What at first began as let’s make some money has turned into a full-time job and potentially David’s college tuition. 

“It’s helped me to go to a lot of places that I would have never gotten to go to before,” the boy told CNN. “When my video first got really popular, everybody [in school] started to know it, but then nobody was talking about it. I got some girls to like me now. I’m just a kid. It’s not really often that kids get famous.”

That Google, Sony, Intel  and Logitech all recognize this and are working in partnership to bring about this change sooner rather than later is good news for consumers. 

The joint effort, which is in its preliminary stages, includes software to help users navigate among Web-based offerings on television sets and serve as a platform for other developers to target in creating new programs, these people say. The technology could be included with future TVs, Blu-ray players or set-top boxes, they added.

But will it feel that way after spending countless hours trying to navigate the impersonal maze known as directory assistance companies throw at you so they never have to actual help you?  Yes, yes it will.  [via]

Fuck. Yes.  The only thing that could make He-Man even more bad-ass would be the thought that Adam of Eternia takes whiskey shots to pump himself up into the Master of the Universe.

Som Distilleries, an Indian exporter, manufacturer, and supplier of beer and spirits that presumably does not spend too much time worrying about such things as copyright, isn’t just known for making “Genius Rum” and “Super Master Whiskey“; they also bottle He-Man inwhiskey, gin, and rum form.

The company also makes He-Man rum and gin.  Go figure.  But really, whiskey is the only spirit worthy of He-Man.  Well, okay, maybe Irish potcheen or corn moonshine from the Southern US are worthy as well. [via]

For a while, it looked like HBO has lost their mojo. There was clearly a period just after shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, Six Feet Under, Deadwood, Rome, et al. had ended and there didn’t seem to be any shows that would be stepping in to fill their lineup.  So much so, that I considered Showtime to be the superior cable network for a time.

But with David Simon’s Treme, and now Scorcese’s Empire Boardwalk (along with True Blood, How to Make It In America, Eastbound & Down, and a few other shows) it looks like HBO’s is getting their mojo back.

Another great entry.  Really, there’s nothing much to say about Between Two Ferns at this point, except that it’s still worth watching.

And not because it’s literally kick ass, but because it’s a music video for the first single of the upcoming Matthew Vaughn flick Kick-Ass. Which, unfortunately, doesn’t come out for another month.

The song pretty much blows, but I suppose maybe this is what Freddy Mercury would sound like if he were making music in the aughts.  Anyways.

The Big Star frontman passed away today.  From Commercial Appeal (via Stereogum):

The singer and guitarist, best known as a member of ’60s pop-soul act the Box Tops and the ’70s power-pop act Big Star, died today at a hospital in New Orleans. Chilton, 59, had been complaining of about his health earlier today. He was taken by paramedics to the emergency room where he was pronounced dead. The cause of death is believed to be a heart attack.

His Big Star bandmate Jody Stephens confirmed the news this evening. “Alex passed away a couple of hours ago,” Stephens said from Austin, Texas, where the band was to play Saturday at the annual South By Southwest Festival. “I don’t have a lot of particulars, but they kind of suspect that it was a heart attack.”

If you have a second, take a second to dig into Dan Griffin’s review of the Big Star box set — as fine an obituary as you will likely read on the power of Alex Chilton’s music.

There’s no possible way I believe this positive review of the upcoming SNL skit-turned-movie, MacGruber.  But it’s worth noting that someone likes it. 

Part homage, part spoof of some classic action films from the ’80s (Rambo III, Top Gun, Die Hard, the Lethal Weapon series), MacGruber avoids the pitfalls of its predecessors by deciding to not merely recycle the punchlines of a skit but instead expand on the character behind it. MacGruber is a man whose preoccupation in the past with alcoholism, fear of aging, racism, and the crash of the stock market prevented him from defusing ticking bombs. Now there is a supervillian to contend with (Val Kilmer, going all-in), a dead wife, and an obsession with a removable car stereo. But instead of a string of time bomb scenarios like in the skit, we get a series of clever action sequences (and some classic sex scenes) to move things along.

