Jared's Jar:

Commercials

2008-10-23T22:33:00.004-04:00

While watching the World Series, the absolute worst part about the whole thing is that they only air two commercials: the one with the very wealthy CEO of Sprint pretending to eat on a diner stool, surprised we still call phones, "phones", and a new (now very old) DirecTV commercial that takes a clip with Chevy Chase in Vacation and superimposes now-Christie Brinkley in her role from the 1983 movie. DirecTV had a great idea with their recent line of commercials, but airing them every single break is complete overkill. It's like eating 30 Oreos.

Heroes

2008-09-27T18:53:00.003-04:00

I really wish I still liked "Heroes." It started out as an intriguing show, but it's turned into labored watching for me. People are always rushing around doing something that you are supposed to assume is extremely important, and then they end up fighting for some reason. Then there's a scene where someone explains a whole lot of nonsense as if it just occurred to them. Repeat. Formula is the grim reaper of tv shows for me, which is also why I'm less into Curb your Enthusiasm than I was in its first couple seasons.

Not to mention there are a few bad actors on the show: that Indian guy, the weird-mouth-was-in-Rocky-Balboa guy, and the South American girl. So I think I'm gonna hang Heroes up.

On a totally separate note, "Mr. McFeely" is a horrible name for a mailman on a kids show.

Sense (= none)

2008-05-08T09:46:00.002-04:00

A woman just entered the room wearing a very heavy, thick, winter coat in 65 degree weather and commented, "Why does it feel like they have the oven turned on?"

There could be one day where I will wake up and just accept that some people cannot connect thought with reality, but I doubt that will be anytime soon. Some people are just simply oblivious to their Obviously Warm and Heavy Winter Coat.

Jeremy Davies

2008-02-09T21:39:00.000-05:00

Jeremy Davies is my least favorite actor of all time. His performance in Saving Private Ryan was not bad, but in every other movie I've seen him in he plays the exact same character: The slightly deranged, confused, bumbling eccentric. And he's playing the same exact character on LOST right now. And it's not really acting. I've seen him in interviews and he is a slightly deranged, confused, bumbling eccentric. Like the guy in high school who tried so desperately hard to be weird but whose weird plan was way too transparent to be convincing.

I realize there are technically worse actors out there (Freddie Prinze, Jr., Lauren Ambrose, Keanu Reeves), but the fact that Jeremy Davies thinks his performances are compelling just completely bugs me.

Men Without Chests: Conviction Over Elegance

2007-12-14T15:39:00.000-05:00

"We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise."
- C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

I don’t know if Americans are getting less intelligent academically, and I’m not sure how you would gauge that anyway. It’s easy to point to things like reality TV and Kevin Federline, but I think those examples are just reflecting the high amount of exposure the media gives to less intelligent people. We like seeing them do really dumb things because it makes us feel smarter, which is a justified feeling most of the time. And some of it is actually entertaining. As I was watching some of the political debates, I wondered if Americans are getting more intelligent politically in a very particular way, and my curiosity has to do with a cinematic analogy.

When anyone goes to a movie these days, they have extremely high standards for special effects, CGI and other tricks to make the images look as real as possible. Special effects from the 80’s and even ten years ago look dated now, and the average movie-goer sees them as quaint. When I watch some of these political debates, I notice right away that some of the candidates are attempting to use an outdated strategy that Bill Clinton mastered: appearing as if you said something without really saying anything of substance. People seem to be really tired of that political strategy. They don’t want the illusion of a leader, they want a real leader with conviction, and that might be easier to spot than it used to be.

This is one example that I think illustrates the point (go about 3:30 into it if you want to skip Chris Dodd and Obama):

Hillary started out as a somewhat strong candidate, probably because of her name alone. The more she talks, the less people like her (insert woman joke here). Another example is when Jon Stewart interviewed Chris Matthews from Hardball about his infuriatingly backwards book, Life's a Campaign. (He should leave out unnecessary title contractions in his campaign.) Here's a clip from the day after that addresses the interview:

Stewart lit into Matthews for constructing his whole life to be basically artificial, i.e. a campaign. It was one of the most popular videos on YouTube before they took it down and it's one of the most popular on the Daily Show site.

There are other examples of the public getting wise to "politalk" that include loud boos after canned responses from Romney, Giuliani and others. I'm not sure how this intolerance of scripted answers will translate in the voting booths next year, but I hope this is an actual trend and not merely my personal wishful thinking.

(Completely off-topic - I wonder how many reindeer jokes Giuliani gets this time of year.)

How to Get on Reddit

2007-12-04T10:06:00.000-05:00

Ron Paul is amazing.

