TurkeyMonkey

GMA finished unveiling it’s “7 New Wonders of the World” today and, well, let’s just say that it was very consistent. Consistently bad.

Picking up where I left off in my last post, the sixth wonder is the Mayan Pyramids. Now, to be fair, this is just about the closest thing to a Wonder (capital W) that the numskulls at GMA and USA Today have named so far, but still, the Mayans built pyramids in many countries. It’s kind of like saying that skyscrapers are a modern wonder. OK, I guess they’re a modern building trend, but why not pick one? The ancient wonder list went with the Great Pyramid at Giza, not all pyramids. Likewise, you wouldn’t say skyscrapers, you’d pick the Empire State building or Sears Tower or Petronis Towers. Gotta be specific.

The seventh wonder was quite possibly the most absurd of all: The Great Migration: Circle of Life. Ugh. We’re talking about the animal patterns of the Serengeti and the Masai Mara plains in the heart of East Africa. This is such an unbelievably dopey wonder — ah, what’s the point.

Frustrated by this utter disaster — a fundamentally good idea that was well promoted and well executed by the GMA team, but horribly conceived of by the expert panelists (if only they could shitcan those turkeys) — I bitched on the GMA message board. But then I decided to do something far more productive: vote on the “New 7 Wonders” project (note the inverted 7 and New), which actually gets it.


The vote totals won’t be revealed until 7/7/07, but at least the nominees are all drawn from the same rational, logical pool of man-made marvels. So at last, I have peace with the Wonders.

This whole “7 New Wonders of the World” project, a joint venture between Good Morning America and USA Today, seemed extremely promising at first. They had cutie Kate Snow moderating a panel of experts (Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Pico Iyer, Bruce Feiler), a ridonculous amount of pre-project hype (billboards, promos, and a sad, sad attempt at viral YouTube video), and most important, a genuinely good idea (I’m thinking of copying the whole 7 Wonders package for one of the magazines I edit). Then they actually started revealing the wonders last week, one day at a time.

1. Potala Palace (Lhasa, Tibet): OK, haven’t ever heard of this place and it’s not terribly pretty, but a giant architectural marvel at the top of the world — I’m feeling you.

2. Old City of Jerusalem (Jerusalem, Israel): Uh, isn’t it kind of cheating to pick a whole city? Why not Paris or New York? But that aside, yes, Jerusalem still passes the smell test — i.e. it’s a wonderous place I’d like to visit.

3. Polar Ice Caps (Iceland): Oh, come on! We’re opening this up to natural wonders? I’m starting to imagine the Wonders experts debating: “Why not the Earth’s core? No, what about the moon? We could do those new moon — I love RX230!”

4. Hawaiian National Marine Monument (Hawaii, USA): Ugh. Clearly the wheels have fallen off this project. This barrier reef is nothing compared to the one that’s actually “Great” in Australia, or the one off Belize. This is yet another natural wonder (which honestly should be a totally different list), and not even a very good one at that.

5. The Internet (Everywhere!): Retarded. Simply retarded.

OK, the Internet may have changed all our lives, but it’s not a capitalized Wonder of the World. Nor is the economy or television or Apple computer or the blogosphere or marijuana or monkey torture. Let’s make this clear: Wonder of the World means massive man-made structure that people from all over the world would be interested in seeing! It’s a simple conceit. These guys get it.

The ancient ones, now called the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World (which are all but gone, except for the Pyramid of Giza), were essentially a list of tourist destinations put together in the 2nd Century BC by a famous writer. Perhaps that’s what GMA and USA Today should have done here: pick one really good writer (that lady who penned “1000 Places to See Before You Die,” maybe) and asked them to come up with one solid list. Not this silly, stupid list that seems like it was put together by a committee of kindergarteners.

Go see Borat. That is all. Now stand for national anthem.

Kazakhstan greatest country in the world.
All other countries are run by little girls.
Kazakhstan number one exporter of potassium.
Other countries have inferior potassium.

Kazakhstan home of Tinshein swimming pool.
It’s length thirty meter and width six meter.
Filtration system a marvel to behold.
It remove 80 percent of human solid waste.

Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan you very nice place.
From Plains of Tarashek to Norther fence of Jewtown.
Kazakhstan friend of all except Uzbekistan.
They very nosey people with bone in their brain.
Kazakhstan industry best in the world.
We incented toffee and trouser belt.
Kazakhstan’s prostitutes cleanest in the region.
Except of course Turkmenistan’s

Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan you very nice place.
From Plains of Tarashek to Norther fence of Jewtown.

