Last weekend was Graham's fourth birthday party (organized completely by Hope). This is the first time where he's really had the chance to have his friends at the party as opposed to just family and friends of ours.

It was a lot of fun. We took over the school playground (without any sort of permission*), served fruit and kettle corn, and - best of all - had a flippin' magic show.

I don't know the last time I took in a magic show but this one was awesome. The kids were absolutely captivated even though they had to be reminded once or twice that we don't throw pebbles on the stage (pretty hard to resist). It turns out 3-5 years old is the perfect age for this. Awesome idea from my wife.

*at one point a vehicle labeled "Des Moines Public Schools Patrol" stopped in the parking and scowled at us for 5 or so minutes but we escaped unscathed.

This Week's Top 3:

1. Zach Braff's Kickstarter Project

Zach Braff is crowdfunding a new movie project called "Wish I Was Here" on Kickstarter. Scrubs is my all-time favorite comedy series and I love the interaction between Zach (JD on the show) and Donald Faison (Turk). Wish I Was Here promises that Donald gets at least a cameo. Watch the fundraising video above then contribute.

Eagle!

2. Raygun's ill-fated Des Moines RAGBRAI Shirt

RAGBRAI (which is an acronym standing for the Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa) is stopping in Des Moines this year and the local host city organizers turned to everyone's favorite witty t-shirt shop to develop a t-shirt for the event. This is a smart move, as about 2/3rds of all locally produced RAGBRAI shirts are horrendous and Raygun (said favorite witty t-shirt shop) makes some awesome shirts. The design they chose is above on the left and the Des Moines Register, the 'R' in RAGBRAI, reported on the theme last week. Then the Des Moines Register realized the rules the Des Moines Register created for the Des Moines Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa don't allow local host communities to use the acronym RAGBRAI on things they sell commercially to fund ... well, RAGBRAI (read more at dmregister.com) 

While the meta-ness of this whole thing (RAGs on RAGs on RAGs) makes me happy in it's own right I'm more excited about whatever Raygun comes up with next. Getting told "you can't do this" tends to be a catalyst for the creativity of those guys whether it's from Iowa State, the Secret Service, or even the Des Moines Register (such as the images above).

Follow along on the facebook.

3. The Sorority Girl Email

Last week, Gawker published "The Most Deranged Sorority Girl Email You Will Ever Read" (warning: crude, inappropriate and hilarious language is used) which thusly began to make it's way 'round the internet. The gist is that a woman in leadership of a local chapter of her sorority is mad at her sisters for not participating in Greek Week at the level or in a manner that they should be and send them a scathing email to try and motivate them to do so. I'm not sure if it worked (no reports on how they faired in Greek Week) but it's so off-the-wall that it was further distributed to the point that Gawker saw it and ran with it. 

This is obviously a bad thing for those of us that value collegiate Greek experience (like me). It let's folks like Gawker cast stones between the language in the email and the ideals of the organization and it obviously is going to hurt that chapter in recruitment and probably fraternities and sororities as a whole - at least as long as the late night hosts continue to use it in their jokes.

Looking at it from the inside - as someone who has been in leadership in a fraternity and heavily involved on campus - I totally get where the girl was coming from. I've been so frustrated with the others in the organization that I've wanted to write and send that email [note: I never did - thank God]. It's because of that ability to empathize with her that it's making me happy to see that someone (again, not me) did it. I don't condone it and it doesn't work (for motivation) but I get it and I find it hilarious especially as done in this dramatic reading by Alison Haislip (Dang, it's like Alison wrote the email! So good).

Tweet of the Week:

#VEISHEATUNDE! #howtobeblack (at @dsmairport) — path.com/p/3vrCGv

— Baratunde (@baratunde) April 17, 2013

Baratunde Thurston was in Ames last week to do a talk at Iowa State about his book, How To Be Black. I saw him to a #KEYNOTEATUNDE on this topic at SXSW a year or two ago and really enjoyed it. I didn't make it but really enjoyed the #VEISHEATUNDE hashtag making this my Tweet of the Week. Related: I need to figure out a universal yet transformable hashtag for my own name.

