Tuesday, July 31
It's more Fun with Found Audio -- this time from the folks at the Audio Kitchen, on WFMU Jersey City. (By the way: if you haven't heard WFMU, do yourself a favor and check out their ultra-snappy website, which features a lovely live audio stream. The station's mix of music, non-music and aural miscellania is utterly captivating and unpredictable and weird, and when was the last time you could say any of those things about a radio station? But don't take my word for it: it's also the radio home of Michelle Boule and Irwin Chusid's Incorrect Music Hour, which ought to be enough for anybody.)
Forget the time it must have taken to create something like Dictionaroke, where "The fun of karaoke meets the word power of the dictionary." Forget the near-genius level of invention required to even think of a site like this. Then just sit back admire the thing's attention to detail. I particularly love the careful stereo separation that has "Elton John" and "Kiki Dee" on right and left channel, respectively, for "Don't Go Breakin' My Heart." (Requires an MP3 player. I like Sonic Foundry's Siren. Link via little.yellow.different.)
So let me see if I've got this straight: According to Reuters, the most important story of the hour is that the guy nominated to be head of the FBI thinks the FBI is neat. The seventh-most-important story of the hour is that there may be life in outer space.
Can't you see that fooding television is the most uplifting shows, of Japan! In Japan, televisioning can only be more bad than in America now! The article can say no less. Must you agree? Linking via Obscure Store!
Irrefutable proof that cheerleaders are evil.
Mariah Carey is still hospitalized for exhaustion, and doctors are starting to get a clearer idea of what caused her condition. A spokesman at an unidentified New York hospital told Reuters that Carey is suffering from "Patti Labelle's Syndrome," a rare malady that results from excess oxygen being forced to the brain during oversinging. "It's similar to nitrogen narcosis in that it causes disorientation and impaired reasoning, so of course it went undetected in Ms. Carey for a very long time," the spokesman said. "Fortunately one of her managers began to suspect that something was wrong when Ms. Carey asked him how he was feeling, and told him his new haircut 'looked nice.' They rushed her right in." The spokesman went on to say that the hospital hadn't seen such a pronounced case of Labelle's Syndrome since Celine Dion played Madison Square Garden, and concluded: "We're keeping a bed open for Christina Aguilera just in case."
When hair plugs go bad.
As a public service, allow me to summarize this wire story. The following toys are deadly: Hourglass Space Sprout, Look For Me Bumblebee, Rattling Paddling Riverboat, Scooter Bug, Winky Tinky Ebola Man, Mr. Muzzy Wuzzy Live Nuclear Warhead and My First Deli Slicer. Also, Burger King apparently encloses its playgrounds in shark netting. That is all.
eBay has filed a trademark-infringement lawsuit against a competitor, BidBay. The suit charges that the smaller site and its owner, George "Uncle" Tannous, "have mimicked eBay's brands to leverage eBay's reputation and (used) eBay's marks as attention-getting devices for their own marketing purposes." That BidBay stole their look, in other words. Gee, I don't know. I don't think they look anything alike at all. But you be the judge.
Dept. of Irony: Tannous bought the BidBay domain for $1000... on eBay.
Monday, July 30
NoRelevance is a lovely site, a safe place on the Web for what site owner Art Thompson calls "some of the mountains of graphical ephemera that I collect." Thompson, a New York City web designer, is one of those guys who has the eye of a scholar and the passion of a fan, and uses them to celebrate low culture, and exalt it. Current feature: the lost and beautiful world of 45-rpm record label design. (Link via Zeldman.)
This is what it sounds like... when dogs laugh. (Via Follow Me Here.)
It's a little grand to call this an "exhibition," and a little unnecessary. Isn't it enough that this University of Nevada, Las Vegas web site collects dozens of photos of Dean Martin in his Las Vegas prime? It's enough for me. Elsewhere on the UNLV site, there's this look at the Xanadu -- the swankiest hotel-casino that never got built.
Eighty percent of Americans feel that kids are more spoiled today than a decade ago. 75% say today's kids have fewer chores to do than children did 10 or 15 years ago, and 48% feel children have too much say in family decisions. The poll was commissioned by Time and CNN, and was based on interviews with 1,015 Americans over 83, 100% of whom also told interviewers to "Get off my porch" and reported unprompted that "Everything was better before the war" and "I can't understand this crap they call music today, with the hip-hopping and the bip-bopping," and further added: "That's just noise."