That the movie is directed by Jorma Taccone is reason to believe there will be some inspired moments contained within, but to say this is the best action-comedy movie since Beverly Hills Cop is fairly preposterous.  Yes, Taccone is part of the Lonely Island crew, which is responsible for the always reliably funny digital shorts, but still best action-comedy movie since 1984?

Foreign Policy has a nifty primer on how spies of used sex and romance to learn secrets.  The nice history lesson stretches from WWII to the present. 

The trade name for this type of spying is the “honey trap.” And it turns out that both men and women are equally adept at setting one — and equally vulnerable to tumbling in. Spies use sex, intelligence, and the thrill of a secret life as bait. Cleverness, training, character, and patriotism are often no defense against a well-set honey trap. And as in normal life, no planning can take into account that a romance begun in deceit might actually turn into a genuine, passionate affair. In fact, when an East German honey trap was exposed in 1997, one of the women involved refused to believe she had been deceived, even when presented with the evidence. “No, that’s not true,” she insisted. “He really loved me.”

Those who aim to perfect the art of the honey trap in the future, as well as those who seek to insulate themselves, would do well to learn from honey trap history. Of course, there are far too many stories — too many dramas, too many rumpled bedsheets, rattled spouses, purloined letters, and ruined lives — to do that history justice here. Yet one could begin with five famous stories and the lessons they offer for honey-trappers, and honey-trappees, everywhere.

From College Humor comes Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before St. Patrick’s Day. Stay safe on amateur day if you plan on going on and getting drunk.  Me?  I think I might finally have to deal with my infected left pinkie finger.  Sigh.  Drinking takes care of that, doesn’t it?

Merton, best to probably reveal your secret identity soon or release another video before the entire internet stops caring about you in T-minus 4, 3, 2…

But he makes Meg Ryan orgasm.  From the same peeps who brought us Captain Kirk is Climbing a Mountain.  Let’s just say, wtf, and end the night on this note.  [via]

In lieu of the last post.  Here is the best car chase scene in movie history.  If you come and argue The French Connection you won’t find no beef here.  I’ll agree, that Gene Hackman scene is crazy good.  But this scene?  This has everything going for it: the slow build, the seat belt buckle at 3:25, the car sounds, Lalo Schifrin’s score, jesus h. christ.  It has everything.  It was the first time in cinematic history that a camera was mounted to a car during a chase for god’s sake!

If you enjoy that, you might like to watch the scene mapped out in San Francisco IRL.

The art of being a man ended with Steve McQueen.

One of the five best songs ever written in music history; everyone here is just straight pimpin’ it.  Basically, Gladys Knight was never better and the Pips, well, jesus they’re rocking blue velvet suits with fuchsia ruffled shirts and dropping dance moves like they’re sleeping.  This.   Right here.  Is the epitome of cool (that and Steve McQueen in Bullit).

There’s a bit of the old bait-and-switch (hopefully!) going on in David Simon’s new post-Katrina, New Orleans-set, show about Jazz musicians.  Instead of anything truly revealing (though more so than the initial teaser), we get lots of New Orleans-styled cliches.  Okay, fine.  But it’s David Simon, right?

I mean a man has to live by a code and something tells me David Simon’s code is to never produce anything hackey or cliched.  Which is why I’m calling this trailer bunk.

It’s lunchbreak time out here on the west coast.

Of course, this is courtesy of a survey from some doggie snack company, but still! And here I thought something weird was happening between myself and Lady Oyster’s Golden Retriever, Penny.  That was a close one.

Founded on March 14, 1950, the list, as stated on the FBI’s Web site, was the byproduct of a 1949 International News Service reporter’s question: Who were the “toughest guys” the FBI was pursuing. The list has included bank robbers and radical political activists of the 1960s and ’70s – when the FBI used controversial strategies, such as Cointelpro – though today it is more likely to include terrorists, serial killers and drug traffickers.

From The Washington Post’s interactive timeline breaking down the Federal Bureau’s famous list. As it turns out, nearly 94% of those criminals who have appeared on the list have been caught.  Also?  Only eight women have appeared throughout its history.  Pretty exclusive club if you ask me.

