I’m sure going to miss everyone when it comes along.
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
The End May Be Near
May 14, 2013Chromebook is the shizzle
April 7, 2013While I was in Best Buy looking for dvd collections of “The Love Boat”(which they didn’t have,) I came across a floor model Chromebook “laptop” for only 159.00. I had two 50 dollar visa gift cards which I had won through work, so the thing only ended up costing me like 60 bucks out of pocket. It’s a little annoying that it is almost totally web based, and you can’t install any programs on it or work offline. However, google has about a gillion apps for it that you can add to work offline, and most of those mimic popular programs(just give me some form of notepad, an image editor and some audio tools and I’m good.) This machine is pimp tight, and for the price you can’t beat it. I’m typing this from Starbucks so I’m one of those cliche coffee shop laptop guys now, even though I’m just drinking water and eating a delicious apple.
Don’t Pass?
March 3, 2013“He’s been playing ‘Don’t Pass’ and ‘Don’t Pass’ is for non-believers. Sabrina, sooner or later, you have to be a believer.” Dean Martin, Charlie’s Angels(1978) Season 3 Episode 1, “Angels in Vegas”
Las Vegas II
January 12, 2013
This was my bed at The Flamingo, where I had sex with the hottest girl ever. She just wasn’t actually there while it was happening.
I didn’t intend to make this stupid ass face.
I almost fell for this marketing tactic.
If only they would have had a slot machine that had Lisa Eilbacher as part of it’s theme, I would have cranked out the quarters.
Have a Blue Christmas, in Las Vegas Part I
January 6, 2013
That’s right. My Christmas this year was mostly spent wandering the Las Vegas strip like a stray dog. I was there for 4 days, which is an incredible amount of time to be in Vegas. Despite being mildly depressed, I made the most of the trip. The second night I was there I walked all the way from the Flamingo to downtown to the Fremont Street Experience(a very looong walk.) Along the way I passed a zillion little wedding chapels, one of them which had a sign that said “Michael Jordan and Joan Collins were married here,”(presumably not to one another.)
Fremont Street has come a long way since the 1971 car chase scene in the movie Diamonds Are Forever. They have an incredible light show on the ceiling of the entire walk which even sometimes features 60′s psychedelic jams like the coincidentally appropriate song by The Zombies, “She’s Not There.” I took a video of it on my phone, but this one on youtube is better:
They had a stage set up with a band called “Candy and the Canes” playing covers of popular Christmas songs like “Last Christmas, I gave you my heart…etc.” A couple of the girls in the band were super hot, from a distance at least.
Back on the strip, they had a lovely ice skating rink outside The Venetian. There’s never a girl around to go ice skating with when you need one.
The highlight of my trip was Christmas Eve morning in my hotel room, as there were 4 episodes of Married With Children on in a row. When I was a kid I used to identify more with Bud, but now that i am older I relate much more to Al or the family dog, Buck.
I have a strange story about my flight back, after everyone boards the plane and we are on the runway two seconds away from taking off, the pilot gets on the intercom and says “I’m sorry , but we have to head back to the gate. There is a passenger on board that is a potential security risk.” So we get back to the gate, and security removes this shifty Pakistani looking dude wearing a hoodie from the airplane. I’m not sure if he was actually up to anything and nobody had really noticed him, but he had the creepiest look in his eyes and a shit eating “joker” grin on his face. They took him away and we never saw him again. My guess is he is either being waterboarded right now, or getting ready to cash in on a racial profiling lawsuit. It was slightly terrifying. I was glad to make it home.
It’s Not Just a Job, It’s An Adventure
September 8, 2012
Army Navy, one the finest bands to come out of Los Angeles in probably the last 10 years, has put out a new video, directed by veteran young writer/director Mark Schoenecker and featuring Martin Starr(Freaks and Geeks.) The well respected group has enjoyed steadily increasing popularity since they burst onto the scene several years ago. Their latest video, for the song titled “World’s End,” is a refreshingly unassuming masterpiece. In this era of illiterate Ke$ha softcore, and perplexingly popular yet total cheeseball songs like “I Wanna Be A Billionaire,” director Schoenecker refreshingly manages to capture the golden age of Sunset Strip innocence and combine it with 21st century, contemporary appeal. Stylistically, “World’s End” is seemingly modeled after the old music variety shows like Shindig, which once dominated television airwaves and introduced many famous musical acts. Yet, this is not really a “retro” video. Rather it represents a return to lost fundamental standards of taste, and attention to long abandoned qualities like color usage, ambiance, and subtlety. In other words, it is the future we now live in, the way we’ve always hoped it would be.
