Tex Avery - The Farm of Tomorrow

The future will rule.

Happy Thursday

Get more of the Evil Days of Christmas at copyranter.

It's like sailing, but in the winter

Since Minnesota has more than 10,000 lakes, and winter is usually cold, this seems like the perfect past-time. We can start giving rides as soon as we finish mounting homme's catamaran on ice skates. Won't take too long now…

Win $100,000!

That's right! You! Could WIN! If you watch these videos I made, learn the tips, and then play! Woo-hoo!

These are a series of 4 promos I made for The Sopranos A&E Connection Game online. They're being hosted on YouTube right now, but will soon be popping up in different places around the web. We need views! So go watch them, enjoy, send them around, and even play the game if you want. It's actually pretty cool.

Tom's Tips #1

Tom's Tips #2

Tom's Tips #3

Tom's Tips #4

Still looking for that perfect gift?

There are many traces of Three Times One Minus One in this, which will never be topped, but it's still funny.

A New Era Dawns...

Hello all. It's the beginning of a new Best of the Blank that will take us into the new year and beyond. Authorship, people. It's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about having you, my valued readers and contributors, help shape what Best of the Blank will become and has always been. This morning I sent out two invites to a couple of regular readers and contributors, and I'm looking to send out some more. If you think you might be interested in posting on this hallowed blog and taking it's name into the stratosphere, let me know. Best of the Blank can only achieve the greatness it deserves with a little help from my friends. Won't you help?

email me at: kylebc <> gmail <> com

When Detective Green dies...

and joins Lenny Briscoe, we know who will replace him:

All My Friends Are Famous

My 100th Post!

Milestones, ladies and gentlemen. They mark the passage of time with points of greatness. In looking forward to what lies ahead, it is helpful to also look behind. And it is with that in mind that I present to you the following.

This is probably my most favorite thing on the net at the moment. I highly recommend that everyone do this and send me your results.

Heart-warming Anti-capitalism

The New York Times today had an amusing piece on the meeting of Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist.org, with a bunch of big-money assholes. At the UBS global media conference, Buckmaster fielded questions about how Craigslist plans on "monetizing" its operation, and faced blank stares at his response of "fuck you and your money." I'm sure more than one banker lit himself on fire at the mere thought of such a thing.

Wendy Davis of MediaPost describes the presentation as a “a culture clash of near-epic proportions.” She recounts how UBS analyst Ben Schachter wanted to know how Craigslist plans to maximize revenue. It doesn’t, Mr. Buckmaster replied (perhaps wondering how Mr. Schachter could possibly not already know this). “That definitely is not part of the equation,” he said, according to MediaPost. “It’s not part of the goal.”

This is very refreshing. I know I'm a big ol' Commie and everything, but wow! How unique! Putting your customers and their needs before everything else! Why is that such an outlandish thing? Could other internet ventures be heading in this direction? Probably not.

Read the article here.

Bah humbug.

Doesn't Larry King look like everybody's confused grandpa here?

Larry: The elves stole my medicine!
Security guard: Sure they did grandpa. Sure they did. Now let's just put you over here, next to these gumdrop trees...
Larry: I hate gumdrops and I hate you.

No wait. THIS is scary.

This is one of the most brilliant trailer-recuts I've ever seen. Prepared to have a childhood joy turned to a childhood terror.

So Scary.

Long-Eyelash
Originally uploaded by asobitsuchiya.

Disrobing the Past: The Johnny Punani Story

A new Quiz Bowl production! Once again being submitted for awards, through the same group that gave us second for Science Baby of the Future. This one was completed in two weeks thanks mainly to the dedication of everyone but myself. I was totally racked with work and thought the whole thing was gonna get kilt, but everyone else on team Quiz Bowl put their all into it and got 'er done. I came in for the voiceover and some narration writing. But everything else you see was brought to life through the dedication of Mike, Sabrina, Joren, Andy, Jacky, Aaron, and others. I'm not going to set it up. Just watch and be amazed...

A Cuteness Supernova

The First Rule of Menace Club Is...

This is an awesome mashup of Dennis the Menace and Fight Club. More here.

Sing For Supper

I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving. This year, as always, we headed up to Connecticut to my Aunt Judy and Uncle Marshall's home for an extravagant food coma day (thanks Jacky). Maren and Emily, who was in town for a conference, joined us, along with my folks, grandma, Noah, Leetha, Jesse, friends of Judy and Marshall, and a 15 year-old Japanese girl who quit school to be a pop star and is staying with two of Judy's friends. It was quite the collective. Naturally, we also had kareoke.

BONER RANCH YOKEL

The Internet Anagram Server is the reason the internet was invented. I put in my name and got an incredible bevy of anagrams, including the gem used in the title. Some others:

• HA CRY ON ELK BONER
• A HORNY COB KERNEL
• LANKY BONER CHORE (are you seeing a theme here?)
• NO CHALKY NOR BEER
• BEER OR CLAN HONKY
• LANKY BRONCO HERE
• ENABLE HORNY ROCK
• HEEB OR CRANK ONLY
• BONNY OAR HECKLER
• CARNY HOBO KERNEL

Amongst thousands of others. I had no idea my name could so completely sum up who I am. Give it a shot and post your best ones in the comments.

Robert Altman dead at 81

Robert Altman has passed away at 81. He was a director who I admired quite a bit for always doing what he wanted to do with a medium he truly loved. His hallmarks - ensemble casts, overlapping dialog, wandering cameras - are things that I think are copied over and over again by directors, but seldom with the same skill (Paul Thomas Anderson is probably his best student).

I've always been a big fan of Westerns, but I never really understood why until I saw McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Altman's deconstruction of the genre from 1971. He took every trope of the Western and burnt them down, along with the church in the finale. It blew me away. It made me understand what made a Western a Western, and why it is the ultimate American movie form. He had a bunch of misses throughout his career, as any filmmaker who puts so much out there will have, but most of his stumbles still had something to them. Except for Pret-A-Porter. That was just awful. But, to his credit, there was an awful lot of nudity involved.

