LMNOP

Life Was So Much More Awesome When You Could Just Hang Out with Your Rooster and Enjoy a Cigarette

I have really been enjoying Black and WTF, and blog that compiles old photos with completely absurd things going on in them.  A few recent favorites:

 

 

And my No. 1 fave:

Just good old Doreen, takin' an alligator ride.

Basically, People Magazine's Pet Website Needs an Ombudsman

I believe I have mentioned here before that I think People Pets is the most ridiculous site on the entire Internet.  The site is notable because, even in a category that is already ridiculous--dog and cat news--it is extra inane.  Take today, for example; amid such major stories as "Larry the 70-Year-Old Lobster Will Not Be Eaten" and "Pious Pooch Attends Church Twice a Week," the site boldly featured a slide show entitled, "Pets That Look Like Vanna White!"

Now, it might just be me, but I think that if you are going to feature something as absurd as a gallery of pets looking like Vanna White, you should really deliver on the premise.  Sadly, the slide show in question does not.  Let's take a closer look at why.

These are the two photos that start off the slideshow.  You'll note that the resemblance here is not uncanny, but it's not terrible.  I would think that if Vanna White were a dog, she would be a smiley retriever-type like this.  So there is, at the very least, enough integrity in the first comparison that you go into the second slide with your hopes up.  But then . . . 

. . . You see this.  A picture of Vanna White holding an umbrella next to a picture of a black cat THAT LOOKS NOTHING WHATSOEVER LIKE VANNA WHITE, also under an umbrella.  Evidently the fact that the two images share the presence of an umbrella is supposed to be enough to sustain the theme of the slideshow, but come ON--the umbrellas don't even look like each other.  We are at the second photo, and already this slide show is phoning it in in a major way.

It gets worse with the third slide, and this crocheting cat.  People Pet's editors clearly had to go back 20 years to find a picture of Vanna to include in comparison, and she's not even crocheting--she's knitting.  At this point, the credibility of the slide show has already eroded beyond repair.

This slide is clearly the best since No. 1, due to such factors as the angle of the photograph, inclusion of sunglasses, and the slightly similar bangs Vanna and the dog seem to be rocking.  It constitutes the second valid inclusion in the entire slideshow, though it is in no way enough to redeem it.

Another photo, another complete erosion of the premise of the slide show.  Notice the caption: "'One-year-old Puppy flips on his back and sticks his paws up like a little bunny,' shares mom Judith Ohanian of Sunrise, Fla."  Which means that even Judith of Sunrise, Fla., who is stupid enough to send a photo of her dog into People Pets, is not stupid enough to compare said dog with Vanna White.  A bunny, yes; Vanna, no.  EVEN THOUGH THEY BOTH, AT ONE TIME IN THEIR LIVES, POINTED TOWARDS A CAMERA.

This is the photo I am presuming sparked the idea for this entire godawful photo gallery.  Somewhere in a stack of photo submissions, someone saw this dog pointing at a TV playing Wheel of Fortune and thought, "Well, we have a million photos of dogs and cats.  There are also probably a million photos of Vanna White out there, because she's been on TV for the past 20 years. Clearly, according to the 'Enough Monkeys and Enough Typewriters' Rule, there has got to be enough material out there to cobble together a slideshow comparing them." 

Guess what?

That was an incorrect assumption.

In conclusion, People Pets' slideshow of pets that look like Vanna White contains two pets that kind of look like Vanna White, one pet that is kind of acting like Vanna White, and FOUR pets that fail to demonstrate anything more than the weakest notional resemblance to being like Vanna White, or in the same room as something she was once also in the same room as.  This, to me, does not constitute grounds for a slide show; rather, it indicates the need for much greater accountability at the highest levels of the People Pets editorial structure.

The Internet Just Runs Itself Now

At this point, I don't think things like this even get made by actual people--I am pretty sure they just materialize on the Internet on their own.  (Although, if this was made by people, I am guessing that my friend Mike was somehow involved.)

A Brief Tour of the First Five Google Seach Results for "King Ralph"

As the title of this post indicates, I am about to launch into paying way too much attention to an almost-20-year-old movie featuring John Goodman as the King of England.  But first, I should explain that this post can really be attributed to the fact that I recently re-watched The Wedding Singer after not seeing it in approximately a decade.  Though I very much enjoyed that movie when I was in high school, upon reexamination I can confidently say that The Wedding Singer is actually a terrible movie.  Now, it probably does not shock you that a movie created primarily as a vehicle for giving Adam Sandler an excuse to grow a mullet is bad, but boy, do I remember thinking it was hilarious at the time.

Anyway, re-watching The Wedding Singer and realizing how bad it is made me think I should re-watch some of the other '90s movies I thought were great, just to see if they have withstood the test of time.  The first movie that popped into my head as a candidate?  King Ralph.  I am not entirely sure why that movie came to mind, but that did not stop me from spending a shitload of time Googling it today.  Because I would like to have something to show for all that hard work, I will now share with you the things you learn when you Google "King Ralph."  Let's explore.

Search result No. 1:  King Ralph entry, IMDB.com
The IMDB page for King Ralph reminds us of some key facts, like that the movie was released in 1991 and the tagline was "A comedy of majestic proportions."  It also tells us the top five plot keywords for the movie, which are:

1. King
2. British Parliament
3. Photograph
4. Tea Ceremony
5. Punk

That sounds about right. 

Unfortunately, the IMDB trivia for the movie is pretty lackluster; the most interesting fact reveals that "John Goodman did his own singing."  Weak.

Search result No. 2: King Ralph page on Wikipedia
Here's where our research starts to get interesting.  According to the Wikipedia entry on King Ralph, the movie was "a box office flop."  Could that be true?  I seem to recall it playing very well to the elementary school demographic; I, for one, found the movie to be extremely clever.