Mike Huckabee is not.

A government official and/or media network is doing something horrific.

Genius? A Very Wrong Website (but also nice to post)

2007-11-19T23:01:00.000-05:00

Apparently, according to this...

Get a Cash Advance

My Friend Screener - Thanks, Martin!

2007-11-04T19:22:00.000-05:00

I was recently in a movie theater and the movie trailer below was one of the previews before the Feature Presentation (American Gangster - good). It let the viewer know the general plot and characters of Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins. But it also served another function: a personality test.

Let me say from the outset that I was in a crowded theater with a typical demographic. It wasn't slanted toward any particular age, gender or race. It was a mixed bag; a random sample. Let me also say that I believe good comedy is good comedy regardless of the source. I like Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Cosby, Brian Regan and Chris Rock. You get my point.

This trailer functioned as a personality test by letting me know who I would not be very close friends with. Those people who were laughing at the preview were people I probably would have very little in common with. The weird part is that 70-75% of the people in the theater were actually laughing at the very contrived, very predictable and very transparent jokes. It was like my own personal twilight zone where things that are not funny at ALL suddenly became ass-over-tea-kettle hysterical to everyone else.

I thought from now on I might show this trailer to people who have the potential to be a friend. Their reaction will be a good litmus test to see whether they will be a mild acquaintance (they smile), a close friend (they become very ill) or an enemy (they laugh at any part). I consider this trailer a Friend Screener.

Google Image Labeler - Origins

2007-10-16T15:43:00.000-04:00

After seeing this post and watching this insanely interesting video (also below) it's especially interesting to see a post like this praising the Google Image Labeler "game." It reminds me of seeing Jeff Han's presentation on his multi-touch interface in August of 2006 and watching the technology come to life less than a year later via the iPhone and Microsoft Table (complete with hilarious spoof). ALSO reminds me of reading this article and then seeing Amazon incorporate its suggestions into its customer ratings system. Technology. Crazy.

Definately MTV

2007-10-11T09:10:00.000-04:00

MTV isn't exactly helping out the MTV generation...

Hats Off to Google. (Part Two)

2007-10-05T14:22:00.000-04:00

(Cont'd) Having access to that amount of information requires strategy. It means scrolling quickly through feeds that don’t produce a high volume of interesting or usable items and knowing when a feed needs to be cut off. When I don’t have time to read something in detail, I put it in my starred items, which is getting increasingly longer every week.

The search capability makes Google Reader essentially a massive Bookmarks program (although I also use Google Bookmarks for links I can't subscribe to). When I see an item that other people might find interesting, I put it in my shared items that other people can subscribe to. I don’t always agree with the author or subject and I don’t always endorse whatever I share, it’s shared only when I think it might be interesting to others who subscribe to my shared items. It also helps me when I want to email or send a link to an interesting story. If I want to revisit the story about the world-renown violinist Joshua Bell who played to strangers in a subway, I can find it in five seconds. Google Reader has reduced the time it takes to search for interesting things by about 95%. It’s amazing.

The biggest problem is information overload, but I’m sure everyone’s seen articles highlighting those pitfalls in titles that go something like, “Is the Web Killing Our Attention Span?” or “Is There Such a Thing as Too Much Information?” To answer the latter question, I don’t think there is, I think it just depends on how you handle it. Like any tool, I think Google Products can be used more productively and successively than almost anything out there in the Web world. They just added another feature in Google Labs called Google Pages that is a web page creator. I'll definitely be using that when I get some time.

For those who know how to use all the products, they can really keep you informed of important issues, funny articles and random-yet-interesting facts and events at lightning-fast speed. Or it can let you know what complete morons are doing these days. Either way.

Hats Off to Google. (Part One)

2007-10-05T12:24:00.000-04:00

The best Google products in order of best to almost-best are The Google Toolbar, Google Reader, Gmail, Google Docs, and Blogger. I am a huge fan of the Google philosophy, and their products have completely changed the way I use the web. And I use it. If I want to know anything at all, I just enter a few key words in the toolbar, hit enter, and I have the results in a new page in my browser. Gmail’s threaded conversations and archival feature lets me search my entire email history in a click. I have all of my grad school notes saved in Google Docs, never having to worry about losing them on a hard drive. They recently added Power Point capability to Google Docs, so I’ll be importing a few slides from a Middle Eastern class I taught in 2004, preserving them forever. Here's an awesome video that explains everything you can do with the Docs feature.

