From Japan Trend Shop for a mere $80:

To get and maintain the perfect visage, you don't need the cosmetic surgeon's knife. All you need is a mouthpiece. Yes, the Face Slimmer is a simple solution to the timeless problem of how to give sagging facial skin and muscles that much-needed daily lift. Just three minutes per day is all you need; pop in the mold and then make mouth movements. The makers recommend you say vowel sounds out loud over and over again, producing regular and methodical exercises that will strength the twelve facial expression muscles in a comprehensive way.

Fight wrinkles around your eyes and help shape the overall look of your face, whether in front of the mirror, in the bath or at any other convenient time every day. The movements are given extra load by the mold, forcing everything to work a bit harder and resulting in more youthful, vibrant faces.

I believe with every fiber of my being that this is not for "mouth exercises" but for men who suddenly have sexual partners but who have been jerking off into onaholes and Fleshlights for so long they can no longer reach orgasm with a living, breathing human. Tell me I'm wrong. SERIOUSLY, PLEASE TELL ME I'M WRONG

​From The Hollywood Reporter:

The vampire Lestat could be heading back to the big-screen.

Brian Grazer and Ron Howard's Imagine Entertainment has optioned the rights to Anne Rice's The Tale of the Body Thief, the fourth book in Rice's best-selling series The Vampire Chronicles.

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Producing with Imagine are Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, the writer-producers behind TV's Fringe and the Star Trek and Transformers movies.

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The hook of the Body Thief is that the story concerns body-switching. Lestat, depressed and lonely after centuries as a vampire, decides to transfer souls for a day with a psychic, who after the transfer reveals that he has no intention of switching back. Lestat, now in a human body and with the help of some friends, must track down the man and get his body back.

Well, thank god. I was just saying the other day how desperately we needed more effete, unintimidating vampires in the movies; thank god Ron Howard heard me. And the worst part is that if ever a series could be excused for a reboot, Anne Rice's Melodramatic Ambisexual Vampires Inc. would be that one. Not only has it been 20 years since Interview with the Vampire, no one saw Queen of the Damned. Plus, they've never made The Vampire Lestat into a movie, which would be the perfect way to reboot the franchise. Also, and this is important, but Tale of the Body Thief is horrible. Just awful, people. Seriously, Ron, just do Lestat. It's what people what, it's the smart financial choice, and it's even the right creative choice.

Ugh. Even though I truly believe this, exhorting a Vampire Chronicles reboot is leaving a bad taste in my mouth. Please excuse me while I go rinse with rubbing alcohol and a match.

Yeah, you can laugh at this old Indiana Jones/Nutella commercial if you want. As it turns out, if you open a jar of Nutella in a room full of Nazis, the Nazis' faces will melt off. From one who knows. (Via Geeks of Doom)

​Rather than do my normal intro, I'd like to talk about Alan Moore for a sec -- specifically, Moore's response when someone asked him how he could be upset about Before Watchmen when he's been using other people's characters in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen for years.

In literature, I would say that it's different. I would say, and it might be splitting hairs, but I'm not adapting these characters. I'm not doing an adaptation of Dracula or King Solomon's Mines. What I am doing is stealing them. There is a difference between doing an adaptation, which is evil, and actually stealing the characters, which, as long as everybody's dead or you don't mention the names, is perfectly alright by me. I'm not trying to be glib here, I genuinely do feel that in literature you've got a tradition that goes back to Jason And The Argonauts of combining literary characters [...] It's just irresistible to do these fictional mash-ups. They've been going on for hundreds of years and I feel I'm a part of a proud literary tradition in doing that. With taking comic characters that have been created by cheated old men, I feel that that is different [...] And that's my take on the subject.

This is, of course, profoundly stupid, but it made me realize I'm also okay with Moore's League, but disapproving of Before Watchmen. Why is that? I'm honestly not 100% sure, but I do know that I don't mind when someone makes new adaptations of Dracula or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or Batman, because while they're wonderful and entertaining, I don't consider them works of art like, say Stendahl or Thoman Mann or, yes, Watchmen. The Red and the Black and The Magic Mountain are complete works unto themselves, and I'd think it just as inappropriate if some guy tried to write a Magic Mountain prequel as I do Before Watchmen. It's something about the works themselves that allow or prohibit expanding upon them -- I hate to call it a "literary quality," since we're talking about book and comic books here, but maybe that's it. It's certainly not a matter of "stealing" versus "adapting," though. Hell, to me it feels like Moore is adapting those classic characters in League, and DC is stealing Watchmen.

