Written by Ethan

Major League Baseball?s winter meetings just ended. As general managers return to their homes, the annual flurry of free agent signings and contract extensions is in full swing. These deals aren?t just about the money, though; they?re also about bonus clauses and sweet, sweet perks. Here?s a list of some of the more ludicrous ones players have received.

1. Charlie Kerfeld, Houston Astros

After a spectacular rookie season in 1986, the rotund reliever who always pitched in his lucky Jetsons t-shirt needed a new contract. Kerfeld asked for $110,037.37, matching his number 37 jersey, to pitch in 1987. On top of that, he received 37 boxes of orange Jell-O in the deal. The Astros would soon regret this delicious bonus, though; Kerfeld, who was famously caught eating ribs in the dugout that season, would battle weight and injury problems and get sent down to the minors.

2. Rollie Fingers, Oakland Athletics

Former A?s owner Charlie Finley never thought of a gimmick he wouldn?t try, including a mechanical rabbit that delivered fresh balls to the umpire and hiring a 13-year-old MC Hammer as his ?Executive V.P.? In 1972, Finley offered his players cash for growing a mustache by Father?s Day, thereby giving birth to reliever Fingers? trademark handlebar ?stache. The A?s went on to win the World Series that season, and Fingers? contract for 1973 contained a $300 bonus for growing the mustache as well as $100 for the purchase of mustache wax.

3. Roy Oswalt, Houston Astros

Before Oswalt made a start in the 2005 National League Championship Series, Astros owner Drayton McLane promised to make the ace?s dreams come true if he won, specifically his life goal of bulldozer ownership. After Oswalt dominated the Cardinals to send Houston to its first-ever World Series, McLane came through with a Caterpillar D6N XL. Since Major League Baseball requires high-dollar gifts be disclosed, Oswalt signed an addendum to his contract, a ?bulldozer clause,? authorizing the club to give him his new toy.

4. Troy Glaus, Arizona Diamondbacks

Arizona inked the slugging third baseman signed for four years and $45 million in December 2004. As part of the deal, Glaus receives $250,000 annually for ?personal business expenses,? namely the cost of his wife Ann?s equestrian training and equipment. Although Glaus bashed 37 homers for the Snakes in 2005, he also tied for the major-league lead in errors by a third baseman with 24, and despite Mrs. Glaus? surely improving performance in the steeplechase, Glaus had to hoof it to Toronto when he was traded barely a year after signing.

5. Randy Johnson, Arizona Diamondbacks

When the Big Unit signed with the Arizona Diamondbacks in 1998, team owner Jerry Colangelo also threw in a pair of partial season tickets for the Phoenix Suns to lure in the lanky lefty. Seems like Johnson could have afforded his own tickets, but to be fair, when you?re making $52 million over four years, it?s hard to get scalpers to fall for ?Can you take twenty for the pair? I swear it?s all I?ve got, dude.?

6. Carlos Beltran, New York Mets

Beltran?s mammoth seven-year, $119 million deal from January 2005 showed that he had all of baseball?s five tools but lacked a conditioned ocular enhancer, a gadget that throws numbered, colored tennis balls over 150 mph to help players pick up the speed of a pitched ball. So he got a contract clause requiring the Mets lease the machine and retain an operator for it. However, Beltran only hit .266 in his first year with the club, so maybe a used copy of Tony Gwynn?s tome The Art of Hitting would have been more cost-effective.

7. Brad Lidge, Houston Astros

When the Houston Astros (sound familiar?) re-signed Brad Lidge in January 2007, their former closer got an incentive clause promising $25,000 for winning a Silver Slugger, given annually to the top hitter at each position. Lidge probably didn?t consider this easy money; as a relief pitcher, he had only been to the plate seven times in his five-season career and hadn?t seen an at-bat since 2004. Despite an erratic season on the mound, Lidge was the model of consistency at the plate in 2007, mostly because he never had an at-bat. Houston finished 13th in the National League in runs scored, though, so maybe letting Lidge take some hacks would have been worth a try.

