YouTube Tuesday: Oh good grief!

Although Christmas isn't my favorite time of year (at best, it's a distant third behind the kickoff of football season in the fall and Independence Day in the summer), I have to say that I'm a little more excited about it this year than in years past.

For one thing, this is the first time in probably 15 years that my supermodel wife and I are staying home for Christmas instead of driving all over God's creation visiting relatives.

Also, it's the first time that our four-year-old daughter is really "into" Christmas. She's trying hard to be good all the time, but because she's human (and she hasn't had much practice at that), it's difficult.

The best part of parenthood is seeing the world through your kid's eyes. Lately, we've been watching all of the old classic animated Christmas shows on TV. This takes me back to my childhood, while allowing me to experience the holidays anew with my daughter.

And then, we see this week's YouTube Tuesday entry. What a great piece of creativity, melding a classic Christmas cartoon with one of the best comedies on TV today in Scrubs.

It appears that this was created especially by the writers and actors of Scrubs (the voices are genuine) for their Christmas party. And thanks to the magic of YouTube and the interwebs, we get to enjoy it today.

Merry Christmas!



tagged: movie, YouTube, video, Charlie Brown, Christmas, pop culture, Scrubs, family

Survey Says... just your average joe

You Are 60% "Average American"

You are average because you don't make New Year's resolutions. You are not average since you have (at least) a college degree.

How "Average American" Are You?

tagged: survey, meme, average, American

TV Moment of the Week

I know, I know, some people consider the SNL sketch of the "D--k in a Box" to be the best clip of the week. But to me, it's a little low-brow, a little too easy.

No, I have to give the nod of TV Moment of the Week to a barbershop quartet explaining to Peter Griffin how a vasectomy works. Funny and educational...



tagged: movie, YouTube, video, Family Guy, vasectomy, Peter Griffin, pop culture, barbershop quartet

Circle gets the square

Not feeling very inspired lately, so I'm going back to Europe (figuratively, not literally unfortunately).

Here's a pic I shot during our last trip to Paris in 2001 (pre-Sept. 11). I love Paris in the springtime.



Your comments and critiques are welcome.

tagged: Paris, France, Place de la Concorde, photo, travel, culture

Liberty tour

There have been lots of rave reviews lately about the recently re-opened Liberty Memorial and the National World War I museum.

I haven't had a chance to visit since it reopened (although I was impressed with the museum when I visited it before all of the expansion and renovation), but it is definitely high up on my to do list for my upcoming Christmas vacation.

But until that vacation gets here in a couple of weeks, I found this link that I wanted to share. It's a video montage produced by Take2 productions in KC. Check it out.

(You'll have to click the image, since T2's website didn't include embed code. Follow the links on the T2 page to Work>Longform>click the Liberty Memorial pic. C'mon T2, get with the program!).



tagged: Kansas City, Liberty, Memorial, World War I, WWI,museum, history, video

The blind leading the stupid

I don't see what can possibly go wrong with this. I mean what possible harm could come from giving blind people firearms?

Lawmaker aims to allow the blind to hunt

A Texas lawmaker is aiming to allow the blind to hunt. Texas State Representative Edmund Kuempel has introduced a measure that would allow blind people to hunt any game that sighted people can currently pursue.

He hopes it will be passed after the legislature reconvenes in January though he does not expect it to come into affect until 2008.

"This opens up the fun of hunting to additional people, and I think that's great," Kuempel told Reuters.

Of course, I suspect the blind hunters only do it for the jerky.

By the way, I think a better headline would have been "Lawmaker wants to legalize hunting for blind people."

tagged: Texas, blind, hunting, rifle, crazy

Congratulations!

At 3:32 p.m. Central time on Dec. 12, 2006, my blog's odometer turned 30,000 page view.

It's a humble milestone on this humble blog -- nothing like the bazillions of hits other more popular blogs get, but I thought it would be fun to mark the occasion nonetheless.

So if your IP address is 66.45.148.163 on Sunflower Cablevision's host 163.148.cm.sunflower.com, and you live in Lawrence, Kan., and you came here from BlogKC, and you're using Firefox 1.5 on Mac OS X, well congratulations lucky number 30,000!

Leave us a comment to let us know how it feels!

tagged: blog, Internet, Lawrence, Kansas

YouTube Tuesday: It's Tricky

Mashup culture is at its height nowadays. It's not like it was when I was a young buck, where you either consumed the intellectual produce of others or created original works for others to consume.

Now, the creative output of anyone can be taken by anyone and added, mixed, and mashed up with the creative output of anyone else to form a new work.

This example from YouTube is a mashup of pop cultural icons from the 80s through today. The old-school soundtrack really takes me back, although Run DMC is probably spinning in their collective metaphorical grave.



tagged: movie, YouTube, video, Run DMC, Tricky, pop culture, mashup, art

Putting the fun in Funkhouser

A couple of weeks ago, I posted an observation on the resemblance of KCMO mayoral candidate Mark Funkhouser to fictional Middle Earth wizard Saruman.

It may have been a cheap shot since, after all, I don't know Mr. Funkhouser. By all accounts he's a upstanding, honest and honorable guy. But my comparison, and similar others, are all in good fun.

And to his credit, Mr. Funkhouser has joined in the fun with some self-deprecating humor. I received this email from him last night:

Hi!

Just want you to know I'm now a member of the local blogosphere. Check out my site, and you'll see my response to your post about my looks!

http://funkhouserformayor.blogspot.com/

I hope you'll take the time to check it out now and then. I'm going to post as often as possible.

Yours very truly,

Mark Funkhouser

I particularly like the Spock comparison. Kudos and balls to Mr. Funkhouser for being a good sport. Let's hope he learns to use Blogger's "comments" function soon (hint hint)

tagged: Kansas City, mayor, Funkhouser , Spock, Saruman

Damned

It just goes to show that those idle utterances can have a greater impact than you intended.

I was reading Xavier Onassisizzle's recent post about Perspective the other day and uttered an under-the-breath "Damn you XO!" when I realized he was typing out his ass and he didn't have any idea what he was talking about.

Well, it turns out someone was listening. I received this email today:

Hello Emawkc,
Thank you for your recent addition of Xavier Onasis into the bowels of my fiery abyss. The little miscreant’s name has been added to my wall of the damned, and you’re welcome to visit at any time. You don’t know how happy I am to see this lousy S.O.B. What can I say, I’m all giddy.

View the damned

Eternally yours,
Lucifer

Holy crap, I guess you never know whose listening. Sorry about that, XO. But you know you had it coming.

tagged: Lucifer, damned, hell, humor