Not only is this Super Mario costume homemade and hilarious, the guy sure can boogie.
(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET)Really, America? Can we talk?
You see, I received this press release from Experian Hitwise in my in-box about the most-searched-for Halloween costumes in the U.S., based on searches in the month ending October 24 that ended in "costume." And the ranking was led by "Michael Jackson costume" and "Balloon Boy costume." OK, so those are timely, albeit a little bit more than unimaginative.
But it doesn't stop there. Following that were "Tinkerbell," "Catwoman," and "Poison Ivy," indicating that most costume searches are either on behalf of women or men who really want to make a fool of themselves. Among the top costume searches beginning with the word "sexy" were "sexy sailor costume," "sexy nurse costume," "sexy witch costume," and "sexy Queen of Hearts costume." (What would Lewis Carroll think?) And high-ranking costume searches beginning with "adult" include "adult cat costume," "adult Snow White costume," and "adult Care Bear costume."
I don't care what you dress up as for Halloween. Have fun with it. But just think about it. Adult Care Bear costume. Really. It's a costume that's probably itchy and uncomfortable, unflattering, and will embarrass the heck out of your kids if you have any. Not to mention that there's no obvious relevance to current events or pop culture that would negate the creepiness factor, considering the last time I checked the Care Bears have been around since 1981. Whatever happened to cowboys and pirates and disgraced politicians? Hitwise stats have officially weirded me out.
More depressing figures: Compared with the same time period last year, Hitwise found a 97 percent jump in searches for "pet costumes" this year. Those poor dogs.
Look what just landed in the department of bad social media campaigns! Toilet paper brand Charmin has put out a casting call for five bloggers who will spend five weeks working as "Charmin Ambassadors" in a pop-up bathroom in New York's Times Square.
I'm going to say it right now: The Procter & Gamble-owned brand has creeped me out for a while with those commercials that feature cartoon bears gallivanting in a forest with rolls of soft and fluffy toilet paper and then sneaking behind trees to do their business. I don't want to think about pooping bears. Sorry. But this new campaign, detailed Tuesday in an article in the Business Courier of Cincinnati, really pushes it to a new level.
"Job requirements include interacting with hundreds of thousands of bathroom guests, maintaining their own blogs and content on Charmin-branded Web sites and popular social media sites, and sharing family-friendly video from the restroom space and surrounding areas," the Business Courier article explained. I'm afraid this is pretty much validating and encouraging those weirdos who like to post to Twitter about bathroom visits.
The new campaign tag line is "Enjoy the go." GROSS.
The bloggers will be paid $10,000 apiece, which I sincerely hope they will use to invest in a name change and a wardrobe of high-end disguises, because if I were one of them I'd be way too embarrassed to go on through life with my current identity.
But don't worry! Charmin has loads of experience so there's absolutely no way this will look stupid. According to the Business Courier of Cincinnati, "This is not the first year Charmin has hosted a temporary, or pop-up, bathroom in Times Square. In 2008, it kicked off a "Plush Potties for the People" tour that traveled from Santa Monica, Calif., to Times Square, where it settled for the holidays."
Plush Potties for the People. As one of my colleagues put it, "You've got to be s***ting me."
In one of the most useful and engaging Web 2.0 productivity apps we've seen in ages, Bacolicious promises to make your browsing experience so very delicious by superimposing an image of a piece of tasty, tasty bacon over everything you navigate.
Here's how you use it: Type in the Bacolicious URL followed by the URL you would like to load. So, for example, http://bacolicio.us/http://icanhazcheezburger.com if you think that your grammatically challenged cat would like to have a bacon "cheezburger."
It's all part of the bizarre Internet meme centered on borderline cult worship of bacon, as seen in the rise of blogs like Bacon Bacon Bacon. See also: Pancakes. Now I'm really hungry.
Happy Friday.
The annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York got "Rickrolled" on Thursday.
If you weren't watching the parade live or on TV, you probably saw the mass influx of Twitter messages: '80s pop singer Rick Astley, whose cheesy song "Never Gonna Give You Up" became the center of a corny Internet meme called "Rickrolling,", gave a surprise performance. "Rickrolling" originally started as tricking someone into clicking on a link to the "Never Gonna Give You Up" music video by claiming it was something else, like a highly anticipated movie trailer.