But whatever. On with the contest.
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Battleship wasn't the only Bayformers-related video shown during the Super Bowl; Universal Studios Hollywood aired this commercial for its Transformers: The Ride 3-D... uh... ride, which intimates the only way you can defeat Megatron and the Decepticons is by paying $77 and sitting in a small theater with moving seats for a while (in other news: It costs $77 to get into Universal Studios Hollywood? Not counting parking? Holy shit, that's obscene). Ignoring the question of why Megatron is still alive at all (he was dead at the end of two of the three TF movies, after all), and why Optimus decided to make his call while Megatron was less than 10 feet away from him, I just want to say how lucky everyone at Universal is that I missed this commercial. If I'd seen Bayformers Optimus Prime appear to interrupt a NY Giants Super Bowl, I would have immediately had a brain embolism, run out of my apartment, and gone on a Universal Studios Hollywood executive killing spree before even considering it might have been a gimmick-y commercial.

You might not know his name, but you probably know his face. Bill Hinzman was the first zombie who lumbered across the screen in George Romero's original Night of the Living Dead, and thus, was also the first modern movie zombie in cinematic history. He passed away yesterday at the age of 75, and I can only hope he'll soon shamble out of his grave to snack on a few brains. I feel like that's what Bill would've wanted. (Via Bloody-Disgusting)

I speak, of course, of the MetLife ad which featured a shit-ton of cartoon characters including He-Man, Voltron, Peanuts and more, getting together to... talk about how much they love life insurance, I guess? I don't know. I didn't care for it. I find life insurance kind of a grim enterprise anyways, and I've never liked the Peanuts shilling for MetLife, so including more cartoons makes me feel like they're trying to sell life insurance to children, which just seems wrong. I mean, they don't let cartoon characters advertise beer and cigarettes anymore, so I don't know why it's okay here. At least beer and cigarettes make people feel good.

​Several months ago, I wrote a list of the 11 Greatest and Nerdiest Fictional Bands, a salute to the best fictitious musicians nerd-dom has to offer, those marvelous bands created as parts of -- or occasionally starring in -- movies, TV shows, videogames, and similar fare. Based on sheer volume of comments it was possibly the most popular list I've ever written... and unfortunately the most incomplete list I'd ever written, as well.

Suggestions for a follow-up were numerous, varied and frankly a bit embarrassing, as many were bands I should have thought of myself. To correct this grievous wrong, here are nine bands that certainly should have made the original list. For the record, that original list included Dingoes Ate My Baby, Jeffster, Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld, Shallow Gravy, Billy and the Boingers, Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, the Weird Sisters, Spinal Tap, Wyld Stallyns, Dethklok and Sy Snootles and the Max Rebo Band, so these bands are not missing from this new list. They're in the old one. Surely there's some other awesome nerdy band besides these 20 that you can be appalled that I missed in the comments. More >>

​Oh, c'mon, you knew this was coming. With DC's announcement they would soullessly cash in on one of the most popular and notably complete comic stories of all time release seven miniseries set before Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' classic Watchmen, I think most of us are a bit... concerned that they might not live up to the original. Certainly, they've got some greatest artists and writers on the books, but really, it's like good bands doing a Beatles cover -- they might be good, but the chances of them being as good as the originals is really fucking slim.

Of course, the more exciting possibility is that they'll be fucking terrible, which would allow the entire nerdernet to point at DC imperiously and say "I TOLD YOU SO," possibly while Alan Moore's serpent god bites them in the genitals. So for this week's contest, let's give DC a hand by showing what to avoid, namely by creating the worst possible scenes we can imagine happening in Before Watchmen.

Now, please recall there's one title for each of the six main Watchmen characters (Rorschach, Dr. Manhattan, Silk Spectre, The Comedian, Nite Owl and Ozymandias) plus one for the Minutemen, the pre-Watchmen team. So try to stick to those, although that should give you plenty of leeway.

Three entries -- i.e., "scenes" -- per person. The contest will at 11:25pm EST on Sunday, February 5th, 35 minutes before midnight, because I think I'm so fucking clever, and because I want to see how many people totally miss this. Have a great weekend, folks. I'm told the weather looks like giant naked ladies, so you might want to carry around your umbrella.

My apologies for running another Herry Potter fan fic so soon after the unhappy feet saga that was "Harry Potter and the Room of Romance," but when I read this story sent to me by Mr. No Name (possibly not his real name) I knew I couldn't wait. It's a story by GiantessLover -- think there's a tiny bit of foreshadowing there?

Hermione had always wondered what it would be like to be a Giantess.

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She wondered if there were any potions that could help her become one so she decided to ask Harry for help.

Hey Harry, she said.
Hi, he said back.
I was wondering if you knew any potions that would make me into a Giantess, she said to him.

OH, IT'S MAGIC TIME. GiantessLover is no mere storyteller, he's a storyweaver. Continue your journey into this epic world of imagination after the jump!
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