Adam Kuban: Kublog

You can’t really read it in this photo, but the piece of tape on the backrest says, “Free.”

As seen on Fourth Avenue near Union Street in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

• Holiday pupcakes are almost done [Cute Overload]
  Heh. Puppy in the mixing bowl. Cute, but it looks staged.
• Video: Olbermann’s Special Comment on the HCR shitshow [MSNBC]
  "No single payer, no sale. No public option, no sale."
• HCR as we knew it is dead [HuffPo]
  "I cannot imagine that the White House has done focus groups or polling among the surge voters of 2008—young people, poor people, single women—to ask if they want to pay Aetna or Blue Cross or Wellpoint 10% of their income for lousy coverage. Ask your friends. Your recently graduated from college kids. I have—the mandate is the wet dream of private insurers and will be stunningly unpopular with just about everybody else."

I was looking for some travel toiletries in this drug store in Berkeley, California, on my Pizza Madness 2009 tour when I turned the corner and saw this. It actually startled me at first; I thought it was an actual animal sitting there in the aisle.

Note: In the world of Christmas songs, “cool” is relative. Let’s just say that these are some of my favorites.

“We Three Kings of Orient Are,” The Beach Boys (iTMS, Amazon)
“All I Want for Christmas Is You,” Mariah Carey (iTMS, Amazon)
“Silent Night,” The Coctails (Amazon)
“O Tannenbaum,” Nat King Cole (iTMS, Amazon)
“We Three Kings,” Miles Davis (download here)
“Christmas at the Zoo,” The Flaming Lips (iTMS, Amazon)
“Father Christmas,” The Kinks [PNSFFG] (iTMS, Amazon)
“Marshmallow World,” Darlene Love (iTMS, Amazon)
“Wonderful Christmastime,” Paul McCartney (iTMS, Amazon)
“Fairytale of New York,” The Pogues [NSFFG] (iTMS, Amazon)
“Another Lonely Christmas,” Prince [NSFFG] (iTMS, Amazon)
“Christmas in Hollis,” RUN-DMC (iTMS, Amazon)
“Merry Xmas, Everybody!” Slade (iTMS, Amazon)
“Christmas Wrapping,” The Waitresses (iTMS, Amazon)
“Last Christmas,” Wham! (iTMS, Amazon)
“All I Want for Christmas,” Yeah Yeah Yeahs (download here)

Another note: I have more to add. Will do so later. And I’m taking suggestions….

P/NSFFG = Possibly/Not Safe for Family Gatherings due to language, themes, or the questioning of Santa’s existence.

I follow a number of people on Twitter who also use Tumblr or the newish TypePad Microblog service. Some of these people have linked their Twitter accounts to their Tumblrs or Microblogs.

Some of these people are annoying.

I’m not going to name names, but you know who you are.

Basically, if all you’re using your Tumblr or Microblog for is to “reblog” something you saw elsewhere, you should not be auto-retweeting this crap.

I don’t want to click on a shortened link in your tweet only to be taken to your microtumble that in turn links to the primary source.

You should have just tweeted the link to the original material in the first place, asshat.

Actually, I’ll use @romensko as an example (chart after the jump), since he’s not a friend of mine whose feelings I might hurt—and because he does this ALL THE TIME. Read the rest of this entry »

• Giro Ambient Bike Gloves [REI]
  These look good for cold-weather riding. 6/6 rating. $45
• A Twist on Mom’s Spaghetti Pie [Burgers and Acquisitions]
  Recipe that takes leftover spaghetti, mixes it with egg and Parmesan, and plunks it into a muffin tin to make individual servings of spaghetti pie. Probably something more along the lines of what a kid would like, but I can't help being interested in it. I love anything that's not a muffin but that's been baked in a muffin tin.

• On "rockstar butchers" [Serious Eats]
  "Someone had to eventually replace 'mixologists' as the over-hyped, self-important, douchebags of the restaurant and food world. Go grind me some hamburger and STFU…"
• Media training tips for trainers – part 2 [noodlepie]
  Good tip on how to use Delicious more effectively. Wonder how many people are still using Delicious though.

• Make better use of the road [The Bellows]
  "Meanwhile, commenters in the previous post are all very upset that cyclists might even consider not strictly obeying the rules of the road. This, quite frankly, is dumb. Every time I find myself on an interstate, it seems to me that nearly 100% of the cars and trucks on the road are traveling faster than the speed limit, which, I believe, is against the law. Here in the city, cars routinely speed. They rountinely roll through stop signs. They routinely illegally park in bike lanes and vehicle lanes. I have seen them go the wrong way down one way streets. I have seen them travel in reverse on city streets to go back and make a turn they missed. Drivers are more or less constantly breaking the rules of the road. As are pedestrians. As are those on scooters and segways and rollerblades. I promise to get very angry at stop sign flouting cyclists as soon as drivers agree to accept a full, no tolerance program of speed limit enforcement."
• 10 Easy Secrets of Good Grammar [MSN Encarta]
  Improper use of "I" drives me crazy: "Use 'I' when you're the subject of the sentence. Use 'me' when you're not. If someone is doing something with you, to you, or for you, for example, use 'me.' 'The teacher was talking with Susan and me about our test scores.'" ¶ The author also says, "The dictionary is your friend," which is something I always try to stress to folks I work with. [via @grammargirl]
• A reader corrects Andrew Sullivan
  "Your contention about roads not existing for bicycles might be true in rural areas and the west.  It is not in the cities of the east.  The first organization to actively lobby for paved roads in America's cities was The League of American Wheelmen, a cycling organization.  The league's members were a who's who of the elite of the day including  Wright Brothers, Diamond Jim Brady, and John D Rockefeller.  If not for their successful efforts to have the roads paved in our cities the auto would have taken hold much more slowly in its early days.  Just as cars once made use of roads paved for cyclists, cyclist may use roads paved for cars without guilt.  Public accommodations are public."

In the 1980s, specifically around ‘83, there was a bit of a mania for ATVs, specifically three-wheelers. The three-wheeler, however, was shown to be dangerous and was quickly replaced by its more surefooted cousin, the four-wheeler. But before the big, loud, motorized tricycle was yanked from the scene it would be immortalized in at least two iconic videos of the decade: Read the rest of this entry »

• Big Paper, little paper, no paper at all? [Philly Citypaper]
  "In April, I ran a panel for the Society of Professional Journalists on "Ethics in the Digital Age," which attracted a wide range of J-school students. I argued that the ethical virtues of an actual newspaper are partly due to having to produce a physical product, whose errors aren't easily corrected. ¶ The old heads in the audience nodded in sync, but the students were unmoved. So I asked how many of these J-students regularly read a physical paper. Not one hand. ¶ Did they print it out at home? Nope. Did they print anything out? Not really. Just papers for class. OMG. " [I'm actually surprised that J-school students aren't reading print anymore. I figured they'd be among the last holdouts of their generation. Sad.]
• I’d never even heard of electronic shifting before this [Bike Snob]
  "Electronic shifting will completely change the way you think about bicycles–assuming, of course, that you previously thought of them as being relatively inexpensive and easily serviceable."
• AMC Movie Theaters Pull Ads from WaPo [WaPo Ombudsman Blog]
  The paper's ombudsman reports that reader complaints have been steady and rising in the month or so that AMC removed the ads in a cost-cutting measure. WaPo hopes attendance will drop and AMC will return. But whatevs. When was the last time you used a newspaper to get showtimes? Hello, Moviefone and moviefone.com. Hello, Fandango.