Steven is history. By a 9-0 margin, the champion gay rodeo star from Texas was tossed out of the Big Brother house. Fairly or unfairly, he was caught in the same web that felled Brian, the pushy former Air Force guy, last week. Steven never really allied himself with anyone.

The mistake he made was waiting too long for mercy this week, asking the April-Ollie-Libra-and-maybe-Keesha team to save him, but by then it was too late. He never really had a chance. Deep down, I think Steven was much too disinterested in the game and he seemed to tune out early. He seemed despondent, even depressed, and when he was accused of not being nice, he became nasty.

Maybe he didn’t really know that Jessie was showing off his Read the rest of this entry »

A repeat tipster over at Aintitcool dropped this little nugget recently regarding the next highly anticipated Disney debut: Tron 2:

TRON” will be in
3-D, slated for Spring 2011 and also coming in 2011;
CARS 2, National Treasure 3 and Pirates 4, no plot on
any of those yet.

WALL*E-WONKA

It turns out, WONKA’s rumor was confirmed by Disney – at least partially.

According to Firstshowing.com, during Read the rest of this entry »

You’re much too good to be true, John McCain. Can’t take my eyes off you. I want to hold you so much. No, really I do. Your campaign staff is so clever. They think that by releasing a video of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons intoning this old 60s chestnut (like the chestnut that you are yourself), with clips of big name reporters like Chris Matthews and Lee Cowan of NBC News saying loving things about Obama is a nifty dig at the media. You’re making the point that the media has fallen all over themselves, that they are “in the tank” for him, according to this somehow current expression.

Let’s use this video, cobbled together by your staff that actually does use the “Internets”, and send it out this very week that your opponent is on his World Tour 2008, visiting both Afghanistan and Iraq, plus conferring with our European allies. You actually want to divert this attention away from Obama. You want to steal a little thunder. He’s over there shaking hands with Malaki, and Malaki is actually saying the same things Obama is saying about a withdrawal of troops within 16 months of January 2009. Then Obama is at an elaborately-staged news conference in Read the rest of this entry »

This past June, Google.org launched RechargeIT, a philanthropic investment and research program aimed to expedite the adoption of plug-in electric vehicles. Today it was discovered that two companies have made the investment list, and are in store for some serious Google “help” ($2.75 mil) to get their products up and running sooner than later.

The Two RechargeIT investment recipients:

Aptera Motors is building ultra-high efficiency vehicles based on improved aerodynamics and composite materials. Aptera’s first prototype achieved over Read the rest of this entry »

The cash in question is a cool $5000. That would be the deposit, in case (God forbid) something were to happen while you test drive the all-new Tesla Roadster, the ultimate electric-powered sports car. Tesla Motors, based in San Carlos, Ca, opened its second showroom this morning just down the road on 101, on 300 El Camino Real in Menlo Park. (The first showroom opened in Santa Monica in May.)

The showroom, which replaces an old Chevrolet dealership on a busy block of shuttered car lots saw curious on-lookers and some serious potential buyers today. Except that you can’t really walk in, buy it, and then drive it out the door, like in most other places. If you do manage to fall head over heels in love, Tesla is happy to take a similar deposit and apply it to their current $109,000 MSRP.

And if you just want to take it out on 280 (take Santa Cruz Avenue west, then slight left on Alameda de las Pulgas, then right on Sand Hill) or join the Read the rest of this entry »

In a previous SMASHgods post, we mentioned how Panera Bread is currently employing Sonic Wall, a censorship site-blocking service at its various restaurant chains across the U.S.

Well, you can simply accept the fact that you are unable to access half of your Internet bookmarks, or you can take action and bypass their flatulent imperialism.

iBypass, the largest, most influential proxy network on the Internet (their claim), utilizes a proxy and allows you to Read the rest of this entry »

TubeLeecher, and others like it, have been around awhile, but countless times have I received the question (today included):

How do I download Youtube videos to my hard drive?

Well, here you go. Visit the site, paste the YouTube url for the video you’d like to download in the box, and click Download.

Important: When it’s time to name the video you’re downloading, be sure to give it an extension of .flv:

Something like: HowToDownloadVideosToMyHardDrive.flv

TubeLeecher has its own player if you don’t have an Read the rest of this entry »

Growing up the youngest of six, I remember my dad and my brothers having a pretty wide selection of cars. That was how I became so interested in them, I suppose –it wasn’t so much the makes or models, or what was inside, but it was about how a car looked. I would always be fascinated by the color and the impact it would make. Those were the days of the muscle cars, and shiny metal behemoths.

My oldest brother had a ’72 Olds Cutlass Supreme, with a 407-engine, two-door coupe, black interior, but it was the most beautiful emerald green metallic I’d ever seen. That Olds replaced the light yellow, almost banana color of his ’65 Mustang, his first car. My sister had a ’75 Ford Mustang II, also a coupe, but this time the color was a little iffy –silver exterior, but burgundy red interior—and impossibly tiny. It was a Pinto with a backseat Read the rest of this entry »

Back in October of 2007, a story came out of Windsor California involving Shaun Malone — a teenage boy whose parents installed a GPS tracking device in his car with intentions of spying on his driving habits. The Malones installed the device to record his speed and have the tracking device send signals (even e-mails) every 30 seconds reporting the exact weight of his lead foot.

