The 2011 Ford Explorer...YOU BLEW IT

I went to the Charlotte Auto Show this evening, and saw a lot of interesting things, more of which I'll be commenting on at later dates.  One thing really stuck out though.  Ford absolutely destroyed the Explorer.

Now, for full disclosure, I have always been a GM (particularly Chevy) guy.  My family has owned seven different vehicles in my lifetime, and they have all been GMs (and, true to this commercial, I was brought home in a Chevrolet).  That being said, I have always thought the Explorer was one of the best vehicles out there.  (Sidebar: although I like the Explorer, I think Ford did a poor job of handling that rollover crisis they were having about a decade ago.  They publicly blamed it on the Firestone tires...and then they did a redesign which lowered the center of gravity and changed the rear suspension...but trust us, it was the tires.)  The Explorer was everything you expect from an American SUV: powerful, good looking, comfortable.  If you go to the Wikipedia page, you'll see that the first four generations of Explorers (1991-2010) were indeed very good looking vehicles.

However, some time in the last couple years, Ford designers woke up and said "damn, we're tired of the Explorer looking like the quintessential American SUV," and came up with this:

What?  Why?  How did you go from this and this to this?  I don't even know what to say about this, I'll just let you sit there and wonder why I pasted in a picture of one of Ford's other SUVs, only to get on Google image search and find that, yes indeed, the Explorer has been ruined.

One final interesting note: luckily, Ford did not elect to similarly ruin the Expedition.  But I won't be surprised if they do in the near future.

Can anyone explain this?  More importantly, does anyone think Ford made a good decision here?

Enrique...Enrique...Enrique

Enrique has done it again. And by 'done it again' created one of the most addictive, yet idiotic song and music video on the face of the planet. The silliness starts right from the onset:

1. For some reason, Pitbull and Enrique find themselves in front of some random room (club?), and upon opening the doors: VOILA, tons of scantily-clad, hot chicks dancing. What else would they be doing in a room full of 100 strangers? Solution: Run into the room and start dancing, of course.

2. What the hell is Enrique wearing on his head? A dead racoon? His hair looks like a mature Justin Bieber's but darker.

3. Probably the coolest part of this video is when Mr. Iglesias decides to couch surf and turns totally parallel to the ground balancing with only his feet on the couch. SO TIGHT. Where are the wires? There are wires right?


4. The video suddenly turns to crap once Pitbull utters words out of his mouth. Some of his more choice lyrics:

-"I’m a Miami boy..."  OH. Really? I thought you were from Pensacola.
-"Let’s party on the White House lawn...Pick up Barack and Michelle and let’em know that it’s on"  YES. Please do that. Glad the first family has become part of pop music culture.


5. Cut to the end: Pan to another room. Show three woman in bikinis having a pillow fight. Unfortunately for them, someone has slit the pillows and feathers are raining down on them. What a shame. Enrique appears halfway through hanging from the ceiling. Things are starting to make sense now...

Eh...I like it.

Bush vs. Obama - Who's the better swinger?

You be the judge:










(Skip to 1:35...and listen carefully)

And it's not because Bush plays more...(story)

Think Your Weekend Was Rough?

Fair warning to all you would-be partiers this weekend: if you do choose to drink alcohol, please, whatever you do, don't do any futures trading while you're blitzed.  That's exactly what one London man did one year ago:

Britain’s financial regulator disclosed on Tuesday that Steven Noel Perkins, a former oil futures broker, single-handedly engineered a jump in the price of oil a year ago and cost his firm millions of dollars with a string of unauthorized trades after a weekend of heavy drinking.

“Mr. Perkins’s explanation for his trading on 29 and 30 June is that he was drunk,” the F.S.A. said. “He claims to have limited recollection of events on Monday and claims to have been in an alcohol-induced blackout at the time he traded.” 

The article also mentions that Mr. Perkins lost $10 million for his firm and was fined over $100,000 as a result of these shenanigans.

I don't know whether to be appalled or amazed.  Most people just embarrass themselves in front of their friends or end up feeling terrible the next morning.  This guy placed a half billion dollars in trades! Nice!

Other things to avoid this weekend while drinking include using incendiary devices, attempting to dress yourself, and of course, driving.

Report: Soccer Lags Behind Other Sports on Technology

In a report that comes from the same obvious bin that includes stories like "Men Like Sex" and "Ice Cream is Yummy", Discovery News reports that, unlike almost every sport on the face of the planet, soccer has been extremely slow to adopt technology to aid referees in making correct calls.  Feel free to peruse the article and draw your own conclusions, but I wanted to point out my personal favorite quotation from the article:

UEFA president Michel Platini is in complete agreement, arguing that video replays would interrupt the flow of the game.

Umm, excuse me? Would it interrupt the flow more than, say, a grown man writhing in pain after colliding with someone else with the force of two busy workers who rounded the corner of a cubicle too quickly?  Or perhaps a player from some certain African country waiting to be taken off in a stretcher (scroll to 96:45 on) and then walking away (9th paragraph, starting with "At one point") as soon as he crosses the sideline?  Just saying.