Come grasp the might phenis of our leader.
From junction with the testes to tip of its face!

(and because I just can’t get enough of this embedded video)

It was only a matter of time before someone stole my idea for the greatest magazine in history: Monkey Magazine. The fact that it’s the Brits only makes it worse. And the only reason that I’m not totally debressed and ready to give up on the whole magazine-publishing racket is this heaven-sent video, promoting the new lad mag.

“MONKEYUS INTERRUPTUS” [Gawker]

Behold, my nephews Owen and Austin slamming their sippy cups into a counter for 1 minute, 30 seconds.

It’s like beating your head against a wall, only funner!

At last, I can now blog at work. I mean, I can blog and not feel dread and guilt and a whole host of other anxious sensations as I post.

As part of my diabolical plan to give the the magazines I work on a half-decent website, I’v also been helping to coordiante four new blogs (all of which will feed into them). The first of these, and also the only one that I expect to contribute to, is Suburb-arazzi (link: suburbarazzi.lohudblogs.com). It’s actually my colleague Robert Zeliger’s baby (I’m just a subordinate blogger), but the conceit is, dare I say, brilliant. Thing Gawker for the Suburbs.

If that doesn’t knock your socks off — well, then you’re clearly not wearing any. Or else you’re one of those faggy octogenarians who wear garters.

Anyway, the blog will be all about the celebrities that populate the Lower Hudson Valley (i.e. Westchester, Rockland, Putnam counties). Some of the naysayers at The Journal News have raised an eyebrow or two over the idea — “Are there really any celebrities to write about?” To which I can only say, come on, puh-lease? We got Bedford’s DMX getting arrested every other week, Stephen Baldwin going absolutely looney with his new skateboarding+Jesus “Breakthrough Ministry,” not to mention Martha Stewart, Donald Trump, and literally dozens of film and TV stars. We’ve got the deck totally stacked.

I’m gonna make a bold promise (and one I would never pledge here): Three posts a day before noon.

For at least two or three days.

Last Sunday, we headed up to the Westchester town of Croton with the Doug Mann clan for the second annual Great Jack-O-Lantern Blaze. There were more than 4,000 hand carved pumpkins, with themes ranging from underwater creatures to a giant spider web to one group that appeared to depict Queen-Anne style chairbacks. Pretty wild stuff. And the detail in the jack-o-lanterns — intricate portraits, 20-pumpkin full-body skelatons (one for the skull, two for the hands, and so on) — was staggering. So staggering that I was able to forgive the fact that thousands of them, especially the ones that were roped off and impossible to get a close look at in the pitch-black evening, weren’t actually real pumpkins (I think they were styrofoam).

At any rate, the kids all had a great time. Especially baby Philip (in this pic with us), who appears to have a ball fetish these day. And what’s better than bouncey balls and soccer balls? Try 4,000 round objects with fire inside.

See a slideshow from our visit by clicking here.

DSCN1992,
Uploaded by heyjupiter.

The John Hodgeman-spawned “H in Sunrays” project keeps getting better and better. This picture on Flickr just makes me want to throw open the window and scream out, a la Howard Dean, “I’m mad as hell. And I’m not gonna take it. And I want to hobos to rise up and eat pot brownies! Now! Yeaaarhhh!”

It’s here. “Secrets of the Alchemist Dar,” the sequel to “A Treasure’s Trove,” came out late last month, and it took only a few days for my brother and I to get our hands on shiny, new first editions. And then it took even less time for us to realize that, hey, this is fucking impossible!

Whereas the first treasure hunt book, leading readers to $1 mil in bejeweled broaches, was accessible and seemed at least vaguely solve-able, this one is just baffling. The last third of the book is an upside down spell book written in ambigrams (word spelled the same upside and down), creepy symbols, and rorschach inkblots. Although I’m not giving up just yet (we’re still talking about $2 mil in rings this time, after all), the book will almost certainly not take over my free time the way the last one did. No obsessive 2am decoding sessions, no late-night phone calls to friends in Iowa and Andy’s relatives to go searching for tokens in state parks, and no frenzied high-speed races down the Taconic.

At least, not until someone manages to crack the first clue and posts their solve to the message boards (either Tweleve or the official Dar board). Then all bets are off.

Did I just see semi-nude photos of one of my good college friends on Flickr? Yes, I believe I did.

Just one of the many fascinating developments going on over at Blog-o-Rama, aka Gwynne’s blog.

And might I take a moment to say, hey, nice pedicure!