Christopher Nolan’s dream-within-a-dream-within-a-whatever thriller Inception has been hurtling through U.S. moviegoers’ wallets for a couple of weeks now. The film stars an earnest and mournful Leonardo DiCaprio (handsome and a good actor—he’s a dreamboat-within-a-dreamboat!), and is perhaps one of the more poker-faced affairs I’ve seen in the theaters for a long while. But I think even its most hardcore fans can recognize that the film’s melancholic mood and dread-inducing soundtrack are ripe for spoofing, as demonstrated by the four recent parodies explained below.

Mashing up kid-favorite Dora the Explorer with Inception turned out to be a great idea—the movie is a high-flown action film about breaking into the sleeping minds of other people for the sake of corporate espionage, and Dora is a curious little girl who just wants things to make sense.

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Inception. The overdubbing here is a little suspect, but Bill and Ted’s stoner incomprehension dovetails nicely with the pay-attention-because-something-amazing-is-about-to-happen tone of Inception’s soundtrack, dialogue, and hype. Actually, it’s virtually the same concept as the Dora the Explorer riff. Pretending you’re a bit dim and child-like is, I guess, inherently funny. Sidenote: when set to the Inception theme, Bill’s “Why would we lie to ourselves?” becomes almost touching. (Thanks, The Rumpus.)

I think this man-celebrates-dog joke misses the mark, except for the alteration of Inception’s title at the end, and the concluding creepy-hilarious shot.

Toy Story 3 plus Inception. We should all be officially disgusted with this joke now. That was, after all, the point of this exercise. It’s worth noting, however, that Leonardo DiCaprio actually looks a little like Toy Story 3’s Ken doll.

The harvesting machine whirs to life. Mechanical arms extend and retract, rusty cogs knuckle past each other and greasy chains creak on an endless loop. Despite a flurry of clockwork motion, the machinery is immobile. That’s because these spare combine parts have been repurposed as contemporary art, reassembled as interactive music makers, and relocated to the gallery floor. The “Combine Project” is the brainchild of Steven White, an Ontario-based visual artist profiled by Musicworks. White got the idea to convert an obsolete artifact of our agricultural past into a collection of fanciful kinetic sculptures when he and his wife moved to some property in rural Ontario. There they found the farm equipment—specifically a hulking, abandoned 1964 Allis-Chalmers All-Corp combine harvester. Sprockets, gears and valves on many of the pieces are interactive, and when you crank them, the sculptures produce an eerie, mechanical kind of music. Here are a few of White's creations and a clip featuring “Molecular Roulette,” a sculpture that looks and works like a bizarre, 6-foot-long music box. (Right-click the link and select "Save Link As" to download an MP3 of White’s machines in motion.)

"Happy Apple Tree" is a kinetic sculpture made from the odd parts of abandoned farm equipment by Canadian visual artist Steven White.

Made from a segmented drive-shaft cover, "Brian's Arc" is modeled after a human spine in a resting position.

A monstrous piece called "Spider Bark."

"Insect Variation," named for its structural likeness to a grasshopper, conveys the tension between technology and the natural world.

White wrote in Musicworks that "Tooth Organ," pictured above, "reuses a crank, two chains, several gears, and graduated metal tines from the combine to produce a sonic mashup that sounds like a blend of a home radiator pinging and a tin cup being rattled on metal jail-cell bars."

Source: Musicworks

Photos courtesy of Steven White. Audio courtesy of Musicworks.

Paste magazine has put together a list of eight literary works that are ripe for graphic novel adaptation. What would you add?

(Thanks, The Millions.)

Source: Paste

Image by LordFerguson, licensed under Creative Commons.

Many American Indian tribes across the nation hold powwows that are basically megaconcerts, with tickets sold to the nontribal general public. Visitors often come away from these events thinking that they’ve gotten an authentic glimpse into Indian traditions and spirituality, a perception fueled by some tribes’ marketing. “It is truly an honor to attend a powwow,” states the web page of the Northern Colorado Intertribal Pow-wow Association Inc.—an honor, incidentally, that’s available to anyone with ticket money.

