First comes the discovery: Someone walks by and sees the plate, which has appeared as if by magic. The alert is instant, epic, and never detailed. “FOOD IN THE KITCHEN” is broadcast with the aplomb of an archeologist who just discovered a T-rex skull.

But sometimes alliances form. If its you that discovers the food, who do you tell? Is there a group you alert first? Perhaps those working directly above or below you, or maybe an individual. You’ve got the power, and giving a few people a head start can be awfully good office karma.

Once the announcement is made, everyone makes a mad, Pavlovian dash leaving an office full of empty, spinning Aeron chairs. Even if you aren’t sure what’s available you go, just in case it’s something awesome on which you don’t want to miss out. It’s the scarcity that creates the demand.

Because it’s free, and in short supply, it doesn’t matter if all that’s available is cold, soggy onion rings (as was the case most recently in my office.) It might as well be gold dubloons the way people clammer for it.

So you made it, you’re among the lucky first few to get some. Now you have to decide how much to take. What percentage of the whole does each person deserve? You look around, wishing that the announcement wasn’t so loud as however many people are gathered around, that’s by what number the bounty must be split. In a group, you exercise chastity and charity. You take one or two, or just half a slice. But if you’re alone, suddenly you’re entitled to half.

Then it’s over. Like the chaos when a crocodile snags its prey from the river edge, the frenzy ends as fast as it starts, and all is peaceful again with only crumbs left, and maybe a spinning plate.

1. I love email and even text messaging.
2. I love talking face to face.

For a long time, I dismissed my dislike of the phone as an affectation of my shyness. Why then do I like talking to people face to face? It would seem that that would make a shy person even shyer. The more I think about it, the more I realize there are two other factors that make me hate the phone.

Turn Based Communication

I think one of the biggest issues that arise when two humans communicate is the understanding and respect of whose turn it is to talk. It’s easy to talk with someone when it’s clear when they’re done speaking and it’s my turn. Then there aren’t interruptions, and the conversation goes back and forth, like a game of pong, without error.

With email, this concept of turn based conversation is taken to the extreme. Your turn isn’t up until you’ve finished a thought and hit send. When you get an email, you know it’s your turn to respond when you’re done reading. There’s no interrupting each other. Maybe this is why I love long email chains.

In a face to face conversation, you can use body language to signify you would like to add to the conversation. This lets the other person know they should pause, that you would like it to be your turn. It’s also much easier to graciously interrupt if you have something pressing to say or the other person is getting long winded.

On the phone there’s no way to tell if you or the other person wants to take their turn. Anyone who’s been on the phone with a salesman knows this. Salesmen love the phone because they can just ramble on and on and on (see Boiler Room.) As someone who was raised not to interrupt, this adds to the stress level since I don’t want to be rude but would like to put in my two cents.

Ramble On

Many people are verbose. I’m as guilty as the next guy for often going on, and on, and on. If someone sends you a long email, you can skim through it, omitting entire sections, to get to the heart of the matter. When you’re in person it’s much easier to be interested in what someone is saying—you can make eye contact, laugh, and more easily offer witty asides and quips. On the phone, I feel trapped. If the person I’m talking to launches into a long diatribe, I’m stuck, locked into my seat until the ride is over. This feeling leads to stress and anxiety, especially if I see a call coming in for a notorious rambler.

So it seems that my dislike for the phone isn’t based in some deep-seated social phobia, but rather in my need for structure in a conversation and a love of efficiency.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsU3B0W3TMs[/youtube]

via Larissa Meek

DJ Stout has redesigned the magazine Dairy Today that is launching this month. In addition to a bold new logotype, the magazine will feature a stylized “portrait” of a dairy cow on the cover of each issue in an effort to differentiate it from its competitors.

I think these new covers are beautiful. Maybe it’s because I grew up around them, but I’ve always found cows to have a pastoral beauty. If you’ve ever spent time with them, you’ll know they’re very peaceful, mellow animals.

via SwissMiss, and others.

This is a good video, and it is a great Christmas special. I know I’ve been rocking out to this Charlie Brown Christmas Mashup for the last few weeks. Dig it!

It all started, as many things do, with Apple. Their iPod Nano ad lodged that Feist song in all of our brains, permanently. I was a fan of her and found the video plucky so I never complained.

