This weekend, I'll be speaking/performing at the annual dinner for the ACLU of Michigan as they celebrate folks doing amazing civil liberties work in the state. We're going to have a funky good time. Here's a one-minute greeting I made for the attendees. Hope to see you there!
Taken by baratunde That would be turkey wrapped around chicken wrapped around sausage wrapped around duck wrapped around squab. Delicious and religion-violatingThis was in the Future Of Pleasure episode, and I made this at the French Culinary Inst...
First, his graduation speech to the 2005 class at Harvard Medical School.
Next, one of the many songs he wrote and sang.
Everything he did was amazing. Rest In Peace, you brilliant man
Got some bad news today that has shaken my mood severely, to put it mildly. But that's not the point of this post. The point of this is how to get out of it. Once when I was in an especially low and desperate emotional place, I called a friend. She was at a fancy dinner but stepped out to talk to me. After unburdening my heavy sadness upon her, she told me to do the following:
- Go to YouTube
- Search for Grover waiter
- Watch and feel better
And you know what? It worked! There's something about Grover's waiter character that is just the right combination of silly and fist-clenchingly annoying that it can cut through the thickest fog of darkness, even for just a moment, and put a smile on your face.
Reminds me of a dear friend and great dancer. The first salsa album I ever owned was a gift in the form of an Oscar D'León CD in 1999, and I used to rock it constantly, especially driving to Sophia's latin dance club in Boston from about 2000 to 2004.
For the homies who ain't here...
AOL is back yall! Really! No CDs jamming up your mailbox this time. The company is a lot more about content than ever before, and not the walled garden variety. Just good, interesting stuff. I first noticed the shift with the launch of Politics Daily a while back which features some actually quite interesting coverage and commentary.
Today, I played a small role in AOL's evolution by helping NextNewNetworks debut a new, daily show called The ONE Daily. It's a simple setup: one person talks directly to camera about the one story most on his or her mind. The show will be published every weekday at 1pm. Get it? The ONE at 1!
Here's the first ever show featuring yours truly talking about Conan's return.
You’re watching Conan and the new face of late night - The ONE. See the Web's top videos on AOL Video
I'm not a big fan of commercials, and I'm even less a fan of doing them. Shooting commercials isn't part of my career path, and I take Bill Hicks's slam against Jay Leno's Dorito-schilling to heart. More basically, there are a lot of resources and brainpower dedicated to convincing us we should buy more things. I don't necessarily see my role on this earth as adding to that sales noise.
However, I was presented with an opportunity a few weeks ago that I decided to accept. It was to do a talk show inside a car, a new, hybrid, compact car from Lexus known as the CT 200h. The self-righteous farmers market shopper in me believes not a single new car should be sold in this country. Folks need to get off their asses and walk more, build up the public transit infrastructure and start biking! The realist in me knows that's not going to happen for several cultural, economic and geographic reasons. So if we can at least shift demand to less planet-destroying options, great. If we can actually make the better options not just good but cool, even better.
I accepted the gig and drove around Manhattan and Brooklyn while comedian Whitney Cummings interviewed me about my various activities. The project is called Darkcasting and rather than some invasive ad model taking over another publisher, Lexus did this themselves. I believe the world now refers to this as "branded entertainment." These endeavors can go horribly wrong. After all, what does a luxury car company know about making a good talk show? But Lexus put together a good team, and Whitney was a riot. Here's our segment:
FYI, I wasn't forced or even asked to say flattering things about the car. I'm generally anti-car, especially in NYC, but I'm pro-hybrid and I like what Toyota has done to motivate the industry.