BONUS ITEM - Nick Offerman in a chicken suit.

Photo via Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on facebook.

I'm really looking forward to seeing "Ain't In It For My Health" the new Levon Helm documentary covering the last few years of his life. 

Early reviews are certainly favorable:

• NPR: 'For My Health': The Latter Days Of Levon Helm
• Rolling Stone: Levon Helm's Last Years Captured in 'Ain't in It for My Health'
• Village Voice: Ain't in It for My Health Stars the True Life of Levon Helm

And, there's fun testimonials like this:

Ain't In It for My Health - See the trailer trailers.apple.com/trailers/indep…. I love this movie! twitter.com/JuddApatow/sta…

— Judd Apatow (@JuddApatow) April 11, 2013

(Apatow included "The Weight" in his movie This is 40)

Now, it make sure that some theater is Des Moines picks it up. 

Someone so unbelievably effective and inspirational that their energy infects you by osmosis, and you just want to punch them in the face/hold them close and never let go out of unbridled emotional overload? Well, the wonderful people at Silicon Prairie News give me that feeling.

They are creating and supporting some of the long term connections and events (not to mention press exposure opportunities) that allow burgeoning startup hubs to survive and thrive in any economy. On one hand, cities like Boston and New York are mature startup hubs. And they’re nearby. But they don’t necessarily depend on each other – in the way that certain cities in the Silicon Prairie are beginning to – in terms of regional events, fundraising, cooperative planning and community building. The implications for the American economy as a whole are clear, given the potential these Midwestern startup scenes have to evolve simultaneously into a kind of “continuous Megalopolis” of interconnected growth.

- Nadeem Mazen of Nimblebot writing for StartupWeekend.org

via realcalvinandhobbes.tumblr.com

I was a big Calvin & Hobbes fan growing up. The humor works on multiple levels and what I loved back in the day and I what I appreciated looking back now are completely different. For one, these days I identify more with the Dad in a scene like the one above then Calvin. Also, thinking of my own kiddo - an only child who loves his stuffed animals - is easily identifiable with Calvin from time-to-time.

A photographer has been taking real life photos of scenes from old Calvin & Hobbes strips and is integrating the characters together (see examples here). They're amazing. They're wonderful. And, they've piqued my interest in the comic strip once more.

Unfortunately, the owner of the copyright to Calvin & Hobbes feels like it's a violation and has asked him to take them down from his blog: http://realcalvinandhobbes.tumblr.com/

Here's the details on the takedown. I'm glad these exist in the world and I'm sorry the full set isn't publicly available anymore.

via realcalvinandhobbes.tumblr.com/

via realcalvinandhobbes.tumblr.com

The Geoff Project - Day 19

So, some fancy chap in London started a project where he spells out my name each day and takes a photo. Well, it's my name, I'm guessing it's his name and also the name of many other men throughout the world (particularly in England and Australia, not here in the US so much). I enjoy the food ones but there are many others, too.

As you likely know, "Geoff" isn't a real common name (Wolfram Alpha tells me there are less than 50,000 of us in the US as opposed to the more than 900,000 with the the nascent, funky "Jeff" spelling) and as such it's not something you see all the time, much less in photos.

You can follow along on Twitter.

The Geoff Project - Day 6

The Geoff Project - Day 11

Three thoughts:

1. "figuring out twitter" (or something similar) is everyone's first tweet, right?
2. Apparently, I didn't figure it out very well since my second tweet was nearly 10 months later.
3. It took all of 3 tweets for me to start using twitter to complain about some big brand. I'm guessing that's a pretty constant theme throughout the other 8,273 of them.

Brilliant.

Taken (Netflix DVD)

A crazy, scary-from-a-parents perspective tale about a teenage daughter (Maggie Grace existed before LOST!?) getting kidnapped and sold into sex-slavery in Europe. Good thing that Dad is an ex-CIA agent!