Altman was nominated 5 times for the Best Director Academy Award but never won. Last year the Academy gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award. In accepting the award he said:

"No other filmmaker has gotten a better shake than I have. [...] I'm very fortunate in my career. I've never had to direct a film I didn't choose or develop. My love for filmmaking has given me an entree to the world and to the human condition."

Word up, Robert Altman. Word up. You'll be missed.

A Reminder to Donate Life

I just went to Donate Life America to make sure I was a registered organ donor, and I would suggest that all of you do the same! They make it really easy to call up your state and and fill out the information (usually just entering your Driver's License info) to make sure you're on the file. It can't hurt to check, even if you've signed the back of your license. Some statistics on donation:

• More than 91,000 men, women and children currently await life-saving transplants.
• Every 12 minutes another name is added to the national transplant waiting list.
• An average of 18 people die each day from the lack of available organs for transplant.
• In 2005, there were 7,593 deceased organ donors and 6,895 living organ donors resulting in 28,108 organ transplants.
• In 2005, 44,000 grafts were made available for transplant by US banks.
• Approximately 1,000,000 tissue transplants are performed annually.

Making sure you're an organ donor is a really easy and painless way to make a huge difference for someone else.

Best of the Blank can't be all cynicism and spite. Just mostly.

Shareyourlife.org

Time For Jell-O Salad!

This post comes courtesy of Maren who is doing us all a great service. For those of you not fortunate enough to have grown up in the Midwest, this is what Thanksgiving is all about. Pilgrims be damned. I encourage everyone out there to submit some of your special Thanksgiving recipes as well to make this a Best of the Blank Holiday Eating Spectacular!

I want you all to be prepared, in case you need to supply the Jello salad this year at Thanksgiving. I will be making 'Lime Salad' as told by Ruth Brakel, my grandma.

You can follow this recipe if you're the designated jello bringer. Or if it doesn't suit your tastes, let me know, because my grandma's community cookbook (where this recipe is listed) has 40 other varities. Were you craving the kind with celery AND marshmallows AND mayo? Well Clara Viker has you covered, I can send you the recipe.

Ok, Lime Salad,

1 pkg lime Jello (3 oz)
1 C. hot water
Dissolve.
1 large can pears, crushed
1 3-oz cream cheese
1 C. chopped nuts
1 large pkg. Dream Whip [aka coolwhip]
Add 1 C. pear juice

Chill. Whip with beater, the Jello, and cream cheese. Fold in crushed pears and Dream Whip, which has been whipped. Put in ring mold and chill overnight.

That is, verbatim, the recipe. Don't worry, it's easy, just mix and let set overnight in a plastic mold. I have lots more! Orange Sherbet Salad, Cherry Coke Salad, Cranberry Walnut Salad, mmmmm. Don't forget about the Jello salad for your holiday meal!

[skeptics - don't judge until you try it]

Brief Journeys to both Past and Present

Oh how time flows upon diff'rent currents when not marked in passing through my blog. It seems as though ages have passed since last I scribed about this page with my bit-dipped quill. A summery:

On Sunday I met up with Noah, Jesse, Maren, and Chuck at Bar None, a bar in Union Square, to watch the Vikings game against the Packers. What made this interesting was the fact that during Vikings games, Bar None becomes a total Minnesota Ex-pat bar, filled to capacity with Helga-headed, purple and gold bedecked, horn-blowing hooligans. It's quite a sight. I even saw Mark Jury there, brother of Paul Jury, rockin' his Moss jersey. Apparently, Vikings fans have been gathering there for nine years, willing to take crushing defeat after crushing defeat in each other's $2 Bud-soaked company. Free pizza at half time too. There were even a few non-Minnesotans there, who've become fans since following Fran Tarkington over. That's dedication.

In other news, on Monday I headed down to a huge studio to watch the filming of a script I wrote for a CSI Miami promo. It was amazing. The director, Daniel Fries from Leroy+Clarkson, did an amazing job of helming the whole bit, turning my script into something much cooler than I had imagined. There was this monster set they built of a bathroom, smoke machines, models, actors, blood, film cameras on cranes, set decorators and prop people, grips, gaffers, ADs, a guy making omelette's for the crew, makeup, wardrobe, the whole bit. It was very cool. Daniel even took some suggestions on set and kept me involved the whole way through. I'm stoked to see the footage and start cutting the promo together. More on this as it comes together.

That, along with another Dog the Bounty Hunter promo has taken up my entire life as of late. I haven't been able to offer much input into Quiz Bowl's latest opus, which is due for a two-week film fest this Friday. Tonight I'm going to hook up with the team and lay down some voice over and write some narration. The brief cuts I've seen have been pretty hilarious. Joren is definitely headed for Emmy nominations should his whole teaching thing not work out.

On Friday it's Neeve's birthday bash at the Irish Rogue, which she describes as "Irish pub meets Bar Mitzvah." And my folks are coming into town! So they'll be hanging in the city for a bit before we all head up to Connecticut for a Thanksgiving Rumble Royale. Noah and I are deep-frying a turkey. Cuz we roll like that.

Stay tuned.

My Jams, Once Again

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Are YOU that somebody?

Pump Up The Jam

Watching this over and over will make you super-intelligent.

NASA Concept Art

Early artist conception of lunar module landing on the moon
Originally uploaded by chrisspurgeon.

chrisspurgeon, on flickr, has posted a very cool set of NASA presentation slides on their upcoming lunar exploration.

Help us Obi-Wan! You're our only hope!

This is totally awesome. A Danish team on engineers and designers have developed a system for displaying video in a 360 degree floating space. The Star Wars nerd in me is trembling.

The Cheoptics360 can display both computer and film content when used either indoors or out and scale from 1.5-meters on up to 30-meters. The video images generated by the four projectors are re-assembled within the prism-like pyramid through a process of mirroring and reflection making them appear to float in mid-air.

Check out the video below, complete with energizing Danish club music and strained English explanations!

Godless Money

BoingBoing points out this interesting page by Mitchell Kahle and his practice of spending only "Godless" dollars. This means he stamps or writes out "God" from "In God We Trust" on every bill that passes through his hands. He provides a succinct history on when and why the phrase was placed on currency and why he thinks it should be taken off. I like his style, and shall be following suit. Let your money be godless!

