5 Ridiculous Gun Myths Everyone Believes (Thanks to Movies) Even in gun-crazy America, most of us aren't shooting things as part of our day-to-day routine. So most Americans actually know very little about guns. Hollywood writers realized this a long time ago and, being writers, used it as an excuse to never do any fact-checking ever again. Silencers Turn Gunfire Into a Gentle Whisper Where You've Seen It: In The Line Of Fire, Die Hard 2, No Country For Old Men, Shooter, practically every James Bond movie. The Myth: Cautious spies and assassins know that if you're going to take out a bad guy in an office or a library, be sure to use a silencer. Above: Stealth. Itty-bitty handguns aren't the only things you can silence. Also, while silencers look all slick and expensive and fancy, Hollywood says pretty much any long, hollow tube will do the job. The Problem: Exploding gunpowder is loud. If you can't watch the video, let us sum it up: It still sounds like a freaking handgun. So a silencer really just makes a large gun sound like a smaller gun.
The 5 Most Famous Musicians Who Are Thieving Bastards Every artist "steals" a little, whether they realize it or not. For instance, we talk about how some musician was "influenced" by music they grew up with, even if sometimes that influence consists of outright stealing and/or barely remixing a classic. That's just the way it works. But sometimes, it's even more blatant than that. In fact, some of the most successful musical acts in history based huge chunks of their careers entirely on plagiarism. Led Zeppelin are remembered for two things: banging a groupie with a mudshark and recording songs that rocked harder than any band had ever rocked before. Don't believe us? A young Jake Holmes played a song of the same name (and chords, and lyrics kind of) at a show in 1967 where he was opening for The Yardbirds, who featured--say it with us! But who cares, right? Gross. Too bad they jacked that shit too. How did nobody notice that? They never did. In hip-hop, there are two schools of thought when it comes to sampling. Dicks.
7 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Outbreak Would Fail (Quickly) Let's pretend for a moment that zombies are real (as if half of you weren't already daydreaming about that very thing). Have you noticed how most zombie movies take place only after the apocalypse is in full-swing? By the time we join our survivors, the military and government are already wiped out, and none of the streets are safe. There's a reason the movie starts there, and not earlier. #7. Do you know why we, as humans, are at the top of the current food chain? We are simply too smart and too well-armed for any wild animal to hunt. If you're saying, "Sure, but it's not like my city is full of bears that can come eat all the zombies," you need to think smaller. Not so disgusting now, are they? We'll scale up a bit: In America alone, we have bears, wolves, coyotes and cougars, all of which can put well-armed, thinking, fast-moving humans on the menu, if the conditions are right. Now imagine zombie hordes wandering Africa. #6. The first concern is putrefaction. #5. Look at it. #4.
8 Historic Symbols That Mean The Opposite of What You Think Misunderstood By: Libertarians, Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck has recently found a soul mate in Thomas Paine, the Founding Father known for his Revolutionary War tract Common Sense. So much so that he's gone so far as to rewrite Common Sense for the modern era, essentially stuffing words hand over fist into the mouth of a centuries-dead political philosopher for the soul-shriveling disgust Beck knows Paine would feel about Barack Obama. Libertarians and tea partiers are so enamored by their new ideological BFF that they've taken to dressing up like him on YouTube and spouting off about the evils of taxation, weak foreign policy and too many brown people. But Beck and his minions could probably benefit from actually reading some Thomas Paine. "Pay as a remission of taxes to every poor family, out of the surplus taxes, and in room of poor-rates, four pounds a year for every child under fourteen years of age." An entitlement paying old people to support them for not working?
5 Adorable Animals That Are Turning to the Dark Side Let's face it, animals are bastards. With all of the ant slavery, ape war and duck rape in the world, it's easy to decide nature is something best left to the wild. But there are those animals that -- thanks to Disney and The Far Side -- we tend to think are more likely to dispense witty one liners than bite our face. But while we've been busy rooting for them, they've been quietly revealing their true colors ... The Good Squirrels are Exhibit A in what a cute face and a bushy tail can do for your cred among humans. The Evil The animal kingdom is like prison. "Come on, take the first swing. Between May 2006 and March 2007, multiple squirrels attacked 13 people, mostly children. Sure. Fish and Game declared the squirrels in the park a "threat to continued public safety" and began trapping and killing them. This is not an isolated incident. Not pictured: Baseball bats and a lot of lye soap. According to eyewitness testimony, the squirrels descended and tore the dog to pieces.