The feature I use the most, though, is Google Reader, and I’ve used it even more since they recently included the search capability (a long time coming). It’s a love/hate relationship, because I subscribe to 59 RSS feeds (including CNN, Washington Post, New York Times, Freakonomics, kottke.org, ESPN, Snopes, Dave Barry, The Onion, other people's shared items, tons of blogs, etc.), which averages to about 600-700 posts/stories a day. If I went somewhere remote for a few days, I would come back to thousands of items and would probably have to declare feed bankruptcy. (Cont'd on next post...)

Umbrella Cover

2007-09-29T15:38:00.000-04:00

Artists who have covered Rihanna's "Umbrella":

- Travis Barker (Plus 44)

- Dashboard Confessional

- Originally meant for Britney Spears (ironically)

- My Chemical Romance (also ironically)

- Vanilla Sky

- Plain White T's

- Tegan and Sara

insane.

Kid Nation Plantation

2007-09-19T22:04:00.000-04:00

I watched Kid Nation and it is off-the-charts interesting. And this is coming from a single guy with no kids of his own, so I don't have that automatic personal connection with kids of my own. It's a reality show, but I've always viewed reality TV as televised social experiments that sociologists would eventually do anyway. Or maybe that's just how I justify it.
The perception of the show before tonight (probably semi-perpetuated by CBS - controversy brings ratings) is that 40 kids are plunked down in the middle of nowhere with no adults and they're told to make due. It's actually kind of like Survivor in a way, but the kids are given social tasks and duties, there are competitions for town money (it's set in a Western town; they get Buffalo nickels), and every few days every kid has the opportunity to leave and go home.
I haven't been around a group of kids since I was one myself, so I forget a lot of what makes kids kids. It was like watching development unfold. The age range was 8-15, which turns out to be a VERY significant factor in their social relationships. The most interesting parts were how the kids cooperated or fought, how some tried to lead, and how many of them were clearly emulating someone they knew back home, personality mimicking. There are so many subtle elements to the show, including how humane it is to leave a community of kids alone while a good amount of them cry for their parents. In public. The hierarchical political element to the show adds some anticipation to later episodes; the structure itself is a conflict bubble waiting to pop.
For sheer entertainment and fascination, it's definitely worth catching an episode.

Song in Cadillac Commercial

2007-09-16T18:53:00.000-04:00

If you want to know the name of the song that is playing in the background of the new Cadillac commercials, it's a segment from "Stars" off of the early 1995 album You'd Prefer an Astronaut by Hum. I liked this song so much when it came out that I bought the album just from hearing this song on the radio. It turned out to be a good purchase, although I didn't ever hear of anyone else who owned the album at that time. It's a pretty unique sound and there are some songs on there that I still listen to today.
It reminded me of how big a risk buying an album was back then. There was no iTunes where you could hear samples, and if no one else had the album then you were buying blind. I guess it made buying music slightly more exciting in the way gambling is exciting, but I think I prefer the modern advantages that keeps me informed. I also bought Foma by The Nixons off of their single, "Sister" (also in 1995), and that was a huge mistake. That album sounds nothing like their radio single and is a tribute to horrible, awful-sounding songs.

If you misspell "Intelligence"...

2007-09-15T23:17:00.001-04:00

From Urban Dictionary...

Wall Street Journal Causes Unnecessary Concern About MP3s

2007-09-12T12:15:00.000-04:00

This WSJ article on MP3-quality sound really bugged me. The WSJ wants to give us something else to worry about in the music industry, but it's a completely unnecessary concern. The gist of the article is that artists, engineers and producers are recognizing that many or most people who listen to music listen to it as an MP3 file on an iPod. An MP3's quality is not as good as on a CD and the problem is exacerbated if the music is listened through standard iPod headphones.
If artists, engineers and producers engineer their musical finished product for the low MP3-quality standard, they deserve any backlash they get from consumers. Good engineers have the foresight to set the quality mark as high as possible and let the medium decide how to meet that standard. Joe Consumer has chosen the MP3 knowing that there is a slight loss in quality but a gain in convenience. I doubt the average listener's ears are so attuned that they will start complaining that their music is not engineered for MP3-level acoustics; so why not be prepared for the future and shoot for a better quality sound? The engineer's smart play is to be prepared for whatever medium replaces the MP3 down the road. When The Starting Line's 2002 Say It Like You Mean It album is heard in 2022 through whatever medium is popular at that time, the high-quality engineering that went into recording will be able to come through the high-quality medium. Good engineering will always outlast consumer trends. No worries.

Update: Apparently, this guy agrees (in a much more cogent and thorough way). AbsolutePunk picked up on the same story, but didn't comment.