But what exactly is a powwow, and what are its ties to Indian tradition? Ojibwe historian Anton Treuer sets the record straight in the book Ojibwe in Minnesota, which was recently published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press:

Powwow itself is new. It did not exist seventy years ago. It is a pan-Indian combination of Omaha grass dance ceremonies, Dakota war dances, Ojibwe dreams about the jingle dress, and rodeo customs, where dancers who used to parade into army forts in tribal war regalia now parade into the powwow arena in dance regalia for grand entry. There are many types of powwows. But [many powwows] involve singers and dancers competing for money. Participants’ abilities to sing and dance are highly valued, supplanting older cultural ideals of community cohesion, inclusiveness, and respectful generosity. The modern powwow is a welcome, healthy gathering of people from many communities. It is a joyous social event and source of community pride. But it is not a substitute for traditional Ojibwe religion or ways of life.

Treuer points out that powwows have become big business. Leech Lake Reservation in Minnesota spends more than $100,000 for prize money on its Labor Day powwow alone, not to mention the many smaller powwows it presents:

The powwow budget for Leech Lake completely eclipses tribal expenditures on traditional culture and Ojibwe language revitalization. Tribes and tribal people are agents of their own cultural change.

So remember that if you attend a large commercial powwow, you are more likely watching a sort of American Indian Idol than a sacred and ancient ceremony. It may be fun, and entertaining, and spectacular, but it’s probably no more traditional than the fry bread they’re selling at the food stands.

Because Minnesota has been at the epicenter of many Indian sovereignty, treaty rights, and social justice issues, Treuer’s book is essential reading for anyone interested in Indian history. From the fur trade and Ojibwe-Dakota relations right up through ugly public skirmishes over spearfishing and casinos, Ojibwe in Minnesota is a clear, candid, and authoritative overview of a people whose epic history is still unfolding.

Source: Ojibwe in Minnesota

Image by Nic's events, licensed under Creative Commons.

If you’re looking for some derring-do on your vacation, you have two choices. You can do something extremely lame, like rock climbing, or you can fight in the World Gravy Wrestling Championships. The Stew, the Chicago Tribune’s food, wine, and dining blog,has some other options as well, on their list of ten “wacky food festivals” happening around the world this summer. Aside from those gravy gladiators in the U.K., there’s also a pierogi tossing contest in Indiana—or a tomato tossing party in Spain. For my money, though, nothing is more valiant than dousing yourself in chicken stock and tussling with another full-grown adult.

(Thanks, The Consumerist.)

Source: The Stew

Image by davitydave, licensed under Creative Commons.

Aspiring literary pilgrims take note: Writers’ Houses is a new online clearinghouse that aims “to be a field guide to deceased writers’ homes, searchable by author, city, state, and country.” You should grab a few destinations for your summer road trip.

(Thanks, GalleyCat.)

Source: Writers’ Houses

Image by That Canadian Grrl, licensed under Creative Commons.

For the past four years, Dutch artists Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn have been splashing paint on Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, transforming the hillside slums into clustered monuments of urban art.

The neighborhoods aren’t just changing aesthetically. "About one-third of Rio de Janeiro’s population lives in favelas," reports mental_floss. "To prevent kids from getting caught up in the drug trade, the Favela Painting project pays Brazil’s youth to create murals for their communities. As a result, armies of teenage artists are giving their neighborhoods new faces—ones covered in bright, cheerful colors. The hope is that within the next few years, the entire landscape of favelas will become a massive work of art, drawing attention to the needs of the poor and filling the community with pride.”

Their most recent project in the Santa Marta favela covered more than 30 densely packed buildings with a kaleidoscopic, multicolored sunburst.

One building in Santa Marta, a samba school and neighborhood hangout, was even painted on the inside.

Art can get a little messy.

Juxtapoz  profiled the Dutchmen’s previous work in the favelas , which includes this three-story tall mural of a boy flying a kite.

Sources: Juxtapoz, mental_floss

Images courtesy of Haas&Hahn/Favelapainting.com.