Y'all want some recombinant coleslaw with that? It turns out that genetically-engineered pigs are not only scientifically significant, but they "taste real good."
Yahoo has begun an experiment with pop-under ads. You know what I say? Great. Good for them. It's their right.
If Charlie Sheen's house didn't do it for you, maybe Wilt Chamberlain's will. It's pretty much as Wilt left it -- mirrored shower, foot-of-the-bed hot tub, swimming-pool moat -- but his executor did remove the room-sized waterbed floor in the playroom, because (I love this) it was apparently the one thing in the house that female buyers found repellent. Wilt's own description says it all: "A little kinky, with kinky details." $4.3 million drives it off the lot.
Saturday, July 28
A Colorado Springs physicist is looking for a volunteer to help in his research into the Shroud of Turin. The volunteer should be 5'10" tall, about 175 pounds, and be willing to travel and be crucified. (Thanks to Ron Givens for the link.)
AOL Time Warner is deeply, deeply troubled by the privacy implications of Microsoft Passport. AOL Time Warner doesn't think a huge, soulless multinational infoglob should be the guardian of your personal data. Unless it's them.
Via Linkalog, dig the swanky song stylings of Phil the Tremelo King.
Honeynet -- fighting computer crime from the spare bedroom of a house somewhere in the Chicago suburbs.
Friday, July 27
Jared Fogle, the once-rotund not-an-actor who shills for Subway, is trying to put some rumors to rest. He didn't die, he never stapled his stomach, and he hasn't zoomed back up to 800 pounds. On a tour of Subway outlets in the Midwest, Fogle started to tell the Des Moines Register "I think it's hyster--", but then blinked out of existence when his fifteen minutes of fame suddenly ran out.
Disney to Anaheim: "Nice little town you got here. Be a shame if something was to... happen to it."
I'm coming to this one a week late, but it's just too good to ignore: Via follow me here, an astounding story about the doodles made by Politburo members during meetings with Stalin (this is Joseph Stalin, now), and the comments Stalin made on them. I don't know what impresses me more: that guys across the table from one of the bloodiest murderers in human history actually doodled, or that Stalin's control freakery was so strong that he had to blue-pencil them.
Somebody please tell me this is a hoax, and tell me quick, because I've got Child Welfare on hold.
From NewScientist.com, which seems to be the place to go for wacky science news, here's a prototype for a shirt that rolls up its own sleeves when the wearer gets hot. The secret is fibers woven of nitinol, which is apparently not an over-the-counter sleeping pill but an alloy with the capacity to retain memory of its conformation into various shapes. "The alloy can be deformed, and then returned to its original shape when heated to a certain temperature," NewScientist says, and goes on to quote Susan Clowes, a spokeswoman for the shirt's developer: "Even if the fabric is screwed up into a ball, pleated and creased, a blast from a hairdryer pops it back to its former shape." But then NewScientist goes too far, its eyes getting all wide and crazy as it burbles that the shirt can even "be 'ironed' as you are wearing it." Blather does not recommend this.
But I want it now: The PDA you buy in 2003 may consist entirely of a small sheet of glass.
Just a month after SiliconValley.com reported that the ubiquitous and obnoxious X-10.com pop-under ads were actually working, here comes NewsBytes to say that they aren't. The story cites a Jupiter Media Matrix finding that, of pop-ups, pop-unders and several other types of Web ads, pop-unders are not only the ones that piss people off the most, in the case of the X-10 camera ads they aren't even effective. The discrepancy between the two news stories apparently stems from inadequate analysis of click-throughs: "While Jupiter Media Metrix cannot track sales of cameras resulting in online visits, the company can track the number of times a user goes into 'secure mode,' passing into an encrypted part of the site where sales can take place. And that number is so small it can't even be accurately counted."
Today's word of the day at the invaluable Word Spy is "blurb whore," which is actually two words, but never mind. Author Paul McFedries traces the root word "blurb" to humorist Gelett Burgess, who also coined the fabulous word "tintiddle" to describe a witty retort thought of too late. In my opinion this is the real money word today, so I'm honoring McFedries' request that his readers pass it along. That word again: Tintiddle. Use it wisely.
