Adam Kazwell is...somewhat concerned

I want to be more like Paul Ford

If only so I could bust rhymes like this:

Came from Pennsylvania with a laptop on my knee. Found a place in Brooklyn when I was 23.

He gave a pretty funny interview with the Gothamist folks (who as it turns out have a collection of decent interviews) where he talks about living in NYC, hanging with the dude from Blues Clues, and how the only way to avoid advertising is to die. You should read it.

Recreating "the Don"

Here's a little experiment from the peeps at Shey.net.

After seeing Donald Trump on the Apprentice most people start wondering about his hair...

Talking about it tonight, we wondered if we could test the long-standing theory that it’s actually the top part of his hair, grown out, swept forward, and folded back over on top of his head. Rachel was good enough to volunteer her hair for a quick proof of concept, as we weren’t sure it was even possible.

The results...

Related Links
1. AwfulPlasticSurgery.com (sweet domain name) presents the story behind Donald Trump's Huge Combover.
2. How real is the real estate in the Apprentice?

If only I were a pimp

Then I could wear one of these sweet Pimp Watches.

Follow the Guide?

Oh man, I was browsing through the Sachs Report (listed on the right hand side under favorites) and came across The Vice Guide to Finding Yourself. Pretty funny read, although the "13 Tried and Not-So-True methods" are kinda twisted.

Among their recommendations:

5. ECSTASY
Before I went to my first rave, I was an angry punk rocker who hated the whole world and everyone in it. Then I swallowed an E “stamp” (they don’t make those anymore), and an hour later I was kissing strangers and realizing that everything was “all good.” It didn’t matter how stupid everyone looked in their baggy jeans dancing to happy hardcore, they were having fun and “being themselves” and that was all that mattered. I don’t do the drug anymore, but I can still tap into that optimism whenever I’m feeling shitty. That’s a crucial finding-yourself tool.

9. THE MAGIC FOUR
This one is only for guys. In order to become a man you have to: 1) break someone’s heart; 2) have your heart broken; 3) get the shit beaten out of you; and 4) beat the shit out of someone. That means: 1) she has to be so fucked up she almost kills herself. Like, doesn’t eat for three days and falls down the stairs drunk; 2) you are so fucked up you have to punch yourself in the head to stop thinking about her; 3) you end up in the hospital with a severely broken nose and some sort of permanent facial scar; and 4) he’s not really moving at the end. You’re kind of just kicking a blob.

According to the Guide, I clearly have a lot left to experience (heck, I don't even have half of the Magic Four)

Note - suddenly this blog seems a lot less work safe. I gotta stop with all this foul language, or bring the "/'s" back into play :)

Turns out the Tipping Point refers to SUV's

After reading Malcom Gladwell thoughts on "Big and Bad" SUV's I'm beginning to think that I'll never own an SUV.

Some of the more interesting points included:

According to Bradsher, internal industry market research concluded that S.U.V.s tend to be bought by people who are insecure, vain, self-centered, and self-absorbed, who are frequently nervous about their marriages, and who lack confidence in their driving skills.

if consumers really wanted something that was big and heavy and comforting, they ought to buy minivans, since minivans, with their unit-body construction, do much better in accidents than S.U.V.s. (In a thirty-five-m.p.h. crash test, for instance, the driver of a Cadillac Escalade...has a 16% chance of a life-threatening head injury, a 20% chance of a life-threatening chest injury, and a 35% chance of a leg injury. The same numbers in a Ford Windstar minivan--a vehicle engineered from the ground up, as opposed to simply being bolted onto a pickup-truck frame--are, respectively, two per cent, four per cent, and one per cent.)

Over the past decade, a number of major automakers in America have relied on the services of a French-born cultural anthropologist, G. Clotaire Rapaille, whose speciality is getting beyond the rational--what he calls "cortex"--impressions of consumers and tapping into their deeper, "reptilian" responses. And what Rapaille concluded from countless, intensive sessions with car buyers was that when S.U.V. buyers thought about safety they were thinking about something that reached into their deepest unconscious. "The No. 1 feeling is that everything surrounding you should be round and soft, and should give," Rapaille told me. "There should be air bags everywhere. Then there's this notion that you need to be up high. That's a contradiction, because the people who buy these S.U.V.s know at the cortex level that if you are high there is more chance of a rollover. But at the reptilian level they think that if I am bigger and taller I'm safer. You feel secure because you are higher and dominate and look down. That you can look down is psychologically a very powerful notion.

In addition to these points is also the notion that the S.U.V. boom represents a shift in how we conceive of safety--from active to passive...

Farewell Column #3

In an effort to get away from the somewhat mindless listing of "low threshold links" I've eliminated the 3rd column from the blog. Instead, I'm going to try out a format similar to Wordparts and Kottke. Hopefully it'll force me to make wiser decisions in what to post vs. what not to post. Also, I hope it'll encourage more commenting on individual links. With that said, there will still be the link archive if all you want is the low threshold goodness.

The Stick Figure Animation Hall of Fame

First, there was Bitter Films.
Then, I can't colour in.
And recently: Best special effects...for a stick figure.

Now this: "Doorsteps" the music video. Enjoy.

Prepare to cease all productivity - it's Movies.xls

Who knew a spreadsheet could be so entertaining...Check out Movies.xls (aka: FilmWise Invisibles™ Quizzes)

Inside is a listing of still frames from 72 popular movies - all you have to do is guess the name of the movie and the spreadsheet will tell you if it's true or false. The only thing is, the bodies behind the actors/actresses have been removed (think special effects in the Invisible Man).

Warning: When guessing the titles you have to be 100% accurate to get a "True" response, so watch out for "the's", apostrophes, or commas. And lastly, there's one typo I've come across so far (#63). So, how many can you get? I've currently got 31 out of 72.

Update on 2.13.04: That's it, all 72 are mine!!! So relieved that I won't have to spend any more time on that damn spreadsheet. Thanks to L, R, G, etc for all the hints. Now what I'd like to do is release a cleaned up version of that spreadsheet...if anyone knows how to unlock it, lemme know please. 

Also, does anyone know how the images in this spreadsheet were created?? I can understand editting out the faces, arms, etc - but how were they able to put what previously wasn't visible there?

Update on 3.9.05: Still want more?? Here's a whole new world of hurt (aka - The new version Movies.xls - NameThatFilm.xls

Update on 3.10.05: Found some additional links to more FilmWise Invisibles™ Quizzes (or .xls) games on BoingBoing - along with a ton of other spreadsheet movie games (complete with answers)