Hotels.com - Truly Funny Commercials

I saw this shampoo ad on the plane (thank you, JetBlue) and started laughing out loud. It was kind of embarrassing for the first minute. But whenever I thought about it for the rest of the flight, I just started laughing again. This was more embarrassing because I was flipping back and forth between Top Chef and American History X. You know whenever someone is laughing, you look at their screen... so I'm not sure what conclusions my seatmates came to about me. You have to admit this is funny shit...



They're all collected at thetalentjungle if you want to see a few others.



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cLASSIC cONCENTRATION

I had to concentrate really hard, but I sure did get it...



I'll never hit a bicycle again!

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There Will be Bud...

Breaking Badass in the tumble-Weeds

Breaking Bad is oh so good.

It has really satisfying episode chunks. Within each, it manages to fuck with your expectations. It also leads you forward (make no mistake, you'll want more) but without obviously annoying cliffhangers. The first two episodes are available on online at AMC. After that, if you don't have cable, it's torrent time.

Basically the plot theme is Weeds, but in every way jitterier, edgier, more hopped up... Somehow, it's also got me remembering a bit of high school chem. In that vein, here's a way to think about it in an SAT analogy kind of way...

Weeds is to Breaking bad as...
(or to use the annoying symbols)
Weeds : Breaking bad ::

Marijuana : Meth
Suburban mom : HS chem teacher
Agrestic : Albequerque
Hippies : Crank whores
Secret husband DEA agent: Brother-in-law DEA agent
Grow house in Agrestic : Winnebago in the desert
Son who's a nerd : Son with cerebral palsy

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Dig if you will, the .ppt

Oh, I dig! But I don't think this one quite fits the lyrics. I might be like my father, but you might be like my mother. I parsed and parsed until I realized that the lyrics themselves may not be all that logical. Then I, like the doves, had a good cry.

Google Trends - Can't Get Enough

This Google Trends thing has grabbed me like a catfish. I've definitely been enjoying it. My interest here has been a massive spike over the past three days since my first post on the topic. In fact, my interest and use of google/trends is exactly represented by the world's interest in Walter Mondale. Spooky, right?

Coincidental as that may be, it's clear I'm well behind the curve on this one. Entering "Google Trends" in google/trends indicates the big spike was back in April of 2006 when they launched.

In a spiral down the meta-toilet, I was also curious how many times people Google Google. As it turns out, it's been steadily on the rise.

Penis Fencing

Cracked.com has an absolutely hilarious article on The 15 Most Bizarre Animal Mating Rituals. Among them, is the flatworm's. This hermaphrodite runs into a potential mate, and like two cellmates on Oz, they battle it out to determine who gets to be the male.

Leslie Newman has caught them on film. And I don't mean to spoil it, but here's an excerpt from the dramatic narration. Imagine this being read nature narrator style:

It's known as penis fencing, and the worms are the swordsmen. From the midsection of each flatworm, double daggers protrude. Each dagger is actually a penis. The first one who can make a successful jab can deliver its sperm.

Flatworms Penis Fencing

Google Trends Dirty

This much dugg screen shot comes from Google trends. Being curious/skeptical, I checked and sho-nuff - the world got real curious about "anal fisting" abruptly at the start of 2006. Specifically, Prague and pretty much all of the Czech Republic got real into anal fisting. Truly weird.

Once you start screwing around with Google Trends, it's really engrossing. For example, the trend for "hangover cure" has massive spikes around the holiday season and the leading cities are the stereotypically drunken centers of English language: Dublin, Edinburgh, Manchester, London... In fact, there are only two U.S. cities in the top ten...

For "police brutality" as a search term, 10 out of 10 top cities are in the U.S. Chicago tops the list and Minneapolis beats out L.A. for second place.

A search on the word "hymen" reveals Iran is very interested in this topic and the U.S. is 10th behind mostly Muslim nations. We are losing the war in born-again virgins.