Spooktasticity

I will have Halloween pictures up soon from a couple different outings, but I encourage all of you to send me links to your Halloween snaps, or the snaps themselves, and I'll put 'em up! Here's some flickr sets from:

• My dad Buddy (in Minneapolis)
• Maren (in Brooklyn)
• Evan (in Minneapolis)

Send some more in! Let's scare the internets! You can email me at: kylebc {at} gmail {døt} com

For The Damaged Right Eye (1968)

This is a surreal short film from Toshio Matsumoto, a Japanese filmmaker, whose Funeral Parade of Roses heavily influenced Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. For The Damaged Right Eye is long for this site (12 mins) but if you've got the time it's pretty far out. Great soundtrack too.

Nathan Keepers: Pay Attention

Every once in a while, an actor comes along, who not only defines his generation, but surpasses it in timelessness. That actor is Brian Atene. Seen here, in his audition tape for Stanley Kubrick for Kubrick's upcoming Full Metal Jacket, Atene somehow manages to funnel all races and experiences into S.E. Hinton's Johnny Cade from The Outsiders. It is a bonus treat that Atene allows us to compare his singular performance with that of Ralph Maccio, who comes off as a total hack. I mean, Maccio's so natural and nuanced! Where's the Drama, the feeling, the yelling? Where are you Brian Atene? The Fannings and Lipnickis of the world need your mighty actorly hand to guide them!

The Cutest Gay Couple Ever

Sent to me by Neeve, who knows too much about my fetish for "Alternative" families.

Smoking Is Terrible

Smoking is Bad

Add to My Profile | More Videos

By Kristen Schaal

Busy Busy Bee

Hello all. Been a while. Still inundated with CSI Miami. I've felt so lost without this connection we call "blog." Last night Katy and I saw The Prestige. Amazing. Great story, great performances, beautiful cinematography, and Magic!! That's entertainment! It was adapted from Christopher Priest's novel by the Nolan brothers, who also wrote Memento together. Katy read the book, and thought the screenplay did a better job of bringing the story to life for her. We were highly engrossed. And the movie starred Batman, Golum, and Ziggy Stardust! Probably the ultimate cast. In fact, I want to see a movie with those three who have to work together to solve mysteries throughout time. It would be called: Mystery Squad Galactic Force Zero. Someone get Joel Silver on the phone.

How Can I Tell If I'm Really In Love?

The reason national divorce rates are so high is because they've stopped showing this video to teens. Ted Danson come back! Tell us how to love again!



Unfortunately, this is only part one, and is a huge tease, but when the other parts surface you can rest assured Best of the Blank will feature them proudly.

Amazing New Sony Bravia Commercial

Does anyone remember the Sony Bravia commercial from last year, in which thousands of colorful bouncy balls are released on a hill in San Francisco? It was a stunningly beautiful spot, and won all kinds of awards in advertising and short-form content. Their new spot is also pretty amazing.

Our latest TV ad - featuring massive paint explosions - took 10 days and 250 people to film. Huge quantities of paint were needed to accomplish this, which had to be delivered in 1 tonne trucks and mixed on-site by 20 people.

The effect was stunning, but afterwards a major clean-up operation was required to clear away all that paint!

The cleaning took 5 days and 60 people. Thankfully, the use of a special water-based paint made it easy to scrape-up once the water had evaporated.

It was directed by Jonathan Glaser, who's done a number of really cool music videos and directed Sexy Beast, with Ben Kingsley.

It's very smart of Sony to make such amazingly cool commercials that don't look anything like commercials. It gets people like myself to pass them around and advertise for them willingly. Sony, if you're listening: I am your next director.

Watch the video.

But what does Outlook care!

I just wanted to share some spam I recieved today. It's pretty stream-of-conscious. It sort of reads like Henry Miller or Burroughs. I bet if McSweeney's published it, people would lose their shit.

And they really hurt. I really miss having a painless period. But what does Outlook care!
BBC News provides trusted World and UK news as well as local and regional perspectives. , RLLP All rights reserved. You know, that dumb question the GP asked my mum was a rather dumb remark the conservatives told the GP last year. I have of those yummy baby pears. But what does Outlook care!
Many individuals at Visibility Corporation have been APICS. Forgive me for being so stupid but I, haha, panic very fast, apparently.
I love experimenting with food and tastes.
Not much to see yet, but this is a really exciting film project.
NET-grokking people like myself. Because, really, that would be a great topic. This time, it was for our language, which accompanied by the Swedes, is thought to sound just like. Not that I have so many, the gynaecologist explained to me I was less fertile. You see, I am so not free. It was a fake one, as so many I have are.
I thought about blogging. I love experimenting with food and tastes. NET-grokking people like myself. But still, the language is not perfect.
html, manufacturing journalist, Thomas R. You see, I am so not free.
And I covered them with Chaumes.
Forgive me for being so stupid but I, haha, panic very fast, apparently.
Because, really, that would be a great topic.
I need to be able to mail.
A mere five years after being. This is exactly how it is to be a web designer. Silly, because I have a great relationship with my parents.

Extinction Ahoy!

Yesterday Treehugger posted this interesting timeline showing how long it would take to eradicate our traces from the planet. It's strangely soothing to think about a world without humans. Remember "(Nothing But) Flowers" by the Talking Heads?

Years ago
I was an angry young man
I'd pretend
That I was a billboard
Standing tall
By the side of the road
I fell in love
With a beautiful highway
This used to be real estate
Now it's only fields and trees
Where, where is the town
Now, it's nothing but flowers
The highways and cars
Were sacrificed for agriculture
I thought that we'd start over
But I guess I was wrong

Great song. So this concept seems to be somewhat en vogue at the moment. New Scientist has a great article up that fleshes out what you see in the graphic timeline, along with interesting little tidbits:

Feral descendants of domestic animals and plants, too, are likely to become permanent additions in many ecosystems, just as wild horses and feral pigs already have in some places. Highly domesticated species such as cattle, dogs and wheat, the products of centuries of artificial selection and inbreeding, will probably evolve back towards hardier, less specialised forms through random breeding. "If man disappears tomorrow, do you expect to see herds of poodles roaming the plains?" asks Chesser. Almost certainly not - but hardy mongrels will probably do just fine. Even cattle and other livestock, bred for meat or milk rather than hardiness, are likely to persist, though in much fewer numbers than today.

