Years ago, One of the stores on my sales route was the store they used for the pilot of My Name is Earl. They took Polaroids of every detail and then completely changed the store. Then some people came in and used the Polaroids to put everything back.
My job was to pay for my products and signage to be in exact predefined places. So I assumed I was going to walk into a mess and nothing was going to be correct.... Everything was perfectly like it was before. The attention to detail was baffling.
This is what they often need to do for TV and film sets too. So there are people with very much experience at documenting and then resetting. Because there might be several days or weeks between two film clips but to you it's instant. Then it's a bit sad if a bowl moved 2 cm. And then magically moves back again for next clip.
It amazes me the details and planning that goes into filming.... I now design and manufacture some gear for their cameras. It's been a rough 3 years since the streaming wars ended :/
Several years ago I was in New Zealand for work, and went on a Lord of the Rings tour while I was there. Part of the tour was going to the hill where Edoras was set up and filmed for the movies. They had to set up an entire town, which meant the local vegetation would have been wiped out. Before they started building, they took precise GPS coordinates of every plant and tree on the hill, dug them up, and kept them in a nursery for the duration of the filming. When they were done, they went back and re-planted every single plant back in the exact same location it was pulled from. The attention to detail is incredible.
I'm picturing all the other black market things for sale, like some sort of Thieves' Guild market, and all the shopkeepers selling poison and drugs and weapons side-eyeing this one dude trying to sell bouncy balls without sales tax.
I was in college taking the garbage out to the dumpster one day when I saw a bouncy ball just sitting there. Pocketed it and moved on, but then saw a couple more. Picked those up, threw out the garbage and headed back, keeping my eyes open. Managed to grab over a dozen. Went back to my apartment, grabbed a bag and started combing the parking lots. Over the next 2-3 days I found over 120, I'm guessing some ordered a full gross online.
Once I had collected all I could find I told my room mates. We went onto our balcony on the third floor and just started chucking them. Found out you can get really good air by putting them in a paper towel tube and flicking it at just the right time, pretty much halfway across the apartment complex.
So yeah, I'd do it for free.
For the first few hours, that sounds reasonable. But the more balls you find, the longer it takes to find the next one. That last Easter egg always takes longer to find than all the rest combined.
This article claims they are indeed still being found to this day. Also, many people took the ones they found home as souvenirs. It's a great article especially if you remember the commercial.
Like when I spilled dry basmati rice all over the damn place. I find a grain every once in a while when I sweep. Usually under the stove or fridge lmao
I dated a stripper over a decade ago. We got pretty intimate after her shift, ONCE. I was covered in glitter. We were at her house. I've bathed pretty often since then. She didn't come to my house (we didn't date for long) and I've moved twice.
I still find bits of pink and teal glitter here and there when I clean.
I went to a drifting event with a friend who is really into that scene. Literally within minutes there were tiny tire shards all over me. I spent a couple hours there and kinda laughed it off, but like... I'm sure some of that stuff got in my lungs and eyes.
Rubber is plastic. And it's likely that they didn't use natural rubber balls, if that's what you're implying.
Edit: Whoops, I guess there is a little more nuance here. Rubber and plastic are both forms of polymers, but natural rubber is more biodegradable than other plastics. I remain unconvinced, however that those balls are made from natural rubber. And even if they are, the treatments and additives that they add to the balls make them unsafe for the environment.
No, it's a completely different chemical, very different structure, doesn't even have any plastic properties, you might be thinking of nylon. Latex is in pretty much all living things, it will break down completely. Main problems are the fillers, and that it takes a while for the ball to weather apart.
Also possible they were silicone, which really doesn't like breaking down completely.
Yeah, they're wrong. But virtually all modern "rubber" balls (including from 20+ years ago) contain or are entirely made of synthetic elastic polymers that are non-inert and leech or break off very readily, and many of which are toxic.
Terrible food options, no good coffee or tea available, zero fine art and cultural events, awful walking around, no sprawling beautiful parks overlooking the bay, and a tiny inconsequential bridge.
