Yelp.com is my usual go to place for food reviews. Generally, they will point you in the right direction. However, about half of Yelp’s reviewers are the stupidest fucking idiots in the world. If a review of a goddamned RESTAURANT starts with an ENTIRE PARAGRAPH about what you were doing with your hipster friends before you got to the freaking restaurant, it’s usually safe to completely ignore the review.
My favorite are the ones that start off with qualifiers such as “Normally I hate this kind of food” or “I am not a fan of _____ food,” which to me is the exact same as writing “My opinion on this matter is literally useless but I am such an attention whore that I am giving it anyway.” And for some reason, Asian chicks seem to be the worst offenders of this.
Even better are the reviews that seem to be just fine for a place, and every indicator they put down seems to say they liked it, but then the review is 1 star. You never see this anywhere else – you never hear someone go “Oh man, Terminator was great! The effects were awesome! I had such a good time! The girl I took to it totally made out with me afterwards because that’s how good the movie was! Overall, the movie was 1.5 out of 5 stars. I can’t recommend it to anyone.) It’s like these people live in a bizzaro world where 1 star means “Great!” 2 stars mean “Pretty good!” and 5 stars means “Nuke this establishment from orbit”
So hey all you code junkies get on it – write a Yelp aggregator plug-in (like the YouTube Comments Snob plug-in that Chris Finke wrote) that analyzes the review for misspellings, and also if the reviewer invalidates their opinion in the first fucking line of their own review (”Normally I hate” and “Usually I never” and “Boyfriend dragged me” are all good first line indicators).
Here are some excerpts from my favorite idiot Yelpers I’ve come across:
seashell l. writes about Carnitas Michoacan #3 (2 star review):
I ventured into East LA in search of really good tacos. Mind you, I’m not really a fan of Mexican food, but a client of mine told me that he goes to East LA for tamales. So I figured…what the heck, I’ll check it out.
The first sentence and the second sentence literally cancel each other out. He is not a fan of Mexican food, yet he goes searching for really good tacos? That’s like me being like “Man, fuck soccer” while I jog to the local park wearing cleats in search of some pick up games. Also good work on telling us the gripping story of how you went to the restaurant.
Jill C. writes about Chanos (3 star review)
It’s Lent season again…the time where we, Catholics, choose a thing or two to give up for 40 days and 40 nights as well as not eating meat every Friday. This year, I chose to give up rice. Yes, it is crazy…but it was either that or sex. Which would you choose??? (alright then!)
Jill has spent the first paragraph of her review telling us about her religion and her choice for lent this year, and also somehow managed to slip in the fact that she’s a whore. Great job, Jill.
Also since the sex she is enjoying during Lent is possibly pre-marital, it would stand to reason that she sucks ass at being a Catholic, which makes the fact that she’s giving up rice totally arbitrary. I love it when you can join a religion and pick and choose which parts to follow.
Why’d you give up rice, Jill? What possible difference could it make!? You’re getting railed non-stop, you think God is going to be like “Yeah, well even though you were getting it good, you diiiiid give up rice, so… COME ON IN!”
We STILL haven’t had ANY indication what this review is about yet either. Here’s the rest of the “review:”
Not eating rice hasn’t been so bad. The hard part is that I always forget when Friday comes around. After skipping dinner to catch a movie, my stomach was not happy with me. Skipping meals does no good anyway. It only slows down your metabolism. It defeats the purpose. Chano’s seemed like a good idea at the time. They are open late and a small taco fix should suffice.
Two tacos Al Pastor. $1.59 each. Green hot sauce. That was good enough for me and my growling tummy.
Then I remembered the next day that I wasn’t supposed to eat MEAT! Ugh! Everyday I get closer to hell.
We get about two lines talking about what she ordered, and how it filled her up. That’s IT? This is what counts as a restaurant review? It’s mostly just vapid ranting and attention whoring about how Lent is so hard for her! Boo fucking hoo, hipster scum.
By the way, Jill has 500+ friends and is Yelp Elite. Also, Asian chick. Just saying.
Jesus Christ, all her reviews are like this.
Charles M. writes about La Taquiza (2 star review)
Not the finest dining I have had here in Los Angeles. To begin with, La Taquiza is in a SKETCH part of LA. I’m not talking just a little bit sketchy. I’m talking about SUUUPER sketchy. Homeless dudes yelling everywhere, lowriders with huge basses thumping by, and all sorts of inner LA sketchiness. Being a white kid from NorCal, this restaurant’s neighborhood is not exactly where I should be hanging out everyday.
