Logopolis

links for 2010-03-02

• How I Spent Friday
  Mark Evanier tells the story of visiting an classroom full of 8 year olds as a professional cartoonist -- which sounds just as awesome as you might imagine -- and makes some greawt points along the way. "Being able to draw Spongebob is like gaining a super-power. It might be worth investing the effort to learn to do it just so you can do it. I felt that way about drawing when I was a kid and also about magic and ventriloquism and a few other things. Even though I didn't go into those fields, I'm quite sure those interests had a role in getting me to where I am today. My father, who had no real marketable skills and always regretted it, used to say, 'It's not that important what you do in the world as long as you can do something!'"
  (tags: NewsFromMe MarkEvanier cartoons LifeLessons)

Messy Wallets and Tacky Keychains, Be Gone

You don't get to love me or date me or even really know me that well without realizing that my wallet is just a manifestation of my mind -- cluttered full of things I find useful that others dismiss and items valuable to me if not high in actual cash value, and often on a good day, it's hard for it to even tell you who I am.

One of the things that has helped me with this problem is justoneclubcard.com. I thought I was the last person in the world to discover this site  a few years back or whenever I used it to print the ratty collection of barcodes that resides in my wallet and captures all my "preferred customer" barcodes.  Apparently, I wasn't because some CVS cashiers still look at me with a "uh..what..duh?" whenever I hand them my self-laminated-with-scotch-tape cheat sheet.

Today I discovered the next generation in wallet maintenance My KeyRingThing. This one is fancier, lets you save your barcodes for later, and order your own laminated card; of course, if I had the money to do that, I probably wouldn't be so jazzed about saving 25 cents at Dominick's.  Still, though, it's neat and highly recommended, especially if you're tired of giving bouncers your PetSmart card when going to a bar or handing over your Borders Reward card when you try to buy cigarettes at a strange 7-11.

(Yes, I get carded sometimes when I buy cigarettes. No, really, I do.)

(And yes, I haven't actually had a cigarette in 9 days.)

(No, seriously... I don't think I look under 18, but I like to believe that in the places where they have signs up that say "if you look like you might be under 40, we're going card you", I can still pass.)

Anyway, click here to print/order your own.  Tell them Logopolis sent you.

(No, this is not an ad.  I just like to pretend like I'm Pat Summerall sometimes. Nor is it a new anti-smoking campaign.)

Bad (Comic) Timing

Even outside of the Olympics, NBC is doing the hardcore promotional press now that its Parenthood is finally previewing, getting Ron Howard to do personalized intros for the preview clips its sending to the media, like this one for TV Squad:

This clip doesn't seem very funny, but of course, I'm going to tune in because hello, Lauren Graham. (The commercials with her were funny -- the first 100 times I saw them.) But either way, I really bet NBC wishes its modern family comedy about multiple generations of a modern family had come out before ABC's Modern Family.

links for 2010-03-01

• Julianne Moore To Return To "As The World Turns"
  Fuck me - I heard this rumor a while ago and thought it was 'the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.' Little Jamie Franco, look what you've started. It's only for an episode, but still... "CBS has confirmed that feature film star Julianne Moore will be returning to the cast of As The World Turns to reprise the role of Frannie Hughes."
  (tags: soaps AsTheWorldTurns awesome wtf)
• Fractions of a Second: An Olympic Musical - Interactive Graphic - NYTimes.com
  Best use of the Internet I've seen all day. If old media keeps having good ideas like this, there might be hope for them yet. "At the Olympics, the blink of an eye can be all that separates the gold medalist from the 10th-place finisher. In some events, this is obvious. But in others, with athletes racing one by one, the closeness of the race is harder to perceive. Listen to the differences below."
  (tags: olympics audio visualization nyt time awesome)