8. A.J. Burnett, Toronto Blue Jays

Lots of players have free-plane-ticket perks written into their contracts, but some feel that air travel really lacks that fun we?re-going-to-the-prom feeling that you can only get from a long limo ride. When flamethrower A.J. Burnett signed with Toronto as a free agent in December 2005, he required that his wife receive eight round-trip limo rides from his home in Maryland to Toronto each season. That?s around nine hours in a limo each way, which is enough time to move the little divider between you and the driver up and down roughly 3,500 times.

Some other interesting perks and bonuses:

9. Daisuke Matsuzaka, Boston Red Sox ? Dice-K?s deal with the Red Sox includes a plethora of strange or excessive clauses including housing allowances and a personal masseuse, but the oddest is that he?s contractually guaranteed the jersey number 18.

10. Kevin Brown, Los Angeles Dodgers ? The seven-year, $105 million deal Brown signed after the 1998 season guaranteed twelve round trip private jet trips from L.A. to his hometown in Macon, Georgia for his family, sparing his children from cruel flight attendants? taunts about their dad being overpaid.

11. Dave Roberts, San Francisco Giants ? The deal Roberts signed last December gives him the right to buy four premium season tickets each year. He?s probably going to keep passing until management puts a decent team on the field, though.

12. Ichiro Suzuki, Seattle Mariners ? Ichiro?s five-year contract extension from July 2007 contains some reasonable perks (interpreter, plane tickets to Japan), but also stipulates the club give him a Jeep or Mercedes SUV, filling the Japanese auto industry with a deep collective sense of shame.

13. Mark Teixeira, Atlanta Braves – Teixeira?s deal for 2006-2007 (originally negotiated when he was with Texas) had a clause paying him $100K for winning the AL MVP, a tough feat since he finished the contract while playing in the National League.

14. Curt Schilling, Boston Red Sox ? The three-time World Series champ?s new deal with the Red Sox for the 2008 season not only rewards Schilling for maintaining his weight, but also gives him $1M for appearing on any voter?s three-man Cy Young ballot. Take note, enterprising voters (?Sixty-forty split sound fair, Curt??)

Ethan Trex grew up idolizing Vince Coleman, and he kind of still does. Ethan co-writes Straight Cash, Homey, the Internet?s undisputed top source for pictures of people in Ryan Leaf jerseys.

Written by Zen Habits Photo by P?rcel???g?rl?

A life lived of choice is a life of conscious action. A life lived of chance is a life of unconscious creation.
– Neale Donald Walsch

As much as possible, I try to live my life by bringing to my consciousness what is bubbling up from my unconsciousness.

I try to clear the fog through which we often drift, to see where I’m going, to make conscious choices instead of automatic ones.

Do you ever have a feeling that you’re drifting through life, and not going where you want to go? Or that you don’t know how you got where you are today?

Living consciously is about taking control of your life, about thinking about your decisions rather than making them without thought, about having a life that we want rather than settling for the one that befalls us.

If you’re drifting through life, or feel out of control, or don’t know how you got here ? deciding to live consciously could be the single most important thing you do.

Are you living unconsciously now?

Ask yourself the following questions ? if you find yourself saying yes to many of them, you might want to consider trying conscious living:

1. Are you in a job that you fell into rather than the job you want?

2. Are you doing things that are given to you rather than what you love to do?

3. Are you spending your time doing busy work rather than what you want to do with your days?

4. Do you wish you could spend more time with loved ones?

5. Do you find yourself overweight because you’ve been eating the food you’ve been eating for years and stuck in a rut of not exercising?

6. Do you find yourself living from paycheck to paycheck or in debt, not knowing where your money goes?

7. Do you find yourself wasting your time doing things that aren’t important rather than focusing on completing the things that are very important?

8. Do you go through your days not thinking about what you want out of life and how to get it?

If you answered “no” to all of these questions, you’re probably already living consciously, and you don’t need this article at all. For those who would like to live more consciously, read on.

How to Live Life Consciously

It’s not something you can change overnight. Living consciously is a lifestyle, a skill, an art. It’s not something you do just once, but a habit that you can form for the rest of your life.

