A Tribe Called Quest Reunites

According to Vibe:

Eight-years after their break-up, A Tribe Called Quest has reunited for more than a dozen fall 2K Sports Bounce Tour dates, which will promote the basketball game “NBA 2K7.”

According to MTV.com, The Bounce Tour, which featured The Roots for their inaugural tour last year, will stretch from Atlantic City, New Jersey to Los Angeles, with a New York show tentatively scheduled for October.

Phife Dawg, who apparently is a video game fanatic, will appear as a playable character in the game, as will Flavor Flav, Common, the Roots’ ?uestlove and a host of other rappers.

I have seen Tribe live many times and they were always great. Tribe’s The Low End Theory also holds the dubious honor of being my most stolen CD. I have re-bought it at least three times. You know an album is good when it’s always being jacked from your collection.

Wonder Twin Rebels Surrender

This story is too weird to pass up. It involves twin brothers named Luther and Johnny who lead a rebel group in Myanmar (formerly Burma) called God’s Army. Did I mention that they are kids and supposedly have mystical powers?

In the late 1990s, Johnny and his brother, Luther, were charismatic leaders of a small band of ethnic Karen Christian rebels in eastern Myanmar fighting the country’s military regime.

They achieved mystical status among their followers after Myanmar troops entered their village during a 1997 sweep of areas inhabited by the country’s Karen minority. Johnny and Luther reportedly rallied some locals and directed a successful counterattack. Their acolytes came to believe the twins were invulnerable to bullets and land mines.

A photo of the twins, then about 12 years old, showing a soulful looking Johnny with long hair and Luther puffing on a cigarette, became an iconic image of child soldiers. The two are now about 18.

The brothers recently surrendered to authorities ” …to live peacefully with their families.”

50 Flicks to See Before You Croak

Chek out this list of 50 films to see before you die. I agree with some, but others not so much. So for shits and giggles I compiled my own list of 50 movies to see before you meet your maker. In no particular order (the numbers are only there to make sure I don’t miss the 50 mark):

1. Time Bandits
2. Pulp Fiction
3. Aliens
4. Raising Arizona
5. Snatch
6. Caddyshack
7. The Longest Yard
8. Old School
9. Stripes
10. Animal House
11. Dazed and Confused
12. Office Space
13. Things to Do In Denver When Your Dead
14. True Romance
15. Tombstone
16. Gladiator
17. Friday
18. Fight Club
19. Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels
20. Dawn of the Dead
21. Menace II Society
22. The Breakfast Club
23. Terminator 2
24. Rushmore
25. Bottle Rocket
26. The Princess Bride
27. The Shawshank Redemption
28. The Empire Strikes Back
29. Platoon
30. Die Hard
31. The Great Escape
32. The Road Warrior
33. Sixteen Candles
34. Goodfellas
35. The Wild Bunch
36. The Usual Suspects
37. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
38. Do the Right Thing
39. E.T.
40. The Thing
41. The Blues Brothers
42. LOTR Trilogy
43. The Matrix
44. Godzilla
45. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
46. Stand by Me
47. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
48. Saving Private Ryan
49. Raiders of the Lost Ark
50. Young Frankenstein

What movies would be on your list?

Via Pop Candy

Balloon Attack

I think I’m more scared of the clown balloon.

See more great pics on Open Thread’s Flickr page.

A Bad Guy Named Gary

I just finished reading Monster Island: A Zombie Novel. It’s your typical end of the world via undead cannibals story with some AK-47 toting Somali school girls, mummies, and killer pigeons thrown in for fun. Yup, it’s that good.

One of the best parts of the book is the villain named Gary. He is a talking, thinking zombie who gives in to his need for fresh meat. The book is pretty equally split between the heroes and Gary, so you get to know the character pretty well. His transformation from bumbling corpse to king of the zombie hordes makes for an interesting point of view. Plus a bad guy named Gary is hilarious!