I also ran across The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT) while researching this, which is a group that encourages the wholesale cessation of human breeding in order to return earth to its pre homo erectus utopian state. Their slogan: "May we live long and die out". Their site could really use a redisign, maybe a little color, but aesthetics are probably not too important to a group that is hoping to not exist. Their site does offer itself in several languages, emphasing their global aspect, which is important since the US is really a very small percentage of the earth's total population.

My Jams

I'm going to try and do a semi-regular column here on Best of the Blank starting...now. Entitled My Jams, it is a presentation of things that I'm into, from literature, to music, to movies, to opinions, to tasty eats. So here are My Jams for the week:


Blog
The Masticator. This is written by the brilliant Harry Sheff. My Jam this week is his post Liberals on Conservatives on Liberals, in which Harry takes a brave leap into conservative punditry and returns with a wonderful deconstruction of hypocrisy-filled arguments (from both sides). (That picture came up when I did a search for "masticator" on google. Harry, I think this guy could be your new mascott.)

Book
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. I've just started this book, but I already want to stand up and proclaim my athiesm from the chuch steeples. Dawkins is an impassioned and eloquent writer, who can also be really funny, and knows exactly what he's talking about. And what he's talking about is what is wrong with religion and why it's time for it to go.

Record
The Crane Wife by The Decemberists. The Decemberists bring their pirate ship into Prog Rock waters, and fear neither the extended jam nor the Reaper on their latest release. The first song will make you wanna hug yourself and then the second makes you wanna rock. On the moon.

Food
Massaman Curry. Yum.



TV
The Office (American version). Katy and I raced through the first two seasons of this with a quickness. The first season left us amused but not amazed, since it aped the British one so much (which is one of our absolute faves). But the second season was flat-out awesome. We laughed, we cried, we squeezed one another everytime Jim and Pam were together on screen. I've downloaded the first three episodes of the third season, and thus know what we're doing some night this weekend.

Work
CSI: Miami. All I've been doing here for the last week are promos for this show. I've come to appreciate David Caruso's monotone delivery and need to take off/put on sunglasses for every statement like I appreciate the delicate movements of a winter swan coming home after a spring thaw. Since we are now running CSI: Miami on A&E at least 20 times a week, I expect to eventually experience a Videodrome-like moment with the entire cast.

Feel free to leave comments with your own Jams!

There's A Film Here...

I'm working on a screen adaptation of this story that came out today:

BERLIN (Reuters) - A small pile of leftover jelly discarded beside the road after a wedding party caused a large-scale security alert in Germany with biochemical experts, firemen and police called in to investigate.

"Passers-by called police after finding a pool of a flabby red, orange and green substance on the roadside," a police spokesman in the eastern town of Halle told Reuters on Monday.

Fears of toxic waste led to the closure of a wide area after the emergency call on Sunday, and experts wearing chemical warfare suits spent two hours examining the gelatinous substance before deciding that it was -- jelly [Jell-O].

"The fire brigade always has to assume a worst-case scenario," said a fire brigade spokesman. "We conducted a variety of tests and figured out it was jelly."

He said the newly wed groom, who was pulled out of bed at noon following a tipoff, confirmed that the jelly, known as Jell-O in the United States, was a party leftover -- and agreed to clean it up.

Ladies And Gentlemen: Joey Reid.

I present to you all: the first guest review on The Best of the Blank. Joey will eventually be transmogrifying this into a column about Ecology. He'll answer questions, address current topics and issues, and eventually make this world a better place, all thanks to the blog. And you, the readers. But mostly this blog. I would also like to take this opportunity to invite any of you with ideas for columns or single posts to submit them to me at robo_chic [at] yahoo [dot] com. Take advantage of the Wild-West-like conditions and get in while there's still plenty of gold in the stream! Open up a saloon! Or a brothel! All the things that made this country great will eventually make this blog great. So, for once in your lives, be a part of something important. And now, without further ado:

Joey's Green Revue
Product: Simple Play Toe sneaker, from the Green Toe line Cost: $93.50 with free shipping from Zappos

Green business is big business. Walmart, one of the 20 largest economies in the world, is trying to sell at least one compact fluorescent lightbulb to each of its customers in the coming year. In addition, Walmart is poised to become the single largest retailer of organic foods in the U.S. Why does Walmart care? One of their employees calculated that they would save 7 million dollars a year by upgrading the fixtures in their stores with compact fluorescents. As for organics, with the market constantly growing, it's just good business for Walmart to get into it; never mind any adverse impacts on the industry.

Although vegetarian shoes have been available for a long time, green shoes just started popping up. Recently, Simple began marketing a new shoe aimed at the green consumer. Simple use the tagline "Shoes with less stuff in them," for their Green Toe line of shoes and sandals. The concept is simple, and Simple are not alone in the market. Camper recently released a line of modular shoes called Wabi. The Camper website describes the horrors of shoemaking, the number of components, the complexity, the nastiness, and offers Wabi as the solution: three interchangeable parts, recyclable materials, replaceable units, something to please everyone. Well, almost everyone, since there's no Camper store in Minnesota, and they're pretty expensive, so you have to spend a fair amount of money on somewhat blind faith. Several places in the Twin Cities carry the Green Toe line of Simple shoes, at somewhat more reasonable prices than the Campers.

After four years, and a ridiculous number of kilometers (miles), I've nearly worn through the heels on my old pair of Campers. I love my Campers; they were comfortable, waterproof, windproof, fashionable and unique. Someone once recognized me at a urinal just from my shoes. Anyway, I figured it was a good time to get something new and the Simples seemed like the perfect choice for a sustainability minded person like myself. I purchased the Play Toe sneakers from Zappos.com for $93.50, a $3.50 premium over Simple's own online store, but with free shipping both ways, in case they suck. The shoes arrived, signed for by my caretaker, in a recycled cardboard shoe carton, complete with laces and crepe paper!

