Happy New Year!

my cat is awesome.

You See a Door...

Ok so my favorite video game company Atlus, is porting over a new game for the DS. it is a japanese game called "Genmu no Tou to Tsurugi no Okite" by a company called Success. It'll be Americanized and called "The Dark Spire" which is a shorter title that will help profitability with stupid Americans.

long story short this game looks fantastic for many reasons, but read this blurb by DS Fanboy for the real rundown of it's AWESOME.

The Dark Spire is a first-person dungeon RPG playable in two distinct graphical styles: a vintage "wireframe" look straight out of Wizardry, or a striking, high-contrast "modern" look. Players control a band of adventurers who attempt to survive the tower stronghold of Archmage Tyrhung in order to gain possession of a magical jewel. According to one baffling screenshot, characters will be able to learn skills including dance, knitting, and "arts and crafts" along the way.

Electric Sheep...

this photo was not taken from the world of Blade Runner. i don't read Cyrillic, so i am going to venture a guess this is a HDR photo of Moscow. well it helps that the link title is "moscow winter life". the photographer has some really awesome HD photos of many different locales, and they are all sort of what i imagine the world looks like on acid or lsd.

Design on a Dime?

(wtf pants??)
so the LA Times asks Philippe Starck to go shop at Big Lots, and he does. two carts full of stuff type shopping. who knew.

maybe the man who has eschewed high end design really isn't blowing smoke?

Philippe Starck Goes Shopping at Big Lots

also worth checking out for the last picture, a photo of his chosen vehicle for Big Lots shopping... very utilitarian. i wonder if that will get some Jalopnik coverage?

I Say I Say...

John K recently put up a blog post detailing the work that goes into a Foghorn Leghorn cartoon, and why that makes him so awesome. definitely worth a read because it gives a great insider's view about the process that made the old WB cartoons so fantastic. in fact a lot of the stuff discussed in the post is why are still so superior to modern day animation.

Foghorn Leghorn Smacks Dog - Big Antics for Big Pain

No Clue...

so a company has a website for the corporate side of their business, and they needed an employee to represent them in a "candid" at work picture. so they get this guy:

this dude looks like he just rolled into work on Monday about 2 hours late from a weekend partying with his fraternity bros. he also sort of has that "my dad is the boss of this company" look.

[16:41] Ty: i bet that guy tivos family guy

Invisible Kayak

i love SkyMall. it is my favorite part about travelling. i am engrossed by this entire magazine filled to the brim with the most middle of the road intellectually devoid useless tacky crap. who buys stuff from SkyMall? how can you really justify ANYTHING in the magazine? i guess people are taken in by the stupid magic of having an umbrella that works for two... WITH ONE HANDLE!!!

anyway here is a websites best/worst of SkyMall... The Best/Worst of SkyMall 2008

i would call it at best a cursory glance at the wonders of SkyMall... you really need to dig into the catalog in order to find true gems like my personal top 5(in no particluar order):

1. Instant Miniature Golf Course. i'll take one please.

2. THE THRILL ZONE!!! can you imagine how horrible the children must be who get to have things like this?

3. 10.1 Inch Waterproof LCD TV only 1600 dollars. WHY.

4. Polar Fleece Footed Pajamas for when the crushing boredom of your adult life can only be solved by a quick rush back to the only time in your life you were actually happy. oh also they are made with FLEECE. everyone loves FLEECE.

5. Comfort-U Pillow White. first it should be mentioned that this pillow is 130 dollars. second i suppose that this is a reasonable solution for when you finally cannot stand spending another night alone in your bed and desperately need to feel loved. i can't really think of any other reason to own something this stupid.

WANT WANT WANT

TWEET

ha ha ha this toy is awesome.



now if Mattel will produce a Ken doll as Norman Bates in mommy's clothes...
story via Boing Boing

1 2 3 4

WFMU's blog has collected a bunch of awesome Sesame Street videos off of Hulu...



go to the site to check out the rest... Oscar the Grouch Hates Christmas

Why Not...

so Wes Anderson/Brad Pitt/Japanese Telecomm come together and form this horribly impressive commercial. i'd love a better quality video, but you work with what you have.

