Croc Eats Dog: A Master Class in Great Direct Marketing

A flier-handout campaign on the streets of Germany boosted attendance at the local zoo by 15%.


I love a great cheap idea. That works.

Lawn Order Afoul of Law and Order

A Newaygo County man spent the past two weekend behind bars because of his yard, and he faces more jail time.

David Burch says he tried to seed the yard last fall but it wouldn't take root. This all stems from a contractor who failed to sod the yard in the first place. Now a judge is saying, do the yard or do the time.

"The people who work at the court, at the jail, thought it was funny," Burch said. "They said there had to be more. I said, 'No, it's just because I don't have grass growing.' They said, 'You're in here for that?'"

He claims he is not skirting the law. Burch said the contractor for his new house is responsible for the lawn. But a White Cloud city ordinance states otherwise.

"This has been in the courts for over a year," said White Cloud Police Chief Roger Ungrey. "I believe Mr. Burch has made an attempt. He did bring me in some receipts for grass seed."

But when it didn't grow, a county judge ordered the yard planted. It never happened. Again this April - no sprouts. Then, in jail, an inspiration. Burch is sodding his yard with donated turf.

"He has been working on it," Ungrey said. "However, he remains to this day noncompliant."

That is because the backyard must also be green.

Senator Switchback (Y & N, Kansas)

The death of Sam Brownback's national political aspiration, caught on tape. Good riddance.

Kelly, More Stuff Like This Here

Kelly Clarkson's new song is out, and it's pretty easy to see why managers are getting fired and tours cancelled.

Watch the minute and a half video above to see what she should be doing. Brilliant and sexy in a way that few women since the 60s have understood.

Pwned

Turn off the volume to avoid the horrible music, then enjoy the many moments of laughing at the pain of others.

Astroneat

More great images from the last shuttle mission here.

Who's the Biggest Jerk and/or Faker -- one of these professional wrestlers or Noam Chomsky?

Great piece in the New Yorker on linguist Dan Everett's decades-long study of the Amazonian Piraha tribe's odd language and how it doesn't fit into the perfect Universal Grammar world of our Lord Noam quite perfectly.

Ping Pong King Kong

Grand Piano

Alkanian and Isaacholbrook messing around after 4 beers.

Mozart and Beer Bottles

I guess one day you wake up and decide this is your destiny. Ah, fame.

Life Imitates Idiocracy - Redux

Watch him count all the way to one million. A star is born!

Maybe the Islamists are right. Maybe it all needs to come down.

Denial Isn't Just a River in Europe

St. Louis Today's Dan O'Neill has dug up Yogi Berra's doctoral dissertation:

"You're probably wondering, how does a kid from the Hill become a New York Yankee and get in the Hall of Fame? Well, let me tell you something, if it was easy nobody would do it. Nothing is impossible until you make it possible.

"Of course, times were different. To be honest, I was born at an early age. Things are much more confiscated now. It seems like a nickel ain't worth a dime anymore. But let me tell you, if the world was perfect, it wouldn't be. Even Napoleon had his Watergate.

"You'll make some wrong mistakes along the way, but only the wrong survive. Never put off until tomorrow what you can't do today. Denial isn't just a river in Europe.

"Strive for success and remember you won't get what you want unless you want what you get. Some will choose a different path. If they don't want to come along, you can't stop them. Remember, none are so kind as those who will not see.

"Keep the faith and follow the Commandments: Do not covet thy neighbor's wife, unless she has nothing else to wear. Treat others before you treat yourself. As Franklin Eleanor Roosevelt once said, 'The only thing you have to fear is beer itself.'

"Hold on to your integrity, ladies and gentlemen. It's the one thing you really need to have; if you don't have it, that's why you need it. Work hard to reach your goals, and if you can't reach them, use a ladder. There may come a day when you get hurt and have to miss work. Don't worry, it won't hurt to miss work.

