Matt Stempeck

March 2007

  • Jordan’s Furniture short-selling the Sox

    With just a few weeks until opening day, Jordan’s Furniture is placing a massive bet against the Red Sox winning the World Series in 2007 by offering a full refund on furniture items purchased by April 16th. I understand the idea behind these kind of promotions in say, 1998, but come on, we won the World Series less than three years ago and we have one of the best starting rotations in baseball this year.

    jordan.jpgFor those of you not from the Boston area, Jordan’s Furniture is yet another furniture store with annoying commercials, although unlike Bernie, Phyl, and the Flea Market guy, they do try to contribute something to civilization other than matching living room sets. For instance, their Reading store singlehandedly quadrupled the number of fun things to do in Reading with trapeze lessons, liquid fireworks, and an Imax theater.

    Of course, this ruined the quintessential-New-England Lake Quannapowitt with light pollution, but it’s all worth it for a mural of the State House made entirely of Jelly Beans (sidenote: who knew Wakefield had a parody website?). Unfortunately Barry & Barry are still pretty annoying, although apparently one of them is now working with John Lithgow on a Broadway show (Wikipedia never fails).

  • How to give a great presentation

    It always helps if you can incorporate mouse nuts and Jimmy Hendrix.

    How the makers of Guitar Hero decided to live the dream and make video games like they gave a damn.

    Link courtesy of Brett’s Blog, a pretty cool site and the only reason my traffic didn’t dip while I was in the Wifi wasteland of Pennsylvania for three days.

  • …it’s back

    thanks to BD for the initial pass-on and Phil for finding it again

  • Hands down worst (best?) local commercial of all time

    I thought Massachusetts had some quality local cable furniture commercials (see: Bernie & Phyl), but this one might take the crown:

    I didn’t even know where to begin with this eyelid-less man, but fortunately Slash did:

    Grievances with/things i couldn’t understand about that commercial:

    – who takes pride in comparing themselves to a mini mall?

    – it’s nothing like a mini mall, the ad was two minutes long and as far as i can tell they only sell three things

    – why is that ad two minutes long?

    – why wouldn’t you just take the money earmarked for a music video and instead spend it on replacing the “FLEA MARKET” sign outside with a comparable one reading “MINI MALL ???? ”  ?

    – why is it necessary to, at the one-minute mark, “make it a dance”?

     

    fantastically entertaining though. i may consider visiting that place if i ever enter the confederacy for any reason

  • March of the Irish

    Is it just me or has St. Patrick’s Day become a month-long affair? I’m not complaining, it just means more Guiness to drink and music to jig to, but it’s kind of like when your 2nd grade teacher decorates the entire classroom and wants to milk it before putting up “spring” a.k.a. Easter decorations.

    Except now it seems to be the result of post-college kids with no spring break to go on* with lots of pent-up energy and unspoilt livers.

    Last week was the Irish Walk and tomorrow’s Shamrockfest. And it’s still a week ’til the actual day of corned beef and roasted potatoes.

    And sticking with the green theme, TWO WEEKS ‘TIL TMNT!

    *I know far too many people taking spring break trips anyway to not include this asterisk

  • No love for Napoleon

    The TV commercial version of the trailer for the new Will Ferrell / Napoleon Dynamite Guy movie humored me, although not in the “two guys figure skating together” sense the producers intended.  No, what strikes me is the long awkward silence they left in after Will Ferrell’s top billing.

    I just hope this will continue to entertain me the next 350 times I see this trailer.

    …and already eating my words, there are a few funny parts in the full version of the trailer (and Jon Heder gets billed):

  • OOH snap(.com)!

    As official king of the blogosphere, I’d like to welcome back Jason Yovanoff.  He broke his 4 months of silence with a post about how annoying those snap.com website previews are.  And then he added some water tower pictures.

    Oh, and because he didn’t actually provide the answer, to turn those things off go here.

    Via Lifehacker

  • Columbia Heights

    Another blog?

    Nope, this one’s a Tumblr.  Tumblr’s are good when you don’t feel like expounding on a subject at length, but do want to routinely share mixed media like pictures, text, and videos.  It also highlights quotes and, channeling the fun of quoting someone out of context (like in many away messages), conversation snippets.

    I thought it’d be a good platform for the occasional publishing of things I witness living in Columbia Heights (in the spirit of Found).

    http://columblr.tumblr.com/

    Maybe I’ll find a way to cross-post here.  I’m 100% confident it’s possible, but not all that much of an RSS / WordPress pro yet.

  • Use your energy

    This is an idea I had a while ago, but clearly did nothing about, so it’s great to see someone else working on it.

    Why not harness the kinetic motion of workout machines to power the gym? You already have hundreds of human hamsters bounding up stair machines, do you really need a coal plant miles away to power the TVs?

    A gym in Hong Kong is on it, and while the technology is still pretty primitive (essentially a car battery) and costly ($15,000 investment to save $183 on the power bill), it’s an exciting thing to keep your eye on.

    Those machines already contained small motion-powered generators used to light up their display screens. But the generators were producing significantly more electricity than was needed to power the screen, and the excess energy was being thrown off as heat.

    The article also mentions generators embedded in shoes (so soldiers can stop carrying heavy batteries) and in the entrances to busy subway tunnels.

    Wall St. Journal, via That’sFit