Rating: 2 out of 5

The Words (Netflix DVD)

Bradley Cooper is a struggling writer that finds and publishes someone elses manuscript and goes on to extreme fame. Nice twist in the plot, too.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Looper (Netflix DVD)

I’m not much for time travel movies since they logic never, ever works out and it’s a convenient “out” for the writers so they don’t have to actually tie things up in the plot. This one was no exception but it was pretty fun. Plus, anything with Emily Blunt is a must-watch. One question though - seems like the whole movie (and a lot of hassle) would’ve been avoided if they just sent one ex-Looper back in time to a different Looper instead of themselves.

Rating: 3 out of 5

The Eagle (other online)

A roman Centurion seeks to avenge his father’s death by finding his late Dad’s standard, The Eagle. Along the way he teams up with a Briton slave, hilarity ensues. Well, maybe not. Not a bad way to kill a Saturday afternoon.

Rating: 3 out of 5

The Green Hornet (Netflix DVD)

Skinny Seth Rogen loses Dad, inherits lots of family money, becomes superhero. Kinda funny but very low on the list of superhero remakes.

 Rating: 3 out of 5

Levon Helm Tribute via Grammy.com

I was pretty impressed to learn that the Grammy's planned to include a Levon Helm tribute on their shown tonight. Of course, Levon is a hero of mine, but I'd imagine much of the Taylor Swift/Katy Perry/Rihanna/young-blond-country-dude set that's the typically audience for this show has no idea who the man was.

The tribute didn't disappoint and featured the Zac Brown Band, Mumford & Sons, Elton John and the one and only Mavis Staples singing The Weight. Ms. Staples has been performing this song since at least 1976 when, as a member of The Staples Singers, she joined Levon and the rest of The Band for their final concert, The Last Waltz.

Here's that awesome performance:

Here's another version, Ms. Staples rehearsing The Weight backstage with Wilco in 2011:

Update: February 12

Deadspin.com has the Grammy performance: here

The 25 year reunion for the cast, as shared more that 68,000 (!) times from some random person on Facebook. I think the actual credit for the original image goes to EW. 

Every few years I remember that I intended to use this blog to document the things that I've codified into my life so deeply that the literally become the "Code of the Wood". I then write one or two of them up and promptly forget about it. Today is one of those days.

I realized this morning after seeing what is likely the best depiction of a beloved movie cast reunion ever(1) that anytime The Princess Bride is mentioned the immediate thought that enters my mind is the scene on the boat where Fezzik and Inigo Montoya are responding to each other in rhyme. Vizzini tires of it and yells to them "Stop it, I meant it!" and Fezzik responds "Anybody want a peanut?" Best. rhyme. ever.

So, when I see the movie mentioned on facebook, I spring to action with said comment: "Stop it, I meant it!" "Anybody want a peanut?" Cue many, many likes and I'm sure laptop-illuminated smiles around the globe.

It's happened at least three times in the past two weeks and I love it.

[several minutes go by]

Hold up - just sought out a video clip of the scene are realized I have the quote wrong.

Vizzini: No more rhymes now, I mean it!

Fezzik: Anybody want a peanut? 

Ah, that's even better.

This is the Code of the Wood.

(1) The DVD commentary on "The Goonies" is pretty awesome, too. All of the kids back together (Goonies Never Say Die!) as grown ups ... and Cory Feldman disappears midway through; not unexpected.

We started a new "behind-the-scenes" series on SPN this morning and I kicked it off with a look into our reasoning behind changing the name of our October event from Thinc Iowa to Big Des Moines.

You can read the full post here: Inside SPN: Why Big Des Moines?

In that post I shared a bit of a broader concept that I've been thinking about over the last year of so that factored into our decision.

From the post:

There's a school of thought that in modern American society cities are our reference points for urban places and that the states are references for rural communities. How often do you refer to Illinois when you're talking about something happening in Chicago? If you're connecting on a Delta flight, do you refer to it as flying into Georgia? Not likely. The cities are our reference point and what reflects positively on the them reflects positively on the whole state.

