With Wimbledon underway and the Olympic Trials picking up speed, my wife and I have been watching a lot of sports on NBC this week. And the most breathless, repetitive story throughout has been the “marvel” of 41-year-old swimmer Dara Torres. 41. It is impossible for an NBC sportscaster to mention Dara Torres (41) without stating that she is 41. 41.

It is impressive that she’s competing in the Olympics at the age of 41, and in fact is swimming at her peak, setting personal best and in some cases record times. But it would be nice if they could just once mention her name and her success without, at least 3 times per sentence, also emphasizing her age. Yes, she’s 41! 41!!! OMG she’s 41!!!!!!11!!41!!!!111one!!!forty-one!

We get it. She’s also a great swimmer, regardless of her age. Enough already!

41.

I had noticed for some years that it was increasingly common to see, in the Mexican food sections of most local grocery stores, stocked in amongst the numerous flavors of Jarritos soda, a few glass bottles (the old-time returnable kind) of Coke. Mexican Coke. I never really “got it” or, frankly, cared too much to figure out what might be different about it and why it would be sold here, but lately it seems that the Cuba Libre (more commonly known simply as a Rum-and-Coke, or, if you prefer, a Rum-’n'-Coke) is becoming trendy… for some reason. But along the way to that discovery, I also learned what’s different about Mexican Coke and why people, especially those who are used to it, would bother to buy it instead of the American version. The recipe still includes cane sugar. Read more »

Know Mark Summers? He hosted the messy Nickelodeon game show Double Dare way back when, and these days he’s the host of Unwrapped on Food Network, which I am, unfortunately, watching as I write this. (Hey, it was that or the routine weekly post-SNL broadcast of the Guthy-Renker infomercial for the Midnight Special DVD collection.)

The show is moderately interesting as a glimpse into the operations of various quirky businesses in the food industry (such as the one they’re talking about now, whose corporate office is a 7-story replica of a wicker picnic basket that would put Beebe Gallini’s powder puff factory to shame). But the most distinctive thing about it is the maddening, Shatner-esque start-and-stop cadence of Mark Summer’s voiceovers. I’m sure he doesn’t really talk that way, at least I hope so, but on TV, he’s so programmed into this particular way of speaking — which presumably originated long ago in broadcasting schools with the desire to sound enthusiastic and engaging, and be easy to follow — that, ironically, I can barely concentrate on what he’s saying due to the way he says it. Read more »

Yeah, yeah… kind of a lame pun for a headline, but it’s not as lame as I’ve come to realize the Spreadshirt store set-up interface is. I was casting around for alternatives to CafePress, and thought I had found one in Spreadshirt. Their design seemed clean and fresh, their prices more reasonable. But that was before I actually got started setting things up. Not only is the end result rather hackish looking (and I’m just talking about the website here, not the products, which I haven’t actually tried ordering yet), but the pricing scheme is much less straightforward and generally higher than that of CafePress. Read more »

Once again, Digg proves to be a source not only of random information of the moment, but some of the most unexpected, bizarre creations I’ve ever encountered.

In this case, it’s work from pixeloo, wherein cartoon/video game characters are rendered in quasi-realistic detail. Brace yourself…