But it is deceptively simple: Be conscious, and think about, everything you do. Make conscious choices rather than doing things without thinkings. That’s all.

It sounds simple, but it’s amazing how few people actually do this, and it’s amazing how easy it is to live life on autopilot, and just do what we always do because that’s what we’re used to doing. And it’s easier that way, even if our lives are difficult.

It’s not easy to changes our lives, to break out of our routines, to begin to live the lives we want.

It takes willful effort, energy and constant vigilance to think about our choices ? all of them.

Here are some key tips that have worked for me:

1. Make reflecting on your life a regular routine. Whether you keep a journal, or make reflecting on your day part of your evening routine, or have a weekly session where you review your life or take some time away from the office to reflect on everything ? it’s important that you give things some thought. Regularly.

2. At least once a year, set or review your life’s goals. What do you want to do in life? What is important to you? What do you want your life to be like? And how will you get there? Write it down, and keep it somewhere you will see it often, and take action.

3. Also review your relationships. The people we love are among the most important things in our lives, if not the only important things. You need to think about your relationships. Do you spend enough time with them? Do you show your appreciation for them? Is there a way you can improve your relationship? Do you need to forgive or apologize about anything? Are there barriers that can be removed? Communication that can be improved? Also review your relationships with others, such as co-workers.

4. Consider your impact on the world. How does what you do, what you consume, and how you live, impact the environment? How does it impact poor people in Third World countries? How does it impact the poor, the powerless, the voiceless? How does it impact your community? Your life has an impact, whether you think about it or not. Being conscious of how your decisions affect others is important.

5. Consider the real costs of each purchase. We often buy things without really thinking about what we’re doing or what they really cost. Sure, it’s just $30 ? no problem, right? But that $30 might represent several hours of your life ? hours that you’ll never get back. Do you really want to spend your life earning money for trivial purchases? Is that what you want to do with your life? Worth some thought, I think. Read Your Money or Your Life for more.

6. Consider the real costs of the things in your life. Our lives are filled with stuff ? our houses, our offices ? and beyond just the cost of buying the stuff, this stuff takes a toll on us. The stuff in our life must be arranged, cleaned, moved, taken with us when we move ? it takes up the space in our life, it is visual stress. Later, we’ll have to get rid of it, sort through all of it, take time to throw it away or recycle it or donate it. If having the stuff is not worth all of that, then get rid of it.

7. Review how you spend your time. Until we do a time audit, and keep a log of our day, even if it’s just for one or two days, we don’t really know how we spend our time. And if we do audit our time, it can be very surprising. And if we know how we’re spending our time now, we can make conscious decisions to change how we spend our time in the future. For computer-based time tracking, try Rescue Time.

8. Explore yourself. Not in a dirty way. Take some time to think about what kind of person you are. What your values are. Whether you live your life according to those values. How you treat people. How you treat yourself. Think about this: what do you want people to say about you when you die? Read more: The Key to Dying Happy.

Do you live a life of consciousness? Do you have any tips for doing so? Share in the comments.

Written by Nelson Doyle

Written by Adario Strange

We spend a lot of time here exposing you to the gadgets and technologies out there already making your life easier and more interesting “today.” But the truth is, behind the scenes, our favorite pastime is actually sniffing around for those gadgets still in the idea phase. We’re constantly searching for these electronic monstrosities so far ahead of their time that only concept designers dare tackle giving such products a face and a name. After the jump, take a peek into our future fetish and 10 nonexistent – but awesome – tech toys that take our gadget lust to a more advanced level.

10. Dattoos: Interactive Tattoos
No one brings concept design to reality like Frog Design. Winners of numerous design awards over the years, Frog has become synonymous with powerful technology meeting artistic design. So when we found Frog’s Dattoo (interactive tattoo) concept, it was like finding futurist gold. Designed by Hartmut Esslinger, Dattoos would conceivably bring us to that final convergence of man and machine. The Dattoos would offer: DNA-reader and identification technology, nanosensors and interactive “touch reading,” full voice interaction, bionic nano chips and various cybernetic components. While Dattoos would definitely look cool, what Esslinger is imagining here is nothing short of the Borg. But hey, who said being a mindless drone working within a hive mind had to be drab?

