Iced at the Office!

Here's the fantastic debut of a wonderful up-and-coming sketch group, "Chinese Food Alliance." I've got a good feeling about these guys. Here's their take on the Icing Phenomenon that's sweeping the YouTubes.

Iced at the Office! from Chinese Food Alliance on Vimeo.

Restaurant Week is Back (Almost)!

Summer Restaurant Week is almost here! It's coming July 12 - 25th! This is great news because my boyfriend and I will be in NYC and on vacation for most of that time! This means we can finally venture into the Restaurant Week Lunch options, which are much more reasonably priced but just as high quality. I can't wait!

Any suggestions for restaurants we should try on this round? We're hoping to hit up at least two, but who knows?

Smart Girls at the Party!

If you guys haven't seen Amy Poehler's series "Smart Girls Out at the Party" do yourself a favor and check it out! It's hilarious, heartwarming, and inspirational all in bite-sized 5 minute doses! Also, my new thing is to mix metaphors I guess. Hooray!

The series is really fun, silly, and inspires young women to be themselves and strive to succeed by following their passions. Heck, it even inspires me! I'm totally going to follow my passions... once I figure out what they are, that is. Tonight it seems to be eating cupcakes and writing blog posts, but there could be new horizons in the future.

Plus, SMATP (pronounced SMATt-pah!) makes me super jealous of Amy Poehler's amazing life (who else creates an awesome webseries with her best friends and at the end there's a dance party with all the stars of Parks and Rec? I don't even understand how brilliant that is). I'm also jealous of her two Production Assistants - can I have that job, please? I'll do twice the work for zero the pay!

I'm even jealous of the bright ladies she interviews, but then I remember that the children are our future and more importantly are the ones who will take care of me when I'm old via technology and stem-cell-grown kidneys so then I'm just happy for them. It's gonna be great!

Anyway, here's a clip of Amy and her friends plugging their website, which is, again, right here! Go to it, enjoy it, and let me know what you think! Here's hoping one day that we can all be the Smart Girls at Amy Poehler's SMATP Parties (unless you're a guy, in which case I hope you're still a guy unless you decided to switch but that's entirely up to you and I'm totally supportive either way.). K BYE!

Find more videos like this on Smart Girls at the Party

Fluffy McCloud: A Drop in the Fun Bucket!

I've been on an animation kick lately. Here's another great short! I like its incorporation of video footage with miniature sets as well as 2D animation. How neat is that?

FLUFFY MC CLOUD from conorfinnegan on Vimeo.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Trailer Online

I have been waiting for this movie for my entire life and I didn't even know it and... It. Looks. AWESOME. I will be inconsolable if the movies aren't great, but even then I will be better off having watched them leap out of my imagination onto the screen. So far, imagination and screen are lining up nicely.



Seriously, right after reading the seventh book, I wanted to write the screenplay for the movies so badly. I decided in my head that only I could do the final chapters justice. I hope to be proven wrong.

Mochi! How Much More Adorable Can a Puppy Get?

I think Mochi, courtesy of the Daily Puppy, may just be one of the happiest puppies on Earth. He also seems adorably confused as to what a camera is. (This is why we couldn't get these types of close-up pictures with Sunny when he was a puppy. He was always too interested in the camera to sit still and let it take a picture of him!)

How Did I Not See This Coming?

McDonalds is rolling out smoothies, which I'm sure will consist of strawberry/banana syrup, whatever plastic goo goes into McFlurries and possibly ice.

Apparently, they've been testing these smoothies out for a year now. If only I could be a McDonald's taste tester! I'd go in there, take one sip, and pretend I was going into anaphylactic shock or that I was choking on the chemicals or I'd spit it out, smash the cup in a fit of rage and cite "Hulkism" as a side-effect.

You can read more about it here. Thank you, Gawker!

Words are Fun!

As demonstrated in this short film by Jacques Khouri, words are made of a thousand pictures.

words from jacques khouri on Vimeo.

Jason Segel is Really Neat

He's just a cool guy! And he seems really nice and down to earth, too. But also a little crazy and hyper-focused. If only I was as focused as he is I could totally be on my way to writing a Muppet Movie, too!

Of course, since I'm not, I'm glad that he's the one who's doing it. He knows what's what.

Need proof? Check out this GQ interview with him!

If I Build It...?

If I build goat bridge... will they come?



I hope so!

Toldja, Ronald

Here's a new study about just how much of an impact using food mascots (in this case, popular cartoon characters like Dora the Explorer or SpongeBob) really has on children. These kids thought that the food with Dora or SpongeBob on the packaging actually tasted better than the food without, even though they were the exact same food.

Chew on that, Ronald McDonald.

And you guys can (as always), help out by going to the Retire Ronald campaign.

Happy Summer Solstice!

Hooray! The first day of summer is here!

Of course, whenever we get to the first official day of summer I realize that almost a whole month of summer has already come and gone. Where did it go!?

At least this year's better than last year. It's sunny and warm instead of raining and cold. I very much approve.

Anywho, go out and enjoy the day! Have fun! Have a picnic or a BBQ or at least bask in the fact that the day is super long. I know I will.

The only thing that could make today better is if I was on vacation. Sigh.

Penny the Puppy!

Totes adorbs. Classic Golden Retriever pup courtesy of The Daily Puppy. Love!

Happy Father's Day!

Thanks for being my dad, Dad!

And here's a little something from Louis CK for you to enjoy.