First saw this on Cynical-C, but it’s been making the rounds lately.  Watch the entire thing, as the piano man is quite good with both comedic improv and playing the piano.

And so my question is, why is Ben Folds hanging out on ChatRoulette?  Right?  The voice, the glasses and even the playing style are all pretty much dead-ringers for Ben Folds. I mean, I guess he’s dropped his voice slightly and the hood obscures his face a bit, but this has to be him having a goof, right?

For comparisons sake:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Anyway, the lone video has been viewed nearly 375,000 times in four days, which means if it is Ben Folds, he’s had more success with this than with just about anything else he’s done.

Who would have thunk it that Dolph Lundgren would be such a source of content over these past few weeks.  First he was singing Elvis/karate chopping ice blocks and generally being cooler than you, then he was on some mysterious mission (which there were other episodes we neglected to post), and now he’s back on that Swedish game show singing Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” whilst adorning boxing robes over a tuxedo and getting congratulated by none other than Sly Stallone.  At some point the world will be destroyed, not by 2012, but by the gravitational pull of Ivan Drago’s awesome-awesity.  [via]

It doesn’t take much, about three-minutes per shoe.  Of course, you’ll have shiny, well-cared for shoes, but you won’t look nearly as pimp as this guy.  [via]

[Stephen] Gass, an avid woodworker who holds a doctorate in physics [and former patent lawyer], built a prototype for his device in 1999 out of a $200 saw and electronic parts he had around his home.

When the Oregon native showed his invention to his colleagues, David Fanning and David Fulmer, the patent lawyers were floored: An electrical current in the blade triggers a brake when it comes into contact with a body part.

“It seemed, for this industry, a fundamental discovery,” Fanning said. “I’d never seen anything like it.”

The trio unveiled the device at the 2000 International Woodworking Fair in Atlanta, wowing industry leaders with their demonstration on a hot dog. When they returned, they quit their jobs.

Over the next few months, they met with several large power tool manufacturers, hoping to license their patented product. They won Popular Science’s 100 Best New Innovations award. The Consumer Product Safety Commission awarded them the Chairman’s Commendation.

Below is their invention at work on a hot-dog.  The device detects the difference in electrical signals between a piece of wood and flesh and stops a blade, spinning at 4,000 rpms, instantly. 

I just wish the iPhone was available for Verizon, who seem to have the superior service and data network.

High praise indeed and certainly my dubious nature thinks this may be a bit of hyperbole. 

But then, consider it was written by Michael Lewis.  Vanity Fair has a lengthy excerpt and it’s quite good. 

The credit-default swap would solve the single biggest problem with Mike Burry’s big idea: timing. The subprime-mortgage loans being made in early 2005 were, he felt, almost certain to go bad. But, as their interest rates were set artificially low and didn’t reset for two years, it would be two years before that happened. Subprime mortgages almost always bore floating interest rates, but most of them came with a fixed, two-year “teaser” rate. A mortgage created in early 2005 might have a two-year “fixed” rate of 6 percent that, in 2007, would jump to 11 percent and provoke a wave of defaults. The faint ticking sound of these loans would grow louder with time, until eventually a lot of people would suspect, as he suspected, that they were bombs. Once that happened, no one would be willing to sell insurance on subprime-mortgage bonds. He needed to lay his chips on the table now and wait for the casino to wake up and change the odds of the game. A credit-default swap on a 30-year subprime-mortgage bond was a bet designed to last for 30 years, in theory. He figured that it would take only three to pay off.

The only problem was that there was no such thing as a credit-default swap on a subprime-mortgage bond, not that he could see. He’d need to prod the big Wall Street firms to create them. But which firms? If he was right and the housing market crashed, these firms in the middle of the market were sure to lose a lot of money. There was no point buying insurance from a bank that went out of business the minute the insurance became valuable. He didn’t even bother calling Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, as they were more exposed to the mortgage-bond market than the other firms. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Bank of America, UBS, Merrill Lynch, and Citigroup were, to his mind, the most likely to survive a crash. He called them all. Five of them had no idea what he was talking about; two came back and said that, while the market didn’t exist, it might one day. Inside of three years, credit-default swaps on subprime-mortgage bonds would become a trillion-dollar market and precipitate hundreds of billions of losses inside big Wall Street firms. Yet, when Michael Burry pestered the firms in the beginning of 2005, only Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs had any real interest in continuing the conversation. No one on Wall Street, as far as he could tell, saw what he was seeing.

