This one is simple and requires no political discourse or analysis. Simple: A website purely consisting of objects that look like ducks.
The always outspoken Helen Thomas writes in response to reader criticism of the Post "rare" decision to publishing an Associated Press photograph taken in Baghdad "of a critically wounded Iraqi child" following a US airstrike, and she wonders aloud why the traditional news media is reticent and more restrained today in its war coverage as opposed to during the Vietnam War when it's editorial decisions helped spread and distribute now iconic images--E.g., Police Chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan street execution of a Viet Cong suspected member--that symbolizes the horrors and savagery of war. She correctly states:
Too often in this war, the news media seem to have tried to shield the public from the suffering this war has brought to Americans and Iraqis.It's not the job of the media to protect the nation from the reality of war. Rather, it is up to the media to tell the people the truth. They can handle it.
Read more here.
I think it's especially important today more than ever that the media fulfill its journalistic due diligence with photographs and videos as our society becomes increasingly visual and multimedia based. As Bill O'Reilly understands a video today can spread faster than any newswire.
Did you know that Helen Thomas' (who really is quite a remarkable lady) parents are Lebanese immigrants? I like reading trivia like that because they remind me how great our country can be and should aspire to be.
A few months back I inquired about what happened to the slow dance at clubs and dances:
You know, slowing it down for the ladies and putting your arms around her and dancing around in circles? The last time I saw anything resembling this was a girl in a black mini dress dancing with her left leg up around my friend’s waist as he held her leg. In other words, keeping it classy and respectable.
Some Argentines wondered the same thing and decided to take action and back in March some 4,000 people gathered in front of the Buenos Aires Planetarium to slow dance the night away. That's the sort of citizen activism that I'm talking about! Can someone please organize this here in NYC?
[Thanks Chris for link and Kenny aka the Two-Step Litigator for Spanish translation]
Today, Thursday May 15 is free iced coffee day at Dunkin Donuts. Good thing there are approximately 13 DD locations in a 2 block radius of my office, including directly below in Penn Station. The fantastic employees there are definitely going to know my name by the end of the day.
Colbert defends Bill O'Reilly's volcanic meltdown that occurred during his Inside Edition days. Colbert sympathizes with his counterpart over at Fox News because he too had a similar experience back in the day. Check out the clip where it appears that Colbert does a better Ron Burgundy impression than Ron Burgundy himself. Watch out Ron! Looks like there's an even bigger deal in town. That's what she said! No time! [youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=X5esS_ULgjM]
Let he journalist who lives in a glass house cast the first stone.
And here's the actual clip of Bill O'Reilly getting all man angry. I don't know about you but watching it makes me get all angry too except it makes me want to fight him.
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=2tJjNVVwRCY]
From analog to digital: Go to this brilliant website, www.cassettefrommyex.com, to listen to various cassette mix tapes people held on to that they received from past relationships and crushes. Along with a photo of the actual cassette tape, each mix is prefaced and contextualized with its surrounding circumstances and back story.
Kate was sweet enough to present me with this cassette after I had one-third of my toenail removed. The growth cells were cauterized so there’d be no future growth, but this also meant hours in front of the TV with my feet soaking in epsom salts. Her dedication, too, was kind and considered: “Music to Soak Your Toe To:”
Making a mix tape for a crush or someone in the early stages of dating is an engrossing act that requires all your facilities and time. One can't just half heartedly or flippantly create a mix tape. No. It's a gift that contains your aspirations, fears, and indeed a part of your soul.
Of course, for those of us who still remember using cassette tapes, that medium specifically heightened the drama or significance of the act of creating a mixtape: It stemmed from the permanence and the forced ordering of the songs. There was no shuffle option or mixing within a larger music library the way you do today with iTunes. When you picked up and inserted that tape into the boombox you were going to listen ONLY these songs in a predetermined order as established by the mixtape giver.
The only agency or choice the receiver had was to start with side A or side B.
DC: Must discuss later. Going back to strip club behind my apartment.
