Stormtroopers: Can't shoot, can't dance...

...but Vader's got his routine pretty tight. Dancing must come from the dark side of the Force.

See more funny videos at CollegeHumor

Thanks to Jay Garmon from TechRepublic's Geekend column for pointing this out, and thanks to CollegeHumor for giving it a home in the tubes.

How do you take your metaphors, shaken or stirred

Spam Subject Line of the Moment, Episode 5:

Success is a fish that is pulled from an ocean. Swim with the big fish, wear PRADA

Okay...so...let me get this straight. Success is a fish, and you want me to pull out the fish. Then where do the fish and I swim? In the pool, what?

Or do you mean I should swim with a different fish? A big fish? The Prada Fish?

I'm so confused. Like a fish outside of the box.

This just might get me on MySpace...

The Kronos Gyros Woman has a profile on MySpace.


And she needs friends. Because, as you can see from looking at the corporate web site, she's been replaced by someone younger, and less 'ethnic' looking.


I think this is a travesty. Frankly, I appreciated having my processed gyro food stuffs advertised by a lovely lady who actually looks like she might be Greek. Considering that here in Chicago, you only see Kronos Gyros advertised in decidedly non-Greek pizza and burger joints, it just makes me feel better.

While we're talking about authenticity here, can I just say how unhappy I am with the concept of Chicken Gyros? This is just another tragic effort to make "ethnic" food that will sell to boring white people. Chicken gyros? Hey, I like chicken, and I like gyros, but I don't need them masquerading as each other. Chicken gyros seems to be the gyros option for people who don't like gyros. If that's you, then great. Go eat chicken. But hey would you want chicken pretending to be something you don't like? Why not try something else? Maybe...wait for it...Greek chicken???

Apparently, this isn't the first time that the corporate overlord has tried to mainstream their product. From the Kronos corporate web site, quoting an article from Crain's Chicago Business:

In 1975, Chris Tomaras founded Kronos to manufacture his own broiler, the Kronomatic. Until selling the company in 1994, he was his own marketing chief, picking point-of-sale materials from table tents to pita wrapping to get operators excited about the gyro. He also picked the first Kronos poster model, a blonde.

"The idea was to not have a Greek-looking girl, but an American girl," says Mr. Tomaras, 68. "And it worked. It worked by Americanizing the product."

Hah. Sure.

Racist.

I think this is the cheeky corn-fed American-looking girl that original Kronos owner Uncle Tomaras settled on for his advertising:

Boosted this photo from a very funny article at TODAY YOUR HAIR IS VERY NICE.
Go read it. It's funny.

It's a sad, but nothing lasts forever. Everything evolves. A new sandwich needs a new spokesmodel. My Gyros Woman wasn't the first, and she isn't the last, but in my opinion, she's the best. I'll take the Bronze Age Gyros Woman over the Modern Age knock-off, any old day.

For more gyros art, check out The Gyros Project, a labor of love featuring landmarks of the Chicago spindled-meat scene. Here's my favorite: Mmmm...I want Booby's.

And finally, I leave you with another choice tidbit from the Crain's article, which illustrates how steeped Chicago is in gyros history:

In the 1970s, some local entrepreneurs began innovating on the gyro (a word meaning "rotate" in Greek), then handmade in local Greek restaurants.

Among the first was Peter Parthenis Sr., an immigrant and University of Illinois engineering graduate who designed the Autodoner vertical broiler. He started mass-producing gyro meat in 1972 after seeing restaurateurs struggle to prepare it themselves.

"The first meat cone that we sent out of state was on a Greyhound bus," says Mr. Parthenis, 60.

Well. That explains why those buses smell that way.

Meat Cone?

That makes me feel a little dirty. And a little hungry.

The eyes are following me...

I was looking at my email the other day, and I was caught entirely off guard.

Like most geeks, I get a ton of messages from electronics retailers in my Inbox. I was looking over the latest sale offerings from Buy.com, and they were advertising R.E.M's new album with this picture:

(Click on the guys' faces for a screenshot of the full ad in context)

What frightened me was Peter Buck staring out of that promo photo...looking almost sinister.

Sinister, like...him...


You be the judge.



That image makes me uncomfortable.


Are we sure that Bill Berry isn't trapped in the Black Lodge somewhere?

"HAAAAAAAAA...litosis!"

Minesweeper: The Hollywood Blockbuster

Movies based on video games are really popular with the studios right now. Dungeon Siege. Hitman.

The folks at College Humor imagine another hot box office property...

...Minesweeper.

Spam Subject Line of the Moment: Episode 4

Forget about the trouble with your male instrument.

Friends don't let friends play the bagpipes.

Spam Subject Line of the Moment, Episode Three

...Revenge of the Spam

If your warrior of love is too small, you may lose this war

"Warrior of Love?" Isn't that the new reality show on Fox?

No, wait.

Wasn't that what Captain Planet called his sidekicks?

Um um, no...

Oh! Maybe you mean this Warrior?



Heh. Steamy.



The fine print, obviously. Image found via Google Image Search at Barnes & Noble. Warrior of Love was written by Rebecca York and Ruth Glick, and is published by Harlequin Books. Image is copyright the original authors, and will be removed upon request. It's used here for the purposes of parody.

Spam Subject Line of the Moment, Episode 2

You deserve to not be ignored by women!

See there, isn't that nice? Not all spam is bad. Sometimes, it can offer valuable affirmations.

Not that I'm ignored by women. Not at all. I'm engaged, so I have a woman who has to pay attention to me, contractually.

1-900-NERD-GIRL

This video made me laugh. One, because it's a pretty savvy parody of the low budget 1-900 commercials that used to come on during USA's Up All Night. Two, because it makes a D&D "saving throw" joke. That's exactly something I'd like, as K. would say. Enjoy.



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