I only wish you could see the photos that went with the print version of this LA Times story about an all-nude open-mic night at a Venice coffeehouse. A naked lawyer is gabbing cheerily away at two decidedly non-naked women, who look back at him with a determinedly level gaze that says "You are not a fruitcake, you are just a normal person who has made an unorthodox lifestyle choice, and I am not going to allow my eyes to dip just a bit, I am not, I am notAAAAUUUUUGHGGHHHHH!!!" Sometimes the Web editions just don't do these stories justice. (Oh, by the way? The next time I wonder why the rest of the country thinks Californians are soulless, godless freaks, I'll just read this story again.)
Thursday, July 26
None dare call it logrolling: Scrubbles is a swell site, and not only because it has nice things to say about Blather. I'm particularly fond of their affectionate look at the art of futurist extraordinaire Syd Mead, whose "Wonderwall" concept painting is a pure, uncut hunk of wah-wah-pedaling early-'70s bachelor pad swank. (For more on Mead, visit his authorized site.)
The good public citizens at Philip Morris have apologized for last month's study finding that premature death from smoking is a big money-saver, or at least have apologized for the fact that it leaked. The statement says in part: "No one benefits from the very real, serious and significant diseases caused by smoking."
Oh, I don't know.
"Well, it's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon. Over at the Chatterbox the old guys were, hang on, my left arm's throbbing. And it feels like there's a belt tightening around my chest. You probably can't hear how alarmed I am because I'm continuing to talk in the same breathy, almost unmodulated voice, but I can assure you that at this moment I'm in the most excruciating pain of my life. I'm feeling nausea now, and starting to sweat, and yet I can still look out over the footlights and see you all looking at me with that pleased, expectant expression on your broad Midwestern faces, because from the absolutely unchanged timbre of my voice you don't have any indication that I'm quite short of breath, and there's the lightheadedness, don't you know. I'm feeling quite fatigued now, and the soothing rhythm of my voice is almost certainly no indication to you all that a long tunnel of white light is sort of spiraling out into the distance straight ahead of me, and I can see my great-grandfather Jack and great-grandmother Eleanor at the end of it, and all the dogs I had as a boy, and now I'm cold, so terribly terribly cold, so while I slump over my stool and add up all my good and bad deeds and pray for forgiveness, here's Butch Thompson."
There will always be an England, but there will no longer be free croissants at the BBC.
Coming soon from Ebrary, it's Ebrarian 1.0 -- victim of the worst brand name since Spontex.
The Queen Mother, just shy of 101, has told friends she wants to be Britain's oldest woman. When an observer pointed out in jest that this would mean murdering several Britons who are already older than 101, the Queen Mother reportedly blinked like a lizard and said "And... ?"
Via Siliconvalley.com, news of a fire sale on domain names. I guess the thinking is that since the bottom's dropped out, once-desirable domains are going begging. But gee, if "Hamburger.net" isn't an evergreen, what is? ($25,000 drives it off the lot! Marked down, down, DOWN from $50,000! They're blowing it out to the four walls, with plenty of free parking and balloons for the kiddies! So drive on down, where the 605 and the 405 meet to form the 1010!)
Asian Bastard, one of the best-written, best-looking and generally coolest weblogs, has bitten the dust, apparently as a result of a beef between AB and his webhost. It'll be missed.
Wednesday, July 25
Today's New York Times has an article about, and recipe for, the caipirinha, which is the national cocktail of Brazil. (Requires free login and password.) The article is full of fascinating caipirinha-related tidbits, like the fact that the secret ingredient is a liquor called cachaca, which is derived from the juice of sugar cane; and that the recipe calls for limes and sugar to be muddled together with a long-stemmed pestle, although you can also use the stubbier variety you surely have in your home, if you're a 19th-century pharmacist. None of these is the salient fact about the caipirinha, though. The salient fact about the caipirinha is that it induces a very, very specific set of neurological reactions. I have some experience in this area, and can quantify these reactions as follows:1) Sip. 2) Raise eyebrows approvingly. 3) Sip more deeply. 4) Eat beef off a big honkin' skewer. 4) Drain glass. 5) Turn to dinner companions and say "This is good. Why, it tastes just like a refreshing limeade. Waiter!" 6) Make a circling "One more round" gesture over the table. 7) Repeat steps 1-6 anywhere from three to eleven times. 8) Wake up the next morning in a patch of weeds by the airport.