From there Old Navy picked up the ball. They featured the song “The Way I Am” by Ingrid Michaelson in an ad for holiday sweaters. Grab the song from iTunes.

The next one I saw was JCPenney. When commercials are on I tend to be looking at the computer (and away from the TV) so this ad caught my attention when I recognized the voice of Deb Talan, who is one half of the great band The Weepies and happens to be from Western Massachusetts–what up! The song is “All That I Want” and, replete with jingling sleigh bells, works perfectly with the holiday theme. It’s nice to see the group getting more exposure. I first heard of them when they were featured on How I Met Your Mother last season. Grab the song from iTunes.

Then tonight I saw–or, rather heard–another Old Navy commercial, using the song “Stars” also by The Weepies. Grab the song from iTunes. Even though the ad looks like it was styled to look like a CW version of A Clockwork Orange, three times constitutes a trend so I started my research

I found a few others from JCPenney that have similar songs:

There’s Forever Thursday’s “How Can It Be”. Grab the song from iTunes. This is probably my favorite ad of them all. It reminds me (both visually and auditorily) of the “Hello Tomorrow” Spike Jonez spot for Adidas.

And Regina Spektor’s “Music Box”. Grab the song from iTunes.

I’m really pleased to see all these songs being used in ads. They fit the holiday mood perfectly and appeal to the female demographic I think these companies are going for. The music has a playfulness to it, but also a vulnerability–the artists seem to be pouring themselves into the songs. I can only hope there’ll be more. If the agencies of these companies need some recommendations, I’ve got them right here.

Without further adieu, I give you the first AllMyLiesAreWishes themed playlist. I call it “Ice Skating”. Put these songs on your iPod and go celebrate some holiday cheer (or at least buy some sweaters).

1. Feist – “One Two Three Four”, The Reminder. †
2. The Weepies – “Take It from Me”, Say I Am You.
   This song has the most whimsical lyrics: “What can I compare you to? A favorite pair of shoes? Maybe my bright red boots…if they had wings.”
3. Ingrid Michaelson – “The Way I Am”, Girls and Boys †
4. Jaymay – “Snow White”, Autumn Fallin’.
   Another band to come from HIMYM, though not this song.
5. Forever Thursday – “How Can It Be”, How Can It Be – Single. †
   There’s very little info out there on this band. Anyone know anything?
6. Bic Runga – “Sway”, Drive.
   This goes all the way back to American Pie. It was used in the scene where Oz and Heather spend the night in Stifler’s boat house.
7. The Weepies – “Gotta Have You”, Say I Am You.
   This was the song used in HIMYM, more specifically the “First Time in New York” episode.
8. Regina Spektor – “Better”, Begin to Hope.
   Some of Spektor’s stuff is a little too weird for me but this album is all good, all the time.
9. Bic Runga and Dan Wilson – “Good Morning Baby”, American Pie Soundtrack.
   Another one to dust off. I’ll even allow a male singer since this song is so perfect for the mix. Plus, come on, Semisonic.
10. Maria Mena – “You’re the Only One”, White Turns Blue.
    “I’m sorry about that time I put my hand between your legs and said it was small, because it’s really not at all.” ’nuff said. Check out the video, she’s cute as hell.
11. Jaymay – “Sea Green, See Blue.”, Autumn Fallin’.
    This song was used to underline the denouement of the season finale for How I Met Your Mother last year.
12. Shiela Nicholls – “Fallen for You”, High Fidelity Soundtrack.
    This song doesn’t fit quite as well with the mood of this mix but it is a track that everyone I’ve ever given it to has fallen in love with.
13. Regina Spektor – “Fidelity”, Begin to Hope.
    Another great video.
14. The Weepies – “All That I Want”, Happiness. †
15. Regina Spektor – “On the Radio”, Begin to Hope.
    The first chorus is a little odd but bear with it, the second time around hits the message home. “You peer inside yourself/You take the things you like/And try to love the things you took/And then you take that love you made/And stick it into some/Someone else’s heart/Pumping someone else’s blood/And walking arm in arm/You hope it don’t get harmed/But even if it does/You’ll just do it all again”
16. Tegan and Sara – “Where Does the Good Go”, So Jealous.
    Grey’s Anatomy fans will recognize this song. Tegan and Sara are such a fun group.
17. The Weepies – “Stars”, Say I Am You. †
    This is the fourth Weepies song on this list. Take the hint.
18. Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories – “Stay (I Missed You)”, Tails.
    Going all the way back to 1995 the mix closes out with the prototype singer/songwriter that paved the way for all the artists you’ve just heard. History is good.

