Geek Chic

Ok New York Times.  What’s going on here:

So the lead story here seems to be a pretty big deal: ‘GM Loses 9.6 Billion as Its Strugles Continue.’  Wow right?  That sucks!

What’s the lead image?

“Living Together : My Monkey, My Self”

WHAT?

Have things really gotten so bad that, instead of dealing with monumentally bad news about the econmy, we feel we should give mental precedance to stories about having monkeys in the house because you’re just not a cat person?

Granted, AIG’s quarterly loss of 61.7 billion obviously made GM’s loss look like chump chnge.

Still.

The 26th, when the story was published, was a Thursday.  A Thursday!  This is the kind of fluff reporting I’d expect on a Sunday!  Were your editors all on vacation?

<sigh>

Come on NYT.  Stay sharp.

This had me rolling on the floor laughing.  It’s funny because it’s true:

Well, sort of:

Gotta get me some of that.  I think the gravity I keep under the sink in my apartment went bad a few months ago…

Can you believe I live in Brooklyn and I haven’t been to the Superhero Supply Store?!?  How is this possible?  I’ve got to get that taken care of, right quick.

I’d also like to take a moment to send a shout out to Dave Eggers and his crew — even the idea of the existence of the Superhero Supply Store (Park Slope) and the Pirate Supply Store (826 Valencia, San Francisco) consistently brightens my day.  Besides the sheer eccentricity of these shops and the items they stock, both of the stores act as fronts for writing workshops for kids.  How incredibly cool is that?

Do you know about these people?  Dave Eggers and his merry men?  If not — in addition to the Pirate and Superhero stores, of course — you need to check out:

McSweeny’s
The Believer

Thanks for the reminder, FFFFound.

Because it’s awesome!!!

I’ve gotta admit — I’m such a sucker for things like this.  I just came across 24 Unforgettable Advertisements yesterday and loved it (well… not so much the PETA one — keep scrolling down to Woodland Shoes and the McDonalds bus stop).  I really love it when people take familiar objects and make you look at them in a totally different way — even if it’s for the sake of an advertisement.

Thanks again, FFFFound.

I just saw this on FAILBlog:

Wow, right?  303,000 people did a search on Google for ‘I am extremely terrified of chinese people.’ ??

What’s amazing about that is that it actually works.  Go to Google.com and type something into the query field and see what Google Suggest comes up with.  We tried ‘I am scared of’ and got this:

Some of that is predictable — 14 million people are scared of death or dying, 7.8 million are scared of the dark.

Some of it is disconcerting — 1.7 million are scared of Obama vs. only 472K are scared of Pailn.

And some of it is just a fun logic game:  if 26 million are scared of people and 16 million are scared of themselves, that must leave 10 million people who are scared of you.

Anyway… it’s a fun way to kill some time, and it’s actually a fascinating exercise to learn what people are searching for on Google these days.

Oh man.  I have died and gone to nerd-tertainment heaven.

Michel Gondry is apparently directing an upcoming episode of Flight of the Conchords (airs Feb 15th — the valentine episode).  You should be dying of excitement, just as I am.

Here, tide yourself over with this (Michel Gondry directs Radiohead’s video for Knives Out)

And this (one of my favorite FOTC songs from the first season):

Ok… You talked me into it. You can have this one too:

Thanks VSL

I don’t mean to turn this blog into my reading list.  Or my Netflix-style Barnes and Noble queue.  But…

I saw this today, and I think it looks great.  Definitely up my alley:

Maybe have a look-see?  Maybe you like?  I’m going to get it when it comes out (tomorrow) and I’ll be sure to tell you all about it.

Many thanks VSL