Restaurant Week: Summer Edition

I'm too excited about finishing the first season of "Veronica Mars" (such a good show! And yes, I really have nothing better to do with my Saturday nights than watch puppy videos and TV shows) to write my Restaurant Week post tonight, so let me give you all a little teaser:

1) Mercer Kitchen (lunch) - $24 lunch menu... sushi pizza, peach and mozzarella salad, and heavenly molten chocolate cake (though, really, when isn't molten chocolate cake heavenly?)

2) David Burke Townhouse (lunch) - $24 steak, mint chocolate mousse cake, and the best eggs of my life

Get excited!

This is How I Spend my Saturday Nights

Border Collies love to herd! And I have nothing better to do but to watch them.

Even Cleaner Fuels Burn Dirty

Turns out natural gas ain't so natural after all (at least not in some ways it's harvested). Check out this article or the documentary Gasland for more info.

I Got a Bike!

I got a bike today! It's really pretty and blue and I got a little bell with blue flowers for it. It even has a basket! All I need is a pretty blue ribbon for it and I'll be set. I can't wait to take it for a ride with the bf tomorrow! So much fun!

I mean, if mass transit makes you healthier, I bet self-transit makes you as healthy as a super hero! Hooray!

The Scholar Your Scholar Could Read Like

For cool nerds everywhere.

Bill Murray, is there anything you can't do?

Just in case you haven't read comedy wonderlord Bill Murray's GQ interview, here it is. You're welcome.

Two for One Puppies!!

Misty and Gem are just about the cutest Old English Sheepdogs ever. Don't you agree? Thanks Daily Puppy!

The Wind Farmer

Here's a lovely animated short by Joaquin Baldwin to end your work week. Enjoy!



[Thanks, Neatorama!]

Color Photos from the '40s?

Who knew? These beautiful photos were all taken during the 1940s and you can find a lot more here. I think we're all so used to photos in black and white that it almost looks like they're from a movie instead of photos of real people back then. Weird but awesome, huh?

New Word: Bubaffoon

Dear Readers,

In light of Sarah Palin's advanced word coining skillz, I've decided to come up with the perfect word to describe Sarah Palin herself.

BUBAFFOON (bu'-bu-foon) n.

A person who encapsulates the behavior, characteristics, affinity for social grooming, and social and intellectual ignorance of both a baboon and a buffoon simultaneously.

As Sarah Palin munched of a tasty tic this afternoon while shooting wolves out of a helicopter, she revealed herself as a complete and utter babuffoon.

Alright, World, it's been done. Let's start calling the babuffoons like we see them!

Kleptones Mania Comes Together!

If you've got time to kill and you want to watch some amazing dance to a pretty good mix, check out this awesome music video by the Kleptones and Crumbs Chief starting with the Beatles "Come Together." I don't know why it cuts off after 8 minutes but I was ready for more. Enjoy!

Kleptones - Come Again (Beatles vs Rare Earth vs Beaties vs Daft Punk vs Cypress Hill vs Boston) Video by Crumbs Chief from The Videotones on Vimeo.

Muppets and Pixar Cohorts!

My worlds have collided in the most delightful way. The new Muppet movie better be the awesomest thing ever or I'm going to kick Jason Segal's booty!

Although, admittedly, I hope that it got more of a "WALL-E" treatment than a "Tangled" treatment. The initial images and concepts for that movie looked pretty cool and weird and a little subversive, but now it's just another blase boys-with-toys animated flick created to sell toy chameleons. Lame!

[Thanks to /Film for the reportage!]

Lightning Will Blow Your Mind

I've had lightning on the brain a lot since my vacation. We were in a beach town where it rained a lot at night and had this brilliant lightning storms. Then, this past weekend we spent a night in the country and another brilliant lightning storm lit up the night. It really made me wonder about how lightning works. Well, here's all the explanation I needed. At 9,000 frames per second, this minute and a half long clip only covers two seconds of real time.



Apparently, lighting does strike the same place twice. In this case, many, many more times than twice.

[Thanks, Neatorama!]

Lama or Llama?

Do you think the Dali Lama ever wears a llama fur jacket and dreams of what could have been if only he had been born with an extra l?

Or do you think he feels more like Buffalo Bill but in a llama-skin-suit instead of a people suit?

Just something to think about...

The Volt and Leaf are Kiiiiinda Super Pricey

A lot of depressing environmental news today!

GM's Volt was announced to cost $41K and Nissan's Leaf is to be $36K when released later this year. Yikes! Remember when everyone was pissed that the Prius cost $20K? Even with the $7K tax break the government is offering that's a lot of dough. And not the delicious doughnut kind, either.

Well, I certainly hope there are enough eco/ego-conscious celebrities out there who'll buy these cars so that in a few years they'll be mass-manufactured enough to bring the price down.

Then again, I also hope that in a few years we'll be getting most of the electricity to run those cars from sustainable sources and that's not exactly likely to happen so...

