After watching Alien Saturday afternoon Alana and I decided 80s and early 90s action classics are sorely missing from our DVD library. We decided to brave The Exchange last night (and I do mean brave, the last few times we were there employees had to oust rowdy/violent clientele) and see what we could find.
We […]

Alana had Saturday off, a rare occurrence, so we seized the opportunity for a trip to the West Side Market. Work gave us free turkeys last week which we thought would be a great chance to try some tweaks to our typical Thanksgiving recipes, but without the pressure of someone besides us having to eat […]

I just found this gem by way of Coudal. The Original Condiment Packet Museum boasts a collection of 924 packets.

Go to the bathroom
Deliver babies
Make animal balloons
Use a loofah
Wipe eye boogers out of his eyes
Wear contacts
Wrap a present
Do the 30 lives Konami code for Contra
Eat a burrito
Laundry
Twirl pizza dough

Things Edward Scissorhands can do

Shotgun beers
Prepare appetizers
Make confetti
Open those difficult to open sealed plastic packages that tools come in
Work at the Seattle Fish Market
Ride a unicycle
Open letters
Make […]

I came across a review of The Game Plan in Seattle’s The Stranger (perhaps the best free paper I’ve ever read by the way) by Lindy West.
“Sorry, annoying child,” he tells her, “I cannot care for you. You see, I am a man, and my apartment is full to capacity with trophies, catchphrases, megabucks, […]

I’ll be in attendance at An Event Apart Chicago with the AG UI team. Not sure if I’ll have any time to post about the conference while there, but I’m not planning on it. I have some friends in town I’d like to visit, and I want to hit up some Chicago staples like Reckless, […]

For its first season, Weeds was everything I hoped it would be and more. It pushed some boundaries, was highly satirical, made fun of stereotypes, etc etc. Then came the second season. While the first season was more about Nancy’s journey in picking up the pieces of her family, season two delved into the “seedy […]

Friday night I hung out with some friends. Alana tattooed one of them while I had drinks next door. Much guitar hero was played. Saturday I had lunch with my sister and stepdad at Great Lakes. I ate German food. It was gorgeous out so we got to sit on the patio. I received an […]

Yesterday Alana and I visited what’s probably the nicest dog park in Northeast Ohio, Bow Wow Beach. Bow Wow Beach is a well fenced dog area within Silver Springs park in Stow. It has a small lake surrounded by grass and a little beach. It’s large enough to accommodate a hundred dogs on a good […]

Wednesday night Alana and I watched the first episode of LA Ink. On these tattoo reality shows you have to take everything you see with a grain of salt, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes. For example, I’m fairly certain TLC actually puts up the money for these shops and owns them, which […]

Now That’s What I Call Indie! It was only a matter of time. Incidentally quite a few bands on this comp are on major and not independent labels. Indie is the new alternative, a word thrown around with no real meaning other than a marketing label. It is not a genre of music.
See also […]

Tonight is the series premiere for TLC’s latest trainwreck, LA Ink, a spin off of Miami Ink. The show is certain to make me roll my eyes and groan with irritation, but I’ll probably watch anyway out of morbid curiousity. Other things the show is certain to contain:

Mediocre black and grey work.
Kat Von D spreading […]

Last night I installed Simplify Media on my home computer, and this morning I installed it at work. If you’re not already familiar, it’s a free application for sharing your iTunes library over the internet. So far I really like it.
But it has a couple quirks, it doesn’t actually share your library, it shares […]

We’ve been going to the dog park pretty frequently, tiring out the pups and ourselves. I sent out a double disc mix cd set to 15 people. I saw SiCKO and Ocean’s 13. Both were exactly as I expected them to be. I want to move to Europe in 10 years. I’m excited for two trips later in the year. First, the AGI UI team will be in attendance at AnEventApart Chicago. This means I get to hang out with the people I know in town and do some record shopping. Second, I’m going to see Loretta Lynn in October.

I am the bane of the RIAA’s existence, yet I’m one of their best customers. Why? I download music. I also buy several times more music than the average consumer. It’s clear that I’m not at fault for tanking album sales, because I buy so much, yet the approach the RIAA takes is to try and scare me out of downloading, not convince me to buy more.

I do not believe music is public domain and that I have a right to it. I do believe musicians should be compensated for their work, and the majority of them aren’t compensated enough. This is why I also believe it’s extremely wrong to profit by exploiting their work, which is why I would never buy or sell a bootlegged copy of an album. Artists have families to feed too.

It’s painfully obvious, however, that the RIAA threatening to sue their best customers, and in actuality suing children and old people and sending them into horrendous debt, is not going to solve this problem, because the problem isn’t downloading. The music industry can do some simple things right now to fix their profits.

I’ve been absent for a few days, as I took some time to visit old friends in Columbus and go see Peter Bjorn and John. I had a great time, and it’s weird to see how much the city has changed since I lived there, mostly for the better but definitely gentrified.

We ate at a few new (to me) places, Surly Girl for late night tex-mex and Northstar (Clintonville) for organic foodie fare. Surly Girl has a great selection of beers on tap, and they highlight which were women brewed and which are organic. Something like 99% of of the food served at Northstar is organic and anything you order looks like it could’ve popped off the pages of Gastronomica. Did I mention they also sell Gastronomica? In addition to uber-modern digs they have an awesome magazine selection available for sale.

From the Human Rights Campaign website:

The Human Rights Campaign has joined forces with legendary performer Cyndi Lauper to launch a national tour in support of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equality.

What a fabulous idea. Too bad HRC apparently only wants to raise support for the GLBT communities in large cities. You know, the ones that are already pretty gay? Isn’t awareness needed more in the country’s smaller cities and rural areas where gay culture is swept under the rug?

The Sartiorialist has become one of my new favorite daily reads:

I always felt that there was a disconnect between what I was selling in the showroom and what I was seeing real people (really cool people) wearing in real life.
Thoughtful critiques of Racist and classist advertising. Good to know I wasn’t the only one a […]

I’m not one for reality tv (besides The Apprentice) but did anyone see Trading Spouses last night?! It looked so nuts from the preview I just had to get it on the DVR. The show had possibly the most over the top person I’ve ever seen on television.