It’s All About The Love, Baby
Posted onIf you ever saw a romance novel and thought, “Man, what a lame ass title and/or cover,” do I have a site full of romance novels for you. Happy Friday.
Thanks Phyl
If you ever saw a romance novel and thought, “Man, what a lame ass title and/or cover,” do I have a site full of romance novels for you. Happy Friday.
Thanks Phyl
I am NOT making this up: Actor Tom Sizemore has been jailed for violating his probation by failing a drug test after he was caught trying to use a prosthetic penis to fake the results, a Los Angeles County prosecutor said on Friday.
According to prosecutors, Sizemore had been caught once before trying to use a similar device, sold over the Internet under the brand name the Whizzinator, and had failed drug tests on at least five occasions.
Read the full article here
Thanks eNos
I’m on a posting frenzy right now. Such is life, when it rains, it pours. When it doesn’t, its a super duper dust bowl full of drought.
I was sent this link and got halfway down the page before I almost spit up what I was drinking. Its pretty funny how a slice of life action photo, combined with photoshop, can amuse me to no end.
Thanks Michele
This video has been around for a while now – its a kid lip-syncing and rocking out in front of his web cam. I saw it back in 12/04 when Chris posted it to Blah Blah Blog. Since then, I forgot about it until someone else sent it to me last week when we were looking for the old hit “The Super Bowl Is Gay.”
So, please watch and enjoy. It helps if you make you window smaller as the flash file will shrink/expand based on the window size.
If you are wondering, the song is called “Dragsotea Din Tei” and its by a Romanian group called O-Zone. You can even buy it on iTunes if you want to thoroughly annoy your friends and neighbors. After the jump you can even read the lyrics.
Thanks Chris as the comments to your post provided the extra info
UPDATE (2/26):
Today there is an article in the NY Times about this kid. He’s actually from NJ. After the jump, you can read the entire NY Times article. Also, I found a link to the actual music video as well. There are many other versions floating around as well but I don’t think they are that good.
Translated Lyrics:
Hello [on a cellphone], greetings, it’s me, an outlaw,
I ask you, my love, to accept happiness.
Hello, hello, it’s me, Picasso,
I sent you a beep [cellphone signal], and I’m brave [or strong],
But you should know that I’m not asking for anything from you.
You want to leave but you don’t want don’t want to take me, don’t want don’t want to take me, don’t want don’t want don’t want to take me.
Your face and the love from the linden trees,
And I remember your eyes.
I call you [over the phone], to tell you what I feel right now,
Hello, my love, it’s me, your happiness.
Hello, hello, it’s me again, Picasso,
I sent you a beep [cellphone signal] and I’m brave [or strong],
But you should know that I’m not asking for anything from you.
Internet Fame Is Cruel Mistress for a Dancer of the Numa Numa
By ALAN FEUER and JASON GEORGE
There was a time when embarrassing talents were a purely private matter. If you could sing “The Star Spangled Banner” in the voice of Daffy Duck, no one but your friends and family would ever have to know.
But with the Internet, humiliation – like everything else – has now gone public. Upload a video of yourself playing flute with your nose or dancing in your underwear, and people from Toledo to Turkmenistan can watch.
Here, then, is the cautionary tale of Gary Brolsma, 19, amateur videographer and guy from New Jersey, who made the grave mistake of placing on the Internet a brief clip of himself dancing along to a Romanian pop song. Even in the bathroom mirror, Mr. Brolsma’s performance could only be described as earnest but painful.
His story suggests that the quaint days when cultural trinkets, like celebrity sex tapes, were passed around like novels in Soviet Russia are over. It says a little something of the lightning speed at which fame is made these days.
To begin at the beginning:
Mr. Brolsma, a pudgy guy from Saddle Brook, made a video of himself this fall performing a lip-synced version of “Dragostea Din Tei,” a Romanian pop tune, which roughly translates to “Love From the Linden Trees.” He not only mouthed the words, he bounced along in what he called the “Numa Numa Dance” – an arm-flailing, eyebrow-cocked performance executed without ever once leaving the chair.
