Thursday, June 30, 2005

CHEKIT: A derby of a different sort.


I could tell you how much fun I had the first time I went to Sycamore Speedway - but to understand the mud, the fumes, the cheap beer, the families, the mullets and the lunatics driving with their hoods stuck open - you have to experience it for yourself. Come on. Don't look down your nose at motor sports, as I mistakenly did. Yes, I know it's a haul out of the city - but so what? What else is there to do? Drink warm beer and contract food poisoning at the Taste?

We'll be out in the sticks Friday, around abouts 7:30, 8 p.m. See your punk asses there.

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

CHEKIT: Chekin' in with Sarah


We haven't been posting much of Miz Sara's goodness here of late. Time to fix that, yo.
How often to you get to say to yourself, while trying to get your bearings in an unfamiliar setting, "Well, I'll just follow the guy with the lobster codpiece."

Science is hot.
I miss you, I love you, New York, and every hour of Sara, besides.

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

CHEKIT: Back in the USSR


It would almost be worth living in a totalitarian regime if I had the chance to look at and design posters like these all day. Propaganda schwag from the Soviet Union ROCKS SO HARD.

Translation: "We, the October's children of our homeland, are faithful to the wise legacy of Liz Phair."
[via BB]

Monday, June 27, 2005

CHEKIT: Toothpaste for Dinner


Slate brings to our attention what they call "the most addictive comic on the web":
Dorothy Parker once wrote that the characters in James Thurber's cartoons looked like "unbaked cookies." The Webcomic Toothpaste for Dinner tends to make even the doughiest Thurber look like photorealism. The characters all have oblong heads, three-fingered hands, and stacked eyes like flounders.

They are noseless and earless and always on the brink of perspectival disaster. The handwritten text that sometimes dominates the drawings often flirts with illegibility. The art is so bad it suggests some kind of tragic and inspiring back story: an artist soldiering bravely on after losing his thumbs in a bear attack or a factory accident.

I'd suggest breakfast and lunch, too.

Sunday, June 26, 2005

CHEKIT [and BOOK]: What me, and every other guy in America's been doing with their spare time. No, not THAT. Well, okay - in ADDITION to that.











Watching this.

Reading this.

And this.

And this.

And this.

And, obviously, playing this.

Understand that, yes, women are playing poker, too - and a lot of it. It's just that I'm convinced that those who aren't have better things to do with their time. Us guys just can't help ourselves.

Thursday, June 23, 2005

CHEKIT: All the New Yorkers. All of them.

While visiting friends in Detroit the summer after my sophomore year of high school, we happened upon a garage sale. Looking for something to do while waiting for our other friend Hayato to get off work, we pulled in and picked about the old jelly glasses and board games - and came upon a table full of old New Yorkers. This was back when I thought Garrison Keillor was one of the literary lights of the age, and had bought the occasional issue in hopes that one of his stories would appear inside. The dates on the covers corresponded with a time during which he'd contributed a great deal. This was pre-Remnick, pre-Brown, when the fiction was up front - and lots of it - certainly more than what appears now.

"How much?" I asked.

"25 cents apiece," said the woman sitting at the obligatory card table.

They were, for the most part, in perfect condition - untouched, I found out, by the teenage English students who were the woman's former charges, themselves unmoved by Charles Barsotti's thick, wry doodlings or Updike's linguistic cross-hatchings, no matter how much prodding she gave them. There must of been a hundred of them.

I felt for a thin, crumpled wad of bills in my pocket.

"How much," I asked, "for all of them?"

She thought for a moment.

"Five bucks," she said.

The box was turd-heavy, and Chris complained the whole rest of the weekend that there were abandoned houses to be drinking secreted bottles of vodka in - that I should get my ass to the library if I wanted those magazines so badly. Indeed, as I was leaving Detroit, the look on the face of the clerk at the airport, sulkily wrapping shipping tape around the copier paper box full to bursting with Talk of the Town, seemed to say the same.