In terms of aesthetics, all you need to know is that these shoes literally make girls scream (in joy, not horror); it's happened to me more than once in the last two weeks. Comfort, is a different matter. If anything these shoes love to contradict themselves. The ped-bed insert actually does sort of massage your feet as you walk, which surprised me. But no ped-bed will ever make up for a lack of cushioning, structure and anatomical design. The shoes lack all semblance of arch support. The unstructured footbed, combined with the essentially flat crepe rubber sole, results in a jolting stride. After two weeks, I feel pain in the balls of my feet, where I've never felt pain before. In contrast to the painful soles, the jute uppers breathe well and create a great climate for my toesies. But even that relative calm is destroyed by the hurricane of a disaster that is the jute laces. Whoever decided that stiff, hard, inflexible, thick laces were a good idea should be fired. They don't tie well. I have to double-knot them, or they'll untie within a few minutes. They're uncomfortable, the hard, thick nature of them digs into the top of my feet, forcing me to tie the laces looser than I'm accustomed. Finally, the damn things don't seem to be very durable, the only excuse I could think of for them. One of them has already frayed halfway through. Why not just replace them? Why not indeed. That would be wasteful, these shoes are all about green production, if you have to throw out a part of them a soon as they arrive, they've failed.

Which leads me to perhaps their greatest failure, other than the pain inducement. The rubber sole, as cool looking as it is, seems to be rubbing off in small pieces. The cutout under the big toe is already wearing from contact with the ground. Looking at these shoes, I highly doubt the soles are replaceable. So what's the point? It would seem that I just spent $90 to keep a bunch of stuff out of the environment, only to dump a fragile pair of shoes in the trash in the not too distant future. I could be wrong on the durability, but if the pain keeps up, I may never find out. Let me summarize the design principles for you: green materials, cute, natural looking colors. Someone forgot to mention that shoes can support natural walking motions or impede them. They also forgot that their ultimate goal should be to keep them out of the landfill as long as possible. The toxic materials that went into the creation of my old Campers will probably be offset by the amount of time I wore them, especially in relation to the Simples. If Campers would just resole them, I wouldn't give a damn about green materials. Some cobblers will resole Campers, so I may try that option. Actually, my Campers would be perfect if the leather had come from organically raised cows, and was tanned non-toxically (progress is being made on this front,) or if they used recycled leather.

Still, these shoes bring some good into the world. They remind me of early digital cameras. They were big, but not huge, they took pictures, and you could see them right away. Wow! Actually, they were a lot like polaroids, but easily transferred onto a hard drive or floppy disk. The image quality was horrific: poor color rendition, poor dynamic range, poor resolution. The cameras were slow, difficult to use, expensive. Film trumped them in every aspect save one, the ease of transferring onto a computer. My experience with the Green Toe shoes is similar. They suck, in most aspects save one, the materials used in construction. Everything else should improve with time, just like digital cameras. Buying one of these shoes now encourages more businesses to make greener products. They'll figure out the durability thing and the comfort thing with time, or they’ll go out of business.

With that in mind, these shoes seem to be designed for the early adopter, the person with a multitude of shoes, who can wear them out on a Friday night, without having to wear them all day for the rest of the week. If you buy a pair of shoes every year, if you love the latest thing, if you love cute, and green, these are the shoes for you. If you're primary concern is long term sustainability, there are some serious issues with these shoes.

Style: ****
Comfort: *
Green: ****
Durability: **

--Joey Reid

A(nother) Tree Grows In Brooklyn

This weekend Elizabeth and Jeremy, our landlords and neighbors, put a new tree in the backyard. It's a very cute crabapple tree.

The process of moving that small crabapple tree into the backyard was surprisingly Herculean. It took four adults and one small person. There were also several failed attempts that anyone who's been through high school physics should feel ashamed for having attempted. Luckily for Stella, she is blameless.

See the flickr set.

Like A Great God Swallowing The Sun

This is how I would describe the ever-moving progress that is Best of the Blank. New features are coming, beginning tonight and increasing throughout the coming weeks, including the inaugural guest posting by Mr. Joey Reid: a review and overview of Simple's Green Toe shoes and the future of Green products. Very cool stuff. Stay tuned!

The Results Are In!

And Quiz Bowl's "Science Baby of the Future" did very well! Our accomplishments:

• 2nd Place Overall
• Audience Award Runner-up
• Best Writing
• Best Sound Design
• Best Baby Actor

2nd Place Prize is:

• WBC Course Certificate for Online Basic Training (valued at $650).
• 1 Master DVD w/ 25 DVD-R copies of the 2nd place team's short film from Tobin Productions
• Free Entry into the 5th Annual Movie Making Madness Film Competition (valued at $85)

Woo-hoo! We're very pleased. The film that beat us didn't say it, but I'm pretty sure it was a collaborative project between Scorsese, Spielberg, and Orson Welles. So that makes us feel a lot better. We're just a rag-tag group of no-goods that decided to put on a show!

To see our film again, for the first time: Science Baby of the Future!

Gospel Feist

This is a picture I snapped on my way to work. This guy was standing on a corner in midtown. "The World Wide Crusade Victory Is Mine Saith the Lord Deliverance Center" does have a certain ring to it.

Applause-O-Meter

Last night was our triumphant screening along with several of the other films. It was a nearly packed house -- when I say house I'm talking about a classroom -- but a very LARGE classroom. It was fun. Some of the movies were not terrible, many of them were. A surprising number of them all had to do with spicing up a couple's sex life, which probably spoke to a lot of filmmakers in general. And even though I am obviously biased, I do think our film had the biggest applause and laughter. We also heard a lot of murmuring about a "cute baby" and "science" so we're feeling pretty good. They handed out audience award ballots that we turned in after the screenings, and I was hoping they would be counted during the Q&A session with the filmmakers, but, as there were no questions, they just sent us out with promises of award announcements on Friday. We wait with baited breaths. After the screening we headed to Dallas BBQ, which may be one of the more depressing neon-adorned restaurants I've ever been to, and drank goblets of Blue Hawaiians and other slushy alcoholic drinks, and ate loaves of fried onions. A celebratory meal fit for artists of our stature for sure.