9. Astrium Spaceplane
The race to full-on space tourism is in full swing, but we’re still in the early stages of the industry, so naturally style and comfort has taken a backseat to safety and practicality. The Astrium Spaceplane looks to up the ante and allow spacefaring travelers the opportunity to look into infinity whilst nestled in comfortable and familiar surroundings. Australian designer Marc Newson’s concept vehicle doesn’t propel passengers into a far-out science-fiction realm, but if the near term of space tourism really looks like this the spaceports will likely be jam-packed and delayed like your favorite local commercial airport in no time.

8. Custom Kicks
Sneaker culture has transcended the world of fashion and transformed into an art form unto itself. Brand loyalty and price-tag importance has fallen by the wayside as pure originality and exclusive design have become the mark of a true sneaker aficionado. But nowadays, finding one of those unseen designs has become even more difficult. Enter Custom Kicks, a concept designed by the Inventables studio. Custom Kicks would allow wearers to instantly change the design of their shoes on the fly with a mere push of a button. Using a tiny iPod-like device, sneaker fanatics would beam a new pre-designed pattern to their feet and immediately up the ante on the fashion wars. We want this yesterday.

7. Nikon 360
In Star Trek: Voyager and Deep Space Nine, characters used a holographic camera to snap instant three-dimensional replicas of certain moments in time. We’re not quite there yet, but in the meantime the idea behind the Nikon 360 concept camera seems like a reasonable facsimile. According to Ye Chen, designer of the device, the camera would take an all-round picture using a built-in inclinometer indicating the horizontal position prior to execution. Sure, panoramic photos are already in existence, but they take a little more work. With the Nikon 360, capturing surround-vision images would become literally a snap.

6. Honda Cub Motocycle
Sam Jibert’s Honda Cub Motocycle concept vehicle takes the macho out of the road hog and adds just enough clean design and geek friendliness to ensure a consumer hit. Looking like a cross between a 19th-century bicycle and a modern-day crotch rocket, the Honda Cub Motocycle is not only cute but enviro-friendly since it uses a hydrogen fuel cell. If Dean Kamen’s Segway had been this cool-looking, maybe Steve Jobs’ initial prediction that it would change the way cities were built would have come true.

5. Pills To Go
British designer Priestman Goode has envisioned a product so simple and practical, it’s astounding to think that this isn’t already available. Pills To Go combines two caplets of your favorite medicinal salve with a hearty gulp of water all in one package. So simple, so convenient, yet as of now, still a futuristic concept. When eventually brought to market by some company – and you can rest assured that it will definitely happen – Pills To Go is sure to be one of the biggest sellers of all time.

4. WPA Wearable Power Suit
Vlady Spetkovsky designed the WPA wearable power suit as a project for the Bezalel Academy of art and design in Israel. Although Spetkovsky doesn’t offer much detail regarding what the suit would actually do, after watching his animated 3D movie showing the suit in action it’s reasonable to assume that it would increase the strength and speed of the wearer via an accumulator-powered exoskeleton. That’s right friends, with suits like this, one day we’ll all get to live out our superhero fantasies.

3. B-Membrain Computer
The B-Membrain won’t transport you into another dimension or suddenly become self-aware and declare that all humans are obsolete, but it does offer something we can all relate to: sexy hardware. Winner of Intel Korea’s recent PC Design Contest (Challenger category), the B-Membrain does away with the computer monitor and instead beams images to any surface via a built-in projector. As for input, the keyboard is described by its designer Won-Suk Lee as a touchscreen interface. Sure, the B-Membrain looks weird and you’d probably have trouble figuring out where to put to the oddly shaped contraption, but never has a more sci-fi-ish computer been so within reach.

