The young man from western Ukraine used to practice Parkour himself, until a bad knee injury ruined his career, Suddenly he had to give up his biggest passion in life, but his unfulfilled dreams reincarnated in his six-months old dog, who loved to run and jump. He began training TreT in the art of Parkour, both in urban landscapes and at historic landmarks, and posted videos of his amazing stunts online. Now the pooch is a true Internet celebrity.

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Y Lan, real name Tran Thi Hoang Lan, is a famous Vietnamese artist who uses multicolored sand to create beautiful paintings. Her works are famous all over Asia, as well as in Europe and North America.

Y Lan has no formal arts training and discovered her unique talent for making sand paintings purely by mistake. In 2001, while visiting her husband’s home town in Phan Thiet she saw the coastal sands in the area and was mesmerized by their beauty and took three differently-colored varieties in a transparent flower vase. After she came home she was just obsessed with the exotic beauty of the sands, so she went back and took more sand samples of different colors. Then she started thinking about what to do with this wonderful colored sand she had gathered, and the idea for her grainy sand paintings was born. Now, Y Lan is internationally recognized as the inventor of sand painting and has established her own company selling these masterpieces all around the globe.

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At one particular Brazilian jail, inmates don’t actually need both wheels on their bicycle to make an escape. By pedaling on stationary bikes, they can reduce their sentence and also get into shape.

The medium-security penitentiary of Santa Rita do Sapucai, a mountain range city about two hours north of Sao Paolo, has recently made headlines for its controversial sentence-reducing program. Thought up by the local judge, Jose Henrique Mallmann, who said he was inspired by a piece of news he read on the Internet about gyms in the United States where people generate electricity by riding stationary bikes, this two-month old program has inmates doing the same thing to reduce their stay in jail. For every three eight-hour days riding the bikes, criminals have one day of sentence shaved off. It’s a pretty good deals, but like other recently-implemented programs in Brazilian jails, it sparked some controversy around the South-American country.

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A structure with interiors covered completely in human bones – sounds like the stuff that scary houses are made of, right? But believe it or not, it is actually a place of worship. Capela dos Ossos, or the Chapel of Bones, is located next to the Church of St. Francis in the medieval Portuguese town of Evora. The 16^th century chapel is a large room that has been adorned with the bones of over 5,000 monks.

The decision to use human bones as building material for a church is certainly an unusual one, but there’s a story to justify it. It seems that in the 16^th century, Evora had about 43 cemeteries that took up way too much land. When the decision was made to destroy some of these cemeteries, the corpses of 5,000 monks were exhumed in an effort to save their souls from condemnation. It was decided that the remains of these monks would be relocated to the Capela dos Ossos. However, the existing monks soon realized that it might be a better idea to put these bones on display, rather than behind closed doors. These monks were concerned about the societal values of the wealthy town of Evora.  So they set about creating a place for meditation, a place where the undeniable reminder of death would help people transcend the material world. Read More »

India is a land of ancient culture, with practices that date back thousands of years. It is hard to trace the origins of any particular ritual, let alone remember the significance behind them. With no logical explanation available, several Indian practices seem superstitious and sometimes even a tad foolish. However, this does not deter the people of India from participating in religious and cultural celebrations with gusto.

One such example is the festival of the nine evenings, Navaratri (Nava=9, Ratri=Evening), celebrated every year in the month of October. Dedicated to different versions of the Goddess, all 9 days are filled with festivities, good food, music, dance and religious ceremonies across the country. Living in India, watching the Navaratri for me is a part of normal life. But then I heard about this man who is certainly unusual, even for Indian standards. Every year, during Navaratri, he bathes with pots of boiling milk. And he comes out of the experience, unscathed.

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It’s amazing sometimes, the amount of skill and versatility displayed by the visually challenged. Especially when they’re able to do certain things better than those with perfect vision. Photography, for instance.

If you’re wondering how it could ever be possible that a blind man take photographs, Evgen Bavcar has gone and done just that. In fact, he is a noted photographer, with his works being published and exhibited around the world. Bavcar, who was born in a small Slovenian town near Venice in 1946, met with two consecutive accidents that completely robbed him of his sight. This, before he even reached the age of twelve. Around four years after this incident, he happened to have access to a camera for the very first time. The first snap he ever took, was of a girl he loved. It was then that Bavcar realized that “I secretly discovered I could possess something that I could not see…”

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Mavericks, a popular strip club in Cape Town, South Africa, has recently launched a series of men’s fragrances called “Alibis“. As the name suggests, they provide husbands with an excuse for when they get home late.

