Recently the Ben & Jerrys Ice Cream shop in Harvard Square created a flavor called “Taste the Lin-sanity” … and ended up quickly pulling the product and apologizing. This follows the two separate same-night incidents from ESPN where in writing and on television hosts used the phrase ‘chink in the armor’.
The phrase ‘going postal’ has become such an entrenched part of our cultural identity that it faces the possibility of losing any real meaning. Case in point: my son mentioned that his best friend’s girlfriend had broken up with him, and he ‘totally went postal’ in the locker room – which to him just meant that he flipped out. But for those of us who have been around longer, the phrase has a more specific meaning tied to workplace violence in which someone unleashes a murderous rampage. It started in the mid-1980s in a string of Post Office shootings, but…
For a fake band, The Monkees were a huge success. Formed in 1965 as a TV-friendly pop group with the intent to release singles and offer a weekly comedy show, Brit Davy Jones joined Americans Mike Nesmith, Peter Tork and Mickey Dolenz as the fabricated pop group. The requirements were more about look, basic singing skills and personality – in fact none of the group played drums, which became an issue when they needed to perform live! But the face of the Monkees during their 58-episode, 2-season TV run was Davy Jones – to the point that he ended up…
Jane’s Addiction had a major hit more than 20 years ago with the song ‘Been Caught Stealing’ which still resonates with kids today. It is edgy, fun and infectious both rhythmically and harmonically. It had an awesomely cheesy music video that helped as well! Last summer the band asked fans to participate in a promotion with LG to film their show using the Thrill 4G 3D camera. Today we get one of the results, a fan film of the classic ‘Been Caught Stealing’. It is a solid rendition, but I always prefer the original music video … enjoy!
In his post-Oscar show, Jimmy Kimmel bemoans how at the Oscars most of the movies only represent one genre at a time, so if you want more you need to watch a bunch of movies. He then goes on to say how he has realized his dreams of creating the most epic motion picture ever … and introduces us to ‘Movie: The Movie’. Take a look!
There are a number things that really sum up the evening, some that require a bit of explanation and others we can list out. Oh, and I am not going to a full award-winner run-down … you can get that here. Let’s do the bullet points first: They could have subtitled the show ‘We give out more awards in the first half-hour than the Grammys do all night!’. And it would be accurate. The Grammys are about showing you why you should buy the crap the labels are pushing … the Oscars are about rewarding accomplishments. The awards were pretty…
I feel I need to make a few comments on the MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs). But before I get started, let me share the one opinion that many, many long-time music fans share, as told on Twitter by Adam Levine, front man for pop group Maroon 5: As I said, at this point MTV hosting the VMA show is much more a matter of tradition than one of them being at the vanguard of music videos … or even very much involved in them at all! There was an early moment of self-irony when they had the case of…
(Image courtesy of Wikipedia) While reading Carly’s post about eBooks and Children, I was reminded of a discussion I had with my parents about technology and the ease with which children learn to use new devices and, conversely, the relative difficulty of the older generation to learn to use the same devices. One could fall back on the adage, “It’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks” but this is both patronizing and overly simplistic. Personally, I like to analyze this “situation” by first examining children’s relationship with technology. I think that most people would agree that children’s ability to…
Note that the above chart is missing one key slice. In 2004, Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage. No World Wars or other disasters befell the state, but the Red Sox won the World Series! So remember, in the event of same-sex marriage, two people get married AND long-standing bad sports curses break. Win-win! (And that really is the most exciting thing that happens. As Dan loves pointing out, Sarah and I are just as boring as every other couple!) Via Good.is
The Academy Awards are here. Get ready for a film filled weekend!
Last night for Sarah’s birthday we went to see “Spider-Man: The Musical”. It was supposed to have officially debuted by now, but due to some unfortunate accidents they’ve pushed back the official debut, so what we saw was still the preview. However, it was still a fantastic experience, both for Sarah (as a theater geek) and me (the comic book geek)!
The Harry Potter series has a great tradition with my family. The first book exploded on the scene when my younger son was just 3, and as a result I was reading the books aloud to both boys and my wife, providing all of the voices. As the movies arrived alongside new books I modified my voices to more closely match the movie actors. And even when the last book arrived, in spite of the fact that my two boys tore through re-reads of the entire series in less than a week … they wanted me to read it aloud,…
Most everyone immediately thinks of Bruce Wayne / Batman when they think of wealthy comic book heroes, but a new list at Ranker.com tells a different tale, looking at the Top 20 wealthiest comic book characters. It is amazing how some of these characters manage to run multinational corporations, have illustrious love lives, and still keep cities safe from crime! Heck, most of us have a hard enough time balancing work and family while finding a few spare minutes for fun … but I guess that is why THEY are superheroes and WE are not! Looking at the list we…
Many folks continue to look for ways to help the millions of already impoverished folks in Haiti deal with the awful impact of last week’s quake. We have posted about sending relief help by cell phone, efforts in the mobile community, Gear Diary’s three ways to help, and even scam warnings. Many, many places are trying to help consumers find a way to help out, and we applaud those efforts. However, when they start taking a significant overhead to make the donation, it stops being magnanimous and becomes self-serving – and a bad deal for consumers! Latest entry to this…
I ordinarily shy away from posting anything remotely political or religious on this site, unless it has a direct tie to something involving tech, and every writer on Gear Diary has been instructed to do the same. I do not need to know how anyone voted in order to decide whether we can break bread together, nor do I need to know a person’s religion (or lack thereof) to be able to tell if they are a good person. But today something happened that made me decide that it was time to break my rule. I have finally. had. enough.
I love technology and gadgetry. Even though I’m in a field that isn’t normally associated with such things, I can’t get enough of it. For the longest time, I thought that my interest had to do with my maturity level, which, as my wife will tell you, can be rather low. 🙂
If you read Gear Diary, you are probably familiar with product reviews on various blogs. But do you ever consider why your favorite website is reviewing product X? Or whether product X has been overly generous to buy goodwill in the blog world? The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) cares. How will this affect you? Read on and find out.
Fresh from last night’s viewing of Religulous, which ends with a disturbing cacophony of nuclear explosions, I found this in my RSS feed today… CarlosLabs has posted a bit of Javascript which uses Google Maps to show the effects of various catastrophic disasters; manmade and otherwise. According to DVICE’s Charlie White, “The deep red color means total destruction, dark red would be third degree burns, light red signifies second degree burns, and yellow means you’d get a pretty nasty sunburn.” You can get a more specific interpretation of distance related damage represented by the colored rings, here.