Whither Now Yahoo!? “First, you get the direct fallout from the Wall Street Journal’s story covering “the Peanut Butter Manifesto.” Then you get the secondary analysis of just what ails the world’s most popular network of web properties. Finally, Yahoo! announces a deal with a clutch of newspaper chains. What’s it all mean, and what’s the relationship between these stories?”
Comedy is Tragedy + YouTube (With a Dash of Legal Stupidity). “This story starts out with video of a tragically bad corporate reinterpretation of U2’s “One” (commissioned to commemorate the union of Bank of America and MBNA’s credit card businesses). It was so painful, it became something of an internet comedy senation. The New York Times, however, notes that the tale has turned tragically stupid…”
This past weekend provided local pranksters Ben Lovatt and Victor Moukhortov — the “Smash Our Stuff” guys — with a two-fer, thanks to the near-simultaneous release of Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Nintendo’s Wii consoles. In case you’re not familiar with the concept, Ben and Victor are well-known in the gadget-o-phile community as those guys who videotape themselves going to electronic stores on the release date of some must-have item, purchasing said item and then smashing it just outside the store.
Below is the video in which they smash a PlayStation 3 that they purchased at the new Best Buy across the street from the Eaton Centre. Considering that the PlayStation 3 is being released in very limited quantities, is the most expensive console today (CDN$549 for the 20GB model and CDN$659 for the 60GB model at Best Buy) and is being resold on eBay for an average price of US$2600, one might think that they were risking being beaten up by the people in line — at least until you considered the fact that you’d lose their place in line if you leapt to the defense of the hapless PlayStation 3.
They followed up later that weekend by doing the same thing to a newly-purchased Nintendo Wii outside the Future Shop near Yonge and Sheppard. The onlookers seemed to take it better than those lining up for the PlayStation 3. There are a number of possible reasons for this: the Wii isn’t being released in such limited quantities, doesn’t cost as much (CDN$279.99 at Future Shop), the Nintendo hype isn’t anywhere as intense or perhaps Nintendo people are just more chilled out:
In case you were wondering about the song that they like to use as background music for their videos, the one with these lyrics…
Keep in mind that these guys are going to recoup the money they spent on these smashed devices — they might even make a decent profit — quite easily. They run Google ads on their site, and it would appear that they get a decent amount of traffic.
They refer to what they do as “social experiments” and imply that they’re challenging consumer culture. I’m more inclined to think of them as a couple bored smartasses looking to entertain themselves and get a little fame through shock value. What do you think?
The Japanese are Weird, chapter 832: Here in North America, when one thinks of “gangster cars”, images of black Lincoln Town Cars with tinted windows, Escalades with spinning rims and riced-up Hondas come to mind. In each case, the car exudes serious macho.
Things are different over in the Land of the Rising Cuteness, where the gangster cars exude more Hello Kitty or Pokemon. Consider the van below. In Japan, this car says “Caution: Members of a speed tribe inside!”. Here in North America, this says “Caution: Even the cast of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy found this vehicle too campy!”
It’s been decided that Accordion City needed another gathering of its blogger populace, so yet another Blogstravaganza has been declared for Friday, December 8th at Fiddler’s Green (right by Wellesley Station), starting at about eight-ish. The responsibility for herding various categories of bloggers has been divided among three people:
Bob Tarantino to gather the right-of-centre bloggers: a pasty, embittered bunch,
Jason Cherniak to summon the left-of-centre bloggers: a motley, disillusioned rabble,
and Yours Truly, to bring forth the Hipster Nerds, the creators and rightful inheritors of the future.
I wrote about the last Blogstravaganza in this entry, where I also link to various attendees’ blog entries on the topic. This one promises to be entertaining, and I’m likely to do a couple of accordion karaoke numbers in the downstairs bar at some point.
Vista Registration Annoyances: “I had hoped that thesethreeentries chronicling my troubles with installing Release Candidate 1 of Microsoft’s Vista operating system would mark the last of the annoyances I’d encounter, but that wasn’t to be. My new problem: registration.