† Used in one of the ads mentioned above.

Devoted Customer Upset Jimmy Dean Downsized Sausage 16oz To 12oz But Charges Same Price.

This is the greatest thing I’ve heard in awhile. This poor Texan just wants to feed his plump wife and 600lbs of men in his home. How could you Jimmy Dean?

PS. Those Jimmy Dean “Chocolate Chip Pancakes & Sausage on a Stick” are the nastiest thing I’ve ever seen. Chocolate and ground meat never go together.

These magnetic balls are meant to hold business cards, pictures, or anything else on your desk that you’d like to display in a fresh-to-death way. They’re also good for hours of fun–pull them apart and watch them slam back together. How cool. Watch the following video to see just how cool it gets.

Visit site.

I remember I was hammering on a fence in the west pasture when Papa approached. He was carrying a letter or something in his hand, and he looked worried.I continued to hammer as he came toward me. “Son,” he said, “why are you hammering on that fence? It already has plenty of nails in it.”“Oh, I’m not using nails, Papa,” I replied. “I’m just hammering.” With that, I returned to my hammering.

Papa asked me to stop hammering, as he had some news.
I did stop hammering, but first I got a couple more hammers in, and this seemed to make Papa mad. “I said, stop hammering!” he yelled.

I think he felt bad for yelling at me, especially since it looked like he had bad news. “Look,” he said, “you can hammer later, but first –”

Well, I didn’t even wait to hear the rest. As soon as I heard “You can hammer,” that’s what I started doing.
Hammering away, happy as an old hammer dog.

Papa tried to physically stop me from hammering by inserting a small log of some sort between my hammer and the fence. But I just kept on hammering, ’cause that’s the way I am when I get that hammer going.
Then, he just grabbed my arm and made me stop.

“I’m afraid I have some news for you,” he said.

I swear, what I did next was not hammering. I was just letting the hammer swing lazily at arm’s length, and maybe it tapped the fence once or twice, but that’s all. That apparently didn’t make any difference whatsoever to Papa, because he just grabbed my hammer out of my hand and flung it across the field.

When I saw my hammer flying helplessly through the air like that, I just couldn’t take it. I burst out crying, I admit it. And I ran to the house, as fast as my legs could take me.

“Son, come back!” yelled Papa. “What about your hammer?!”

But I could not have cared less about hammering at that point. I ran into the house and flung myself onto my bed, pounding the bed with my fists. I pounded and pounded, until finally, behind me, I heard a voice.
“As long as you’re pounding, why not use this?” I turned, and it was Papa, holding a brand-new solid-gold hammer.

I quickly wiped the tears from my eyes and ran to Papa’s outstretched arms. But suddenly, Papa jumped out of the way, and I went sailing through the second-story window behind him.

Whenever I hear about a kid getting in trouble with drugs, I like to tell him this story.

By Jack Handey

Many thanks to Matt Swain for showing this to me years ago and finding it online for me tonight.

I don’t know if this would be funny, quirky, and amusing or incredibly depressing. I, for one, don’t really need the knowledge that I am the same weight as a cloven farm animal.

via Angry Retail by way of Swiss Miss

Check it:

That shower with the sexy rabbit lady actually sounds pretty dope:

Danny Venlet’s Shower design for Viteo shoots off water jets which spray up in a circle around you as high as 4 metres. The jets are automatically activated when weight is transferred onto the platform. They gently fall down in the middle and guarantee a sensual shower experience. This reverse shower has won the Red Dot Design Award for 2007

No animal head here, but I just think these chairs are beautiful.

All you photogs out there, what do you think of these?

Not pictured: your mom.

View them all

Most of my friends in college were film and photography majors. I am, therefore, intimately familiar with modern hipster culture. And I hate it. I won’t go into all my problems with it, that’s for another day. Chances are that you either feel the same way as I do, or you’re a hipster yourself. At least that’s what I thought.

