Each week, Jonathan Ross presents music and celebrity chat on his BBC television show “Friday Night with Jonathan Ross.” In this entertaining video clip,  quirky Oscar-winning Hollywood anti-hero Christopher Walken reads a few lines from Lady Gaga’s hit song “Pokerface.”

I suppose we should be thankful he didn’t request “more cowbell!”

Click here to see Lady Gaga perform Pokerface. » Read more

The soldiers of the 101st Airborne, 159th Aviation Brigade found a newborn puppy on an Afghanistan battlefield — so they rescued the puppy, and made her a part of their brigade.

“It obviously had been abandoned. There was no mother around… It was very, very young, so if they would have left it there, it would have never made it,” said Teri Lemmons, mother of Army Cpl. Michael Lemmons.

Unfortunately, when the time came for the soldiers to return home, military law prevented the soldiers from bringing their beloved pet back with them on military planes. The cost of shipping the dog was more than $2500. Faced with the possibility of leaving her behind, the soldiers got creative.

The touching story was broadcast on the ABC News with Charles Gibson last week. Watch the video below to see how this shaggy dog story ends.

Have you ever wondered why most plastics are marked with a number from 1 to 7 inside a recycling symbol? The simple answer is that each number represents the type of resin made to produce the plastic. Because each resin is different, these numbers influence how that product can be recycled, though the most popular today are clear plastic drinking bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) #1 or milkjugs and soap bottles made of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) #2 plastic. Plastics with codes #3 through #7 might be accepted as part of your recycling program, but these products are not easily recycled, and are often sorted out and incinerated. (An excellent chart explaining the differences between the types of plastics can be downloaded from earth911.com)

The first PET bottles were recycled in 1977, and since then, plastic bottle recycling has increased to more than 2.4 billion pounds annually. In fact, according to earth911.com,  more than 80 percent of communities across the nation collect and recycle plastic bottles, and in recent years, the number of U.S. plastic recycling businesses has nearly tripled. More than 1,600 businesses are now involved in recycling post-consumer plastics.

Recycling 1 ton of plastic saves 7.4 cubic yards of landfill space. Recycling a single plastic bottle can conserve enough energy to light a 60-watt light bulb for up to six hours. And recycling one pound of PET plastic bottles saves approximately 12,000 BTUs (British thermal unit) of heat energy–that’s enough energy to bring about eight gallons of water 180 degrees from freezing to boiling. And, producing new plastic products from recycled materials uses two-thirds less energy than is required to make products from raw materials! » Read more

Thanks to @MarkShepard, for sharing this video,  and introducing us to Oren Lavie and his lovely music. The stop motion video for “Her Morning Elegance” is created from more than 3200 photo stills shot using a camera hanging from the ceiling over the bed.

It took four weeks to create an animated computer-generated storyboard for the video, using 3D dummies for the characters, but it only took two days to shoot the live actors frame by frame to create the 3.5-minute final sequence.

This video has become an international sensation with over 8 million hits on YouTube to date, breaking YouTube’s most highly rated video record. The song can be found on “The Opposite Side of The Sea,” Oren’s debut album, released on his own label, A Quarter Past Wonderful.

According to his blog, Oren is a “songwriter, director, and a writer of funny books for sad children,” who likes to “create dreamy visuals from realistic elements…squeezing big worlds into small spaces.” The gorgeous redhead in the bed is Israeli actress and model Shir Shomron.

“Her Morning Elegance” was also featured in a Chevrolet Malibu television commercial (found here on YouTube).  The songwriter, who has never owned a car, says could not stop giggling for days, though he continues to take the bus.

Life is great when you’re able to turn “a little too much time on your hands” into a business opportunity that pays hundreds of dollars for your doodles. And while many artists make their living with traditional media like oils on canvas, or watercolors on paper, this one makes his living with Sharpies on Styrofoam cups

They’re gorgeous: intricate black and white drawings that circle around the cup to tell a story with no beginning or end. Pointillistic drawings of people and animals, Japanese woodcut-style oceans of swirling waves, and playful vignettes of people in everyday activities. They can take hours or months to create: Cheeming Boey drinks out of the rejects and sells his best ones between $120 and $220 at a fine art gallery in Laguna Beach, California.

Some might raise their eyebrow at his medium which gets a bad rap in this environmentally aware society because polystyrene foam never biodegrades.  But, as Boey said in an interview with the The Orange Country Register, “These cups last thousands of years, and my Sharpie says it’s permanent ink. These things are going to last generations. It’s archival material.” He also draws more temporary art – on bananas.

See more photos of Boey and his work in this gallery at The Orange Country Register or check out his entire Styrofoam Cup collection on Boey’s Flickr page

Kevin Richardson is an animal behaviorist who has built such a reputation for his amazing relationship with lions, that he has become known as “The Lion Whisperer.”

Once a student of human physiology, the 34-year-old has been working with animals for more than a dozen years now. Based out of a wildlife conservation area near Johannesburg in South Africa, Kevin has built such a strong relationship of trust with these fierce felines that he says he can even sleep with them without fear of mauling.

“I have to rely on my own instincts to gauge an animal or a situation, and I will not approach a creature if something doesn’t feel right,” he said in an interview at The Daily Mail.  “I don’t use sticks, whips or chains, just patience. It may be dangerous, but this is a passion for me, not a job.”

