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John Hughes Follow-Up

John Hughes, director of such iconic 80s and 90s films as Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Planes, Trains & Automobiles, She’s Having a Baby, Uncle Buck and Curly Sue and the writer of many more such as National Lampoon’s Vacation, Mr. Mom, Pretty in Pink, Some Kind of Wonderful, Home Alone and Career Opportunities, passed away of a heart attack yesterday in New York at the age of 58.

Born in Lansing, Michigan on February 18, 1950, Hughes grew up in Northbrook, Illinois, where many of his films would take place (the city was originally named “Shermerville”, hence the “Shermer, Illinois” name in the movies). He married his high school sweetheart in 1970 and remained with her throughout his life. He began his professional life working for Chicago ad agencies, where he created the famous “foam vs. Edge” credit card commercials.

I’m not going to write a long post about how he was the “voice of a generation”… in fact, I’m not sure I really even know what that phrase means. All I know is that Hughes made me laugh, cry and think about my life. His movies were the first to portray “my” generation in a somewhat realistic manner. And when I saw his characters on the screen, I identified with them. These weren’t movies for my mom, my younger and hipper uncle, or even the babysitter… there were movies for me. And for that, I’m thankful we had John Hughes, if only for a short while.

Here are a couple of neat Hughes-related things:

Here’s the complete text of “Vacation ’58”, Hughes’ “allegedly fictional” short story that inspired the Vacation film. It’s a short (but hilarious) read… you oughta check it out!

And here’s a blog entry by a woman who was “pen pals” with Hughes. It seems that she wrote Hughes a long letter, pouring her heart out to him after she saw The Breakfast Club. Hughes sent her a form letter in return, which made the woman so mad that she sent him another long letter, this time an angry one. Hughes actually wrote her back personally this time, and the two exchanged several letters over the years. Reading her post is sad… not only because of Hughes’ death, but because she quotes a few paragraphs from her letters about why he largely turned his back on Hollywood. It’s a sad and poignant post, and if you were a Highes fan at all, you should really read it.

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FRIDAY FUN: WTF, Rite Aid?

So… yesterday, Lisa and I needed to run some errands. One of the stops was at our local Rite Aid, so Lisa could pick up some lipstick. Having no interest in lipstick, I just wandered around the store while Lisa decided between “salmon” and “coral”. I managed to stumble upon some “limited edition” coconut M&Ms. Being a fan of all things coconut, I just had to try them… but check out my receipt:

Rite Aid WTF 01

Now, I’m not one of those “save the planet” types, especially when it comes to paper – which comes from trees, which can easily be replanted. But come on, people… Do I really need 16″ worth of receipt for one 88¢ bag of M&Ms? WTF Rite Aid!

Rite Aid WTF 02

By the way, the M&Ms were crazy delicious!

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R.I.P. John Hughes

It’s a sad day for those of us who grew up in the 80s:

Writer-director John Hughes, Hollywood’s youth impresario of the 1980s and ’90s who captured and cornered the teen and preteen market with such favorites as “Home Alone,” “The Breakfast Club” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” died Thursday, a spokeswoman said. He was 59.

Hughes died of a heart attack during a morning walk in Manhattan, Michelle Bega said. He was in New York to visit family.

via ’80s teen flick director John Hughes dies in NYC – Yahoo! News.

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$90 Cheese Pizza?

College football commentator Steven M. Sipple, writing a post for the Husker Extra website, talks about the grandeur, opulence and price gouging of the Dallas Cowboys’ new stadium:

You almost have to see it to believe it. There are carpeted hallways throughout the arena. Padded leather seats in sections other than suites. An 18,000-square-foot gift shop. Cowboyrita drinks for 14 bucks a pop. A total of 3,000 Sony high-definition televisions throughout the arena, with plans to add 2,000 more before the 2011 Super Bowl.

Tuesday’s tour took our group into a suite that can be leased for $800,000 a year — which doesn’t include the price of game or event tickets but does offer a large pizza for $90 (no toppings), 12-packs of domestic beer for $66 apiece and a four-pack of Red Bull for $22, among other ridiculously priced items.

The Big 12 is apparently considering making the new stadium the permanent home of the Big 12 Championship and Sipple, who opposes the move, was recently given a tour of the facility.

via HuskerExtra.com.

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Worse than newbies…

In the world of tech support, there is a special scorn reserved for “newbies” or “n00bs”, people that are new to computers and are often afraid that their machine will burst into flames if they click the wrong thing. Personally, I never understood the hate. Yes, newbies are annoying… but weren’t we all newbies at one point in our lives? There are a million things I don’t know, and I know that if I tried candlemaking, caulking, coffee roasting, or stamp collecting I’d be an annoying newbie to all those with experience.

The people that I hate are those that have “just enough knowledge to be dangerous”. For example… calls like these:

Knowledge Is Dangerous Guy: “I was hoping you could help me.”

Me: “Sure, let’s first get some basic information about your system.”

KIDG: “Well, it’s running Windows Vista SP2, but it has two network cards.”

Me: “Two network cards?”

