We’ve seen people cover their cars with the weirdest stuff – right from dentures to swarovski crystals. But this one is a first – an Italian hairstylist chose to pay tribute to her profession by covering her car in human hair. There’s hair everywhere – on the exterior, the seats, the dashboard, and even the steering wheel.

The car in question belongs to 44-year-old Maria Lucia Mugno. She decided to cover it in hair in 2010, after a friend bet her that she couldn’t do it. So with the help of her assistant Valentino Stassano, she spent 150 hours sewing thickly braided strands of hair imported from India on her small Fiat 500. The effort won her the Guinness World Record title for the world’s hairiest car.

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Singaporean artist Ivan Hoo is an ace at creating optical illusions. Using pastels and pencils on wood, he illustrates highly realistic objects such as spilled cola, cracked eggs, broken vases and crumpled paper. It all looks three-dimensional until you touch it and realise that it’s not.

Ivan said that he chose to work with wood because of its texture and the way it holds color. “By working on wood, it gives me a lot of dimension and ideas to create something close to reality and it works really well with pastels too,” he explained.

“I started to experiment on wood some years back with mainly portraits as my subject before going further with a different concept,” he added. “I started to think of ideas and draw things that we could see ‘happening’ on a piece of wood, so the very first idea that struck me was the dripping effect. That was my first anamorphic work.”

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38-year-old Abe Calimag is so hooked on the Broadway musical Rock of Ages that he’s seen it 500 times in the past five years. His obsession has taken him to six different countries, just to watch various productions of the same show. And he’s spent a whopping $25,000 along the way.

Abe, a business consultant from Virginia, bought his first Rock of Ages ticket in 2009 because his favorite actress Amy Spanger was supposed to be in it. He later realised that she wasn’t in the cast anymore, but he decided to go see the show anyway. It turned out to be the experience of a lifetime, and thus began Abe’s love affair. During the last five years, he has traveled to London, Toronto, Australia, Manila and to several states in the US, and even taken a few cruises just to watch the production over and over again.

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This group of highly skilled Indonesian woodworkers caters exclusively to people who love collecting sports cars – both real and wooden. They carve impressive life-size replicas of popular sports car models, and their creations are routinely exported to buyers in the US, England, Germany, and other European countries. 

Their latest handiwork is a model of the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport, made entirely out of teak – it doesn’t work of course, but it’s a stunning copy of the real thing. And let’s not forget – cheaper by several thousands of dollars.

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Peter Combe is a San Francisco-based visual artist who specializes in creating three-dimensional artwork using nothing but paint swatches, hand-punched into small disks. Using his special technique, Combe creates stunning pieces that range from abstract pattern-based compositions to highly realistic pixelated portraits with a vintage photograph-like quality.

Combe has a huge collection of paint swatch disks of over 1,100 colors that he has organized based on tonal increments and light-reflecting values. This enables him to think of tones rather than colors while working. To create a piece, he fits these disks into bezel-cut grooves on a specially prepared archival material, with the aid of a vintage operating-theater lamp.

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They say everything tastes better deep fried, but who’d have ever guessed that also applies to maple leaves? Well, the dish is real – it’s called Maple Tempura and it’s a fall delicacy in Japan. Surprisingly, it isn’t just made by picking up random fallen leaves and frying them. There’s actually an elaborate process involved in making these sweet, golden snacks.

To prepare Maple Tempura, the leaves are carefully selected and preserved in salt barrels for over a year. Then, they’re removed from the salt and dipped in a batter made from flour, sesame seeds and sugar. These batter-coated leaves are then deep fried for over 20 minutes, until crisp.

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‘Air Food One’ is a food delivery service in Germany that exclusively caters to people who happen to love airline food. I’m not sure what’s more surprising – that the service exists, or that there are actually people who like the flavorless reheated stuff that is generally passed off as food on an airplane.

Anyway, the service is being provided by a German grocery store in collaboration with the company that makes meals for Lufthansa. It includes weekly home delivery of meals that are supposed to be ‘business-class quality’. Apparently, online grocery store Allyouneed.com noticed there was a demand for airplane food from its clients, so it teamed up with airline caterers LSG to satisfy their cravings.

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Eyeglasses are the bane of a good kiss, especially if both parties happen to be spectacled. Thankfully, Tokyo-based eyewear company Blinc Vase has come up with a great (albeit weird) solution – ‘Kiss Eyeglasses’ – specifically designed for those extra-long lip-locking sessions. These two-way glasses consist of a single pair of lenses that can be worn by two people at once.

How is that even possible, you ask? Well, it’s simple – the glasses have two pairs of arms facing opposite ways, allowing a couple (who would otherwise be wearing two pairs of specs) to get even closer to each other. Of course, an easier solution would be to just take both pairs off for a specs-free experience. But you have to admit, kiss eyeglasses sound way more fun. This way, even people with the worst eyesight can gaze at their significant other while sharing a kiss.