On the "Talk" page for the entry, we learn about some of the editorial struggles inherent in characterizing a complex movie like King Ralph.  For example, one editor asks:

Why delete what I added about Ralph meeting with the Zambezi king? It lays the foundation for Ralph's announcements to Parliament near the end of the movie. The way the plot outline appears, it's a bolt out of the blue. GBC 22:04, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Search result No. 3: Amazon.com

There are currently 25 customer reviews of King Ralph on Amazon.com, but I think this one gets to the heart of things best:

That about sums it up.  Well done, Christine Andersen.

Search result No. 4: Video results for "King Ralph"

Google is helpful enough to provide us with an overview of some relevant video search results for the term "King Ralph," which is good, because it reminds us that the world is such a vast place that it actually contains multiple people who have taken the time to convert clips from this movie to Internet format.  Evidently, someone also made a Ralph/Sarah Palin mashup-type thing--

Personally, I think this is all the proof we need that the movie is still relevant.

Search result No. 5: King Ralph movie reviews on Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes is a site that scores movies by aggregating reviews and then translating positive and negative feedback into a percentage score on something called a Tomatometer.  Currently, King Ralph has a 25% score, which is not that great.  I decided to check out some of the linked reviews and found this original New York Times writeup by Janet Maslin from February 15, 1991. 

According to Maslin, "The sight of Mr. Goodman in a kilt trying to play Frisbee with the royal corgis is worth a lot. But when Ralph begins trying to leave his mark on Buckingham Palace . . . the film loses a little of its spark. The sight of electric trains and pinball machines in the palace is almost overkill."  Clearly, what the nearsighted Maslin is seeing as the movie's fatal flaw is what even some random Amazon.com reviewer was able to correctly notice as its most hilarious virtue: it's funny, because he doesn't know how to be a king!

In conclusion, there is literally no reason this post needed to ever be written.

Touche, Bob Garfield

The other day I posted tweet linking to a Mental Floss quiz in which you had to match the names of various public radio personalities with their photos.

 

Less than an hour later, my friend Phylan tweeted the following in response--

 

--which I thought was funny.  So I replied back:

 

And that was the end of the conversation.  Until today, that is.  Apparently Bob Garfield is on Twitter AND actively searching the web for references to himself (hey, no judgment--I have a Google alert on my name, and I am not even remotely famous.  In fact, most of the alerts I get have to do with another Lauren McMahon's bowling scores).   So, get this--Bob Garfield called us out!  First, he said this:

 

Yes.  The host of On the Media called my friend "babycakes." 

Touche, Bob Garfield.

He then proceeded to mock two of my recent, particularly uninteresting tweets:

 

Threeche, Bob Garfield.  ("Threeche" is what comes after "touche," duh.)

Lessons learned:

1. Bob Garfield hears everything you say about him. That is how on the media Bob Garfield is.
2. Bob Garfield is actually quite cool.  However, it's no wonder nobody can identify his photo in a Mental Floss quiz--he is obscuring his identity by hiding behind a Simpsons avatar!
3. I will henceforth be randomly injecting insults directed at various public radio personalities into my tweets in the hopes of baiting them into sending me hilarious @ replies.  So if you ever see me tweet something like "Eating a Popsicle and being glad I am not stuck in an elevator with that loser Ira Glass," you will know why.
4. Bob Garfield is probably reading this right now.  Hi, Bob!

My New Excuses for Not Blogging Will Be "Kidney Stolen" and "It Burns"

This Wired piece on digital-age etiquette contains some truly fabulous graphs and graphics.  My favorite is this one on plausible excuses for calling in sick:

 

Also good is this one on balanced media consumption:

And finally, Holsters: A Style Guide.

 

(Sidenote: I still do not own beer holsters.  And I have lost this shirt.  So my hands-free beer capabilities are even worse than they were two years ago.  I am hereby officially renewing my commitment to owning beer holsters.)

"Also, if you have any advice on registering the monkey"

Found this gem on Craigslist today (click to enlarge):

My first thought upon reading this was, "Weird." 

My second thought was, "Hey.  I'm a primate.  I'm disease-free, too.  This could be a great way to make $1000."

This Week In Internet: Nerds, Lincoln, and Free Microwaves

FYI, if you were wondering what 13 years of perfect attendance gets you, it's a profile in the WashPost about what a NERD you are.

Speaking of nerds, ever wonder if your tweets can be copyrighted?  (In case you consider "I just ate chicken" to be important intellectual property)

Looks like Season 3 of Mad Men is set to start in August.

The National Archives added this "long-lost" letter written by Abe Lincoln to their collection yesterday.  Turns out the letter itself is not that exciting.

Gotta love the "Free Stuff" section on Craigslist (thx, Em).

At Least Someone Is Getting His Job Back Despite the Recession

Back in 2006, I blogged about the fact that Ask Jeeves had kicked poor Jeeves to the curb and rebranded as Ask.com, essentially trying to look more Google-y.  Well, today I am happy to report that Jeeves has his job back--in the UK, at least.  He also got a sweet makeover:

I am thrilled to see that Jeeves was able to get his job back, because one thing I know for sure (but not from experience) is that once you have been a high-profile butler, it is just about impossible to find work as anything else.  After all, you're old, slightly snooty, and all you own is a closet full of duplicate butler uniforms.  Your options are seriously limited.  Just ask that guy who hasn't been seen since he played Niles on The Nanny.

Effective Immediately . . .

. . . The "don't take candy from strangers in vans" rule has been expanded.  It will now read: "Don't take candy from strangers in vans OR the Craigslist 'free stuff' section."

Please update your internal Common Sense Handbook accordingly.

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