Kevin he says he feels the closest bond with the lions, sharing with them an amazing unconditional love that includes gentle caresses and exuberant play. This is a relationship that has been nurtured over time, and the magnificent animals greet him enthusiastically, welcoming him into their pride as if he were one of them. However, Kevin’s gentle talent extends to other animals such as cheetahs, leopards and hyenas, as well.

According to the article, “Kevin says he is most confident with animals he has known since birth, but claims he can become close friends with any lion less than a year old, when it is still flexible enough to accept him as part of its own pride.” That’s truly amazing! The animals feel so comfortable with him, that they even allow him to handle their newborn offspring.

It’s an unbelieveable and amazingly moving relationship that you have to see to truly understand. I hope you will enjoy the following video.

Brandy Schaffels, eCycleGroup Contributing Editor

Okay, my 16-year-old son might have thought I was a little whacked when he saw that this video made me cry, but come on! Don’t you always cry when the beautiful and jubilant bride walks down the aisle?

How could anybody have had more fun or expressed their true love and unique personalities better than these two? Best wishes to Jill and Kevin for many years of happiness together!

And just to show the song’s versatility, another group has created a sequel using the same song for the entry into the courtroom for their last day together.

Rawk on, you funsters!

I was home alone late one night nearly 20 years ago, killing time with MTV on in the background when this video from the Indigo Girls began playing.   I had never heard of the duo, and had no idea who they were, but I loved the concept of the video, and the message of the song.

Titled “Galileo,” the song references the circle of reincarnation, making light of the possibility that our day-to-day circumstances could somehow be linked to our previous lives… a fear of flying caused by a previous life’s plane crash, or making compensation in this life to right wrongs we committed in the past, basically “serving time for mistakes made by another in another lifetime.”

I went on a quest to find out more about the band and discovered the Indigo Girls,  an American folk rock duo consisting of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers. Since then I’ve become a lifetime fan of their music and thoughtful lyrics that tell moving and important stories. When I need to find consolation, I listen to their songs to help me identify what’s in my heart.

Beyond the themes of their music, they are also very politically active. According to their page at Wikipedia,  they have championed the causes of the environment, gay rights, the rights of Native Americans, and the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. For many years they incorporated a recycling and public outreach program into their road tours by including Greenpeace representative Stephanie Fairbanks in their road crew. They helped Winona LaDuke establish Honor the Earth, an organization dedicated to creating support and education for native environmental issues. Amy and Emily have also appeared at the annual SOA Watch rallies, the March for Women’s Lives, and several other rallies and protests.

They’ve just recently released a new album, titled “Poseidon and the Bitter Bug” and are touring this summer across the United States and Europe in support of it. As part of their tour, the Indigo Girls have partnered with Rock for a Remedy and are collecting food for people and pets at each venue; these donations then make their way to neighboring families who are struggling keep food on the table.

I hope you will enjoy their music as much as I have. Normally, I embed the music video player directly into our Friday posts, but embedding has been disabled on all the Indigo Girls music videos I can find at YouTube.com. Please click to watch the Indigo Girls perform Galileo and maybe discover other Indigo Girls music as well. You can also find them on Facebook.

Have a great weekend,
Brandy

We discovered this video when @PieceofGreen tweeted about it at Twitter.com. We followed the link to treehugger.com.

They said: “Although he passed away before his time, Heath Ledger left an impressive legacy behind–but it’s not just his top-tier acting work that should be remembered.” As one of his last activities Ledger  directed the animated anti-whaling music video for Modest Mouse’s song “King Rat.” Unfortunately, he didn’t live to see the project completed, but the finished video can be viewed via YouTube by clicking the window below.

The video starts innocently enough with a lovely tune and carefree images of whales piloting a boat to sea. As the intensity of the music grows, so do the images, until its simple, satirical animation makes clear the hideous violence committed on whaling boats. shivver

Also, according to Treehugger.com, if you download the video on iTunes during August, the proceeds will go to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society — the infamous anti-whaling group.

More on Whaling at Treehugger.com:
Whale Hunting Ban Effective
Whale-Watching Report: Whales are More Valuable Alive than Dead

I return from a whirlwind tour across the country and back again: 12,000 miles in 14 days from Los Angeles to Denver to Detroit to Los Angeles to Detroit to Los Angeles to Chicago and finally back home to Los Angeles. And if you think that was hard to read, you should be glad you weren’t the one spending all those hours in those snug and uncomfortable airline seats, seated next to snoring passengers with smelly feet.

It doesn’t matter which airline I flew, and I did fly several, it seems they all ran late, connections were delayed or cancelled, and baggage was always a hassle. It became a joke for me that the new airline slogan was “We’re not happy unless you’re not happy!”

I don’t usually check a bag if I can help it; I do this as a way to speed my way onto and off of the plane and out of the airport as quickly as possible. But sometimes it was necessary to check my gear, and when it left my hands, I always said a silent prayer to ensure its safe return.

After discussions with a friend of mine about these travels, he shared this story he knew about Dave Carroll, a musician from the band “Sons of Maxwell,” whose precious Taylor guitar was broken by careless baggage handlers. (If you don’t know much about musical instruments, Taylor guitars can be worth thousands and thousands of dollars; his was worth $3500.) The story is documented in the following lighthearted, but pointed, music video created as a response to the atrocious customer service he received when trying to get his guitar repaired.

P.S. After this video was posted, Carroll did ultimately receive compensation from United for his guitar’s repair. You can find more videos about the situation here at YouTube.

Enjoy!