Amy and Julie Zhang are Chinese Kiwis who live in London. Online, they’re known as The Dumpling Sisters and star in their own YouTube videos about delicious fusion food, their mum, and adventures in the big city.
I was introduced to them when they were rallying for votes because they’d made the finals of Jamie Oliver’s Search for a Food Tube Star. They are the only finalists to represent NZ out of more than 250 entries worldwide!
It’s awesome to see Kiwis fly, so have a watch of their video and click the ‘like’ button on YouTube to show your support in the competition.
It closes this Monday, 23 September, at 11 am NZ time. Please let your friends and family know about this and lets see these lovely ladies take out the competition!
To commemorate September 11, and to encourage New Yorkers to look forward with hope, the city’s Ballet Company released this video at dawn on September 12, 2013.
It was filmed at sunrise on the 57th floor of 4 World Trade Center in lower Manhattan.
MUSIC
Spiegel Im Spiegel by Arvo Part
CHOREOGRAPHY
After the Rain by Christopher Wheeldon
DANCERS
Maria Kowroski
Ask la Cour
VIDEO
Directed by Davi Russo
Edited by Tim Zeigler
Produced by Radical Media
Executive Produced by Gregg Carlesimo
Executive Produced by Maya Brewster
Produced by Logan Luchsinger
As part of the 2013 BNZ Literary Awards, sponsor BNZ have come up with a novel way to promote the short story competition they’ve been running for a few years now.
The competition, in which writers create tiny 150 word masterpieces, lends itself perfectly to social media platforms – everyone has a Facebook friend who posts status updates longer than that! (If you can’t think of one, chances are it’s you.)
Given that social platforms are becoming more image-based (think Pinterest and Instagram!), it’s pretty ingenious that the bank have created an app that turns the short stories into art, to be shared back to the platforms.
It may just be the quirky and fun incentive needed to get people out of their shells and writing. After all, it’s not every day your writing becomes art.
I especially appreciate the time taken by the BNZ to create this word art out of a particularly intelligent tweet of mine.
Cantina is scary, funny, mind-bending and beautiful.
Described as “a spectacularly dark and dangerous cocktail of circus”, it’s cabaret featuring characters who titillate and at the same time, frighten; Acts of stupidity or bravery, depending on how you look at them; And people who make you laugh, and a heartbeat later, gasp.
The men are breathtakingly handsome, full of roguish, flirty charm, and the women live comfortably flowing between doe-eyed innocence and all out sadism – what else would you expect in a world where walking a tightrope in high heels is all in a day’s work.
I recommend you catch it as part of the Auckland Arts Festival, currently on in Auckland.
Twitter: Giving people a licence to be rude to strangers since 2006.
People often say “you shouldn’t be in the kitchen if you can’t stand the heat”, but hearing celebs read out the insults they get tweeted in the below videos highlight just how mental people can be.
And also how the celebrities are actually just human beings, with feelings and senses of humour. Mostly.
Who doesn’t love a good viral hit – at least for the first week? I’ve collated some of the biggest into this list, in no particular order.
Ridiculously Photogenic Guy
On a sunny March day in South Carolina, Zeddie Little was participating in the Cooper River Bridge run when his picture was snapped by Will King. Will put Zeddie’s photo onto Flickr, and then Reddit where it received more than 40,000 upvotes.
The photo quickly became meme fodder
And Zeddie ran his way into hearts across the world.
Ecce Homo – aka Potato Jesus Now to the polar opposite of Ridiculously Photogenic Guy: A century-old painting of Jesus was restored by an elderly woman, but comes out of it looking like a potato.
Yeah. It was only a matter of time before this happened:
Grumpy cat What would a top 10 viral list be without an entry about a cat? This one is a cat named Tardar Sauce, who is the unhappiest looking cat you’ll ever see.
Instant viral hit.
Bonus: Here is a video of grumpy cat being patted:
Overly Attached Girlfriend Meet Laina. She likes you. She really, really likes you.
It all started with this video, which includes the lyrics “If I was your girlfriend, I’d never let you leave without a small recording device taped under your sleeve.“
Which quickly spawned a huge Overly Attached Girlfriend meme!
This grew into Misunderstood Girlfriend
Laina’s now done deals with large companies to capitalise on her new-found viral fame. Here’s something she did with Samsung…
2012 was the year we called our dogs out for their terrible behaviour. Dogshaming started as a tumblr in August with this photo:
And grew…
And grew!
Kony 2012 The Invisible Children wanted to create a project to focus the world’s attention on capturing African rebel leader Joseph Kony. And boy, did they do that and then some.
It’s unusual that a half-hour video would viral, but that it did – nearly 7 million views in 16 days on Vimeo, and 43 million views in 72 hours on YouTube.
Almost immediately, a bunch of celebrities came out in support of the project, #StopKONY became a global trending topic on Twitter, and a critical Tumblr was launched to point out some of the issues with the video and Invisible Children. Debate raged over Kony, what governments should do, and the nature of the Invisible Children organisation
In March, one of Invisible Children’s co-founders was taken into police custody after he started running around San Diego naked, drunk, masturbating and screaming. The incident quickly spawned its own meme.
Kony is still at large.
Gangnam Style The number one most-watched clip on YouTube, causing Beliebers everywhere major heartbreak, is now Gangnam Style, by K-Pop act, Psy.
It spawned this amazing version, featuring five people playing the one guitar
…Got historical
…And even the Queen got amongst it
Call Me Maybe I just met you, and this is crazy. Here’s the video, watch it, maybe?
Carly Rae Jepsen’s hit was technically released in 2011, but didn’t become a viral hit until Justin Bieber, Selena Gomex and Ashley Tisdale released their lip dub tribute in February.
Someone cut a Barack Obama version
As well as the memes and videos, the song even inspired a range of business cards.