Well, Shaun ended up getting a ticket but claims this time, he wasn’t speeding – and he can prove it. After receiving a citation for going 17 miles over the speed limit, he used the Read the rest of this entry »

“Yee haw! Come over here, quick!”

“What is it, Peepaw?”

“Did you see those cute girls on the TV, son? The girl race car drivers? They was over there in Indy on Saturday, practicing for Sunday’s Honda Indy 200. You know, that Danica Patrick girl. And that other one, she’s hot, where-she from? Vene-zu-ay-la? What’s her name? Milk and Donuts, or somethin’ like that?”

“Oh yeah, Gramps, I saw that all right. I guess Danica didn’t like how Milka wasn’t letting her get around her on the racetrack, saying, like, she didn’t like her driving style. Just like a woman, right?”

“Dang nab it, boy, just lookee here at this catfight. Look at them get all hot and bothered, towel slappin like they’s boys in a friggin’ locker room! She is slappin’ that thing in her face. And that mouth on Danica!

“That’s right. She be cussin’ up a storm –thinkin’ she’s like a boy, right? Tryin’ to be all tough too”

“What did I tell you, son? They want to be racin’ cars just like us and look at ‘em, fussin and screaming like angry beavers in front of everybody. That’s just wrong. They should be kicked out of the sport for good.”

“Yeah –look at this website, Peepaw. It’s about that fight too.

They’re blamin’ it on those girls’ time of the month You know –maybe they just can’t help it. We sure don’t have that problem, right? We’re always pissed off! Look –this site has a picture of two hot girls in a jello fight. This one has that picture of these fightin’ pussies. Read the rest of this entry »

You’ve heard the old adage on “no such thing as a free lunch”, but it seems California-based Plumble is trying to tear down that old way of thinking by offering its users FREE calling – with only a couple of strings attached.

Plumble offers free calling (up to two-and-a-half-minutes) to its registered users. All you have to do is listen to two twenty-two second ads. And your reward for listening is a free call anywhere in the U.S. or Canada on the company’s dime.

The current rendition of the service is Read the rest of this entry »

I have a few questions for Sherwood Forlee, inventor of the new “Easy PB&J Jar”, and I can’t wait to ask them.

• Your jar claims to be straight-sided, so that the usual rounded jars don’t trap bits of precious peanut butter down at the bottom. Don’t we still have to buy those rounded jars of Skippy and then spoon them into your jars? What about the stuff that stays at the bottom during the transfer?
• That stuff at the bottom —is it really all that much Read the rest of this entry »

In this lazy summer of crushing gas prices, home foreclosures and general misery all around, the President the other day gave a news conference in which he pronounced himself an “optimist”. Things are really not as bad as they seem. Before taking the usual tough questions by the White House press corps, he tried to deflect any criticism that he, the lamest of lame duck Presidents with a lower-than-low—28%, according to the latest Gallup poll– approval rating, is really not out of touch with the state of the American economy:

The bottom line is this: We’re going through a tough time, but our economy has continued Read the rest of this entry »

Curiously timed to be released amid the throngs this weekend packed in at all the “Dark Knight” showings across America, middle-brow retailer JC Penney launched its new “Get That Look” ad campaign. What? You didn’t know they showed commercials while you’re munching on your Milk Duds, eagerly awaiting the hottest movie this year? And there it was: a virtual scene-by-scene mini re-creation of the 1985 teen classic, “The Breakfast Club”, with the various demographically-chosen teens, taking place in the same high school as in the movie.

(OK, trivia fans, it’s “Shermer”, as in Shermer, IL, suburb of Chicago).

The teens here are supposed to mirror somehow the petulant, slouching brood from back then –the jock, the fashion plate, the nerd, and the shy introvert in the back. Except this time, well, being the 21st century and all, JC Penney threw in a bit of Read the rest of this entry »

Christopher Nolan’s masterful “Dark Knight”, the latest Batman film that has already made $66.4 million in one day, is a true cinematic achievement. It is certainly dark, but it smartly avoids the flashy action-flick stunts and over-the-top special effects that one would normally expect. This is a deeply thoughtful film, a moral tale of good versus evil, of how we see our roles in an increasingly corrupt and dangerous world. Batman, played with great depth by Christian Bale, is a conflicted and sometimes flawed persona who symbolically bleeds and gets injured, even through Read the rest of this entry »

Is that a pack of Rolos in your pocket or…

Apparently the boring ol’ flat, rectangular bar-shaped handsets have driven designer Marc Schömann to the edges of insanity. And this baton-style, buttonless, screenless talkstick is the brainchild of his madness.

You turn the _______ on (yes, it’s nameless) by twisting one of its many sections. If you want to make a call, prepare yourself for a brain teaser and start Read the rest of this entry »