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Friday, May 30, 2008

rest in peace, harvey korman

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

if you want to please your captain, sink 'em low boys, hang 'em high

this right here is how it's done:



bonus round ... with john paul jones on piano!

in case of emergency: do not ride subway

dear new york city metropolitan transit authority,

i live in this city. i take the subway just about every dang day. i keep seeing a certain sign on my commute and i have become curious: what is the emergency cord for if it's not for pulling in the event of an emergency?

don't follow me? well. check out the subway's Emergency Instructions and please let me know if you can decode them: in case of fire, medical crisis, or violent crime ... "Do not pull the emergency cord."



i am going to tug the cord on my way home just to let everyone know that "everything's ok on my end!"

ps: thank you for not arresting me when i took that picture.

Friday, May 23, 2008

weezer is too clever by half

this went up on the youtubes today.

Saturday, May 17, 2008

this is a real commercial that really plays on tv for real

i am buying 10 of these things.

Friday, May 16, 2008

what's next? mom jeans?

this whole having-a-second-kid nonsense is getting frighteningly official. yesterday my bride came home with an Ergo baby carrier! oh dear. soon enough we'll have someone to stuff inside it. imagine. the first time around we rocked the Baby Bjorn. walking around brooklyn with my first born strapped to my chest for a year was a lovely prolonged bonding experience. it also had the minor side effect of making me feel about as sexy as a eunuch wearing a diaper. in a bunny costume.

so what, i wondered, was this Ergo carrier all about. as you know, ergo is latin for "therefore," as in "i breed, ergo i apparently wear things in the fanny pack family." these contraptions very popular with all the crunchy brooklyn moms. i peeked at the box:


"the best way to support your Baby ... and your LifeStyle." indeed.

i'm not sure why Baby is capitalized -- maybe they want to emphasize how very important your child is, you know, in case you forgot. maybe they're German. maybe it's a message from the 18th century when ergonomically-correct infant-shaped knapsacks were all the rage. more perplexing, however, is "LifeStyle" -- no space, both words capitalized. i mean, presumably if you need an ergo carrier, it's a bit late to start
thinking about condoms.

whatever. i wondered what LifeStyle of mine this baby carrier is the "best way to support." fortunately the box offered some helpful hints, such as Chillaxing By The Beach With Your NewBorn Because That's What You Do When You Have NewBorns:


if that's not quite the LifeStyle for you, they also have the Abu Ghraib Hood Accessory To Bind and Gag Your Squalling Child to Your Back, Freeing Your Handsome Self Up To Admire the Palm Trees:


this last LifeStyle isn't on the box, but maybe it should be. it certainly IS plastered on phone booths (remember those?) and bus stops around brooklyn. it's my personal favorite: I Love My Boo, Which I Do While Wearing LifeStyles -- or Trojans or Magnums or Whatever's Handy in the Heat of Our Moment -- And I Also Get Regularly Tested ... But, Honestly, Having A Baby Doesn't Really Fit Into My Immediate Agenda:



Thursday, May 15, 2008

a bit early for father's day, but ...

please take a moment to reflect on the tender and tenuous bond shared between father and son. this humble clip is so beautiful that i cry a little every time i watch it. mostly the tears are from laughter, but they are truly genuine. i wish my dad were here so i could give him a hug. and a little yodel.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

speaking of the presidential election. and man babies.

yes, the things on this list are all, indeed, younger than john mccain. but note one glaring omission: no man babies. man babies are definitely younger than john mccain. who will think of the man babies?

obligatory mother's day post

so for mother's day we had a lovely weekend -- both of my parents and my in-laws came to new york to celebrate ... OH LOOK! MAN BABIES!

ManBabies.com - Dad?