Well... We tried, am I right?

News Flash! Climate Change Still Happening!

In what's totally not a surprise for anyone who doesn't watch Fox News, this past decade was the hottest one on record. If you'd like to read more about it, check out this Nat Geo article.

Personally, I think the easiest way to tell that climate change is happening is to compare how warm/cold it is during the day and night. Remember when there was a big difference? Now, not so much. Of course, when you live in New York City, a lot of that can be attributed to the heat trapping properties of buildings and roads, but for realsies - 90 during the day and 85 at night? That's not a big difference.

So enjoy those cool night breezes while you can, world! We ain't got much of them left.

The Trauma of Bicycles

Sometimes I feel like I'm just a venue for linking to Hyperbole and a Half and I'm SO fine with it. She's hilarious! Her latest post deals with the trauma of learning how to ride a bike. While (thankfully) I never experienced her repeated crashes, I did use training wheels until I was nine years old because I'm that awesome and super paranoid about getting hurt.

Then again, when I was six, I had my dog Harry pull me around on roller blades and he was insane, so why I chose to trust him over my own balance is beyond me.

Then again then again, when I was five, I fell off a slide because I tried to go down sideways, so I trusting my dog over my own balance probably was the safer choice.

In Other News, Puppies are still Adorable

The proof is in the (pictures of) Monty the Mixed Breed. Courtesy, as always, of the Daily Puppy.

Bullfighting is Bogus!

And finally Catalonia agrees. They've outlawed bullfighting on the grounds of animal cruelty - duh - and we can only hope that the rest of Spain will follow their lead.

[Thanks, again, Gawker!]

The Irony Lives On!

The NRA is now supporting Glenn Beck's "Stomp on the Grave of Martin Luther King, Jr." party on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28th. Yes, that is the same day as Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream Speech" in 1963.

His dream may not live on that day, but irony sure will.

Ugh, New York!

Another round of cuts coming to the subway next year. These ones look worse than last year or the year before! No more one-day passes? Limits on unlimited cards? No raises for MTA workers?

Didn't those wraparound subway ads generate any revenue?

We're supposed to be easing into relying more on the subway and other means of public transportation, not less.

I'm so happy I'm buying a bike this weekend.

[Thanks for the tip, Gawker!]

Glad I'm not a Brit!

For once I'm glad I don't live in England. Then again, I don't need a hip replacement, so I guess I'd still be ok there.

Nate's Cartoons is Back!

Ok, so I know haven't been posting lately, but that's only because I had a second week of vacation and was really, really into enjoying it and staying far away from my computer.

But now Nate's Cartoon's is back, so I guess I've got to start posting again, too. Be on the lookout! Also, today's cartoon is totally awesome.

I'm Back!

I'm back! New posts to come...

Aww, Some Dogs Just Ain't Bright

Hyperbole and a Half came out with another great post - this time with a puppy in it! What could be better than comedy and a puppy? The answer is nothing. Unless you are Hitler, in which case suffering is your only joy. And also you are dead.

Oh, and yes, I should stop posting other things that people have made that are funny instead of making things of my own that are funny, but I'm about to go on vacation so screw it!

Good News for Texans!

Finally Texas' clean air regulatory agency is being held accountable for allowing its power companies to essentially pollute as much as they want with little to no consequences.

I hope that the EPA will really follow through on this and bring these companies up to code. It's not fair to the people of Texas to have to suffer through so much pollution at the same time as they're the ones building the fastest growing renewable-wind power in the country. That's a contradiction that's frankly too big for Texas.

Good News for Chickens!

Pretty soon, because of a new law in California, all eggs sold in CA must come from humanely treated chickens. Of course, humanely treated just means that they can stand up, flap their wings, and turn around, which to me doesn't seem like they have a whole lot of freedom, but that's definitely a lot better than what has been going on. Way to go CA!

Here's hoping they propose and pass a law that all chickens sold to be eaten in CA will also have to come from humane conditions, too!

Shout out to Liz for letting me know about this!

Breakation!

Hey Readers!

I'm going on a nice, long break+vacation=breakation for the next two weeks. The first week the boyfriend and I are going to South Carolina with his parents, where we will relax on a beach, go fishing, and presumably have a blast. During this time I will be on a strict internet hiatus, so don't expect any posts after tonight over the next ten days or so. When I come back I'll be posting about restaurant week and the joys of my vacation (just to make you all super jealous), so get excited about that. I know you all will miss me dearly, but no worries, I'll be back before you know it with more puppies, more stories, and more fun!

Hugs!

Artful Stew

Goldendoodle Galore!

After seeing Jacob (the puppy one, not the werewolf one), I may have to reconsider and make a Goldendoodle as my first puppy choice...

Happy Fourth of July with the Muppets!

Happy Independence Day! Hugs for America! Enjoy!

New Muppet Video! Starring The Swedish Chef!

This one's great! Then again, when are they not great? Enjoy!