The Poverty Jet Set

Sadly, the time has come for me to part ways with another trusty steed. My dear Lil’ Red hasn’t been driven enough and he needs a good home. He’s been a fantastic car since I drove him across country from Los Angeles on a solo road trip from my brother Dave’s who gave me the car on the sole condition that I tend it well. He totally babied this thing. Lil’ Red spent the majority of his life garaged in California. He’s got no rust, original henna red paint and only a few bumps and bruises (I’ll gladly specify if you’re interested).

Since we live in Philly, and don’t have a garage, I feel like I’m not holding up my end of the bargain. It just ain’t right to leave this hottie on the street. He’s a classic (which reminds me, you can get PA Classic tags if you want him as a collectable - that’ll save you hundreds in insurance, inspection and registration costs). Lil Red runs great, is still well shy of 200k miles. The only things that don’t work well right now are the air conditioning (needs a charge) and heater blower (needs a fan). The manual transmission is sturdy, but probably won’t last forever. I’ve recently had the clutch hydraulics redone this spring. This puppy gets 30 m.p.g.

If you’re in the market for an inexpensive, sexy, fuel-efficient, classic, hand-built automobile, by all means, get in touch. I’d even deliver it to you if you’re not too far away from Philadelphia.

Asking price: $1500.

Kinda last minute I went to the National Constitution Center to shoot video for DigPhilly.com at the press conference for HBO’s new mini-series, John Adams. Sounds like it’s going to be pretty awesome (Lord knows we need to watch some 18th century rabble rousing in us since Deadwood is no more). It stars Paul Giamatti and was produced by Tom Hanks, hence the photos.

We went up to my parent’s house this weekend to have a lil’ Sunday brunch action and for some reason, the whole time we were up there, we all just laughed our butts off. These were the primary culprits:

1.) You Suck at Photoshop.

2.) Stuff White People Like. Because it makes us laugh at ourselves.

3.) My dad’s obsession with the Flowbee. Seriously, the guy just loves his Flowbee. He convinced me (by telling me it would make a good blog post, ahem) to have my hair trimmed with his Flowbee-like Robocut. Srsly. We laughed so hard!

This is one of the funniest things I have seen in a while: a blog dedicated to posting Garfield strips with Garfield removed from them. I used to tear through those Garfield comic books when i was a kid. They’d set me to ROTFLOL.

To quote:

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life?

Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness and methamphetamine addiction in a quiet American suburb.

Makes me wonder… what would Steve Garfield Without Steve Garfield look like?

[thanks for the tip, Annie (via Twitter)!]

Allow, if I may, to re-blog - without comment - a quote I just read on one of my favorite all-things-freak-folk blog, naturalismo:

Q: How do you think your present image as world traveller, bawdy singer, etc. combine with your image as a writer of children’s books?
Shel: I don’t think about my image.
Q: But if you are a spokesman and leader of your generation with millions of followers, don’t you care what they think?
Shel: I don’t speak for anybody but me; I am not a leader. I just want them to let me alone so I can do my thing.
Q: What is your thing?
Shel: I don’t know. That depends on the day, the time of day, and what I did yesterday.

Audrey’s been a blonde her whole entire life. Until today!

How hot is that!?

For my friends who aren’t as crazy obsessed with blogs and tech news as I am, there’s been a pretty weird turn of events in ye olde social networking. Turns out Facebook launched a new project called Beacon which automatically tells all your friends what you’re buying on the web. Not so cool. They started reading the cookies in your browser and reposted information on your Facebook page. Without your permission. But now you can op-out. Head over to your Privacy Setting page here and check the box, then click save. Voila. You’re out. Spread the word.

I’ve been playing around with Tumblr lately, and have been totally diggin’ it. Check out my tumblog called Meem. Tumblogging (what a word!) is quick and painless posting, a little like Twitter, but more. A little like blogging, but less. Me likey.

I’ve been posting all sorts of ephemera from my journeys around the web. And posting photos from my cell phone from my journeys around my day (like the one above, taken under I-676 on 3rd Street). Fun!

This is a little late post-Halloween, but I just got these pics from my sister-in-law Molly. My brother Dave works at Dreamworks as a digital animator. This is the kind of pumpkins he carves:

Funny vid of the week for youze:

{Star Wars Pop Art by Eelus, via Laughing Squid}

After checking into my Google Adsense account for this blog for the first time in, like, 3 months, and finding out I made a whole $0.85 for the entire last month (FTW!), I took that God-awful crap right out of the sidebar. It’s dawned on me that I really don’t care about making money with this blog. It’s fun to blog for blogging’s sake. And my little experiment with text ads has done nothing but clutter up my site for no good.