[via]

Is it just me or is SNL actually killing it this season?  Here’s the most recent digital short from Lonely Island (which was also on their album Incredibad), this time featuring Julian Casablancas of The Strokes.

Just remember, a boombox can change the world, kids, it’s definitely not a toy.

Imagine the possibilities of achieving 35mm depth of field with a digital camera. Of course it will set back some studio or director nearly $120,000, but still.

From Uncrate: “Sure, it costs as much as 47 Canon 5D MK IIs, but you’d need nearly that many — configured in some sort of crazy, Matrix-like setup — to match the unbelievable 1,052 fps high-speed 1080p recording of the Phantom HD Camera ($118,000). Other jaw-dropping specs include ISO 640 sensitivity, the ability to achieve 35mm depth-of-field, up to 32GB of in-camera memory with hot-swappable CineMag flash memory magazines up to 512GB, compatibility with 35mm accessories, an 11-stop dynamic range, 14-bit sensor depth, a maximum resolution of 2048×2048, and the ability to capture slow-motion gems like this and this.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

So, Robert Rodriguez dropped by SXSW this weekend with this nifty little preview of the new Predators movie he’s producing for director Nimrod Antal and 20th Century Fox.  Before seeing this, I wasn’t remotely interesting in a remake.  Now, hell yes.  I’m on board.

One could probably write an interesting comparative study between She & Him’s new video for “In the Sun”, which is the first single off of Vol. 2, and Britney Spear’s video for “Hit Me Baby (One More Time)”.  The differences and similarities are fairly obvious and speak volumes about sexuality, female confidence and well, talent.  When you have it you don’t have peddle in sexual fantasies.

Here, we get the same school scenario, only Zooey is all wholesome and quirky.  Her dance moves are fairly awkward and not quite on time with the song.  Yet somehow, like all things Zooey, it comes across as whimsical and charming.

I think Twilight, is pretty lame, but I recognize there may be some of you out there that is mildly curious about the trailer for the third movie in the series, due out June 30, 2010.

This video has been making the rounds over the past few days and it includes two things I love a lot: The Beastie Boys and Battlestar Galactica.

Galactica: Sabotage is a shot-by-shot remake of the Beastie Boys’ Sabotage video (dir. by Spike Jonze), using footage from Battlestar Galactica.   It becomes even more impressive when you watch the side-by-side comparison. 

I have a feeling that if Starbuck had always been refered to as “El Capitan” the show would have had much better ratings.  As such, the video makes BSG look like the greatest frakkin’ show ever created.  Which, it pretty much is.

Now, Nomah is coming home — signing a one-day contract to officially retire as a member of Red Sox Nation. 

“Everywhere I go I get so many [Red Sox fans] come to me and tell me ‘Thank you. We miss you. We still love you,’” Garciaparra told ESPN. “And it’s so genuine and the feeling is mutual. Hopefully from my actions throughout my career in that uniform and hopefully my actions today again tell them what it means to me.”

It feels right. 

It’s just too bad he wasn’t there during the best two months of being a player or fan the Red Sox organization will ever experience.

William Shatner recites a bevy of tweets from the Twitter account @ShitMyDadSays during last week’s Shorty Awards. 

It was recently announced that Shatner will be playing the Dad in a televsion version of “Shit My Dad Says” on CBS.  [via]

He looked 50, and probably peaked in life at 16.  Now, at 38, actor Corey Haim has died.    License to Drive, Lucas and The Lost Boys are a pretty damn good legacy.

There’s also something about Lohan having the same single name recognition as Madonna or Oprah or Pele or whatever and that the ubiquitous name “Lindsay” only belongs to her.  Her ignoramous chutzpah aside (never mind the self-agrandizement), this is probably the funniest thing you’ll read today.  And it’s not from The Onion!