Don't say you weren't warned. Salud!
If you haven't had a good solid jolt of Nukefear lately, this will fix you right up: Conelrad's Live.365 stream of A-bomb-related pop tunes. Includes the hits "Crawl Out Through The Fallout" (1960) by Sheldon Allman, Warren Smith's 1958 "Uranium Rock" and "Advice to Joe" (1951) by Roy Acuff ("Here's a question Mr. Stalin and it's you who must decide/When atomic bombs start falling do you have a place to hide?"). This is amazing stuff, and it proves either that pop music has always been a good way to address society's deepest concerns, or that singers and songwriters haven't yet found something so scary they can't try to make a buck off it. (Playlist is here; follow along!)
"Dat no-good mon been cheatin' on you, baby, he been sneakin' 'round wit' another dead woman behind your back": The company behind TV psychic Miss Cleo is being sued by the Attorney General of Missouri, who charges among other things that dead people are being billed for readings.
The brilliant comedy minds behind USA Today's fictional "Whitney Matheson" (see background here, here and here) have scored again. The current "Whitney Matheson" column is a dead-on spoof of weekly journohacks hitting their midsummer doldrums, finding it hard to focus, and ending up with columns about how hard it is to focus -- a trick every grade school kid knows by heart. In fact, the "Whitney" collective has done its work almost too well. If one didn't know that the fictive "Whitney" is actually a group of accomplished comedy writers engaged in a running parody, one might reach the end of the column and wonder: "What was this thing supposed to be about?" As a comic exercise, though, and a deadly piece of satire, it's flawless.
You know those cute, sweet curly little lucky bamboo plants that are all the rage? You know how you got one for your grandma and she melted and told you you were the best, most thoughtful grandchild ever, and she took it home and gave it pride of place in her lace-curtained, cookie-smelling kitchen? Remember those cute curly little green devils? Guess what? They're RAGING VECTORS OF VIRAL INFECTION. Have you, ummm... talked to Grandma lately?
News from the frontiers of law enforcement: A special agent of the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center -- you know, FBINIPC -- infected several private-sector computers this week when he passed along the rapidly-spreading SirCam worm. According to NewsBytes, FBINIPC (pronounced "Fibby-Nippick") is the FBI division that -- yes! -- investigates and responds to technology-based threats against U.S. critical infrastructures. Damn. And things have been going so well for the FBI lately.
Tuesday, July 24
Ahora, es un otro Tricka de Web Stupido... Blather en Espanol! Y muchos, muchos gracias al bueno caballeros al "Google" para este "cool" methodo de wastando tiempo! Es literalio horas y horas de "fun" estupidisimo!
Oh, here's a good idea: Two Congressmen want to require the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to establish a new top-level domain, ".kids," which would be analogous to the children's section of the public library. The legislation would require ICANN, which has been criticized in the past for its autocratic ways, to set up the new TLD within 30 days, to decide which applicants qualify as "kid-friendly," and then to police content guidelines.
Via Asian Bastard... Ewwww.
From the AP: "A fire that started in a candle shop destroyed six buildings early Tuesday in the historic Calico Ghost Town [Calif.].... The cause was under investigation, but the fire appeared to have started in the Basket and Candle Shop." Shopowner Luanne Baxley, sobbing, told the wire service that "Business had been going so good lately, too, especially since we shortened our name from 'The Tiny, Close-Quartered Highly Flammable Wicker Basket and Perpetually-Burning Leaping-Flamed Candle Shop.'"
2001: A Coffee Odyssey fills me with a warm feeling, indulging as it does the unspoken truth that every coffee drinker knows in his pounding heart and throbbing head, which is that coffee is not only a physiological but a psychological addiction, every single bit of the experience being fascinating -- the first blast of aroma that hits you when you crack the door to the coffee bar, the whoosh of the espresso machine, the whir of the grinder, the very tactile sensation when the first slightly gritty swallow of espresso hits the back of your throat, and oh God I probably shouldn't have had that extra shot this morning, just go to this site and read it, read it, rea
Headline-writing 101: Which version of the Patrick Ewing story would you read first?...