I need to start a family soon
September 2, 2012I managed to make it through the entire summer without going out more than 2 or 3 times. It’s liberating to stay home I tell you. These days, if something doesn’t involve making money then chances are I’m not interested. I’ve learned enough from past experience to know that every time I get on the track toward major success, I end up getting romantically distracted by a female..BUT no more. If I can manage to avoid all non business related human contact, I will be okay until I die my premature death from some inevitable illness which symptoms of I am mistaking for my own hypochondria. As I was walking down Sunset with an old friend, on our way to peep the scene at H&M in the course of a recent trip to Los Angeles, we waxed nostalgic about our endless struggles with hypochondria. He summed up my thoughts nicely with the statement, “I no longer worry about being cut down in prime…cause I’m already past it.”
So much solitary confinement has led me to a lifestyle that, upon reflection, would be incompatible with the desires and needs of any known or imagined female. I am currently watching Big Trouble in Little China for the 25th time in only 10 days. It brings back great memories of the summer of 1987, when the movie was always playing on HBO, a carefree childhood Phoenician summer, filled with epic Uzi squirt gun battles and forts made out of couch cushions. Those were the days! Will I ever get them back?
I watch the same movies over and over again and never get sick of them. I laugh at the same jokes, look forward to the same scenes and root for things to happen and alternate outcomes which I should by now know are not to be!
Prior to my recent Big Trouble in Little China movie marathon, I watch Vegas Vacation every night for about 6 weeks, alternated with the original National Lampoon’s Vacation. I’ve always enjoyed Vegas Vacation even though it is widely regarded to be one of the worst of the series. Not for me though. It is an inspiring film which features one of my favorite cities, Las Vegas, in all it’s magically tacky glory. It also came out in 1997, which was a prime year for me in which I lived more in the present than almost any other time in my young adult life. Actor Ethan Embry and I are almost exactly the same age. He was born about two weeks before me. Watching the character he portrays in Vegas Vacation is like watching a younger version of myself. He dresses and acts the same as I did in those days and shares many of the same awkward mannerisms. Some have even said he even kinda looks the way I looked at that age(no offense to him.) He and Marisol Nichols in their own way represent what was our time. The film has aged well by the fact that it now appears dated to those of us whom now live in a world which is seemingly unrecognizable. Ethan Embry’s performance in Vegas Vacation offers awkward, savvy, yet underachieving indie teenagers of the 1990′s the opportunity of taking pride in our newly identifiable generation. Nick Papagiorgio for the win.
Now, if any remarkable “youngish” ladies are interested I’m getting ready to embark on a 10-15 day, nightly screening of “Curse of the Pink Panther,”(which doesn’t even have the late great Peter Sellers in it.) Do I have any takers? Ha! You know the idea appeals to you! Going once…going twice….
*Cue the sounds of crickets chirping*
For the Love of Kazys
August 3, 2012I just got the weirdest spam email:
“Dear Sir/Madam,
Hello, how are you today? My name is Kazys and I would like to say, that I’m very interested in your country and your company. But especially I’m fascinated by your nature and animals, maybe that’s why I’m studying biology 
, now it’s my second year at the university. Anyway, I just wanted to ask if you could send me some marketing material that represents your company, and I promise that one day I will come to say hi. Many many thanks! 
My address:
Kazys Jancauskas
Navasaicio st.6, Taurage
Lithuania, LT-72192″
A not so unRealistic RadioShack Comeback
July 9, 2012
I think they boast of at least 5,000 stores, which in my opinion is way too many in this day and age and essentially amounts to an overextended electronics empire. If one were to think about how RS can adapt and survive, the example they should look to is Redbox. Video stores went bankrupt because the product they served no longer constituted an entire store. Everything could be rented online through Netflix or streamed on demand. Yet for those who would have preferred not to wait for dvds in the mail, or didn’t have a connection or screen resolution capable of streaming… along came Redbox. Everything that was once handled by a 10 employee, 2,000 square foot storefront, could now be streamlined through an unmanned vending machine outside one’s local circle K. Such could be the case with Radioshack. I’m not saying they should close all their stores,but there is no reason for them to maintain 5 or 6 stores in a given city. My feeling is that they should keep the most profitable 1,500 stores as well as low rent/low risk outlets in places like the south(where people are still more inclined to purchase from a local outlet.) The everyday items RS sells like batteries, cables, wireless accessories, could be sold in RS vending machines dispersed throughout cities. I’m not suggesting they fill these things with capacitors and robotics components. Those items should still be sold at the regular stores. People would be willing to drive a small distance for these, so long as there is still a shop or two within the city limits, people will still make the trip.
Secondly, they should resurrect their “Realistic” brand and sell vacuum tubes and other such equipment. Radioshack seems to have abandoned this market right when it is making a big comeback. I’ve been to CES 4 years in a row, and there is big money in the high end audio market. It is not a huge market share, but if we’re talking about reducing the amount of physical storefronts, this can be offset by improving the quality and expanding the product offering. Money saved from closing physical stores can also be spent promoting the RadioShack.com website and boosting online sales. Dollars normally spent on keeping a physical store open can go a long way in online marketing.
Also, I know most people hate it, but I kind of like their decision to rebrand themselves “The Shack.” It really is annoyingly catchy.