Fire + Soundwaves = Ruben's Tube

Rubens Tube - More amazing videos are a click away

Bat for Lashes - 'What's a Girl to Do'

Siouxie meet Donnie Darko. Hang in there for 40 seconds or so and you'll see what I mean.

More TV Nostalgia - Carson Drops in on Letterman

TMBG - BIRDHOUSE IN YOUR SOUL

From 1990, will a wailing solo by Doc Severinson.

Old TV Production Company Logos

Ah, youth.

TV Genealogy

An old "Taxi," featuring a flashback to Jim's days at Harvard with his stoner roommate, a young Tom Hanks.

Gore Criticizing Bush (41) on Ignoring Iraq's Connection to International Terrorism

In 1992.

Radiohead - How to Disappear Completely

With perfect audio, from a Canal DVD, circa 2001. Thanks to the anonymous reader for the tip.

Bambi Lives

Worst shot. Ballsiest deer.

Conan Pulling His Walker Texas Ranger Lever

Comedy gold. The "one with the kid" had me laughing as hard as I can remember laughing for a while.

If Fox News Had Existed Throughout History

Click image to enlarge.

A funny concept via Kontraband.

Funeral Goes Bad

Funeral Goes Bad - Watch more free videos

File under: Comedy is not pretty.

Tom Waits - "I Don't Want to Grow Up"

Deconstruction Construction

Outer wall rotates on this building. Quite cool.

Bikini Truthers

Reductio ad Smoking' Hot Posteriori: A line of reasoning so, er, stacked with logical fallacies of so many different kinds that one must resort to delivering it to the public out of the mouths of girls in bikinis.

On Foiled Terror Plots

A good editorial on why the JFK terror plot, though planned by morons, still needs to be taken seriously.

Foiled terror plots often will seem ridiculous and unlikely, especially when they are pre-empted. What could be stupider than Ahmed Ressam, ''a petty thief'' according to Wright, running from border guards in Washington state after explosives were discovered in the trunk of his car? He wouldn't have seemed so risible if he had exploded his bomb at Los Angeles International Airport. If the 9/11 plot had been disrupted at its very inception - with jihadis playing flight-simulator games in Afghanistan - it would have seemed laughable.
This is why even foiled plots deserve to be taken seriously. The New York Times notoriously played down the scheme to blow up fuel tanks and pipelines at John F. Kennedy Airport on Page 37, pleading that the amateurishness of the plot limited its newsworthiness. As former prosecutor Andy McCarthy points out, the FBI is a victim of its success here. Moving from an emphasis on prosecutions to an emphasis on pre-emption necessarily means that terror cases will be weaker, thus tempting us to discount the threat altogether.

The Democrats have schizophrenia on the question. On the one hand, they argue that President Bush has inflated the terror threat to make us accept fascistic restrictions on our liberties; on the other, they say that he hasn't made us safer (safer from what? one wonders, if the terror threat is so exaggerated). In the recent Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton stood alone in maintaining we're safer since 9/11, demonstrating that - whatever her flaws - she's the adult supervision in the Democratic field.

YouTube Hosts First Feature-Length Movie, "Four Eyed Monsters"

This is a really interesting way of monetizing video on the net.

The filmmakers made a deal with a new Web 2.0 movie-review/social-networking site, spout.com, to receive $1 for every person who registers on spout.com as a result of/as compensation for being able to watch the movie for free on youtube.

They've received $5397 so far, with me helping to contribute that last buck.

To learn more about distributing your film this way, go to bside.com/filmmakers

Athens, Georgia: Inside/Out -- Documentary from 1986

This 10-minute trailer for a documentary about the golden age of Athens includes early footage of REM, B-52s, Pylon, Flat Duo Jets, most of which were managed and/or booked by my late friend Ian Copeland, a Wild Thing who is deeply missed....

REM's Mike Mills Does Acoustic Version of "Don't Go Back to Rockville" on Regis and Cathy Lee

From February of 1992, when they were promoting "Out of Time," (the album that launched REM's "sucky phase" which continued until, well, now) here is Mike Mills singing a song from their "pre-sucky phase," off their second album, "Reckoning."