Talking to people at work, it seems that there are those out there who, through some luck of circumstance, have never crossed paths with a hipster and aren’t familiar with the term. These people are often curious and want to know what this sub culture stands for, and how to spot its members. I usually get as far as “they’re all douchebags” before apoplexy takes over and I can no longer speak.  If you’re like me, then this video can come in handy. It’s an excellent primer on the ironic douchy-ness of hipsterism. Just send this link and save yourself from ranting.

From the site I’m Cooked, an online community where users can upload videos of themselves cooking various recipes. A video of Christopher Walken roasting a chicken with pears popped up the other day.

I love this guy. The title in the beginning just says “man makes chicken with pears”. He never identifies himself, the video isn’t professionally produced or lit, and he isn’t showboating. If you didn’t know who he was, you’d never know he was famous from this video. There’s something really refreshing about seeing an amateur video of a celebrity doing something normal and every day, not flashing their junk or having sex on camera.

I saw Ratatouille over the weekend and I loved it. I was especially impressed with the attention to detail Brad Bird and company paid to the kitchen details as well as Remy’s character, mainly his love for food and fastidious attention to detail.

In order to inhabit Remy the rat with the soul of a true chef, Pixar hired Thomas Keller (French Laundry, Per Se) as a consultant on the film. A former French Laundry employee has recently spoken out about how much of Keller is in Remy (spoiler alert: a lot).

One of my other favorite parts of the movie were the cool little taste animations used to display how food “feels” as well as tastes. Each ingredient on its own had a unique style, like a visual chord, that would change and become a greater melody when the food was paired and tasted as a whole. I find this to not only be wonderfully artistic but also a great-and simple- way for kids to familiarize themselves with tasting and the concept of food as transcendental experience. The creator of these animations, Michel Gagne, has a wonderfully detailed blog about how these animations came into being. There’s even video!

via NY Magazine

Personally, I don’t go to Dunkin Donuts that much. Only when I’m jonesing for an iced coffee although their decision to use Rachael Ray as spokesperson has forced me to entertain the idea of a boycott. Nothing against her, (I actually respect her self-promoting skills) it’s just that she’s on the TV whenever I turn it on, in every isle of the grocery store, and plastered all over my beloved Triscuits. I have to draw the line somewhere. But I digress. When I do visit Dunkin, I usually go inside. There’s something enjoyable, patriotic, nostalgic about ordering breakfast over a counter. I think it reminds me of the bagel shops and delis that do short order breakfasts in bigger cities. Well, I had one in my home town (a few actually) and that’s about as small as towns get. Maybe it’s just Rochester.

That’s when the epiphany came: Rochester is in short supply of a good, family owned deli that does egg sandwiches, hot pastrami, various macaroni salads, all those wonderful American food staples. The kind of place that always has a super cute girl working behind the counter but you’re afraid to even smile at her because the owner is her father and he, along with his three large sons will do unthinkable things to you or your food if you infer anything but innocence of their beloved daughter/sister. Every new food place around here gets branded to death or is a chain to begin with. I don’t want that fake gourmet crap Bruegger’s serves, I don’t want the soggy P.O.S. sandwiches from a fast food place.

I want a real BEC that’s wrapped in foil devoid of a logo or mission statement. I want the egg and bacon of that sandwich cooked on a griddle that I can see. I want who’s ever cooking it to have cooked thousands of these and be more concerned with how fast he gets the out the door than what after-prom party he’s attending. I want the sandwich on a regular bagel or hamburger bun. Maybe with some poppy seeds, but that’s it. I want that bread grilled so it doesn’t become a soggy mess. I want the egg over hard, misshapen and a little crispy on the outside. I want it to come with home fries that are cut out of the huge mound on the back of said griddle, even if I won’t eat them. I want the cheese on the sandwich to be cold when added, but melted when I unwrap the package at my desk. I want it be called a “bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich” not a “morning sunriser” or some other bullshit. I want it to cost less than $3. I want to wash it all down with a cup of coffee that doesn’t taste like donkey piss. Start your morning with a sandwich like that and I defy you to have a bad day. That’s something I’d gladly wait in line for. Just not a drive-through because that’s obnoxious.