That's just the start of it and I want to write more on the idea. I think there's the potential to turn it into a white paper or something more long form but I think in the interim I'll start to flush out the concept here on the blog.

If you're interested in following along our joining the conversation - just track the Cities vs States tag.

The Channel 4 New Team prepares to battle (via screened.com)

On Monday night a friend tweeted a reference to Ron Burgundy and I thought it was time to give that one a try. I saw this movie, originally, in the theater and didn’t really enjoy it. All my buddies thought it was hilarious (which usually means that my lack of enjoyment was more the situation that I saw it in rather than the movie itself - how I came to that realization is a topic for it’s own post) so I knew that it was worth another go.

It took nearly 9 years but I got back to it. I had the movie on in the background but definitely found it more humorous on this go round. It took three nights to watch the whole thing (it’s been a busy week). 

First off, I didn’t realize how many little catch phrases, jokes and memes that I’m aware of came from this movie. I’m sure they’re all improvised, how else do you come up with things like “I love lamp” and “I’m going to punch you in the ovary”.

Brick and the trident

The five-way fight scene between the various news teams was definitely my favorite part of the movie - seem like something Mel Brooks would’ve come up with (“Yeah, there were horses, and a man on fire, and I killed a guy with a trident”). 

Rating: 3 out of 5

poster graphics courtesy the interwebz!

As I wrote the other day, I’ve decided to catalog all the movies that I watch in 2013 here on the blog. One hand I’m trying to appreciate the movies that I watch more and on the other I want to get back into personal blogging.

Monsters, Inc 3D - Jan 1 (theater)

Hope and I have a tradition of going to see a movie on Christmas Day (it was The Hobbit this year … but that was 2012) and this year we extended that tradition a bit by taking Graham to a movie on New Years Day. We chose Monsters, Inc in 3D.

I don’t get super excited about about animated movies, much less ones that I’ve seen before. However, this one was about me it was about Graham and he seemed to like it. He doesn’t quite have the attention span to sit still in a theater for a full feature (luckily we had the place to ourselves).

Random note - first modern movie I’ve seen in 3D that I can remember. I did not see (and still haven’t seen) Avatar. Prior movies I have seen in 3D include some SpongeBob thing at Kings Island and Michael Jackson’s Captain EO at Disney World.

Funny anecdote - Graham was complaining that he couldn’t see any kept taking off his glasses. I kept trying to get him to put them back on (we paid extra for 3D!) and finally I looked through them. Indeed they were completely covered in butter from the popcorn. I should listen to my kid more.

Rating: 2 out of 5

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (DVD via Netflix)

I added this to the ol’ Netflix queue back in the day and it finally came due. Decent movie, Hope and I watched together. I actually fell asleep and had to rewatch the latter half the next day but that was just based on how tired I was not the movie. I’m not particularly a Woody Allen film but I did like this one. I AM a Scarlett Johansson fan (who isn’t?) The Barcelona setting was pretty neat and I enjoyed the story.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Game Change (other online)

This is a dramatization of the McCain-Palin campaign of ‘08 as written/told by one of McCain’s top advisers. As you can guess, it’s not complimentary of the former Alaska Governor. It’s obviously very one sided and for those of us not caught up in the Palin-mania of the day, it was a pretty darn enjoyable to watch. Great cast, too (Woody Harrelson, Julianne Moore - as Palin, Ed Harris - as McCain, and even fellow Cedar Rapids-native Ron Livingston).

Rating: 3 of 5

Apparently, Joel Hanrahan. The Red Sox pitcher, who is a Des Moines native, took over the official team Twitter handle today and installed an avatar of himself wearing an ISU t-shirt.

If your answer was "baseball", you'd be wrong. ISU dropped its baseball program in 2001. Sad face. 