Still, though - the best five bucks I ever spent. Because anyone can go to a garage sale and find a box full of stories - but how many of us can claim to have discovered, for five dollars, in amongst the Joyce Carol Oates and Graham Coster stories and Asberry poetry, what you want to do for the rest of your life?

15 years later, and for $95 more, you can find your own lucky little card table, too. [Thanks, Jen]

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

CHEKIT: OPEN LETTER TO KANSAS SCHOOL BOARD


I'm not even gonna explain this one:
You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s. For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature.
Just know that I am a believer. And that He is a wise and just pasta, indeed. [via BB]

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

MUZIK: Today is the greatest day Joe's ever known.


The guns of the S.S. Dispatches turn towards Omaha, and Commander Billy Corgan fires the following post directly at our friend Joe:
Today is a special day in my life as it marks the release of my very first solo album TheFutureEmbrace. For over 17 years I have been proud to represent Chicago as an artist through my words and music, and am continually humbled by the undying love that I have been shown from this city as one of its native sons...

When I played the final Smashing Pumpkins show on the night of December 2, 2000, I walked off the Metro stage believing that I was forever leaving a piece of my life behind. I naively tried to start a new band, but found that my heart wasn't in it. I moved away to pursue a love that I once had but got lost. So I moved back home to heal what was broken in me, and to my surprise I found what I was looking for. I found that my heart is in Chicago, and that my heart is in The Smashing Pumpkins.

For a year now I have walked around with a secret, a secret I chose to keep. But now I want you to be among the first to know that I have made plans to renew and revive The Smashing Pumpkins. I want my band back, and my songs, and my dreams. In this desire I feel I have come home again.

Joe? Joe? You cracked your head on the floor there pretty hard just now. Are you okay? Joe? Wake UP, Joe!

The news is made all the more sweet by the smoke he was blowing up EW's ass just a few weeks ago.

[via Stereogum]

Monday, June 20, 2005

CHEKIT: Divorce Granted For Couple In Alleged Murder-For-Hire Plot


Mary Elizabeth sent along what may possibly be the best example of "irreconcilable differences":
An Arkansas judge has granted a divorce to a Fouke man whose wife allegedly plotted to have him killed earlier this year. The ruling ends the volatile 13-year marriage between James Edward Byrd and Sherry Dawn Byrd, who is awaiting trial on charges of criminal attempt to commit capital murder.
It's sad when two kids just can't make it work. [thanks, Mary Elizabeth!]

Sunday, June 19, 2005

CHEKIT: Dance Dance Immolation!


More DDR insanity - and don't misunderstand me - I enjoy interesting hacks of comsumer products as much as the next person - but this is a little messed up:
Dance Dance Immolation is an adaptation of the popular arcade video game Dance Dance Revolution, but with fire! Basically, you play DDR; when you do well, the computer shoots big propane blasts up into the air. When you do poorly, it shoots you in the face with flamethrowers. Yes, you, as in your actual corporeal body. And yes, flamethrowers, like the kind that are on fire.
Disco inferno, indeed. (Sorry. Couldn't help it.) [via BB]

Saturday, June 18, 2005

CHEKIT: Turkish Turkeys.


Get your credit cards out. Guadalupe alerts us to a fortuitous confluence of popular culture, feckless greed and cavalier disregard for international copyright law - God bless the Turks:
The Turkish film industry has a proud (well, actually shameless) tradition of remaking Hollywood classics on a budget that wouldn't pay for lunch for a typical Hollywood movie crew. Now you can host your own Mystery Science Theatre party with these incredibly awful and hilarious rip-offs from the Turkey film factories.

SEE . . . The Tin Man portrayed as a fruity homosexual!


SEE . . . E.T. played by a midget wearing a garbage bag!


SEE . . . The most incredible spray of pea-soup puke in the history of the cinema!


SEE . . . Darth Vader enter his space chamber with his evil robot, an upside-down garbage can on top of a garbage can with a water cooler and a police siren on top of that.

Sweet, sweet candy. I'm waiting for their version of "Episode I." I'm betting it couldn't be any worse than the original.

Friday, June 17, 2005

CHEKIT: "Blue Moon Detective Agency."


