So I can’t sleep
It’s probably because of a variety of internal and external stimuli, but I suspect one of the larger factors might be the dude who is always yelling at a Bobby I’ve never met. This neighbor has the strange habit of screaming “fuck you you you you you you you you” around two in the morning. This repetition somehow finds the nexus of hypnotic, tragic, hilarious, and enraging.
Related news: I now have the Kansas City Police phone number in my favorites on my iPhone.
the art of bullshitting
A great story about thinking on your feet:
Twisted Pixel chief creative officer Josh Bear had responded with abounding confidence, if only to mask the truth. Because the fact of the matter, the fact that he and CEO Mike Wilford were all too aware of, as they sat in Redmond, WA Tex-Mex restaurant The Matador, was this: The idea wasn’t “awesome.” It was nonexistent.
The developer had scored a major meeting with Microsoft to pitch a new game developed exclusively with Kinect (then “Project Natal”) in mind. It needed to be big, it needed to be smart and — most pressingly to Wilford and Bear at that exact moment — it needed to exist.
It wasn’t that Wilford and Bear weren’t prepared. It’s just that the original idea they wanted to pitch (one that was actually first conceived for the Wii) wasn’t a good fit for the device, which they only became aware of once they saw it for themselves.
“It was really cool, but it didn’t have the fidelity to do what we wanted, it couldn’t really track finger movements,” Bear said. “I was like ‘Oh shit, we’re going to pitch this whole thing and they’re gonna know that it’s not possible with the hardware.’”
(thanks, Rich)
Whitney Cummings on lady writers
I talked to Whitney Cummings last night at a Paley Center event for her new sitcom Whitney. I asked her about her views on lady writers having difficulty in the industry and she had this to say:
“I don’t know, I guess I’m confused when people say that, I guess I don’t see that. I know the numbers might say that. I don’t think its because they’re not qualified, I think it’s because they don’t want to do it because it’s a shitty gig. It’s the same reason women don’t play football, because we’re not stupid enough to play a sport that you have to put on a helmet to get in there, it’s a bad idea. I think a lot of women are qualified to higher level writing jobs but they’re kind of like “This is torture, I’m going to do something that’s easier and more fun.” I think it’s the same reason that there’s less female comedians, it’s just a really grueling life and they are not masochistic, they’re smarter.”
I don’t know what I think about that, exactly.
boxercising earthquake
A friend called a few weeks ago to tell me about a skyscraper that had to be evacuated after an earthquake in Seoul. For ten minutes the building made wide metronomic swings. Thing was, there had been no earthquake registered in the area. It was a mysteriously super local event. After a two-week investigation, the epicenter had been narrowed down to the building’s twelfth floor gym where the side kicking, upper-cutting, and fist-jabbing of seventeen middle-aged Korean women boxercising to Snap’s 1990s hit “I’ve got the Power” seemed somehow to have hit the building’s resonant frequency, sending the whole structure into convulsions.
(thanks, David)
What Happened When We Moved Out Here
It’s a little out of the way. We love our new home but the location is relatively remote. Not Montana prairie far, and not Desolation of Mordor far, but you have to drive for almost fifteen minutes to get a gallon of gas or milk. We’re twenty-five minutes from the Interstate, so for the first time in decades I cannot sit on my porch and hear the hum of highway traffic. Are these the metrics that define civilization? Do you choose isolation or insulation?
‘In this study, all they had to do was introduce competition for resources and summer camp became Lord of the Flies’
Some of the Eagles boys discovered the Rattlers’ flag standing unguarded on the baseball field. They discussed what to do and decided it should be ripped from the ground. Once they had it, a possession of the enemy, a symbol of their tribe, they decided to burn it. They then put its scorched remains back in place and sang Taps. Later, the Rattlers saw the atrocity and organized a raid in which they stole the Eagles’ flag and burned it as payback. When the Eagles discovered the revenge burning, the leader issued a challenge – a face off. The two leaders then met with their followers watching and prepared to fight, but the scientists intervened. That night, the Rattlers dressed in war paint and raided the Eagles’ cabins, turning over beds and tearing apart mosquito netting. The staff again intervened when the two groups started circling and gathering rocks. The next day, the Rattlers painted one of the Eagle boy’s stolen blue jeans with insults and paraded it in front of the enemy’s camp like a flag. The Eagles waited until the Rattlers were eating and conducted a retaliatory raid and then ran back to their cabin to set up defenses. They filled socks with rocks and waited. The camp staff, once again, intervened and convinced the Rattlers not to counterattack. The raids continued, and the interventions too, and eventually the Rattlers stole the Eagles knives and medals. The Eagles, determined to retrieve them, formed an organized war party with assigned roles and planned tactical maneuvers. The two groups finally fought in open combat. The scientists broke up the fights. Fearing the two tribes might murder someone, they moved the groups’ camps away from each other.