In December, the Web site newgrounds.com, a clearinghouse for online videos and animation, placed a link to Mr. Brolsma on its home page and, soon, there was a river of attention. “Good Morning America” came calling and he appeared. CNN and VH1 broadcast the clip. Parodists tried their own Numa Numa dances online. By yesterday, the Brolsma rendition of “Love From the Linden Trees” had attracted nearly two million hits on the original Web site alone.
The video can be seen here.
It was just as Diane Sawyer said on her television program: “Who knows where this will lead?”
Nowhere, apparently. For, in Mr. Brolsma’s case, the river became a flood.
He has now sought refuge from his fame in his family’s small house on a gritty street in Saddle Brook. He has stopped taking phone calls from the news media, including The New York Times. He canceled an appearance on NBC’s “Today.” According to his relatives, he mopes around the house.
What’s worse is that no one seems to understand.
“I said, ‘Gary this is your one chance to be famous – embrace it,’ ” said Corey Dzielinski, who has known Mr. Brolsma since the fifth grade. Gary Brolsma is not the first guy to rocket out of anonymity on a starship of embarrassment. There was William Hung, the Hong Kong-born “American Idol” reject, who sang and danced so poorly he became a household name.
There was Ghyslain Raza, the teenage Quebecois, who taped himself in a mock light-saber duel and is now known as the Star Wars Kid.
In July 2003, Mr. Raza’s parents went so far as to sue four of his classmates, claiming they had placed the clip of him online without permission. “Ghyslain had to endure and still endures today, harassment and derision,” according to the lawsuit, first reported in The Globe and Mail of Toronto.
Mr. Brolsma has no plans to sue, his family said – mainly because he would have to sue himself. In fact, they wish he would bask a little in his celebrity.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” his grandfather, Kalman Telkes, a Hungarian immigrant, said the other day while taking out the trash.
The question remains why two million people would want to watch a doughy guy in glasses wave his arms around online to a Romanian pop song.
“It definitely has to be something different,” said Tom Fulp, president and Webmaster of newgrounds.com.
“It’s really time and place.”
“The Numa Numa dance,” he said, sounding impressed. “You see it and you kind of impulsively have to send it to your friends.”
There is no way to pinpoint the fancy of the Internet, but in an effort to gauge Mr. Brolsma’s allure, the Numa Numa dance was shown to a classroom of eighth graders at Saddle Brook Middle School – the same middle school that he attended, in fact.
The students’ reactions ranged from envious to unimpressed. “That’s stupid,” one of them said. “What else does he do?” a second asked. A third was a bit more generous: “I should make a video and become famous.”
The teacher, Susan Sommer, remembered Mr. Brolsma. He was a quiet kid, she said, with a good sense of humor and a flair for technology.
“Whenever there were computer problems, Gary and Corey would fix them for the school,” she said.
His friends say Mr. Brolsma has always had a creative side. He used to make satirical Prozac commercials on cassette tapes, for instance. He used to publish a newspaper with print so small you couldn’t read it with the naked eye.
“He was always very out there – he’s always been ambitious,” said Frank Gallo, a former classmate. “And he’s a big guy, but he’s never been ashamed.”
Another friend, Randal Reiman, said: “I’ve heard a lot of people say it’s not that impressive – it doesn’t have talent. But I say, Who cares?”
These days, Mr. Brolsma shuttles between the house and his job at Staples, his family said. He is distraught, embarrassed. His grandmother, Margaret Telkes, quoted him as saying, just the other day, “I want this to end.”
And yet the work lives on. Mr. Fulp, the Webmaster, continues to receive online homages to the Numa Numa dance. The most recent showed what seemed to be a class of computer students singing in Romanian and, in unison, waving their hands.
Mr. Reiman figures the larger world has finally caught on to Gary Brolsma.
“He’s been entertaining us for years,” he said, “so it’s kind of like the rest of the world is realizing that Gary can make you smile.”
My bro-in-law just sent me a link to a site that is devouted to “gamers, geeks and hackers.” Gotta love that. It has tons of stuff to buy in all sorts of lovely categories. The clothes are the by far the best. After briefly scanning the tee shirt page, I really would love for someone to buy me this one. Why have I never seen this on St. Marks Place? Thanks in advance to whomever is buying it – if you need my snail mail address in order to ship this to me, send me an email. Thanks in advance!
