Post-hiatus Punch

I went on a brief hiatus to do things like earn my salary. I’m back now 

- What!? Ticketmaster is $750 million in debt! Serves you right you greedy bastards. But how does that happen? And why did you double my Bon Savants ticket price? Argh. [via Paste]

- Yum! A $30 TV dinner, available in New York. [NYTimes via Consumerist]

- In today’s glass half-full moment, a useless survey finds that 91% of Japan won’t be buying the new iPhone 3G when it hits their market later this summer. Sounds bad for Apple, except when you consider that 9% will, and that’s about 11 million people. [via Macrumors]

- Root beer is the new beer! [NYTimes]

- Interesting marketing campaign for laundry detergent. Send samples wrapped in a t-shirt, then instruct the recipient to wash the shirt to demonstrate stain removing power. Hope it actually works. [Frederik Samuel via Kottke]

- Devo is pissed at McDonald’s. And they are suing. [Pitchfork]

- Gawker surveys New York bloggers and media gurus to figure out how exactly to break into the media industry. This is New York specific but I think it applies to all “cool” jobs anymore:

“-Claim you’re an expert in “New Media.” No one knows what the fuck it is anyway.
-Don’t say “Web 2.0″
-Do say “I subscribe to [X] feeds…”

Sad that you have to BS about all these changing web platforms in order to seem “skilled.” Other good pointers and full text here.

- Download some free tracks from stellar Cambridge indies Passion Pit. The live show is great, as you can imagine.

Feed The Animals

….and Gregg Gillis for that matter. Pay what you want for Girl Talk’s divine new creation. 

Get it here

via Nolte Notes

 

 

Fightin’ Friday

 

 

I never thought I would have a Red Sox-related photo on this blog, but thankfully my first trip to Fenway was at least exciting. [Thanks, Boston Herald]

- Sure ordering food online in order to eat locally sounds counterintuitive, but as the New York Times reports, its a phenomenon that is actually twice as green as going to the grocery stand and buying locally.

- Quickly! Get your free Obama sticker from MoveOn.org now that he’s finally the presumptive nominee. (Yeck, look at that conflicting adverb-adjective combo).

- I made the Yelp Elite this morning. Hooray! More snobby reviews coming soon.

The Glamour of Grammar

Roy Peter Clark, fellow Providence College English cavalier and Vice President and Senior Scholar at The Poynter Institute, offers this insightful look at the distinction between lie and lay. Here’s a taste:

As a writer I may want to stretch the language to the snapping point for effect, but as a reader I demand attention to standard English, not just for clarity but also to avoid distractions that would make the act of reading less fluent. On the other hand, when the bank robber tells me to, “Lay on the floor face down with your hands over your head,” I’m disinclined to respond, “Excuse me, sir, but don’t you mean ‘lie down’?”

He also has a snappy blog for those inclined to better their writing. I like his philosophy on spelling:

No reason exists to master spelling unless you can use it to make meaning as a reader and writer.  The magic will not work if you write allusion when you mean illusion, except to turn you, like Shakespeare’s Bottom, into a fool wearing donkey ears, an ass and an ars.

Mid-week Roundup

 

- Kottke has an interesting breakdown of the various per-hour costs of the habits of New Yorkers

- For all you pleated-pants wearing types, Sears will give you $75 if you buy $100 worth of Dockers. File under things that will bankrupt a national retail chain near you. [Consumerist]

- Berkeley institution Amoeba Music has some really excellent live performances archived on their site. My picks include: Beirut(Mount Wroclai – yes!), Tegan and Sara (check out The Con), and Tunng.

- My favorite new blog is Copyranter, a running critique of the foibles of advertisers. Potentially NSFW.

- Is it bad that all I took away from this article on being young and poor in New York was that I wanted rice and beans for dinner?

But there are smaller measures, no less ingenious, that round out the lifestyle. These young people sneak flasks of vodka into bars, flirt their way into clubs, sublet their walk-in closets, finagle their way into open-bar parties and put off haircuts until they visit their hometowns, even if those hometowns are thousands of miles away.

- GM will launch a “strategic review” of the Hummer brand. Hopefully they just issue an apology to all of America for offending all five senses with the H2. [UK's Telegraph]

[image of the beautiful and badass Ms. Jenny Lewis courtesy of Brooklynvegan. Check out the whole set.]