December 2010
58 posts
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WatchA time lapse of workers transforming Heinz Field in Pittsburgh from a football stadium into a hockey stadium for the Winter Classic. The Winter Classic takes place on Saturday.
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Hockey players are tougher (or crazier) than you...
One of the things that sticks out most about the HBO’s 24/7 series hyping the Winter Classic between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Washington Capitals on New Year’s Day* is the faces of the players in the close-ups.
* Besides Capitals’ manager Bruce Boudreau’s propensity for using the word “fuck” of course.
You know the classic reality show interview, a person...
Game show contestants lose $800K because of error...
Someone at Fox is probably going to get fired over this. Or at least, someone at Fox should get fired for this.
On the game show “Million Dollar Money Drop” a boyfriend and girlfriend were asked which was sold first — Post-It Notes or the Sony Walkman. They said Post-It Notes. And they were right.
But Fox said they were wrong.
In an embarrassing about-face, the show’s...
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WatchA sound-collage of musicians who died in 2010. Even if you hadn’t heard of the specific musicians you probably heard of something that they were involved in as this collage from The New York Times Magazine shows.
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Spiderman Broadway show gets through performance...
It is probably a bad sign when it is news that no one got hurt during your musical. Not only that, it looks like it wasn’t affected by the technical problems that plagued earlier performances.
There appeared to be no problems with a new safety plan that involved two stagehands, not one, rigging actors into their flying and acrobatic harnesses for the 38 maneuvers that involve aerial...
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Facebook: Young people talk about themselves, old...
Facebook’s data team took a look at the status updates of the services users. They sorted the words used into 68 categories and then had a whole lot of data; after all Facebook is only behind Google on the list of most popular websites in the world and is the website where people waste, er, spend the most time.
Anyway, here is part of the Facebook data team’s results:
Younger...
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NPR examines strip clubs' role in Atlanta hip hop
I’m not sure that Atlanta strip clubs are a place that I’d expect NPR to go for a story. But Elizabeth Blair of All Things Considered went to Atlanta to examine the role of strip clubs in making hip hop hits.
Hip-hop producers have been breaking records in Atlanta strip clubs for a long time now — at least as far back as 2003, when Lil Jon was doing it with songs like, “Get...
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Bowl game to go one despite flooding at stadium
You may have heard that California is having some pretty intense storms hitting them and have so for the past few days.
How bad? Check out this photo of the flooding of Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego where Navy and San Diego State are going to play in a bowl game tomorrow according to bowl officials:
PHOTO BY K.C. ALFRED
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Replica of Koufax's perfect game recreated in...
OK, this is awesome; a couple of Jewish brothers, and their roommate, recreated Sandy Koufax’s perfect game in edible form. And don’t forget to check out how they made it, why they made it and pictures, including details recreated throughout the replica.
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Shady celebrity boxing promoter wants Will Smith,...
Some shady guy who runs something that he calls the “Hollywood Boxing Federation” has offered $1 million each to Will Smith and Mark Wahlberg to fight. I’m not sure if Damon Feldman, whose promoted fights included C- and D-list celebrities like Danny Bonaduce and Tonya Harding, understands that Smith and Wahlberg are actually huge movie stars with better things to do.
Like not...
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NFL dominates TV
The NFL is the biggest thing when it comes to TV. The only thing that is perhaps comparable in its dominance is American Idol and there is some thought that Idol’s reign of terror over the TV landscape may be coming to an end soon.
But the NFL? In an age of declining ratings shares, more and more people continue to tune into the action on the gridiron.
NBC’s Sunday night games are up 10...
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Spiderman Broadway show continues to be a disaster
Yeah, this Spiderman Broadway musical (called “Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark”) is a boondoggle. It is way over-budget, has been pushed back dozens of times and is completely unsafe for the actors and maybe even the audience.
From a performance tonight:
Theatergoers who attended Monday’s performance of “Spider-Man,” a $65 million musical laden with complicated aerial stunts, said...
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Man who shares name with Giants punter gets hate...
It’s all a case of mistaken identity. When one football player made a huge mistake, a journalist who shares his name saw what fans thought of him.
Matt Dodge, the punter for the New York Giants, screwed up yesterday. Coach Tom Coughlin told him to punt the ball out of bounds with 12 seconds to go instead of putting the ball in DeSean Jackson’s hands.
Jackson is one of the most...
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Pure awesomeness: Bret from Flight of the...
There is going to be a new Muppets movie and it will feature music from Bret McKenzie. Along with Jemaine Clement, McKenzie was half of the comedy music duo and cult sensation Flight of the Conchords.
