DanThat'sCool!

To all of you who have managed to make an Art Form out of wandering aimlessly in circles while attempting to run errands or simply make it from Point A to Point B…I salute you.  It has already been well documented that I could write the eBook on bobble heading around in child like discovery instead of actually paying attention to other pedestrians and incoming traffic, and have somehow so far lived to tell the story.  So I jumped right on this one.

The Photosynth App for iPhone is made for people like us.

There are hundreds of photo panorama apps out there, but most of them end up looking like you scotch taped a bunch of polaroids together on the refrigerator.  That was nifty back when the Brady Bunch went to the Grand Canyon, but it’s 2011, people.  This app is how it should be done.  It’s amazing.  It’s easy to use.  And it’s free.  A triple score.

Plant yourself in one spot and turn on the app.  Then just do what we do best…spin around slowly while looking up and down and right and left.  The app automatically snaps a photo every couple of feet, using a neato overlay marker, so you don’t miss a spot in your panorama.  The more photos you shoot, the bigger and better your photo ends up.  Shoot the subject, the sky, the ground and all the details until you end up back where you started.

That’s it.  Using some kind of high tech software magic that is way beyond me, the photos are stitched together seamlessly and then…wait for it…BAM!…a little bit of your world is now in 3D panorama that you can spin, tilt and show off on your phone, Facebook or the Photosynth website.  It is only available for the iPhone right now, but it’s coming for other systems.  (One, relax…it’s coming.  Two…you should have an iPhone anyway.  Just saying.  Snap.)

But right now I’m still a little light headed from my last 360, so check out the corporate vid on the subject.  You need to see it in action, and they explain it better anyway.  Very DanCool.

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Oh, please.  I know they’re behind me.           Someone tell those Bitches it is ON like freakin’ Donkey Kong.

Why do you people keep begging me for more Toddlers & Tiaras?

Remember I swore off this show last time?  And the time before that?  There is such a wealth of much more important news out there nowadays.  There is the NFL football players lockout, the struggle to get the country’s debt ceiling under control and something about how Piers Morgan might have been hacking into people’s phone lines and getting dirt on them in order to skew their group dance scores on America’s Got Talent.  (Honestly, I was brushing my teeth in the other room when NBC was reporting that last one, so there is a slight possibility that I might not have all my facts straight.  But shame on you, Piers.  Shame on you.)

Lucky for you the football players got it together already, so I can do my best Peyton Manning and spike you a few nuggets on T&T.

Our friends at TLC over inflated another balloon full of crazy this week, untied it and then let it squeal out all over our television screens.  And they did it with the bonus stink of Holiday fruitcake, because it was the highly anticipated (at least by the 41 people sitting in a 4000 seat auditorium…again…) Sugar Plum Fairy Pageant!  Which basically means that all the Moms got to feed  their sleepy babies candy canes as well as Skittles and Pixie Stix for this round of Glitz.  Nice!  Who needs No Doze when you can just lick sugar off your fingers and the table tops all day?  Forget the carrots…they need to feed that s*** to Santa’s reindeers and he could get the whole trip done in half the time.

Ziinnnnngggg!  Back at the Toy Shop before Leno.

So again this time we got to witness various Moms living through their daughters.  The littlest Sugar Buzz Fairy, Logan, has a Mom who dabbled in pageants and apparently soft serve when she was younger, but never got to take home the title of Queen.  She reeeeaaaaallllly wanted Logan to bring it home.  Hmm.  For who I wonder?  As previously mentioned, those crowns are at least 10 times the size of an actual child’s head, so you know Mom and Dad are playing Judge and Naughty Pageant Girl every night after little Logan crashes from her sugar rush.  Logan’s biggest challenge, aside from Mom always beating down her self image, seemed to be focus.  From her first intro, she was running in circles and crying and then repeating the process until blackout.  Even upon arriving at the venue, she bolted from the van and ran into parking lot traffic.  She was totally tiny enough that you would definitely hear something hit the muffler but probably keep going, like you do when there are no streetlights and you klunk a squirrel on the way home from Bingo.

Paisley was another Plum Pudding contestant.  Stick this girl in a room, let her cry and pick her nose, and she is one happy camper, because that is about all she accomplished this round.

For the uninformed, there are a couple of random things in the pageant world that should never be done.  One is drink decaf.  Red Bull and Mountain Dew are the only two liquids that should ever pass your glossed lips and soften the enamel on your baby teeth.  Two is when those teeth fall out, naturally or otherwise, do NOT leave a gigantic Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown hole in yo’ face, girl.  Plug that thing with a flipper.  And three, never…NEVER…put sisters up against each other in the same age category.

Someone should have told Kylie and Karly’s parents about that last one.  Unless those two girls end up in a Playboy pictorial together, which isn’t really a stretch, I’m thinking that they will probably never hug each other again.  They were all “I hope you win…No, I hope you win” until, well…one of them won, and the other one got a stinking mini crown or something.  Kudos to the TLC editing room staff for the priceless loser looking at the winner shots.  You know the loser was hoping that the spiky crown cut a jugular when the non-loser was playing with it on her head.  Even the Pageant Director, another one who used to be a soft serve/pageant girl clearly stated that sisters are doing it for themselves.  No tag team.