Friday, May 09, 2008

eight is so very much enough


ok so i'm never going whine about having two little kids. this is a vow to you people. never again shall i bitch and moan about how scared I am about having more than one little one, about losing sleep, about how hard life is as a parent and boo-hoo-hoo. you see i have made a horrifying discovery: i have discovered Jon & Kate Plus 8.

to those of you with lives who aren't watching Oprah every other minute or religiously tuning into the TLC because you're actually sane might not know what i'm talking about. allow me to breakitdown:

i was at the gym the other day, a rare treat. riding the ol' stationary bike. watching tv. totally zoned out. it was great. i'm flipping through the channels and because i don't really know my way around the cable lineup not having cable at home, i'm just randomly watching whatever. i start with The Hills. i don't really get The Hills, but then i know i'm not the target demographic. i do think my soul died a little bit the day i learned who spencer pratt was. (although, i will say this: justinbobby is kind of rad.) i can't get mad at these children -- they're pretty, paid handsomely to have nary a care in the world.

at a commercial break, i start surfing the channels. i end up on a scene where some mom is wrangling her kids into the kitchen. she appears to have two or three of them. "ah," i say to myself, "this looks familiar. herding cats. heh." i watch for a minute and it slowly begins to dawn on me, she has more than three kids. actually, wait. there's another. she has more than four kids. holy shit. she has more than five kids, seven kids. she has eight fucking kids. and they're all under the age of six or something.

it was at this very moment that my brain broke.

i stayed on the bike for about three hours, my broken brain attempting to process episode after episode of Jon & Kate Plus 8. absolutely captivating television. watch clips here. the scoop, for those of you who don't know it: jon and kate gosselin couldn't get pregnant so they took fertility drugs. then they had twins. so very cute. a sane person would have stopped right there. but they are, apparently, not very sane. she says she wanted to have just one more baby because she didn't know what it was like to not have to split her attention between two babies. ah, but the cosmos loves a good practical joke. instead of one baby she had ... six. at one time. a whole litter of pups.

my broken brain was trying so hard to understand this fact. eight kids. all under the age of four. in one house. sweet jesus.

after watching Jon & Kate for a while (they are, it turns out, very charming and kind of fucking badass, if a little too heavy on the God stuff, at least on their website) i toggled back over to The Hills. the blonde one was on some date with some cute sk8r boy she went to high school with or something and they were all like giving each other loaded meaningful glances over uneaten frisee salad and triple skim lattes and talking about the crisis in darfur. no, wait. they were talking about recent breakthroughs in string theory and quantum physics. hahah. i'm kidding of course. they were talking about, well, it's hard to explain, but i'm sure it was something meaningful about, like, cool stuff. that they bought shopping. and like. yeah. whatever. also, audrina's a slut.

i toggle back to Jon & Kate and there they are just trying to get through breakfast also. it's chaos plus insanity times madness to the power of crazy. i'd buy a whole haberdashery just so i could tip every single hat in it. man.

talk about two very different "reality" shows.

this is when my broken brain formed it's first idea since breaking. it was a fantasy. my fantasy is this: i want heidi and spencer to have eight kids. i want lauren and brody to have eight kids. i want
audrina and justinbobby to have eight kids. i want all those ratfaced little Hills turds to have eight kids just for one day. that is something i'd subscribe to cable to watch.

"people matter, but celebrities matter more"

you know, john mayer is kind of rad. mostly because he's the first to admit that his music kind of isn't.

that said, i did see one live clip of him playing at the (*gag*) Jammies and he was trading solos with Buddy Guy! ... and the dude absolutely tore shit up! do you think the ladies on the Mayercraft Carrier know this -- or care? he might be the luckiest boy, like, ever.

i kind of want to be his friend.


and kiss him.

Thursday, May 08, 2008

steampunk'd

newsweek, oct 31, 2007: Steampunking Technology

new york times, may 8, 2008 Steampunk Moves Between 2 Worlds

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

an actual press release that somebody sent me today. please make the pain go away.

***PHOTO/INTERVIEW OPPORTUNITY***

CELEBRITY DOGS WALK RED CARPET AT LAUNCH OF NEW HEALTH/WELLNESS PRODUCT FOR PETS

Sex & the City Star Canine “Elizabeth Taylor” Will Celebrate HealthyMOUTH, First of its Kind Dental Care Water for Dogs and Cats, As It Makes Its Highly Anticipated NYC Debut on Thursday May 8th with an Evening of Pet Pampering

WHO:
Celebrity Doggie Divas will strut their stuff for the PAW-parrazi :
· Penny, King Charles Spaniel (“Elizabeth Taylor,” upcoming role in Sex and the City movie, also plays Charlotte’s dog on HBO series)
· Bravo, Golden Retriever (stars alongside Mark Wahlberg, Susan Sarandon and Rachel Weisz in the upcoming Lovely Bones)
· Mia, Miniature Pinscher (stars alongside Paul Giamatti and Billy Crudup in the upcoming Pretty Bird)
· Camille, Jack Russell, seen in ads for fashion house COACH
· Bijou, Chihuahua, seen in print spoof of Paris Hilton’s dog in Maxim Magazine
· And 40 other cute, well-behaved, party-hopping dogs!



it goes on. but i lost the will to live right around here.