Thanks Amos
The pic below is of Diew, the world’s first potty-trained pachyderm. I shit you not (pun intended):
This is from a Special Broadcasting Service (I know, lame name) article from today:
Thailand’s talented elephants are about to add toilet-training to their repertoire of skills, which already includes painting, dancing and playing musical instruments.
The elephant handlers, or mahouts, at a private enclosure near Chiang Mai, are determined to teach their charges how to use specially-designed giant-sized toilets, according to The Nation newspaper.
Several large concrete loos have been installed, equipped with a rope-flush that can be pulled with the gentle tug of a trunk.
An eager five year old elephant named Diew has been put on toilet duty, trialling the new sanitation system and its jumbo-sized plumbing.
The operators of the facility at Mae Taman, 50 kilometres north of Chiang Mai, are hoping that the toilets will keep the tourist attraction clear of huge and unsightly elephant droppings.
With fully-grown Asian elephants able to consume over 100 kilograms of forage in a day, even a small group of the animals can produce massive amounts of poo.
Mae Taman and Chiang Mai are among Thailand’s most popular destinations, drawing international visitors who are fascinated by the country’s clever pachyderms.
Thailand’s Asian elephants are an endangered species, with an estimated population of 3,000 to 4,000 animals.
A century ago, around 100,000 elephants roamed the jungles of Siam, as Thailand was formerly known.
The elephants kept at Mae Taman have been rescued from Bangkok’s streets, where they were put to work by their owners to collect money from tourists.
You just can’t make this shit up.
Maybe you are looking for a very large metal book? No, okay, maybe you are looking for a an enormously large shuttlecock? Well, if you are ever looking for these or other extraordinary large items, check out this page that lists tons of really large statues that shouldn’t be as big as they really are. I’m so happy that someone has done this because now I won’t guilty about not moving to the midwest to chronicle this phenomenon.
Courtesy of Anticlown.
Tis the season to provide interesting and funny links courtesy of Blah Blah Blog:
1. Homeless Martians on Mars. The Mars rovers have had their solar panels mysteriously cleaned (which has miraculously increased the amount of power they create and then use) and the scientists at NASA have no clue. “Look, I don’t care what NASA tells us on this one. It is clearly alien intervention, most likely of the homeless squeegee kind.” Click here to read the entire story.
2. How to Kill A Polar Bear Without Using a Rifle. This is great – just great. ‘Nuff said.
3. Farm Sluts is a 17 minute movie starring Chris Parnel (from SNL) as an everyman whose life snowballs after he is caught accidentally looking at porn in the office. Click here to watch it and get ready to laugh.
Now that I’m on the Daily Candy email list again (I don’t know why, I delete without reading 9 out of 10 emails because they are about boutiques that only the trendiest girls will like), I received these words and definitions in my inbox this morning courtesy of Daily Candy. Like the last time, I thought I’d share:
Violent night, troll-y night
n. The aftermath of the holiday party where a certain elf swills too much vodka.
Mistleho
n. Someone who hangs around under the mistletoe, waiting to get kissed. (“Eve was being such a mistleho at the company party that no one else could get any play from the cute tech guys.”)
Eggsnog
n. A makeout session that takes place under the influence of eggnog.
Hallmarketing
n. The outrageous marketing push that begins two months before each holiday (Halloween decorations in July, Christmas decorations in October).
Round yon virgin
n. Severely overweight child relative who hogs all the dessert. (“I never even got to try Aunt Martha’s cranberry squares – the round yon virgins charged the dessert table.”)
Santa fraud
n. Poorly costumed Santa Claus impersonator. (“Avoid department stores at all costs. They’re overrun with Santa frauds this year.”)
Dreidel robber
n. Someone who cheats young children at dreidel.
Yulezilla
n. Someone who goes way too overboard with the Christmas decorations (usually Mom).
Mrs. Claws
n. Work buddy’s wife whose steely gaze keeps her husband’s female colleagues on the other side of the office-party dance floor.