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Beer lovers, rejoice! The world’s first spreadable beer – ‘Birra Spalmabile’ – is a genius Italian invention that allows you to enjoy your favorite beverage early in the day, completely guilt-free. No one can judge you for indulging in this delectable beer-based breakfast spread – just slather the stuff on your toast and crepes, or stuff it in your pastry.

Made of 40 percent beer, Birra Spalmabile is predominantly sweet to taste. The spread comes in two flavors – one light and delicate, and the other with an intense aroma and stronger taste. Both flavors are available for purchase internationally at $51 for a 280-gram jar.

The product is the result of the ingenious collaboration of chocolatier Pietro Napoleone and Emanuela Laurenzi’s brewery Alta Quota. Through various chemical processes, they managed to thicken the brewery’s Omid dark ale and Greta blond ale to a creamy, smooth consistency.

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Nothing compares to the warm hug of a real person, but when there’s no one else around, this nifty little Japanese invention can do the job quite well. It’s called the ‘tranquility chair’ – its back is shaped like a giant human doll with a friendly face and long arms that can wrap around you in an affectionate embrace.

The chair is the brainchild of Japanese company UniCare – they’re selling the product for 46,000 yen ($ 419) at the International Home Care and Rehabilitation Exhibition in Tokyo. “It makes you feel safe,” said a UniCare spokesperson. “Anyone can use it, but it is designed for older people.”

Given that a quarter of Japan’s population is currently over the age of 65, and the number is expected to rise to 40 percent in coming decades, the tranquility chair is really quite apt for the Japanese market. The company has come up with a host of similar products, like ‘Life Rhythm Dolls’ that are programmed to remind owners to take their medicine or go to the toilet.

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To pay tribute to Serbian inventor and electrical engineering genius Nikola Tesla, artist Phil Hansen recently created a portrait of him using only electric sparks.

A time lapse video of Hansen creating the painting shows him connecting a couple of wires to a large battery. He then brings the two naked ends of the wire together to produce sparks. He uses the sparks to create burn marks of varying darkness on paper, creating the eyes, nose and other features of Tesla’s face until the mind-blowing portrait is complete.

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Xiao Yongsheng is the owner of a small beach and a traditional Chinese house on Lingshan Island, off the coast of Qingdao city in eastern China’s Shandong province. When he decided to renovate his large home, he wondered if it was worth spending money on expensive designers and architects. Ultimately, he decided to save up and do it for free – he spent two whole years covering every inch of his 1,500-square meter house with seashells that he collected from his own beach.

“I’d always liked shells but it never struck me to use them until I was walking on a beach one morning and came across a very unusually colored clam shell and then it hit me,” said the 58-year-old. “I realised I was sitting next to a huge, free supply of beautiful building material – so why not use it?” So he began collecting every kind of shell he could find – right from tiny 3-millimeter ones to giant conches that weighed over four kilograms.

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‘Happening Girls’ is a new reality TV show in Japan, featuring a girl group that fans can date and potentially even marry. The band currently consists of four girls who always wear bikinis or swimsuits in public. Male fans interested in dating the girls can apply to the producers of the show and take part in X-Factor style auditions and interviews for the chance of winning a date.

The four bachelorettes who currently make up the band are: Manaka, 20, Saaya, 22, Kaori, 26, and Eri, 25. If one of them gets married and leaves the show, her place will be taken by a new band member. The show’s producers are recruiting replacements under strict conditions – applicants must be between 17 and 30 years of age, living in Tokyo, and must have no objections to wearing bikinis in public at all times.

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In a bizarre display of love, a Polish veterinary student recently stitched the words ‘I Love You’ on to the skin of a dog that he operated on. The fourth year student at the University of Warmia and Mazury, in Olsztyn, then posted the image on to his girlfriend’s Facebook wall, so she could admire his handiwork. The grisly picture was immediately criticized by the couple’s friends and college mates for being grotesque and unethical.

The girlfriend, who is a member of the student council at the same university, defended the photograph: “What’s so unethical about it? He learnt to sew in order to help and is just showing his skill.” Read More »

Li Guojun is a farmer by profession, but his passion for military toys has pushed him to build a couple of life-size, fully functional tanks. Although he doesn’t know much about military engineering and he doesn’t even have access to the internet, he managed to build his own tanks by observing models that he purchased at a local toy shop. The two vehicles are 6 meters long, capable of a top speed of 12 miles per hour, and can tackle almost any kind of terrain.

“To be honest, it wasn’t that difficult to do,” said the humble farmer. “I simply needed to make the same parts that the model had, but much larger.” Li did have a little help from a friend and fellow military tank enthusiast – they built the tanks together and they now spend their spare time driving the massive vehicles outside their village in Kangping County, in northeast China’s Liaoning Province.

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