This Had To Be Intentional

2007-09-12T09:45:00.001-04:00

Pennsylvania Is Run By Monkeys

2007-09-03T22:16:00.000-04:00

This article in the Philadelphia Inquirer is proof positive that the people who are in charge in Pennsylvania are idiots in the strongest sense of the word, and so are the people who report on them. The article's discussion is based around the Supreme Court's upcoming decision on whether Pennsylvania convenience stores, grocery stores, etc. will be allowed to sell beer. The article had an opportunity to inform the reader of where Pennsylvania fits into this discussion on a national level, i.e. what other states' beer distribution laws are. It could have compared PA to other states that have more relaxed beer distribution laws and how that has impacted those other states. Instead the writer chose to focus attention on how beer distributors would be affected by such a law, implying that these distributors would be victims.
I'm sure there is some broader economic point that I am missing in this, possibly involving "The Man vs. Mom and Pop" debate. But the issue is whether PA should allow convenience stores to sell beer. Period. In making that decision the lawmakers (and journalists covering the debate) should look at how other states have been affected by passing laws that allow convenience stores to sell beer. The economic impact on beer distributors should carry no weight in the debate. If beer distributors' service is no longer needed in the same way, that's fine. Why should public policy and law ever be forced to sustain unnecessary businesses at the expense of principle and public convenience?

Blockbuster: Man's Best Friend

2007-08-28T15:06:00.000-04:00

After I received an email from Blockbuster saying that they have completely cut out their free in-store exchange service they were so giddy about a year ago (AND their in-store coupons for free rentals) I noticed that they were making it up to us in other ways. Because I am a loyal subscriber, I get amazing deals on movie prices. Instead of paying $14.99 for a movie, I pay the low low price of $14.24, a savings of three quarters of a dollar!! They truly are passing the savings on to me. Thanks, Blockbuster!!

Nicetown

2007-08-20T09:22:00.001-04:00

When moving to Philadelphia, consider a move to Nicetown. I hear great things.

Non-Baby Girl Names

2007-08-15T14:51:00.000-04:00

Below is a list of girl names you won’t really see much of anymore, mostly because no one in their right mind would name their little baby girl any of these:

Mavis

Joan

Barbara

Gladys

Linda

Mildred

Paula

Mabel

Alice

Edith

Deborah

Down on "Pal"

2007-08-06T12:31:00.001-04:00

Is "Pal" really the right word to use here? For some reason it seems very irreverent given the circumstance. I don't think I've ever used the word "pal." I don't know why, but it just sounds really stupid. This was acknowledged in the Seinfeld episode, "The Deal" when Elaine got upset when Jerry referred to her as his pal. "What's wrong with 'pal'? Why is everyone so down on 'pal'?"

Poop Terms

2007-08-02T10:37:00.000-04:00

Culled from yesterday's Preston and Steve show. Immature, yes. Funny, yes.

Dropping a cobra in the basket.

Making room for dessert.

Brewing butt coffee.

Stocking the pond.

Crunching a grumpy.

Backing the car out of the garage.

Heave a Havana.

Getting rid of some butt ninjas.

Dropping anchor.

Launching a corn rocket.

Don't Worry, It's Ok to Call

2007-07-25T11:06:00.000-04:00

I take full responsibility for my cell phone, and I think others should too. There have been great developments in cell phone technology including the “vibrate” function, the “silent” feature and the “off” button. I will never get annoyed at someone who calls at any time, even at night, because it’s always my responsibility to adjust my settings according to my environment. Even if I tell you I’ll be at a movie, at work, at church or at a funeral I cannot blame the caller for calling. It’s on me. That is my cell phone policy. (This also gives me an excuse to post one of my favorite movie theater ads.)

Patterns

2007-07-16T17:48:00.000-04:00

As I was driving on I-95 the other day it became clear to me that there are just some people in this world who simply lack some forms of intelligence. The stretch of I-95 here in South Florida is very different from the part of I-95 in the Northeast. There are more lanes and the scenery is a little better. I was in the second fastest lane going 75-80 MPH (which really is the average speed) and looking out for the cars to my left going much faster than I. There was very little congestion, which means that most people on the road could easily choose the lane they felt most comfortable in. I saw an SUV ahead of me in the lane I was in and started to become “confused” (“angry”). The SUV had five lanes to choose from to go 65-70 MPH, and he went with the second fastest. Cars were going much faster than him on the left side AND the right side. He was obviously and clearly out of place, and everyone on the highway knew it except for him and we were all visibly annoyed. Drivers are taught from fifteen years old that the left lanes are for fast vehicles that are passing and the right lanes are for slower cars. It’s about as simple of a concept as you can get: Left = fast, right = slow. I just can’t figure out what misfires in someone’s head where they have a range of options and pick the worst one when there is such a clear, better option. Some people have no concept of traffic patterns.