There was an NPR interview with The Sopranos’ David Chase a few years back, where he makes the case that - more so than any other form - the episodic television series of today are the greatest stages for character development in the history of story. And that long before the Six Feet Unders, the Sopranos-es, the Gilmore Girls and the Buffys, at the dawn of this modern era of dramedy - there was David and Maddie.

If you don't know how cool Moonlighting was - is - ever will be - then you never will know - or haven't seen it yet. If you missed the reruns on Bravo a few years back, get down on your knees and shout up to God "Thank you, Lord, for the bounty of this day!"

Seasons 1 & 2 were recently released on DVD.

Recently, I asked Weeble: Hey - why do you think Moonlighting rocks out so hard?

And in reply, I got this:

This is all I have to say:

David Addison: We're looking for a man with a mole on his nose.
Security Officer: A mole on his nose?
Maddie Hayes: A mole on his nose.
Security Officer: [to Maddie] What kind of clothes?
Maddie Hayes: [to David] What kind of clothes?
David Addison: What kind of clothes do you suppose?
Security Officer: What kind of clothes do I suppose would be worn by a man with a mole on his nose? Who knows?
David Addison: Did I happen to mention, did I bother to disclose, that this man that we're seeking with the mole on his nose? I'm not sure of his clothes or anything else, except he's Chinese, a big clue by itself.
Maddie Hayes: How do you do that?
David Addison: Gotta read a lot of Dr. Seuss.
Security Officer: I'm sorry to say, I'm sad to report, I haven't seen anyoneat all of that sort. Not a man who's Chinese with a mole on his nose with some kind of clothes that you can't suppose. So get away from this door and get out of this place, or I'll have to hurt you - put my foot in your face.

"Some walk by night, babe...we'll fly by day..."

Thursday, June 16, 2005

CHEKIT: "man who catch fly with chopstick accomplish anything..."


...and while I don't personally approve of benevolent, ass-kicking, grammatically-challenged Asian stereotypes, I do approve of this Flash game, which you'll find yourself playing long after they've carried Daniel-san off the field of victory. [via SH]

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

CHEKIT: Bonus Stage!


I find it funny that the people most likely to find this the most amusing were, back in the day, the ones least likely to get to this particular level in the game. 1UP indeed. [via Kotaku]

Monday, June 13, 2005

CHEKIT: Catching up with the cool kids.


It's good to catch up with people. At a barbecue on Saturday, I saw Jen of J&J for the first time in months and yapped about her new job and her poor dogs - and the hope for a return to the Tokyo they both loved. Kimko, whom Jen and I both worked with back in Columbia and whom I hadn't seen in many moons served up the snacks, and we talked a little about the oddness of hanging out with your ex and her cool-ass new venture (those are some of her products above, top right and bottom left.) Her roommate, Heidi, is an old friend of ours, funny and talented and just cool enough to hang out with us. Just. (Just kidding, Zeiger! Though I will confess something - for all these years, until you sent me the URL for your great little portfolio, I thought it was spelled "Ziegler.")

Friday, June 10, 2005

POLITIK: MSNBC's correspondent gets a new title

The graphic they're referring to, in broadcast TV parlance, is called a "Super". That kind of mistake, in broadcast TV parlance, is called a "major-league piss-pants-funny fuck-up." [via Wonkette, via FishbowlDC]

Thursday, June 09, 2005

LL&CB: I usually hate online surveys, but...


10. Name three things you like about the WB dramedy Seventh Heaven (take your time):

12. Do you think God is a woman, a man, or a very angry terrier?


24. Do you think Kermit and Miss Piggy's romance was a strange yet effective attempt at demonstrating a functioning multi-cultural relationship, or was it a thin excuse on the part of Jim Henson to show some nasty pig-on-frog action?

27. Do you think your parents will approve of the person you end up marrying, or are they both deceased?
GET YOUR ANSWERS BACK TO YOUR FRIENDS AS SOON AS YOU CANNNN!!!!!!!

