GLORY
I need not say anything else…
Jun
13
Apr
5
This Is Just Great
This is a hot dog stand in Jerusalem. It’s probably a 40 minute walk from the Western Wall and the Temple Mount. Just makes it that much better.
Feb
5
District 13: Ultimatum
This is the sequel to the 2004 French film District B13. I don’t know how big the following for that movie is, but for what it is, an action packed thriller addressing class issues and showcasing Parkour, it is highly entertaining. Ultimatum should be released on DVD here in the U.S. pretty soon, but in the meantime, go rent District B13 if you haven’t already seen it.
Ultimatum
District B13
Parkour
Feb
3
Great Picture
I saw this picture hanging on the wall in the lobby of my faculty, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. My biostatistics TA, Rony-Reuven Nir, took it. It’s fantastic.
These other pics I received in an email chain about 10 years ago. The subject ran something like great pics of the year, but I don’t have the original email. They’re also incredible. Posted below the pictures are the explanations as I got them.
Pilot Ron Candiloro breaks through the sound barrier in an F/A-18 Homet fighter plane over the Pacific Ocean on July 7. The cloud ball effect is caused when forward sound waves squeeze moisture in the air.
Black sun – the last solar eclipse of the millennium is seen in this multiple exposure photograph as it appeared from the famous Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey, on Aug 11.
Falling for colour – hundreds of cars jam a road in Nikko, Japan on Nov 3, as drivers slow down to admire the colourfully tinted leaves of autumn.
Singers perform on a giant stage on Lake Constance during a rehearsal of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera ‘Ein Maskenball’ on July 15. The design of the stage in the lake shows ‘Death’ reading the book of life.
Jan
25
Great Chicago Tatoo
Kinda weird. Kinda cool.
Not much of an article, but here’s the source:
http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/cta-tattler/2010/01/devotion-to-cta-is-tattooed-on-her-foot.html
Dec
4
Dec
3
The Real “The Wire”
Baltimore’s current real-life mayor, Sheila Dixon, has been convicted of misdemeanor fraud. Don’t the bitch watch “The Wire”? Or is this a case of life imitating art? Well, “It’s alllll in the game,” I suppose…
From The Associated Press:
Mayor Sheila Dixon’s misdemeanor fraud conviction fails to meet a key standard necessary for her removal from office, her attorney said Wednesday as the mayor resumed her regular duties a day after the verdict.
Her criminal defense lawyer, Arnold M. Weiner, said the guilty verdict reflected testimony about actions that weren’t part of Dixon’s duties as City Council president, the post she held at the time.
State law requires removal of elected officials who are convicted of crimes related to their public duties and responsibilities.
A legal expert, however, said the argument that the conviction didn’t pertain to her public responsibilities would be weak.
It’s not clear if her defense team would have an opportunity to argue that point before a suspension took effect, or whether such a claim would be decided by the trial judge or another court.
Her defense team plans to appeal the conviction.
Meanwhile, former mayor and fellow Democrat Kurt L. Schmoke said Dixon owes her constituents an apology if she plans to fight for her job.
“The city has been put through a very traumatic situation. She should apologize for having placed the city in this situation and maybe ask the city for forgiveness,” said Schmoke, who served as Baltimore’s mayor from 1987 to 1999 and is now dean of Howard University’s law school in Washington.
Dixon’s conviction of fraudulent misappropriation by a fiduciary of $525 worth of gift cards carries a penalty ranging from unsupervised probation to five years in prison. Her sentencing hasn’t been scheduled. The jury acquitted her on three other counts, including felony theft, and failed to reach a verdict on a second count of misappropriation.
Under state law, Dixon must be suspended upon sentencing for a conviction that’s related to her public duties and responsibilities and involves moral turpitude. She would be removed permanently and replaced by the City Council president if she loses all appeals.
Byron L. Warnken, associate professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, said Maryland case law has determined that fraudulent misappropriation is a crime of moral turpitude. He said any argument that Dixon’s conviction wasn’t related to her public duties would be weak, but a stronger case could made that she can’t be removed as mayor for an offense she committed before attaining that office.