Your Way Right Away

Someone sent me a story that got me thinking this afternoon. It starts with two kids who were stoned at work in a Burger King in Valencia County, New Mexico. For some dumbass reason, they decided to sprinkle weed on the Whoppers ordered by a police officer (Henry Gabaldon) and consumed by two police officers (Mark Landavazo)- both on duty. The officers ate about half the burger and found leafy green bits that tasted like weed then had it analyzed. Sure enough - it was weed. The kids admitted they did it.

This all happened a few months ago. Just this week, the second kid got probation, just like his partner did a little while ago. All told, I think it was a pretty fair sentence although one of the cops definitely does not agree...




Once you've seen the video, you realize that one kid is Latino (Armijo) and the other one is African American (Nuckols). You also learn the judge is Santa Claus - or possibly a homeless wizard.

Some people - like on the Breitbart.tv forum are mindlessly defending the kids. Some maintain it's "no big deal" since it's just weed and essentially harmless. But there's also a lot of knee-jerk, fuck-a-police type of polemic (if you can count mistyped/mispelled one-sentence comments polemic).

It's clear that many of these comments come from people who feel vindicated by the teenagers' pot sabotage. They are happy that someone 'struck back' against police.

On the other side of the thin blue line,the police reaction shows a lot of frustration that these two kids were not locked up for assault. I don't think these kids should have gone to jail, but I can see why this i really unsettling. The officers were not targeted for being dicks, but because the guy ordering was a cop. This was a random anonymous attack like minor league terrorism.

What's interesting about this incident - and people's reactions - is that they're not about the individuals involved. This was a minor skirmish in a grand struggle battle between cops and teenagers - with some added twists of cops vs minorities.

Cops live in fear of the people they police for reasons just like this. Some of them respond by trying to inspire a little more fear in the people they encounter. That's the way things go with an armed occupation. Is it fundamentally different than our occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan?

I might be making this connection because of the bullying cop videos I've seen recently. This one was big on Digg last week...



When we see these things, we'd like to think these are isolated individuals abusing power. My first reaction was WOW what a cock! This guy definitely shouldn't be a cop. But surely he's in a class by himself... This was kinda what we tried to believe with the pictures and videos from Abu Ghraib when they surfaced. Then I saw a nearly identical one...



The common element I see is fear and confusion on the part of the officers. They confront the kids head-on. They single out an individual in front of his friends - probably in a semi conscious decision to 'make an example' of him. To break him. Then things just escalate.

Once you enter a confrontation, there has to be a winner and a loser. You can't just stop and say - look this was a big misunderstanding. This is true of individuals, groups and nations.

Cookin with Coolio - Second Episode

I was not impressed with the first episode of this show on My Damn Channel, but the second - has fixed most of my earlier complaints! The recipe is an actual recipe - he's sort of braising a cheap cut of beef with a salt-n-peppa rub (can't believe that joke didn't come up). He probably should have seared the steak first to get a crust, or maybe added the liquid after broiling it on each side for a minute - but his aim is simplicity and he's definitely got a simple attack on the meat.

The garlic bread also totally impressed me. He makes the spread with mayo base along with shredded cheddar and some hot sauce. I pretty recently made the discovery that you can make a pretty mean grilled cheese with mayo instead of butter. This seems bold, simple, and I'm definitely going to give it a shot.

In terms of the gags, he's settled down a bit with the catch phrases and worked them into the framing of the show - good move there! I didn't really laugh too hard at the college kid thing - but it was quirky and helped keep the energy up, so I guess it worked.

I'm really impressed with the turnaround! I'll keep watching after this.

Super High Me

Doug Benson is a comedian making a documentary where he smokes weed for 30 days and then does not smoke weed for 30 days. Doctors check him out and measure his visual and mental acuity and assess the damage... I got all this from the trailer and/or making it up to fill in the gaps.


Some people are undoubtedly going to think this is a ludicrous and unhealthy experiment, like SuperSize Me! Instead, I first wondered what the fuck is so exceptional about smoking pot for 30 days in a row? Now the 30 consecutive days off... I've definitely tried that from time to time, but agree it's an ambitious goal. I wonder what the side effects will be - will it make him paranoid or maladjusted? ...bored? ...active outdoors?

It seems to me Mr. Doug Benson is a pretty funny dude. There are some clips on ComedyCentral. First time I've seen him...



