Oooops

Just to prove I'm not helplessly Probama, there was one pretty bad misstep in big O's sit down with Leno tonight. Leno asked Obama if he gutted the White House bowling alley in favor of a basketball court. Obama's response:

"No, no. I have been practicing . . . I bowled a 129. It's like -- it was like Special Olympics, or something."

I'm pretty sure that by the time I wake up, the Special Olympics committee will demand some sort of apology and CNN's Rick Sanchez will ask everyone to share their thoughts on Facebook and Twitter. Then the New York Post will put together some graphic of Obama superimposed onto a wheelchair with a basketball in his hand. Then PETA will swoop in over the First Family's pick for a dog because it came from some detestable breeder. Thank god I will miss all of this with hours and hours of basketball this weekend.

INSTANT UPDATE: Yup, its already everywhere, including a lead story on POLITICO.

UPDATE 2: Gawker has it too, along with a clip of Keith Olbermann discussing it with Craig Ferguson (although Gawker calls him Colin Ferguson. Inside joke?)

this is going to be real annoying.

Mercurizzle Poisizzling

TERPS WIN! I'm Lazy, It's Clip Day

For old time's sake:



(credit deadspin for the inspiration)

Colbert on the Past Tense of Twitter

Commander and Chucklehead

(via POLITICO)

Ten Minutes of Steven Seagal Beating Ass

Last Minute Bracket Considerations

2008	1, 1, 1, 1	Kansas, Memphis, North Carolina, UCLA
2007	1, 1, 2, 2	Florida, Ohio State, Georgetown, UCLA
2006	2, 3, 4, 11	UCLA, Florida, LSU, George Mason
2005	1, 1, 4, 5	North Carolina, Illinois, Louisville, Michigan State
2004	1, 2, 2, 3	Duke, Connecticut, Oklahoma State, Georgia Tech
2003	1, 2, 3, 3	Texas, Kansas, Marquette, Syracuse
2002	1, 1, 2, 5	Maryland, Kansas, Oklahoma, Indiana
2001	1, 1, 2, 3	Duke, Michigan State, Arizona, Maryland
2000	1, 5, 8, 8	Michigan State, Florida, North Carolina, Wisconsin
1999	1, 1, 1, 4	Connecticut, Duke, Michigan State, Ohio State
1998	1, 2, 3, 3	North Carolina, Kentucky, Stanford, Utah

Diddy is Kind of Annoying

Discontinued :(

Links

High-tech green roof architecture

Biomass and thermal power designs

Interview with Animal Collective

Germany presents: Obama Fingers

What a TRILLION dollars looks like

Maryland

Here is a tournament preview I wrote for deadspin, along with some fun facts about the school:

1. Fear la Tortuga. An impressive ACC Tournament performance negated the bad losses to Morgan State and Virginia to send #10 Maryland to face the #7 California Golden Bears in Kansas City on Thursday. The two teams met this past season in football, where the Terps beat the Gatorade out of Cal, 35-27. Junior guard Greivis “Arantxa Sánchez-Vicario” Vasquez, the only player in the nation to wear eye black, leads the team in points (17.2), rebounds (5.5) and assists (5.1) per game. The fiery Venezuelan played high school ball with Kevin Durant at Montrose Christian in Rockville, MD. Eric Hayes, Maryland’s other starting guard, always looks like he’s about to turn the ball over, causing me to yell at my TV and out my window. But then he’ll knock down a big three, and all is forgiven…for now. Oafy, yet lovable Dave Neal, whom Terp alum Scott Van Pelt dubs “The Mayor” for some reason, holds his own despite looking like a cross between Paul Blart and Kevin James. The lone senior leads the team in 3-point percentage and SABs (Smiles After Buckets). He’s the Jimmy Fallon of basketball. Interchangeable parts Landon Milbourne, Adrian Bowie, Sean Mosely, Cliff Tucker and Dino Gregory have had their moments, but the team’s success is dependent on the play of Vasquez. In Maryland’s 20 wins, Vasquez averaged 19.3 ppg; in losses, he averaged just 11.5.

2. Fun Gestapo. Best known for burning couches, Scheyerface, and throwing batteries at Carlos Boozer’s mom, Maryland’s fans can be a little rambunctious. But at least we do it in unison! So it was sad to see our Commie utopia disrupted when the university shot down the contest-winning nickname for the Comcast Center student section. Campus buzzkills deemed the name “Red Army” offensive to Eastern Europeans, proving once again that Native Americans are the only people colleges can still publicly disparage.

