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The more music changes....

...the more it stays the same.

Beyonce meets Andy Griffith in this Party Ben mash-up that...well, you just have to hear it. It's really incredible how a 50 year old song and a brand new Billboard Hottest can work so well together. We've come a not so long way.

(From Aram Squalls)

Breast Milk for everyone!!!

A few years ago, good blog friend Brendan Melican somehow became the proprietor of one of the world's largest message boards on selling breast milk, a fact he pointed out a few weeks later.

Looks like Melican may have been at the forefront of a meme going in a completely new direction.

After a Swiss restaurant owner announced he was going to be replacing most of his dairy products with human breast milk, PETA has demanded Ben & Jerry's do the same.

"The fact that human adults consume huge quantities of dairy products made from milk that was meant for a baby cow just doesn't make sense," says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. "Everyone knows that 'the breast is best,' so Ben & Jerry's could do consumers and cows a big favor by making the switch to breast milk."

BREAST IS BEST! Our only question is what the wholesale price is for breast milk these days.

Nudity on planes is for lovers. Only.

You guys remember that scene in “Airplane” when the naked chick runs in front of the camera with her boobs all-a-bouncin? Great times.

Except when it happens in real life.

I was on a flight from Boston to LA yesterday that was already pretty interesting—the couple next to me had gotten off the flight before it started after the woman freaked out that she couldn’t fly, hyperventilated, cried, and bolted off the plane. Her husband debated with me what to do (I suggested Valium), and eventually left with her. They were on their way to a honeymoon in Honolulu.

So we’re somewhere about halfway across the country when a guy comes out of the bathroom in his full on birthday suit, strolling back to his seat like it’s the most natural thing in the world. A New England Revolution official (oh, right…they were on the plane) stops the dude, eventually convinces him to get dressed (at one point they threw a blanket over him in his seat) and he goes back to the lav. He comes out again, and 15 minutes later makes a beeline for the exit door….the GM, a couple other Revs officials and a flight attendent “subdue” the guy. The pilot locks down the cabin, and immediately lands us in OK City which, from the sky, looks every bit as boring as I anticipated.

Anyway, they were pretty quick about getting us on to LA, although some people missed connections. I made mine to Monterey, CA…only to have them almost not land us because of the ongoing forest fires.

You can read the full story at the Boston Globe (bonus: story written by Milton Valencia, who I boxed for charity in 2006).

And thank you for flying Air Zoback.

Chris Matthews 1, Kevin James 0

It's popular these days to parody Chris Matthews as a blustery fratboyish blowhard who never really gets anywhere with his subjects. Mostly because it's true.

But sometimes, the guy is spot on.

A few nights back, Matthews caught right wing talking head Kevin James in a vicious circle, letting James hang himself for 10 straight minutes with his own ignorance and sneering rhetoric. James had backed up George Bush's comparison of Barack Obama's wanting to talk to Iran with Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of the Nazis; Matthews had a feeling the puppet mouth was just regurgitating what he had heard from Papa Bush.

And indeed, all James does here is claw his way down the same belligerently xenophobic jingo-lined hole that so many before him have fallen into.

The genius of the interview is the rarity of Matthew's technique: Matthews lets the guy talk and talk and talk, just to prove how he doesn't know what the hell he is referencing. It stands out among a proliferation of sound-bite driven talking heads. Broadcast media - in its ad-sensitive segments - doesn't allow for more than a few minutes at a time for guests to hit a range of points. It's a medium that tends to favor breadth, not depth, especially with hosts (including Matthews most of the time) who are too self-centered to let their guests get more than 40% of the airtime.



All I know is that Bill O'Reilly should take some lessons.




[via the best media/post-modern anthropologist out there, Thomas de Zengotita]

A little somethin' somethin'

In the vein of WOOT comes the "SomethingStore." It's a simple concept. You give them $10, they send you...something. It could be a CD or jeans; a remote control car or kitchen knives. You just don't know.

I'll take two.

WTF CNN!

I enjoy me some cool t-shirts - I have a slight shirt.woot.com fetish - but even as a news junkie, I find this ridiculous.

CNN is offering up a beta version of "CNN T-Shirts." See that little t-shirt logo next to select headlines? For the not-low-enough price of $15, you too can walk around like an ass showing off your favorite CNN story head.