The story of two groups of boys, under the supervision of psychologists, left to fend for themselves, in Oklahoma’s Robber’s Cave State Park in the 1950s.
(via Aaron Cohen at kottke, and the browser)
funeral for man entombed for 27 years in chimney
Daryl, did you write this?
from the moderated comment spam
Slam dunkin like Shaquille O’Neal, if he wrote informative airctles.
Update:
Way to go on this essay, hleeped a ton.
‘As a result of several short conversations with him, officers believe he may not be from Utah’
With a little editing, this could be worked into something:
“This is really a strange case,” said Lt. Dennis Harris with the Utah County Sheriff’s Office. “He just doesn’t want to be found.”
Drop me in the water
Was at a wedding this weekend. At dinner someone asked who I was there with, when I said no one, they said “You are so brave!” I made my face a cascade of nothingness and said with a bit of confusion I said “Why?” Later on a bottle of champagne was my dancing partner.
Earlier in the evening someone told me that it was better for children to grow up in an orphanage, rather than let them be adopted by gay parents who would teach them about the “alternative” lifestyle.
One hour ago
I was still walking home from my therapy appointment when I received a call from United Airlines. My connecting flight scheduled from Chicago to Cleveland tomorrow morning has been cancelled, but luckily I’ve been rebooked to depart late tomorrow evening so I’ll still make it to my destination. The first half of my brother-in-law’s memorial weekend begins in the town he grew up in, Milan, Ohio, tomorrow morning. So I called my dad. One of his flights to Cleveland today was cancelled. He and my stepmom are hours late, but almost there. They got the same notification. They told me they’d call United and, with Dad’s world-traveling clout, make something happen. I was about two blocks from my apartment when I got the new itinerary. 9pm departure to Newark. I hadn’t even packed yet! My original red-eye to Chicago departs long after 11. I packed. I kissed Nina. I jumped in a taxi. Halfway there I realized I didn’t have any cash on me. The driver assured me he could accept credit. We pulled up to the airport and he charged my card. The tip was $5.70, for an even $43. Instead the receipt showed a tip of $55.70. We settled with a cash difference. I checked in, I walked through security, my flight boards in a half hour.
from the spam
icedog says:August 8, 2010 at 9:58 pm
For the observant and devoted.
Seeing Tabloid in a few days, and interviewing Morris in person, most likely. Jinxing it by saying this I’m sure, but any questions?
“It’s all part of life’s rich pageant”
A friend of mine (who eventually became a VP at a Major Philanthropic Foundation) began his (adult) working life as a cross-country trucker. He said that although the so-called “boot-heel” of Missouri scared the bejeesus out of the most seasoned truckers, there was this place where you could go at 7:00 AM and get steak and eggs and bourbon AND watch a live sex show.
Actually, he said, that was also part of the scariness.
He also claimed that he met Patty Hearst when she was on the lam. When pressed, he said, “Well, she said her name was Tanya. And she stole my dope.”
Rememberies of the Star Herald
’76 – ’79-ish.
1) Mrs. Carroll (Editor of the weekly she inherited it from relatives before her, sold it to the the publisher in Corning, a decade before I started working there)l: Rick, you’re fired!
Me: Again! Why this time?
She: You turned the air conditioner thermostat up to 78. (This in the middle of the gas crisis in the late 70′s when we were trying to conserve.) Read more
The Flaming Lips play Hollywood Forever Cemetery
I just got back from seeing the Flaming Lips play at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. I didn’t have a ticket, but I went and patiently waited and eventually after the show started a sneaky security guard said he’d let me in for the face value of the tickets. I handed him the money and walked through the gate as everyone looked the other way. I felt like reporting him for malfeasance, and I felt terrible about it, but I also wanted to see the band play. Ah, ethics.
