Category: looky

Extremely bizarre approach to SUV safety. Here’s a question for you- if they are so unsafe, why is it legal to drive them on the freeway? Shouldn’t there be a special license you have to get, like a commercial driver?
Web link of note: Esuvee
(At http://esuvee.com/)

Do you ever wonder where that paper money in your pocket has been, or where it will go next? This is the place to find out.

All you need to do is enter the denomination, series, and serial number of any US dollar bill, and your current USA ZIP or Canadian Post Code in the box below.

Web link of note: Where’s George
(At http://www.wheresgeorge.com/)

Greg Brown is a Palo Alto-based artist who specializes in whimsical murals- I had grown up seeing his work downtown without putting together that there was a reason these aliens and burglars seemed sort of similar.

Brown specializes in a technique called trompe l’oeil (“fool the eye”) which basically equals super-realistic shading and detail- murals so realistic that according to legend someone called the police department on the burglars Brown painted above a University Avenue storefront.

A few years ago I saw a exhibit he did called “Unlikely saints,” in which he painted some everyday characters as Orthodox saints, complete with gold leaf background halos- a barista, a landscaper. It was pretty cool.

• PDF description of the Unlikely Saints show
• press release from the same show, put out by the Palo Alto Art Center
• list of the downtown murals, with pictures and a map of their locations, all ready for a art crawl of downtown Palo Alto
• brief writeup (and his photo) from the Palo Alto Housing Corporation

You corporate whore!
Web link of note: The Logo Game
(At http://logogame.com/)

I’ve only seen like three of these broadcast- my favorites are Cleaner Girl and the one where the girl ignores her friend drowning…

But what happened to “I learned it from watching you!!” or “No one says I want to be a drug addict when I grow up.” ? What happened to “You’re a smart kid Timmy.” ? These are the classics, man. Anti-drug commercials from the late 1980s.

Ah well. Maybe they were part of another campaign and therefore not archived? Maybe I need to start my own archive.

Meth. oooh meth!

Web link of note: Anti-Drug Commercials
(At http://www.mediacampaign.org/mg/television_archives.html)

Time for a quick history fix! I’ll be reading this at lunch for the next couple of weeks…
Web link of note: History House
(At http://www.historyhouse.com/)

I was surfing randomly while watching The Jayne Mansfield Story– which I hadn’t realized had Loni Anderson and The Governator in it. Bizarre.

At any rate, I saw this toy I used to have, “Mr Machine,” made by Ideal. It was a wind-up plastic clockwork man. You could wind him up, and he’d whistle and wheel around. When I owned Mr Machine, I used to wonder how he worked… you could see his gears inside.

But today I found out just now that he was the lamer, “safer” version of a even cooler version of Mr Machine- the earlier version you could take apart! He came with directions and was over 160 pieces.

I am so jealous. Some of these memories online are pretty funny though- recollections of taking him apart and not being able to put him back together again. I don’t think that would have been me- I had almost every “Zoid” ever made up through the early 1990s, and we kept them in pieces in a giant bin, ready to be reassembled.

Oh crap, looks like once again, I can buy things to overcompensate, this time a reproduction from Robot Island. A mere $89. Yikes. Also, here’s the commercial!

Someday we will figure out how to efficiently generate energy from plastic. And then people who live on landfills will be RICH!

focussed on the Mattel Vertibird- one of those cool toys that got banned when parents got litigous. My kids will have cool toys, I command it!
Web link of note: Whirlybird Central
(At http://www.whirlybirdcentral.com/)

Website of comic book artist Thien Pham.

I just read his book “Air” which is basically The Karate Kid or Rocky but with air hockey. It is awesome. It is available for purchase at Global Hobo Comics.

I got mine for $3. Woo hoo!

Web link of note: E-Z Cheese
(At http://www.e-zcheese.com/)

This show is such a great example of TV being the opiate of the masses.

Alice was watching this last night, and getting her attention was like trying to talk to someone on smack. Hello, Alice? Yo! Over here!

The show is John Stamos basically being the Jerry MacGuire character, except this time, he’s in PR. He starts to flip out over how shallow his life has become. He starts looking for a real, down-home way of living. He is amazed when he can buy ten pounds of cashews at the store for cheap. He is charmed by the suburban lifestyle.

This show is a girl show. A self-delusional girl show.

News flash housewives- people with lucrative, professional careers, who date supermodels, don’t envy your suburban life. Most likely, they started off there, and clawed their way out. They won’t be amazed by being able to buy cashews for cheap- their cashews come in convenient tins at Whole Foods, are imported from exotic locations, are organic, and flavored with spices you’ve never heard of before. They don’t care about cheap nuts because they make twice as much as you. They could just buy you on a whim.

This show is a fantasy that you watch to try to pretend your life isn’t boring. And you’ve wasted valuable time watching it- that was another hour you could have been doing something interesting.

You are all doomed.