“‘It’s a moot point because I’m finished being City Council president’ — I think that’s an argument,” said Warnken, an experienced appellate and criminal defense lawyer.
City Solicitor George A. Nilson, a Dixon appointee, said the first-term mayor would remain focused on citizens’ concerns and the city’s business until her appeals are exhausted.
Meanwhile, mayoral spokesman Scott Peterson said Dixon’s focus “is on the city and the citizens of the city.”
He said Dixon conducted a senior staff meeting Wednesday morning and had lunch with the city’s public schools chief.
Later in the afternoon, Dixon joked about the media attention at an event at a police precinct where a community group donated $5,000 to the department’s mounted unit.
“Well, it’s really great to be here and it’s great that you brought out all the media for this event. I’m impressed,” the mayor said, acknowledging the half-dozen television cameras before her.
Dixon said she wouldn’t comment as reporters shouted questions about whether she would step down.
Baltimore residents and downtown workers had varying views on Dixon’s future. Leon Hines, owner of a downtown lunch counter, said she should resign.
“Her own peers found her guilty; she’s responsible for her actions,” said Hines. He posted a lighthearted sign reading, “We don’t carry gift cards,” outside his store Wednesday.
However, Miranda Phipps, whose family firm, Phipps Construction Contractors, regularly vies for city contracts, said Dixon should stay on.
“We don’t want the mayor to step down,” Phipps said. “We want her to appeal.”
Sep
20
NINJA ASSASSIN
So Deejer, that youngblood Travs and myself went to go see Jennifer’s Body this evening (highly recommend everyone to see it…if you got kids bring the whole family, grandma, baby, everyone) and we saw this trailer that made me jizz in my pants…ancient warrior shit meets modern days, guns, and it’s got my two favorite words in the title. ENJOY.
when we saw…
…at this movie…
…I almost…
Aug
5
Jul
26
Bruno VS. Terrorists
"Ish think Terrorism is neesh neesh"
From The New York Post
Sacha Baron Cohen has stepped up his security after being threatened by a terrorist organization that is angered at its portrayal in the film “Bruno.”
The al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a coalition of Palestinian militias in the West Bank, said it was “very upset” that it was featured in the movie, starring Baron Cohen’s homosexual fashionista alter ego.
Baron Cohen’s Austrian character ridicules the terrorist group when he attempts to get himself kidnapped during a meeting with Ayman Abu Aita, who is identified in the film as the leader of the Martyrs’ Brigades.
The British comic is taking the threat seriously and has improved secu rity arrangements for himself and his family in preparation for violent reprisals.
The Martyrs’ Bri gades has issued a statement to a Jerusalem-based journalist including a veiled threat against Baron Cohen, 37.
“We reserve the right to respond in the way we find suitable against this man,” it said. “The movie was part of a conspiracy against the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades.”
The group condemned the use of the interview.
“According to what we checked, there was no meeting about the real context of the film,” the statement said. “This was a dirty use of our brother, Ayman, and we don’t accept that the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades is part of the film.”
The group is responsible for dozens of suicide bombings and shootings, and has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States.
Baron Cohen’s Austrian character is shown telling Abu Aita: “I want to be famous. I want the best guys in the business to kidnap me. Al Qaeda is so 2001.” Before Abu Aita can respond, Bruno suggests that he remove his moustache, explaining: “Because your King Osama looks like a kind of dirty wizard or homeless Santa.”
Abu Aita claims that he was tricked into appearing in the film and has insisted that he is no longer involved in the Martyrs’ Brigades. He has threatened to sue Baron Cohen.
“This man, I think he is not a man,” Abu Aita said. “He is not saying the truth about me. He lied.”
Abu Aita’s lawyer, Hatem Abu Ahmad, has said that he is preparing a legal action against Baron Cohen and Universal Studios alleging that the terrorist reference could get his client in trouble with the Israelis and that the gay association could get him killed by Palestinians.
Abu Ahmad said: “This joke is very dangerous. We are not in the United States, we are not in Europe, we are in the Middle East, and the world operates differently here.”