6 Things Our Kids Just Plain Won't Get This article is for my three kids. They will, very soon, start seeing the world through adult eyes, and a lot of things about my generation will just plain not make any sense to them. I'm going to attempt to explain some of it, so that they don't dismiss an entire generation of people as rock-fuck stupid. For instance, the generation coming up behind us most likely won't understand ... Many of the Phrases and Pictures We Use Every Day Do you use Skype or Yahoo Messenger? Specifically, the "Call" and "Voice Call" icons. I know my kids have never used the old microphone that Yahoo Messenger uses to represent "Voice Call" because I raised them, and therefore can safely say than none of them are news anchors from the 1950s. For instance, if you weren't alive during the early 90s, how are you supposed to know what the hell that thing next to the "Save" button on every single program in existence is supposed to represent. A Transformer talking out of the side of its mouth? Do you like cartoons?
8 Actors Who Look Exactly The Same on Every Movie Poster In Zoolander, Ben Stiller plays a male model who only knows how to make one facial expression in front of a camera: Blue Steel. Most of us have Facebook friends with their own version of Blue Steel -- a particular facial expression (or if they've had a few drinks, body part) that comes out every time someone tells them to say cheese. Well, it turns out that some of Hollywood's most iconic actors are no different when it comes to selling their movie. For instance ... Eddie Murphy Raises His Eyebrow Eddie Murphy has this thing he can do with his eyebrow that he wants you to check out. Murphy appears to be looking out at us from inside this fish out of water comedy, and saying, "You believe these Hollywood assholes?" Then he brought it out for The Golden Child, where he used it to say, "You believe these Chinese assholes?" "You believe these Hollywood assholes paid me to make this movie?" He doesn't break it out for Dr. Eyebrow. Do you think that theory's too far fetched, Mr. Eyebrow? Huh.
8 Absurd Jokes That Predicted Real Life Events Comedy can be a dangerous business. It's hard to make the world look ridiculous when it's always finding new ways to make itself look ridiculous. For instance, back in August of 2009, Cracked.com columnist Cody Johnston posted an article about Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer (the "comedic" "minds" behind Epic Movie and Meet the Spartans) and created a fake trailer for Vampire Movie, citing it as a likely candidate for Seltzer and Friedberg's next film. One year and 10 days later, Vampires Suck was released in cinemas. We've got plenty more ideas where that came from, Hollywood. So in a way, making comedy gives you the ability to predict the future. 30 Rock Predicts the KFC Double Down In the first season of 30 Rock (which for the uninitiated, is a sitcom set behind-the-scenes of a SNL-style sketch show), Tracy Jordan is having money problems and is advised to come up with a product to put his name on and sell. There really is elegance in simplicity. Via Michael Saechang "Natalie Portman!
6 Songs That Were Decades Ahead of 'Groundbreaking' Music Most great bands are considered revolutionary in some sense: You wouldn't expect anyone in the 60s to sound like Radiohead or Nine Inch Nails, just like you wouldn't expect anyone in the '30s to sound like The Beatles. That's why the songs on this list are so bizarre to listen to; they were so far ahead of the curve that their genres weren't even invented yet. In fact, we're going to say that only time travel can explain songs like ... Cromagnon -- Caledonia (or, Industrial Music in the 60s) Few things have scandalized more parents than the mainstream debut of Nine Inch Nails in the mid-1990s. "Is this what music has come to?" Meanwhile, music critics fawned over NIN's second album, The Downward Spiral; even The New York Times praised Reznor for having "perfected the use of noise as both atmosphere and weapon." We always assumed "industrial music" was the inevitable reaction of snorting cocaine off a sound mixer. But, decades before ... But you could probably tell that from their cover art.
6 Artists Whose Weird Fetishes Defined Pop Culture It doesn't take a cinema genius to catch that most of Martin Scorsese's movies feature violent sociopaths. And you don't need to be a horror/geography wunderkind to notice that every Stephen King book is about an unexplainable evil being evil in New England. Those trademarks are part of the reason we like the work of those guys. But what's really interesting are the artists who have been flaunting their bizarre fixations in our faces for years but have never been called out on them. Until now ... Joss Whedon Clearly Has a Foot Fetish If geek fandom was a high school, Whedon would be its resident golden boy jock. Ladies. The secret trademark: It's definitely a creepy foot fetish. When you really think about it, it's not that often that you see bare feet on the little screen. To be fair, most of these do belong to Summer Glau's character, River, who was supposed to be the show's psychic warrior dancer of sorts (you know how all dancers hate shoes). Man, feminism is easy! Bathrooms. Dr. Gross.