During the festivities, Logan needed another nap, which was clearly not going to happen.  So that meant it was up to Mom to drag her around the stage like a glittery half monkey, half porcelain marionette kind of thing.  How Logan didn’t leave the pageant with a trophy, teddy bear and two dislocated shoulders is beyond me, because I don’t think her feet even touched the floor while Mom was swinging her around.  If this was Dancing With The Stars, Logan would have absolutely lost points for her toes not touching the floor during a lift.  Carrie Ann does not stand for those shenanigans, missy.

Paisley did the whole inanimate toy in a box routine that all Glamaglitz girls seem to turn to when they are not in the mood for jazz hands or cowboy boots.  But she needed a nap too, so it pretty much was just wheeling her out in a cellophane coffin and then wheeling her back off stage again.  That’s the life, huh?  Push me over there, boys.  To my room, boys.  To the Mall, boys.  Off this cliff, boys.

One half of the sister act rocked out a second toy in a box routine, oh no she din’t, and managed to add open eyes and movement to her routine.  The second half wandered around in a Jackie O/Delta stewardess ensemble until redneck Daddy came out on stage carrying what appeared to be Paris Hilton’s puppy.  Puppies always score high with judges.  But maybe not so much this time, because I’m pretty sure that one of the panel was actually a school janitor filling in at the last minute for that sassy judge who just jumped ship and joined The A-List TV show.

The whole thing was just another sparkly train wreck, from the first minute when one Mom casually mentioned that dressing up her doll/daughter was her personal hobby, to the very end with one of the Sugar Plums taking a face plant over the interview stool while dreaming about buying cheese dip with her award money.

You can thank the NFL for this Toddlers & Tiaras update.

I’m bringing Sexy Back.

What does Heaven look like to a Geek?  If he or she dares venture beyond the mysterious perimeter of their parents’ basement and out into unfiltered oxygen and real sunlight, Heaven probably looks a lot like a Convention Center full of comic books.

It’s a fluffy cloud full of collectors and dealers sitting behind miles of tables filled with minty fresh Fantastic Fours, artists signing any surface that won’t smudge a Sharpie, and everyone who was ever beaned in the niblets with a grade school dodgeball now strutting around in a Wolverine costume shouting “Snikttt” every time a flash bulb goes off.  And ideally this is all being witnessed as you squint through the slightly off center eye holes of your own oversized Batman cowl.

Yup.  Comic-Con hit San Diego.

What could have been just another chance to bust out your Darth Vader voice changer, got a little dose of Cool this week as Ernie and Bert strolled the aisles.  Now I’m well aware that any member of Magneto’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants could easily take down a fuzzy Muppet.  Der.  But maybe not if Ernie had killer dance moves.

If you had taken your foam rubber Incredible Hulk Action Hands, gotten all Gamma Ray psycho and knocked off Ernie’s enormous costumed head, you could have had a brush with Boy Band greatness.  This week Justin Timberlake worked the Comic-Con floor incognito as Ernie, pretty much just to see if he could do it.  I know, right?  Cry Me A River.  Bert’s Boy Toy was LoveStoned.

Now that he is an honorary Saturday Night Live Prankboy, Justin is all about this kind of goofball shtick.  Since he was already there to promote his upcoming movie, and apparently always travels with an Ernie costume in his Tumi duffle, why not?  He wobbled his way through miles of homemade Captain Americas and their spray painted red, white & blue garbage can lids, bumping into Magic The Gathering card tables and rubbing up against those girls who always wear Naughty Nurse uniforms at Halloween, and no one had a clue.  Kind of makes you wonder who else was hiding under latex this weekend.

If you squint, Smurfette did look a little like Lance Bass.  Busted.

We’re bringing all this back, unfortunately

And as long as we’re dissin’ Boy Bands… New Kids On The Block & The Backstreet Boys still refuse to pull the emergency brake on that train called the “I Refuse To Admit I’m Getting Older World Dominance Tour” as it systematically careens off the track, either ending up on the Today Show sidewalk or Left Field at Fenway Park.

How do housewives always manage to find babysitters on such short notice every time these boys show up on a cruise or at a Best Buy?  Seriously. NKOTBSBM.O.U.S.E.(Why? Because we love you!) as they are referred to on comfortably oversized pastel souvenir t-shirts and over Sooper Scoops at Denny’s after the PTA meetings, are not going down without a fight.  Even with waistlines that have somehow increased in direct proportion to the decrease in their hair height, they keep on side to side dancing in front of packed arenas full of Moms who just made it to their seat in time because the Swim Meet ran late.  I’m still trying to figure it out.  Maybe it’s because when you squint from the cheap seats…hey…the school’s not giving away Band uniforms, ok?…it looks as though nothing has changed after all these years.

Uh Uh Oh Oh Oh.  Check it ou ou ou out…