Stuff That Doesn't Suck 14

Stuff That Doesn’t Suck is a meme where I graciously share with you the things that I come across in a week that do not suck. This includes a variety of things from books to music to YouTube and even more. Feel free to join in on the comments or on your own blog.

Things are crazy busy at Kentucky Geek Girl headquarters as I prepare to move to my hometown for awhile. Things aren't certain, but I expect to be back in Lexington at some point Quarter 1 2014. So, while the stress of preparing to move sucks, I looked especially hard for some things that didn't suck this week.



Improv Everywhere - Indiana Jones 
Improv Everywhere is a collective based in New York City which causes "scenes of chaos and joy in public places." As a fan of improv, though kind of terrible at it myself, I love to see the reactions of people who aren't in on the joke. Every Tuesday this fall, the group from Improve Everywhere is being given a mission to recreate a scene from a film in real life. Their latest offerings for Movies in Real Life include Back to the Future and Jurassic Park, but being me, I wanted to highlight their second episode which featured Indiana Jones. The Indiana Jones scene re-enacts the iconic idol switch/boulder run from Raiders of the Lost Ark.



h/t Elliott Serrano

Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart
These two. I mean, really. With a decades old friendship and storied careers, the Sirs couldn't be cooler. Having rehearsed for weeks (with Sir Patrick documenting the experience on Twitter), their play Waiting for Godot premieres on Broadway November 24 for a limited 14 week run. In addition to being accomplished actors, the two seem to just have the best friendship ever. From their pictures, to their tweets, to a wonderful interview that the two of them did with the New York Times, the two not only play off of each other, but just genuinely seem to care about one another. And that's awesome.

Libraries on Wheels
I went to a rural school in Greenup County, Kentucky and we had a decent school library. Okay, most of the books were from the 1970s, but by golly I read most of them, even the boring White Men's History books. Every so often, we'd have a visit from the Bookmobile, a mobile truck on which you could pick from hundreds of books. It was on the Bookmobile that I discovered the Dear America series, an awesome series of historical fiction written from the perspective of young women. Now that I'm a (somewhat) trained historian, I think it's really interesting to look back and see that the Bookmobile isn't a recent invention. According to the Smithsonian, what we know as the Bookmobile didn't make it over to the United States until the early 1900s, and then was still drawn by horse.

Image courtesy of Smithsonian.com

Image Source

As someone who is proud of her Eastern Kentucky Heritage, I wanted to share something else related to libraries. This week I came across a photo of librarians on horseback and wanted to learn more. In the 1930s, libraries were hurt by the Great Depression. As part of the Works Progress Administration the Pack Horse Library Project of Eastern Kentucky was created in order to service the population of Eastern Kentucky that was completely cut off from access to public library facilities. It's an incredibly fascinating story about intrepid librarians who braved the wilds of Kentucky in order to bring books to Appalachians.



Cats remake The Hunger Games with cardboard
Yeah, you read that correctly. In case you need a refresher on The Hunger Games before you see Catching Fire, check out this truncated version from The Pet Collective, which seems to be the home of cute animals on YouTube. In this parody of The Hunger Games, Katniss, Peeta, and Effie are all played by cats and the cardboard set is changed out each scene. You can also check out my review of the movie, the book, and some of the plot points I thought were best left in the film. I'm hoping that Francis Lawrence doesn't pull a Gary Ross with Catching Fire.





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