As a follow up to my passionate manifesto In Defense of Crocs, it appears that one of my friends has had a change of heart by switching from the team of hate to the team of support and empathy, because that's what true friends do. It's kind of like how in Philadelphia Denzel Washington loyally stood by Tom Hanks while Hanks' character slowly withered away due to AIDS. As a sign of his friendship in spite of (or because of?) my decision regarding Crocs, Clay forwarded me a link to these amazing accessories for Crocs.
[Thanks Clay!]
What are "upfronts?" Upfronts were lavish industry affairs hosted by the big TV networks so they could preview their upcoming season lineup and schedule to advertisers in order to convince them to part with their money. The networks would whore out their stable of stars at these events giving an opportunity to the mid level ad executive or the reporter to rub elbows with various stars and celebrities. The Comeback, an HBO show which I really enjoyed but unfortunately lasted just one season, had a funny episode involving the upfronts from the perspective of one of these stars, albeit an aging former actress (played by Lisa Kudrow after the conclusion of Friends) attempting a comeback on a new show as the matronly chaperon of a house filled with oversexed young 20-somethings. But the question the Times asks is how will the networks' upfronts change, if any, in light of TV audience's steady decline combined with the impact of the writers strike?
[Jeff Zucker] declared that NBC would be “much more realistic and much more honest” in its presentation of programming to advertisers. ...Fox, which still has a bona fide, if recently weakened, hit in “American Idol,” is planning an upfront as usual, but no surprises or dramatic unveilings are expected. Finally, CBS is doing a programming and advertising presentation. No party.
I just want to be invited to one of these upfronts before they die out completely or stripped of the open bar.
Read more here.
HAHAHAHAHA. Seeing someone get smacked in the nuts = Always funny, unless it's me on the receiving end, which never happens because I'm Asian and have ninja like reflexes from all my time training in the dojo.
New club Santo's Party House opened up in Chinatown of all places (makes sense if you think about it in terms of zoning and space availability) at 100 Lafayette.
Who needs MTV when I can watch brilliant music videos like this one for "Again & Again" by the Bird & the Bee on YouTube? Featuring two sexy fronts--a lip synching chick who I now have a major Indie hipster crush on and Apple's operating system with all the various peripheral software--this music video is another one of those creative endeavors that I really admire and simultaneously slap myself for not doing first already.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kxDxLAjkO8]
The YouTube page has a listing of all the software seen in the video, which is pretty neat. I just like the usage of the Photobooth--that alone would have made a cool video.
Here's what this song would have looked like on a PC:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOEKASLb4lM]
Haha.
This terrific blog I read has an amusing interpretation of the recent snafu committed by People magazine who apparently mistakenly fell into the "All Asians look the same" sandpit by placing a photo of Karl Yune (brother to moderately successful actor and model Rick Yune) next to a feature blurb on Asian pop singing sensation and Colbert's bitter rival, Rain. It's easy to chalk this up as yet another indicator of the US entertainment industry's whiteness and ignorance, and a good chunk of this probably is...BUT what about when the Asian paparazzi can't tell...Asians apart?
Needless to say, if the Asian paparazzi is mistaking me for Rain (albeit momentarily), then I think it's safe to say that all people -- Asians and non-Asians alike -- think Asian people look alike.
Read more here.
Anyway, people and People,
I can't stress this enough: please avoid the "All Asians look the same" sandpit at all cost. It's not a good place to be in. Also, dodge the need to inquire "Where Asians are REALLY from?" And lastly, sidestep the category of "Oriental" unless referring to rugs. Thanks.
Regards,
MRod
I've been wanting to share this gratis Iron Man t-shirt I received when I went to the pre-release screening of Iron Man. T-shirt is pretty bad ass, right? I mean obviously not approaching the badassness of Aquaman, but it is a close second.
There is the young-me/now-me photo Internet meme where people take updated photos in the same pose and location (ideally) as one of their childhood youth photos. Relatedly check out these "then-and-now" photos of people with their cars that they never grew out of. Sadly, no Camrys in the bunch.
Giving up golf is how President Bush honors the sacrifice of US soldiers in Iraq as he stated in a recent interview with Politico and Yahoo News:
“I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”Bush said he made that decision after the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top U.N. official in Iraq and the organization’s high commissioner for human rights.