Say Goodnight to the Bad Guy

It's like when peanut butter met jelly or Hall met Oates: it's a perfect combination. (NSFW, btw)

We Love You All!

Thanks to everyone who watched SPACE BABIES OF THE FUTURE! We've gotten over 250 views on youtube! We're tre tre excited to go to the screenings tomorrow night. It turns out the awards are not presented then, but on Friday, so stay tuned. There will be a Q&A after the screening that we're gonna send Michael up for and there will be audience awards, so we'll probably snag up most of those. In case anyone is interested in attending, we're in the 8:00-10:00pm segment at NYU's Cantor Film Center (36 East 8th Street @ University Place), Wednesday night, and tickets are $5. To represent how tomorrow evening will be playing out, I present the following video, sent in by Buddy Cohen. In this video, the terrified girl will be playing every other film at the screening, while the Indian Michael Jackson zombie and his zombie posse

Science Babies of the Future!

Here it is! The end result of team Quiz Bowl's 12 hour NYC Film Run. For those unfamiliar: the NYC Film Run pits teams against one another in a race to create a film of four minutes or less in 12 hours, from noon on saturday to midnight. There is a specific theme and an action that must be in each film. For this race the theme was A Search, and the action was A Slap. We got this information at noon sharp and raced over to a loft of Jacky's friend to begin planning the story and production. Everything came together beautifully. Check out the credits for how everyone contributed. It went remarkably smooth for how constrained we were with time, largely to everyone's ability to multi-task like what. The films are all being shown this Wednesday where they will also announce the winners. We think we've got it locked, but there are 46 teams against us, so who knows. Check out the end result. It may terrify you, but like An Inconvenient Truth, it was something that needed to be addressed.

Could I supersize that?

This is completely edible! A husband and wife team collaborated on this for a Crafster.org challenge. There's lots more pictures here.

Wow.

This one's not safe for Grandma. Unless she's totally into mulletted, oily, Zubaz ®-wearing male strippers. In which case she'll probably go bananas.

Dinosaurs Still Roam The Earth

I just got back from assisting on an interview shoot with Sonny Grosso. The shoot was for an electronic press kit for the A&E movie Kings of South Beach. It's being wrapped up right now. For those of you unfamiliar (as I was), Sonny was the basis for the Roy Scheider character in the French Connection, and Gene Hackman played his partner (Grosso had a part in the film as well). The man has some amazing stories. He had a part in The Godfather playing one of the guys who shot James Caan, and it was his personal gun which was used in the restaurant scene where Michael (Al Pacino) shoots Capt. McClusky (Sterling Hayden). He still keeps this gun on his desk and was happy to show it to Andrew and I. And I was both awed and scared. He counts Robert Duvall, William Freidkin, and Nicholas Pileggi (who wrote Goodfellas) as friends. His office was a museum of film posters, photos from sets, awards from police departments and community organizations, cheesy Italian knicknacks, antiques, and over-the-hill gag gifts. But the most valuable piece in his vast collection rested upon his desk, and was shown to Andrew and I as we were about to leave. Framed in tarnished silver, facing him as he sat, was an 8x10 black and white photo of the lovely Marilyn Monroe. She was mid-laugh, perched on what looked like a stage, and surrounded by several people obscured by the tight cropping of the photo. She filled the frame. But taped to the bottom of the photo, outside of the glass was another photo of a man, woman and Joe DiMagio from much later. Sonny explained that the framed photo represented the moment that Joe left Marilyn. We couldn't see why, considering she looked so happy in the shot, until he took off the taped photo on the bottom to reveal: Marilyn Monroe's vagina. Yes, an upskirt shot of the woman who may have been responsible for the fall of the house of Kennedy; who was named "Sexiest Woman of the Century" by Time Magazine; who became an inadvertant icon of the Pop Art movement. Andrew and I were of course speechless, a reaction which I'm sure Sonny never gets tired of. He explained that Marilyn never wore "bloomers." It was a landmark moment in my life.

The Ecology of Cities

From Treehugger.com:

Urbanization is one of the dominant demographic trends of our time. In 1900, 150 million people lived in cities. By 2000, it was 2.9 billion people, a 19-fold increase. By 2007 more than half of us will live in cities—making us, for the first time, an urban species.

In 1900 there were only a handful of cities with a million people. Today 408 cities have at least that many inhabitants. And there are 20 megacities with 10 million or more residents. Tokyo’s population of 35 million exceeds that of Canada. Mexico City’s population of 19 million is nearly equal to that of Australia. New York, São Paulo, Mumbai (formerly Bombay), Delhi, Calcutta, Buenos Aires, and Shanghai follow close behind.

The article goes on. Interesting stuff. Read it here.

Love is rather plebian...

This is one of my favorite songs to sing in the shower. A scene from The Girl Can't Help It (1956) by Frank Tashlin. Julie London is a quick-changing ghost come back to taunt her drunken lover. Great lighting. Check out the end where she's pulled back into Hell.

This Could Make Our Country Great Again

Baby Toupees. Yes.

The Great Unraveling

There is a stench in the air. It is the stench of Right-wing bullshit being rolled out in great tractor-fulls from the classified bunkers in which they were stored. Today in the Guardian is a piece on the release of an Intelligence Report disproving Bush's claim that the Iraq war is making America safer from terrorists. The report, put together by 16 different intelligence agencies had this to say:

The Iraq conflict has become the 'cause celebre' for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world. If this trend continues, threats to US interests at home and abroad will become more diverse, leading to increasing attacks worldwide.

President Clinton's impassioned ass-kicking during a Fox News interview, the release of a memo that contradicts Condi Rice's statement about Clinton not leaving a strategy for dealing with al Qaed, and retired army generals coming out in droves against Rumsfeld; these things are making me feel good again. Things are happening here. Dems are starting to step up and rattle the rafters a little bit. Also of note are the current Amazon bestsellers. Pretty wild that Chavez can hold up a book while calling Bush "the Devil," and Americans head out to pick it up in droves. Think about that GW. That's fucked up. For you. Keep the rancor coming America! Let's move the bullshit from the White House to the Big House!