Not only that, but the shirts are blatantly undesigned crapjobs that look like grandma's first attempt on CafePress.

This feels like an Onion story.

Micro/Pico projectors are going to be fantastic/annoying as shit as they start to come out over the next few years---We're already anticipating the glorious douchebaggery that these will be used for at bars.

But Microvision, one of the companies developing the tech, seems to think we need some "lifestyle" videos to show us how the projectors could be used, in case we couldn't figure it out on our own. And the videos...well, even Uwe Boll would be pissed.

This is low quality shit, the kind of dreck usually reserved for driver's ed or middle school sex ed videos: Core77 called it "high-school-play production value." I actually want the product less after watching the overly-sexed guys watch YouTube videos on the back of a bartender's shirt, or the "cool" mom hopping in the back seat of a minivan to show her daughter clips from the soccer game the team just lost. Gag.

Watch to see how marketing departments can absolutely annihilate a good idea.

Tom Cruise is officially certifiable (Lawyer's note: I don't actually believe or know what Tom Cruise's mental state is or is not. Thank you)

Wow. I am officially scared shitless for Katie Holmes.

This four-year old Tom Cruise Scientology testimonial/promo/recruitment video is as troubling as it gets, next to Britney Spears and....you know what, it's so weird, I can't even make a Britney joke.

Cruise laughs manically (it seems forced), describing of what it means to be a Scientologist; he rants on and on in the language of a true believer (more on that in a minute); and generally acts like he has gone off the reservation's deep end, all the while with a Mission: Impossible theme playing in the background.

Again, count me scared.

This video has already been allegedly pulled off of YouTube, so if you didn't catch it online this week, watch it now before other people pull it. A glossary will help:

KSW means "Keep Scientology Working," a widely-quoted policy letter.
SP means "Suppressive Person"

Creepiest line? The menacing voice over at the end: "The story of Tom Cruise, Scientologist, has only just begun."

"Being a Scientologist, when you drive past an accident, it's not like anyone else; as you drive past, you know you have to do something about it, because you know you're the only one that can really help." -Tom Cruise

Here you go, true believer!

Google, Seven years back

The New Yorker is featuring an article on Google from 2000, breathlessly describing the "default search engine of the digital in-crowd."

It's a cool snapshot of less than 10 years ago: Sergey Brin and Larry Page were only earning $80,000, Yahoo was still the most popular search engine, and Google's offices "are spread through a sort of dot-com strip mall not far from Palo Alto.....The offices are stocked with enough free M&M’s, PowerBars, barrels of granola, urns of coffee, and coolers of fruit juice to drive anybody through to 4 A.M.—which is not an unusual time to find people in the office. Not everything is in place yet, though. When I visited, a baby-grand piano and a new espresso bar were both on order, so the lobby looked a little bare."

Read it here.

Ron Paul, part two

Interesting article found by Duncan denouncing Kirchick's article denouncing Ron Paul. Here's the crux:

"Jamie is a muckraker, a charlatan, and a hypocrite. For being so careless about concealing all these, he is a fool to boot. His bottom-feeding journalism dishonors The New Republic's history as a bastion of high-minded political discourse. His story was deliberately timed to inflict maximum political damage on a man of such uncommonly principled integrity that he is attacked for statements written decades ago by others in his name."

Harsh on Kirchick, but I agree with the argument to an extent. EVERY single article about a candidate - positive, negative, or otherwise - published around the time of the election should be viewed through a slightly cynical lens in relation to its timing. I'm not saying there's always a bias, but writers, editors and sources are all susceptible to "happy accidents/coincidences" of timing a story for when it will garner the most interest. More often than not, that happens to be around an election or big political to-do.

That said, you can't throw out everything Kirchick said, even if the guy is somewhat of a Drudge. The fact is, Ron Paul published newsletters with HIS name on them that contained beyond-inflammatory comments. Did he personally write it? I don't think that's the point. George Bush/Hillary Clinton/Barack Obama aren't writing every letter they send out thanking donors, but if one of their letters said, "Thanks, but gay people should stay in the closet," they'd be absolutely slaughtered.

Kelly says it best in the comments on "Gays for Ron:"

Come on, folks, there is simply no defense for Ron Paul letting this ugliness appear under his name for so long. That, however, is not the crux of the article in TNR. Instead Jamie Kirchick plays fast and loose with facts to make a much more interesting read. It would be one thing to write extensively about how Ron Paul let his name be used by intellectual monsters. But that isn't the article Kirchick wrote....