From what about a zillion Twitterers said, Astley emerged from a parade float sponsored by cable channel Cartoon Network, and started singing "Never Gonna Give You Up" live. The singer was recently honored at the MTV Europe Awards, but contrary to rumors, he did not perform.
Qik user Steve Garfield streamed the whole thing. Click here for a video (embedded above).
Singer Jonathan Coulton reacts to the 'live Rickroll' at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
(Credit: Twitter)Police in Monroe, Wash., say they've arrested that guy who robbed an armored car outside a bank, hired unsuspecting dress-alike decoys on Craigslist to fool authorities, and escaped downriver in an inner tube, according to the Seattle Times.
Contrary to what news media had speculated, tracking him down doesn't seem to have involved Craigslist at all.
Three weeks prior to the September 30 robbery, a homeless man contacted city authorities after seeing someone recover an oddball array of items from behind the same bank branch--a black wig, a reflective safety vest, dark glasses, a two-way radio, a baseball cap, and a can of mace--and provided a license plate number. It's believed that the witness may have seen a test run of the heist-in-progress.
The actual robbery, as fans of wacky news may recall, involved a dozen people responding to a Craigslist ad for road maintenance workers who were asked to show up near the same Bank of America branch wearing a very similar outfit.
Using the license plate data, cops tracked down 28-year-old Anthony J. Curcio, recovered a "significant" amount of money from him, and are holding him in the Snohomish County Jail. His family had apparently recently had some financial difficulties, and had a prior home foreclosed. Curcio also had an infant daughter born 10 days before the robbery, according to birth announcements that the Seattle Times surfaced. Quick--somebody give him a job devising plots for CSI.
But it's not over yet: "(Police) still want to know what role the inner tube played in the robbery," the Seattle Times reported. "They believe it may have been stolen. They are asking anyone with information regarding the yellow inner tube, or the robbery, to call the Monroe Police Department."
Please, think of the inner tubes.
In an elaborate robbery scheme that's one part The Thomas Crowne Affair and one part Pineapple Express, a crook robbed an armored truck outside a Bank of America branch in Monroe, Wash., by hiring decoys through Craigslist to deter authorities.
It gets better: He then escaped in a creek headed for the Skykomish River in an inner tube, and the cops are still looking for him. "A great amount of money" was taken, Monroe police said, but did not provide a dollar value.
It appears to have unfolded this way, according to a Seattle-based NBC affiliate: around 11:00 a.m. PDT on Tuesday, the robber, wearing a yellow vest, safety goggles, a blue shirt, and a respirator mask went over to a guard who was overseeing the unloading of cash to the bank from the truck. He sprayed the guard with pepper spray, grabbed his bag of money, and fled the scene.
But here's the hilarious twist. The robber had previously put out a Craigslist ad for road maintenance workers, promising wages of $28.50 per hour. Recruits were asked to wait near the Bank of America right around the time of the robbery--wearing yellow vests, safety goggles, a respirator mask, and preferably a blue shirt. At least a dozen of them showed up after responding to the Craigslist ad.
"I came across the ad that was for a prevailing wage job for $28.50 an hour," one of the unwitting decoys, named Mike, said to the NBC station. As it turns out, they were simply placed there to confuse cops who were looking for a guy wearing a virtually identical outfit.
Authorities eventually found the getaway inner tube (a getaway inner tube!) and suspect that accomplices may have picked up the robber in a boat. According to the NBC affiliate, police hope to track him down by figuring out who posted the Craigslist ad in the first place.
Craigslist founder Craig Newmark was not immediately available for comment.
Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly in his 2004 Halloween costume.
(Credit: Blog Southwest)A few years ago, it was trendy and "transparent" for CEOs to have their own blogs. But typically it didn't go this far--then again, Southwest Airlines chief Gary Kelly isn't your average CEO.
