I Love Ben Brown

yournewfavorite: Katie as Optimus Prime

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 10:25:50 -0500

Halloween 2008: Sexy Optimus Prime

Halloween 2008: Sexy Optimus Prime

At the office

yournewfavorite:

Katie as Optimus Prime

A photoset of photos of my favorite person!

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:39:28 -0500

A photoset of photos of my favorite person!

One More Time | Daft Punk | Music Video | MTV

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 15:15:22 -0500

One More Time | Daft Punk | Music Video | MTV

"We should, in particular, have several Congressional committees, plus a Cabinet-level department,..."

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 11:36:55 -0500

“We should, in particular, have several Congressional committees, plus a Cabinet-level department, representing Americans who play World of Warcraft, who outnumber American farmers.”

- Equal representation in Congress - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com

ADVENTURES IN AWESOME, PART 2

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:40:00 -0500

Finding ourselves back in Los Angeles post-MaxFunCon, Katie and I activated our wondertwins powers and took the form of XOXCO. We zeroed in on the Idyllic Nerd Commune where we met up with one of our clients, Micki Pedia.

(Yes, I agree with you that it is strange that her last name is actually Pedia. These are strange times we live in!)

As XOXCO, we are helping Micki achieve her dream of world domination through clicking on stuff, this being our speciality. Though what transpired at our meetings must remain a secret, I can say that our whiteboard markers wrote things that will echo through the hallways of time for generations to come, and that we designed a button that will strike fear into hearts of men, both evil and good. I offer as proof this photo documentation of our work session, in which you can see Ms. Pedia’s face caught half-way through a revalatory transition from shock to awe.

As a reward for two grueling 4-hour work days, Micki hosted a cookout in her backyard in our honor. She invited many of our lovely Los Angeles based internet friends, many of whom I have had tongue-to-tongue contact with at Burning Man. Unfortunately, the names of my friends and most of the details of this party were wiped completely from my memory by my consumption of an enormous number of homemade, ultra-delicious bacon-wrapped dates.

But one memory remains, still burning in my mind hole:

Several hours into the party, after I had consumed vast quantities of grilled meats, beer, and the aformentioned bacon-wrapped dates, and as I was just settling in for a nice long session of staring happily at a wall, one of Micki’s precocious young nieces approached with a glint in her eye. Still agitated from a ~~ping-pong~~ table tennis match we had played earlier in the evening, and with competition still on her breath, she issued a challenge:

“I bet you can’t do a bridge pose!” she said.

“I so can,” I said. This is true. Though it is not common knowledge, I am a serious practitioner of Ashtanga yoga, and can, with very little effort, perform a perfectly executed bridge pose.

“Then do it!” she said.

“I don’t really feel like it,” I said. The thought alone caused some of the dates in my stomach to shed their bacon wrapping and head for my colon.

“You can’t do it!” she squealed.

“Yes, yes, I can!” I said. “I just don’t want to!”

I was not about to be cajoled into displaying my physical prowess by an eight-year old child, and this must have been quite evident, as Sarah Szalavitz chose this moment to jump into the conversation.

“It is really interesting,” she said, “that you can’t just admit that you are unable to do a bridge pose.”

“But I CAN do one!” I said.

“Wow,” she said. “You can’t even admit it to me.”

“I COULD admit it if admitting it would not make me a liar, but I stand strong on my position that I am perfectly capable of doing a bridge pose, but that I do not at this time DESIRE to do so, especially as it would now represent rhetorical defeat at the hands of an eight year old girl.”

“It is just so weird that you can’t admit it.” said Sarah.

It is a true testiment to the glory and power of the Internet that I can now reach back in time and PROVE SARAH SZALAVITZ TOTALLY AND FOREVER WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!

(It should be noted that this is the second attempt at proving Sarah wrong about this. The first attempt undertaken involved displaying my ability to a mutual friend who was supposed to bring up in casual conversation her amazement at my ability to execute a bridge pose at a moments notice. This mutual friend, however, was slightly too nonchalant about it, and Sarah did not pick up on the fact that she had been proven so very, very wrong, and thus I did not get the satisfaction I desire.)

Late that night, we left our friends and their iPhones, and returned to Dana’s house to sleep on her unreasonably comfortable couch. She left early the next morning before we awoke, and as we also had to leave so that we could continue our trip northward to San Francisco, we made a parting gift out of the gourmet pickles that had earlier been given to us by a gourmet chef.

What great friends we are, Katie and I. Great friends bearing pickles.

STAY TUNED, AS EVEN MORE ADVENTURES IN AWESOME ARE STILL YET TO COME!

Update: Success!

PlEASE SOMEONE BUY ME THIS!

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:56:24 -0500

PlEASE SOMEONE BUY ME THIS!

"It wasn’t just about educating parents, it was about preventing us from getting the music we loved...."

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:33:07 -0500

“It wasn’t just about educating parents, it was about preventing us from getting the music we loved. And as I feared, stores do use the sticker as a way to keep certain materials out of the stores. They won’t rack certain records, or CDs, they won’t even sell certain ones. It’s even gone one step further when the Best Buys and the Wal-Marts, they force record companies to make alternative versions. They sell you edited product without you knowing it’s edited. You do not get the artists’ vision. That happens with DVDs as well. So this is just wrong. And that was our fear that this would be used, the idea of just stickering records, wholly different than it was.”