What an asshole.
I run a classy establishment but occasionally a bit of riffraff will slide in through the doors when I'm not around, which explains this story via the Gothamist about a New Jersey morgue technician caught having sex with a dead 92 year-old woman's corpse. He plead guilty and faces up to seven years in jail where I bet he won't be too popular with the inmates there who have much love for their abuela.
McSweeney's has some good literal jokes of all categories, from knock-knocks to ethnic to religious jokes none of which offends!
KNOCK-KNOCK JOKE #8 Knock, Knock! Who's there? John. John who? John Wilson, your old friend from college. What a pleasant surprise. Please, come in.POLISH JOKE #9 How many Polish people does it take to screw in a light bulb? Two. One to hold the ladder, and the other to turn the light bulb in a clockwise fashion until it is secured in the socket.
BLONDE JOKE #116 How do you brainwash a blonde? A rigorous schedule of psychologically breaking down their confidence and resistance to outside suggestion.
Read more here.
Gawker posted on a tip about a mysterious feature on Facebook, the social network for the intellectual masses, that appeared to reveal a very specific listing of five of your friends. To access this list you had to go to the search field and just click the "down" button on your keyboard. Since Gawker's posting--the most viewed currently on Gawker with over 250 comments so far--this feature was disabled. The first theory was that this was a list of the five people that searched you the most. And boy, did people FREAK OUT. And by people, I mean stalkers including yes, YOU. You know who you are. But this was quickly contested by others who pointed to various other theories including this one that seems plausible:
The five friends that you see below the search box are populated based on people whom we think you'd be most interested in. Taking into account various factors, we attempt to make an educated guess as to who it is you're looking for when you start typing a name in the search box. Please note that this information is only visible to you and will not be shared with your friends. We hope that this feature is helpful and we appreciate your feedback. Let me know if you have further questions."
I had the following people appear in my list when I checked earlier today.
1. Hot girl. 2. Good friend. 3. Random girl I met once. 4. Friend's cousin. 5. Friend's cousin
I'm not sure what to make of the list because I don't check any of these people's profile pages (mainly because they are rarely updated), and the third person is just a straight up outlier of this bunch. It would be DOPE (for the ego I suppose) if Facebook DID royally f-up and revealed who was checking your profile page, because the first girl on that list is...HOT. HOT, yo!
Stay tuned on this developing story. It reminds me of the utter panic that ensued when Friendster (remember that site?) quietly and unannounced activated an option that allowed users to see a list of all the people visiting your profile page. THAT was interesting, and kind of awesome.
Update: Gawker has an update on this blitzing story with an officially shady statement from Facebook.
Facebook tries to surface the people we think are most important to users to make it easier and faster for them to navigate the site and find what they are looking for...The search drop down is not a list of those that have searched for the user. It is also not a list of people whose profile the user has viewed the most or who have viewed the user's profile the most. To avoid any confusion, this will no longer appear.
As one snarky Gawker commenter wrote: But WHY won't they tell us how they determine who the most important people are? This is the single most pressing question of my week. Yes, why???
If I described a particular footwear to you and said they were functional, airy, simple, and easy to clean would your immediate response be hate and animosity towards me? As a rational and free-thinking individual the answer would be "no" right? Alas many people, including friends, say otherwise and displayed a surprising vehemence to this footwear and the wearer or in this case potential wearer. After I expressed interest in these particular sandals whose only uniqueness was its extreme utilitarian design, a neo-style if you will, my friends reacted as if I said I was off to join Al Qaeda or Fox News. Here's a representative sample of the knee-jerk reaction:
MC: We will no longer be friends and I'm serious. .. wearing [them] is like killing puppies.
KM: I find them offensive.
Chris B.: What?? And you make fun of my Uggs??
ON: Loser
As Mahatma Gandhi once said, "Three quarters of the miseries and misunderstandings in the world would finish if people were to put on the shoes of their adversaries and understood their points of view." I hope my friends would open their arms, heart, and feet to Crocs before they judge so, oh so harshly. Judge a man not by the sandals of his feet, but by the content of his character. Or her feet and her character.