And I think that’s the key. A few years ago, my dad had the chance to sit beside a bona fide rocket scientist at a fund raiser. Now my dad is a very intelligent guy, but I doubt he would be able to accomplish a fraction of the mathematical hurdles that a rocket scientist faces. What was interesting to me, and what has obviously stuck with me, was the rocket scientist’s explanation of what his job entailed. When asked to explain how he does such a complicated job, the scientist replied in a humble and congenial tone, “It’s just patterns.” When I was told this story, I was strangely drawn to that explanation. It was so simple and so profound. Even in their explanation of their job, these rocket scientists are smart.

The traffic incident is just one example of why I think that rocket scientist was on to something. There are very intelligent people out there who can do remarkable things with their mind. I saw this firsthand when I spent a few short years in academic circles. Some people’s skills with esoteric, high concepts, extremely complex logic, theories of probability, etc. were beyond anything I’ll ever be able to grasp. But to quote Stuart Smalley, “and that’s…ok”, because in the vast majority of these cases these intelligent figures would show a lack of skill in another area. Those who were extremely gifted in mathematics or higher order logic could see patterns that my brain just could not pick up. At the same time those same geniuses had trouble picking out social patterns and participating in simple social settings. Many were nice and polite, but there is a certain skill that one should pick up in life after finding himself in situations with others. I have learned not to take good conversation for granted. Some people do not know what it’s like to find someone with whom they can easily engage; where their words effortlessly ping-pong back and forth. The very subtle, indescribable patterns of social behavior escape some very intelligent people. These people tend to think puns are actually funny, or they stare at you a little too long after you’ve finished a sentence when it is clearly their turn to speak. Recognizing the meter, tempo and patterns in everyday speech is much more difficult for some.

Rocket Scientist Guy was right. There are some people who will survey the traffic they’re in and not pick up on the patterns of movement. These people may be PhD holders or brilliant mathematicians. I’ve realized that 99% of the population has a limited capacity to recognize patterns in multiple fields and situations. For the most part our brains are not able to recognize patterns within a large number of spheres. If I can use a fictional example, Will, the main character in Good Will Hunting, was a genius in mathematics and the humanities, but he could not understand how someone was so skilled in music. He couldn’t read the musical patterns but he could do the most complex mathematics. We’re just not programmed to be great at absolutely everything.

I probably won’t be more patient when I drive, but who knows? I might pause and wonder if there is something that the awful driver is superb at. Or maybe he’s just ridiculously old and irrationally cautious and cranky.

Next up...Context.

The Sweater

2007-07-10T20:35:00.000-04:00

The word "sweater" does not originate from a Middle English, Latin, or German word. The word is used in Dutch, Spanish, Swedish, and Hebrew, but as far as I can tell these are just transliterations of the English word. That means that some person who spoke English had to come up with a name when the sweater was first invented. Now, he had a number of options. It could have been very descriptive and uncreative, like a "warmer", or "thick-shirt...er". British and German people say pullover, which was mostly accurate until pullovers with zippers came out.

This interests me only because I cannot imagine anyone marketing a new product that describes the bodily function that results from wearing that product. This would be like calling underwear a "Chafer". What could have been the initial conversation over naming it that? "When you wear this garment, it will probably cause you to sweat. Lets go in that direction for a name. Lets call it a 'Sweat-er'". My guess is that people liked this new, warm product so much that they just ignored the awkward name, and now we just take it for granted. I cant really think of a better name, but I probably could if it was my job and someone paid me to come up with something.

