It would have been cooler as a van

Brandon Ortwein has produced a series of illustrations of celebrity automobiles like Herbie the Love Bug, the General Lee, the Batmobile and the Delorean in van form. They’re available as prints, iPhone cases and laptop skins.

Maybe now people will start to realize just how awesome the A-Team van really was.

[via Cameron Moll]

Iconic TV posters

Loving the simplicity and depth of these posters.

[via GraphicHug]

Ear bleeding to finally end

It’s always baffled me as to why advertisers think that annoying the crap out of people by cranking up the volume on their ads would work in their favor. So I’ll probably never understand why it took an act of Congress to bring that horrible, horrible practice to an end. The CALM Act (Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation), change we can believe in.

Why We’re Teaching ‘The Wire’ at Harvard

HBO’s [now] critically acclaimed show ‘The Wire’ has received a lot of traction in collegiate classrooms since the final season ended. But it’s interesting to hear what specifically educators see in ‘The Wire’ that is beneficial for their students.

Of course, our undergraduate students will read rigorous academic studies of the urban job market, education and the drug war. But the HBO series does what these texts can’t. More than simply telling a gripping story, “The Wire” shows how the deep inequality in inner-city America results from the web of lost jobs, bad schools, drugs, imprisonment, and how the situation feeds on itself.

“The Wire” is fiction, but it forces us to confront social realities more effectively than any other media production in the era of so-called reality TV. It does not tie things up neatly; as in real life, the problems remain unsolved, and the cycle repeats itself as disadvantages become more deeply entrenched.

Here’s Johnny

All 3,300 hours of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson have been digitized by the Carson Entertainment Group and many are now available for free on their website. They just don’t make ‘em like they used to.

[via Hivelogic]

Top Gear takes on the Ferrari 458 Italia

I get giddy whenever I hear them say “They call him the Stig!”

[via Clusterflock]

Tosh.0

I’ve said Tosh.0 is the funniest show on television, but now it has the ratings to prove it. I’m just glad @doylerr kept telling me how good the show was a while back.

How LOST should have ended

Aye brother.

Lost + Saul Bass

What if Saul Bass had done the opening title sequence for Lost? It would probably look something like this.

[via Cameron Moll]

Willie Mays

Jon Stewart had the pleasure of talking with one of the greatest baseball players and professional athletes of all time.

Update: The video and link have been changed and now include just the Willie Mays interview, not the entire show.