Oh man if he hadn’t said he was a white kid from Nor Cal I never would have guessed. Really? Figueroa a hair south of downtown is capital SKETCH part of LA? Hot balls, if that’s “sketch” then the place I’m living now must be a freaking oil painting of danger. I wonder if he comes from a family with money? Let’s find out based on a line from a random review for a car wash:
My family and I have been getting car washes here all my life. Between our 5 cars, that’s a HUGE amount of car washes.
Check. But I wonder… how rich? His review for a country club suggests: Very. Now, I wonder if he’s raging against the machine due to his rich upbringing? Perhaps his 1 star review of In-And-Out will shed some light on this:
But I learned not too long ago that the company (In-and-Out) donates disgusting amounts of money to right wing fundamentalist christian organizations. Being a militant Atheist, I strongly disagree with fundamentalist christian views, such as the hate for fellow human beings expressed in Proposition 8. Therefore I will NEVER again in my life give a single dollar to the In n Out company until they prove that they have completely changed their views.
Double check.
Erin H. writes about Tommy’s (1 star review)
Seriously now, what’s the deal with everyone loving this place. Everytime I drive by it’s a long line. My boyfriend will leave the house to go get some Tommy’s (3 minute drive) and it takes him an hour. He comes back with food items that are barely recognizable underneath a mountain of brown sludge that i’m told is ‘chili’.
Her entire first paragraph suggests her review is based on driving by and seeing a long line, and the fact that her boyfriend brings back food that doesn’t look appetizing to her.
Sandi K. writes about Galco’s (3 star review)
I expected Galco’s to be a little bigger. I was looking for sodas without caffeine or high fructose corn syrup and found about a dozen or so that we hadn’t tried before.
Middle of the road review for what must have been a disappointing experience for her. A dozen sodas they never tried before wasn’t enough, and the place was smaller than she though. Wonder-fucking-full.
James S. writes about Paseo (1 star review)
Not a review of the food.
Always a good sign.
I went Saturday night: out of sandwiches. I went tonight. Sold out of sandwiches. 1 star for being really out of sandwiches = being really annoying. I asked about it and the guy, although kind of ‘nice’ wasn’t saying anything other than “yep..sold out”. It would have been nice had he pulled his head out and said ” you know, we’re out of sandwiches, again, I’m sorry about that…here’s the deal…we just don’t have room to store extra bread…or meat…or whatever” as opposed to just “yeah..we’re out”…I know you’re out, I’m more curious to know why after running out so consistently you don’t prep for more sandwiches. Anyway…after I get around to eating one (it’s been a year since my last go around) I’ll write a proper food review. But until then…I’ve spent about $10 on gas just to hear “yeah..we’re out”
Basically King James gives the place 1 star because they’re sold out (which should say something about how good they are) two nights in a row when he manages to raise himself from his throne and drag himself over to the establishment. Then, when the employee doesn’t suck him off with an explanation of why they’re out (which any idiot, including King James himself, can infer), he rages against em and leaves this scathing review.
Really you freaking moron? Why don’t you just make more sandwiches? AS IF THE OWNER HAD NEVER THOUGHT OF THAT? As if the OWNER thought, “Gee we sell out a lot if only we had more sandwiches. Oh well, since I HATE MONEY I guess I’ll just stay the course!”
James is probably the kind of idiot who claimed the Nintendo Wii shortage was a calculated effort by Nintendo to deprive their company of FREE MONEY.
Jason A. writes of Paseo (2 star review)
“Why so hostile?” you might ask. This place is overrated. Overrated like the MPAA overrates movies. Yeah, that overrated.
Jason A needs a basic lesson on how the MPAA works. They assign a rating not based on quality but on content. You can’t “overrate” that. If the MPAA assigned twelve R reviews to a movie, then they’d be “overrating” it. Jason sucks at simile. Not like me – I’m awesome at it. Take a look up the page at the masterful “sketchy/oil painting” pun-tafor I made. That shit was awesome.
Finally one more before I have an aneurysm:
Kristen S. (Another Yelp ELITE, by the way) writes of Dick’s Drive-in (1 star review)
I think Dicks is greasy. But I’m a vegetarian so I don’t get the burgers, but the fries are gross- so are the shakes. I suppose it’s not about the food…but really…what is it about then?
YOU STUPID CUNT IT IS ABOUT THE FOOD.
IT’S ABOUT THE FOOD YOU DON’T EAT BECAUSE YOU’RE A FUCKING VEGETARIAN REVIEWING A GOD DAMNED BURGER PLACE
Augh! Fuck Yelp! Anybody else have any good terrible reviews to share?