2. Credit Card of the Future
Paying bills will never be fun, but in the future there’s a chance that you’ll at least be able to pay the piper in style. To that end, designer Jacob Palmborg mocked up a universal payment device that simultaneously links to all of your banking and credit accounts. The unnamed device would keep a real-time accounting of just how much you’ve spent, and what your near-term financial forecast looks like based on recent purchase activity. And if that’s not Big Brother enough for you, the device would only be accessible via biometric (think thumbprint, eyescan, etc.) verification. With RFID tap-and-pay bankcards already being used throughout the U.S., it seems like this little gadget’s emergence is just a matter of time.

1. Timeflex Stick-On Watch
It’s been awhile since a cross-demographic product has swept the country, but something like the Timeflex stick-on watch might just do the trick. Imagined as a non-permanent, self-gumming timepiece, the Timeflex would make the perfect accessory for style-conscious millennials (read: teens), on-the-go professionals, and athletes (swimmers, rock climbers, runners, etc.). The outlines of the device are meant to be fluorescent, with the interior sporting a transparent surface so you can show off your fashion-forward sensibility, and a little skin in process.

Click the pic for large version

Written by Emru Townsend

PCs that started instantly and no Registry to worry about–what’s not to like

We zip along at gigahertz speed, not megahertz. We store gigabytes instead of kilobytes. Going strictly by the numbers, we’re living in a computing paradise compared with 20 or 30 years ago, when the personal-computer revolution was just beginning. But there are a few things from the old days that we still cherish.

1. More RAM Than You Can Handle

One early quote often attributed to Bill Gates is that 640KB–that’s right, kilobytes--should be enough for any computer user. (He vehemently denies saying it.) We joke about it today, but in 1981 that sentiment would have made sense.

The phenomenally popular Apple II and Commodore 64 computers had 48KB and 64KB of system memory, respectively, and the IBM PC’s basic configuration had a measly 16KB. Few people complained. For personal computing’s first decade, none but the seriously hard-core had to push their system beyond the seemingly limitless 640KB. These days, even 2GB isn’t enough to prevent Windows from dipping into the virtual-memory well.

2. Easy, Registry-Free Tweaks

Hey, want to tweak your WordPerfect settings? Fire up your favorite text editor and edit the WP.INI file to your heart’s content.

Prior to Windows 95’s introduction of the Registry, editing .INI files was the way to customize your experience on a PC. Sure, some of the parameters seemed arcane, but dealing with them was better than deciphering the enigmatic HKEY_local_machine parameters infesting Windows machines over the last 12 years.

The .INI files were also easy to back up, restore, or swap, and messing one up wouldn’t take down your entire system. And honestly, did you ever hear of an .INI cleaner? I rest my case.

3. Software That Goes With You

Back when hard drives were expensive (and therefore rare on most PCs), the medium of choice was the floppy disk–which, depending on your operating system, could hold as little as 180KB. Without hard drives, software had to fit on floppies, meaning that applications were reasonably compact and self-contained. You could easily run your programs with your own settings on any compatible computer if you were willing to tote a few disks around. Recent innovations such as the U3 spec for USB drives are just starting to bring that capability back to modern PCs.

4. Lightning-Fast Startups

Microsoft has worked hard to keep startup times down for Windows, but let’s face it: With all of the drivers, antimalware utilities, and other doodads that load into memory (do you really need that casserole-recipe widget on your desktop?), you can probably make a cup of coffee before you can do anything on your PC.

In the old days, either the operating system was built into ROM (so the computer was ready as soon as you flipped the switch) or you loaded it from a disk (which took just a few seconds).

5. A Virus? What’s That?

It’s not that malware didn’t exist–computer viruses actually predate personal computers–but virus protection wasn’t as big a concern as it is now. Running virus scans certainly took less time; since most personal computers lacked hard drives, you could guarantee that a clean floppy would stay uninfected simply by write-protecting it. In a certain sense, an inch of adhesive tape, back then, provided better protection than a battery of antimalware utilities does today.

Collected by photo-and-image.blogspot.com

Good friendships between animals

Written by Postscripts

HUMOR

Yo momma so fat her bellybutton gets home 15 minutes before she does.

That’s a prime example of a ‘Yo Momma’ joke, a genre so popular it became the basis for a series of no-holds-barred competitions on MTV. Produced and hosted by actor Wilmer Valderrama, matches were held on successive seasons in Los Angeles, New York and Atlanta.

