Category Archives: Blogroll

Travolta… no reason I ask

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Cheese, baby!

From Defamer:

Every once in a while, a reader will send in something just interesting or odd enough to totally mesmerize us, something that we we feel oddly compelled to share despite our complete inability to find a blogworthy angle. If you need a context for the attached photo, it’s merely a sign from San Diego’s Little Italy neighborhood, one of a series celebrating various famous Americans of Italian extraction, sponsored by a local business called Precious Cheese. If you need a further reason to stare, feel free to impose your own meaning on the serendipitous pairing of sponsor and overly earnest, past-his-prime actor, and muse that “Precious Cheese” is Travolta’s drag name or his term of endearment for his favorite private jet passenger. Either way, Precious Cheese will haunt our dreams tonight.

Only 89 shopping days till Christmas!

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So you might as well get some of those presents out of the way early. In case you’ve got any lonely and unpersonable men on your list, here’s the girl of their dreams, from eBay via Gawker: the Elizabeth Hurley fembot from Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.

But did you see the Star Trek with Harry Mudd?

Even though this version comes with a removable face (included!) and gun-mountable nipple ports, you can still exult in ample late-1990s Hurley cleavage. Only $1,500 on eBay, and no bids as of this writing. Get everyone in the book club to pitch in.

Update: Minimum bid is now $3,000. I guess even Fembots monitor their press!

the Meatpacking District: a history

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Gawker‘s current muse is the Meatpacking District, and in an attempt to exorcise the demons that have driven them to this absurd and unholy fascination, they’ve posted three times today on the topic, perhaps hoping to exhaust this obsession before it becomes embarassing.

Too late.

But this one is funny at least:

Approx. 4500 B.C.: Lenape tribe settle in New York area, shun Meatpacking District as “too canoe & kayak.”

1524: Florentine navigator Giovvani da Verrazzano becomes first person of Italian descent to visit area; gets handjob from drunken local after claiming to be “a large personne in the Spice trades…”

1626: New Netherland Director General Peter Minuit purchases Manhattan from local tribes for $24 plus promise to buy at least two bottles of Cristal in V.I.P. lounge.

1664: Director General Peter Stuyvesant surrenders New Amsterdam to the English; King Charles II declares territory “an area forewith to which we will send our most wretched, unpleasant personages”; early progenitors of various Sykes siblings sit up and take notice…

1985: Florent opens. Although even the neighborhood’s fiercest detractors acknowledge innovation and daring implicit in the opening of a bistro in the MPD at this point in time, it can only be viewed as the root of the poisonous tree from whence springs all evil…

2000: Samantha Jones moves from UES to MPD. Thousands of young women who are so unimaginative that they base their own lives on an HBO program written by a gay man and some dude who will eventually become the world’s most annoying advice columnist decide that the area is the next big thing.

Lotus opens. Had al-Qaeda bombed this place during certain evenings of its first year they would today be considered national heroes, feted at awards dinners and their features put on stamps and currency…

how to build a tiki bar

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The tiki bar is open!At last, something useful from Web Zen on BoingBoing, usually the home of a big “What? Whatever,” any time I check it out. But this makes up for many, many vintage Japanese vending machine item posts.

Although it must be said, these two do not look like they’d be my #1 choice for tikiization of my rec room. The funk factor here is, like the rec room, in the basement.

This comes from Atomic Magazine’s Fall 1999 issue — a very tongue-in-cheek set of instructions on how to build a tiki bar, designed to look like a family-friendly (until you read the finer print) construction kit from the 1950s.

In related news, this clever fellow has converted a VW van into a mobile tiki bar. Clearly he’s got it going on; who wouldn’t stalk him on the highway, just to be able to sit at this bar?

tiny tiki mobile tiki bar!

best. comments. ever.

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Bar none. You don’t even have to know who Peter Hitchens is to enjoy this thread. It truly gives one faith for the British school system; they must be doing something right if the amusing and condescending wordplay can continue for 277, that’s 277 comments, most of them golden (including mine, but then I was educated by Boho preppy draft dodgers).

We are all Peter Hitchens now.

We are all Peter Hitchens now

One of the most amusing (and irritating) comment makers on this blog uses the name Peter Hitchens, he writes from a sometimes witty, sometimes demented hard right-wing position. As does the comment maker. The real other Peter Hitchens has been in touch to complain.* So can the impersonator change his user name, so we can avoid getting into a “no, I am Spartacus“ bun fight. In fact Guido would like to invite the impersonator to publicly announce his name change in a post where he can also outline his world-view. Email to sort this out.

UPDATE : Hitchens has a blog! Not a very busy blog, maybe “Peter Hitchens” should go and comment over there….

UPDATE II : Have had second thoughts about getting “Peter Hitchens” to change his user name, can he just put his name in ironic quotation marks at least?

UPDATE III : Peter Hitchens has just emailed from the Mail on Sunday to confirm he really is himself. He thought it all very funny until people began thinking it really was him. Is that clear?

*Presumably from the original Peter Hitchens “Would the person who is abusing my name on this blog please cease doing so? It seems to me to be unoriginal, dishonest and rather cowardly to hide your own opinions behind the name of somebody else. I have written this message because I am beginning to receive messages from people asking if I am connected with the person who calls himself ‘Peter Hitchens‘ on this blog.”

Now, I’m already confused. See, is it Peter Hitchens, “Peter Hitchens,” or ‘Peter Hitchens?’ You’ll note three different possibilities, even leaving Spartacus out for now.

Which the comments have not done. Don’t just sit there, read them! This thread is a thing of beauty and a joy forever; already noted at Fortean Times, fyi, but that’s not going to stop me from posting it here, too, particularly as I’ve been up for 36 hours straight and am far too lazy and woozulated to come up with something of my own at this hour.