1. Baseball Picks on Ice Cream Helmet – You can still play Baseball Picks!
2. Links for May 20 – Third of four Links posts this month.
3t. Boo Most Commercials, Hooray Some! – From last May. Not sure why this post was popular this month. A look at some commercials for ESPN, Emerald Nuts, and Red Stripe.
3t. Horse Racing Picks on Ice Cream Helmet – The Belmont is this weekend, so there is still a chance to participate this year.
3t. Links for May 1 – First of four Links posts this month.
3t. The Long Plane Ride Home – From this month, the story of my flights to and from Seattle. Including my plane having to turn around and return to Houston during my trip home.
Anatomy Of A Failure: Lessons Learned – An interesting post from the founder of Meetro, which was a location based IM client. I tried it out when it was first released. There were not many people in my area. I also thought it was a little strange talking to strangers nearby. I’d rather my strangers be far away. It was an interesting idea and worth a shot. Very interesting read about why it failed and the thoughts of someone behind the scenes.
The Simpsons Ride – Was there not a Simpsons ride before? Its the perfect recipe for a ride.
Mario Kart Wii Training Wheel – Having issues with the Wii Wheel for Mario Kart Wii? I’m not but some of my family had trouble with it as first. You can create your own training wheel and look ridiculous at the same time.
Super Mario World levels set to music – Someone spent a lot of time to create these levels to match up to music. I only got three minutes into it. Those three minutes were cool but I think I got the point.
Turn your soda can into a bottle. There must be some sort of resealable can that could be designed instead of this.
50 Ways to Help the Planet – Easy ways to do your part.
Lovers, Not Fighters by Doug Glanville – As far as I know Glanville is the best writer in baseball. Here he discusses brawls he’s been involved in.
Beckham’s 60-yard Goal – I happened to catch this live. I don’t watch soccer all that much but I was flipping through and saw the game on HDNet. Nothing else was on so I watched a few minutes. I like soccer but there aren’t enough hours in the day to be a fan.
The bracket for the NCAA Baseball Tournament. Possibly the most complicated playoff format outside of Baseketball. The 8 teams that emerge from this 64-team field head to Omaha for the College World Series.
I collected these over the past few weeks. I’ve been busy and traveling. I hope these are still relevant.
From the Dilbert Blog, a man was forced to give up his seat and sit in the bathroom.
Horse tramples car. I have no idea how the horse got onto this car and then how did it get out?
GUTS is sort of coming back. It will be a family version on during Nick at Nite. I wonder if Moe is available?
My current favorite Carolla segment is Made Up Movies where callers give the title and the hosts develop the plot of a movie.
Police Log: Someone set a port-a-potty on fire.
NCAA Football 09 is coming. I’m excited.
50 Most Memorable Movie Cars
10 Worst Entry-Level Tech Jobs
Awful Announcing is quickly becoming one of my favorite sites. Here are a few posts I enjoyed in the past weeks …
Apparently you just have to fill out a form to be eligible for the NBA Draft. Then you even get added to the watch lists.
Charles Barkley reads everything he sees on the prompter.
I saw Joel McHale last week. Bo Burnham opened for him. I thought he was very good. He sings lots of odd songs and is only 17.
I was browsing the iTunes Podcast Directory looking for some new ones to listen to. I wound up adding a bunch of NPR podcasts. Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! is the best of the bunch. Its weekly, on Saturdays, look at news items from the past week with a sense of humor.
New David Sedaris in The New Yorker. Not my favorite, its all about smoking. Still, its David Sedaris, so its worth reading.
A touching story of a balding penguin.
Photoshopping what each candidate would look like in 4 years.
Police Log from The Daily Collegian. Always one of my favorite parts of the paper, this one doesn’t disappoint.
One of my softball teammates’ man cave was featured on a PSU blog this week.
Some Lists …
Philly is #1 place to live for new grads.
Pittsburgh gets a #1, but for sootiest. Here is the full list.
Top 50 comedy sketches. #50 is cowbell. So either the list is terrible or there are about 40 hilarious sketches I’ve never seen.
Top 50 TV Shows of All Time – See how far you get until you have to stop because you realize the list is worthless. I got to #49. Then I flipped to #48 and they redeemed themselves.