Another cool thing about this book is that you can actually read the whole thing online. Monster Island is part one of three part series of zombie fun that are serialized online and available in print.

Beck, Debra

I heard Beck’s song Debra for the first time in a long time on the way to work this morning (thanks ethel). I was reminded of how awesome it is to hear Beck do a 70ish pimp, love song.

So I thought I would do a little digging on ye ol’ interweb to see what I could find to pass along my musical joy to you. First, here is some history about the song. Next, here are the lyrics. You got to love a song with lyrics like this …

I pick you up late at night after work. I said, “Lady, step inside my Hyundai.
I’m gonna take you up to Glendale. Yeah, gonna take you for a real good meal.”
‘Cause when our eyes did meet, girl, you knew I was packing heat.
Ain’t no use in wasting no time gettin’ to know each other. You know the deal!

And finally listen to Debra on the Hype Machine.

What You Talkin’ Bout Willis?

I had to share this picture of my boy. Although I know he has never seen Different Strokes I think he’s got the Arnold Jackson face down purty good.

Runaway

This is a great find over at Found Magazine …

My son had a tantrum, and I gave him a twenty minute time-out in his room. After twenty minutes I went up to his room, and he was gone. I looked everywhere and couldn’t find him. I go back to his room and see this note (he buried himself in boxes under his bed it turns out).

I can remember “running away” sometimes when I was a kid. I hid in the laundry basket under the dirty clothes (I know, nasty). I regret never leaving a cool note like this though.

Home Invasion

I have not blogged in awhile because I am recovering from a traumatic experience. This past Tuesday my house was occupied for at least three hours by the Kirby Vaccum salesman.

I don’t know how they got past my wife. She is usually steadfast in picking out a scam, while I am the sucker 9 times out 10 (pyramid scams, shady phone companies, credit card offers, you name it and I’ve been bamboozled by it).

It must have been the offer to vacuum and shampoo our living room that got to my wife. After three hours of countless demos and spiel the carpet did get cleaned (along with other various things in the house including our mattress – weird).

The wierdest parts of the whole expirience to me is that 1) people still sell crap door to door, and 2) the salesman actually stayed in our house for 3 freakin’ hours. It was after seven when they finally evacuated the Short Fat house (with no sale, mind you – they wanted $1,700 for that puppy).

I want that three hours of my life back!

What’s In Your Bag?

The blog Unusual Business Ideas That Work has an interesting story about a company that sells unclaimed baggage.

In Scottsboro, Alabama, Bryan Owens, 44, is CEO of Unclaimed Baggage, a store started in 1970 by his retired father, Doyle. It may be one store, but what they sell brings in more than 1 million customers per year. Unclaimed Baggage is just what it suggests: a store selling airport luggage that has gone unclaimed. There is so much of it, the retail outlet has expanded over a city block and now attracts visitors from around the world.

[...]

Every year thousands and thousands of wayward suitcases end up in Scottsboro—specifically, at the Unclaimed Baggage Center. Once an airline has tried and failed to reunite suitcase and owner (a process that varies according to airline), it will compensate the owner and sell the suitcase—and all its contents—to the UBC, which buys suitcases by the truckload and hauls them to its 50,000-square-foot complex in Scottsboro. There the UBC staff sorts through the bags and puts their contents in a showroom (or some of them: others are given to charity, still others discarded), where they can be seen and bought by members of the public. But are people really interested in buying other people’s, uh, lost stuff? “We’ll have close to a million people come to the store this year,” says Bryan Owens, the owner of the UBC, “from every state in America and thirty foreign countries. This is kind of the Mecca for lost bags.”

Now that sounds like a great business idea, but wouldn’t it be more fun if they didn’t unpack the bags and you just had to take a chance on buying a suitcase by it’s look. They could charge by the pound.

Think about it. You could get a bag full dirty underwear or a kilo of cocaine. Would you take the skeevy looking bag or the nice black rolling luggage with a little ribbon tied on it. Don’t judge a bag by its cover though you may never know what treasures lurk within.