- From a great interview of Dee Snider by the readers of The Rumpus.

Apparently they didn’t like my RADICAL VIEWS ABOUT...

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:24:04 -0500

Apparently they didn’t like my RADICAL VIEWS ABOUT COOKING.

Adventures in Awesome, Part 1

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:58:28 -0500

It is so much better to be a visitor to California than it is to live in California full-time. At least, for me it is.

We arrived in Los Angeles last Thursday night to an admittedly beautiful evening.

“Isn’t it so hella nice here,” said our friends from California.

“Yes,” we said.

“Cooler than Texas,” they said.

“Much,” we said.

“So you’re going to move back then?”

And then we laughed and laughed and laughed at their bankrupt state, high income tax, and traffic jams.

Our bestie Dana let us stay at her sexy new downtown loft, and in honor of how awesome she thinks we are, presented us with an amazing portrait of the Super Brownces riding through the sky on magical bikes. Then, she plied us with drugs (NOT REALLY, MOMS!) and forced us to do Bikram Yoga, where I picked up Foot-in-Stench disease from all the other-people-sweat that was spraying everywhere and all over. Did I not enjoy it? Yes!

On Friday morning, we headed up to MaxFunCon, a weekend retreat from reality into the world of semi-pro podcasting, stand-up comedy, and drunken revelry with minor celebrities including but not limited to Jonathan Coulton (the OTHER internet rockstar), Matt Haughey, Josh Allen, Merlin Mann and his lovely wife and child, Derek Powazek and Heather Champ (together, the Powazachamphuahuas), Adam Lisagor, Scott Simpson, Jesse Thorn and Jordan Morris, Maria Bamford and yes, yes oh god yes, John Hodgman, king of nerds. Wow, I haven’t written a list of minor celebrities like that since 2001!

But it wasn’t just about hanging out with cool people. I don’t want to give the wrong impression. It was also about the cool people hanging out with me and Katie!

Here is the best way for me to describe how maxfun this con actually was: We shared our little condo with a dude who had accidently stumbled into getting a ticket at the last minute. He didn’t really know what it was all about. So, to make sure that he went down in history as a REALLY FUN DUDE, he brought with him his collection of 30 or 40 bottles of scotch, and invited everyone at the event into our room on Saturday night for a scotch tasting and AFTER PARTY PIZZA PARTY. What a hero!

Normal people, meaning people weaker than Katie and I, they would end their vacation after an experience as good as that or risk developing a dependency on awesome. Us? We planned another FULL WEEK OF AWESOME!

STAY TUNED FOR PART 2.

"Why sell the reward that you already have in order to gamble on getting a much more difficult reward..."

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:41:00 -0500

“Why sell the reward that you already have in order to gamble on getting a much more difficult reward that might enable you to buy back what you sold earlier?”

- I hope I’m not overblogging.

From a post by Buster Benson about a post someone else wrote about working.

"Um, isn’t the purpose of health care reform to protect American citizens, not insurance companies?"

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:19:16 -0500

“Um, isn’t the purpose of health care reform to protect American citizens, not insurance companies?”

- Krugman gently tears Senator Ben Nelson (Douche, Nebraska) a new hole.

Open Ocean Fish Farming: Is it a Good Alternative?

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:42:33 -0500

Open Ocean Fish Farming: Is it a Good Alternative?: My brother works for FishWise, a company that provides information about the sustainability of various seafood products. He just posted this interesting essay about the subtleties of “farm-raised” seafood - a must-read for anyone who eats a lot of fish.

I missed this when Robert first posted it a few months ago: ...

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 01:28:46 -0500

I missed this when Robert first posted it a few months ago: Procedurally generated jellyfish that change colors in response to music.

Amit’s bike took a picture of me. (via Amit’s Bike)

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 02:42:22 -0500

Amit’s bike took a picture of me. (via Amit’s Bike)

"Mathes’s Law: The quality of software developed is inversely proportional to the amount of..."

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:24:22 -0500

“Mathes’s Law: The quality of software developed is inversely proportional to the amount of time a product manager is forced to spend on it.”

- Oh, Adam!

"The request, made to a Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey, is yet another new-media milestone: the..."

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 01:55:23 -0500

“The request, made to a Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey, is yet another new-media milestone: the recognition by the United States government that an Internet blogging service that did not exist four years ago has the potential to change history in an ancient Islamic country.”

- U.S. Steps Gingerly Into Tumult in Iran - NYTimes.com

"Somehow, Jesse has managed to attract an audience which consists only of those who appreciate the..."

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:37:19 -0500

“Somehow, Jesse has managed to attract an audience which consists only of those who appreciate the most positive potential in humanity. I guess I would expect nothing less of an organization so simply and descriptively named.”

- lonelysandwich nails the reason MaxFunCon was so great. I have described it as having all the best parts of SXSW mashed up with all the best parts of Burning Man, but with none of the negative bits from either.

Katie & Ben. (via Jason Permenter)

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 12:04:22 -0500

Katie & Ben. (via Jason Permenter)

Portrait (via Katie Spence)

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 11:50:30 -0500

Portrait (via Katie Spence)

"…Supposedly respectable news organizations and political figures are giving aid and comfort to..."

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:23:34 -0500

“…Supposedly respectable news organizations and political figures are giving aid and comfort to dangerous extremism.”

- Op-Ed Columnist - The Big Hate - NYTimes.com

My dad has been saying this for months.