Here goes -

I, Geoff Wood, hereby resolve to do the following two big things in 2013:

1. Blog more here on my personal blog.

This is brilliant, since this very “resolution-y” post puts me well on my way and it’s only January 9! In reality, I used to blog here at least weekly (back in the glory days of the pre-social internet, say ‘05-’08) but the advent of Twitter has made me too lazy. It’s much easier to just pump out 140 character quips without much thought of editing or the fact that one’s thoughts might have relevance for more than a few minutes. On top of that, in 2009 I started writing aggressively for siliconprairienews.com which is both awesome and, you know, “work”. Which means that anytime that I’m writing here I feel like I should be writing for SPN (I always have a backlog of opinion pieces I intend to write and I’d say less than a third actually make it all the way to be published. Here’s the latest: “With focus on VC money, story on prairie startups misses bigger picture”).

Fun Fact: I only published 10 posts here in 2012 and one of them was nothing more than an old SportsIllustrated photo of Randy Moss and his sweet afro.

Inspired by an episode of the NPR Pop Culture Happy Hour Podcast I figured out how I’m going to do it: I’m going to keep track of all the movies that I watch and each book that I read in 2013. And, I’m going to write about them here, at least weekly. I really like movies. I watch alot of them throughout the year, often just as background noise when I’m working.

My hope is that I’ll appreciate these movies more if I make myself write even the tiniest bit about them as I watch them. I might even rate them. We shall see.

As for the books, I really like books, too. Particular fiction books like spy thrillers and detective stories, sci fi or historical fiction. Unfortunately, at some point in the last few years I almost stopped reading. Hopefully this resolution kickstarts that, too.

As I make myself write more, I’m hoping I’ll find joy in it again and I’ll start to work my thoughts out in long form more often.

Look at that, one resolution begets three positive outcomes. I’m on a roll.

2. Set a new short term resolution each month (and accomplish it!)

One of the biggest mental problems with the New Year’s resolution style of goal setting is that they’re just too damn long to actually accomplish. They’re either lifestyle changes (planned length: forever) or something you want to do throughout the year (planned length: 365 days). Either way, it’s a long time and it's easy for me to get distracted and then fall away from them completely.

So, I’m dividing it up and going with 12 short term goals (I know the logic is a bit flawed, but it’s all about the state of mind in these things).

January’s goal is to organize every photo that we’ve taken since 2005 in iPhoto (thousands upon thousands of photos). I want to not only organize the events but label the faces and assign location to the photos not take with an iPhone. Up until now, the photos have sat on a hard drive kinda organized and mostly inaccessible other than as our Apple TV screensaver.

Fun Fact: We bought our first digital camera in 2005 so by default that year is when recorded history of our family began (we met in 1998, started dating in 2002). I know my wife has scrapbooks from the analog photo days but it will be tough to get those into iPhoto.

February’s goal will be more health oriented - I’m thinking getting a physical (it’s been a few years) and probably a teeth cleaning.

Not sure what the following months will bring nor do I want to at this point. The short term, monthly resolution idea is to flexible that I don't want to plan to far ahead - who knows what will seem important in March? 

That’s it, I'm back, baby! Huzzah.

It's the Central General Store. Take a left at Main St to get to the West General Store. 

It can get quite tropical in the Ames in the summer.

I'm a big fan of the show and I realize they were dressing up locations in Hawaii to look like Ames but it still makes me laugh to see stereotypes of the Midwest played out.

Will anyone at the Iowa State show tonight have a ukulele with them? Please let me know, hawkeyes.

— hodgman (@hodgman) November 30, 2012

Iowa State, I apologize. You can trust I did not know Hawkeye referred specifically to a hated sports team.

— hodgman (@hodgman) November 30, 2012

So, to clarify dear CYCLONIC ANTI HAWKEYES, if anyone has a uke I can borrow at the Iowa State show tonight, please alert me.

— hodgman (@hodgman) November 30, 2012

Alternative title for this post: "Why i never understood why Purdue fans living in Indiana didn't object to being called Hoosiers"

Randy Moss and his 2005 afro: twitter.com/si_vault/statu…

— Andy Gray (@si_vault) September 6, 2012

Great ~8:30 minute documentary on Cyclone star Royce White's NBA draft day. By the guys behind Grantland (who I've already written about).