Cool Shit 9/17

On the one hand, I'm glad these 32 people escaped death from the hands of others...on the other, I can't think of a creepier way to start off a Tuesday than reading about how these 32 people escaped death from the hands of others. Enjoy!

ESPN can say all it wants about how their business model and relationships won't affect its journalistic integrity, but I'm don't see how it can't. And that's the age we live in. And with more sports channels entering the fray, it's only going to get worse. Thankfully, it's just sports entertainment, and our news channels would never have their journalistic coverage tainted by big business!

Perhaps it's because I've been in its community for awhile now, but I like to think the CrossFit and Tough Mudders social aspects that draw so many people to to them took some of their influence from Ultimate Frisbee, a sport that has a strong "social gathering" element. Of course, I could simply just be being biased as well.

Years ago, probably 2004 or so I bought an ipod online from someone. And the person had left his music library on it, probably at least a thousand or so mp3s. So while I took a cursory look through them, I didn't sit and listen to everything. I added some of my music onto it and then would routinely hit random while at work and enjoyed a varied playlist of music I knew and didn't.

Until one day the ipod landed on a strange, audio clip, about a minute long, talking about stories of clowns driving around in vans in small towns. Obviously I was intrigued, but it had no description or anything else to offer what and where it came from.

But I loved that audio clip, because it sounded so factual. As if it were taken from a documentary, or at least an audio book. I searched the internet for clues and came across a few mild bread crumbs, but nothing substantial.

And then my wife dropped my ipod, and the clown story was gone...

Until today!!! Well, at least there's evidence here that suggests the clown epidemic has a following of some sort. Seeing a clown walking around my town would probably put me on edge.

Ugh. I'm sure fans of The Walking Dead are excited about the idea of a spinoff, but I think it's a horrible idea. Aside from the pilot, and maybe three or four episodes, the first two seasons of this show were bad. And while season 3 was an improvement, it was inconsistent and left us with a weird cliffhanger and a a two-dimensional villain riding off into the sunset. To further spread thin the creative minds behind this show by putting another show on their plate will only produce 2 mediocre shows.

Judgement Night! A terrible Emilio Estevez movie; a brilliant rock/rap fusion soundtrack. And it turns 20 this year. Look, it definitely was a gimmick, but dang it, the gimmick worked. Take popular rap and rock groups and have them make music. Why it needed to be connected to this awful movie I'll never understand, but if we have to wade knee deep through an Estevez swamp to get some good muss, I'll do it every time (ok, like 6 times out of ten).

For those of you with Spotify, here's a link to the album. Get pumped in your cube and frighten Sally from accounting. And if you don't have Spotify, enjoy two of my favorite tracks below...