Side note: anyone notice the button at the bottom of Youtube videos that looks like a soccer ball?  Try it out.

Sorry for the link confusion regarding the Ghana super dive.  I can't find a video of the performance incident.

oooohhh......YEEEAAAAAHHHH

This is how the world celebrated Landon Donovan's amazing game winner vs. Algeria a few days ago:

More Capitol Hill hijinks

The latest hyperbole uttered in Washington D.C. comes in the wake of the massive oil spill currently having its way with the Gulf of Mexico.  The background: executives from 5 major oil companies were hauled in front of Congress so representatives could flap their wings investigate the situation.  One congressman had some interesting words for BP America Chairman Lamar McKay:

Rep. Joseph Cao (R., La.), who emigrated from Vietnam, said: "In the Asian culture, we do things differently. During the samurai days, we just give you a knife and ask to you commit harakiri."

For those readers who may not be experts in Asian cultures, harakiri is a form of seppuku, which is a ritual suicide, historically performed by samurai.  While it's hard to deny that BP screwed up big time, it might be a little extreme to say they should just pull the plug on one of the largest companies in the world.

However, Mr. Cao's words do have an interesting ring.  According to Wikipedia, "seppuku was used voluntarily by samurai to die with honor rather than fall into the hands of their enemies."  Given the fact that the Obama administration is trying to throw its weight around (most notably by blackmailing them into suggesting that they suspend their dividend and contribute $20 billion to a relief fund) with BP, maybe they should fall on their sword rather than become another US government experiment gone awry.

Winnebago Man

Stumbled across this the other day.....thought you might enjoy


http://winnebagoman.com/index.html

Stoked

What do you feel when you find out there's a new skate park in North Hempstead??

Stoked?

Yeah I thought so.

Magical and Revolutionary

Quick...think of something magical and revolutionary...

give up?

THE IPAD!

Ode to Minor League Baseball

Even though some might find it a little creepy that they're putting links at the top of your Gmail window based on what's in your emails, sometimes the links are pretty cool.  Case in point: it let me know there's a new minor league team: the Lake County Fielders.  Sound like an odd name?  Maybe the logo will ring a bell:

No?  Does it help to know it's in Iowa?  How about this:

Get it?  Field of Dreams?  Nice one.  That's one of the great things about minor league baseball.  You get goofy nicknames that reflect that character of the places they're in:
Kannapolis Intimidators (Dale Earnhardt was from Kannapolis)

Montgomery Biscuits:

Las Vegas 51s (as in Area 51):

Then, there's always the far less entertaining yet equally unique name of Dash.  That's the Winston-Salem Dash (One of the city's nicknames is "The Dash", in reference to the hyphenated name):

How about the Vancouver Canadians (Vancouver is in Canada...get it!?!?)

(That is not their logo but it is much cooler than the actual one)

And I guess for good measure, we can throw in the Lansing Lugnuts:

Sweet.  In my opinion, it's hard to beat a minor league baseball game.  Everything's (relatively) cheap, plenty of entertainment (outside the game, that is), great atmosphere, and all that's just in case the thought of relaxing in the sunshine and watching baseball isn't good enough for you.  So get out there and support your local oddly named baseball team!

ALERT: Guam about to capsize!

Many have probably already heard about this, but Representative Hank Johnson (D-GA) actually asked a Navy Admiral about the possibility of the island of Guam tipping over and capsizing due to overpopulation.

Check it out
(No intent to deceive by skipping to 1:05 in the video, it's just that he spends the first 65 seconds wondering aloud exactly how big the island is)

Now, to be "fair", Johnson later claimed that he made the comment in jest:

On Thursday, the congressman said that he was merely being funny and used the “capsize” term in a metaphorical sense.

"The subtle humor of this obviously metaphorical reference to a ship capsizing illustrated my concern about the impact of the planned military buildup on this small tropical island,” he said in a statement.

Yes, because humor is such an excellent way to get your point across on Capitol Hill

Headlines that make you LOL

"New York's Hipsters Too Cool For the Census"

Apparently they were too busy looking for vintage t-shirts and rolling up their pants to spend five minutes on a form that "really relatively has nothing to do with your life" (that's straight from the hipster's mouth)

Apparently they don't realize that if they don't fill out the forms, thrift shops and organic food stores won't know where their customers are!

Viacom vs. YouTube

So remember how Viacom (the parent company of CBS, MTV, etc.) used to go crazy about keeping their stuff off YouTube?  Well it turns out it was all a ruse. Says YouTube:

“For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately ‘roughed up’ the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko’s to upload clips from computers that couldn’t be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. …
“Viacom’s efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself."

Wow.

http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2010/03/quoted-youtube-docu-drama.html

Masters

Let's not mince words. This weekend is all about one person. Unless you're cut off from the world as we know it, Tiger Woods owns the spotlight. And yet it seems like for all the publicity he has gotten in recent months, the golf world is, surprisingly, back to normal.