One can dismiss or even denounce Paul for letting such hideousness appear under his name, especially for so long, but that would have given Kirchick a blurb, not an article. TNR owes an apology to its readers, and Kirchick owes an apology to all of us. Stephen Glass redux?

Ron Paul thinks I killed Jesus (probably)

The New Republic has published a brilliantly researched account of Presidential candidate Ron Paul's not-controversial-enough past. Apparently, Paul has published a variety of newsletters under his name for the past few decades. Few of the articles in the bulletins have specific bylines, but almost all purport to be "from" him. The one common thread over the years? A level of scary hate-mongering vitrol I haven't seen from any other presidential candidate, and that includes Huckabee's anti-gay rants in the 1990's.

Like blacks, gays earn plenty of animus in Paul's newsletters. They frequently quoted Paul's "old colleague," Congressman William Dannemeyer--who advocated quarantining people with AIDS--praising him for "speak[ing] out fearlessly despite the organized power of the gay lobby." In 1990, one newsletter mentioned a reporter from a gay magazine "who certainly had an axe to grind, and that's not easy with a limp wrist." In an item titled, "The Pink House?" the author of a newsletter--again, presumably Paul--complained about President George H.W. Bush's decision to sign a hate crimes bill and invite "the heads of homosexual lobbying groups to the White House for the ceremony," adding, "I miss the closet." "Homosexuals," it said, "not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities."

It's frightening stuff that covers race, religion, sexual orientation, and general paranoia. And Paul - through a spokesman - denies knowing too much about what was written, at one point telling the author James Kirchick, "A lot of [the newsletters] he did not see. Most of the incendiary stuff, no." Smartly, Kirchick calls bullshit:

In other words, Paul's campaign wants to depict its candidate as a naïve, absentee overseer, with minimal knowledge of what his underlings were doing on his behalf. This portrayal might be more believable if extremist views had cropped up in the newsletters only sporadically--or if the newsletters had just been published for a short time. But it is difficult to imagine how Paul could allow material consistently saturated in racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and conspiracy-mongering to be printed under his name for so long if he did not share these views. In that respect, whether or not Paul personally wrote the most offensive passages is almost beside the point. If he disagreed with what was being written under his name, you would think that at some point--over the course of decades--he would have done something about it.

But what truly scared the hell out of me more than anything else is who Paul associates with.

Then there is Gary North, who has worked on Paul's congressional staff. North is a central figure in Christian Reconstructionism, which advocates the implementation of Biblical law in modern society. Christian Reconstructionists share common ground with libertarians, since both groups dislike the central government. North has advocated the execution of women who have abortions and people who curse their parents. In a 1986 book, North argued for stoning as a form of capital punishment--because "the implements of execution are available to everyone at virtually no cost."

It's Shia law for Christians!!!!!!!!!!

Check out Kirchick's work here...great stuff.

Pixar's model: Pee-Wee

Here's how infatuated I was with PeeWee Herman growing up: One Halloween, I insisted I go out as the bizarre Playhouse docent, complete with gray suit, red bowtie, and slicked hair. Oh, and I wore my secret spy PeeWee Herman watch, incongruous as it was.

Anyway, PeeWee had his...fall from grace, but, in a clip I've never seen, it looks an awful lot like the Pixar crew was big fans of the show. The resemblance between the characters from the Playhouse and Monsters, Inc. is uncanny.

Welcome back: Beggin for a piece of that bubble

I've been trying to find an appropriate "first post back" for a while now.

And this is definitely it. A hilarious clip, and one of dad's favorite songs to boot.

Best wedding dance ever.

So thanks Brendan, and welcome back to me.

Papa Zo: 1953-2007

I'll miss the man. He was a giant to me, and to us all.

Love you dad.

Obituary and service information.

I've got: One ticket to Paradise

While researching the insane prices of Hannah Montana tickets for a story at work, I found salvation in the form of an eBay auction. It's not so much the price that bothers me, but the shipping is a bitch.

Also, how did this guy get positive feedback???


Ticket to Heaven

Cops 4 Corruption

This is pure brilliance.

A site dedicated to calling out cops who had the nerve to write other cops a ticket. Or, as the site's mission statement says: "There's always another ticket down the street. We are all family and maybe someday you may need one of us to get out of our car and save your sorry ass."

