Do you like chocolate?

Oh yeah? How much? Oh, you think so, huh? You're the biggest fan of chocolate ever?

Bullshit. That's right, I'm calling bullshit on you! Oh, you think so, huh?

Well, ok. Have you ever worn chocolate jewelery? That's right. Like this right here from these crazy people called Food Is Art, who are based in England:



Oh, you have? Oh.

Well, ok! But! Have you eaten a painting made of solid chocolate? Like these?



You have? Jesus, really? Wow.

OK! Well, there's no way you've ever played a giant game of Jenga made entirely of chocolate like this:



WHAT? NO WAY! YOU HAVE NOT! THAT IS NOT YOU IN THAT PICTURE! COME ON! What do I look like here? You're a lying bastard, that's what I'm saying!

OK OK, all right. You're so smart, have you ever eaten A CHOCOLATE ROOM? That's right! A whole freakin' room made entirely out of edible chocolate! Like this here:



Yeah, I thought not. Who's the king of chocolate now, huh? Well, ok, fine, it's not me either. I mean, a chocolate room? That's just ridiculous.

NO! Anybody but Jesus!

From The Local, bosses at a Stockholm hospital have asked a nurse called Jesus to change his name, after concerns that it might cause confusion among patients.

According to Jesus, an auxiliary nurse at Huddinge hospital, his superiors were worried that patients told "Jesus will be coming soon ," might get the wrong idea.

"If they thought that Jesus was coming they might believe that they were already dead," the nurse told The Local.

Jesus, who will now use his middle name Manuel, said he didn't have a problem with the change.

"I understand why they wanted me to use my middle name," he said.

But, he added, "my name never usually causes me problems."

What my name looks like in Japanese

Nice, huh? It is pronounced "RINJII". (Consonants are pronounced more or less the same way as in English. "I" sounds like ee in meet, but shorter. Double vowels like "II" are held for twice the duration of single vowels.)

Wanna see what yours looks like?

Hey, what the....

The little mascot for Dubai-based airline Air Arabia looks suspiciously like Kyle from South Park! Refresh the airline's home page and see his many disguises! Is South Park moving to Dubai to be with Michael Jackson?

Hello! Free Krispy Kreme Doughnut!

Click here for the free Strawberries and Kreme doughnut.

Man, I grew up in the town where Krispy Kremes are from. I miss them so!!!

Ah well.

Careful! Pull from the top!

All of these images were made entirely of stacked cans!

All right, Hotel Gansevoort is off my list

So, yesterday, they were telling us not to poop in the pool, now, according to the New York Post, they're throwing people in the elevator, which caused the elevator to free-fall and then get stuck between floors for over an hour!

Blake Weissberg tells us he was partying on the hotspot's popular rooftop late Saturday night when a security guard shooed everyone into the elevator at closing time. "He shoved 18 people, including me, inside the elevator," Weissberg said. "It did a free-fall and came to a screeching halt. We were stuck between the fourth and fifth floors, and we finally opened the door and crawled out."

Gansevoort spokesman Michael Lindenbaum said the hotel is reviewing security footage, but denied that rooftop revelers were forced into the elevator by guards. "We don't allow more than eight people in an elevator at a time," he said. "I think what happens is that when people get inebriated, they force their way into the elevator and they don't have a very good short-term memory about it . . . We've apologized to all the guests. We're going to be giving them complimentary drinks or dinner reservations. We feel very bad for the inconvenience."

Wow, they're stuck between floors because of rough handling, and all they get are some drinks? No wonder they have to tell people not to poop in the pool.

Welcome to the Hotel BLEHARGHACHOOFFFFTPOOP. The pool's on your right.

My goodness. This is a real sign outside the pool at the Hotel Gansvoort in downtown NYC.

Do we really need a sign to point this out? Is there anyone who needs clarification on the basic rules of humanity?

What? Me Worry?

I have this particularly interesting relationship with David Naunton, house sound engineer of The Goodman Theatre. He's the greatest guy, and I really enjoy working with him.

He does have this habit, however, of being reassuring in a way that always makes me incredibly nervous. (I'm POSITIVE he would say the same thing about me). Like he'll say things like "Well, I'm sure it will all be fine, and if it isn't, just your entire career will be ruined, that's all." That kinda thing. As in I wasn't worried about that before now, but now that you've brought it up, I'm incredibly worried about it!

Today, he sent me this, the quintessential David Naunton good-news-unless-it's-incredibly-bad-news type of thing:

Are you losing sleep at night because you're afraid that all life on Earth will suddenly be annihilated by a massive dose of gamma radiation from the cosmos? Well, now you can rest easy. Some scientists have wondered whether a deadly astronomical event called a gamma ray burst could happen in a galaxy like ours, but a group of astronomers at Ohio State University and their colleagues have determined that such an event would be nearly impossible. Gamma ray bursts are high-energy beams of radiation that shoot out from the north and south magnetic poles of a particular kind of star during a supernova explosion.

Yes, thank you Dave. Now I will spend my nights worried about the one-in-a-million chance of being blown to bits by gamma rays.