Looks like I missed April. I posted on the last day of March and the first day of May. Since there were no posts I was curious as to what where the most viewed posts in April. Here are the Top 5:
Baseball Picks on Ice Cream Helmet (You can still sign up!)
Links for March 27th
The Janke Chronicles – Episode 2
The Janke Chronicles – Episode 3
Top 5 Things I secretly miss about the 80s
I thought this was a great post about why Hilary is doing so well in PA. Possibly the best thing I’ve seen written about the election so far.
Incompetent people are clueless. From this Dilbert Blog entry.
Fake Craigslist ad said everything in this guy’s house was free for the taking.
A corn flake that looks like Illinois. Personally, I think it looks more like Texas than Illinois.
Adam Carolla Show – Reinactment One of my favorite things about the Carolla Show is when they read a news item or hear a story and then do dialogue as if they are the people in the story. Confused? Well this one is an actual segment with the purpose of reenacting an event.
A home paternity test. Something tells me this will lead to a large number or practical jokes.
Celebrity Family Feud. Why did this take so long to happen?
The NFL going to require haircuts? This should wait until after the first person gets injured from being tackled by their hair. Just something I we all need to actually see, as a lesson.
Top Hybrids of 2008
A Focus Convertible? So hot.
LEGOs
Futurama
Camaro
I keep telling myself to do this daily, but I get sidetracked. Here is a sampling of the links I shared with my friends this week. These are the ones that made the cut and aren’t dumb after looking at them again.
The Condiment Pistol. Now if they can figure out how to get ketchup and mustard into the same gun. Perhaps a double-barreled shotgun?
My new favorite dinosaur name: Duckbilled Edmontosaurus.
Finally I won’t have to listen to everyone demanding that BattleBots come back.
Life Clock. Cool, interesting, or morbid?
Not sure how the Secret Public Journal will turn into a sitcom, I’ll watch though.
Colbert is coming to Philly. I got burned by the fact that I DVR it and watch it after work the next day. By the time I saw this, tickets were gone.
Do we want the largest building in the hemisphere to be in Philly? I guess we never want to win a championship.
Kenny Maine is writing a book? It will be kindling. Not because it will be bad, I will probably get it and enjoy it, but its going to be so try the sun will set it on fire.
The Dodgers are leaving Dodgertown. So sad, it really makes no sense. Orioletown doesn’t sound nearly as good. Lasorda said, “We’re going to leave, but we’re not leaving our memories.” Something about the wording of that quote bothers me. Sounds to me like ‘we’re leaving and we’re taking our memories with us’.
Is independent study a major at Michigan?
Service Pack 1 was released for Vista. Usually things start looking up after the first Service Pack. Who knows with Vista, everyone hates it so much and most of them haven’t even tried it.
The Adam Carolla Show
Teresa tells what Adam says is his favorite story. Part 1 Part 2
Who the F sells this S? (My favorite segment) Part 1 Part 2
These are a little old, but in the off chance you missed them …
YOUTUBE TOOK THE VIDEO DOWN
Sarah Silverman and Matt Damon’s song.
YOUTUBE TOOK THE VIDEO DOWN
Jimmy Kimmel and Ben Affleck’s song.
Stephen Colbert and Conan O’Brien have been having a little disagreement. Jon Stewart got involved and they all appeared on each other’s shows with a brawl occurring during Conan’s show. If you missed any of it, here are all the clips.
Biker gang violence in Philly. Why hasn’t HBO made a show about rival biker gangs?
This group had over 200 people freeze in place in Grand Central Station freeze in place in Grand Central Station for a few minutes. The other people were a little confused.
I saw this on The Dilbert Blog. Are these necessary? It claims they create a more relaxed soothing atmosphere.
An interesting alarm clock. It can make all sorts of noise or turn on lights.
Google News added a new local section. Just put in your zip code. Found some interesting stuff. Then I heard about this site, Topix, which has been doing the same sort of thing for a while. I’ll try them both out for a little while and see what happens.
The Aqua Teen Hunger Force with John Kruk. I haven’t watched it yet, but its an episode of ATHF, not the movie, so it should be good.
Sports Guy has had lots of Norm links recently, here are 2 more.
