Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Inappropriate, But Still Funny

By now, you are probably sick of reading stories about Michael Jackson.

Apart from his death eclipsing another little story about what's going on in Iran, and the general wackiness displayed by his fans that prompted Jesse Jackson to come out and urge them not to kill themselves; someone told me by far the best story over the weekend.

I play softball with a guy who is a supervisor for the T bus drivers (for those of you who don't know, the T is the public transportation system for the Greater Boston area).

He told me after his shift on Friday (the day after Micheal died), he noticed several of the African American bus drivers were kind of upset.

He asked them what was bothering them. The answer he got was - throughout the day, white people were coming on the bus and telling them that they were sorry about Michael.

By the way, you can still buy the shirt for $6.

Friday, June 19, 2009

Trying too Hard on Facebook

Everyone have at least once tried to put something witty in their Facebook status. You know, something to show your friends that you are intelligent, interesting, and maybe fun to hang with.





But when you try too hard, you get something like this:

LOOK AT ME: is making laksa for dinner, but is jonesing for bacon mac & cheese.
Yesterday at 5:04 PM


See what she did thre? Threw out an exotic dish (not just a dish - mind you, a street dish), but closed with the ordinary for the irony.

Right now, this person is hitting that refresh button, begging for someone to notice and ask her that obvious question.

Somebody who doesn't know how to use Google
at 5:10pm June 18

laksa?


Bingo!

LOOK AT ME:
at 5:14pm June 18

it's maylasian street food. Soup with noodles. Lots of curry and shrimp paste and cilantro and... okay, now that's what I DO want for dinner.


Note the time stamp - 4 minutes - you know she had the response all ready to go.

I know this person, and she is not Malaysian. With this knowledge of some obscure Asian dish. She has immediately elevated herself to the top of the list amongst her white friends.

Somebody who doesn't know how to use Google
at 5:16pm June 18

OMG that sounds like awesome comfort food. Not that bacon mac & cheese didn't sound like awesome comfort food...hmm, maybe that's what I'LL make for dinner!! Thanks for the idea!


See what I mean? this person is the enabler, but an amateur one at that. If they had asked our laksa eating friend here where and when she learned about the dish, she could have gone on for hours telling her tales about her travels. Not just staying in nice western hotels either, probably some backpacking adventure where she discovered the street dish.

Then, here comes people like me to ruin her fun:

Person C
at 8:49pm June 18

isn't that a dog?

Me
NO! you would use parsley, mint or basil for dogs.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Now I Feel Old

It's one thing to see stuff that was popular when you were a kid being brought back as "nostalgia", it's another when you see things that were "in" when you were an adult now being called nostalgia.

Remember those Starter jackets? They're coming back. Iconix is resurrecting the brand and has signed Tony Romo to a deal promoting the brand at Wal-Mart.

I remember Starter from the 90's, seemed like everyone in Boston had one of those Starter Bruins jackets (yeah, the B's were popular once before all the front runners came on board last year). The company went belly up back in 2002, and the brand seemed to disappear overnight.


Entertainment Weekly has a nice write up of the Rise and Fall of the Starter Jacket.

Yep, the brand once favored by hip-hop artists, gangsters, and suburban gangster wannabes now have TO's quaterback (can't say the quaterback of the Dallas Cowboys, Starter does not have a deal with the NFL) at the helm piloting the resurrection.


Now I am curious if anyone is going to bring back the GoBots (the Starter brand as the Transformers) of the gangster NFL apparel - the Apex One Pro Line jackets?