Month: December 2011

I’m looking around nervously, checking for signs to see if I’ve somehow been transported to a parallel universe, thanks to the video above: it’s Ice Cube waxing poetic about Charles and Ray Eames, relating their works to mash-ups and sampling.

“The Eames made structure and nature one,” says Cube, who studied architectural drafting before becoming that most gangsta of rappers. “This is going green 1949 style, bitch! Blee’dat!”

Mind. Blown.

I’m going to have to close with this graphic, in honour of the changes between the AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted-era Ice Cube and today’s version. I’m cool with both:

My friend Natalie showed this to me at dinner last night and it was too cute not to share.

I found this map of New Jersey on Facebook, and having visited New Jersey many, many times – I’ve got friends and relatives there – I will say that there’s some truth to the map, assuming you’re looking at the world from a New Yorker’s eyes. If you’d like a closer look at the map, just click on it.

I narrowly avoided becoming a New Jerseyite. Or is it New Jerseyan? New Jerseyoid?

Back in the early 1980s, my mom got a sweet research job offer from a drug company that would require us to move to the town of Summit, New Jersey, which in the annotated map above is located in the “Executives Living in Mansions Driving Mercedes-Benzes” zone. The deal was a hair’s breadth of going through when U.S. Immigration put the kibosh on the plan, citing some obscure restriction, and we remained in Accordion City. A few months after that happened, Mom was contacted again and told that the restriction had been lifted, but by then my parents had decided to stay in Canada.

I wonder how differently life would’ve turned out had I grown up in a place that had the 16th-highest per-capita income in the U.S. according to the 2000 census, a drive or train ride away from both Jersey Shore and Manhattan. I can’t complain about where I’ve ended up, but it’s always fun to play “What if?”

These are the house rules at Camaraderie, the coworking space where we three Toronto-based Shopify employees – me, Craig and Bruno – work. All words to live by!

Toronto Mike spotted the meme before I did, but it’s too fresh and too funny not to share. It started with the Toronto Star photo above featuring our Peter Griffin-esque mayor Rob Ford doing a ceremonial football kickoff at the Rogers Centre.

Someone submitted it to Reddit, inviting its readership to go nuts with the photo, and that’s exactly what they did. Here are some of my favourite remixes…

Here’s Ford, going for the gold:

My first thought was that he looked a helluva lot like “Moshzilla”, the mosh pit girl, and some had the same idea:

“THIS! IS! TORONTO!” If only the mayor loved Toronto as much as Leonidas loved Sparta. And boys.

I suspect that Rob Ford and Casually Pepper Spray Everything Cop would get along like gangbusters:

And why stop with just Pepper Spray Cop? Let’s make it a meme party!

Want to get in on the fun? Here’s the mayor’s football kick, minus the background and football, ready for your remixing.

And here’s the cutout, with the football:

Enjoy, and if you create a work of art, link to it in the comments!

Update!

Here’s a remix of the “curb stomp scene” from American History X. It’s rather symbolic of his administrative style.

The odds are better than even that it’s just a creative writing exercise featuring made-up texts, but real or not, Texts from Bennett is high-larious. It’s purportedly a blog featuring screen captures of SMS conversations between the blog’s owner and his/her cousin Bennett, who is described as:

"…my 17 year old cousin Bennett. He is a white boy that thinks he’s a crip, works at Amoco, has a girlfriend named Mercedes, and is one of the most unintentionally funny and brilliant souls on the planet.

He has no idea I do this blog. Yes, this is 100% real.”

Here’s Bennett on seasonal activity, birth control and filesharing:

Here’s Bennett on payback:

And finally, Bennett on how you can be straight up gangsta and have a stuffed animal: