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Lad bombs, Mario wall art, and more in this week’s Staff Picks

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jeff van campJeff Van Camp: Breaking Bad, 1995 style

Today’s television has nothing on the 90s. It was the decade that brought us Nicktoons, Law & Order, ER, more Law & Orders, more ER, and some of the best sitcom theme songs ever. Remember that Charles in Charge theme? I bet you were singing it this morning. Step by Step? Full House? Saved by the Bell? Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Friends? Yeah, you know them all.

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The problem with today’s television is that it’s just too damn good. Breaking Bad is one of the most intense shows on TV today. Wonder what it would have been like in the 90s? Look no further! I got what you want, brah!

les-shuLes Shu: A mom’s crafty interpretation of Super Mario

 I don’t know about yours, but I think my mom is pretty awesome. She’s smart, fashionable, and creative, yet she knows how to stretch a dollar to the max and she makes an amazing roast chicken in the microwave. But, as cool as she is, there’s one thing I would never trust her to do when I was a kid, and that was to let her decorate my room. There was no way I was gonna let her replace my Transformers posters with her cross-stitch art. (Now that this has been etched into cyberspace eternity, I’m sure I’ll be getting a phone call any minute.)

That’s why I envy this kid’s mom, Katja Kromann, who created this kick-ass wall art of a pixelated Mario (of Super Mario Bros. fame) using scrapbooking paper. The project requires some design preplanning via Photoshop and wall measurements, but Kromann figured out that she only needed a few sheets of varied-color paper to create this piece of awesomeness. If Kromann was my mom, she can redo my room anytime. Head over to her site for the full details.

 Now, if you really want to show your kids some love, make them this Super Mario wall art with the push-pins you steal from your office.

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caleb denisonCaleb Denison: Lad Bombin’

Just in case you are one of the 6.5 million people who hasn’t seen this video yet, we present to you Chris Stark interviewing Mila Kunis for BBC Radio1. In what is being billed as the best interview in the history of anything not involving Larry King, Stark nervously sits in front of the super-hot – and apparently super-sassy (what a shocker) – Mila Kunis just 10 minutes after he was told he’d be conducting the interview.

Highlights include Kunis’ reaction to what will be my new favorite drink to hate forever starting this weekend (the Lad Bomb), and all the canned answers she’s prepared for questions related to her most recent cinematic effort, Oz The Great and Powerful, effectively showing us all just how uninterested celebrities really are during promotional interviews. But perhaps the best part of this interview is the impossibly awkward demeanor of poor Chris Stark, who at one point asks Kunis to accompany him to his mate’s wedding. Good luck with that, Stark. And good on ya!

andrew coutsAndrew Couts: Where has all the creepy gone?

There was a time, not so long ago, that the Internet was a very different place. Creeps and weirdos lurked around every corner. You actually had to actively avoid landing on webpages that contained some hideous example of humanity – disfigurations, gore, violence, or worse. And a lot of times you still failed. Nowadays, you have to seek out the weird. Much of the Web has become commercially anesthetized; it’s no longer the land of the freaks. Unless, of course, you count things like these super screwy photos of adults-turned-into-children by artist Christian Girotto. It’s no goatse or LemonParty – but these pictures are still giving me the heebie jeebies. Maybe there’s life left in the dark side of the Web, after all.

Creepy girl
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amir IliafarAmir Iliaifar: Desiring Desire

Recently I discovered the Showtime series Homeland, and while I realize I’m bit late to the party for this excellent drama, I simply can’t get enough of the show. It’s actually pretty embarrassing how many straight hours I spent trying to catch up, but I digress. The fact that Homeland stars one of my favorite actors, Damien Lewis (of Band of Brothers fame) as a Marine POW returning from the Iraq war doesn’t hurt either.

So you can imagine my excitement when I learned that the feisty Brit would share the spotlight with another favorite of mine, Jaguar’s stunning new 2014 F-Type, in a short film titled Desire.

The short film is being helmed by Oscar-nominated director Ridley Scott, and sees Lewis in the role of Sidney Clark, a man on a mission to deliver one stunning set of wheels, the Jaguar F-Type. Lewis plays opposite Jordi Molla (Blow, Bad Boys II) as an armed drug lord and Shannon Sossamon (A Knight’s Tale, 40 Days and 40 Nights) as mysterious woman on the run.

As the trailer states: “His job was simple: deliver a car. But in the desert, nothing is simple.”

From what we’ve pieced together from the full trailer, it looks like Lewis and Jaguar could be a winning combination, and even though the entire short film hasn’t been released yet, I’m already hoping a full-on feature isn’t out of the question.

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