The New York Times:
Ewing Testifies in Racketeering Trial
In case you left the room for a minute, here's a quick recap: Anniston and Pitt not expecting, Harrison not dying, Jacksons not normal. Can we all go on with our lives now? Thank you.
Here's a followup to last week's item about the poor, power-strapped state of California being so lousy with excess megawatt-hours that it was selling them on the spot market for huge losses. It turns out that you can put a price on panic buying, and that price is $14 million.
Okay, here's the thing. I'm as big a fan of "Vanishing Americana" stories as anybody. But when I read stuff like this, in an AP piece about baton-twirlers in Texas..."The silver rod flashes between her fingers like a propeller. She tosses it high and pirouettes several times beneath, meeting it in time and space as if it were a bird lighting softly. Instantly, she leaps away and strikes another graceful pose, always spinning the baton."
...my mind drifts to the Vanishing Wire-Service Editor who should have whapped this guy upside the head with a #2 pencil, but didn't, probably because he was too busy wondering if he was still going to have a job the next day.
Monday, July 23
Blather now features permalinks for your linking pleasure. (Note: This is an arcane feature that will appeal only to webloggers, and maybe not even them. For the rest of you -- err, carry on.)
Second acts, Pt. II: Hmmm. Three days ago Jonathan Alter writes on MSNBC.com that "Last Sunday’s gigantic New York Times article on overseas absentee military ballots in Florida is already lining bird cages, an example of what happens when a big story doesn’t catch fire." Today, in a promotional mailing to NYTimes.com subscribers, editor Bernard Gwertzman concludes: "On the news front, in case you missed it, The New York Times conducted a six-month investigation into how absentee ballots were handled in Florida in the contested election last November. Read the full report." Maybe the thinking around the Times is that NYTimes.com represents the last best hope to get some traction under this story. If so, it suggests another chapter in the evolving relationship of old and new media: the new as not just a brand extension of the old, but in a sense its savior. Cool. Oh, by the way, you know what else would be cool? If the web site of the most prestigious newspaper in the world didn't stun its readers senseless with noxious, rage-inducing pop-under ads. But maybe that's for another time.
Wonderful piece in today's New York Times about Booked Up, Larry McMurtry's huge used-book store in Archer City, and the author's dream to turn the small Texas town into a bookselling mecca. (Requires free New York Times login and password.) McMurtry seems to be a gruffly plainspoken type, and if his Luddite assertion that he's proud to have no personal access to the Internet smacks a little too much of self-conscious mythbuilding, he still comes across as the sort of bookdealer you'd want to have in your town. (FULL DISCLOSURE: The author of the Times piece, John Schwartz, is an old friend of mine. Also, I am married to a Texan. Also, a former boss of mine, and for that matter of John's, is married to an Archer City woman who purportedly was the model for a character in "The Last Picture Show." Also, I have seen the miniseries version of, but not read the book version of, "Lonesome Dove" and admired it very much; however, screenwriter Bill Wittliff's screenplay for "The Perfect Storm" irritated me no end. Also, I have spent a certain amount of time in Texas, my wife and I once having driven several hundred miles to Amarillo for the express purpose of eating biscuits.)
Coca-Cola has brought back the guy behind the New Coke debacle. So maybe there are second acts in American life... or maybe it's just that there are no limits to how badly you can screw up before you get your big ol' white butt tossed out of the executive suite for good.
A Frito-Lay spokescreature, commenting on reports that some of the food giant's products may be tainted with toxins ranging from gasoline to the degreasing solvent perchlorethylene, said that complaints from consumers are "extremely rare" -- on the order of .012%. She might have, but did not, correlate the low incidence of complaints by Frito-Lay consumers with the extremely high rate of short-term memory loss. Also lack of muscle coordination, internal bleeding, aortic aneurysm, renal failure and "tasting gasoline in my mouth when I eat Fritos."
Sunday, July 22
Jeez, I don't think it looks so bad... you know, considering that it's Hell.