Wolverine?

you know the new Wolverine trailer seems to be a whole lot of "ugh" moments for me. best description i heard about it was from Heidi McDonald at the Beat...

"it’s safe to say that this movie will be filled with two things: hot guys and shit flying through the air."

but my biggest gripe with the movie that is just a trailer is that it features way too much Gambit. how much is too much Gambit you ask? any Gambit whatsoever. his appearance as a name on a computer screen in a previous X-Film was too much for my taste. the flashback stuff looks cool, though i feel like most of this film will consist of explosive playing cards and LOTS of slow motion. damn you John Woo for this slow motion crap.

I Found This Odd...

click on a link for "Scientific Games" meant to me that i would soon be entering the web portal of the most boring video game company in NYC.... turns out that it is the parent company for one of the lotto scratch off makers.



it is funny going from "Scientific Games" to such a visceral reaction from the consumers of these "Scientific Games". that the science gets lost when you introduce the chance to win money is, i guess, all part of a pretty winning formula for the parent company in question here.

as if American public space architecture needed to feel any more insecure...


this is a FISH MARKET. how sweet is this thing? this is just a great usage of simple clean efficient architecture/building.

full story over at AMNP. click on the pics to go to the firm's site for an overview of the project.

HUG

i am just going to post this and walk away...



courtesy of Serious Eats.

Science!

so they found Copernicus, or his body, and they've double checked it against some spare Copernicus hairs they had sitting around. they took his skull, and they recreated his face from it, and voila! you now know that he was a really ugly dude.



i would be so pissed if i die, and then say however many thousand years later someone recreates my face and they make me look that bad.

Polish tests 'confirm Copernicus'

Reverse COPS

there is a reality show where a film crew stages a "suspicious" plant growing setup in a residential house so that the local cops will use illegal techniques to detect it and then raid the house without legal precedent.  said film crew is waiting inside with a lawyer and cameras to bust them. 

i am imagining this show, Kopbusters, will not last very long... but it is about time someone started trying to police how out of control home raids have become.  good story at Boing Boing about the show with links included... 

Kopbusters- reality show that busts cops for conducting illegal drug raids

on that note, a bizarre story from the UK: Cops raid house because flowers smelled like pot

A+

there is a great article in the current New Yorker about how difficult it is to identify who will be a good teacher.  

"Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford, estimates that the students of a very bad teacher will learn, on average, half a year’s worth of material in one school year. The students in the class of a very good teacher will learn a year and a half’s worth of material. That difference amounts to a year’s worth of learning in a single year. Teacher effects dwarf school effects: your child is actually better off in a “bad” school with an excellent teacher than in an excellent school with a bad teacher. Teacher effects are also much stronger than class-size effects. You’d have to cut the average class almost in half to get the same boost that you’d get if you switched from an average teacher to a teacher in the eighty-fifth percentile. And remember that a good teacher costs as much as an average one, whereas halving class size would require that you build twice as many classrooms and hire twice as many teachers."

go read the article. it is definitely worth your time. after substitute teaching, albeit briefly, i can say you definitely see a difference in how teachers effect their students based on their performance and enthusiasm. with our country, hopefully, on the verge of some education reform this brings up an interesting point that will need to be discussed in any reform talks.

story via Boing Boing  

VERTIGOOOOOOO

ok so if you are afraid of heights at all, probably would not recommend going to the site below.

the pics though are as beautiful as they are scary though, and it's intersting to see what it would be like get a real view of "the way down" from the top of the Empire State Building.

see the rest at English Russia.