KIDG: “Well, I didn’t want to spend the $30 for a router, so I set up a virtual machine running Squid, which is connected directly to the cable modem…”

Me: “Ummm… OK…”

KIDG: “But I didn’t think that was safe, so I set up Internet Connection Sharing on an old Windows 2000 computer I had lying around, so the Squid output from the virtual machine is forwarded to the Windows 2000 machine, and…”

Me: “Wait… what?”

KIDG: “… now, I used to have ZoneAlarm and Kerio installed on the Vista box, but that didn’t work out so well, so the Squid box sends the output to the ICS machine, which runs it though ZoneAlarm before sending it to Kerio on the Vista box…”

Continue reading “Worse than newbies…”

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Congrats, Mad Men!

Sorry to be so late with this… but congrats to Mad Men for winning “Outstanding Achievement in Drama” at the Television Critics Association this past Saturday!

Mad Men - Don Draper

The season 3 premiere is less than two weeks away! OMG – I’m so excited!

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Captain Obvious returns!

Why is it that some men feel the need to tell me that they would sleep with some obviously beautiful celebrity?

You’d “tap” Jessica Alba? Really? Really? Welcome to the least exclusive club in the entire world, buddy: “Men Who Would Sleep With Jessica Alba”! We currently have 3.8 billion members. We meet on Tuesdays at the Y. Bring cookies. Come early – seating is limited.

Call me stupid… call me old-fashioned… but I always thought that “I’d tap that” was used when talking about friends, chicks at the grocery store… that kind of thing, or maybe a celebrity that most people wouldn’t consider to be attractive. In fact, the whole point of “I’d tap that” was to bring attention to the fact that you’d sleep with someone who wasn’t especially known for her looks. Thus, you’d say something like “You know Brenda at JustCuts? I’d tap that!” or “I can’t help it…  I’d hit Kirstie Alley”.

To say that you’d “tap” or “hit” someone obvious like Scarlett Johanssen, Angelina Jolie, January Jones or Katy Perry… well, it just sounds stupid. If given the chance, all of us, the entire male population of planet Earth, would do the same thing, genius. I know your mom told you that you were special, but really… you’re not.

But that’s just me talking.

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Monday’s “Random Stuff” Post

– Heroes star Hayden Panettiere was the star of the recent bomb, I Love You, Beth Cooper. If you saw the film (or the trailer, or the commercial) you might remember the pivotal opening scene, where a high school valedictorian uses his commencement address to announce his longtime crush on Panettiere’s title character. Well, it seems that a jackass viral marketing team paid a real-life valedictorian in Los Angeles $1800 to “spontaneously” reveal her secret crush during her own commencement address. A member of the marketing team was on hand to record it for posting to YouTube. The team did not ask for permission from the school administration or the Los Angeles Unified School District… so parents were subjected to what was essentially a marketing gimmick for a crappy movie in the middle of their children’s high school graduation. Stay classy, marketing folks!

– Food Network star Guy Fieri’s two restaurants are getting horrible reviews on Yelp.com. It’s unclear whether the restaurants actually suck, or if this is some kind of backlash against the celebrity or what. It’s still funny, though.

– Barnes and Noble are adding DRM to certain ebooks… to “protect the copyright”… of public domain books. I don’t understand it, either.

– A 14 year-old British racing star who was nearly decapitated in a racing incident has made a full (and remarkable) recovery.

– A simple, $5000 facelift surgery might cure migranes.

– Gibraltar’s airport has a major road that runs across a runway:

Gibraltar Airport

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Tweets in Outlook

Twitter is, of course, a highly popular “microblog” site where people post short items about their lives. Microsoft Outlook is an all-in-one program that does email, RSS feeds, calendaring, task lists and more.

If, like me, you’re one of those people who uses Outlook several hours a day, you might be interested in TwInbox, a free plug-in that allows you to send, receive, archive and search tweets in Outlook:

TwInbox

Setup is really simple: just install the plug-in and provide it with your Twitter login information. The plug-in allows you to receive all your tweets in a single folder, or you have have TwInbox create subfolders for each person you’re following. As mentioned, you can create new tweets from Outlook, too. What’s more, because every tweet becomes a standard Outlook post, you can archive the tweets to a PST file and search them like anything else in Outlook! In fact, the only thing you can’t do is follow new people (you’ll still need the web interface for that).

TwInbox is free and available here.

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-08-02

  • So the US loses to Mexico 5-0… and the 14 US soccer fans are sad. #
  • Fact: No one knows who owns the Frusen Glädjé brand. Kraft says it sold it to Unilever in 1993; Unilever says it wasn't part of the deal. #
  • Man, I'm hungry! #
  • @goodbyesimone Please come to Charlotte, NC soon! 🙂 #
  • TFLN: "I feel like tequila is God's way of lighting my fuse to do something awesome" #
  • Pip Brown is 30 years old? She looks like she should be hanging out with Ashley Tisdale! #
  • @ Dammit Janet #
  • Christopher Dodd has prostate cancer? There's a joke in there somewhere, but I'm not finding it… #
  • Glen Campbell is covering the Foo Fighters now? http://ping.fm/rQghr #

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