I feel so much better.

How fast is faster than really really really slow?

Anybody who's ever spent time waiting for their luggage might appreciate this....

CBS in Chicago is reporting that United is hiring NASCAR pit crews to figure out how to streamline and tighten luggage handling for the airline. In other words, how to make those people move faster and get the bags to the people!

I guess I should be happy about this, baggage service is appallingly slow for United, which I fly all the time. Routinely, I will wait for up to an hour and a half after I get off a plane at LAX before I get my bags. So I guess that's why I feel a little skeptical of what these pit crews will say other than "Hey, you should hire more people and make them move much faster." Still, if it works, I'll be unbelievably grateful.

Now, if they hire NASCAR drivers to get the planes to go faster, we're in business!

I hate cilantro!

I do!

I love almost any kind of food from any kind of nationality, but dammit! I hate cilantro!

It seems like the last few years have been about everybody just putting cilantro in every damn thing, and I'm ready to start a revolution!

Fortunately, for me, there's a place I can go to find kindred souls, and that place, of course, is ihatecilantro.com!

Yes, on this website, you can find out stories from when people realized that they hated cilantro as well as fact-filled statistics like what cilantro really tastes like.




Viva la revolucion!

ow, my head....where am I? Hey.......where are my clothes?

I know I KNOW.

So I started this blog. And I really liked writing something every day. It's been fantastic. I really love it, and I can't tell ya how great it is that people actually read it.

Then. I started working on this show.



And lordy jeezus, it nearly killed me.

55 people in a musical, with an eleven piece band.

If anybody ever says Lookingglass and low-budget in the same sentence again to me, I want you to hit me on the head with something really really hard. I will not blame you, I promise. Hell, they won't blame you either.

Anyway, the show's open now and it sounds great. I would tell you to go see it, but the whole run of the show is completely sold out. Just take my word for it, ok? It's great. I'm proud of it. I can't believe it's finally open, but it is.

Honestly, contrary to what you might think, I'm truly glad Lookingglass calls me for these things, because god forbid things ever get boring in this job, they are NEVER boring with Lookingglass. And that's a good thing. Seriously.

So, now I can go back to blogging daily, right? Well. Not exactly.

See, I got this other thing. And it's even more crazy than the Lookingglass thing. I can't even talk about what it is, it's that crazy. But I have to meet this deadline on it or I'm a dead man. That deadline is April 7.

And then I can go back to blogging daily, right? Well. Hopefully. I do have this thing right after that where I have to do three shows in one week in 3 different states. That might be a little stressful.

But, after that, I'm all yours. Honest.

So, anyway, I'm sorry that I've been out of touch. And I promise I'll write as much as I can when I can. Keep checking back. I just need a little bit longer to like get things together before I can do the everyday thing again.

In my classic obsessive way, however, I will eventually make up for all these lost blogging days. I'm just crazy enough to carry out that promise, you wait and see.

Free Post-it Notes, anybody?

Write yourself a note to check out my blog!

How to be a cashier

A truly remarkable video from the early sixties, made by Reader's Digest.

This was working for a living, kid! No bar code scanner in sight.

There's too much time on your hands, and then there's WAY too much time on your hands, and then there's this:

OK, we have a winner. This is the silliest thing that I have seen in a long time.



Behold the Blendie!

Doesn't look like much, does it? Ah, but what you don't know is that Blendie is the world's first voice-activated blender.

Don't believe me? Check out the hilarious demonstration video.

Blendie is a creation of Kelly Dobson, a sonic artist and graduate student of the MIT media lab.

She explains her creation as "Blendie is an interactive, sensitive, intelligent, voice controlled blender with a mind of its own. Materials are a 1950’s Osterizer blender altered with custom made hardware and software for sound analysis and motor control.

People induce the blender to spin by sounding the sounds of its motor in action. A person may growl low pitch blender-like sounds to get it to spin slow (Blendie pitch and power matches the person) and the person can growl blender-style at higher pitches to speed up Blendie. The experience for the participant is to speak the language of the machine and thus to more deeply understand and connect with the machine. The action may also bring about personal revelations in the participant. The participant empathizes with Blendie and in this new approach to a domestic appliance, a conscious and personally meaningful relationship is facilitated.

Machines influence self-conception, expression, social perception, and perception of responsibility and action. Blendie is part of a series of machines designed to access and vitalize the interplay of people and machines. Intercommunicative awareness is brought out and individuals are invited to reinvent their own existence.

In Blendie a mix of design, art, engineering, and psychotherapy inform the interaction facilitated between participants and the familiar blender. An empathic opportunity is made manifest emphasizing and utilizing the aspects of blenders that are not what have been traditionally designed into them intentionally – i.e. their incredible sound and vibration – but that nevertheless have large roles in our interaction and approach to them.

Blendie is a free standing blender as seen in the video documentation. Everyone may talk with Blendie, though Blendie does have moods, desires, and preferences, of course."

The equally hilarious diagram for this device is below (click on it to see it at its full size):



I can hardly wait for the voice-activated toaster. (You think I'm kidding? It's called Toastie!)