However, the real impetus for this post in particular is an amazing bit I just read at Coding Horror called “Thirteen Blog Cliches“. Don’t miss such gems as “The Useless Calendar Widget” and “Excess Flair“. Funny stuff, well-thought out. Thanks, Jeff.

While Audrey and I were talking about money, jobs, careers and all that crap the other day she turned to me and said, “We just have a high sense of freedom requirement.”

It’s true. When balancing out the decisions in life, all people take the obvious factors into consideration. Does buying this house without running water or electrical outlets make sense? Is this cubical farm job not-so-bad because it pays okay and is relatively secure? Will this video of me pole dancing in a speedo make me rich and famous? You approach these quandaries with care and penitence while your mysterious internal mechanisms begin to weigh the options. Thing is, of course, we all have different factors that dictate our happiness. Money. Fame. Security.

She hit the nail on the head, methinks, for us. Freedom. We just need a lot of it. We can’t function without it. And therefore, we have pledged to ourselves to make sure we don’t live without it. Free time. Free thinking. Free as in speech. Free movement. Free food. Yeah!

Okay, that’s my liberating thought for the day. Don’t forget the freedom, peoples. Over and out.

Technorati Tags: work, povertyjetset, free, wisdom, freedom, jobs

Never give a razor to a bored man with a beard.

(UPDATE: Okay, so the ’stash only lasted 36 hours… sometimes daring facial hair is just too daring.)

Ocean City, New Jersey. Summer, 2007.

Technorati Tags: people, summer, newjersey, audreysmith, beach

Geez, man… I’ve been saving drafts of tons of posts without ever being able to get them done. Today is house cleaning day, so stay tuned for a bunch of updates from the good people (me) behind this lovely web playground. Cheers.

Oh, and in the meantime, this is a mildly entertaining and (gasp!) topless video of me that I just recorded - what I’m doing right now - my ‘Me Today’ video for my pals over at the great video sharing site, Viddler.com:

Technorati Tags: video, metoday, viddler

Agnes Varnum (the wonderful documentary film blogger behind Doc It Out and pal of mine from the True/False Film Festival) has ‘tagged‘ me to play the 8 Random Things Meme Game, which, truth be told, is kinda like those silly MySpace survey bulletins do when they’re bored at work, but a little bit cooler ‘cuz it’s about MEME! I’m up for it. Here it goes:

Rules:
1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged write their own blog post about their eight things and include these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged and that they should read your blog.

8 Things about Mark, randomly selected:

1. My first concert ever was The Beach Boys on their Kokomo Tour. Oh yeah!
2. I’m way into this drink: 3 parts sparkling water, 1 part 100% pure cranberry juice - oh yeah!
3. I always name my cars. My first car was Sparky. My first blog post ever was about him. Now, I drive Lil’ Red, a 1980 BMW 320i. He rulez, too.
4. I never lived in one place longer than two years during my 20’s. I’m tired of moving.
5. My first pet was a turtle named Jeffrey. My second pet was a turtle named Jeffrey. My third pet was a hamster named Jeffrey. Hmmm… Maybe I was like this kid.
6. The first CD I ever owned was Nirvana’s Nevermind. The last CD I ever bought was Pissed Jeans Hope for Men, from the band, at a gig here in Philly.
7. I’ve been to nearly every single National Park in America. And 46 of 50 States. Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota and Vermont remain. I’ve got to savor those.
8. I’m a serial Partial Continuous Attention practitioner. I’m wrote most of this blog post while listening to a discussion about mobile devices and blogging and Twittering other people sitting in the room.

Okay, now I’m tagging you, dear friends from BlogPhiladelphia!
EricSmithRocks
StellarGirl
Girls Can Tell
Blankbaby
Dangerously Awesome
knowHR
Jen Simmons

What does your Simpson’s avatar look like? Show me in the comments! I can’t stop laughing at mine and the one I made (unofficailly and without permission) for Audrey…

And here I am, hanging out with Homer and the fellas, at Moe’s Tavern.

Technorati Tags: advertising, simpsons, movie

I just made this animation out of warped frames of video that Final Cut was burping up while digesting something rather heavy.

Thank God for warm weather! Yay for SPRINGTIME! (yeah, I’m a nerd.)