Here's a quick clip from one of the "Dicks of the Month."

"I'm a retired NYPD (specialized unit) officer and I was stopped yesterday, 06/10/2006, 9 days after my 50th birthday, by a police officer, and I use that loosely, for doing 51 in a 35. I had my wife in the car and a visiting friend who is also retired.
No excuse on my part, I was wrong...when the officer approached my vehicle and he asked for my license and registration, I produced both documents and also told him that "if it means anything, I'm retired from the NYPD" and showed him my retired ID card, he told me "I didn't ask you for that". I told him that I showed it to him to put him at ease and with the hopes of him showing a little professional courtesy. He said that "down here, we obey the law" and that I wasn't above the law. I told him I knew a Sgt. on his job who worked as an NYPD officer before moving down here and I also knew a Lt. with the Mooresville PD but he didn't care and again stated that I wasn't above the law and that by showing him my retired police ID card that I was being disrespectful."

The absolute balls of that cop to want to give a ticket to a private citizen going 16 miles over the speed limit...man, thank god the rest of us have that same protection.

Cops Writing Cops

It was the no-arm man. Seriously.

So a guy with no arms fights a neighbor over a girl, and kills the dude. Come again?

"He's dating my brother's ex-girlfriend," said Teer's sister Lynn Elliot. "My neighbor left my brother for this guy, so it's a verbal argument between them the whole time."

Elliot said the armless man attacked her brother.

"They got into a big confrontation, a verbal confrontation and a fist fight and he came after my brother, he came with full force, and head butted him as hard as he could," said Elliot.

She said Teer collapsed and died a short time after the fight.

Seriously, why does this stuff only seem to happen in Florida or Georgia????

Check it out, complete with video of the victim's sister giving her assessment of the situation.

Greatest. Pranks. Ever.

I love great pranks. To me, massive ones like the Yale Football Prank are cool, but it's the ones that put a huge amount of effort into pranking one person that are even better.

In college, our prank wars capped off with a 100% rearrangement of my roommate Serge's bedroom in the kitchen; the guys eventually did the same to me. I was also the victim of a year-long-prank: Every time the doorbell rang in our house, it was ridiculously loud in my room only. The asshole roommates had plugged a wireless doorbell speaker in an outlet behind my dresser our first week there, and I didn't find it until we moved out.

All of that pales in comparison to this, one of the greatest pranks I've seen.


That's what he gets for wearing an Ichiro jersey to the Stadium.

More details on the prank via deadspin.

When a cross is more than a cross: Don't cross the Red Cross

The Red Cross has a long, patriotically intertwined history in the US; it's basically the one organization you never want to speak out against. Even PETA is a better target if you're looking to bash a non-profit for the hell of it.

So when pharma-colossus Johnson & Johnson sued the organization over the licsencing to the red cross symbol, it's no surprise that public favor was with the guys who help innocent victims, not the guys who make tear-free baby shampoo.

But there are several sides to the debate over the symbol, and the case brings up some interesting arguments about who should have the right to a symbol that has existed for thousands of years.

Design site aiga.org has a fantastic recap and article on the debate:

But where did it begin? The International Committee of the Red Cross was established in 1863 in Switzerland. The following year it adopted the red cross as its symbol by reversing the colors of the Swiss flag.

The ARC argues that it began using the red cross as its emblem in 1881, five years before Johnson & Johnson was founded. According to an ARC statement, “J&J obtained a trademark registration in 1887, but did not object to the Red Cross use of the emblem at that time.”

But the American Red Cross was not officially chartered by Congress until 1900, and only after an amendment in 1905 was its right to the emblem declared. Lobbyists for J&J fought and failed to make their own specific rights to the cross clear.

After the Johnstown flood in 1889, when the ARC was active in helping survivors, some companies attempted to cash in on the red-cross symbol. During World War II, the ARC also charged companies with infringement. The ARC has recently sent stern warnings to walk-in clinics and other organizations that use the red cross. But it’s nearly impossible to stop them all. The other day I passed a sign bearing the legend “First Care” accompanied by the numeral one nestling against a red cross to form a sort of logo. It turned out to be simply a doctor’s office, the kind of use that’s likely to remain beyond control.

Of course, the other great Red Cross debate has always been: What symbol do we use where Christianity ain't the thing?

