Every family has its own traditions for Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries and other special occasions. Writer Nick Confalone recently shared on YouTube, a particularly endearing tradition followed by his dad during Christmas. Starting in 1985, Nick’s father made home videos of his kids coming down the stairs on Christmas morning. He continued this practice for 25 years, chronicling the growth of his children over a quarter of a century. Nick recently edited the footage filmed by his father and posted it on YouTube. Apart from Nick and his sister, other members of the family are also seen in the video. Pets come and go, as do boyfriends, and you can clearly see how the kids evolve from little toddlers to teenagers and then young adults. Initially the kids are seen to be excited to find out what Santa Claus has left them under the tree. Nick is a cute kid making silly faces at the camera. As years go by, their reluctance to be a part of the videos is quite evident. Of course, Nick now considers the videos to be nothing short of magical.

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With the holiday season in full swing, we’re hearing stories from everywhere about the crazy Christmas decorations that people put up. The latest addition to the news is a couple from Greenwood, Indiana, who have taken their home decorations to new heights, covering every single room in their home. Nine years ago, Brandon Smith and Dennis Guyette started off by decorating a few trees each year, as a hobby. Now, they’ve transformed their hobby into a full-fledged tourist attraction. They say that the people who loved their work encouraged them to keep adding more, and open their home for public view. Overall, there are 68 Christmas trees in their house, each one decorated with a different theme. The decorations extend into each and every room, even the kitchen and the bathroom. They look for and purchase Christmas decorations from all over the country, and when they’re finished, visitors are allowed every December from 6 to 10 pm. They do not charge an entry fee. The neighbors love them, and their holiday hobby. They’re used to seeing a long line of cars parked outside every year, but they don’t mind it in the least. Read More »

Now here’s an extremely interesting and catchy version of the Nativity Story. For those of you who feel that the traditional ways of telling the story have become rather monotonous, an English Vicar from Devon has made a rap song out of it. The video put up online has already been watched thousands of times. 40-year old Reverend Gavin Tyte gets it just right, as he raps the story of Jesus’s birth to a beatbox backing. The song is called ‘The Beatbox Nativity.’ The video clip is three-and-a-half minutes long. For the video, Reverend Tyte dresses up in three different costumes – a shepherd, an angel, and himself, as the narrator. The song goes on to describe the entire story of the birth of Jesus, in perfect rap. He says he has been beatboxing since the age of 8 and was even a professional performer before be was ordained. The Reverend has been in the company of rappers for a long time, but he admits it was a little tricky to create a rhyme out of each and every verse. “You are constrained by what is written and what sounds good, so it does not flow as well as if you were rapping from scratch.” Read More »

The wastage of food is something we often don’t realize, because we tend to think of it as ‘just this once’. In reality we’re all guilty of ordering something on the menu we know we can’t really finish, just out of the temptation to see what it tastes like. Well, one restaurant has finally decided to put the matter to rest. A Saudi food joint has started charging their customers extra if they order more food than they can eat. Fahad Al Anezi, the owner of Marmar restaurant in the city of Dammam says the move is an attempt to stop the wastage of food and reduce extravagance. According to Al Anezi, he routinely witnesses clients who order large quantities of food in order to impress those around them. He also says that the idea of fining people for leftovers, instead of making him unpopular, has actually been endorsed by the Saudis. In fact, a few customers have said that they’ve learnt their lesson and will only order food that they can finish.

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Progress in the world of gaming and technology has brought us nothing other than amazement over the years. The latest awesome feat of gaming is beyond awesome as the Tobii EyeAsteroids pushes you to take a different look at gaming, literally. Based on one of the best games in history, Asteroids, the new arcade game features a special controller – your eyes. Using some special sensors and software, the game tracks the motion of your eyes and then interprets it as input commands for the game. The Tobii EyeAsteroids is a game that simply implies you looking at it. There’s no button mashing or jumping up and down to control the game. It seems to be the perfect gaming system to indulge in laziness while safely avoiding carpal tunnel problems. It’s also a definite eye catcher system that can be both weird and addictive at the same time. Read More »

Director Greg Jardin spent the last two years making a music video for singer/songwriter Kina Grannis using a whopping 288,000 jelly beans. I think it’s fair to say this is literally sweetest video ever created. Inspired by the jelly bean art of artists like Roger Rocha, Malcolm West and Kristen Cumings, Greg Jardin thought it would be a good idea to make a music video almost entirely out of jelly beans, for Kina Grannis‘ song “In Your Arms”. The young singer thought it was an amazing idea, although she did have some problems even imagining how it was going to look like, so the ambitious director got to work. He had a friend, who is an illustrator, draw up  all the concept art and email it to him, and he turned into an animatic. There were over 2,300 frames he had to recreate out of differently colored jelly beans. Read More »

Jeremy Kirsch has creates what is probably the world’s first photographic sequin mosaic, comprised of 50,625 independently-mounted sequins, which move and sparkle when they catch the light. The artist from Glendale, California created this unique work of art for the ArtPrize 2011 competition, where although it didn’t win the big prize, it caught the eye of Ripley’s Believe It or Not! “How this piece didn’t win the big money at the contest I will never know, said Edward Meyer, VP Exhibits and Archives for Ripley’s. “Everyone was talking about it as the “must see” piece. I fell in love with it instantly, and considered it the number one “must have” piece for Ripley’s from this year’s Artprize.” Read More »

