Triumph of the Liams

    The History Channel, the one place you can go one cable to see some grainy old footage of Nazis getting shot at. At least that's how it used to be... Over the past few years it seems like the History Channel is pulling an MTV and not airing the type of programming that the channel was named for... Think of the Weather Channel airing a reality show about weathermen. The History Channel has been doing this crap for a while now. I remember in the late nineties when they would rerun old episodes of "In Search of" with Leonard Nemoy. This was a campy faux-investigative report show about supernatural crap like the Lock Ness Monster. I didn't mind this too much because there were still plenty of shows about actual historical events. Well, things have changed quite a bit in the last ten years.

    Alright, who sent a memo to all the soccer moms and hipsters telling them it's cool to wear plastic shoes in public? These things have been around for a few years now but recently I've noticed that everyone has a pair of Crocs. Supposedly this monochrome petroleum polymer footwear is just so awesome that no one realizes they look like a retard while wearing them. And I don't mean a retard in the popular you're-acting-like-a-fool sense, but rather I mean retard in the actual mentally-retarded sense. Whenever I see someone wearing Crocs in public I can't help but think they've escaped from someone's protective supervision and they're on the lam, only they don't realize that they won't get very far because they are wearing plastic shoes...

    You may not have heard of Cuil before. They've actually only just opened up shop today. So what is Cuil... well, it's like Google, but different. It's a search engine built by former Google engineers, it even has a weird name like Google's top secret projects. Supposedly it's pronounced 'cool' which is mildly ironic, because the site is anything but cool.

    Since when does everything have to come in a chipotle flavor? Who made this decision, and don't tell me it was the consumer... this isn't some all knowing market force correcting itself because of some overwhelming public demand. Marketing is more likely to be the culprit. Because of some fluke focus group thousands of miles away now I have to be bombarded by ads telling me how chipotle is the hippest shit to eat. Well I'll tell ya, it's not that good. Wow, it's kinda spicy, but it doesn't taste any different than jalapeño... maybe I'm missing something. Did you take a good look at the image on the right? It may look like a benign box of "cheese straws," if there is such a thing, but before you commence to snackin' you should take note that they're packing some extreme chipotle flavor. I'm sorry, that'd actually be bodacious chipotle flavor... <liam>

    This weekend I watched the first couple of episodes of ABC's I Survived a Japanese Game Show. Going into this I expected to see a rip off of Takeshi's Castle/Most Extreme Elimination Challenge but with fat and stupid Americans as the contestants, and that's pretty much what I got. The premise behind the show is that ABC duped some random reality show contestants into flying to Japan without any explanation. Supposedly the contestants only knew that they were going to be in a reality show, nothing more. "This is what happens when you put 10 strangers in a Japanese Game Show, what happens when you stop being polite and start getting real?" Well, Real World this ain't...

    So there I am, minding my own business, reading the news headlines until something tickles my fancy. "Oh, Nintendo shows off a new game and it's called Captain Rainbow?!?!" So naturally I click on the link so I can scoff at the article on 1up. I read a few lines of the story, it didn't seem like anything interesting, blah blah Birdo, blah blah Super Smash Bros. And then, out of the corner of my eye I think I see a smiling baby on the right side of the page, but as I glance up to mouse over the red X to close the window I realize that's no smiling baby... ZOMG IT'S A BABY WITH A CLEFT LIP!!! Damn you, Cleft Palette baby, you've fooled me once again. Fooled me into looking at your grotesque deformity...

    Myspace recently changed things up a little. The "new design" isn't really all that new, there are a grand total of two changes. The new navigation is better than the old nav but it's still nothing to write home about. What is notable though is this story which points out how these changes will 'free up' space on the site for more ads. And who doesn't like more ads, I hardly ever notice the ads on myspace, especially the one where you can win a $50 Macy's gift card if you shave Brittney Spears' head before the timer runs out.

    Top Gear, possibly the best thing the British have ever managed to ever create, is coming to the United States. NBC announced today the details behind what is being called "Top Gear USA" which has to be the lamest title ever... You may remember a few years ago when the BBC version of Top Gear started showing up on the Discovery Channel, which begs the question, "WTF?" Well, apparently the kinds of Americans that like insanely expensive and insanely fast cars are the same Americans that think all Englishmen are homosexuals and do get the Discovery Channel. So what's gonna be different this time around? Well, everything...