Norm MacDonald on Dennis Miller Live
Norm stories on Stern
Interesting article on Leno and Late Night.
There is a Canal Museum in Easton, PA? It doesn’t reopen until May, but it sounds like it could hold my attention for a little while.
Sports
Donyell Marshall had been hurt for a few months. He went to come into his first game and he didn’t have a jersey on.
From last year, a look at some of the technology behind the Super Bowl broadcast.
Nice work Pirates, apparently #1 is retired because someone screwed up.
Science-ish Links
Phil’s predictions have been less correct recently, this is a sign of global warming this is a sign of global warming.
Time may not exist? This one gets a little sciencey.
Mind reading
Basic Instructions
I was behind on these, here are some of the better ones from the last few weeks.
How to Listen to Other People Talk About Their Vacation
How to Decide Which Star Wars Character You Are Most Like
How to Get the Most Entertainment for Your Video Gaming Dollar
How to Deal With Someone Who Doesn’t Like You
Can I pull off a themed links day?
LEGO’s 50th Anniversary was this week. Gizmodo posted a bunch of the most popular ones. I was able to find all that made up my LEGO town. Yes, I had a LEGO town, with streets and all. Not many real towns were as lucky as mine to have an airport and shuttle launch pad. The tradeoff? Alien attacks.
Hershey has some candy and apparently its packaging is similar to drugs. Crack, cocaine, and heroin are all mentioned. They are actually Ice Breakers, which I wouldn’t call candy. Anyway, I didn’t think they looked like drugs from looking at them. I don’t think any kids would thought so either, before now. If there was some sort of mixup between this candy and drugs, I think you are buying your candy from the wrong store …
Like perhaps this Pizza Place at Penn State where the most popular pizza was the Marijuana Lovers.He may be 21, but I think he grabbed the drugs instead of the candy. I don’t know where Brian Callaway (the writer of the story) is hoping to get in the newspaper business if he isn’t going to mention whether or not those slippers growled with each step.
Shaun White is how old now? Says here he’s 21. I think he’s won about 300 X Games Golds. Here he is pulling off a 1260. If he wasn’t so good at everything, then I’d hate him less.
Most hockey players are kids these days, at least the good ones. Here are some Penguins doing an ad for a car dealership. I respect the dealership for using artistic license and going with the non-English speaking players.
Sick of these kids yet? How many can you beat up?
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Colbert
The Colbert links are all over the place thanks to his book release and his Presidential Bid.
Watch – On Larry King, this link is to the Larry King iTunes podcast. CNN doesn’t seem to have any direct links to their podcasts.
Read – From the New York Times Op-Ed page. He wrote Maureen Dowd’s column for her.
I’ve very excited for his run in South Carolina. Anyone who thinks this is a joke that will make a mockery of the primary process has not been paying attention to the primary process. Right now his focus is getting the signatures to get on the Democratic ballot. The $25,000 to get on the Republican ballot is going to be more difficult. Why does it cost so much to get on the ballot? Shouldn’t the chance to run for office be open to anyone? I thought signatures were fairly standard, or having to go and fill out a form and pay a processing fee, but one a little more realistic. The next step needs to be voter registration. At the very least a ton of people who have never voted before will register and go to the polls. A decent showing could spawn a write-in campaign across the country. In the end, two things are accomplished: more people are registered to vote and people take notice that the whole process is actually a joke. Who knows, maybe by defending his right to be in the race he can get some of the other candidates to defend their words and be honest.
Conan
During taping of Conan one night this week an alarm went off. Conan rolled with it and they wound up keeping it in the show. It continued when the next guest, Paget Brewseter, came out.
I’ve been concerned that Conan might not be able to be successful on The Tonight Show when he takes over. I think he’s great, but, to me, The Tonight Show is an entirely different audience. An audience that enjoys Jay Leno, which I cannot understand how that’s possible. After seeing how he played this I realize how truly great he can be and that he can work with any situation. That will make him successful in the new time slot. I’m just hoping he doesn’t change too much and keep the consistent boredom that is the current Tonight Show.
More Goods
Best Dilbert Blogs that I read this week. They may be a little older, I had some catching up to do.
Indoor Recreation – Just for his idea for the Ping Pong Palace.