Mmmmm... pointy.
"I don't care. Arrest me. 20 years from now I'll be the richest dork in the history of the planet. Heh heh. Heh. Heh heh heh. Heh heh. Heh."
This discussion on one of the Yahoo music-shopping boards is hilarious... and provides proof, as if anybody needed it, that Huey Lewis & The News are still a powerfully divisive force in American society.
Saturday, July 21
How does a movie like "Montana" slide so thoroughly under the radar that you can see it on HBO on a slow Saturday night, expecting nothing, and be knocked out? How does a movie with a cast that includes Stanley Tucci, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Kyra Sedgwick and Robbie Coltrane go so unnoticed? How can you not love a movie that has a scene in which a professional killer is being forced to dig her own grave and a small boy wanders by and asks brightly: "Whatcha doing? Diggin' a hole?" Sly script, deadpan direction, black humor to burn... and as of this writing, $2.99 used at Amazon.
Fun with American history: The Hilton hotels were considered such a sterling example of postwar capitalism that some were actually built with money from the Marshall Plan. That's just one of the cool facts excavated in a new book about the role of the Hiltons in Cold War propaganda. Author Annabel Jane Wharton quotes Conrad Hilton: "Each of our hotels is a little America, (built) to show the countries most exposed to communism the other side of the coin." It sure must have seemed like a good idea at the time, although the time when a huge, glassy, air-conditioned box was thought to represent the best of America seems long ago and far away -- as irretrievable as the swanky design now obscured under the bland facades of the chain hotels that used to be the jewels in the Hilton crown. (Requires free New York Times login and password.)
Elmer Henderson died last week. I'd never heard of him either, but he was one of those little-known figures who wrestled history around into a different direction. You learn about the most amazing people reading obits.
I don't know about you, but if I were a 94-year-old quadruple Oscar winner, the very first thing I would want the world to know is that I had a urinary tract infection.
We all knew the world was shrinking, but it now seems possible to encompass the whole thing in 180,000 square feet. Well, the food, anyway, at Jungle Jim's International Farmer's Market in Fairfield, OH, "Where grocery shopping is an adventure." (The original drafts of the slogan, "Where grocery shopping is a nightmare" and "Where grocery shopping is an acid trip gone awry," tested poorly.) Demographers tell us that the American palate is changing and Jungle Jim's seems to be the proof. "We used to get complaints from international customers that our cashiers were looking at their fish heads funny," owner Jim Bonaminio tells abcnews.com. "Now everyone's accustomed to 'em." Maybe so. But I don't believe I will ever get accustomed to the Giant Mushroom produce canopy.
Kottke.org's photos of London reminded me to put up this picture, of a playground just east of the Millenium Wheel in Southwark. Conclusion: those London toddlers are tough.
Friday, July 20
God bless Iggy Pop. (Best line: "The paper did not say why Pop wanted the dwarves.")
Via common street trash, here's an archive of vintage comic-book ads. Gloriously cheesy products, supersaturated colors, migraine-inducing teeny type... you can practically smell the ink. And man, dig those ugly-ass Bruno Magli Juicemobiles.
Wait a second. If them aliens is so smart, how do we know they aren't faking the signatures? I mean, hell, a super-intelligent race of alien masterminds from out of space -- they could probably learn to forge my John Hancock pretty good. I better wait. Better not sign. Better just kinda... hunker down. Go off the grid for awhile. Lay in some canned goods, some gold bullion and a box or two of Teflon-coated .357s... Yeah. Better wait. Yeah. Wait. Yeah.
Flash: Time Travel is Real! Want to journey back a whole year? Go to the Columbia Journalism Review's page of U.S. newspaper links and click on the link for the Philadelphia Daily News. But be prepared to be whisked away to a magical wonderworld where it's still last summer and the Republicans are converging on The City of Brotherly Love to nominate-- well, I'd hate to spoil the fun.
Humbug and flapdoodle: Slate's Michael Kinsley on the demagoguery behind the perennial non-issue of a flag-burning amendment: "I deplore (flag-burning) no more than I would the burning of a copy of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution or a model of the Lincoln Memorial. The flag is the least American of our patriotic icons. Its design says nothing distinctive about us except that we were 13 colonies and are now 50 states. Flag worship is the emptiest form of patriotism. It has no direct connection to the values that really make America exceptional."
