That's pretty good I guess

Neymar got a lot of press for his haircut and his play during the Copa America. Both of them were rather poor. When we saw his coiffure for the first time the best response was from Monica, who said, "Oh. My gosh. Look at ME, bitches!" I laughed, because his haircut is very Look at Me, Bitches.

He did do this in a league game though. And if I could do that then I'd probably get an obnoxious haircut too.  I'd get an obnoxious haircut if I could even imagine doing that. In a video game.

Back to back Sesame Street rap covers: Because that's what the world needs

I think I featured this on the blog before, but I couldn't find it. (I didn't look very hard.)

So here (again?) are Bert and Ernie, doing what they do.


If I made a Sesame Street / Girl Talk mashup I think the universe would collapse under the weight of the awesome.

EDIT: Wanted to point out that the green dude @ 1:01 in the video is dancing pretty much exactly like I do when I'm at a Girl Talk show. Coincidence? I think not. 

"Se-same street?"

[It may be that some of you don't remember a muppet trying to pronounce Sesame Street as "se-same street" over and over again. I promise it was funny.]

This mashup of the beastie boys and sesame street is my second favorite muppet video mashup ever. The Cookie Monster is an inspired choice.




Sesame Street breaks it down from Wonderful Creative on Vimeo.

Well played, sandwich guy. Well played.

The backyard (seriously)

I get sandwiches at the local grocery on occasion. For lunch. The deli made sandwiches are really hit or miss. Too many variables to list them all, but the two big ones are the quality of the ingredients and the person who puts it together.

The ingredients are all over the map. Sometimes the bread is stale (sometimes not), sometimes the lettuce is crisp and sometimes less so, and even the turkey depends on the mood of the assembler. Some days you get the boring bland stuff, some days you get the fancy premium pepper Boar's Head turkey cold cut.

There is one guy that does a consistently superior job, but he's not always there. So you take your chances.

I mention all this BS (that's backstory, thanks very much) because today I filled out my sandwich form as per usual but my order was misread and inverted, so my regular options were omitted, and my regular omissions were included. Hello turkey with mustard and tomatoes and pepperoncinis (I always get those though so who knows what the guy was looking at). As it turns out, the sandwich was excellent. Tomatoes were surprisingly delicious and I didn't mind that it was missing lettuce and onions. Nicely done, sir.

Note: Photo has nothing to do with my lunch. It's just a nice picture of the koi pond that I took with the crap camera on my cellphone. It's been hot here and I'm not sure if the fish like it but the plants seem to love it.

Imitation, flattery, and theft (yeah I stole this)

Irrelevant Demotivational pilfered direct from Badass of the Week

 Confession time: I've been sitting on one of my favorite websites for a while now, waiting for the perfect moment to share it with you, the public. As it happens there is no perfect moment. And it's possible that many of you have already heard of it.

 http://www.badassoftheweek.com/

Today is Friday, and that means that at some point today there will be an updated Badass of the Week.



I've been working through the BotW entries for a while now and they really don't ever get old. I find that they are best savored one or two at a time, because there's only so much facepunching, sackbusting badassery that the human mind can take before you start to desensitize, and that's not cool. None of the epic awesome that is Badass of the Week should be anything but epic and awesome.

The language from BotW can best be described as colorful, and as such isn't strictly SFW. (There are f-bombs, is what I'm saying.) But it's not unsophisticated, and fans of comic books (check), video games (check), history (check), esp. combat history (check), mythology (check), role playing games like D&D (check), and people/things that are awesome (check, and check) will enjoy the hell out of it.

My favorite recent paragraph (and there are many from which to choose) is from the entry on Buzz Aldrin. I'm well familiar with the history and hagiography of Aldrin, since he features in two excellent books: The Right Stuff and, more recently, Rocket Men (second book highly recommended). Anyway, here's my favorite extract from his bio on my new favorite website:

--------------
OK. Now this is the United States, and here in America you are free to believe whatever crazy ridiculous nonsense you want to believe. In fact, guys like Buzz Aldrin have fought wars to defend our right to say whatever the hell we want to say whenever we want to say it, no matter how much it makes us look like complete idiots/toolsheds/jackasses. But when you go up to a man, especially a hardass like Buzz Aldrin, look him in the eyes, and call him a "liar, a thief, and a coward" to his face, you also have the right to receive what's rightfully coming to you. And in this case, what's coming to you is a fucking punch in the mouth.

Buzz took one look at this guy, said nothing, and coldcocked that douche in the chops with a head-shatteringly badass face-punch that left him staggered and dazed. I'm not entirely sure what happened afterwards, but my guess is that the cops showed up, took one look at Buzz Aldrin, and then maced the shit out of the conspiracy theorist with a bunch of crazy tear gas pepper spray stuff and arrested him for violating every conceivable statute relating to "Criminal Dumbassery".
-------------

I emailed my cousin to suggest that he incorporate the BotW site content into his kids bedtime reading. The oldest is around 6 so he might be a little young for it. I'm hoping he set it aside for the future, because they are going to love it.

Now hear this!: 99% invisible

We love us some good design over here on GJAW, and we also have, umm, *views* about the health care system in this country.

In any case, here's an interesting 10 minute listen on how bloated inefficiency in health care can be redirected via good design and actually improve services AND cut costs. Weird, I know.