Awwwww!

What is it about tinycute animals who've been injured? Why do they melt our hearts so? Sometimes, when something is just so cute, I want to squeeeeeze it. I know I'm not alone on this. Durga ended up in a cast in her very first couple of months with us. We didn't have anything to do with it, we swear. But watching her limp around was, like, so totally cute. In honor of her, and of those who share the admitedly sick delight in such cute tragedy, I present a gallery of animals in casts.

They Heart A Computer

On Tuesday, October 3, Rhizome.org is throwing a 10th Anniversary party at The Kitchen in NYC.

This evening of live performances and video screenings explores forms of expression, desire and anxiety prevalent in a culture increasingly influenced by the Internet. Doo Man Group (made of Ben Jones, Jessica Ciocci, and Jacob Ciocci of Paper Rad) interweaves live percussion with a dense collage of web-based visual emphemera. Jona Bechtolt (of Yacht) and Claire L. Evans combine music, dance and Powerpoint to explore the possibilities and fallacies embedded in online communities. In addition, videos by Michael Bell-Smith, JODI, Shana Moulton, Takeshi Murata, and humorist Ze Frank investigate how the Internet amplifies and exxagerates life offline.

Rhizome, now an affiliate of the New Museum of Contemporary Art, is an organization dedicated to new media art. Their site once served as the place to be for new Flash-based work and internet installations. They Heart A Computer is being sponsored by Engadget, one of my favorite tech blogs. It's probably worth going just for Ze Frank.

Little Superstar

Sent to me by my dad who knows what I likes. I actually wish this was one of my old home movies.

kylesbob Is The Narcissist, Not Me

Harry at his blog The Masticator links to the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) at The LA Times. Like Harry, I seem to be more narcissistic than musicians, actors, comedians, and even reality TV stars (apparently the standard by which all narcissists will be measured into eternity). Take the test and see how you do. Of course, just taking this test already gaurantees you're a complete narcissist. You all make me sick.

David, NO!

Does anyone here have Showtime?? Because Sunday, October 1st, there's a new series beginning starring none other than Michael C. Hall, portrayer of David Fisher on one of the greatest shows of all time: Six Feet Under. From a gay funeral home director to a serial killer miami cop. Hall is dangerously close to becoming typecast as a darkly complex character with death/law enforcement fetishes. Couldn't somebody get Hall's agent on the phone with David Crane? There have got to be some quirky, intrusive neighbor roles available on a network that isn't into "pushing boundaries."

In any event, I'd love to give this show a shot but haven't got Showtime. I'll probably take "a stab" (get it?!) at downloading it, but if there's someone out there with a better cable package than me, watch it and let me know how it is.

Hoping to get Lost In America

If any of you have been wracking your brains over what to get Katy and I for our upcoming nuptials, here's an idea: The Airstream Safari Special Edition trailer (click on Safari SE). Oh, and we're also going to need a car to pull this. And enough money that we won't need to work so we can just drive this around the country having adventures. Start saving those pennies!

In related news, we're narrowing down dates for said wedding next summer. Official announcements to follow.

Roots

Mike D pointed me to this commercial which pretty much laid the foundation for our careers as MCs. Thank you phantom rapper, for laying down such tight rhymes about such an integral figure in our lives. This was the moment re realized Rap could be used for something important.

Katy's New Glasses!

Aren't they so cute? She actually got them specifically to match that cocktail. That's how cool she is.

It's Official: Weird Al's Back.

This is seriously funny. I am still proud to proclaim that my first concert was a Weird Al concert.

It's finally here!

Yarr! Today is the official Talk Like A Pirate Day! Could you sleep last night? I know I couldn't! Visions of scurvy and trolling vowels kept dancing through my head! But it's here, it's here! Everyone take advantage as much as you can. And remember, where I come from (the sea), talk like a pirate also means dress like a pirate. So scabbards and scabbies for all!

Primal Laughing / Primal Fear

"Cradle to Cradle" Umbrella Competition

Over at Treehugger there's a very cool competition happening to determine a new/improved umbrella. Each of the entries submitted adhere to the Cradle To Cradle concept, paraphrased here:

McDonough (architect) and Braungart (chemist) propose an industrial revolution, but this time, a green one. Taking cues from biomimicry, they propose that WASTE = FOOD, and suggest that things should be made from one of two types of materials: biological nutrients, which decompose naturally, and technical nutrients, which are designed for upcycling (little to no quality lost during recycling).

The five entries presented vary from what I see as being practical replacements for the spontaneously combusting cheapies you can buy on any corner in New York, to interesting concepts that ultimately are completely unpractical unless you're a millionaire hippy. Which would be in itself unpractical.

Umbrella Competition

Banned Books Week

It's not until next week, but Google and the American Library Association are teaming up to present highlights and information on a number of classics that were once banned or challenged. From Google's site:

To Kill a Mockingbird. Of Mice and Men. The Great Gatsby. 1984. It's hard to imagine a world without these extraordinary literary classics, but every year there are hundreds of attempts to remove great books from libraries and schools. In fact, according to the American Library Association, 42 of 100 books recognized by the Radcliffe Publishing Course as the best novels of the 20th century have been challenged or banned.

Google Book Search is our effort to expand the universe of books you can discover, and this year we're joining libraries and bookstores across the country to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Banned Books Week – a nationwide initiative to help people learn about and explore banned books. You can start by browsing these 42 classics – books we couldn't be more pleased to highlight.

It's pretty cool and worth checking out. Many of these make up personal favorites and all are worth reading at some point.

Check it

The People Have Spoken

And they want to let the Dog out. Some brave soul (apparently a John Buffam) has created a petition online to drop all charges and warrants against Dwayne "Dog" Chapman and his cohorts. Over 13,000 people have signed as of this posting, and from what I know about the influence of internet petitions on international criminal law, his freedom is pretty much guaranteed. Please, won't you sign?

Free Dog

More Important Than Reading the Bible Six Times

"Some secrets are best left a forgotten secret."