The Gymnasium

2007-07-09T16:28:00.000-04:00

Back when Socrates was asking more questions than Paris Hilton at a lecture on Shiny Objects, Greek culture stumbled upon a new phenomenon called "Leisure Time." This was around 400 BC during the Persian era when the Greeks were producing new technology to make life better, such as coins and road systems. These new economic and transportation developments saved time and helped get them out of the Iron Age, where the average citizen did not have the time to contemplate life because they were too busy running from the enormous bear or lion that was trying to eat the deer they just spent 5 hours hunting. So the Greeks could now concentrate on other activities besides fighting for their survival, and they started devoting time to the health of mind and body. They started asking the tough questions like, "Why are we here?", "What counts as 'knowledge'?", and "Did Adam and Eve have belly-buttons?" Hence the popularization of the Humanities including philosophy, literature and drama, the fine arts, and architecture.
At the same time, the Olympics had been going on for a number of years, and with it came an interest in physical fitness. As more and more people had Leisure Time, more and more people gained an interest in naked fitness. Unlike myself, they did not see fitness as an activity that requires clothing. The word "gymnasium" comes from the Greek word, "gumnos" meaning "naked", which then produced the verb "gumnazo" which means (I'm not making this up) "to exercise naked."
This horrible tradition continues in gyms today. Americans have more Leisure Time than any other culture in history, and also choose to spend it cultivating the Humanities and athletics (or a Sudoku). I go to a gym at varying rates of regularity, but do not consider myself a "gym guy." Gyms are very weird places, and there are not a lot of other places that compare on the weirdness level. And it starts in the parking lot. I have driven into the gym parking lot and found a car with its blinker on waiting for a parking spot that is 20 yards closer than the one I park in. This person would rather wait in their car than walk the extra 20 yards...before exercising. And this happens on nice spring days while other people are taking walks in the park just to be outside.
The entrance to the gym is set up so that everyone who is working out can see you when you enter, and judge you accordingly. When I walk in I fully expect the lights to go down and a giant spotlight to shine on me while a guy with a microphone describes what I'm wearing, my weight, and my body type. Everyone turns to see if the person just walking in is the person they are imagining themselves with while working out. There's a lot of disappointment at the gym.
Much like bars and clubs, there are types of people who go to the gym, all of whom choose to spend a good bit of their modern Leisure Time getting fit, or at least pretending to get fit. The most obvious type is the guy with the spaghetti strap wife beater who is always there when you are there, no matter what time you go. His bed is located at Hollywood Tans. There is the butch woman with short hair and big arms who probably should have been born a man, and is bitter about this twisted fate. The middle-aged creepy guy is definitely there, and so is the Guy Who Somehow Knows Every Single Person at the Gym. There's the mom/divorcee who still thinks her body is in its junior year of college, but it is most definitely not. Then there are the attractive 20-somethings, and other, better groups you can probably think of.
But back to the naked thing, which is the "horrible" part of the horrible gym tradition. I have never been in a women's locker room, despite what I might tell you in casual conversation, so I can't say much about that, but I imagine there are some parallels between the two genders. A men's locker room is a freak show. After working out, I walk in and will always find a guy toweling off naked. It appears as if he is auditioning for a naked Zest commercial, and has chosen the locker one over from mine as his prime spot. I'm not sure what went on in gyms 20-30 years ago, but middle-aged-to-old men are under the impression that nakedness is required in the locker room. I'm not hyper about it, but if you asked me, "If you were in a situation where you were forced to look at men, would you prefer looking at dressed men or naked men?", I would go with "dressed." Baby boomers would apparently answer differently.
But I guess we're heading in the right direction. Gyms are now mostly co-ed. I can't (and never would) imagine going to a gym where all the male members (no pun intended) worked out in the buff. Forget towels, the equipment would have to be steam-cleaned after every use. Which leads me to my real question: Whatever happened to those hilarious "Co-ed naked" shirts?

Addendum - "The Gymnasium" Part Two: 'Stretching Is Not An Ethical Issue'

I usually go in the sauna after I work out to loosen up, and lately I've been hearing the most ridiculous conversations. First, I am usually not in the mood to carry on lengthy conversations with strangers of the same gender when all parties are barely clothed. Second, the conversations are usually about something I could not care less about, and are usually complaints about something. This is because some people think that if you complain about something it automatically creates common ground between you and them; it's supposedly something you both can relate to.
Recently there have been a surprising number of people who have been campaigning for stretching. It's not enough that they point out how important it is for themselves to stretch, they need to see other people stretch too, and when they don't see it they shake their heads in disappointment. I'm all for stretching, but I really don't care if others stretch or not; they're not my muscles. Honestly, stretch away gym-goers, but please don't attach any kind of ethics to the act or lack of stretching.

Would You Like To Join Me For A Date Tonight?

2007-07-05T16:49:00.000-04:00

My phone, made by LG, has a wonderful feature called “Quick Text.” It’s a set of preset text selections that LG anticipates many people will use for their on-the-go lifestyles. Selections include, “What’s up?”, “Let’s meet.”, “Thanks” and others. And there’s another selection for a specific type of cell phone user. Say you’re a young twenty-something, and you frequently find yourself needing to ask multiple people out on a date tonight, and you need to do this quickly via a text message. You can’t be wasting time with personalized text date requests. You need these multiple offers to go out to as many people as possible and ASAP. Well, you are in luck. LG knew you might encounter this problem, what with you being such a Lady of the Night or a Man Who Has Many Itches. They include a convenient Quick Text selection with you in mind. All you need to do is scroll down and select the one that says, “Would you like to join me for a date tonight?” You can send this quickly and frequently to people in your Contacts you would like to go on a date with. The biggest problem you will have is the responses you will receive to this most generic and impersonal date text request (and possibly juggling your evening schedule). You’ll be the Fonz, the Wilt Chamberlain of the text-based date-request world. Fear not, LG 8100 user. Your voracious appetite for text-based date spam can now be fulfilled.