This reminds me of a course I took in college called Technology Transfer. In it we studied, among other things, the concept of how new trends disseminate into culture. There are the first to jump on board – the early adopters. This is a small fringe group who are often seen as the ‘eccentric’ or ‘geeky’ in society (think Bill Gates and Steve Jobs when they were first developing the personal computer). These people are not the ones leading the charge for what is accepted in society. This makes the risk high in this stage – things are usually expensive, and often support and investment is not rewarded with long term benefit if the item in question fails to grow. The second stage of adoption is known as the early majority. These are the people who are comfortable with some risk, but wait a bit to see make sure they aren’t jumping on a trend. While only slightly larger than the early adopter group,  these people form the ‘voice’ the rest of the people listen to. They are the trusted leaders of society, and after their endorsement, popularity surges exponentially. This is the exact trend this study proved.

It makes sense. If I felt on-the-fence about a song the first time I heard it, then saw that 1,000 other people downloaded it, that might convince me it was quality (a hundred million Elvis fans can’t be wrong, right?). Likewise, if the number of downloads was minimal, I’d assume the song might not be worth it. I’d like to think if I had a strong reaction – either negative or positive – that the group opinion wouldn’t matter, but a look at my iTunes might suggest otherwise.

Even more interesting is the presence of a certain “butterfly effect” in the results. The second group in the experiment, the ones who saw the number of downloads, were divided into eight different “worlds” so that users could only see the downloads for their own world. Again, theory would suggest that the same songs would show spikes, that maybe it is based on some short of quality judgment. Again, we’d be wrong. Different songs in each “world” showed success. It would appear that random variations of downloads cause different songs to become the dominant successes. It would appear that whenever the early majority jumps on board, popularity follows, indeterminate of quality. It’s reassuring, somehow, to know in a parallel universe Smash Mouth would’ve never been popular.

Read the full article. Story via pmarca.com.

Although [your mom] may appear to be a recent phenomenon, one can trace its roots far back in history. Indeed, William Shakespeare appears to utilize such a device in Act I Scene 1 of Timon of Athens:

Painter: “Y’are a dog.”
Apemantus: “Thy mother’s of my generation. What’s she, if I be a dog?”

“Your mom” can be combined with most types of insults, although suggestions of promiscuity, obesity, or lack of intelligence are particularly common.

“Your mom” is also sometimes used as a sarcastic retort to either a mild criticism or even an innocuous statement. This often results in a sexual innuendo, as in the following example:

Speaker 1: What are you doing?
Speaker 2: Your mom!

Another technique is to respond to the original speaker with “your mom” substituted in for the original subject of the sentence, as follows:

Speaker 1: That car looks like trash.
Speaker 2: Your mom looks like trash.

This all started, by the way, when a few of us were talking about Pogs at work. Remember Pogs? Me and Scott both have fond memories of rushing down to the Pog store to stock up each afternoon after school. Frank’s a bit older and missed the craze. So I thought I’d sent out some info:

On 6|26|07 19:08 PM, “Dickinson, Justin” wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogs

On 6|27|07 8:33 AM, “Piacitelli, Frank” wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lame
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbles
BAM !

On 6|27|07 8:35 AM, “Wolf, Scott” wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Your_Mom

It all started April 15th. Not being able to find a ride to the airport I decided to leave my car in long term parking. It was going to cost me about $15 bucks. Call a cab? Don’t even talk about cabs. $22 from the airport to my door. Gas doesn’t cost that much, assholes. I get back and it’s pouring rain. No big deal, there’s a shuttle out to the lot. I get in the car, slightly damp and ready to go to work (it was Monday morning). Turn the key. Nothing.

Two days later I get my car back from the garage where it had been towed. Thank god for AAA. The battery van guy actually brought me to an ATM to get cash to cover the fee when he got back with the truck (it was in metered parking). Then he brought me home and was nice enough to tell me his entire life story, show me cell phone pics of his new tool box, and explain how he started his own DJ business: the lusty leopard or screaming seagull or giggling cheetah or something then charge me $80 to tell me he didn’t find anything. In fact, as soon as he had it towed in, it started up fine. Even so, he felt the need to spend five minutes turning it on and off every twenty minutes for an hour. Assholes.

Then it was April 21st and time to go to Toronto for Flash in the Can. Why did I offer to drive? Go ask the owl. It drove up fine, and even drove home well enough. Then the problems started. Randomly not starting, randomly stalling at a light or when idling, transmission problems, the outlook was bleak. I took it to the wonderfully whimsical Dial-A-Tire who surmised they could find nothing wrong and maybe it was the transmission. Wade (the owner) became my instant mechanic-for-life when he didn’t charge me for the labor since they couldn’t find anything.