To all those who think the fans shouldn't be cheering and applauding Tiger; nobody cares about his philandering, they just wanna clap at some well played golf balls. Like this: SICK. To be clear, that is most definitely a hook. That shot that you're able to pump out about every go on the golf course, he owns to within feet of the hole.

To all those who think Tiger should stop cursing on the golf course, and that he's disrespecting the game. Think about it this way. Golf is his job. A job he takes very seriously; admonishing him for cursing is like getting pissed off at Frank in Accounting for yelling at the copier when it has a paper jam (PC LOAD LETTER?). Maybe CBS should do us a favor and not mic him up every time he hits a bad shot (What?).

---

On that note, I didn't know there were loads of YouTube vids of golf players hitting people on the golf course. Makes sense, if there were a gallery of people around me when I was playing golf, I'd be sending people to the emergency room.

1. Crack
2. SNIPER! DOWN ON THE GROUND!
3. ohhhhh....
4. BOOM

---

The first few thoughts I had when I watched opening round coverage were:

1. Tiger is jacked. Apparently he's taken all his emotions out in the gym.
2. The "YOU DA MAN, TIGER!" guys were back in full force. I heard more of these shouts than normal.
3. Who spends money on this?
4. Tiger has more than a legit chance to win. Nowhere has he shown that probably the biggest personal mess of his life has affected any part of his golf game. Not only that but you got a bunch of chokers in front of him: Westwood, Poulter, Mickelson, Kim, Couples, and Barnes. That's about as easy as you're gonna get in front of you without adding the likes of Duval, Calcavecchia, and Van de Velde.

Music...where have you gone.

I am the ultimate pawn of the music industry. No, I'm not trying to make some consumer-conformist-whatever statement, it's just that I simply don't care to peruse the MILLIONS of songs by indie and alternative bands in lieu of mainstream ear candy.

I buy the iTunes top ten...every month. I listen to Top 40 music stations. Yeah. Whatever.

Anyway, this extreme lameness allows me to get well acquainted with today's racket. A racket that has turned from mildly entertaining and comical music (think Beatles to KC and the Sunshine Band to Poison to Madonna to Beastie Boys to Backstreet Boys) to an ego trip (sans Lady Gaga).

You will not be able to listen to a song on top 40 radio without learning how awesome the people are who are singing it. It's...lovely.

Example #1: Taio Cruz's Break your Heart and you'll also enjoy a BBC blog post on it.

"If you fall for me, I'm not easy to please. I'm gonna tear you apart"


But the best part is the beginning, it's an ego love-fest: 


"Woman: This night is gonna hurt you.
Taio: You know i'm not gonna break your heart.
Woman: You wanna bet?
Taoi: Bring it on."


Taoi, you make my knees weak, man. 


Example #2: Kevin Rudolf's I Made It featuring half the rap world and Cash. Money. Heroes. 


Observation a. When you make more than $10 million, you should be better at naming your posse. Cash Money Heroes? Fucking awesome!


"I look up to the sky
And now the World is mine
Ive known it all my life
I made it, I made it!"



BTW, Rudolf, you are the old man equivalent of Kesha. It's true. 

THE PAY TSAR

Just kidding.  I meant Pay Czar.  This isn't Russia. Is this Russia? This isn't Russia.  I'm currently doing a project on this guy and he is pretty rad.

His resume includes:

• Chief of Staff for Ted Kennedy in the late 60's
• Special Master of the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund
• Court-Appointed Special Settlement Master in several high-profile product liability cases including Agent Orange and asbestos
• Administrator of the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund
• Had a street in his hometown named after him
• Founding partner of this law firm

He actually has a pretty reasonable view on executive compensation.  His main tenets are small cash salaries and lots of long-term stock compensation.  He also strongly believes in "claw-back" provisions, where if someone receives a bonus based on a performance target, and it later turns out that target was not actually met, that person should pay back their bonus.  To a normal person, that sounds like common sense, but I guess it took this baller to make companies actually do it.

Best of all, he likes to have testy exchanges with congresswomen.

Platform Tennis

Thanks to my new gig caddying at a golf club, I've been introduced to the sport of platform tennis.  Each time I walk down the fourth fairway, I look to my left and think "what in the heck is that thing?"  Well apparently it's used to do this:



Is it just me or does this not even look like a real sport?

Tiger Lolz

A lot of the jokes made at Tiger's expense have been crass and/or just not that funny, but Slate made a pretty clever one here, imagining how Tiger's situation might relate to Google's new "Every Search Tells a Story" campaign:








More on Tiger later...

I'm a Newsday Twitterholic

...It's probably like yummy in Spanish, except Portuguese. They're definitely the same language.

...or more like early, drunk people.

In other news, pun intended, can newsday.com find me that commercial where they say "smiles per gallon"? I can't find it on youtube...I would really like that. Thanks Newsday.