Big Wheel Race!!

Yesterday was the 9th annual BYOBW Easter Big Wheel race in San Fransisco, the 4th year that I've participated. There I am above with the ubiquitous pink and purple disney fairy princess big wheel. Target must have stocked up big on those ones, because a high percentage of the folks had these big wheels.


You can see me in one of the races, 0:17 - 0:36 in this video:



and in from 0:17 - 0:20 in this video:



you can find more videos and pictures on youtube and flickr if you search for "byobw 2009".

This was the best year yet. I raced 7 times and my big wheel held up for the whole event. Most of the folks I went with this year broke their big wheels on the first run.

I can't wait for next year!!

All Nightmare Long

It's only Tuesday, but this has got to be the best thing to come out this week. Sci-Fi Cold War Soviet zombie plague awesomeness in this video for one of the better songs on Metallica's new album Death Magnetic.




it's a nine minute movie that starts with the 1908 explosion over Tunguska that ends with the conquest of the US by the Soviets. Aliens, balloons, robots, zombies, fires, chaos.

the io9 post I orginally saw this on.

new shoes!

my Black Sabbath vol. 4 Converse arrived today. I accidentally ordered two pairs (because of the crappy flash site converse has) and after much arguing over the phone they agreed to send me a label to return one of the pairs. After seeing them, however, I think I'll keep both.


update: by popular demand (meaning Priya emailed me "WHERE IS THE LINK TO BUY THEM!!!?!?") here is the link

be warned: crappy crappy flash site circa 2002.

Rodrigo y Gabriela

OK I admit it -- I'm little slow to the bandwagon again. Misti turned me on to Rodrigo and Gabriela a couple of weeks ago and i've been listening to their self titled album off and on non-stop since (is that even possible?).



They were in a mexican metal band together before moving to Ireland where they took off. They do a cover of "Stairway to Heaven" that reminds me why I fell in love with that song in jr. high.

a Place to Bury Strangers

My friend Rick turned me on to this band some months back. They combine some of the better aspects of the Cure with the distorted surf sound of the Jesus and Mary Chain. I think that's how Rick first described them to me and it's pretty right on.

"To Fix the Gash in your Head"



"I know I'll see You"



They are playing in San Francisco on February 29th at the Bottom of the Hill, and on March 3rd at the Casbah in San Diego.

A Place to Bury Strangers on myspace, and their own website.

Turkish Star Wars

As a Christmas bonus, I thought I'd post a clip of the Tuskish "remake" of Star Wars.



Splicing together footage from the orignial (that appears to be filmed by pointing a video camera at the tee-vee) with the hero bouncing around the desert decapitating furries with his judo chops, this truly has to be one of the most bewildering, bizarre, and awesome remakes ever.

[Although having heard of the majestic awefulness that is this movie, I found this clip while browsing on cracked]

Evel never dies

Evel Knievel died yesterday.




He was trying to jump the Snake River on this.









A glorious death, as predicted in this Evel biopic poster starring George Hamilton.




He didn't limit his daredevilism to motorcycles.



This was one of favorite toys when i was little. I was even thinking about buying one on ebay,


but I had second thoughts because I didn't want to end up like this guy:

Boris Live in San Francisco

I saw Boris last night at the Independent. Frickin' awesome show. There were a few people recording the show with iphones and whatnot and I found some video on youtube this morning.

Youtuber nixmusicblog posted some great video of the show -- I'm glad you were there!

Here's Boris performing Pink, one of my all time favotrite songs. Everytime I drive to San Digeo I have to put this song on as I start up the grapevine.



two more songs:

amazing Rube Goldberg machine

This is really fantastic Rube Goldberg machine incorportating some things you would expect (golf balls, pool balls, a candle, a slinky) and some items I haven't seen used before (a checkmate in a chess game (not sure how that is doen actually) and text messaging).

for akern

I saw this build-it-yourself-Dylan-SHB-promo-viral-video thing on laughing squid today and I knew that I had to make one for Karen because I know how much she hates the guy.

The joke is is that I always mistype Karen's name, with Akern being the most common variant. Unless I'm trying to mistype -- then I wind up writing it correctly.

When I made this video I actually typed "Karen" correctly four times.

edit: I removed the embedded clip because it wasn't formating right. here's a link to the video I made on the site itself.

my first five legged cow

Today i saw my first five-legged cow. The bad news: I didn't have my camera with me. the good news: it looked just like this




well, without the hat.

to give credit where it is due, i stole this picture from here.

"Unicorns are the new Chuck Norris, but Hobos are the new Unicorns"

Hipster Olympics! saw this this morning on Laughing Squid.

Friendly reminder:

Rescue Me is the best damn show on tee-vee.



If you're not watching this show yet, get you on it -- it's on season four already, for crissakes.

Finland = Winland

Many of my friends will tell you that I am fascinated with all things Finnish, so it really shouldn't be a surprise that I couldn't resist reposting this video of Gregorius after seeing it on Boing Boing.



disclaimer: I blatantly stole "Finland = Winland" from the youtube comments.

I love google reader

Google Reader is awesome. Not only will it pull together RSS/Atom feeds from various blogs, it will display your reading trends.




it looks like I do most of my blog reading at lunchtime -- and I'm okay with that. Now if only Jor would update her blog occasionally, I'd be happy. And I can't believe that Bruce Sterling doesn't have a feed for his wired blog. That must be a deliberate choice to force readers to visit the site instead of reading it via RSS.

Bad move -- that just means I probably won't be reading it much. I think providing feeds will actually increase traffic; for the blogs I do read through google reader, I often visit the site to poke around more.

edit: All of my post titles and labels started showing up in Devanagari and i don't know how to turn it off. Damn the google!

new edit: I figured out how to turn it off.