Hassan Kussein

[10:15] Ty: i couldn't find any jams or op stuff this weekend
[10:15] flyingovertrout: ha ha ha ha
[10:15] flyingovertrout: ebay dude
[10:17] Ty: i dont want to wait for it to be 1992!
[10:17] Ty: i want to read Youngblood now!
[10:17] flyingovertrout: ha ha ha ah
[10:17] flyingovertrout: Hussan Kussein
[10:20] Ty: HAHAHAHAAHAHAA
[10:20] Ty: did he think saddam was going to sue?
[10:21] flyingovertrout: yeah i loved that
[10:21] flyingovertrout: well it's sort of his MO you know... taking a well known concept or person or character and just SLIGHTLY altering their personage
[10:21] Ty: hahahaa
[10:26] flyingovertrout: my only thing was... where were the ridiculous shoulder pads on Kussein
[10:26] flyingovertrout: totally lacking
[10:29] Ty: he did have that awesome robot body guard
[10:31] flyingovertrout: OHHHH
[10:32] flyingovertrout: yeah but dude that robot guard was dispatched pretty easily
[10:32] flyingovertrout: very ineffective
[10:32] flyingovertrout: if i am paying for a robot guard i would like him to protect my head from being exploded from the inside
[10:32] Ty: i bet third world despots often have giant robot guards
[10:33] flyingovertrout: likely
[10:33] flyingovertrout: the real saddam's was made of marble and gold plating
[10:33] flyingovertrout: plus he had a mural of hot babes airbrushed on his back
[10:33] Ty: hahahaa

YES!

for those of you familiar with the Garth Ennis/Steve Dillon Punisher Run "Welcome Back Frank" you will be overjoyed to learn Marvel is releasing a sequel.



Punisher War Zone #1 releases this week and is the first of a 6 issue mini series.

It all starts when two mobsters take a trip to the zoo and piss off the wrong monkey. Limbs are lost (the kind you can’t easily replace), vultures are fed (with said appendages), and then things get, like, really crazy. Like back-from-the-dead crazy. That’s right -- she’s back and she wants payback. Ma Gnucci. Eighty-five pounds of hairless, armless, legless evil.

i can't think of anything in that press blurb that could possibly convince anyone they DO NOT want to read it.  go to Newsarama for a preview of the first issue.  

Oonst Oonst Oonst

Putin + Techno = AWESOME.

i don't really know what the deal with this is... there isn't much out there on the net about it. either way... awesome.

MEOW...

this picture is so perfect in so many ways.

...

i love production process videos, my favorite show being How It's Made. my love for these and my love for Eames Shell Chairs has merged into a video!

“Rickey doesn’t have albums. Rickey has CDs.”

so there's a compilation of Ricky Henderson's greatest hits (well not hits, so much as awesome moments in the life of the greatest man ever created)... 

16) A reporter once asked Rickey if he talked to himself, “Do I talk to myself? No, I just remind myself of what I’m trying to do. You know, I never answer myself so how can I be talking to myself?”

The Definitive Rickey Henderson: The 25 Best Stories of "Rickey Being Rickey."

Pffft

i just can't see the US Automakers really ever getting it together unless they use this chance to really change the way they are handling and dealing with the UAW. the UAW boss Ron Gettelfinger just seems like they aren't going to be able to, or want to, make large enough concessions, and his view of why American Auotmakers are not competitive just doesn't seem to jive with reality. Gettelfinger has said adamantly that they are not willing under any circumstances to open their contract for negotiations, but they will make modifications to it as they see fit. that's a lot of talk to say they aren't going to really fix the problems ailing the manufacturers who employ them.

my hope is that Congress delays long enough and we lose Chrysler to bankruptcy, and then GM can negotiate a structured bankruptcy for govt funds shortly thereafter. of the 3 GM and Ford have a somewhat positive outlook, and a forward looking production lineup with a lot of cars/trucks that will be competitive with foreign automakers. Chrysler is falling apart, and their mis-management is the worst of the 3. plus they tanked the only hybrid production models they had in production.

it feels to me like the automakers are using the end of the world gambit here, and predicting a lot of doom and gloom if they restructure under chapter 11. if US Air can bounce back i am pretty sure that Chrysler or GM can given that they start producing cars that make sense to buy.