Poorly conceived ideas in youth marketing

This has shitty written all over it.

Sez the Globe,

State authorities tomorrow will unveil a glowing, gyrating website called the84.org that's targeted at adolescents, with film clips of anti smoking ads made by kids, and an invitation to "peep" or see the winners. It's designed to dissuade youths from smoking -- and to encourage them to quit if they've already started.

Ideas like this -- bureaucratic stabs at being hip -- are usually misinformed, and poorly done. This site has that down pat, with section headers like "Truthenize," and a giant Snowboarder under the phrase "Yo, it beats smoking." 'Cuz snowboarding is the illest, yo, right?

(Oh, and what's that? A launch party with GOVERNOR DEVAL PATRICK????? HE'S SOOOO DREAMY!)

But it's even worse when the site's address makes less sense than it's content. The 84? Huh?

"Because 84 percent of teenagers in school don't smoke," said John Auerbach, the state's public health commissioner. "This came from the young people themselves. The impression many young people have is that the majority of teenagers smoke.

"They felt it was important to have a name that suggested the vast majority of young people don't smoke -- that the norm is not smoking."

Ohhh, so the "young people" came up with it. Well gee, then it makes perfect sense. I'm surprised he didn't use the word "tubes."

Seriously, if anyone thinks a website conceived by Public Health officials -- no matter how much input or "user submitted content" comes from teens; no matter how many clever slogans they use--is going to stop teen smoking, they've got to find another line of work. Those crazy adolescents see right through this BS.

State unveils website

Worst accents ever

Brilliant compilation (with clips) of some of the worst movie accents of all time. My vote for all-time worst didn't even make the list: The Russian mobsters in Boondock Saints.

Still, Tommy Lee Jones' accent in Blown Away almost made Jeff Bridges look legit. And that takes skill.


Wost Film Accents [via BoingBoing]

The Daily SkittleBrau: Things that don't go together

• Jackass has got nothing on these guys. A homemade 500-foot Slip-N-Slide so freakin' intense, they built a 24-foot pool at the bottom. Are you surprised they were drinking when they came up with the idea? Are you surprised that I'm jealous?
• I appreciate the thought behind this seat made only for a man, but we're not all...built the same down there, if ya know what I mean. Cough.
• This is the gang sign for the Gangster Disciples. And this is the new Virginia ad campaign. And this is an embarrassed tourism board.
• Government pays a cool $1 million for two 19-cent washers. But it's not their fault. No, no, no. It's the hardware store that overbilled the government for $20 million or so over a decade. One of the owners faces 20-years in prison, and her twin sister committed suicide after being questioned by investigators. I'd love if I could use this logic at Fenway: "Nine bucks for a beer? I'm pressing charges!"
• And if you haven't seen the not-nearly-infamous-enough infomercial for the TimeLife Soft Rock collection hosted by Air Supply, you've been missing out. I caught it in a hotel room a few months ago, and couldn't stop watching. We're talking Top. Grade. Cheese. "Oh the memories," indeed. You really have to watch the full thing to get a sense of how far these guys have fallen.

A Matrix wrapped in a simulation engulfed in suspended reality

"Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself." -Morpheus, The Matrix

The NY Times has never freaked me out more with a feature.

"Until I talked to Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University, it never occurred to me that our universe might be somebody else’s hobby. I hadn’t imagined that the omniscient, omnipotent creator of the heavens and earth could be an advanced version of a guy who spends his weekends building model railroads or overseeing video-game worlds like the Sims.

But now it seems quite possible. In fact, if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. Bostrom’s, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation.

This simulation would be similar to the one in “The Matrix,” in which most humans don’t realize that their lives and their world are just illusions created in their brains while their bodies are suspended in vats of liquid. But in Dr. Bostrom’s notion of reality, you wouldn’t even have a body made of flesh. Your brain would exist only as a network of computer circuits.

You couldn’t, as in “The Matrix,” unplug your brain and escape from your vat to see the physical world. You couldn’t see through the illusion except by using the sort of logic employed by Dr. Bostrom, the director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford.

Dr. Bostrom assumes that technological advances could produce a computer with more processing power than all the brains in the world, and that advanced humans, or “posthumans,” could run “ancestor simulations” of their evolutionary history by creating virtual worlds inhabited by virtual people with fully developed virtual nervous systems."