I didn’t think one could use a sewing machine for anything but sewing, but this guy proves it’s the perfect tool to create realistic portraits. I found this video during my daily browsing sessions, and knew I just had to post it for you guys to see, I haven’t been able to identify the skilled artist yet, but even though the video was uploaded by a Russian blogger, the protagonists speak English so I’m pretty sure the guy’s American. If anyone knows who he is, let me know so I can credit him for this awe-inspiring performance. You have to see the video to believe it, but long story short, this man sews a portrait of a female model into a piece of leather using just a sewing machine, and does it all in just a few minutes. All throughout the video I was sure he was going to sew his finger into the art piece, that’s how close his finger was to the needle…Amazing stuff! Read More »

John Chang, also known as the Magus of Java or the Electric Eel man is a mysterious Indonesian healer who reportely possesses an incredible power called nei kung. Mr. Chang was first presented to the world in an award-winning documentary called The Ring of Fire, by brothers Lawrence and Lorne Blair. He requested his identity be protected and he was referred to as Dynamo Jack, in relation to the amazing current of energy he was able to produce with his body. In this documentary he showed the world how he uses Chi to heal his patients, sending electric impulses through their bodies and even treating Lorne for his eye infection. All he needed to do was touch certain areas of a person’s body and electricity just passed through them causing uncontrollable twitches. His power was so strong he needed an assistant to hold the patient’s body and ground them. Read More »

Shinji Saito, the most competitive yo-yo player in the history of yo-yo competition put on quite a performance at the 2011 World Yo-Yo Championship, winning his 11th title. At just 24 Shinji Saito is the most acclaimed yo-yo master in history, winning most of the contests he’s ever entered. He was a 2A yo-yo champion by the age of 13 and since 2002, he only came in second place once, in 2008, but reclaimed the top spot the following year, and hasn’t lost it since. At this year’s World Yo-Yo Championship, Shinji Saito showed everyone why he’s the best at what he does, putting on a memorable performance that make tricks like “walk the dog” look like child’s play. For his 11th World Yo-Yo Champion title, Shinji won a $300 cash prize and the priceless reputation that comes with the territory.

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Human hair used as a medium has become rather common in the art world, and we’ve featured a few worthy examples on Oddity Central, but this man’s ability to manipulate his curls into a cool portrait is something I’ve never seen before. Some artists use hair to make unique jewelry, others use it for clothes, but the artist you’re about to see cuts his own curls and uses them to draw a pretty good portrait of a woman. He starts out by giving himself a sloppy haircut with some scissors, than takes the hair and carefully shapes it into a portrait using only his hands and what appears to be a pencil, for the fine details. His work is somewhat similar to that of sand manipulating artists like Ksenyia Simonova so I’ve posted a video of one of her amazing performances, as well. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find out who the hair drawing artist yet, let me know if you know anything about hm or his hairy art. Read More »

They say it’s back luck to spill salt, but Toronto-based Bashir Sultani clearly has little regard for superstition, as he has no problem spilling the seasoning and shaping its fine crystals into detailed portraits of modern icons.

After spilling salt onto a black background, Afghan-born Sultani uses basic tools, like a razor blade and Q-tips to manipulate the grains into portraits of actors, singers, popular movie characters and other icons. He makes it all look easy in his videos, but it’s obvious you need a great deal of patience and skill to create such original masterpieces.

Be sure to check his YouTube channel for more making-of videos of his amazing salt portraits.

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Natalie Irish is one of those artists who doesn’t need to use her hands to create mind-blowing masterpieces. Like someone said, she has more talent in her lips than most do in their entire body.

You probably haven’t seen Natalie’s art before, neither had I, and that’s a real shame because she creates some pretty original stuff. Using only her lips and a lipstick, she creates detailed portraits, like the one of Marilyn Monroe, pictured below.  The Houston-based artist simply puckers her lips and kisses the paper canvas thousands of times, until she gets the desired result.

Get ready for the coolest thing you’ll see all day:

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“Go with the rhythm! Hyper Ping Pong” is a quirky Japanese video game that allows you to play table tennis without a table, a ball or an opponent.

Following in the footsteps of Nintendo – inventors of the popular Wii console –  Japanese game developer, Happinet, has decided to take things one step further and take the video out of video-game. They’ve come up with a table tennis game that only features a motion sensor racket that emits the sound of a ball being hit by the invisible opponent. Players must find their rhythm and time their hits to the sound to continue their rally. By pressing the square button on the paddle, they can do a Smash, and if performed with perfect timing, it turns into a rally winning Super Smash.

According to Atsushi Watanabe, from Happinet, you can play Hyper Ping Pong, by yourself, in your room, but also at parties, to show people just how well you can rally. As the game progresses, the rally will make everyone more excited, making the game more enjoyable for everyone. Right… I think a YouTube commenter said it best: this game was invented for people who love ping pong but have no friends whatsoever.

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A Latvian magazine thought it wasn’t fair that real twitting birds didn’t have the chance to do it on Twitter so they set up a service that allows them to share their thoughts with the world.

Voldemars Dudum, the founder of BirdsOnTwitter.com, has always been a big bird lover, and while feeding them pork fat one winter, he came up with a brilliant idea to give them the chance to tweet for themselves. By fixating small pieces of unsalted pork on keyboard keys, feasting Tomtits type their own messages on the popular social networking platform.

The fat is attached to the keys with small stainless steel screws which increases the sensitivity of the strokes, since Tomtits are too light to press a real key with their beaks. The bird tweeting station is set up in the small Latvian village of Sarnate, where winter temperatures drop to a whopping -20 degrees Celsius. Eating the pork fat helps the chirping birds survive the harsh temperatures, and now gives them the chance to send messages worldwide.

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