Because it was so late, everyone else was at the far side of the enormous cemetery, and I could hear the far off music and began to walk towards it among the towering mausoleums and tombs, graves and headstones. Psychedelic colors from the stage-show filtered through the fog and I started to feel a little panicky, walking quicker and quicker, but I thought to myself “Even if this is all I saw, it was worth the money.” (And then, if I’m being more honest, because it is a constant thought these days; “Aww, this’d be great in a movie.”) How often are you alone in a foggy graveyard with one of the most explosive and visually exhausting spectacles beckoning you on? Well, maybe you live a more exciting life than I do.
Large balloons filled with confetti and money exploded in the crowd, cannons with sparkling flecks of paper burst out, lasers and all manner of neon insanity occurred. They played the entirety of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, several Wizard of Oz songs, some other Flaming Lips hits like Vaseline and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, and finished the night up with Do You Realize? I wanted to cry as he sang:
Do you realize? That everyone you know someday will die?
And instead of saying all of your goodbyes,
let them know you realize that life goes fast,
it’s hard to make the good things last.
but then, I always want to cry when he sings that.
It happened at A-Kon
So, I crouched behind a pyramid of plastic cups to photograph a foam-sword battle when a young man with a quiet voice said, excuse me, sir, this is my practice area.
Frijoles
It was the photo of a friend’s pot of weekend frijoles that called this to mind, and now I want to tell a story.
It’s a Texas gubernatorial anecdote. Could well be spurious, but even if so, it’s true. In the early 1970s, a white man named Preston Smith was governor of Texas. And there was this Texas member of the Black Panthers named Lee Otis Johnson, who got 30 years for possession of one joint. And then there was this one day (probably one of many) when people were demonstrating outside the Governor’s Mansion or the Capitol. And Preston Smith is said to have asked, “Why are those people hollering for beans?”
They were chanting, “Free Lee Otis! Free Lee Otis!”
Words I just said out loud
“In Hawaii, Hawaiian shirts are just called ‘shirts’.”
Grand Rapids lip-dub video
The entire city of Grand Rapids seems to turn out to lip-dub “The Day The Music Died” all over town. Pretty amazing, I don’t even know how they did this.
She wore a raspberry beret.
I saw Prince last night perform at the L.A. Forum. Mary J. Blige opened for him, and it was something else entirely. They sang a duet of “Nothing Compares 2 U” that was incredible. I wouldn’t say I was a Prince fan before this, but I am now. He played the Forum for 21 days, and made a deal with Ticketmaster so the tickets would be 25 dollars flat, all fees included. Some friends, the Brions, took me as a birthday present.
Then I found this clip on YouTube of Prince appearing on the View.
I can’t explain why I find this so funny, I just do.
A Good Deed I Did
I thought I might have told y’all about this good deed I did. (There aren’t many.) But I don’t think I have, at least not on the site. It involves a kind of role reversal.
When I lived in downtown Chicago, there was a nearby chain convenience store where I bought newspapers and, you know, sundries. The chain had a policy requiring clerks to card everybody who wanted to purchase alcohol. No guesswork. Across the board. You wanted to buy booze, you had to show ID.
This was news to an old man who wanted to buy a bottle of malt liquor one night when I was in the store.
Read more
Herschel, the Magnificent Jew
Old Jews Telling Jokes, via John Gruber
May 23, 1934
This day in 1934 Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow was shot dead by Texas officer Frank Hamer and his posse on a back country road in Bienville Parish, Louisiana.
It probably weren’t much like in the movie.
Cooper’s and my friend Allen was just writing to tell about the 1936 Texas Centennial, staged in Dallas.
“One of the attractions which impressed my father, who at that time was 13, was the bullet-riddled death car of Bonnie & Clyde.”
I’d buy that app.
Fuck it I’ve heard enough, I’m going to make some killer android app that listens to every word you hear and uses Google’s voice recognition shit and some semantic networks and logistic regression crap and fucking starts chirping at you whenever it detects someone is hitting on you, make it look like an incoming call from captain obvious or something. It make take a while to accumulate enough training data to detect every subtle hint but it should pick this one up pretty easily. #
One of the 5,661 comments on From Male Redditors: What are some hints females gave you, but you didn’t get them until after you had your chance?
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