My only question: Red pill or blue pill?

Fraudulent War on Liquid turns One: ABC says still needed

When I flew back from San Diego last week, the couple behind me at security "forgot" they had left their shampoo, cologne, water, wine and a few other liquids in their carry on bag. The TSA drone on staff berated them, taunted them, and let them go on their way. Sans liquids, of course. Those "dangerous" containers - which were banned from flights because the government claims they could hold chemicals that in a certain configuration could blow up a plane - were chucked into a wastebasket on top of dozens of other bottles.

It's been a full year since the so-called War on Liquid began, and it's still as much of a joke as ever. Blogs (most notably BoingBoing and Bruce Schneier) have exhaustively covered how the ban makes absolutely zero sense, in so many ways. You can buy flammable alcohol AFTER security checkpoints; you can sneak fluids on in your pockets; and liquids are simply being thrown away in unsecure bans, allowing passengers to pick them up again.

"The point of taking away your liquid isn't to make airplanes safe, it's to simultaneously make you afraid (of terrorists with magic water-bombs) and then make you feel safe (because the government is fighting off the magic water-bombs). It's what Bruce Schneier calls "security theater."

That's because, as several chemists have written, it is nigh impossible to make an effective bomb out of the liquids the government is forbidding people to take on planes.

"A mix of H2O2 and H2SO4, commonly called "piranha bath", is used in orgo labs around the world for cleaning the last traces out of organic material out of glassware when you need it *really* clean -- thus, many people who work around organic labs are familiar with it. When you mix it, it heats like mad, which is a common thing when you mix concentrated sulfuric acid with anything. It is very easy to end up with a spattering mess. You don't want to be around the stuff in general. Here, have a look at a typical warning list from a lab about the stuff.

Now you may protest "but terrorists who are willing to commit suicide aren't going to be deterred by being injured while mixing their precursor chemicals!" -- but of course, determination isn't the issue here, getting the thing done well enough to make the plane go boom is the issue. There is also the small matter of explaining to the guy next to you what you're doing, or doing it in a tiny airplane bathroom while the plane jitters about.

But the government persists, and tonight on ABC World News, they showed video (viewable at the link) and interviewed officials to "prove" why the liquid ban is so necessary.

"I think that the plot, in terms of its intent, was looking at devastation on a scale that would have rivaled 9/11," [Homeland Security head Michael] Chertoff told ABC's Pierre Thomas. "If they had succeeded in bringing liquid explosives on seven or eight aircraft, there could have been thousands of lives lost and an enormous economic impact with devastating consequences for international air travel."

That video---from a test conducted at a government contractor---hardly replicated what a potential terrorist would be able to do in a practical situation. The chemicals needed, in the quantity needed, would still be a)impractical; b)unstable; or c)could be detected through other means. Simply limiting passengers to 3 oz bottles does nothing, but the government says that the ban could continue indefinitely. Makes plenty of sense.

THIS JUST IN: Barry Bonds is a MACHINE!

This is a new one to me. Editor and Publisher claims that Barry Bonds' HR record is not only steroid aided...it's the result of a mechanical asistance device.

"Beyond his alleged steroid use, Barry Bonds is unquestionably guilty of the use of something that confers extraordinarily unfair mechanical advantage: the “armor” that he wears on his right elbow....by my estimate, Bonds’ front arm “armor” has contributed no fewer than 75 to 100 home runs to his already steroid-questionable total." - Michael Witte

Part of me wants to call BS on this, as it seems to be grasping at straws to find any possible explanation for Bonds' power surge....but the inveterate Barry Bonds' critic in me latches on to any bit of 'F-him' that it can find.

Make of it what you will. Barry Bonds' Home Run Record Tainted by Mechanical Device.

Comic Con and Beer

Almost a month since I've posted?

For shame.

I got back on Monday from the nerd-gasm Mecca known as San Diego Comic Con. Seriously, if you haven't been there, make a point to go once: It's the only place in the world you'll take a piss next to Seth Green at a Hyatt bar, and five minutes later walk by a full blown light saber battle while a fat Wolverine and the Burger King King look on. Or maybe it was the Legoish Star Wars characters

Or maybe a naked out-of-work superhero is more your speed. Two shitty Supermen who look like they're out of a bad Mexican remake? Princess Leia and Alice out of Wonderland?