Kelly posted an entry on the Southwest blog on Tuesday asking readers to contribute to an annual poll he hosts: What should he dress up as for Halloween? Kelly has been known to go all-out, and provided photo evidence of past costumes that included Hairspray drag queen Edna Turnblad, Pirates of the Caribbean's Captain Jack Sparrow, and painted-up Kiss bassist Gene Simmons.
"It would be really nice if your suggestion doesn't involve short-term (and especially long-term!) body modifications like shaving my legs," Kelly wrote in the post, "although I will sacrifice for art--within reason."
It's certainly a quirky and humanizing move for the airline, which is one of only a few U.S. carriers that's not mired in economic woes.
So what have readers suggested so far? They seem to be looking toward the silver screen. There have been a couple of requests for the Joker from The Dark Knight, a few for Indiana Jones, and one for Harry Potter. Then there's one reader's bright idea that Kelly don a Speedo and go as Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps. I wouldn't put my money on that one.
It's the ultimate summer Friday news story: CNN Webcasting a press conference hosted by the men who claim they nabbed a dead body of the legendary creature known as Bigfoot.
Bigfoot hunter Tom Biscardi held the press conference in Palo Alto, Calif., in conjunction with Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer, the two men from Georgia who claim that they found the corpse while hiking. Biscardi wouldn't actually show the body, saying that he had invited Fox News reporter Megan Kelly to show it on-air and that a number of scientists would be performing an autopsy on Monday.
"Starting Monday I should have assembled some fine scientists that will do the autopsy to find the origin and death of this creature, and at that point in time we will make it known and hopefully we'll get somebody to come in and film it," Biscardi said to listeners, "to show it to the world as it's being done. I want to get to the bottom of it."
That didn't do too much to appease the skeptical audience of the press conference, who were on the verge of heckling.
On the Web it was equally chaotic. Twitter users went nuts, with Twitter Search (formerly Summize) bringing up dozens of posts per minute from users who were watching the press conference online or expressing their opinions within the site's 140-character limit. Third-party analytics site Twitscoop showed a barrage of Twitters that included the word "Bigfoot," and determined the word to be the hottest term on the microblogging site at the time.
People have been Googling it, too. The search query "Bigfoot press conference" hit the top three on Google Trends.
"R.I.P. Harry. The Hendersons will miss you," one Twitter user said jokingly in reference to the '80s comedy Harry and the Hendersons, about a family that adopts a Bigfoot. Others were more skeptical, given the dubious nature of the photos. "That Bigfoot in the box looks so totally fakey, like a bad Halloween costume," another Twitter user said.
But most of the Twitter observers tuned into the press conference seemed to take the whole thing as entertainment. "I'm actually fearful to enter these Bigfoot infested woods in Georgia!" one exclaimed. "He's a Bigfoot dressed up as a Bigfoot, playing another Bigfoot," one wrote in a nod to a line spoken by Robert Downey Jr. in the just-released satire flick Tropic Thunder.
Most Twitterers didn't seem to believe the contents of the conference, probably because there were enough gray areas in the press conference to paint the walls of my office a nice foggy hue. Biscardi denied that he'd participated in a money-scheming Bigfoot hoax in 2005, saying that he'd been duped by a deranged woman who claimed she had two "Bigfeet" in captivity; he claimed he refunded those who'd charged to see a Webcast of the creatures when he realized it was fake. And Whitton shrugged off a series of goofy YouTube videos, most of them now pulled from the video-sharing site, in which he and Dyer reportedly claimed the Bigfoot was a fake and featured Whitton's brother dressed up as a scientist analyzing it.
"We just decided to have a little fun with it," Whitton said. When asked why he didn't call authorities when they claimed to have found the body in early June, he answered, "I didn't see any need to at the time. It seemed like it would create a frenzy."
"I want to protect the species," Whitton continued. "Everyone would be up there hunting for Bigfoot and disturbing the habitat."
Plus, the Associated Press reported that Whitton and Dyer's story had changed, and in the press conference Whitton claimed that he and Dyer hadn't actually been veteran Bigfoot hunters as reported earlier. When they found the creature, they considered the idea of doing guided tours of Bigfoot country, but that was as far as they said they went.