For those of you who haven’t owned a car more than ten years old, believe you me that the words “it’s the transmission” is pretty much a death sentence. It’s hard to pay for a repair that costs more than the car’s worth (that’s called ‘totaled’ kids). Much like Napoleon at the height of power, my strategy was to wait and see.

Through an evolution Darwin would’ve been proud of, the problems got more varied, idiosyncratic, strange, inconsistent, and mind-boggling. By getting to know my co-workers better through begged rides to and from work (thanks again Emily, Jill, and Pete), I made it through a few weeks. Oh, speaking of Pete, he gave me the only small victory in this battle by changing all my plugs and wires while I was away one weekend. Not like “surprise, new plugs”, I dropped it off at his house before I left. That seemed to solve problem #9 – randomly not starting. ‘Randomly’ isn’t the right word, it was sort of predictable. As the importance of my arriving on time at my destination went up, the chances the car would start went down – a direct inverse proportion.

I adapted to a schedule that allowed me to drive to work, and drive home, with no stops along the way and no going out once I was back for the night. I couldn’t drive anywhere else (in case it didn’t start) or drive anywhere that would require me to sit idling (since it would stall). That included days in which traffic was heavy on the way to work. Those days included Friday, June 15th when my car stalled in the middle of a two lane road and had to be pushed, in reverse, over an incline into a bank parking lot. That’s even less fun than it sounds.

This was getting ridiculous. Summer means road trips and I needed a car that wouldn’t leave me stranded on Rt. 17. For those of you who don’t live upstate, as you drive down Rt. 17, you have to turn up your stereo to drown out the banjo music rolling forth from the porches peppered along this rustic almost-highway. Horseheads NY? Assholes.

One more chance. the Hail Mary pass, I decided to give Dial-A-Tire another shot. The problems had gotten consistent enough to diagnose. I dropped it off yesterday morning. Wade called me that afternoon. It lives!

Turns out the internal computer had gone all wonky. Who knew ‘93 Buicks even had a computer? I always assumed my car ran on wishes and magic. Apparently I wasn’t far off since the computer was controlling the engine as if I was teleporting back and forth between the south pole and the equator. Do you know what happens when the engine suddenly thinks it’s -40 degrees? It floods with gas and everything stalls. Oh, and the idle goes nuts.

What’s the best thing about big, common American cars? Every garage has the necessary parts laying around and a new computer only costs $240. The radiator fan wasn’t working but rather than charge me for anymore parts or labor, good old Wade just whacked it with a wrench and it started up again. Reminds me of my mechanic back home who would stick a jack-knife into battery connections to check for live voltage.

I can’t express how good it feels to have a car again. I don’t have to hold my breath at every stoplight. I can go out at night for dinner, or groceries, or the gym, all without begging my neighbor. I can eat lunch at work, even if no one else is going out. If I forget my sunglasses at the cigar bar I don’t have to wait for two weeks until I’m in the neighborhood on my way to the liquor store with Rex. I honestly didn’t realize how stressed out I was about not having it. I guess you don’t know what you got till it’s gone it comes back.

From that list, there are a few shows I disagree with. My mother’s overbearing loving attention to the quality of television I was allowed to watch bred into me a certain snootiness for the more bourgeoisie shows- a pretention, I believe, that has persisted to this day. This included Salute your Shorts, The Adventures of Pete and Pete, Rugrats, and You Can’t Do That on Televison (which my mom flat-out forbade me to watch). Were these shows actually bad? Probably not, but I’ll never know.

The vast majority of the list I agree with whole-heartedly. I loved shows like Clarissa Explains it All, Are You Afraid of the Dark, Ren and Stimpy (which always left me a little uncomfortable but intrigued – my first experience with modern art), Double Dare, Eureka’s Castle, Hey Dude, and Doug. Including a few other Snick regulars that got left out:

What Would You Do (1991 – 1993)
This spin-off of Double Dare was also hosted by Marc Summers. Audience members were asked to vote on the outcome of various pre-recorded situations and certain families (usually a parent and child) were chosen for live competitions. Failure to complete a given task would result in a family member, usually the parent, being placed into some sort of pie-throwing contraption (like the pie-slide above).

