Category: Uncategorized

  • Why I still watch Seinfeld.

    Every night during dinner, my wife and I watch TV. I know that’s bad. Mealtime should be a time for conversation, for connection, for relationships. A sacred, inviolable hour for the young family. So sue us. Our most recent addiction has been classic episodes of Seinfeld, king of the 90s TV charts. We’ve restarted from…

  • Phoenix’s “Los Suns” jerseys: multi-lingual / multi-laughable

    In last night’s Western Conference Semifinal game versus San Antonio, the Phoenix Suns donned an altered version of their orange jerseys. The shirts drop the team’s usual airport-code abbreviation (PHX) and instead read ‘Los Suns.’ Phoenix’s management explained that this change expresses the team’s solidarity with Arizona’s Latino population. The jersey swap was timely. Yes,…

  • Embracing the Cheese

    This commercial is so full of win, I can hardly stand it. Let’s talk about why. Locally-produced commercials are infamously cheesy. Low-quality video sources, inadequate audio equipment, tasteless subtitles, and tragically unhip jingles mark the genre. Unfortunately, it takes cash to do a whiz-bang, slick ad–and cash is exactly what a small local business lacks.…

  • Urinal logos: flushing your brand down the drain

    Conventional wisdom says that you want to get your brand out there, no matter what. Sloan Valves, manufacturer of my school’s waterless urinals, has apparently taken that to heart. The drain canister on a Sloan waterless urinal. Photo credit: TSOMPITM. Any press is good press, right? After all, by printing their company name here, Sloan…

  • Highway signs: when ‘south’ doesn’t mean ‘south’

    This is Interstate 85 as it runs through Durham, my current hometown. Here’s the thing, though: they call this “85 South,” as it runs from right to left across your screen. Not only does this confuse the horizontal with the vertical, it completely inverts the compass. When you drive down 85 South out of Durham, you’re…

  • CAPITAL LETTERS: the unforgiveable Internet sin

    Curse out someone’s grandmother. Threaten to burn down their house. Spew slurs that would get you arrested anywhere else. On the Internet, just about anything goes. But there’s one thing you cannot do. One thing that will earn you sworn enemies and get you banned from the crudest of forums. YOU CANNOT TYPE IN ALL…

  • Replacing live sports with video games.

    Sports video games have come a long way, baby. Back in the day, you needed a Ph.D. in modern art just to identify what sport you were actually playing. This red block here blips its way to that green block, and… touchdown! Er, or is it… home run? Oh, sorry, no… uh, birdie? Not exactly…

  • Bugler’s Nightmare

    More often than not, when NBC played Arnaud’s “Dream,” they cut out a whole measure of the timpanic intro. Why would they short-circuit their own spectacle?

  • Mark Lansdale on “potty ideas”

    “The history of technological development is littered with products which failed not for economic reasons, but because nobody really wanted the functionality they provided.”