Jun
3
Jun
1
May
30
May
28
Barney’s Rhetoric : The Lemon Law
Now that I watch How I Met Your Mother, I decided we need a regular post called Barney’s Rhetoric, so I’ve started by posting the origins of Barney Stinson and his Suit Up! mentality, also known as the Beginning of Awesome, and by re-posting the Lemon Law theory. I will post another tomorrow and then try and make them fairly regular from then on. Enjoy!
May
14
Going Through the Motions
This was taken from my buddy Danny’s Blog:
How can you really expect to be successful if you sit back and simply do what is expected?
I’ve heard on numerous occasions about how getting a certain job, whether enjoyably or not enjoyable, will accelerate chances of success.
People strive so hard to do their best, to get that great job, and yet when they get that job, they can’t help but think how miserable it is.
If we are truly to be successful at anything, we can’t simply go through the motions. We must love what we do. If we are counting down the clock till 5pm, what is the point?
At the end of the day, success comes from hard work and a desire to do well. If we don’t like what we do we will simply do less, strive for less, and just go through the motions.
“Get busy living, or get busy dying”
Apr
30
The Hip Game of Mocking the Hipsters
This article is great. At the bottom the author talks about the hypocrisy of dressing like a hipster to reject the main stream culture. My opinion if you truly don’t care how you look, you would get dressed like I do. Take which ever jeans, shirt, underwear, and socks are on the top of the pile. And my cleaning lady is kind enough to place the clean clothes on the bottom of the pile so I don’t constantly wear the same 3 shirts.
Hipsters are taking a great bashing on the Internet these days, and it’s hard not to join in the uncharitable fun - contemporary urban fashion is at its most ridiculous point since at least the late 1960s, and there is something so cleverly smug about the skinny-jeans artist brigade that they cannot help but annoy. You have probably seen the “Hipster Olympics” video on YouTube, a fake contest in the spirit of Monty Python’s “Upper Class Twit of the Year,” in which young New Yorkers compete in choosing ironic T-shirts, photographing themselves for MySpace and criticizing a jock. So now I encourage you to check out my current favourite hipster-mocking site, the rudely named “Look at This [Expletive] Hipster,” which is a collection of candid photos of real people on the blog site Tumblr.
LATFH, as we will call it, is modelled on the famously cruel Vice magazine “Dos and Don’ts” photos, in which an anonymous, violently misogynist and racist, and very funny voice made comments about unfortunate people photographed in the street. There is the same tone here.
But where Vice magazine praises, with masturbatory enthusiasm, some of its subjects (the Dos), LATFH is purely negative. It’s all Don’ts. Which were always the funniest anyway.
Here are three textbook hipsters, for example, standing on the lawn of some college campus, all stick men with mandatory hipster slumped shoulders and mops of unwashed hair, in their super-narrow jeans and their striped T-shirts and their oversized glasses, and they are looking with some boredom at a girl sitting on the lawn in front of them, and she has a blanket over her legs. The caption reads, “There better be some torn leggings, bruised thighs and tattered cowboy boots under that blanket, or we are out of here.” Which actually made me laugh out loud. Or here is an extremely skinny, pale, androgynous boy in dark glasses, sitting next to his identical-looking girlfriend on the subway, and the caption reads, “I’m sorry. This is the last time I’ll ask, but are we a lesbian couple?” And here is a guy with the most unbelievably hideous, greasy mullet, big 1970s spectacles, an ugly mustache and a nasty acrylic sweater. He is saying, “Why yes, I do have ironic pubic hair.”
Now yes, of course, this is a juvenile and conservative humour, and it is not cool to find sexual androgyny ridiculous; it usually indicates some kind of insecurity. I have been on the receiving end of it so much in my life I am surprised by my own hostility here. Why is it that the hipsters irritate me so? I try, I try hard, to see something subversive or rebellious or aesthetically interesting in their determinedly ugly clothes and their determinedly unimpressed stance and I just can’t.
I see a certain hypocrisy: The hipster pose is of someone who rejects fashion, who is wearing second-hand clothes because she is poor and refusing to buy into consumer culture, who makes fun of sensual subcultures such as Goths and dandies, and yet the outfits she invariably concocts are so odd they cross the line into flamboyance. If you combine your second-hand 1970s dress with huge plastic sunglasses and canvas running shoes, you can’t deny you want to be looked at. And then of course there’s the weedy, whiny music, and the lack of interest in any cause or intellectual issue, other than possibly environmentalism (the default cause of the sensitive dropout).
