Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Download the Weird

Posted October 30, 2012 by shooting in Uncategorized / 9 Comments

Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Download the Weird

Review by Lauren

copy sent for review, but all opinions are my own

Review: I think everyone knows what Ripley’s is so I’m not going to take too much time to explain this book. Basically, it has various sections that include photos, facts, and stories about all sorts of crazy and interesting things! Some of these include World, Body, Animals, Food, and Feats. I try to avoid the animal section because it tends to creep or gross me out the most…but overall, I like these books a lot! I learn some cool facts and feel a bit smarter after browsing this book!

This particular edition, Download the Weird, has a Digital section (I don’t believe any of the other Ripley books have this) and it included all sorts of cool things. The first page includes some information all about the first virtual retail store in South Korea. How crazy is that?!

There is even a list of Wacky Websites. I do wish they had included the URL for these, but I guess if we googled them, that would work! Some of the ones that seem interesting, though, are one where you can unroll toilet paper without having to roll it back up again (yeah, a site for this… I guess it could be a nice stress reliever!) and even a site where you post pictures of your Hitler-looking cat (I have heard of this one before!)

Another section I really like is Popular Culture. There is a section all about someone who replicated the movie UP by attaching balloons to a house (and it actually flew!). I love that movie, so it was cool to hear about this. The things people will try!

Finally, my other favorite section is Art. I can’t believe how creative people can be! It’s really awesome to read about some of these things…and I’m always wanting to go look up so much after reading these sections in the Ripley’s books. One example is an artist, Natalie Irish, that creates portraits of famous people like Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix…using her lips! Yeah, you read that right. She puts on various lipstick and kisses the canvas to create these amazing portraits!

Irish’s lipstick portrait of Marilyn Monroe -I do not own image

Of course, there is some art that kind of freaks me out…like the Vomit Artist. Essentially, she vomits the “paint.” I’ll just leave it at that. If you’re curious, google Millie Brown and/or Vomit Artist.

And now, I leave you with one of the most awesome things I learned about in this book (Popular Culture section). Six-month-old baby Arthur Hammond and his mom Emily (they are from Oxford, England) recreate famous scenes from movies like The Blair Witch Project and American Beauty. Isn’t this too fun?! His blog is here but there hasn’t been a new photo since May. It looks like there are gaps inbetween the posts, though, so I’m sure more will be up in the near future!

Arthur for The Blair Witch Project (real movie still below)-do not own images
 

Overall…fun book! It would make a perfect gift for that hard to buy person!

9 responses to “Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Download the Weird

  1. Oh this sounds awesome! And you're right, an awesome gift!
    I love looking through books like this. I wish they had these in waiting rooms, much better then magazines.

  2. Sam

    Your Hitler-looking cat? Wow. 😀 Ha, this sounds quite fun to read! It's not something I would usually go for but just reading your review makes me want to get my hands on this. 🙂 Glad you enjoyed it!

  3. Wow… definitely going to skip visiting the vomit artist 🙂 I have a pretty tough stomach but that might send me over the edge! This book sounds really interesting – it might make a good holiday gift as well (can you tell I'm trying to stock up on as many gift ideas as possible?).

  4. I love Ripleys Believe It or Not! Over the summer I checked out the little museum thing they have in Wild-Wood. It was very cool! I had no idea it was also a book. I'll definitely have to check this out! Thanks for sharing (:

Leave a Reply

(Enter your URL then click here to include a link to one of your blog posts.)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.