A couple years back I remember reading about a study, conducted at the University of Aberdeen, which basically concluded that a male’s attractiveness to females is at least partly based on how he is perceived by other females. That is, women will look to other women to help them determine attractiveness, which is intuitively obvious to anyone who’s noticed that the dudes who are hitched up or wearing wedding bands are the ones that the other ladies flock to.
The study took two pictures of men roughly equal in attractiveness to each other, and put a picture of a woman smiling at one of them. A majority prefered the ones that the woman was smiling at.
So basically, I have designed a shirt based on the results of this study which will scientifically and subliminally increase your attractiveness to females. I’ve attached a mockup below:
Niko tonight asked to be waterboarded.
I’m sure by now you’ve heard all the hullaballoo about waterboarding and how it’s like the frat initiation technique that’s sweeping the nation, and also perhaps about how even the most hardest of CIA operatives only lasted for mere seconds when they subjected themselves to this technique.
Now odds are, knowing how politics and the world tends to work, it’s very likely the kind of thing that the media has latched onto and amped up (imagine! Torture that is effective in seconds and leaves no marks!) After all, I highly doubt the CIA manual on non-marking torture techniques contains a single chapter on “Waterboarding” and a glossary for terms like “inclined plane” and that’s it.
And obviously, any attempts to demonstrate it here are hindered by the fact that Niko knows us and knows we’re all just messin’ around in the loft and at any time he could quit and we could all go get Burger King double cheeseburgers for a buck no problemo.
But still, even knowing all this, we decided to give it a shot.
We went out into our hallway, filled a gallon jug with water, laid him down on an inclined plane, and, as best as we could tell based on the videos and descriptions readily available on the internet, tried it on him. I ran every iteration of the method I’ve seen, from plastic covering everything except a hole over his mouth, to the wet towel, to the wet towel in combination with the plastic.
Niko was a sly dog. He reported that the initial rush of water up his nostrils filled up his sinuses, but perhaps because he is a man accustomed to allergies or is a terrible swimmer, by simply forcing himself to relax and hold his breath, he could last as long as he could hold his breath. So in his experience, there wasn’t the instant five seconds later and you’re begging to tell the enemy everything experience that the Fox News reporter went through. Knowing what to expect and holding the breath was all it took to last until he couldn’t hold his breath anymore.
Now obviously granted he couldn’t hold out forever – he would give up eventually but simply because he needed to breathe – that’s not what we were testing. What we were wondering about was the sensation of drowning that people have reported. Niko reported everything that other sites have corroborated – he did indeed feel water in his mouth and throat, but did not experience the dread of drowning and death. Thus for him it wasn’t any different than, say, dunking his head in water or otherwise not being allowed to breathe.
So I dunno, maybe we were doing it wrong? Niko concluded that against well trained people who knew what to expect, this form of torture might not be very effective (in an oxygen deprived state and a calm demeanor, it wouldn’t be so hard to just allow yourself to pass out, he thinks), but against people who either don’t know what to expect, or non-trained folks, this technique could actually work well.
Either that, or Niko is a man who is unafraid of drowning.
By popular demand, a closer look at the image our projector starts up with:
Ol’ Disneyland started out with everyone having a good time:
We discovered the Single Rider lines at Indiana Jones and Splash Mountain basically allowed you to fast pass the people in the fast pass line! It’s truly the ultimate Disneyland Pro Tip because ostensibly, single riders get separated, and since everyone at Disneyland is there with grampa and three toddlers (all four would get scared if they were on a ride by themselves), nobody separates.
We got on Indiana Jones in about ten minutes, to the whiny chorus of children in the regular line asking their dads “How come those guys get to go ahead of us?” and a flummoxed parent unsure of themselves, and wondering that exact same thing. When we got to the front we rejoined the regular folks, so we were basically indistinguishable from someone who legitimately waited in line for an hour by the ride ops. We went the honorable route, but the dude was like “Oh you have five single riders? Ok all of you get on this jeep.”
The highlight of the day was at Splash Mountain (the only other ride to offer the single rider service). As we waited moments away from boarding, a log full of sorority chicks with Mickey ears pulled in. They were probably slightly buzzed, and one of them shouted “Turn baaaack! It’s not worrrth it!” thinking she was hot shit. I leaned over and said, very concerned, “But… I’ve been waiting two minutes. Is it worth it if I’ve only been waiting for two minutes?”
Her smug self-satisfied expression morphed into confusion, and then betrayal, and right when she was about to ask me how the hell did I manage to game the system so well, the log jolted forward and whiplashed her prehensile brain right into the back of her skull.
We told one older couple about our trickery, and they both looked like they were ready to jettison their kids just so they could get some sweet animatronic Indy action a little early. Disneyland should offer some kind of Disneysitter service, where for like three hundred bucks you could get a teenager in the Goofy suit to lead your crotchspawn all around the park (in character of course) while you and the ol’ lady can get back to the $2,500 a night Pirates of the Caribbean Suite and get your freak on.