This Is Not An iPhone Post

2007-07-05T15:19:00.000-04:00

There has been much ado about the iPhone, and for good reason. I tried one in an Apple store yesterday and it was everything I always dreamed an iPhone would be from when I was an iKid. It made me think of how far cell phone technology has gone, with cameras and…cameras. I was a little late on the cell phone craze, mostly because I was in grad school when it started to become common and at that time I couldn’t afford much of anything. My first cell phone was in 2004 at the ripe old age of almost 25. Back then people were constantly lamenting the cell phone age; how it was irreversible, how it was a new medium for blatant rudeness and disregard for others, etc. Those complaints were mostly true, but they were never filed with a proper measure of historical perspective, and most were slippery slope arguments attempting to make a mountain out of a molehill.

It would be easy to go on about the benefits of the cell phone – increased safety due to quick communication with help in various forms, enhanced efficiency decreasing instances of wasted time… But one of the biggest benefits in my opinion has been the elimination and extinction of 1-800-COLLECT commercials. They were at least as annoying as local car and furniture store ads, if not more so, and there would be an irrationally large number of collect call companies competing against each other. 1-800-COLLECT was very popular, but then 1-800-CALLATT issued in an era of phone number memorization insanity. I admit, it is somewhat reasonable to expect someone to remember “CALLATT” when they need to make a collect call. Then other companies went into a frenzy of “10-10” numbers vying for all of your collect call business. There was 10-10-321, 10-10-220, 10-10-811, and others that I can’t remember. They would all be competing for that large market of people who are not near someone’s phone who would allow charging a call. These commercials aired ALL THE TIME, in every commercial break. Not only that, but 1-800-COLLECT saw this very annoying trend, assessed the situation, and instead of coming up with a reasonable spokesman to counter the collect call mania, they went with the most obnoxious person on the planet – Carrot Top. Maybe it was a genius strategy since I still remember the commercials today, but by that time there were so many collect call services that I would have chosen another one just to spite Carrot Top. Maybe whatever service John Stamos worked for, post-Saget.

The situation got so insane Saturday Night Live even noticed it and did a parody of the 10-10 commercials. The joke was coming up with mnemonic devices to help you remember the lengthy string of completely random numbers involved in a collect call. Shortly after, the collect call hysteria died down as more people had access to cell phones and had complete control of who and where they were calling and generally complete knowledge of how they were being charged. Alas, the elimination of collect call commercials will probably be the cell phone advantage that time forgot.

Edward Kennedy and Ted Kennedy - Evil Twins?

2007-06-29T11:52:00.001-04:00

I guess a big part of this blog has evolved (or devolved) into asking questions that crop up in my random-laden brain and perplex me. One such question involves the name of that notorious Massachusetts Senator. His name is Edward M. Kennedy, but not really. Most people know him as Ted Kennedy, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why that is. Where did “Ted” come from, it being a nickname for “Theodore”? Was it just accepted because it’s close enough to “Ed”? If his name was Albert Kennedy would it be ok to call him “Cal”? I’ve never heard of such a confusing and botched nickname. I’ve considered that it has something to do with his well-known, raging, endearing-to-some alcoholism, but that would be too easy. I think the public is owed an explanation of his nickname etymology.

My Big Screen Debut Now On Your Littler Screen

2007-06-27T22:02:00.000-04:00

Back on October 1st, 2006, I was an extra in a movie called Shooter starring Mark Wahlberg, Danny Glover, and a really cute girl. They shot in the heart of Philadelphia, and I was an extra on a number of locations thanks to the Preston and Steve Show who put the word out on the open call.

I saw the movie opening weekend with great anticipation. I thought there was a chance you would be able to see me front and center when they were filming a car-chase scene. Cop cars were chasing Mark Wahlberg's car, and I was charged with playing Surprised (But Not Overly Surprised) Guy With Backpack Walking With Girl. It was a tough role, but I dug down and grabbed the emotion required for the film. I didn't want to let Mark down, although he never even set foot in Philadelphia when we were shooting. Much to my disappointment, that angle never made it into the final cut of the film.

