ChallONNNNNNGE

I am going to copy the geniuses over at theSuperest.com and try a little experiment I'm calling:

ChallONNNNNNGE.
A photo battle to determine the Heavy Weight Champion of Cool.

It starts with G-Rizzle down below in yesterday's post. And as Chairman, I declare that the only thing cooler than a bear in a Kangol hat is Slick Rick rocking a crown and eye patch.



Who will ChallONNNNGE Rick? Any photo of any person is fair game. It's not rap mogul specific. They're simply kicking off the battle. So send your photos of TransAm owners, LumberJacks, etc. It's a wide open field. Submit via email: bshawise@yahoo.com. Sean, don't send me a picture of Hasselhoff or Danny Tanner. This is an amateur competition.

Roll Out

My feelings toward bears may have just changed. I'm not going to make any drastic reconciliatory statements just yet. But for today, I heart this bear. I want to throw a boombox on my shoulder and roll down Vine St. with him.

T. Boone

T. Boone Pickens is my new hero. I've been reading about his planned attack on our television sets but have yet to see anything. Last night I watched T. Boone on C-SPAN talk to a few Senators about his plan to harness the wind gods. They posed questions, pointed out how hard his plan will be and kind of dared T.B. to convince them it would work. With his visionary drawl, he said over and over in various ways, "I...I think we can do this...it won't be that bad." I love that kind of leadership. He makes me want to put on a bandana and weld me a turbine. Seems like a wind/spirit is blowing back in this country causing people to re-believe that we can make change. If only I had a friend who could teach me to weld. Or plant a Victory Garden.

Wassiliness

Stumbled across this photo today of the Wassily Chair. It's a classic. Designed by Marcel Breuer in 1925-26. A chair worth marveling (some museums do) for it's revolutionary materials and manufacturing back in the day. My friends Sydne and Brad own this chair. I saw it in their basement with my own eyes. Their three year old, Will, was using it as a trampoline/step stool to play air hockey. Many goals have been scored with the assist going to Breuer's modernist work of art.

I remember collecting baseball cards as a kid. We'd buy Beckett's guide and figure out what they were worth. We'd dream of one day retiring on the sale of our Ken Griffey Jr. UpperDeck rookie card. I can remember telling my dad my Griffey was up to $45 and him saying, "Only if somebody buys it." That made zero sense to us. Beckett told us how much our cards were worth in black and white. It said nothing of having to find a buyer.

Collectibles are a funny thing. My initial reaction when I saw young Will bouncing barefoot on the Wassily was to snatch him mid-bounce and run off with the chair to the nearest museum so it could be properly admired. But maybe it already was. Maybe Mr. Breuer is happy (if furniture designers can be happy from the grave) that Will is using his chair to get demolished by his older brother, Rob, in air hockey. Happier than if it were sitting empty in a dust-free, art zoo.

I guess collectibles are great if they're enjoyed in the present tense. Sterilizing and preserving things for a future pay day is fine as long you really enjoy the sterilization process. My dad was smart to minimize the monetary "worthiness" of our baseball cards. Kids shouldn't worry about investments. The future is for old people.

Someday, maybe I'll take my kids to the Reds game where an arthritic Junior is being inducted into the hall of fame and I'll brag about how I owned his rookie card when I was a kid. We'll eat cotton candy and laugh about how they could go to college if I knew where that card was. And maybe someday, when Will is grown up, he'll take a young lady to a museum where the Wassily Chair is on display. Perhaps he'll put his arm around her and brag about his reckless air hockey days with that chair. His cool apathy towards material goods will sweep the young lady off her feet and they'll go get their first of many italian ices together.

Creepsterabbit

So this is the creepiest photo I've seen this week. I hereby vow, and I want to be held accountable to this, that I will never allow my child(ren) to sit on the lap of adults in fuzzy costumes. Think about it.... if you saw a stranger sitting in the mall with a polaroid camera asking for five bucks and the chance for your kid to sit on his lap you'd call the cops. But, if the same stranger puts on fur pants then WHAMMO, you have something worth waiting in line for. Something you want your friends and family to remember on their refrigerators. It's child abuse and I'm against it. My kids will learn to avoid the lap of a furry stranger the same way they'll avoid unmarked vans on a candy outreach. I'll buy them a book on explosives before buying them a lap dance with Peter Rabbit. Bombs trump adults dressed as bunnies every time in the Wise family.

Citizen Kane Got Soul

Even when Orson gets a little behind he seems to always catch up. It's a rhythm and blues mirrrrrrrrrrrrrracle. (it's pathetic how many times this has made me laugh out loud)

Digital Candy

So there's new treats available to install on your touchable iPods and iPhones. I paid $1.99 for a solitaire game that remains undefeated. 52 gang members teaming up against me every time. I bought another one for $.99 that is a digital zen garden. You drag your fingers around in digital sand. I read the reviews and fellow dorks said how relaxing it was to draw in the sand. Someone wrote, "It's like playing in the dirt." The review I didn't think much of until just now was a guy who said, "Is it me, or is this really dumb? Wouldn't it be better to go outside and actually play in the dirt/sand?"

We're trying hard to never leave our cushioned chairs. I expect iPods to start going to the bathroom for us soon. I recently saw WALL-E. It's really great. But really convicting. They paint the picture of future humans being fat, regressed blobs who spend their entire lives in comfy chairs staring at digital gadgetry. I don't want to become that. I want to be more like the guy who realizes digital zen gardens are dumb. But jerks like Steve Jobs are making it hard by continually churning out digital candy for us all to sit around and munch on. And that was the ironic thing about WALL-E. It was kind of biting the iPod-wielding hand that feeds it. Steve is saying, "buy this sexy, pocket machine-it's the future." And his Pixar peeps are saying, "your future is chair-bound fatness, pork-rinder. how another game of solitaire?"

(cue debbie downer music)

Sweet Ohio ad #2

I hope this makes you proud, Jane. I hope it makes all Fremonters proud.

Sweet Ohio ad #1

Here's the first installment of our Sweet Ohio Ad Campaign. I hope this will inspire you to share what you love about Ohio in our little experiment. Check the post down below if you don't know what I speak of...

seven/eleven

My brother's wedding this past Friday (7/11) was probably the most fun I've had since my wedding weekend. I am left overwhelmed by how much I love my friends and family. Makes me think that the small towns and villages around the earthplanet that are filled with families and friends who never move away and make a life together have something figured out. After the reception we grilled tubed-meats, shared cheese puffs and carbonated beverages, illegally swam in the heavily chlorinated pool and just talked until the wee small hours of the morning. The whole weekend was magic.

We showed the following video at the reception as surprise for Lindsey. Her reaction was exactly what we hoped for. We shot the video at the bachelor party. Pay attention to the tallest of the background dancers. He will appear to be deaf. He is not. He's just really drunk. And one of the worst dancers this world has ever seen. After it played the biggest question we got (surprisingly to me) was "how did you get matching suits?" They are $5 goodwill specials. Brent bought them all a month ago and since then Lindsey has been asking him how in the world he spent $40 at goodwill. As the video played Brent finally answered her.