Peter Sagal: Funny Voice, Funnier Vice

This interview by Mental Floss of famed "Wait... Wait... Don't Tell Me!" host Peter Sagal is entertaining and endearing. I always thought that Peter seemed like a nice guy and this just proves it.

The only downsides about reading this article are:

1) Feeling jealous that Peter Sagal has led a much more interesting life than I think I ever will (my favorite line in the article is "Second of all, I have a background [writing about] soft-core porn, through no fault of my own" because that is hilarious and so interesting and he does not explain it at all one bit.)

2) Realizing you really do have to go to Harvard to work in comedy or be successful in anything ever. It's just too bad.

Otherwise, enjoy! It's a fun read. And he has a book out called "The Book of Vice" which is probably just as, if not more, entertaining than the interview.

The School Lunch Project

Fed Up with Lunch: The School Lunch Project. Very interesting read and look - how gross is that? Why does everything come in packages?

Being a Grown-Up is Too Hard

This is why I'll never be an adult.

You said it all, crazy writer-illustrator at Hyperbole and a Half, you said it all.

What's funny is as much as those drawings scare me, they also vividly convey the feelings I go through when I, too, try to be a responsible human being.

Thank Goodness I have a boyfriend who is naturally responsible and doesn't mind feeding me, because gosh knows some nights I just couldn't do it myself.

Also thank Goodness that I have direct deposit. The greatest thing to come to finance since Depression-era regulations. And therefore the only remaining good thing about finance.

Dogs are Great.

A seeing-eye dog for a puppy?

At first I was skeptical, but then I realized the dog volunteered to be a seeing-eye dog for the little, blind puppy. How sweet is that?

Dogs are great!

Happy Bloomsday, Everybody!

Reading Ulysses was probably one of the smartest choices I ever made, if an incomprehensible one. Just like the book!

I suggest that everyone read this great work of literature and feat of words that usually don't make sense together but somehow in this they do in a weird way that you can only learn in a classroom or insubstantially by reading Cliff notes and I did both and think I understand about 77% of it and I only say 77% because it is my favorite number but the actual percentage probably hovers around 35% but then how do you really measure reading comprehension in a book where an entire chapter takes place in a bathtub as a man considers what to do with his erection.

Seriously, though, it's a great book. Read it in a classroom setting and you will have your mind blown.

Have I Met My Match?

Someone with the handle "Poodle_Heart" just posted a comment on a Gawker article about the BP oil spill. The comment:

"Clean energy. Energy independence. Jobs.

an agenda for the 21st century: clean, green energy and the jobs to produce it."

While I wouldn't have phrased it exactly like that, I'm seriously wondering if there's someone out there who has stolen my identity and is using it for good. Or if I just have a doppelganger.

Weird!

Everyone at Pixar is Nice!

This Letter of Note gives me hope for my future.

But, then, of course, I look at how even Pete Doctor's handwriting is artistic and he has a cool felt pen he knows how to write with (it's not easy to get cool handwriting!) and even his sketches are brilliant and filled with life.

My sketches are lucky if they look animatronic instead of stuffed.

PS. Shout out to Alex for pointing this out!

BP Sucks, UCB Funnies

Watch and laugh! Until you remember that there is a never-ending disaster in the gulf that is going to have devastating effects for years and years to come. And even still, the Senate probably won't pass a Climate Change Bill, and the House won't pass it without a provision banning abortions.

Finally, a Poll I can Trust

This NY Times op-ed article is really interesting. Turns out, when you just ask a bunch of people, straight up in a scientific poll, if they believe that climate change is happening, 88% say yes.

But if you ask them, "From what you've seen on the news and confirmed by reading scientific evidence, do you think the media thinks that global warming may or may not be exagerrated to the extent that it makes people in polls answer ridiculously complicated questions regarding a topic that has nearly universal consensus so that the media and pundits can have something to talk about on the nightly news, stir up drama, and freak out politicians enough that they don't do anything about climate change and in fifteen years the planet is one giant hot cake and we're all eaten by mutant, zombie grizzly-polar bear hybrids, and what would you call these hybrids - grizzolars or pogrizzles?"

Then they usually say, "Pogrizzles" because that sounds way cooler.

Awesome yet Terrifying: This Mouse Ain't Real

See this ad? That mouse isn't real and it's not CGI - it's a robot and it's amazing. To see more, check out this HowStuffWorks article and John Nolan's reel and try to tell me that I'm not wasting my life not constructing myself a puppy robot-puppet like his.

Remember Nate's Cartoons?

It's been blowin' up! Lots of wacky goodness this week. I think this one's my new favorite.

Harry Potter 7 Trailer!

I can't wait until November. Why isn't it November yet?



I think this may be the first time in my life I want it to be winter.

This is Why You're Fat

Commercials! TV commercials! TV commercials which advertise people to eat 25 TIMES the amount of sugar and fat they're supposed to eat in a day, even taking into account a 2,000 calorie diet.

Read it, and be sad. Then do something? Like Retire Ronald.

Auto-Tune Things Considered

I love NPR. They make my commutes so much happier, and today they made my GReader happier, too!

McDonald's - I'm Hating It!

So many reasons to hate McDonald's. Here's one more!

Want a way to piss off McDonald's and feel good about yourself? Check out Retire Ronald and sign some stuff. What else are you going to do with your day?

California Voted to Ban Plastic Bags! Hooray!

This is awesome.

And they're going to charge a nickel for paper bags!

PS. Ok, the bill hasn't gone through the state senate yet (sometimes I really hate the senate, even the state ones), but here's hoping it gets passed!