The Gate's Mark Morford on the Webbys... and, from the archives, a piece on the upside of the dotcom bust, which is that it allows entertaining eccentrics like "Jesus" and "Peter Pan" to claim their share of the spotlight. Morford is the guy behind The Gate's wonderful "Morning Fix," from which I frequentlystealborrow, and you can too, by signing up here. (By the way, congrats and an honorary Webby to Mark for actually getting two columns out of one awards show.)
Thursday, July 19
Now who says Louisiana ain't colorful, hear? Police in Bayou Blue nabbed a naked man on charges that he robbed the store where he worked, boosted a car, stole a dog and just generally lived the lyrics of a bad country song. Oh yeah: he was naked, see, in the hopes that he would be invisible to the cops. Well, hell, if that's all it took I never would have gotten arrested that time at Fenway Park.
Wow. Irony. Historical irony. GM, after a $10 million gift to the Smithsonian Institution, is about to get a major exhibition space named after it -- the General Motors Hall of Transportation, which will house a $20 million "America On the Move" exhibit of cars, trains and motorcycles. Hmm... I wonder if they'll save any space for the Red Cars.Well, maybe that's a cheap shot. There's genuine disagreement about whether GM engaged in a conspiracy starting in the late 1930s to buy up and dismantle interurban rail lines around the country, and so promote sales of automobiles. Among others, The Straight Dope doesn't buy it; among others, the conspiracy-minded folks at disinfo.com do. The story also figured prominently in the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" Me, I don't know... Does it really seem likely that a huge corporation would engage in ruthless anti-competitive practices to crush its business rivals?
There's so much good stuff in this brief abstract that it's barely necessary to read the full Philadelphia Inquirer story. First, there's the news that Philadelphia banking customers are now officially chattel, as Mellon Financial Corp. announces plans to sell "its 345 branches and 650,000 customers." Phew, thanks! For a minute there I was in actual danger of feeling like an individual! The chairman of Mellon goes on to say that the bank is abandoning middle-income savers and borrowers to, quote, "return to our roots" handling investments for rich people and big businesses. Aww... back to their roots. That's nice, isn't it?
Good AP piece today about Midland, TX, one of the quintessential oiltowns, in its post-boom years. Even the native son in the White House can't bring back the glory days, try as he might. (This is the same part of Texas covered in exquisite detail in Buzz Bissinger's "Friday Night Lights," one of the great works of reporting.)
This might be my favorite needlessly literal-minded quote of the week... from Brittany (of course), a 17-year-old New Jersey kid who is part of a group that tries to keep young people safe online: "Even if we got one more parent to not be afraid to let their child on the Internet, or saved one child from a predator, that would be good. But we're obviously going for a lot more than one."
Oh, shut up (Pt. II).
Wednesday, July 18
Fun with streaming video: Who says webcasts are useless? Watching the live stream of the Webbys, I learned an amazing thing: the guy behind Peter Pan's Home Page talks like Steve Van Zandt.
Apparently information doesn't really want to be free.
Thanks to Megnut for this pointer to NASA's JSC Digital Image Collection, a staggering resource for anybody with an interest in the history of the space program. You can dip in anywhere, but for sheer drama, just compare these photos of Mission Control before and after the safe return of the Apollo 13 crew.
From kottke.org: "If you fold a £10 note just so, grafting the upper half of Charles Darwin's head onto the bottom half of Queen Elizabeth's head, you end up with John McEnroe."
Also in the Mercury News this morning, a report that a new Internet startup -- that's right, I said "a new Internet startup" -- is opening a server farm in a bastion of the old economy: the abandoned Wrigley gum factory in Santa Cruz, which apparently has "eight-inch-thick concrete walls and four-inch-thick wooden floors, (and) was once designated as an official bomb shelter by the federal government during the Cold War." It does occur to me ask why the manufacture of Doublemint required a facility that could withstand nuclear winter, but never mind -- shine on, you crazy diamonds!
This is beautiful: Remember how rolling blackouts were going to leave California gasping for breath this summer, her helpless citizens huddled in the dark as huge mutant rats roamed the lawless streets, looting and killing with impunity? Now the Mercury News reports that the state has surplus power, which it is selling on the spot market at a huge loss.