Comedy Central Insider links to an amazing bit from the usually mediocre website Something Aweful. These fake IMDB (called AMDB here) profiles for even faker movies are often hilarious and include cast lists, taglines, memorable quotes, and everything else you find on an IMDB page. My favorites so far are CyborgWarp and Hip Hop Tomb Raiderz, the latter starring DMX as Professor Phineas R. Compton. The title of this post is the tagline for Canoe. Here's some memorable dialog from Hip Hop Tomb Raiderz:

Lara Inglewood: Phineas! Enough of this bullshit! You need to decide right now: are you a rapper or an archaeologist?
Professor Phineas R. Compton: You know that ain't fair, Lara. Rapping's my heart and archaeology's my soul. You kill one you kill the other, man.
Lara Inglewood: This isn't about heart and soul, Phin! You're great at both now, but if you focused on one you'd be a legend! Why you gotta have it both ways, man?
Professor Phineas R. Compton (cocking pistol): That's the way I roll, bitch.

There are many instances of brilliance. Also brings to mind the work of the legendary Eric Blevins.

Driving Force

Here's a promo I produced for the Driving Force Myspace page. It was supposed to be cut to a much cooler track with vocals, but the licensing didn't go through at the last minute and I had to improvise with sound bites. Still fun tho. Wait for the video to load for better playback.

link

Dog Update

In the interest of my readers, who demand up-to-the-minute info on our most beloved be-mulleted bounty hunter, here is a reprinting of an AP article from today:

Duane 'Dog' Chapman, Two Co-Stars Arrested in Hawaii on Charges of Illegal Kidnapping

By MARK NIESSE
Associated Press Writer

HONOLULU (AP) -- TV reality star Duane "Dog" Chapman and two co-stars on his show were arrested Thursday in Hawaii on charges of illegal detention and conspiracy in the bounty hunters' capture three years ago of a cosmetics company heir.

Chapman, son Leland Chapman and associate Timothy Chapman were taken into custody and did not resist arrest, said Mark Hanohano, U.S. Marshal for the district of Hawaii. "It went down without incident," Hanohano said.

Mona K. Wood, a publicist for the star of the popular cable series "Dog The Bounty Hunter," said Chapman would be vindicated. "He arrests the bad guys - and he is definitely not one of them," she said.

The charges stem from Chapman's capture of Max Factor heir Andrew Luster on June 18, 2003, in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, said Marshals spokeswoman Nikki Credic in Washington.


Chapman's capture of Luster, who had fled the country while on trial on charges he raped three women, catapulted the 53-year-old bounty hunter to fame and led to the reality series on A&E.

Chapman, shackled at his ankles and wearing a blue muscle T-shirt at his first court appearance Thursday, said the government was jealous of his success in hunting down criminals.

"You see what the American government is doing to us? They throw us in jail," Chapman said in a federal courtroom. "I'm so upset about this."

The three are being held in Honolulu. Bail has not been set. They will face an extradition hearing to Mexico under terms of treaties between the U.S. and Mexico, Credic said.


Chapman's son Leland, 29, and Timothy Chapman, 41, no relation, assist Chapman in exploits chronicled for the TV show around the Hawaiian Islands. The show focuses on Chapman's family as much as the bounty hunting, which generally involves tracking down bail jumpers, often creating emotional scenes with repentant captives.

Charges have been pending against the three since local police in Mexico arrested them shortly after they roped in Luster. They posted bail but never returned to Puerto Vallarta for their court hearing on July 15, 2003, Credic said.

Mexican authorities demanded that the Chapmans transfer Luster to Mexican police. Their refusal to do so led to their initial arrest.

A U.S. warrant for their arrest was signed by a federal judge in Honolulu on Wednesday.

Chapman's wife, Beth, said he didn't do anything wrong.

"If Duane has to return to Mexico to take care of any misunderstanding, then that's what he will do," she said outside the courthouse.

BREAKING NEWS!

I have just received word that A&E's bread-n-butter, Dog the Bounty Hunter, aka Duane Chapman, and his son Leland and brother Tim, have all been arrested by US Marshalls in Hawaii! It stems from his apprehension of convicted rapist/murderer Andrew Luster in Mexico in 2003. The Mexican government is apparently having him extradited on kidnapping charges since he didn't have the authority to hunt there. Why this is happening now, and why the US is listening to Mexico is unknown. But one thing is clear: America will not stand while its greatest citizen is wrestled behind bars in a Mexican prison, forced to reenact his greatest takedowns against the prison's greatest Luchador for the amusement of Mexico's president. This shit will not stand. Mexico, you're on warning. Return The Dog or face the Dog's Bite.

Backyard BDay BBQ (I'm late on this one)

DSCF0624
Originally uploaded by kylebc.

Yes, this was a month ago. But better late than never! These are images from the most awesome BBQ we had in our backyard for my birthday. Supes fun.

Part of the Problem!

Joey sent me this open letter from a number of prominent UK scientists, children's authors, critics, sociologists, etc. in the Telegraph, regarding their concern with the way new media is damaging children. It's entitled "Modern life leads to more depression among children." They suggest that kids are not psychologically able to deal with our "fast-moving hyper-competitive culture" which is contributing to higher levels of depression and violence. Much of their open letter I agree with:

[Children] still need what developing human beings have always needed, including real food (as opposed to processed “junk”), real play (as opposed to sedentary, screen-based entertainment), first-hand experience of the world they live in and regular interaction with the real-life significant adults in their lives.

But if they're not getting these things, is that really the fault of "modern life"? Hasn't every generation been faced with "Modernity" in some capacity, whether it was radio or rollerskates or TV or the internet? And hasn't every previous generation suggested that such tools of modern living are contributing to our children's downfall? Ultimately, despite the fourteen pages of signitures, the letter ends up seeming pretty shallow. They offer no solution aside from proposing that:

as a matter of urgency that public debate be initiated on child-rearing in the 21st century this issue should be central to public policy-making in coming decades.

Great. We'll get right on that. What about rather than appending your name to the fairly simplistic notion of helping children (who would oppose that?), why not use your name to actually suggest solutions to the problems you see?

Any thoughts?