My favorite maxim about REM: they started to suck when they started to take themselves seriously, whereas U2 started to suck when they stopped taking themselves seriously.

Lions and Buffaloes and Crocodiles, Oh My

The Ten - PoMo Movie Trailer for PoMo Movie

The VO at the end is the greatest thing ever. Because what else is there left to do when all the possibilities have already been exhausted?

Plus, you know, Jessica Alba.

"Watch or Die" -- The Ultimate News Promo

As a former purveyor of award-winning disposable television (how's that for an oxymoron), I've gotta say: I'm jealous. Even I never conceived of offering the viewer a juicy marketing promise like "Watch or You Will Die."

Talk about putting it out there in pursuit of the nice big gold Promax statue....

Great Outdoor Advertising

Click to enlarge.
The brilliance of this outdoor ad is that the billboard on the far right is for Nationwide Insurance, with the tag line, "Life Comes at You Fast." There is no such thing as Coop's Paints.

Either that's brilliant, or too brilliant for its own good.

UPDATE: Here's a different angle -- courtesy of this Russian blog -- that seems to have been taken at a later date, with new cars in the parking lot and the pool of paint spreading and getting larger. Interesting.

Ski-Gliding the Eiger

I've had this exact sequence as a recurrent dream for years. So strange to watch someone actually do it.

François Bon and Antoine Montant did this, the world's first speedflying descent of the Mt. Eiger, in Switzerland.

Virtual Compositing 2.0 Emerges from Web 2.0

Ridiculously Cool Technology - Watch more free videos

Mind blowing stuff, from Microsoft, of all places (naturally, via acquisition...).

The beginning segment is an eye-opener, but stay for the second-feature: a virtual 3-D model of Notre Dame Cathedral, as constructed from every image of it on Flickr.

This is what the 21st Century looks like.

America Braces for New Wayans Brothers Movie

In The Know: America Braces For New Wayans Brothers Movie

Open-Source Movie Unfolds

The Web 2.0 devours its next victim, the Hollywood Studio System, with a feature film funded, developed, and to be distributed on the web. The movie, called, "The Unfold," is still open to the web-public who wish to participate in the project by becoming "angel" producers -- at a cost of about fifty bucks each. As you would expect, they are doing it with Creative Commons licensing.

The aim of the project is to create a UKP 1million ($1.95M) feature film and give it away to over 1 million people using the Internet and a global community of “angels”, each of whom pay £25 (approx $47) to join the project, and in return get to have a say on all aspects of the creative process, access exclusive content, and even become part of the film crew.

Here’s a breakdown of each phase:

1. Proof of concept. 100 members only. COMPLETE. Develop online presence.

2. Early Development. 1000 members. COMPLETE. Script and visual development for 2 scripts. Production of teaser and promotional material. Begin user-generated content initiatives.

3. Advanced development. Open to 5000 members. Produce trailer and documentary material. Finalise scripts and complete development.

4. Pre-production. Open to 25,000 members. Vote to greenlight 1 script. Scout locations, choose cast and crew, plan production.

5. Filming. Open to 50,000 members. Production, post-production, distribution, creation of member-only products.

Teller Tells

Magic's most taciturn man talks about Richiardi's Chamber of Horror and Illusion.

I, for one, welcome our new line-drive hitting overlords.

The end is nigh.

Ah, So That's What Happened to George W. Bush's Spine

Someone made a lamp out of it after Nancy Pelosi ripped it out of his back.

Trivia: The dome of the lamp was made from the top of Donald Rumsfeld's cranium, preserved carefully after the delivery of his head onto Madame Speaker's platter by GWB and then artfully bronzed by San Fran Senator DiFi. People in the Bay Area are SO creative! It's positively faboo!

Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash

One Too Many Mornings, and a Thousant Miles Behind.

Here's the first take:



Bonus: from the Johnny Cash Show:



Girl from the North Country