This blog was picked last in gym class.
If I had the time this is what my front yard would look like every Halloween.
Of course, knowing how lazy I am this is also how my front yard would look for Christmas. Have a great Halloween!
This photo is via Annkelliott’s Flickr page, visit to see more great pics.
You can now subscribe to the Short Fat Kid via e-mail.
Just go here and enter your e-mail address. Then once a day you will get an e-mail containing any posts to this blog, my del.icio.us links, and Flickr pics for that day.
What a bargain!
Check out this video of a dude (no chick is this stupid) trying to jump over a building on a bike.
To quote Nelson Muntz – “Ha ha.”
Via The Blog Herald.
Jonathan Coulton is an independent musician, songwriter, and blogger. Last year he released a cover of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s Baby Got Back that is surprisingly good. You can listen to the song on his site and if you really dig it you can buy it for a buck.
If you really, really like it then put his RSS feed for Thing a Week into your favorite reader. According to Mr. Coutlton the Thing a Week is …
[...] my forced-march approach to writing and recording. Since September 2005 I have posted a new song every Friday in an effort to keep the creative juices flowing and to prove to myself that I can actually create on a schedule.
Via Rants and Ramblings.
I never thought I would speak the following sentence until I became a dad.
Stop hitting the dog with your pants.
I also never thought I would have the Backyardigans theme song stuck in my head instead of Fergie’s London Bridge or some other inane, saturated pop song.
Aint parenthood grand?
Take a look at this horny beast.
Its four prominent horns lend this new Utah dinosaur an intimidating air, but the rhinoceros-sized beast probably spent large parts of its day peacefully grazing.
This 20-plus horned creature, which can easily hold its own in the spike department against its famed younger Triceratops cousin, is the latest major discovery by Utah scientists to be announced from the badlands of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
P.S. sorry for the headline, I couldn’t resist.
Story and pic via the Salt Lake Tribune.
I just finished listening to World War Z by Max Brooks (Mel Brooks’ son) on CD.
In the wake of the great zombie war, Brooks’s fictional alter ego travels around the world to ask tough questions of individuals and leaders about their experience and actions before, during and after the undead menace decimated the human population. Brooks remarkably identifies and articulates the nuances and unconsidered realities of what a zombie war would look like. This intriguing “oral history” stands apart from his previous zombie-related book, The Zombie Survival Guide, as Brooks uses the postwar culture here to provide political and social commentary on a wide range of real-life individuals and institutions. An all-star cast including Alan Alda, Mark Hamill, Jürgen Prochnow, Henry Rollins, John Turturro, Rob and Carl Reiner, and many others deliver their parts with such fervor and intensity that listeners cannot help but empathize with these characters.
This was my first foray into books on CD and I was not disappointed. I was weary of listening to someone read to me for hours no matter how interesting the story was. The format of the book lends itself perfectly to the idea of multiple readers without being too hokey.
Their monologues about surviving the living dead onslaught come to life with each actor’s reading. It’s not Henry Rollins reading a part of the book, but Henry Rollins acting the role of a disgruntled corporate mercenary who bugs out of a mansion full of celebrities to leave them to the undead hoards.
It was awesome to listen to the book during my dismally long commute to work (I finished the 6 hours of CDs in about 3 days). It was like someone was telling me a ghost story while I sped along the dark back roads in the morning.
There are only two problems with the CD:
The story itself was awesome and I would recommend the book or CD to anyone. I think it would be especially fun for zombie lovers and fans of historical non-fiction since it reads like a history book from the future.
If you want to get a preview of what the CD is like just visit the World War Z website and click on the World Map to hear excerpts.
The other day I walked into the bathroom at work and there were a couple of gentleman fixing a broken sink. I was pretty much oblivious as I sauntered in and used the urinal.
As I was leaving the bathroom another guy was coming through the door. He surveyed the situation then exited the bathroom. Suddenly I thought “Should I have found another lavatory to do my business in?”
I was starting to feel pretty bad about possibly breaking one of the unwritten man laws of public bathroom use (e.g. eyes forward at the urinal or never talk to the guy in the next stall).
I believe that my infraction should only be considered a misdemeanor, like jaywalking. Now if my greatest fear had come true while those guys were fixing the sink then I think that would have been grounds for capital punishment (he who breaks the law goes back to the house of pain).
What say ye? Did I violate our sacred laws?
This is the kind of art I can get behind …
Ever since moving to New York in 1996 — after earning master’s degrees from the cutting-edge program in electronic arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic in Upstate New York — the McCoys have been doing fine as academics. Jennifer’s a full professor of fine art at Brooklyn College; Kevin’s on his way to tenure at NYU. But their careers as artists took off in 2001, when they exhibited a piece called “Every Shot, Every Episode.”
Describe the project and it sounds like a dry exercise in academic deconstruction: The pair took a huge pile of footage from a single television show, then pulled it apart into its components. Almost a season’s worth of close-ups got burned onto one CD, while the establishing shots, zooms and pans were gathered onto others. Still other CDs collected all the shots of city streets, for instance, and other kinds of settings or props or characters. The artwork includes a little player and a screen mounted in a briefcase, “Man From U.N.C.L.E.”-style, and you’re invited to pop in any of the discs and watch as the disjointed imagery unfolds.
The genius and fun of the project lies in the show the McCoys chose.
Their carefully honed analytic skills were brought to bear on the ’70s trash of “Starsky & Hutch.”
Dip into the project’s 277 discs — as curators at the Metropolitan Museum of Art did a little while back, when they proudly put their McCoy on display — and you get to survey “Every Disguise,” or “Every Comic Criminal” or “Every Sexy Outfit.” A TV show that was painfully formulaic in the watching becomes a pleasure in this work of art, which is an almost comic celebration of its formulas, an appealing crazy quilt of trivialities.
Rather than crying out against how television constructs the modern self, or begging us to break free of its formulas, the McCoys invite us to revel in the medium’s absurdity. The “essential joke” of the piece, according to Jennifer, is its failure. It “critiques and laughs at the idea that those categories are sufficient to human experience.”
Despite the success of “Every Shot,” the McCoys soon began to move in another direction altogether.
Almost on a whim, and in the space of a week, they got a film crew and an actor friend to re-create a short chase scene from the horror classic “Evil Dead II,” which they shot and re-shot. Their pile of footage was then edited so it could be looped and scrambled, sped up and slowed down and reversed, ad infinitum, by a computer program of their own devising. Thanks to the McCoys, the poor slob will be fleeing forever, without escaping or getting caught but without ever precisely repeating his flight.
Check out the full story to learn more about their art and see a video of some of their projects (including the Evil Dead one).
In 1992 Gang Starr collaborated with Nice & Smooth to create Dwyck, a classic hip-hop song. I was listening to The Ryhme the other day when I heard Dwyck start pumping through my stereo, and it made me smile.
The lyrics are classic. From Nice’s nonsensical flow (Droppin dem basso ah oui oui/ Rock for a fee not for free/ Maybe I’ll do it for charity/ Now my employer or my employee/ Is makin Greg N-I-C-E very M-A-D). To The Guru’s smokey delivery (Lemonade was a popular drink and in still is/I get more props den stunts den Bruce Willis).
Here is the video for Dwyck. It’s pretty pedestrian as far as video’s go (rappers rapping and girls in bikinis), but the song is great.
BTW, if you must know what dwyck means, here is the explanation straight from the Guru.