Despite what many Republicans would have you believe, one of the problems with government is not that they provide essential services. It's that they provide essential services inefficiently. It would be nice to see this type of efficiency injected into your local DMV office. It will never happen, but it would be nice.

99% Invisible-30- The Blue Yarn by Roman Mars

If you're of a mind you can review the 99% invisible blog.

Insert your own soundtrack

Normally you'd expect something from OK GO, but the sound of all the stuff clicking and snapping it's way around is pretty cool too.

With a special nod to my friend Scotley, who enjoys contraptions.

Yeah that looks about right

Got a new motorcycle helmet. Nothing wrong with the old helmet. But I wanted a new one, so I could switch it up now and again. Some days you want to rep the union jack, some days you want to rep Colin Edwards. Either way, really. It's pretty cool though.

In other news, the roommate got a new Bowflex Xtreme 2 SE for the garage. (Apparently It's so extreme that the 'e' couldn't handle it and bailed.) It will make all the exercise he's not getting a lot more convenient, if a bit pricey. He mentioned to me that he had a hard time getting to the gym because he wanted to get home to the dog. I said that the dog didn't seem to be an issue when he went to his girlfriend's house. So I'm skeptical, but whatever. He probably thinks motorcycles are silly. EVEN THOUGH THEY TOTALLY AREN'T. pffffffft.


The Harry Potter movie comes out today. I opted against the midnight showing but I'll make sure to get current early next week after the crowds thin out a little.

Now I must buy a pair of k-swiss shoes: Kenny F. Powers, MFCEO

Patrick Willis plays for my sort of semi-favorite team. If that's not reason enough, someone at k-swiss corporate actually greenlit this project. And paid people to make it. So, so rad.

"Now that K-Swiss is bigger than television and/or drugs, everybody's trying to get up in my f*cking slacks."

FYI: The language is about as far away from work-safe as possible. And also awesome.

Happy News

Rob, Kimberly, and daughter (from prev. marriage) Jordan

Went to a wedding a couple weeks ago. It takes me about that long to get my act together for these reports but whatever.

It was a lovely wedding, and I had a superb time. My friend Rob is about 10 years older than I am and he's been an inspiration to me in a lot of ways. He's one of those people that never has an unkind word to say about anyone, and he does it in such a way that I didn't notice until someone pointed it out. He just navigates his way through life being one of the nicest guys around. He's so relentlessly positive that I had a hard time taking him seriously at first, which probably says a lot more about my own shortcomings than I'd like to admit.

In the fitness world he's a name brand: he's got his own line of fitness and yoga videos, sponsored by Gatorade, travels around empowering people, encourages them to reach their full potential. If that all sounds corny and cheesy then I don't know what to tell you, except that sometimes corny and cheesy things are awesome.

Rob and Kimberly asked that we make a donation in lieu of a gift, so I made my donation to karting2live, an organization that works to empower people that have been injured in motorcycle crashes.

Thanks for reading.

Science is good for you: Wash your hands

Wash your hands, but don't bother with 'antibacterial' soaps unless you're scrubbing in for surgery or similar.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=scientists-discover-that-antimicrob-2011-07-05

Kick out the Jamz

Summer weather = summer anthems.
If you're not feeling this then you may need to turn it up a little louder.

I spent my Cuatro de Julio paddleboarding in Crystal Cove. It seemed like a better deal than a hangover. "Paddleboarding" might be giving it some credit. I mostly tried not to fall in while I was looking at the fish, leopard sharks, skates and stingrays. Ocean paddling is a bit more difficult than an afternoon cruise around Newport Harbor. Good times.

Speaking of making good choices on my favorite summer holiday, one acquaintance of mine was arrested for illegal fireworks. I'm not sure how much trouble he's in but I hope he got rid of the stuff his pyrotechnician neighbor gave him before he got caught. Cops tend to frown on unlicensed possession of high explosives. They tend to frown even further when you light them off in places where all fireworks are expressly illegal, like Newport Beach, CA. They're funny that way.

Turn up the Awesome for America

I wrote a long post about education spending and defense spending and stupidity and a bunch of other stuff that makes me write long blog posts but it was just too much Bad News. Bad News isn't good for traffic and no one reads that stuff anyway so I'm going to bury it between some other posts about awesome shit that is awesome and if you want to read it later you can.

 So here's a link to a recipe for a delicious cocktail:

http://www.slate.com/id/2298202/pagenum/all/

For example, here's the instructions on Ice:
Thirty pounds of party ice is not too much. Some will melt. Some will be used with the excess of mixers listed below to concoct nonalcoholic drinks for children, designated drivers, and persons treating chlamydia with antibiotics. Some will be placed in sandwich bags and applied to areas of injury.

I'm thinking of putting it together at some point this weekend.

I write the long posts mostly because people say all kinds of stupid shit and although none of that stuff will change anyone's mind it's nice to have in your back pocket when someone says something ridiculous, as when my co-worker pointed out the divine providence of the Omaha beach landing in WWII in the break room the other day. He didn't mention what God was doing while Hitler's SS was gassing/starving/burning/shooting 6+ million Jews. I'm sure there was a really good theological explanation. Actually I'm sure there wasn't, but that didn't shake his firm belief. The whole thing was depressing and weird. 

Anyway, the point is that it's fourth of July weekend so I hope you are having a fine old time celebrating the birthday of the world's greatest nation.