This is the band that brought us such great songs as the post-apocalyptic themed song for robots called “The Humans Are Dead.”
Anyway, he will be writing some music for the new Muppets...
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Old Spice dominated viral videos in 2010
Advertising Age has a weekly “Viral Video” chart to see which viral video campaigns have been the most-watched viral videos in a certain week. And, thanks to an inventive social media campaign, Old Spice dominated the year-end chart with four of the top ten viral campaigns.
Old Spice videos took first, second and fourth. A Doritos ad took third and Nike’s World Cup video rounded...
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The story behind the infamous Billy Ripken "fuck...
There is one baseball card that a lot of people know about even if they don’t know much about baseball cards. It is Billy Ripken (yes, brother of Cal Ripken, Jr.). It was a normal card, a player standing with a bat slung over his shoulder, mostly empty seats behind him.
The difference in this one? The handle of the bat says “fuck face” on it. And for some reason the people at...
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Lunar eclipse will happen on winter solstice
This is pretty cool stuff from NASA on the lunar eclipse that will happen tonight/tomorrow morning:
This lunar eclipse falls on the date of the northern winter solstice. How rare is that? Total lunar eclipses in northern winter are fairly common. There have been three of them in the past ten years alone. A lunar eclipse smack-dab on the date of the solstice, however, is unusual. Geoff Chester...
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WatchThe WEC went out with a bang when Anthony Pettis pulled out an incredible wall-walking kick on lightweight champion Ben Henderson. It didn’t knock Henderson out, but Pettis won the fight by decision — including by just one round on two judges cards.
If things had played out differently (say, he misses the kick and Henderson takes him down while he’s off-balance), he could have...
Caps Lock may be on the way out
Google’s new laptop, the Cr-48, has something new — or rather, it takes out something outdated and old.
The computer has all kinds of new features—Chrome OS, a simplified design, and free broadband. But perhaps the boldest change is Google’s decision to ditch the Caps Lock key. In its place is a Search button, denoted with the image of a magnifying glass. Users can still...
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Man wins contest for putting "I smoke crack rocks"...
Gabriel Parent from Carnegie Mellon University won the 2010 PhD Challenge which called for people to get the phrase “I smoke crack rocks” into a peer-reviewed, academic paper.
Indeed it proved to be a daunting task, as there were only three submissions the entire year. But the reviewing committee’s decision was unanimous: Gabriel’s bold writing style seamlessly weaved the special...
WatchWe can all stop playing, Stephen Colbert won Twitter.
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Owner of The Atlantic calls customer who made...
The magazine The Atlantic is profitable for the first time in a decade. So they did something pretty damn cool:
Profitability is a new enough concept at The Atlantic that some there seem almost giddy about it. [Owner David G.] Bradley asked his accounting department to find out which subscriber’s check officially put the company into the black. They pinpointed a woman from Livingston, Tenn.,...
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Flashback to Ripken's streak ending
Before Brett Favre, there was Cal Ripken, Jr. Well, only in that Ripken an Favre both had record-breaking streaks of consecutive games-played.
Here is how the Associated Press wrote about Ripken’s streak ending:
On his own terms and own turf, the Baltimore Orioles’ third baseman sat out of Sunday night’s game against the New York Yankeeswith just one week left in the season,...
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Brett Favre to profit off consecutive games streak...
What do you do when your streak of days at work ends? If you’re Brett Favre you sell footballs celebrating your record-long streak! (h/t @darrenrovell)
One of the most historic streaks ever in all of sports has come to an end. The NFL’s own Ironman Brett Favre has ended his consecutive starting game streak at 297. Chances are if your under 40 you don’t remember a time in the...
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WatchHere is the trailer for the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean movie. I am pretty sure that I saw the third one but I have no recollection as to what happened.
Anyway, if you like Johnny Depp acting like Keith Richards then here is a trailer for you.
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'Gulf oil spill' top Twitter trend of 2010
The top Twitter trend of 2010, according to the folks at Twitter, was the Gulf Oil Spill that shot millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico for months.
Three World Cup-themed trends also made the overall top-ten: FIFA World Cup, Vuvuzela and Pulpo Paul.
Justin Bieber was number 8.
Here are the overall top-ten:
1.Gulf Oil Spill
2.FIFA World Cup
3.Inception
4.Haiti Earthquake
...
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Less funny Arrested Development also canceled by...
Running Wilde, the sitcom by Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz and starring Will Arnett, will no longer appear on television, proving that a less funny version of a great, but failed, show will not get enough viewers to stay on the air.