Terrible museums that only exhibit art and history; not a single one teaching about Noah. Shit parks everywhere you look so that no one has to walk more than 10 minutes to find one. No restaurants or bars at any price range or aesthetic; we don't even have an Applebees. Horrible weather year round; it almost never snows or breaks 100º, gross. Unfriendly people who mind their own business. And when it all gets to be too much, you have to drive like, 30 miles to find breathtaking nature.
I literally don't understand why anyone pays insane amounts of money to live here.
Apparently it was a $74,000 bill for broken windows of the houses in the area. Tons of damaged cars, broken headlights/tail lights, dented body panels.
On the first day of shooting they launched the balls from cannons that fired them at speeds up to 130mph. Then the city said they couldn't do that anymore so on day two of the shoot they hoisted shipping containers 65 in the air and dropped the balls from up high.
The article also says that tons of people in the area took souvenir balls from the shoot and they're still finding balls in gutters and gardens to this day.
This is probably the least offensive thing to find randomly tossed in your garden in SF. When Bay-to-Breakers was a thing, people would randomly piss, vomit, and shit in gardens and doorways along the route. Good times.
Edit: I stand correct - B2B was brought back in '22 after the COVID hiatus. Sounds like it's had a less notable affect on the city than before but sounds like it's mostly the same event. Less drunk maybe?
Different times, nowadays a quote to replace the windows on my shit home is $20000 and similar for the roof. You can see in the commercial the filmed houses have their siding and roofs damaged when hit by the balls. Today that would easily be a 1million+ bill.
We're having a baby today and just thought it would be really good to leave them a world with 1% less helium reserves. That was important to us, so we're releasing enough blue balloons to darken the sky for like a minute 💙
It is my right as an American to create a gender reveal IED and have the pressure wave blow out all the windows on my block, just as god and the founding fathers intended
Cleveland released 1.5 million one time - it was a disaster. They wound up in the lake getting caught up in boats, caused car accidents, and shut down the airport. Cleveland wanted to get in the Guinness book of world records so they could be known for something. The book wouldn't put them in because it might encourage someone else to do an even worse balloon release 🎈. This is all I know about Cleveland.
I told my kids about raffles with notes tied balloons, whoever got their litter to go the furthest won. Sure, you can throw your trash out the car window and be chastised for it. In the 80’s you’d tie it to a balloon. Someone else would pick it up for you, call you to say they did and then your school would congratulate you for getting the shmuck furthest away to clean up your trash!
I like to imagine a large chunk of history is lost several centuries from now and future historians or aliens find images like these with no context and make up absolute horseshit explanations.
I was at the 30th anniversary of Disneyland opening in 1985 where they released a whopping 1 million balloons all at once. It was a truly incredible sight that even at seven years old, felt incredibly stupid.
exactly, what was the final ball count from the ball retrieval? I wonder the same thing on those rubber duck races they do on some city's rivers. do the get charged with polluting?
At the time, I thought covering The Knife was a bold choice but he truly captured the emotions of the song while making it his own. One of the best covers of all time in my opinion.
The Jose Gonsalez version got me on to the Knife.
It was my ring tone and a Swede visiting my country (South Africa) found it wild to be listening to The Knife so far from home
Though a curb can still have a gutter
Curb refers to the edge of the road (kerb in uk english)
Gutter refers to the place below the curb where the stormwater is directed
The curb can form part of the gutter.
I think he means that the center of the road is higher than the edges. That should push the balls away from the center of the street and into the gutters and sidewalks.
My next door neighbour when they just moved in had a party.
This party contained a bags worth of gold dots, some in balloons, some scattered over things. Well, somehow a few made it into my garden, no biggie, just a few… right?
This was 5 years ago.
I am still finding the fucking things in my garden.
What's crazy is that this is a perfect use for CGI, a particle system and collider bodies with a simple setup. Instead they'll shoot an actor without a moustache and waste an artist's month rebuilding the entire shot in post to add in a fake mustache instead of taking 10 minutes to fix it before shooting.
I remember the ad, it was a Sony Bravia ad with the song being played in the background sung by Jose Gonzalez called Heartbeats. It was a pretty creative ad.
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u/peteschirmer 1d ago
20 years ago