Monday, May 05, 2008

on recidivist procreation


we have a few friends whom we know because they had their first kid around the same time we had our first kid. we met through a neighborhood "new mommy" list that my normally misanthropic bride signed up for about three years ago. turns out to have been a good move -- the people we met are fantastically wonderful and, now, three years into parenthood, our only social acquaintances. it's amazing how one's social life reorganizes itself around one's proclivity to spawn. the frequency with which i carouse with single friends has greatly diminished over the past 36 months. so, too, has the frequency with which i drink to excess (somewhere other than my kitchen/office/crawlspace), pass out and urinate on friends' couches, fornicate with dudes/goats, and generally ever see single friends other than over lunch or because they're my colleagues whose mere existence mocks my life.

well! now, just like us, our baby-friends are beginning to spawn anew. in fact. we're not even the first! we have one friend who had baby numero dos just two months ago (on valentine's day! awwww, sweetness!). another good friend delivered her second boy just after that. we have a third friend whose first child was born within a couple months of our first child, late spring 2005. they had child number two ... a year ago. meaning they had a baby when their first unable-to-rationalize/cope child was barely (not even?!) two.

we, as you may know, are expecting Child 2.0 sometime between five minutes and eight weeks from now. i, being journalistically inclined, did some cursory interviewing of these fascinating Recidivist Procreators. here are some of the pearls of wisdom i have recently picked up:

1) "i always thought having a second baby would make life marginally harder. i mean, we've done this before, right? yeah, well, it doesn't make just a little bit harder. it makes them exponentially harder. it makes like freakishly more difficult."
2) "will you please fake my death so i can come live in your crawlspace? all i want is sleep."
3) "i couldn't find the baby's shoes this week and my wife was at work but she wasn't answering her phone and so i got really pissed ... and i sort of kicked my bedroom door down."
4) "well. it's been a year now and i feel like i am just becoming human again. sorry for falling asleep in the middle of that sentence."
5) "you know how you look at people with no kids and you hate them? you hate them because they can go out to dinner at any time; you hate them because they get to see movies; you hate them because they stay up past 11 and they still complain about their meaningless little lives. right? well when you have two kids, you hate people who have only one kid. you despise them. they have no idea how easy they've got it."

and so in conclusion: my little passionfruits ... please fake my death so i can come live in your crawlspace. i promise the sound of my weeping won't disturb you too much.

Friday, May 02, 2008

the trouble with hitch

a collage of alfred hitchock's subtle cameos in his own movies. so many good ones. "rear window" and "north by northwest" easily rank among my favorite all-time flicks of his (if not of all time), and both boast seriously strong hitchcock cameos. but i think "the trouble with harry" might someday win out as my top AF film in the end (even though hitch's cameo is one of his weakest).

so this is weird.

children who attend daycare or playgroups cut their risk of the most common type of childhood leukaemia by around 30 percent.

"Until we have conclusive evidence then we cannot say for certain what causes childhood leukaemia." -- Dr Carole Easton

what facebook would look like in the real world

sex and the mommy!


the new york post, that paragon of american journalism -- the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh columns all rolled into one -- has a groundbreaking report today: one-third of moms have cheated! what?! at scrabble, right?

oh noes! the same amount -- just 36 percent -- say they're still attracted to their husbands. the rest would apparently rather bone george clooney (well, who wouldn't?) or, um, barack obama.
least reassuring quote: "the desire to have desire [for their husbands] is there."

ladies, please stop reading now.

seriously, gals. go away.

gone?
good.

ok, gents. so i sent that story to my friend dan. his response? "they harangue you to get married and then...they cheat!" ah hahahaha! ahaha HAH ahHAHA hah HA!!!! ha! ha. hee. heh. huh. hmmm.


(i am never going to get any love again, am i?)