"We've been through enough of these bankruptcies that I can tell you, that is the worst possible path for this industry to go in," Gettelfinger says. Filing for Chapter 11 protection "would lead to Chapter 7, which is liquidation," he says. "I firmly believe that."

first off i don't get how the situation can get WORSE for the automakers right now. their sales have dropped off in double digts and it's going to get worse before it gets better. i love the hypocrisy here, if we file Chapter 11 without a bailout we'll go straight to Chapter 7, but if we file Chapter 11 with a bailout we'll somehow avoid Chapter 7 because the government held our hand through it. i do not believe the American public sees a difference in either bankruptcy filing.

this is a good article about this very topic: GM Bankruptcy Option Under Discussion

This Blog Post Courtesy of Stove Top:

so my friend Nick sends me a link to this NY Times article about revolutionary advertising methods going out into the world. well in Chicago Stove Top is going to pay to heat selected bus stops throughout the city. this is immersing you in the sensation produced by whatever is being sold apparently.

"From Tuesday through the end of this month, Kraft is arranging for the company that builds and maintains the bus shelters, JCDecaux North America, to heat them, trying to bring to life the warm feeling that consumers get when they eat stuffing, according to Kraft."

i love that the shelter company who runs these things doesn't heat them most of the time even though they could. so the warmth of eating Stovetop (yeah i don't really get that part so much) permeates your being as you sit under this heated bus stop. i can't think of anyone i know who'd associate Stovetop with warmth or comfort. personally i tend to associate it with being totally freaking poor and eating it for dinner in college.

“In these hard times, when people are eating more at home,” he added, there is “a great opportunity to introduce our brands to people in a new way.”

fantastic... and speaking of that, they'll be passing out single serving Stovetop QUICK CUPS. barf.

now if they can only keep these bus stops free of homeless people who are trying not to die in the winter it might just be a successful marketing scheme, though again, i doubt anyone is going to associate the heat with the product and go buy the product to recreate the effect they felt when they saw the ad. that won't happen because it is STOVETOP.

Uh Yeah

how awesome is Conway Twitty?



answer: TOTALLY AWESOME.

Actually I'm a Dentist...

watched Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer last night... and i really had a great time drawing along in my sketchbook.  translating the 3-d puppets into line drawings was good practice.  plus there are just some totally weird looking things going on in that movie.  i love that Santa is a total dick the whole movie until the last 10 minutes when he's Mr Nice Guy all of a sudden.  i guess he gets a pass all year and then on his one big day becomes nice.  who knows.  

here's the totally dumb song about being misfits that always cracks me up.

i'll try to scan some of the sketches from last night this weekend... i've actually got a lot of sketches sitting around from the past few weeks i have been meaning to scan in and put up online.

Ugh

so the ubiquitous Hot Topic friendly character "Emily the Strange" turns out to be a huge ripoff! SURPRISE!



i am still in disbelief that an immensely popular character with the "i only listen to the voices in my head" pseudo goth freak crowd would be into a shallow rip off someone else's intellectual property. what is interesting about this to me is that the original character is so much more interesting even though it's essentially the same thing. the art on the original is ten times better and shows a more deft use of talent than the wasteland that is Emily the Strange.  just look at how interesting and unique Rosamond looks compared to the non-entry that is Emily.  Emily is sort of an every-girl... she looks dime a dozen, though i suppose that helps her appeal to a broad range of idiots who feel the need to define themselves through characters and slogans all over themselves.  i could go on... but you may as well just go read the full story at You Thought We Wouldn't Notice.

story via Boing Boing.

????

Magic Powder

this is called Camelia Washing Up Liquid. it's certainly not liquid, but it's a "tea powder" derived from a plant in Taiwan. there is a waste product in the production of the edible oil derived from the Camelia plant, and this waste product is the powder you see. it absorbs oil and is healthy for your hands and now Muji will be selling it as a cleaning product. this is one of the winners of their annual design contest. what an awesome store.

Ding Dong Ding Dong

A Phil Spector Xmas album for 2 bucks on Amazon.



the deal is still good, i just downloaded it. itunes has the same album for 10 bucks. story courtesy of dealnews.

edit: i just found the stupid album for FREE on some nondescript canadian's site.

on English Russia they highlighted a fantastic Russian illustrator/artist, Olga Gromova.



click on the picture above for more at their site.