Coors and Reese's Pieces
From the Echo-7 flickr collection.

I'm not quite sure which is more entertaining -- E.T. the 80s extra-terrestrial wiping down a bar counter or the fact that Coors and Reese's Pieces used the same spokes-"person."

Found behind the bar at the always entertaining retro arcade Ground Kontrol.

The 70s gave us many disaster movies and "Meteor" happens to be one of them.

It's less catastrophic epic than it is Mystery Science Theater fodder, but it does boast an all-star cast that includes Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, Richard Dysart, and Martin Landau (among many others). And isn't that what counts?

Plus, the title font is great. It screams, "I'M A DISASTER FILM! RUN FOR YOUR ENTERTAINMENT - STARVED LIVES!" They liked it so much that they used it for all their day of the week captions. Wednesday has never seemed more dire.

I didn't stick around for the credits, but I'm pretty sure this movie was filmed in Brown-O-Vision^TM. I realize that most of the 70s was painted with a palette composed only of orange, bile green, and brown, but this seemed a little browner than that. There were some shots that were completely brown with the tan-costumed actors camouflaged against the wood-paneled walls and coffee-colored curtains. Oh, 70s. You and your incorrigible obsession with brown.

By far, my favorite plot device was the Meteor Trajectory board. It made no sense on so many levels. I mean, the straight line is not really much of a trajectory. It's more of a timeline, but Meteor Timeline doesn't quite have the same cinematic flair as the much more scientific sounding Meteor Trajectory.

I started wondering who made the sign. Either they pulled people off of the "stopping the 5-mile meteor from destroying Earth" project to work on this light-up sign or they outsourced it.

If it was the latter, I wonder what those workers thought when they got the project. "We'll get the basic design to you in a week and...oh, you need it today? Okay. And this 'time to impact' part. Is that anything to worry about?"

Nothing that a brown-clad, all-star cast and a Meteor Trajectory board can't take care of.

Yeah, raindrops on roses are nice and all. And, sure, whiskers on kittens are fine too. But some of my favorite things include watching roller derby and reading comics.

"So what?" you ask? First off, don't sass me. Second, I only mention them because those two very things have been fused together into one wonderful, panelized package - "The True Tales of Roller Derby."

I assume it's wonderful as it hasn't been released yet, but how could it not be? The Portland comic scene plus roller girls? That's like putting chocolate together with peanut butter or beer with...another beer.

You can get your issue and have it autographed at the next bout or at one of the launch parties.

Rose City Rollers bout
March 22, 2008
Portland Expo Center
6:00pm - 9:00pm

Launch Party #1
April 4, 2008
Cosmic Monkey
6:00pm - 9:00pm

Launch Party #2
April 12, 2008
Bridge City Comics
6:00pm - 9:00pm

Portland's very first, very green bike box is complete!

Faith 'n' begora! Just in time for St. Patrick's Day.

I love this concept. It's intended to diminish the annoyance of running over those pesky bicyclists when making a right turn. Instead of inconsiderately being in one's blind spot, they'll be right smack in front of one's car.

This one is at SE Hawthorne and 7th Ave with more to come.

Portland's alternative paper, The New York Times, has a great article about Portland's Bike Boxes here.

The only thing that bothers me is the hyphen in between "wait" and "here." It falls under no category that I know of that constitutes the use of a hyphen. They might as well go the whole way and put an exclamation mark at the beginning and a curly bracket at the end.

Today, March 14, is one of my favorite [geek] holidays -- Pi Day.

An irrational celebration of an irrational number.

It's funny because the date is 3/14 and pi rounds to 3.14. It's math humor. And, I guess, calendar humor.

It doesn't work as well for Europeans, and others who put the day before the month when writing dates. For them, they can celebrate July 22 (or 22/7, which is a close approximation of pi).

Some people observe this festive day by baking a pi(e) or by singing a song about pi or, I imagine, calculating the circumference of various circles. Feel free to celebrate in your own unique way. Just remember. If you've had more than 3.14 drinks, get a cab.

Carrie Brownstein, key member of Sleater-Kinney and amazing dog trainer, writes a very entertaining blog for NPR called Monitor Mix.

She's currently covering the SXSW music festival in Austin, TX for NPR. Her coverage is quite amusing. Here's a part of her description about what NPR will and will not allow:

In fact, I am not allowed to mention that I work for NPR if I've had more than two drinks. If I've had more than five drinks, I have to say I'm here with the BBC.

While all her cohorts received official name tags on which their various names were professionally printed, Carrie was handed a blank name tag and a Sharpie. Instead of just writing her name she chose to let the readers of her column suggest a new identity for her.

Today, she became C.B. Grumbleton.

So, as of this morning, every person in my house has had a surname of Grumbleton. Sometimes McGrumbleton. With a four year-old, it's also changed to Whinington a couple of times.

Read the full story here, here, and here.

I don't usually pay attention to recent studies unless they support a habit I already have. A glass of wine a day is good for me? Chocolate fights tooth decay? Watching roller derby prevents cancer?

Hey, I'm not going to argue with science.

Now I can feel good about coffee consumption thanks to this very informative, and very enabling, article:

How to Defend Your Coffee Habit

Anti-oxidants? Better short-term memory? How could I live without coffee?

Now if there was only a study about the health benefits of sitting in front of a computer all day.

Some song lyrics are so complex that it would take a cryptologist with a thesaurus and a Rhyming Becktionary to decipher their layers of meaning. I mean who knows what "Turning Japanese" or "The Reflex" are really about? And "I Want To Sex You Up"? I think only Color Me Badd could unravel that ball of mystery.

Thankfully, the Song Chart Meme exists.

Now lyrical substances are as easy to divine as a glance at a pie chart or bar graph.