Also I was thinking how sweet would it be to have an iPhone app (Disney branded obviously) that would cull a condensed form of the current state of the park foot and ride traffic data, and give you an optimized day planner for whatever rides you’re trying to hit that day.
So let’s say you want to hit Space Mountain and Indy, you pop it in and the app goes “Hey, look, Space Mountain’s clogged up as shit right now go do the teacups and on the way grab a fast pass at Indy because by the time you get out, the bulk of traffic will be watching the parade so you can hop right on Space Mountain and then go to Indy ten minutes after you get off.”
Heck, it doesn’t even need to do that – it could just be an “at a glance” ride times and color based density overlay on the GPS data for the park – think Google Maps traffic but for Disney theme parks around the world.
The trip optimizer would be cool though as a day planner kind of deal where you put in your priority rides, and it basically plans your day out for you as efficiently as possible and you could have the option of like sprinting to every ride or rolling around in a motorized wheelchair or what have you.
I was thinking about this because Logan showed me this article, which is about a guy who did a bunch of data gathering and wrote a program to spit out the most efficient route to do all the rides.
Obviously, they would price the app at a slight premium, but I’d bet a $10 app (on a day when you’re blowing fuckin’ $4 on a Mickey shaped ice cream bar anyway) that promised saving you 2 hours of waiting around in lines all day would be worth it to the tech savvier park goers, as well as the power vacationing parental types.
Also, this app would tell you to get on the Single Rider line and fuck your kids because guess what you just got on Splash Mountain in like thirty seconds.
Problem is since we blew through the park so fast, we got pretty bored. Niko especially:
Brandon was just staring into space, so shocked was he by the furry heaven that is Splash Mountain:
Heck by the time we got to Space Mountain again, we were all just about ready to leave. Carson was still loving it though:
Got this one just now:
Subject: Question!!!
Hey, I was wondering, how do you take care of your hair? My hair is about the same length as yours, but I can’t keep it nearly as neat as what I see in your videos. Is there anything specific you do in your daily routine? Certain shampoos or something? This message is really awkward to write LOL
Hope to hear back from you soon
My response:
Vidal Sassoon shampoo is especially good at getting rid of the coating of dried perspiration, salts, oils, airborne pollutants and dirt that can weigh down hair and flatten it to the scalp which can make you look older. The conditioner is also good silicone technology permits conditioning benefits without weighing down the hair which can also make you look older.
On weekends or before a date I prefer to use the Greune Natural Revitalizing Shampoo, the conditioner and the Nutrient Complex. These are formulas that contain D-panthenol, a vitamin B complex factor; polysorbate 80, a cleansing agent for the scalp; and natural herbs.
Over the weekend I plan to go to Bloomingdale’s or Bergdorf’s and on Evelyn’s advice pick up a Foltene European Supplement and Shampoo for thinning hair which contains complex carbohydrates that penetrate the hair shafts for improved strength and shine. Also the Vivagen Hair Enrichment Treatment, a new Redken product that prevents mineral deposits and prolongs the life cycle of hair. Luis Carruthers recommended the Aramis Nutriplexx system, a nutrient complex that helps increase circulation.
Hope this helps!
-fw
Saw this the other day: http://davidafterdentist.com/blog/
What is with people who get a viral video and then go out of their way to capitalize on that success in the most retarded possible way? Everybody goes straight to “Hey, you know what’s a good way to make money off this? A t-shirt! People love shirts! Everyone wears shirts!”
Have you ever, in your life, ever seen anyone wear a shirt that had an internet catchphrase on it (outside of Dragoncon)? Memes die out faster than fashion trends. I’d like to see the numbers on this, but apparel doesn’t seem to be the way to go.
They also threw up an Amazon Associates store with links to a smorgasbord of other random stuff. Probably make a little bit out of that on people being like “oh hey I’ll get this U2 cd, why not?”
Viral videos ain’t what it used to be. Now everyone sees it as their ticket to a quick buck. If it works, more power to ‘em, but most of the time it comes off gaudy and desperate to hang on to the 15 seconds of fame the web gets you.
(Update 4/14/09) Well fuck me sideways, Hot Topic, purveyor and leech of the gaudiest of subculture phenoms inked some deal with these dirty b’s. I need some licensing and merchandising or something.
Brian Firenzi, creator of 5secondfilms.com and arbiter of funny shit, brings you Telekats: 
The Forbidden Blingdom comes at you with the following kickin’ track:
Guitar solo is all me, baby. Rock on!