BUT the shoot was not a total loss for me. There is a scene where the President is coming to Philadelphia from New Jersey via the Ben Franklin (or maybe Walt Whitman?) bridge. They shot a huge motorcade coming over the bridge while a group of other extras and I waved little flags and pretended that some people do that for presidents. As I remember, there were about three takes of this, all backing up traffic. The most interesting thing about the backup was to see the drivers' reactions. Most Philly drivers are demons who have no soul. But for some reason when you tell them the traffic backup is for a movie, all is excused and they want to know if their car will be in the movie. We usually tell them yes, although there's no way their car would ever be in any movie.

The whole reason I'm sharing all this is because you can actually see me in one of the shots, and the DVD that came out yesterday proves it. It's only for a couple seconds, and you can't really see my face, but these pictures should be enough evidence to show that I was there waving a flag.

All in all it was a fun day. I got paid a decent amount for a very long day, and eventually got to fill a W9 from Paramount Studios. I would highly recommend doing extra work if you can. It's fun to see how the film process works, even for a day. My day was very long, and required a ton of effort and money from a large number of people, and all of it was for a total of about a minute-long segment in the film. Not the most efficient use of resources. If we could pool the same amount of money, resources, and labor for a worthy cause, we would have world hunger kicked by 2009. Maybe someday a film will inspire us to do that.

Google Docs - the Future Is Now

2007-06-27T12:18:00.000-04:00

Those who use Google Docs and Spreadsheets should be happy about the new face of its main page. I use Docs for quick access to old college and grad school notes, articles, resumes, and blogs that I will probably reference or re-read later. The feature that lets you access documents via an internet link is particularly helpful when sending to someone with a different OS (Windows to Mac) or across different word processors (Word to WordPerfect). It effectively neutralizes them all into a rich text page. You can read about the new features here.

Knock-knock Jokes

2007-06-26T14:59:00.000-04:00

I would very much like to know the origin of the Knock-Knock joke. If I had never heard one before, and upon hearing one you then told me that it would eventually be known all across America by all ages, I would think you were out of your mind. First, they are not funny at all. I have never heard a funny knock-knock joke. Second, I can’t think of any other joke methods as unique as this one. There are the classic “Man walks into a bar…”, “A priest and a rabbi…”, etc., but those are just similarly classified variations of a storytelling joke. The format is basically just a story with a punch line. Same with the “What do you call a…” genre.

The only theory I have is that it was first published in some form of mass media. No way would such a dumb joke format rise to fame on its own merits. It was probably featured on the Howdy Doody show, or some other kids show from that era, and passed along as humor. Orange you glad you didn’t live back then?

Werner Herzog

2007-06-24T23:40:00.000-04:00

I just finished watching Little Dieter Needs to Fly, a documentary film by Werner Herzog. The film came out in 2002 but is getting a lot of press these days because of Herzog's new upcoming film, Rescue Dawn (out on July 4th in select cities), that tells the same story as Little Dieter. The new film stars Christian Bale, Steve Zahn, and Jeremy Davies (the weak translator from Saving Private Ryan). You might also remember Werner Herzog from his prior work on Grizzly Man, another very heavy and slightly unsettling film.

The subject matter in Little Dieter is intense. It describes how Dieter, a native German who came to the US to join the Air Force, was caught in Vietnam after his plane crashed. He was starved and tortured, but the most interesting part is his demeanor in the film as he describes what happened to him. He casually paints a detailed picture of the pain he went through and the torture methods his captors used on him. It's a very moving documentary, and I can't imagine the upcoming film affecting me any less. I highly recommend watching the documentary before seeing Rescue Dawn to get a context for what the story is about.

A Very Cool Site. Also, Disney.

2007-06-24T20:47:00.000-04:00

A couple highlights from my Shared Items...

(via Kottke) This site is fascinating. You can go to any area in the US and see how it has developed over the past century or so. Highlights for me include Philadelphia, Amarillo, Boynton Beach, Columbus, OH and Boston.

.....

The other day I saw the Disney logo and it made me a little sad. When I was a kid I used to watch the Disney Sunday Movie, and it made my nights. Michael Eisner would introduce whatever movie was on that night, say something clever, and a guy wearing a Mickey costume would put his hand to his mouth like Eisner just said something provocative. Since then Disney has sunk to new lows as their first priority clearly has been making money off of kids, regardless of the quality of their product. They do this by making horribly awful sequels to great classics. What kid wouldn't want to see Aladdin VII: Jafar vs. The Cute Arabic Monkey? And then I came across this article. I know Steve Jobs gets a lot of flack for just about everything he does (like most public figures), but I applaud him on his zeal for Disney integrity. The last great Disney animated feature in my opinion was The Lion King (not counting the Pixar movies). I'd love to see something of that caliber again.