From Monday to Thursday, the show pitted the toughest trash talkers against one another. Each team of contestants battled it out in front of a rowdy live audience of their peers. The four winners then came back on Friday for a Best of the Week. Here are 98 more prime examples of Yo Momma humor:

Yo momma so fat,

1. she had to go to Sea World to get baptized.
2. when she tripped over on Fourth Avenue, she landed on Twelfth.
3. she’s got her own area code.
4. when she talks to herself, it’s a long distance call.
5. she’s got smaller fat women orbiting around her.
6. whenever she goes to the beach, the tide comes in.
7. she was born on the fourth, fifth, and sixth of March.
8. she was floating in the ocean, and Spain claimed her for the New World.
9. she wears aluminum siding.
10. she could fall down and wouldn’t even know it.

***

11. she got hit by a VW and had to go to the hospital to have it removed.
12. the sign inside one restaurant says, “Maximum occupancy, 512, or Yo momma.”
13. she puts mayonnaise on aspirin.
14. the back of her neck looks like a pack of hot dogs.
15. her cereal bowl came with a lifeguard.
16. she has to iron her pants on the driveway.
17. when she goes to a restaurant, she doesn’t get a menu, she gets an estimate.
18. when she ran away, they had to use all four sides of the milk carton.
19. she was zoned for commercial development.
20. when she sings, it’s over for everybody.

***

21. she looks like she’s smuggling a Volkswagen.
22. when she was walking down the street and I swerved to miss her, I ran out of gas.
23. when she dances, she makes the band skip.
24. when she got her shoes shined, she had to take the guy’s word for it.
25. she gets group insurance.
26. she’s on both sides of the family.
27. she can’t reach her back pocket.
28. she was born with a silver shovel in her mouth.
29. when she fell over, she rocked herself to sleep trying to get up again.
30. when she hauls ass, she has to make two trips.

***

31. when she was diagnosed with a flesh-eating disease, the doctor gave her ten years to live.
32. we’re in her right now.
33. when she sits around the house, she really sits around the house.
34. her bellybutton’s got an echo.
35. when she turns around people throw her a welcome back party.
36. her belly button doesn’t have lint, it has sweaters.
37. the last time she saw 90210 was on a scale.
38. a picture of her would fall off the wall.
39. when she gets on the scale, it says “To be continued.”
40. she sat on a dollar, and when she got up there were four quarters.

***

41. she fell in love and broke it.
42. when she takes a shower, her feet don’t get wet.
43. you have to grease the door frame and hold a Twinkie on the other side just to get her through.
44. when she goes to an all-you-can-eat buffet, they have to install speed bumps.
45. when she wears a yellow raincoat people holler, “Taxi.”
46. when she gets in an elevator, it has to go down.
47. she could sell shade.
48. people jog around her for exercise.
49. she gets runs in her jeans.
50. when she wears a Malcolm X T-shirt, helicopters try to land on her back.

***

51. she eats Wheat Thicks.
52. light bends around her.
53. when she was born, she gave the hospital stretch marks.
54. her graduation picture was an aerial photograph.
55. her job title is spoon and fork operator.
56. she left the house in high heels, and when she came back she had on flip-flops.
57. you have to take a train and two buses just to get on her good side.
58. she has to wake up in sections.
59. she sat on a quarter and a booger popped out of George Washington’s nose.
60. she walked into the Gap and filled it.

***

61. she has to put her belt on with a boomerang.
62. she comes at you from all directions.
63. when she was growing up she didn’t play with dolls, she played with midgets.
64. she uses two buses for roller-blades.
65. when she goes to a buffet, she gets the group rate.
66. she doesn’t eat with a fork, she eats with a forklift.
67. Weight Watchers won’t look at her.
68. the last time the landlord saw her, he doubled the rent.
69. she put on some BVDs and by the time she got them on, they spelled “boulevard.”
70. I ran around her twice and got lost.

