Awesome Leisure

Yippee-I-aye, Yippee-I-o… the Melodicka Bros. took the oft-covered western staple Ghost Riders in the Sky and transformed it into a synth-heavy cyberpunk jam. The track is accompanied by an appropriately neon-lit, smoke-filled music video that imagines a cybercowboy riding his steel horse to round up some cybercows.

The hardcover book is filled with 100 Star Wars illustrations for you to embellish with crayons, colored pencils, or markers. The images include fanciful scenes inspired by classic movie moments, along with mandalas and other repeating Star Wars patterns to color in.

Here’s a fun family project if you live somewhere the temperature stays below freezing for days on end. The ABC Allred Family shows us how easy it is to build your own backyard igloo from blocks of ice and a dash of food coloring for extra flair. You can make the ice bricks in aluminum foil trays and then cement them together with a mixture of snow and cold water.

Leo Moracchioli turned Britney Spears’ 2000 hit Oops!… I Did It Again into a shockingly good heavy metal track. Leo is at the top of his guitar game while wearing a blue bodysuit which seems like it would be a good canvas for applying visual effects. And for more unexpected Britney covers, check out Toxic on toothbrushes.

The upcoming life simulator game inZOI takes the idea of The Sims and updates it to take advantage of modern hardware. The 4K gameplay trailer shows incredible detail in its virtual worlds and sees its avatars going grocery shopping, cooking fried chicken, watering plants, and going to the gym. Its character- and world-builder tools look incredibly deep.

We’ve come across some weird musical instruments over the years, so why not add another to the collection? Artist Philipp Läng’s spring-loaded Flötenkreis makes its music by pushing air through a dozen plastic recorders, each set to play a single note. The sounds it produces are more annoying than melodic.

Insight Editions offers a glimpse inside the mind of filmmaker and adventurer James Cameron. The 392-page coffee table book is packed with exclusive images from Cameron’s personal archives, revealing concepts that led to classics like The Terminator, Aliens, Titanic, Avatar, and other films that were never produced.

Two of Mexico’s very best — Patrón Tequila and Oracle Red Bull Racing F1 Driver Checo Pérez — teamed up for the 2023 edition of Patron’s Mexican Heritage Tin. Debuting at the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix, the 8th annual edition of the tin features symbols inspired by Checo’s life on and off the racetrack.

Avengers assemble! You’ve got 5,201 LEGO bricks to put together! This impressive Avengers Tower is the biggest Marvel x LEGO collab yet. The 3-foot-tall tower includes lots of play areas for acting out classic MCU scenes, along with 31 minifigures of MCU heroes, villains, and even Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige. Drops 11.24.2023 at 12 am EST.

If you spend any time on TikTok or Instagram, you’ve probably seen the Pimp Named Slickback dance craze. Originated by Jubi2fye, the crazy gliding foot move has blown up with dancers around the world. Now, variants of the fancy footwork have started to emerge, and this brain-bending version posted by he02445300 is on a whole other level.

The Impulse backpack duffel provides an impressive 45L capacity and has a padded compartment for up to a 17″ laptop. Its main section has compression straps and mesh compartments for efficient packing, while its water-resistant exterior includes a water bottle pouch and a slot for stowing its backpack straps.

The 1990s TV show Dinosaurs was a breath of fresh air from other sitcoms, imagining a prehistoric world where dinos lived in a modern civilization. Secret Galaxy looks back at the show, its origins, the depth of its messages, and how it ended with one of the darkest finalés of all time… mass extinction.

Come along for a ride on a cogwheel train that takes passengers to the top of Switzerland’s Mount Pilatus. The first-person footage from Switzerland is Life will make you feel like you’re riding along with the conductor as you ascend to the alpine summit. Watch it in 4K full-screen with headphones for maximum effect.

Obey your master and crank your speakers up to 11 for Gamazda’s latest performance, an absolutely killer grand piano arrangement of Metallica’s Master of Puppets. We never thought we’d bang our heads to a piano concerto, but we’re making an exception here.

If you have a bunch of remote-controlled airplanes, wouldn’t it be fun to have an aircraft carrier to launch them from and land them on? James from Project Air spent months designing and building his 6-foot-wide, 12-foot-long carrier from polystyrene foam sheets and fiberglass. He also had to learn how to skillfully land planes on such a tiny runway.

Jeff Sanders, the builder behind the Brick Bending YouTube channel, is an expert at creating unconventional LEGO structures. This video shows off some large and elaborate wheels he built by layering hundreds of trapezoidal slices together. They look like they should be strong, but they’re quite fragile due to their weight and incomplete connections.

Using LEGO Technic components, it’s possible to build a toy weapon that fires ammunition using air pressure. After building some simpler LEGO pneumatic guns, Jamie’s Lego Jams created this impressive bit of kit that uses motors to pressurize air tanks. It fires plastic axles, knitting needles, and other skinny projectiles with a strong burst of air.

Digital artist Erik Wernquist welcomes us to a planetary orbiter that rotates at 1 RPM to generate artificial gravity for its occupants. The luxurious environment inside looks like it could be a home away from home for über-rich visitors. However, devoid of people and bathed only in natural light, it takes on a haunting quality.

Most backyards are covered with grass or maybe have a patio or a swimming pool. Adolf Silva has a mountain bike park in his yard. MTB rider Sam Pilgrim and his pals Max Fredriksson and Nicholi Rogatkin stopped by Silva’s compound to do some jumps and tricks through this amazing and challenging backyard dirt course.

Budding artists are often encouraged to draw trees for quick sketching success. Drawing Trees branches out from that lesson with 30 meditative guided drawings of trees, leaves, and other identifiers. Trace the images with a pen or pencil to grow your skills and knowledge of tree species from Black Walnut to White Ash.

Another suburban family morning… grandmother screaming at the wall. Musician Kent Nishimura performs a wonderful acoustic guitar cover of the 1983 Police track Syncronicity II. Even without the lyrical genius of the original track, Nishimura’s interpretation is powerful and emotive.

The latest brain teaser from Puzzle Master asks you to unscrew its seven machined metal bolts, then reassemble them so they fit back into its hexagonal tray. It looks deceptively simple, but it’s rated a Level 8 on a scale from 5 to 10. Created by famed puzzle designer Oskar van Deventer. Be sure to check out Puzzle Master’s other metal puzzles.

Expert LEGO builder Brick Technology put together a series of unusual mechanisms designed with one purpose – to sink LEGO ships. After starting with a machine that fires bricks at rowboats, he stepped up his efforts with machines that create waterspouts, waves, and floods and tested them on progressively larger boats.