I'm tickled to note that IMDB - while it has an official sounding plot summary - has pegged this as a 2007 film, but nobody seems to be committing to a release date. That's prolly wise.

Computers are Bad

This site, Computers are Bad, is oddly entrancing. I have probably spent too much time on it trying to figure out the trick - if there is one.

I've been reading a bunch of anti-web anti-computer polemic in the last week. My mom kicked it off by sending me an op-ed from the WaPo called 'The Dumbing of America' and forgetting how to read because of the advent of video. Of course, the article was too long for my atrophied attention span so I ended up googling "computers are bad" when I figured I got the gist.

My solace from this fear comes... in the form of a video...

Catfish Noodling - With Gator

I said I like Internet Superstar and now there's Lil' Interet Superstar, which I'm guessing is a more daily dose or something. Gator hosted one alone on one of my all-time favorite topics... catfish noodling! Basically, noodling is when you wiggle your fingers in a muddy hole so they look like a worm and entice a catfish to swallow them. Then you stick your hand in it's throat and haul it out. So, the catfish bites your hand... and that's the objective! This first-finger account is the one that hooked me about a year ago. I gotta confess that Gator's clips are tight, but here's a decent look at some guys flexing their skills...



These catfish they're hauling out of the water can be up to 50 or 60 pounds. Imagine jamming your hand down a first-grader's throat and trying to haul him away from the telivision. Now imagine that kid is a badass swimmer and you're battling underwater. That's a rough wrassle. But imagine if you picked the wrong hole and got a truly giant catfish. How big could that be?

A pretty big man could be two hundred pounds. A big fatty lineman could be 300. Now double that and you've got the giant catfish. That's right, in the Mekong river, National Geographic reported that fishermen caught one that was nine feet long and 650 pound in May, 2005. If you tried to noodle that, you'd have to play Jonah and have a partner hold your ankles as that monster swallows you whole.

Native American Songs Gone Indian!

Here are two priceless outcomes of the global village...

Smoke on the Yangtze:



And then my personal favorite... Sweet Adoptive Child of Mine

Revision3

These guys have put together some great content in a bunch of formats. The one I've been enjoying is the Internet Superstar podcast. It's got one doofus (Martin Sargent) with a sidekick (Gator) and highlighting a bunch of sad, pathetic, inspiring and just plain weird stars of the interweb.

I've really enjoyed it, and it's right up my alley. In fact, I can't get enough of the show. I'm a little hesitant to recommend to others because two people's I've shown it to find Martin Sargent too grating to sit through.

Do I have a high tolerance for doofus-dom? I wouldn't have thought so... Somehow, I find Martin sincere and open in his dorky doofus-dom. Not too abrasive for my tastes and the content he's digging up is great.

How else would I have learned about The Disintegrator? Some kid spent a year coming up with a rubber-band gun that launches 40 rubber bands per second. Good luck smuggling this into the lunchroom...

Cookin with Coolio and the Mock-you-structional

I don't know what I expected from Coolio's Cooking show. It kinda looks like they're having fun, but it's walking a really weird line between serious cooking show and crazy.

In a way, this is the same sort of pseudo-instructional video genre I talked about last time with My Damn Channel, but it's less funny than "You Suck at Photoshop" and I think I can pinpoint a couple of reasons that may help figure out what you need to to in mocku-structional genre:

The biggest failure is that Coolio can't seem to cook for shit. His first recipe is caprese salad. YOU CAN'T FUCK THIS UP! But he's got each ingredient spread all over the place on the plate in ways that can't get in the same bite... I take my munchies seriously. If you're gonna slice a big tomato, slice a big ball of mozz. If you're going with little chunks of mozzarella, split up grape tomatoes or something. And then onions? I dunno about that one bit. The photoshop dude was clearly good at photoshop and using it to fuel the humor.

Dumb gags unrelated to the frame - it's kinda funny to have the spices look like drugs... kinda... but remember, if you're gonna get stones from weed when you cook, you gotta hot-it-up. Ain't gonna work otherwise.