While I preferred Double Dare, this show was always entertaining. Thad, a friend of mine from college, actually went on the show and had a chance to throw a pie in his dad’s face. That’s family bonding. I can’t stand Unwrapped so I like to remember Mark Summers from these shows, when I thought he was the coolest guy I’d ever ran into in an airport when I was eight.

Round House (1992 – 1995)
This show, from the creators of In Living Color, was a collection of sketches, dance performances, and live music recorded in front of a live audience. All music was written and produced for the show, and performed by the house band.

I remember this being the first show I felt was edgy and cool. The sketches dealt with current events in pop culture and were more entertaining that moral-driven. I was from a small town and grew up mostly around adults so this was as hip as it got back then.

All That (1994 – 2005)
This show took the sketch format a step further and created what was basically Saturday Night Live for kids. Replete with a theme song by TLC, actors in drag, re-occuring characters, celebrity impersonations and musical performances, this was quality adolescent entertainment. This is where Kenan Thompson, currently an actor on Saturday Night Live, perfected his skills including his now-famous Bill Cosby impression. The movie Good Burger was based on a sketch from this show.

I had no idea this show went on for as long as it did. I stopped watching it around ‘97 and never looked back. I still have fond memories of “Coach Kreeton” and “Mary Beth Denberg with Vital Information for Your Everyday Life”.

(turn the sound off. best I could find on youtube)
The Secret World of Alex Mack (1994 – 1998)
A replacement for Clarissa Explains it All, the show debuted on Snick in October 1994. Alex Mack, played by Larisa Oleynik, was a girl who had super powers-mainly telekinesis and the ability to morph into a silvery liquid-that were the result of accidental contamination from chemical GC-161. Her best friend and sister were the only ones to know of her power as she had to keep it secret since the company who produced the compound that contaminated her wanted to find her for experimentation. Several guest stars appeared on the show including Jessica Alba.

Larisa Oleynik was probably my first crush (nothing personal Melissa Joan Hart). Maybe it was the controversial nudity in the first episode (the first time Alex morphs into a liquid, her clothes are left behind. She materializes behind a set of strategically placed boxes) which went on to be included in the opening credits throughout the series. I wouldn’t see her again until 10 Things I Hate About You where she played the younger sister of that girl from Save the Last Dance.

Kenan & Kel (1996 – 2000)
A sitcom spin-off of All That featuring Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell, Kenan & Kel followed the classic comic duo setup with Thompson as the straight man to Mitchell’s crazy character. Kenan plays a smart kid who is always hatching some sort of nefarious scheme with Kel as his goofy sidekick who really loves orange soda. The theme “Aww, here we go” was by Coolio.

This show has the distinction, I believe, of being the first Nickelodeon/Snick show to feature a prominently African-American cast of major characters. For me, it was a segue into the other African-American family sitcoms I was so fond of like Family Matters, The Parent(hood), and, to a point, The Wayans Brothers and The Jamie Foxx Show.

The characters on these shows dealt with what we were dealing with – social cliques, popularity, new feelings for the opposite sex, responsibility, jobs, parents who didn’t seem to understand, and the simultaneous need for both independence and group acceptance. The characters weren’t adults yet but the themes were more mature. They captured that strange emotional fluctuation that is adolescence.

The actors on these series were famous, but it was a different celebrity climate then and the focus was more about the show than the actor. We never read about Melissa Joan Hart’s clubbing proclivity or which of the actors on Round House were sleeping with each other. Today’s programming seems to be one vehicle after another to launch an actress’s singing career or an obvious attempt for some kind of hip-hop street cred. From a story-telling standpoint, they’re all lacking in originality and substance.

Maybe it’s the Gen-X/Gen-Y gap (which I consider myself to be right in between, leaning slightly to the X side). There was an innocence and vulnerability to these shows that made them more real and accessible.

I, like many kids of my generation, loved science and wanted to grow up to be a scientist. It seemed so exciting! There were other shows – like Beakman’s World and Bill Nye the Science Guy – that I would watch but, looking back, Mr. Wizard was always my favorite. There were no rat-suits, frenetic pacing and editing, or other bells and whistles to keep my childishly A.D.D. mind focused. He taught a generation of children how to think like a scientist, and that experiments weren’t regulated to guys in coats in a lab but could be done at home. I don’t know a single person my age who didn’t love this show growing up.