3. Midnight Madness. On October 15, 1971, Maryland coach, Lefty Driesell, began the tradition of Midnight Madness in an effort to build up hype around his squad. At midnight, which marked the beginning of the first official day of team practice, Coach Driesell had his players run laps around Byrd Stadium’s track. Reflecting on the day, Lefty said, “I got the word around campus and 500 or 600 people showed up. We didn't have (stadium) lights, so the guys ran by car lights.” Not to be outdone, current coach and R.J. Bentley’s frequenter Gary Williams has carved out his own Madness staple by entering the arena floor in increasingly ridiculous vehicles. A tank is considered a vehicle, right?

Here’s Gary in a Lambo; on a motorcycle; in a tank!

Bonus: The Wikipedia entry on Midnight Madness has redefined laziness in fact-checking:

According to legend, Lefty Driesell, who was the head coach for the Maryland Terrapins men's basketball team, began the tradition in 1970 or 1971.

A Complaint: MTV.com Edition

If you are like me, and I know you are, MTV has gone way of the Snickers bar: You are too old to digest it in public, but will consume it in private from time to time. I won't watch a skater and his bodyguard or "Run's House", but I'm not above watching every other episode of "The City" or a "Made" episode where a sure-to-fail H.S. sophomore band geek campaigns for prom queen. What a tool. But this isn't ground-breaking journalism here. Everyone who grew up in the 80s and 90s has complained about the station being a shell of it's former self. It's become cliche and inconsequential at the same time. Instead, here's my bafflement at the missed opportunity of MTV's website, mtv.com:

Mtv.com should be leading the way in online music, right? The site has licensed access to over 16,000 videos. And despite a grand total of zero video airings on the flagship station, MTV Hits, MTV Espanol, and MTV Jams air videos around the clock. While costly epics like "November Rain" have gone by the wayside in favor of smaller budget blue screen and Miami Beach shoots, music videos are still a strong driver of sales. With the explosion of Youtube and embedded video, any Tom, Dick, and Brian can post a music on their site. But mtv.com should be the driver behind this. This isn't a knock on the site's content- the videos are there, the articles are there. The problem is, the site itself is horrible.

Sure, blame piracy and Youtube, but really this is a microcosm of the bigger problem with the MTV brand- it is stale. What was once a pioneer in music and sorta-music related content is now a slow-loading, ad puffed, bulky, difficult-to-navigate, directionless site. It's as if an executive at the company said, "Just throw all the shit we own onto the front page, they'll figure it out."

This post may seem irrelevant because MTV has become irrevelant. Color me nostaligic, but back in my day (in old geezer voice), MTV used to mean something. Sure, that something may have been Bon Jovi, (younger) Britney, and Nine Inch Nails videos, but there was an energy and differentiation between MTV and everyone else. Now, sites like Youtube, Imeem, and countless others have rendered mtv.com moot at a time when it should be innovating. Shouldn't users be able to purchase songs off a flashy interface? Shouldn't the site build an online community that rivals the now music-centric Myspace? Viacom's troubles are well documented and likely a source of such shortcomings, but perhaps this a part of the reason why the conglomerate is in trouble in the first place.

In Honor of St. Patrick's Day

Check out Jenny Wick's photography piece titled "Root Ginger":

"Redheads are a pretty big deal. From naughty Eve in the Garden of Eden, without whom some might argue none of us would be here at all, to Britain's most renowned monarchs - Henry-the-serial-wife-killer and his daughter Elizabeth-the-virgin (perhaps some connection there), not to mention the recent Prince Harry-the-rascist. People have been singing ballads to readheads since time immemorial (especially the Irish). More recently there was Valerie, so lamented by The Zutons and Amy Winehouse in the song of the same name. Would the song worked if Valerie had been a brunette? It’s impossible to say. Yet despite their abundant tenacity, gingers receive a very bad press and have often found themselves the objects of ridicule and the victims of what remains in our society, apparently, the last acceptable discrimination."

Scribd

If you haven't heard of Scribd yet, here's your introduction. The site, developed in 2007, allows users to upload PDFs (as seen below) and embed them into websites. Obama's plans, including the '09 budget, health care plan and small business recovery plan can all be found on the site. The site description:

Scribd began with a simple observation – that there's a writer in all of us. And that even more fundamental than our desire for self-expression is our need to learn and be inspired.

Today, Scribd is the place where you publish, discover and discuss original writings and documents. More than 50 million people each month are finding or sharing fun, functional or fantastical writings and documents on Scribd.com and tens of thousands of other websites that have embedded Scribd's document reader.

2009 NCAA Tournament Men's Basketball Bracket

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Puzzles & Games 2009 ncaa tournament

Happy St. Pat's

See the rest of Christoph Neimann's simple but brilliant NYC Lego work here.