Coolio is trying WAY too hard. He tries to make at least three different catch phrases stick in the span of five minutes. It's like when the dumb girl in mean girls keeps trying to make "fetch" into a catch-phrase. That's can't work can it? The photoshop guy is pretty subtle about being crazy. It seeps out in the framing and it's related to the picture he's doctoring in each webisode.

I do think Jerez is kinda funny. Like so ridiculous that he makes his end of it work. He just repeats everything Coolio says and helps jump in on his tag-lines.

In conclusion - to be funny in a mock-you-structional: 1) know the content, so the basic frame is believable and can save you. 2) Be quirky funny within the frame 3) Don't force it.

George Lopez - Underbite of the Century

The Grammy's sucked dog dick. Well eulogized here. Within the 10 minutes before I bailed entirely, I saw George Lopez take a shit on stage:

He starts by noticing that only in America could a black man and a women be running for president of the United States.

Then he has some can't-believe-he-bit this joke about how a Latino vice-president would be a great insurance policy for either Hillary or Obama.

Didn't Chris Rock make this joke about a black VP about 10 years ago on SNL?

I thought so. Then I checked the original version on weekend update...

Find more videos like this on www.truveo.com.

No, no, wait... Chris Rock is funny. What's so odd is that George Lopez didn't even bite the joke. He sort of reversed, copied it, and took out the funny.

Coolio and Kool-Aid Pickles

I spent a little time on My Damn Channel. The thing that pulled me in was a trailer for Coolio's cooking show - which strikes me as a great thing. BUT, it's not available yet.

The oddball mixed genre thing that really got me laughing was this show called "You Suck at Photoshop." It's actually decent tutorial of photoshop, but it's also really funny.

Worth a smoke-n-giggle. I'll also have to remember to check back next week when Coolio's cooking show is up and running. The Ghetto Gourmet. Mmmm... Maybe he'll do Kool-Aid Pickles. Did you know that's a thing? Anyone tried one?

Shit, I'll try anything once. If ever there was a snack conceived of while stoned, this is it. In the Times article, they're endorsed by a kid as “I like it the same as dipping hot Cheetos in ice cream.”

Face Transformer

Face of the Future is a set of exhibits and tools that allow you to explore "the latest advances in facial computer vision and graphics, and what they mean for society." It's a ton of fun to screw around with.

With the face transformer, you can upload a picture of yourself - prefereably with a plain background - and then transform it a bunch of different ways. As a Super-Tuesday treat, here's George Bush.


That's his real picture (not the 50% chimp transform as you might suspect). And apparently, I'm not the only one to think he looks a bit like a chimp. Check this guy's set of comparison photos.

You can also go for an ethnic transform. Here's one of George Bush as a South Asian:



You can also do the face averager to see what it would look like if you had kids with someone. You just need pictures of the two people and you can slap them together. How much fun is that? Is that reasonable precaution before a second date? "I like you and all, but I just don't think this is going anywhere. Our kids are going to look like George Bush... "

Everyblock... creepy cool

Everyblock is basically geography based reporting. Described like this:

The easiest way to keep track of what’s happening on your block, in your neighborhood and all over your city — like restaurant inspections in Chinatown, crimes in the Loop or everything around 475 Kent Ave.

I messed around with it and found it eerily entrancing. It's all the great pseudo-stalker-y things that make the internet fun... Like that feeling when you first joined The Facebook and got to check everyone out. This is like that, but more real and intimate.

You get to check out all the forms of public information that you would never check - or even know existed. From restaurant inspections, to building violations, noise complaints, arrests... and that's just the background of the tapestry.

You also get the mentions in the news, the photos from flickr, and juiciest of all... the missed connections on craigslist.

From all of this, you get the sense of what's going on in people's homes. What's going on out on the street. Where you definitely need to stop eating. It's all there.

It's fascinating, but maybe not endlessly... I worry that it could fall the way of The Facebook. That after a few aggressive bouts of geo-stalking, and neighbrowsing, I might have enough.

There are probably practical reasons that this type of data bundling will be really valuable - like for realtors or people thinking of moving in. It could even be a great way to check out what's going on this weekend if I feel like going out... but not too far... if I went out...