If you didn’t watch the show, Arentt played a character that was like GOB, only rich. And Keri Russell played his love interest.
That’s...
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How Fox got the footage of the Metrodome roof...
The collapse of the Metrodome’s roof has to be the most-viewed new video on the internet over the past 24 hours. I got a few text messages from people asking me if I’d seen the video, something that rarely happens.
The USA Today found out how Fox got the video:
“It was already leaking,” NFL lead game producer Richie Zyontz said Sunday. “But we heard that’s...
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New Yorker's top story of the year was about the...
The secretive Koch brothers who fund a network of libertarian think tanks and other organizations throughout the country are interesting to many. So interesting that a profile (of sorts) of the two extremely wealthy businessmen and opponents of all things Barack Obama was the top story on The New Yorker’s website this year.
You can read the Koch brothers story here.
It beat out some stiff...
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SNL gets biggest ratings since season premiere
Last night’s Paul Rudd/Paul McCartney episode of Saturday Night Live got the biggest ratings since the Amy Poehler/Katy Perry season premiere.
I already highlighted the Julian Assange skit that I thought was pretty funny from last night’s show, but the What’s That Name skit and the digital short (which doesn’t seem to be available online) were also preetty funny.
Weekend...
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WatchHere is the video of the roof of the Metrodome in Minneapolis collapsing under the weight of the snow and ice after a storm.
The game between the New York Giants and Minnesota Vikings has been moved to Detroit tomorrow night.Detroit fans will probably be happy, as they are seeing a horrible game between Green Bay and Detroit right now.
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Cash Cab is (kind of) fake!
If you have dreams of going to New York City (or Chicago) and getting on Cash Cab, well, you probably won’t. Not because of the fact that there are a million cabs in The Bg Apple but because, well:
It’s long been a pretty well-kept secret, but the passengers on the Discovery Channel show aren’t just random travelers—they’re cast, just like actors or Oprah ultimate fans. The process...
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Adage column: Eliminate sweeps
Sweeps is one of those grand traditions in TV. All of the TV networks put forward their most eye-catching, gimmicky shows to get as high ratings as possible in a certain month to set the advertising rates.
Does it sound archaic? Well it is. And Brad Adgate says that it is time for the practice to end. One reason is that cable networks don’t care about this schedule.
In today’s...
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Comedy Central has a new logo
Comedy Central has changed the logo that it has had throughout its Daily Show and Colbert Show-led rise.
Comedy Central has a new logo — which may seem tangentially to put YouTube on notice.
On straightforward boxy, simple background, there’s a small “c” which is encircled by another larger, backwards “c”. Below that, in a minimal looking font, appears...
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Infamous Cabrini-Green high rise closes
The infamous Cabrini-Green public housing developments is officially closed after its last tenant left on Thursday.
For pundits and politicians, the once-sprawling development on the Near North Side has long been a symbol — and a scapegoat— for all that is wrong with public housing. They saw Cabrini, and the city’s other massive high-rise public housing developments, as hothouses for drugs,...
Great "one-season wonders" in TV since 1996
My favorite TV critic, Alan Sepinwall, honored the late, great, recently canceled Terriers with his ten favorite “one-season wonders” in his time as a TV critic.
Here’s my favorite of the ten:
“Undeclared” (FOX, 2001-02): Apatow tried to learn from the “Freaks and Geeks” failure with this follow-up series, set in a college’s freshman dorm. Gone...
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Protesters damage Prince Charles' car over tuition...
When we get massive tuition increases here in the United States it usually results in harshly worded letters to the editor and an op-ed in the student newspaper. In England? Well…
According to The Independent:
“Charles and Camilla were travelling to the Royal Variety Performance in central London when they were targeted by protesters demonstrating against the rise in tuition...
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2010 correction of the year: Amazongate
Every year, the blog “Regret The Error” gives out its awards for the error of the year, correction of the year and other such awards from newspapers and magazines. Here is this year’s error of the year as described by Regret The Error:
The Sunday Times led with one of the more damning reports about the emails. Headlined, “UN Climate Panel Shamed by Bogus Rainforest...
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UFC boss says George St. Pierre is a bigger star...
UFC President Dana White says that UFC welterweight champion and one of the best pound-for-pound fighters in the world George St. Pierre is a bigger star than hockey legend Wayne Gretzky.
“This dude [St. Pierre] is a billion times more famous than any other athlete that’s ever come out of Canada, including Wayne Gretzky,” White said. “I like Wayne Gretzky. I was just with...
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