Archive for the ‘Offbeat’ Category

Stay Safe With Bagram Batman

Now that Dark Knight trilogy is complete, Batman has a new gig promoting safety and situational awareness in Afghanistan at Bagram Airfield. +Continue Reading

YouTube’s Top Prank Videos

Miami Zombie Attack Prank

Here’s the facts: the editorial staff here at Under the Radar and at Military.com’s widely lauded Off Duty pages is really irritated with Google over the Google Reader shutdown, since it’s been the #1 tool we used to scour the Internet for the stories we cover.

So we’ve ignored all the April Fools pranks from the Google jokesters, including the YouTube shutdown and Google Nose search engine. And then this Miami Zombie Attack prank video showed up. It’s the most popular clip from YouTube’s #7 Most Popular Prankster channel and it’s good enough to post.

Click through for the most popular videos from the other nine channels in the Top Ten Prankster Channels. They’re all pretty funny, but they don’t begin to make up for the whole Reader thing. +Continue Reading

Jim Carrey Picks a Fight With the NRA

The fact that Jim Carrey’s career is deader than a doornail (raise your hand if you saw last week’s bomb The Incredible Burt Wonderstone) is not going to stop folks from getting exercised about this incredibly unfunny “parody” video that’s really just troll bait for the conservative blogs.

Carrey’s Charlton Heston impersonation is terrible and how can you parody Hee Haw if you’ve obviously never actually watched the show. Complain here below or at the usually entertaining Funny or Die! website.

Maxim for the Troops

According to the New York Times, Maxim Magazine “has become for today’s Army what Esquire was to soldiers fighting in World War II and Playboy was during the Vietnam War.” Apparently, the magazine’s not-quite-naked girls give it a leg up over Playboy and Penthouse for troops stationed in the Middle East.

We know  Maxim best as the other place where My Wingman Diana editor Diana Falzone appears online, but the magazine’s editor Dan Bova has seized an opportunity to cater to a military audience with their Maximum Warrior contest and its annual Salute to the Military issue. Check out Maxim here or read the article here.

Combat in the Vegetable Garden

British filmmaker Chris Butcher revisits a childhood toy soldier games in Plotoon, a short film that refights WWII in the back garden.  +Continue Reading

Gina Elise’s Pin-Ups for Vets

We get a lot of press releases from showbiz folks who want us to let you all know about whatever project they’re launching to raise money “for the troops.” The celebrity commitment usually involves some kind of drive-by photo op at a base or a VA hospital and a press release written in the kind of PR-speak that no real human uses in normal conversation. Or it’s some band you’ve never heard of that wants us to offer a free download of their terrible song with military-themed lyrics when it’s hard to fathom how a free download is going to do anything except promote the band.

Gina Elise’s Pin-Ups for Vets project is a rare exception and one worth your attention. She’s putting out WWII-style pinup calendars of herself since 2006 and donating all the proceeds to help purchase state-of the-art rehabilitation equipment for physical, occupational, and cognitive therapy programs in hospitals serving America’s Veterans. She’s raised $50,000 so far selling calendars at $10 a pop. +Continue Reading

Support a Naked Soldier

Our Brit allies are fighting back at a media assault on one of their own. Captain Harry Wales was vacationing in Las Vegas with friends when American dirt merchants TMZ purchased and published some naked photos of him partying in a hotel suite, thus violating the “What Happens in Vegas” rule.

His fellow soldiers have started a Facebook page where they strip off their own uniforms and post photos in support their colleague (who also goes by the name “Prince Harry”). If your want to show support for the British monarchy or just want to post naked pictures on the Internet, the page is now open to military men and women from all over the world.

(via Buzzfeed)

A Jedi’s Return

“Danny, I am your father.”

USAF Col. Rob Kiebler had been training and on a tour of duty in Afghanistan for 14 months when he got an opportunity to come home early and surprise his son Danny, who loves Star Wars in that totally obsessed six-year-old way. Danny’s mom arranged for some Star Wars reenactors to show up at Danny’s birthday party and Rob got hold of a Jedi costume and joined the group, giving his son a huge surprise.

Hot Wheels in Real Life

As any 6-year-old boy could tell you, nothing would be more awesome than actually getting to drive your Hot Wheels car down those orange tracks and upside down through one of the giant loops.

Hot Wheels and the X Games promoters agree and last Saturday they made it happen in front of the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The loops were six stories tall and drivers Greg Tracy and Tanner Foust took them at 52 MPH. So call your big brother or your irritating cousin and tell them they were wrong when they tried to argue physics and claim that Hot Wheels was dumb and that it would never work if you did it for real.

A Soldier for a Soldier

Nine-year-old Brendan Haas started with an idea, a toy soldier, and a Facebook page. His goal was to trade his toy soldier for a trip to Disney World, not for himself but for the family of a fallen service member.

“We heard about the guy, how he traded a red paper clip up until he got a house and we wanted to do something,” says the Kingston, Mass native. Armed with his soldier and his “A Soldier for a Soldier Facebook page, Brendan began trading items and growing his network until it spanned the nation and he reached his goal: tickets to Disney World, airfare, a stay at the Disney Villas and almost $900 in Disney gift certificates. All that remained was to choose a winner.

“People just posted that they had lost some family members in the war and we put them in the raffle.” +Continue Reading