Wheelchair Cats, Abandoned Theme Parks, and Why Boston Sports Fans Rock

The First Day Of The Rest Of This Blog

As you may (or may not) have noticed, I’ve made a couple changes to my site recently. There’s really two reasons for this: First, I did it because I’m constantly experimenting with how to do different design tricks and this site is the perfect guinea pig. Second, the way I’m posting on this site is always evolving so I figure I might as well tweak the design to fit how I’m actually using it.

So what’s different? I eliminated one of the sidebars and got rid of the music, comedy, and movie of the moment videos. Rather than posting every day the way I was when I started the site back in December, I think I’m gonna roll with a couple posts a week instead. But those posts will be much longer form and should include their share of comedy, music, movie and other assorted videos.

That’s also why you’ll notice that each post will now have these little subheadings to break up the items and make for an easier read. It’s a blatant rip off of Jimmy Traina’s Sports Illustrated Hot Clicks column, but I dig how that works and it struck me that what I’m doing on this site is kind of similar in form so why not rip off his look as well.

Ok, enough about how the sausage is made on this site, let’s get to the part where I actually post some stuff you might potentially care about. Cue the new subheader!

Things That Cracked Me Up Recently

Here’s a few of my favorite things from Comedy.com in the past few days:

The Difference Between The Web In 1996 And 2010

A Deserted Disneyland – Japanese Style

“Nara Dreamland was a theme park in Nara, Japan which was built in 1961 and modeled after Disneyland in California. Due to the fact that it was an extremely cheap copy, it didn’t have a lot success and was pretty much a ghost town before it closed permanently. Since being abandoned the dodgy theme park owners put up nasty spiked fences and barbed wire around the whole park hoping to keep urban explorers out.”

That didn’t stop a guy from sneaking into the abandoned park and taking some amazing photos including these:

Two Movie Jokes That Made Me Laugh

I don’t know what it is about these still frame movie jokes, but they get me every time.

“Advertising Is Fucked.”

I couldn’t agree more with this Jeff Jarvis article about the impending collapse of the advertising industry. Here’s an excerpt:

Condé Nast is a house built on smoke and mirrors — that is, to say, on brand advertising. So it is astonishing to hear its CEO, Chuck Townsend, essentially toss the company’s business model out the window of the Death Star in what The Times frames as “a fundamental overhaul of the advertising-based business model.” This, folks, is surely the real product of the McKinsey studies undertaken at Condé, not a few magazines folded but a new strategy. In a phrase:

Advertising is fucked.

And here’s another great excerpt:

I suggest they have to get new revenue through commerce — through selling the things they once advertised now that advertisers are deserting them to sell direct. Problem is, that’s hard, as Condé knows best from its experience with Style.com, which started as an attempt to create a high-end store (I worked there then). They created it in partnership with a retailer and the retailer bagged the effort when times got tough in the first bubble; it then became another ad-supported site. But the strategy wasn’t wrong. Problem is, there is no retail expertise in the company.