"I didn't believe in Bigfoot at the time," Whitton said.
And if Twitter is to be believed, the Internet still doesn't.
A couple of hunters in northern Georgia (the state, not the country) claim to have found a carcass of the legendary creature known as Bigfoot (or Sasquatch, if you prefer).
The two hunters teamed up with a fellow named Tom Biscardi, head of a group called Searching for Bigfoot; they plan to hold a press conference on Friday in Palo Alto, Calif., to show off DNA evidence and photos--but not the body itself. That's apparently being kept under wraps. (Yeah, right.)
He's reeeeeeeeeeeeal! (Or is he?)
(Credit: Amblin Entertainment)Biscardi's Web site, searchingforbigfoot.com, proceeded to crash under bandwidth pressures.
According to a press release, the creature:
• Stands 7-feet-7-inches tall.
• Weighs more than 500 pounds.
• Looks part human and part ape-like.
• Is male.
• Has reddish hair and blackish-gray eyes.
• Has two arms and two legs, and five fingers on each hand and five toes on each foot.
• Has flat feet that are similar to human feet.
• Has a footprint that is 16.75 inches long and 5.75 inches wide at the heel.
• Has hands that are 11.75 inches long from the palm to the tip of the middle finger and are 6.25 inches wide.
• Walks upright. (Several of them apparently were seen on the day the body was found.)
• Has teeth that are more human-like than ape-like.
• Has been undergoing DNA testing.
This summer has filled quite the appetite for strange creatures in the news, fueled by photos of the "Montauk Monster," a strange carcass that washed ashore in eastern Long Island, New York. That creature, which earned plenty of headlines on Gawker and other New York-centric blogs, has been shakily confirmed as a viral marketing stunt. Earlier this week, a Texas man claimed to have videotaped a legendary creature called the Chupacabra, but the video really just looks like a weird dog.
The two amateur Bigfoot hunters who claim to have found the body in Georgia, Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer, are a cop and a former corrections officer, respectively. Biscardi, according to LiveScience, has been responsible for at least one Bigfoot hoax before, leading many to take this with an even bigger grain of salt than they normally would.
But here's the real kicker: Every geek and X-phile knows Bigfoot prefers the thick forests of the Pacific Northwest. What the heck was this one doing in Georgia? Searching for decent barbecue?
(Credit: MTV Networks)
Who said you couldn't bring the Web to TV? Slide's absurdly popular social-network application "SuperPoke" is coming to a new platform: MTV Networks' VH1, as part of a promotion for its new reality show I Love Money.
In a cross-promotional advertising deal, "actions" related to VH1's schlocky reality shows Flavor of Love, Rock of Love, and I Love New York will appear in the SuperPoke arsenal. In other words, you'll be able to post things on your friends' Facebook and MySpace profiles along the lines of "Josh has gotten romantical with Rob"--a reference to Flavor of Love--assuming the friends in question have installed SuperPoke.
'Yay! We're going to be on TV!'
But wait, there's more. SuperPoke will be invading your television. VH1 plans to hold a four-day-long "SuperPokeFest," in which 10,000 of those SuperPoke actions will be chosen via lottery and shown on-air.
Slide has had a couple of recent issues with the fact that one of its other applications, Top Friends, had a security hole in it; SuperPoke does not appear to have had such problems, so you can happily sheep-toss your way into oblivion. And if you're a chronic SuperPoker who's desperate to be chosen, fear not: VH1 has the courtesy to inform you in which time slot your SuperPoke will appear live.
Set those DVRs! The whole thing starts Wednesday! You'll be so uncool if you miss it!
At the end of the four-day Max Levchin lovefest, VH1 will premiere I Love Money, which contrary to the name is not about venture-happy Silicon Valley guys in khakis and blue button-down shirts. It's an "all-star" program featuring past contestants from Flavor of Love, Rock of Love, and I Love New York, and it gives a dozen contestants the chance to win $250,000. Which is totally small potatoes compared to Slide's reported $500 million valuation.
In other news, I'm going to go throw a sheep at whoever came up with this corny idea.