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

POLITIK: F Dubya


Wonkette confirms this Washington State license plate actually did exist, and hung on the car of its owner for a few months before some tightass over at the DMV figured out that the F didn't stand for "Fabulous," "Fantastic" or "Funkalicious." The owner is now trying to pay some bills and bring some joy into a lucky liberal's heart by selling the plate on eBay. [via Wonkette]

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

CHEKIT: Ike Turner's Guide to Restoring America's Honor


The charming, loving ex-husband of Tina sends the US some words of wisdom:
OK, first things first, America. Stop smacking the bitch. I know sometimes you get caught up in the heat of the moment and you don't know when you've gone too far. Sometimes you just get so mad sometimes. I know you tried to warn Iraq. You told Iraq to stop provoking you. But Iraq wouldn't listen. Iraq was being stubborn and ignorant, and you had to teach Iraq a lesson. Now Iraq's all beaten and bruised and bleeding everywhere, fucking up the good carpet. It's time to chill the fuck out, America. You don't wanna kill Iraq. You just wanna show Iraq how much you love it. It's just sometimes you go a little crazy is all.

Monday, June 06, 2005

MUZIK: What's the Worst Ad Song Ever?


Seth Stevenson over at Slate asked for readers to send in their votes for the poorest use of popular music in a commercial. And they made their cases pretty emphatically:
"No doubt, the ad whizzes at GM's agency thought that tying the 'new' Cadillacs to the loud and very male Led Zeppelin's 'Rock and Roll' would be viscerally a great idea. But the song is about not getting any! Those of us who know the lyrics (and let's face it, there aren't that many to learn) know the song is about a guy complaining that it's been a 'lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time.' So is the message buy a Caddy and forget about getting laid? Argh!"
I'm just waiting for Popsicle Brands to start promoting their frozen lemonade with "The Lemon Song."

Saturday, June 04, 2005

Friday, June 03, 2005

CHEKIT: Appoggiatura!


Congratulations to 2005's spellin'-pimp Anurag Kashyap, who, in the 19th round of the National Spelling Bee, went to town on "appoggiatura," and took the title. He was seen last night on Jennifer 8. Lee's balcony surrounded by fresh-faced interns, doing champagne bongs.

Other folks, however, are cursing his dumb luck.

No disrespect to ESPN's breathless and wholly unironic coverage, but for my money, the best-spun tale of spelling heartbreak and victory belongs to Spellbound, the 2002 documentary about eight kids making their way to the finals in DC. It gives Hoosiers a run for its money.


Gotta love Harry.

Thursday, June 02, 2005

CHEKIT: Pint Lock.

Doug Hertle sent this letter to the folks over at Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream a few years back:
This is not really a flavor idea, but a necessity I truly believe. The ONLY problem with the "Ben and Jerry's" ice cream is the mental turmoil I go through after I have purchased it. I currently live with three other guys between 21 and 25, and I live in constant fear of leaving my Ben and Jerry's alone in the freezer!! I can't concentrate on anything while I am at work, or out running errands. When the freezer opens, and someone catches a mere glimpse of that golden little container of eternal goodness, everything else in the freezer comparatively looks like tofu. I have tried my attempts of distraction, for example, putting a carton of an expensive Seattle based coffee manufacture's ice cream right in front of my little treasure, but to no avail!! Getting to the point, I STRONGLY suggest selling "Ben and Jerry's" in stainless steel containers with little padlocks on them. I can understand the price difference with this suggestion, but I think we would all benefit greatly from it. It would give the world a much needed peace of mind.

P.S. bulletproof stainless steel container might not be a bad idea either!!
And so, the Pint Lock was born.



Which is to say: Stay away from my Chunky Monkey, muthafuker. [via BB]

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

POLITIK: Deep Throat! Dude! DUDE!



Lots of people wondered. Many guessed. But until yesterday, only some folks over at Vanity Fair, WoodStein and their editor, Ben Bradlee, knew. But now, the world knows.


And if not for W. Mark Felt, what would modern journalism - what would Washington - what would this country look like now? I'm glad I don't have to wonder. Many others are, too.