Because most clients get a bit carried away when visiting Mavericks, and choose to have one more dance “to see what happens”, the joint’s owners were inspired to create a series of perfumes that could give married men an alibi for when they arrive home late.  ‘The fragrance market is a natural extension for the sexy, sophisticated and upmarket Mavericks brand, and the idea of a range of ‘Alibis’ is one that will appeal to many of our customers”, said Mavericks owner Shane Harrison. He expects buyers will find uses for the Alibis fragrances in a variety of day-to-day situations, and thinks the products will prove a hit during the upcoming Christmas season. Read More »

Gregory Da Silva, better known as Egg Man, is an African comedian artist and storyteller famous for wearing an outrageous had adorned with 1,000 eggs.

Born in Benin, West Africa, Da Silva studied computer science but decided to follow his artistic calling and went on to found a theater group called Voice of Spirit. They performed political, comic and poetic theater shows in Benin, but he made a name for himself after he became the Egg Man and started giving street performances wearing his ridiculously large headgear. When he first started performing in Cape Town, South Africa, Gregory’s art was so unique it got him arrested by the local police, who had to call their superior for advice on what to do with him. They were told to let him go, and he’s been performing in the city’s Green Market Square ever since.

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Pedro Martin Ureta, an Argentine farmer from General Levalle, has used 7,000 cypress and eucalyptus trees to create a giant guitar in memory of his late wife, Graciela.

Seeing this incredible design for the first time, I bet the first thing that comes to mind is “Photoshop”, but this one’s for real, folks. 70-year-old Ureta embedded this carefully planned design into his farm many years ago, and maintains it in honor of his wife, Graciela Yraizoz, who died in 1977, when she was only 25.

Mr. Ureta met Graciela in the 1960s, when he returned home after traveling to Europe, where he spent a lot of time with artists and revolutionaries. He was 28 when he first saw this beautiful 17-year-old girl and soon decided he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. Despite the priest’s reluctant attitude, thinking Pedro wasn’t committed enough to loving Ms. Yraizoz all his life, the two got married and proved extremely devoted to each other.

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I don’t know about you, but for me it is enough seeing the vuvuzela and I can actually hear that horrific sound it makes.

Well, at least I’m not the only one who doesn’t get why this “instrument of torture”, with which even the loudest group of supporters can’t compete, was such a hit during the South African World Cup. And the sound is not only annoying but also bad for your health, as Dr. Katijah Khoza-Shangase, professor of speech pathology and audiology at the Univeristy of Witswatersrand in Johannesburg, says, quoted by CBS News: “We are not saying, ‘ban the vuvuzelas.’ The vuvuzela is part of the festivities of the game, it is part of what makes the soccer in this country, but people need to be aware that they need to just wear ear protection.”

In an attempt to transform the vuvuzela into something decorative or useful,after the end of The World Cup, Matt Blitz and some of his co-workers at Leftfield, an advertising firm, put up a blog called Wozela on which people could post their ideas on transforming the leftover vuvuzelas.

Although they started of with a few of their own ideas and were hopping to get just 20 maybe 50 more, they had to make this into a competition as they received 150 submissions in just a few months. There was also a prize of 10,000 Rand, around $1500, for the best idea.

The ideas were ranged from practical to absurd, from vuvuzela light fixtures to vuvuzela educational table or Christmas trees, but the top prize was won by a simple one: vuvuzela earrings, idea belonging to Megan Bernstein from Cape Town. She considers this as a form of redemption “Out of one vuvuzela you can make 10 earrings so there’s quite a return of investment there.”

Matt Blitz affirmed: “We’re trying to change perceptions a little bit. In the way people might have reacted and the amount of positive comments we’ve got I think we have done quite a good thing in busting the negative image of it.”

And the end of the online contest doesn’t mean the end of the vuvuzela make-over ideas. New ones can still be submitted and the initiators of the “Wozela movement” plan to organize exhibitions featuring the submissions first in Cape Town and then Johannesburg.

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The small town of Cape West May, New Jersey is currently being “terrorized” by a group of “despicable” people who wrap trees, stop signs and even lamp posts in knitted covers.

You can clearly understand why the local authorities want them brought to justice, right? Of course you can’t, but they do offer a useful explanation: “It’s bright, it’s pretty … but in a community and in law your rules have to be consistent.” In other words, they want the people behind the Mystery Knitter project to come clean. But without the mystery, would something like this even be worth mentioning?

Signs of the Midnight Knitter first appeared in Cape West May, a few months ago, and since then more and more knitted covers keep showing up, over the cover of darkness. No one know who’s responsible for all this, but pretty much everyone loves their work (except authorities, of course).

One of the Midnight Knitter members told the Daily News a trio of knitters is knitting donated yarn and placing their work around the city, at night. He described their work as a form of graffiti, without the destructive effect. And everyone agrees it’s a lot better than someone spray-painting their walls.

via PressOfAtlanticCity

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