The twist on hipster mockery, of course, is that (like all vicious satire), it comes from inside. That is, you have to recognize the subtle hipster tropes, which means that you are probably pretty much a hipster already. I myself wouldn’t be so irritated if I didn’t live in the thick of them. Vice magazine is the prime example of this self-deprecation, and LATFH itself is deeply in-the-know. One picture, of a guy in a plaid jacket listening to headphones, is captioned, “If I didn’t already know I was listening to Animal Collective on these headphones, I would bet myself $100 that I was listening to Animal Collective on these headphones.” Which is, of course, only funny to a hipster.
Indeed, this kind of photo blog, and Tumblr itself, are madly hip. This is exactly how hipsters communicate. Tumblr is a site where, for free, you can create your own “tumblelog,” a blog that is usually a collection of photos, links and oddities rather than of written entries. Like Twitter, it represents microblogging, a trend away from the page-long texts and arguments of blogs and toward brief flashes. You could call it post-literate.
And like any good Internet meme, LATFH has spawned iterations with similar names. “Look At This Lovely Hamster,” for example, is exactly the same, except it’s pictures of hamsters. Is it a parody, is it ironic, or is it completely serious? What’s the difference? I can’t tell. That’s how hip it is
Apr
6
Cellphone Calls Fail to Crash Airplanes
From the Freakonomics Blog:
I’ve long squawked about how ridiculous the airline “safety” rules and procedures are.
Sully recently embarrassed me with his water landing, but at least the data on the danger of electronic devices is coming down on my side.
According to TechDirt, a European provider of in-flight cellphone calls has logged 10,000 calls without incident: no crashes, no interference with planes’ electronics, and no impact on ground networks.
So far there are no statistics, however, on how many thousands of other travelers wanted to kill the people jabbering on their cell phones on the planes.
Apr
6
Wisdom from the Weekend (4/6/2009)
This weekend was filled with man-drama. However, I don’t feel comfortable airing it here. So instead of writing about my weekend wisdom, I am going to give a much needed dose of Denny’s wisdom.
Apr
2
Ask Frank
"Me and one of my best friends, James Gandolfini"
Anonymous asks:
Hey Frankie,
My girlfriend wants sex like everyday, but honestly I’m just too tired sometimes when I get home from work. How do I tell her I just wanna relax, eat a pizza, scratch my nuts, and watch some television?
Frank’s response:
Listen up you fucking momo, you ever call me Frankie again and I’m gonna put icepicks in your balls just like I did to that shnook in the oscar-nominated film “Casino”, directed by my good friend Martin Scorsese. Then if you call me Frankie after that, I’m gonna put your fucking head in a vice, just like I did to that same shnook in the oscar-nominated film “Casino”, directed by my good friend Martin Scorsese.
Now in terms of the problem with your una dispettosa, what are you, a fanook? I got my friend Hesh Rabkin sitting right here, and he says you are a fagula in tuchus! Che cazzo stai dicendo? I mean you sound like fuckin’ Vito Spatafore over here. One second your turning down la fica and the next your running around in leather chaps pretending your Maria from West Side Story. Do me a favor, stop whining like a fucking stunad and grow some fuckin’ coglionis Kabeesh? I mean what are we doin ovaaaaa here?
Frank Vincent,
The greatest and most versatile actor of all time. PERIOD.
Mar
30
Ask Frank
Whenever I am faced with any type of dilemma, I ask myself one question and one question only - you guessed it - what would Frank Vincent do?
Now, for the great news. Every monday (or whenever Frank decides he feels like working) Frank is going to be taking questions from our readers. Just remember, nothing is off limits and what Frank says is always right. I mean we’re talkin’ about the guy who told Tommy Devito to “Go home and get your fucking shinebox”. Frank Vincent. The Man. The Myth. The greatest actor of all time.
We are going to setup a specific link in the left-side bar to ask questions, but for now just send a message to Frank@StopBragging.com.