Hail Of A Day

I submit to you a look a like that occurred to me the other day.  General Akbar of Star Wars fame and the hit rapper Lil’ Wayne.

Tags: StarWars, Lil’ Wayne

» Geek Gang Signs » The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century : Joey deVilla’s Personal Blog

Last night I was watching the great, “Iron Eagle”, a classic 80’s movie, when I came across a familiar face. I noticed that Doug’s highs school sweetheart girlfriend was none other than Melora Hardin, Michael Scott’s girlfriend in the hit t.v. show, “The Office.” Take a look at this clip of Doug racing “The Snake” route in his Cessna. She’s at the end of the runway in a letter jacket. http://youtube.com/watch?v=Nrq31J6RbgU

Funny how you think that a movie is just awesome when you’re a kid and then you watch it 15 years later and it’s not so awesome anymore. I think a lot of the movies today will stand up to the scrutiny better than some of the stuff they put out 20 years ago. At one point, Doug and Chappy were flying into Iran and they obviously had Chappy in an F16 cockpit with a green screen. While he’s talking, they literally switched reels and started showing a different B-Roll of the sky. It was so stunningly bad that it got my attention and I rewound it. Sure enough he went from, middle of the clouds to a few hundred feet off the ground in 1 second.

In my opinion, that’s just sloppy. How could the editor and director see that and go, ‘aww, no one will notice”. But honestly I didn’t see that thing the first 25 times I watched that movie as a kid. I think we just sort of glossed over that thing because we hadn’t seen movies like Jurrasic Park or The Matrix, yet. We were still living under the glow of “The Last Starfighter”, which coincidentally was one of the greatest movies ever. But, I bet you that if I saw it again now, I’d turn my back in shame at what it had become through the passage of time. So, I think I’m just going to have to keep a list of my all time favorite movies from the 70’s and 80’s and not watch them. I’m sure that I’ll be nostalgic one day and see a glimpse of one of them and think, “man, I’d really love to see “Mannequin” or “Space Camp” right now”, but I want to have fond memories of them, so I’ll just turn the channel to “Bones” or “Men in Trees” for my wife, I’ll shut my eyes and I’ll think back to the time when I was 8 years old and I wondered what it would be like to be chosen to save the universe by piloting a starjet. Greetana!

Tags: ironeagle, the office

Did you hear about this guy who stole $50,000, a few pennies at a time from several banking institutions?  Does this remind you of the plot from TWO movies?  If so, can you name them.  Hint:  Check out the clip below, and the article below that….

YouTube - Office Space: Cake

Man Allegedly Bilks E-trade, Schwab of $50,000 by Collecting Lots of Free ‘Micro-Deposits’ | Threat Level from Wired.com

Tags: officespace

What is the worst sit-down restaurant chain in America? This is completely subjective and personalized to each reader, but I am more than happy to put forth my own list. I was inspired to create this list based on the fact I visited one of them tonight:

5) Olive Garden - I’m so beat down by the tagline, “When you’re here, you’re family.” Really? Why do I have to pay the bill then? And my brother is not usually as openly hostile as the waiter when I ask for more breadsticks at the table. The food is quickly turning into the “Golden Corral” of the italian cuisine world.

4) Any national bbq chain - Dickey’s, Spring Creek BBQ, etc. They are all the same. Step right up to your dry meat, processed mac n’ cheese, pickle bar, and then wash it all down with the ubiquitous soft-serve ice cream machine. It seems like you just have to go to a hole in the wall to get good bbq. It must not lend itself well to franchising. I want an old, weathered guy with a huge knife barking orders at me, whose name is something like Slappy or Sonny, and he’s eying me suspiciously cause he thinks I’m there to steal his secret sauce recipe. Put on the bib, cause you know it’s gonna be good.

3) Luby’s - Why are cafeterias in existence past 12th grade? This has to have something to do with the circle of life, because the prime demographic is 70+. The food is intentionally bland. Yes, intentionally. That’s what someone told me once. “Older people can’t handle flavor,” they said. Not spice, flavor. Rule of thumb: if they serve liver and onions, go next door. And you can’t believe how expensive this place is. I have to admit, I get a little greedy when I see all these self-serve bins with various sides and meats. It’s like asking a hyena to use discretion and work on just the calf muscle of the antelope. So by the time you get to the end of the line, your bill is north of $18. And by the time you sit down to eat your instant mashed potatoes, they gravy has crystallized into a hard exoskeleton, impenetrable with a hacksaw.

2) T.G.I.Friday’s - Pound for pound this is the most expensive place on the list. They win the award for “Most Promising Menu - worst payoff”. You overlook the $12.95 price tag for buffalo wings appetizer and $19.95 for Captain Jack glazed honey bourbon chicken poppers, because you’re thinking, “man, this sounds great”. It ALWAYS underdelivers. And this is one of those places that you go to 20 or 30 times and hate every experience before you realize you’ve been duped for the last time. It’s because of the afore-mentioned menu and the clever logo and happy-go-lucky atmosphere.