***

71. the shadow of her butt weighs 100 pounds.
72. the National Weather Service names each one of her farts.
73. when she’s standing on the corner police drive by and yell, “Hey, break it up.”
74. she’s been declared a natural habitat for condors.
75. she sets off car alarms when she runs.
76. when she goes to the zoo the elephants throw her peanuts.
77. her blood type is Ragu.
78. they had to let out the shower curtain.
79. when she runs the fifty-yard dash she needs an overnight bag.
80. she can’t even fit in the chat room.

***

81. she gets her toenails painted at Lucky’s Auto Body.
82. she doesn’t have a tailor, she has a contractor.
83. she measures 36-24-36, and the other arm is just as big.
84. she was in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade…wearing ropes.
85. she went on a light diet. As soon as it’s light she starts eating.
86. she’s half Italian, half Irish, and half American.
87. when her beeper goes off, people think she’s backing up.
88. when she goes to the movies, she sits next to everyone.
89. when she goes in a restaurant she looks at the menu and says, “Okay.”
90. she puts her lipstick on with a paint roller.

***

91. she has to pull down her pants to get in her pocket.
92. her waist size is the Equator.
93. she’s got her own zip code.
94. she has to buy two plane tickets.
95. she stands in two time zones.
96. she fell and created the Grand Canyon.
97. she can’t even jump to a conclusion.
98. she fell out of both sides of her bed.

Written by Nelson Doyle

Written by deputydog

there’s a relatively easy way to give the audience a chill during a film: slip in a shot of a deserted city centre, a city centre that’s notoriously busy in real-life, the scene preferably culminating in the camera panning out to prove the crew didn’t just manage to clear 10ft of road for 5 seconds.

it’s a guaranteed talking point. look at vanilla sky: the film was bordering on atrocious but the one thing that always gets mentioned (apart from cameron crowe losing his grip) is the ‘how the fuck did they manage to clear times square?’ bit. if i was a director i’d have a deserted city scene in every film, regardless of the movie’s plot.

here are my 5 favourite goosebump inducing ’empty’ scenes.

5. philadelphia – twelve monkeys, 1995 (imdb)

the opening shot of terry gilliam’s top-notch ‘twelve monkeys’ is superb, bruce willis’ character coming above ground in a post-apocalyptic philadelphia to be faced with a world deserted but for wild animals roaming the streets. gilliam’s crew were given a corner of the city hall to work with, built a lip around the area to hide surrounding traffic and added snow to make it feel ‘more desolate’.

4. los angeles – omega man, 1971 (imdb)

‘omega man’ was the 2nd film based on the novel ‘i am legend’, the 1st being ‘last man on earth’ and the 3rd being ‘i am legend’, to be released in a few weeks. after coming to terms with the fact that a huge set would be too costly the producer realised prior to filming that l.a. was surprisingly quiet early in the day at weekends so all of the deserted city scenes were shot at that time of the week. the scene below even includes a pan-out for added despair and the echoes of ringing payphones.

3. madrid – abre los ojos, 1997 (imdb)

the gran via in madrid was completely closed off to film the scene below, the inspiration for vanilla sky’s big budget version in times square. it may not have the flashing billboards and an a-list star to run down the street like a maniac but the street’s architecture more than makes up for it. this clip is actually the first 10 minutes of the film, the initial 3-4 minutes being the ‘deserted’ section.

2. manhattan – vanilla sky, 2001 (imdb)

this remake of ‘open your eyes’ was largely disappointing, this scene being the best part of it. the crew were given 3 hours to shoot the times square sequence early on a sunday morning and crowe was determined not to use cg to remove any signs of life. the whole process included lenghty discussions with the new york mayor’s office, the new york film commission and the police department. the result is incredible.

1. london – 28 days later, 2002 (imdb)

it took 6 days to shoot the ‘deserted’ sections of this brilliant film on mini-dv cameras, the crew only able to get permission to close off entire streets in london for minutes at a time, and the effort was worth it. for the empty motorway scenes, they even managed to persuade the traffic police to close off a 10 mile stretch of the m1 for a very short period of time. warning: the clip below has been subjected to a shit soundtrack by the youtube user. turn the volume down.

sources: 1, 2, 3