Bizarre

To be fair, it's not just 200,000 video game/Star Wars reenacters in a convention hall comparing body odors and lucky Captain Kirk socks. I spent some time again this year with Dave Mandel, part of the brains behind Eurotrip, (which informed our college years' humor more than it should have), several SNL skits(including the infamous Bill Clinton in McDonalds routine), a few seasons of Seinfeld, and now an Executive Producer for Curb Your Enthusiasm. Really a fantastically down-to-earth guy with a great sensibility of "funny." And definitely a counter balance to some other attendees.

Anway, Pog Form should be back in the swing of things now that I've partly recovered.

Works Every Time
In the meantime, be sure to check out Tales of Colt 45 -- a very cool ad campaign put together by my good friend Jim Mahfood. I have a particular (selfish) interest here: In my side gig as an Artist's rep, I negotiated Jim's deal with the ad agency for the project.

Enjoy.

Skittlebrau: Stuff that doesn't go together anywhere but here

• Need a domain? It's a pain in the ass to figure one out, especially with guys like this buying up all the good ones. But Bust a Name makes finding a domain name...fun somehow. How many variations of porn can you come up with? [via CNet]
• This dude shaved his eyebrows. (For a bet? Jesus? Peace?) Now you can watch him ramble about everything while they grow back. As exciting as watching eyebrows grow.
• Perpetual motion/energy is science's version of street-corner, Jesus-sandwich board wearing preachers who KNOW you are going to hell if you don't accept their word. Pure bunk. So I don't know why everyone keeps giving Steorn's Orbo (the "free energy" machine that they were going to demonstrate in an art machine before all the prototypes simaltaneously 'broke') so much press, but if you want to see a snake oil saleseman squirm, Wired has been doing a fantastic job covering the story.
• How meta. Auction site owners want to sell auction site they founded because they thought eBay sucked. Where do they turn to sell it? EBay.
• Dear Sisqo: Thongthongtho-thongthongthong. Sincerely, Scott.

Be Mine, Optimus Prime

I've been busy lately, so I'll let Dethroner speak for me:

"That’s how I feel about robots fighting. I know it’s juvenile. I know it’s going to be an awful movie. I just can’t help it. I’m gay for robots fighting. And I want those robots to fight inside of me."

Sigh. I couldn't agree more. And I feel the same way about Indiana Jones, Die Hard, and just about every other bit of shlock coming out.

Although...this takes on a MUCH different meaning when you remember the original Transformers, Grapple & Hoist, below.

Japanese gameshow blowout!!!

At the risk of turning into an all-Japan, all-the-time blog....here are a few more great Japanese game show clips that need to make it to this side of the ocean soon. A definite trend of outright corporal punishment that would never fly here, but hilarious nonetheless.

A quick sampling:

• Say a tongue twister. Fail, and you get slammed in the nuts.
• Watch a video of someone learning English. Laugh and you get caned and kicked out.
• Actually, there's a series of these, all reminiscent of a Comedy Central show five years back, but with corporal punishment. Do Not Laugh #1, Do Not Laugh in a locker room, and so on.
• Choose the wrong card, and have something painful/bizarre done to you. (This is an entire series called "Silent Library")
• Mushroom gets dropped on girls' heads. Girls freak out.
• Naked guy jumps in boiling water in order to get nearly naked girl's bikini to..uhh..jiggle. I don't get it either.
• Answer a question. Get it wrong(or not quick enough) and get a 10 foot soccer ball rolled onto you.
• Kiss a smelly butt.
  

Enjoy.

Happy and Scrappy

Welcome HappyScrappy readers.

Excuse the mess as we renovate.

And don't forget to check your bases at the door.

Human Tetris

Godbless those imported Asian gameshows---right now I'm all about "Ninja Warriors;" the dubbed over "Most Extreme Challenge" was a college favorite. It's something about the bizarre physical challenges and insane mix of contestants that makes for better TV than anything Mark Burnett could dream up in that crazy little head of his.

But nothing compares to Human Tetris. I don't even have words to describe it, but this is just about the funniest thing I've seen in a while. Wait until the Andre the Giant-esque MMA fighter is forced to do a high leg kick. Now THAT's TV.



Can someone import this now please? Thanks.

Off to see the Wizard.....

This is sad news.

Mr. Wizard is dead....

Don Herbert, we knew ye well.