Some People – Sometimes, you just want to kill someone for no particular reason.
North American Vexillological Association – Flags, flags, and more flags. The kind of site that you think is dumb, and then a few hours go by and you are still looking at it.
The videos follow …
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These got me talking …
Legality of some Pa. marriages is questioned
This one caught my eye because I know some people who were ordained by the Universal Life Church. I was even there when it happened. We had some time to kill after Fitness Walking. Yes, I got credit for walking. We were sitting in the computer lab and two of my friends decided to get ordained. It required them to fill out a form. It was all very official looking and by official looking I mean it was a web site with a form. I decided against it on the grounds that I could make my own certificate, if I really wanted one, and I felt thing signing up would get me involved in the subsequent legal proceedings that were likely to be associated with this organization. There was one wedding performed. While I’m not sure how much the bride and groom talk anymore, I don’t believe there was ever a divorce. I guess now they can rest easy that they can pretend the whole thing never happened.
Comcast holds the line on Big Ten
I’ve talked about this a few times. While I love the idea of having more Big Ten coverage and a chance to watch some Penn State sports besides football and basketball, I’ve been on Comcast’s side the whole time. Two things in this article stand out to me. First, something I’ve been curious about it how much money is actually on the line. According to this if Comcast puts the channel on expanded basic, BTN gets $60 million a year and if it puts it on the Sports Teir, BTN only gets $2.5 million. The article states that the Sports Teir has only 4% penetration. However, those Sports Teir numbers are going to grow. NFL Network is now on the Sports Teir but NFL games don’t start on the channel until Thanksgiving. Also, have some confidence in the drawing power of your channel. The BTN will draw even more subscribers. Getting some money has to be better than nothing at all, especially when you don’t have to do anything extra, the channel is already broadcasting. The second point in the article is even more important and something I hadn’t thought of before. Every major sport has (or will have in baseball’s case) a channel. The Big Ten is the second conference I know of to have a channel (I haven’t been upset that I don’t receive The Mountain West’s channel, which I believe Comcast has a part of). Pretty soon the other major conferences will follow suit. Then it’s going cost a bunch to pay for all of these channels. There won’t be any need for the ESPN PPV packages for college football and basketball. Everyone will be paying those prices and more because all those games will be part of the channels. While I’m an alum of a Big Ten school I want to see games from all the other conferences just as badly. I already subscribe to Verizon’s sports package so that I can see Pac10 and Big 12 games that Fox College Sports shows. I’m an odd case. There are lots of people that don’t care about sports at all, these are people I refer to as ‘people I’d rather not associated with,’ who don’t need to be paying for a bunch of channels they are never going to watch.
TV Related
Table Cloth Challenge
Someone explain to me why there isn’t a Japanese Game Show channel. At least GSN should have a Japanese block which would wind up being so popular it would need its own channel.
Creed Thoughts
Creed from The Office has a blog. I usually don’t even bother reading ‘in character’ blogs. However with Creed I had to make an exception.
Late Night Subdivision
Colbert on Fresh Air
Stephen Colbert has been everywhere promoting his book. I really liked this interview. Its about 45 minutes long so it gets a lot more in-depth than any of the others. He also talks a lot about the character he plays on the show.
Jimmy Kimmel Does Product Testing on Kids
I miss being able to watch Kimmel every day.
It’s official: Conan moving to L.A.
Sure, the show will probably be exactly the same. It definitely won’t be better. So why move?
Fox Considers Joe Buck for Late-Night Show
I can only support this if it means that he won’t be covering sports any more. Who am I kidding? There is already a Tim McCarver show and I still have to listen to him.
Sports Things
Giants Linebacker Injures His Ear
Lesson: Don’t stick a cotton swab in your ear in a crowded locker room.
An Error-Plagued Game, but From the Broadcast Booth
I’ve thought TBS has done a great job covering the playoffs. Although broadcasting a signal already puts them in a tie with Fox and ESPN. I would like to see more of these types of articles, besides in blogs, calling out announcing mistakes.
Fun Stuff
Exploits of a Mom
If you are a fan of SQL injection comics, then this is for you.
Top 40 Demotivational Posters
People in my job love these things. The mocking variety, just like these. My favorite out of this group has to be the Free Candy van.