This show isn’t available anymore is it? It should be shown in syndication or on DVD or something. It saddens me to think a new generation is growing up without such a great inspiration for their imagination. It’ll be a real shame if the body of this man’s work falls out of our culture.

Read the story at Yahoo News.

Update: The show is available on a multiple volume DVD set over at Mr. Wizard Studios. This would be a great gift for parents with young kids.

When you type a search query into the Google search field in Firefox, it starts to auto-complete your entry based on the most common Google searches not from your personal history but from the collective history of all Google searches.* This is usually helpful. And when it’s not, it’s hilarious.

So, let’s talk about this. The top two huge things people are looking for most often are balls and women? In that order? Seriously? Who’s searching for this? Are guys with the first searching for the second? Vice versa? I’m fascinated by this.

P.S. The next suggested term after “huge waves” was “huge muscles”. I found that amusing.

UPDATE: As Pete and Frank pointed out, the next-most common search after “huge muscles” is “huge grant”. That’s funny enough to be made up. But it’s not.

* At least I think that’s how it works. It’s not local, that’s for sure. I don’t need to search for huge balls. Zing!

Stories, by their nature, have some sort of conflict. Otherwise, they would be boring. Conflict, by its nature, has at least two sides. To be able to write these two sides well, the artist has to understand, deep inside, that both sides are equally human. The more he portrays the other side as human, the better the story. The less human the other side, the more flawed the story.

 

Read the entire article.

That Spirit of Christmas.

Saved the best for last. If you just can’t get enough or find this speech oddly topical for you own life. Here is an mp3 version for your iPod.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Sony!”

“Oh, um…Hi! How are you?”

“Oh good, good. You get your Blue Ray DVD player yet?”

“Well, I was thinking about it. Then I saw that another one of your formats was just shitcanned.”

“Oh, that wasn’t shitcanned. Unless by ’shitcanned’ you mean ‘made way more awesome and groundbreaking by the world’s technology pioneer’”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, now we sell movies on the Memory Stick Entertainment Packs. It’s never been done before, we broke new ground…again, lol”

“Um, isn’t that one step away from people converting videos to MPEG and uploading manually to the PSP, the way everyone already does it?”

“No, it’s totally different and awesome. Would you like to buy S.W.A.T. or XXX: State of the Union on MSEP?”

“Maybe later. I guess I saw this coming, this whole conversation sounds familiar… you did the same thing with MiniDisc in the 90s.”

“No, MiniDisc was totally awesome. Americans weren’t ready for that kind of technology…”

“Yeah, are you sure it doesn’t have anything to do with cost? I mean, it got to the point where you could buy a CD and a blank MD cheaper then the MD of that album. Was that part of your business model?”

“We don’t condone the unauthorized duplication of copyprotected media.”

“Oh, trust me, we all know how you feel about that. How are those lawsuits going anyway? Nothing like some privacy invasion to stir up good PR”

“That wasn’t our fault! It was all First 4 Internet! Plus, most people, I think, don’t even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?”

“Ok. I’ll assume that’s not a fictitious company. I don’t really understand what herpes are, but I know damn well I don’t want them. Remind me again when you last revolutionized technology? Ah yes! The Walkman. Wow, that turns 30 soon doesn’t it?”

“The Playstation 3 is set to take the world by storm in ways the walkmen could never dream of!”

“Oh? Looks like you better be right if you want to keep dinner on your plate.”

“It’s going to change the way we use electronics at home.”

“You seem pretty confident, are you going to start advertising soon?”

“Yes! Not only is Sony the world’s leading technology innovator, we work with some of the most cutting edge agencies in the world to produce revolutionary advertisments!”

“Revolutionary? Are you sure you don’t mean creepy, confusingly offensive, vaguely illegal, and racist?”

“Proof again! The world is not ready for Sony! We stand beyond the forefront of early adoption and remain a beacon for the next decade that will bring about…”

“Hey, Sony, I have another call. It’s LG, we’re going to meet Samsung for some sushi, Maybe I’ll see you around.”

“Oh, what sushi place are you going to? Maybe I could…”

“Actually, it’s this whole thing where we’re going to buy iPods after, I didn’t really plan it, I’d feel weird just inviting, hey, listen, we’ll talk later OK?”

*click*