WHY GOD CREATED YOUTUBE™: Kraftwerk Live in Milwaukee

Don't you just love going to concerts nowadays and watching all the people around you videoifying? What a joy. Not only do you get to be annoyed and distracted by the cameras during the show, but then when you go to the YouTube after the show and see the footage and it's all small and grainy and has shitty sound you get to be disappointed that it's not better quality. Ah, the angst of the 21st Century cultural snob.

Truly this is why God created YouTube.

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FILMPHLEGM™: Don't Ever Go To A Goddamned 4-D Theater If You Know What's Good For You

Anyone out there in JohnEats land ever gone to a 4-D theater before? Ever gone to the one at the Shedd Aquarium like Anonymous A and I did last week? Well, if you haven't, don't bother unless you enjoy getting poked in the f*cking back with a plastic rod, slapped in the legs with a rubber hose, sprayed about the legs and face with tepid water, and blasted with air from power fans so loud they drown out the soundtrack of the movie. Who in the hell thought that this was a good idea? Nowhere in the marketing bullshit about this supposed "cinematic revolution" do they mention oh, by the way, there's a plastic rod in the backrest of your seat that will suddenly spring out and feel like somebody's sticking the business end of a pencil in your back. No, they describe this as a "special FX seat" which "will thrill you with bubbles, wind, strange and wonderful smells, tickles, amazing sounds and all kinds of surprises." Has no one with a heart condition experienced this, keeled over and sued the be-jesus out of whoever manufactures these things? I mean, yeah, it was kind of funny at first but after the third time I got poked in the back and splashed with water I was pretty goddam sick of it.

Not to mention the creepy, solitary tweed-sporting 50-something white guy who decided that he needed to sit right next to me even tho he was one of only five people other than Anonymous A and myself in the entire theater -- yet another piece of evidence that the irritating social misbehavior known as The Human Swarm is close to an outright epidemic now. Sonuvabitch.

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Please Stand By.

Sorry to be away for so long, I'm sure all three of you who read this are probably devastated. I'm a bit busy at the moment, but hope to find the time to do more useless ranting soon.

In the meantime, why not check out:

• This?


• Or this?


• Or how about this?


• But what about this?


• Maybe even this?

More soon, with context!

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Never In A Million Years Did I Think I'd Ever Have To Write This

If I knew back in the day when I was desperately telling everyone I knew to watch Freaks And Geeks because I couldn't bear the thought of it going off the air that there would come a day where I'd see an ad for what looks like Owen Wilson starring in a 21st century Disney remake of My Bodyguard and then in the same week make the startling discovery that the viral ad campaign I'd gotten tired of before I'd seen the second billboard were both products of the man who created one of the best sitcoms ever, well...I'd still keep telling people about Freaks And Geeks. But I wouldn't have to like it.

Please, Judd Apatow. Take a movie season off. Your fans deserve not to get sick of you.

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iPLOD™: Sharper Image's Beamz™ Interactive Music Performance System

Dartanjal really hit the nail on the head with this one. I think in the beamz™ interactive music performance system, we can find everything that's wrong with the entire Sharper Image aesthetic in one lone SKU. First off, for some weird reason that can only be explained with the aid of some recreational drug use, they think their demographic still thinks products whose names substitute an "S" with a "Z" are somehow "hip", "trendy" or "urban chic." Then you've got the aesthetic design of the thing, which is of course molded in a silver-like plastic substance and shaped like a big-ass W (because corporate guys who buy crap like this to make themselves feel like they might just have a solitary creative bone left in their bodies still like George W. Bush, right?). Then you look at the specs of the thing and you realize they're charging $600 for what essentially amounts to the synth inside a crappy Casio keyboard connected to a few LED lights. And their marketing geniuses think that psuedo-New Agey ad copy like this will appeal to their base:

The beamz™ interactive music system brings families and friends together through highly personalized music performances that elicit joy and excitement across all ages. Even preschoolers can "play the light®" and everyone can be the music star of the party! And in a different way, anyone can chill out while performing alone — expressing their mood with music of their own making.

With a combination of poor concepting, execution and marketing like this, it's no wonder Sharper Image just declared bankruptcy (thanks for that bit of info, Koobifora).

I can just see lots of Shaper Image board members standing alone in their offices, one hand holding their quarterly financial report, the other moving through the magical LEDs of the beamz® Interactive Music System, playing a wistful, melancholy tune along to a "reggae" rhythm track, a single tear streaming down their cheek as they ponder how meaningless life will be without so much useless shit to buy when Sharper Image is finally put out to pasture.

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