The New York Times's front-page obit for Katharine Graham is well worth reading, for a few reasons. It bears remembering that this is the woman who faced down the Nixon administration in rooting out Watergate, and overruled her own lawyers in deciding to publish the Pentagon Papers. Let me repeat that -- a corporate executive who overruled her own lawyers. That aside, her story is simply a great yarn, encompassing so many of the things we're fascinated with in American life: wealth, class, power, gender, self-transformation. (It is, of course, easier to transform yourself if you're an heiress than if you work in a Schlotzky's. But that's for another time.) Finally, the Graham obit sits side-by-side with one that might otherwise be missed, for Mike Saltzstein, co-owner and caretaker of the last remaining classic carousel at Coney Island. Saltzstein died a death rich in pop-cult symbolism: his partner discovered his body when he failed to show up for work on the 4th of July. (Both obits require free New York Times login and password.)
Tuesday, July 17
Let's say that just once, in an overabundance of youthful high spirits, you had tried to walk out of Tower with an unpaid-for CD stuck down the front of your pants. You know what would have happened? A pitiful little siren would have blown and the rent-a-cop in the bad black polo shirt would have managed to stop yawning long enough to tap your shoulder and wave you back into the store. Here's the only reason I bring it up: That's better security than they have at the FBI.
The fatal wedgies: In what may be the most bizarre murder case of the year, defendant Kenneth Fitzhugh of Palo Alto blames the death of his wife on a pair of black, backless Cole Haan shoes with an inch-and-a-half wedge heel -- "the goddamn black shoes" that he says caused Kristine Fitzhugh to trip and fall down the basement stairs. "I must have told her six times to get rid of the black shoes," an anguished Fitzhugh told police. "And then she bought some red ones just like them." The videotaped remarks are the centerpiece of the prosecution's case, which is expected to close today. The stand will then be taken by one of the Fitzhughs' sons, who -- okay, remember now, his mother is dead, possibly murdered, and his father is on trial for it -- has been on a trip. (This is apparently the same kid Fitzhugh referred to in his police interview as "her older son." Detectives asked: "You said, 'Her older son?' Is he not your son?" Fitzhugh's answer: "No. He's our son.")
Hey, you like games? Here's a game we can all play! It's called "Which Is Most Depressing?" Pick one:1) The prospect of a live-action theme-park version of "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire"
2) A prospective host saying "I was thinking of replacing my monologue with how my day is going. It might be a little more entertaining"
3) The phrase "Regis Philbin wannabes"
4) The news that drinking water in 18 states is contaminated with rocket fuelCome on, play along! I'll be in the garage, hanging myself!
Monday, July 16
Okay, yeah yeah yeah, I know, capitalism is inherently evil and needs to be overthrown. But Jeez, don't do that, you scared me. (Spoiler: this is a stupid web trick with an ideological bent. It appears to take over your system, but doesn't. If you panic, as I did, and start screaming like a schoolgirl, as I did, select the fake "Start menu" button, then "Shut down.")
It's official: Internet raises dysfunctionality to level of art.
Actually, I hope Charlie Sheen (see below) is watching the Robert Downey case. It should send a strong signal to rich, well-connected drug abusers that if you mess up you will be sent straight back to jail, provided you mess up a very high number of times.
Wow... via rebecca's pocket, this report by the straight-shooting fellas 'n' gals at Philip Morris. PhilMorrCo officials in the Czech Republic are advising that smoking is not, repeat not a drag on the national economy... in part because smokers' early deaths help offset medical expenses. See? It's true! Smoking is good for you!
"Our bad. Totally on us. Sorry, sorry... That was us. It's all on us. Sorry. Sorry." Actually, CBS is remarkably uncontrite over the news that "Big Brother" heartthrob Justin "Would You Get Mad If I Killed You" Sebik apparently has five arrests on his record, including three for assault. According to Bill Carter in The New York Times, "A senior CBS executive said Mr. Sebik's background had been thoroughly checked by an experienced, 'highly professional' security agency -- the network declined to name it -- and that he was cleared to take part in the program.... But just a brief
