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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Get High for Dinner

Holy Shit! This company seats you and 25 of your guests for dinner and then lifts you up a couple hundred feet in the air while you eat. The chef is there with you and you get seat belted in like a roller-coaster. Costs about 8000 Euro.

Check out the video. Unreal!

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...

Beautiful and Entrancing

There's something mesmerizing about this giant puppet girl. You can see all strings attached, but yet it's not hard to make the leap and assume life. In fact, I ended up believing this giant girl must be aware of all the ropes attached to her body.



The tongue is a little creepy though, huh?

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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.

OG Sexy Hands...

You know, Aurorasbored, you can't say the things the NY Times said about Gabriel Byrne without making me think of another great listener:

Taking in the world from the depths of his leather armchair, Paul is all ears. And eyes. And hands. Steepled, clasped in contemplation or lingering at his cheek, those hands, especially, express empathy better than words.



I got all nostalgic for the show and satisfied my jones with this hilariously confrontational interview with Vanilla Ice...

Pineapple Express has a release date...

August 8, bebe! And here's the trailer...

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.

All Aboard the Stoner Express!

Following on that theme about anticipated stoner movies, it's worth mentioning Pineapple Express. I was watching Superbad - first time since the theater - and the special features included the trailer (sorry can't embed). Got me all fired up and bubbling with excitement! The script is by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, who grew up best buds and wrote Superbad together. In fact, they starting writing Superbad when they were 13, and probably one (or both) of them were still in the cock-a-doodle-ing phase themselves.

I'm pumped about seeing Seth Rogen together with James Franco again. I was pretty crushed that Freaks and Geeks didn't make it past one season. It was the same hurt I felt as I worked my way through Undeclared on DVD realizing all the while that it was a finite pleasure. It was like falling in love when you know there's a shelf-life on the relationship... when your new lover is about to get shipped off to war - or college. It makes the feelings so intense but bittersweet.

Not-so-randomly, the name Pineapple Express also reefers to a meteorological phenomenon like a warm El Nino blowing off Hawaii. My pot-sulation is that there's a real strain of weed named for the event. Certainly if there wasn't before, dealers are definitely going to be naming weed after this movie. Another case of life imitating art imitating nature.


The pineapple bong. Tasty. (from CollegeHumor)

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...

Zoom Quilt

This has gotta be one of the greatest online collaborations I've seen. It's called a zoomquilt. Take yourself a couple of good rips and situate yourself with Weird Fishes or Air or something in your headphones. You're about to start falling through one digital drawing after another. Each of them is by a different artist and they must have worked out with each other how one was going to fit into the next one.