1) Red Lobster - Hands-down the winner. If I had any kind of actual way of quantifying this, it would probably double everything else on this list on the stink-meter. Where to begin…This was the first job I had out of high-school. It was so emotionally traumatizing, I still haven’t recovered. It all starts with the corporate mothership. Behind the scenes, this place takes every conceivable shortcut to save money. I saw a guy nearly get fired because he used tongs instead of a 2 oz. spoon to put cabbage on a salad, thus violating the corporate mandate. The reason? They figured out that they could save x number of dollars a year because the servers would use more caution when putting it on the salad, consequently not having wasted cabbage on the counter. I am not kidding about this. The fish is the sea-equivalent of horsemeat. And the clientele? Holy cow! My friend that worked there for a season said that her personal horror was the annual all-you-can-eat shrimp fest. Morbidly obese people would come in and put away a couple hundred shrimp and then drink the drawn butter for dessert at the end. Again, I’m not kidding.

So that’s my personal list. Have I left any off?

Tags: redlobster, luby’s, restaurant

You may have seen the viral video a couple months ago where Kobe Bryant jumped over a speeding Aston Martin as it was heading towards him. It’s up to you to believe, or not believe, it’s validity. Kenny Smith of TNT did a parody of the jump that is absolutely hilarious. This is most assuredly what would happen to me if I tried to jump a car coming at me. If you’ve seen the original Kobe clip, skip ahead to the Kenny clip about 2 minutes into the video.

This is absolutely brilliant. Weezer once again knocks the ball out of the park with this video that ingeniously features tons of the last couple years’ viral internet stars.

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Tags: rat, cat, dog

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Tags: Bird

From Freakonomics Blog:

In keeping with our aptonym tradition, a bunch of helpful readers have sent in good examples of people whose last names go well with their professions. To wit:

From a reader named James:

Apparently, the city of Boston has a tree inspector named Leif Fixen. (Also, the photo credit on that story goes to a guy named Kamerman.)

From our friend Rafe Furst comes this example:

Reading this article, I did a double take when I got here: “But slick PR and lobbying aren’t as important to the horse racing industry’s success on Capitol Hill as its longstanding ties with politicians from horse racing and agricultural states, said Keith Furlong, deputy director of the Interactive Gaming Council …”

Here’s what a reader named Andrew Henderson sent in:

Who better to speak for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety? None other than Russ Radar.

Here’s one from a reader named Karthik:

I found this name to be so perfect that I had to send it: ” …said Mark Shuttleworth, who leads distribution of the Ubuntu operating system (OS). … He is also well-known for being the second-ever, self-funded space tourist, traveling to the International Space Station aboard the Soyuz spacecraft in 2002.”

Sitar Teli of London sent this aptonym:

The relevant paragraph is the 5th one down: “Cost per employee? San Jose-based caterer Abe Caterman (really!) guesses it would cost Google about $15 per day, per employee, for breakfast and lunch. But Prentiss Hall, a helpful exec at Aramark Business Dining Services, thinks Google could be spending closer to $30 a day, based on the quality and level of service the company provides.”

And last but, during this exciting election season, very much not least, comes a contribution from a reader named Eric:

I found this amusing, thought you might. Premier Election Solutions, Inc. is a wholly owned operating subsidiary of Diebold and provides electronic voting solutions. Their spokesperson/media contact? Chris Riggal

If you haven’t seen this, it’s pretty thought-provoking. This guys was trapped in an elevator for 41 hours. What would you do for 41 hours? More importantly, you don’t know WHEN you’re going to get help. I’m sure he got more and more panicked as the hours rolled along. My only question….bathroom?

“After a certain period of time I knew that I was in pretty big trouble because it was the weekend,” Nicholas White said Monday on ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America.”

Video of his Oct. 15, 1999, ordeal in an elevator in New York’s McGraw-Hill building was posted online to accompany an article in the April 21 edition of The New Yorker. It can be seen on the magazine’s Web site and had been viewed more than 280,000 times on YouTube by Monday morning.

White said he understood why the video has captured people’s attention: So many have wondered what they would do if it happened to them.

Edited to a soundtrack of classical piano music, the video shows him pacing, trying to climb the walls, lying down, curled up in a fetal position, prying apart the doors. (He said he relieved himself down the shaft when the doors were open.)

White sued the managers of the midtown skycraper and the elevator maintenance company and won an undisclosed settlement.

He was a production manager for Business Week when he left his office about 11 p.m. Friday for a cigarette break. According to the article, it was never determined exactly why the elevator stalled though there was talk of a voltage dip.