A comment from a visitor to my blog posted a link to this cool new TV ad for Shane Acker's 9:

It's great to see Focus Features is giving 9 a good marketing blitz comparable to their other recent releases.

UPDATE: It turns out the comment was posted by Justin Boreta from the band The Glitch Mob, whose remix of the TV on the Radio song "Red Dress" is featured in the above 9 ad. I'm a huge fan of TVotR, and this TGM remix is very fitting for the ad. Thanks for the tip, Justin!

Barack Obama: 3
G.W. Bush, et al: 0

Actually, this chart conveniently leaves off Thomas Jefferson, who waged war against the "Barbary states", which supported pirates, so presumably pirates were killed because of Jefferson's actions.

Still, the rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips by US Navy SEAL snipers is clearly a victory for Obama that is rare among US Presidents.

After posting a link to the "9" Trailer everywhere I could (this blog, my Facebook, my MySpace, etc) people have been asking me what those songs are in the trailer. I was a bit curious myself because I honestly didn't recognize the songs, so I considered asking Shane, but I decided to try out the iPhone apps that identify songs played into the mic.

I already had both of the iPhone apps available, Shazam and Midomi so I decided to try Shazam first, because I'd already tested out Midomi and I'd recently seen Shazam in an iPhone commercial. I tried 3 times but Shazam failed to identify the ambient music at the beginning of the trailer, possibly because there was only 3 long sustained notes before Martin Landau's narration starts (I made sure to stop short of the narration since it's obviously not part of the original song). Shazam said that the song was "unrecognized" on the first 2 attempts and on the 3rd try it misidentified the song as "Ich Bin Nich' Ich" by Tokio Hotel (horrible song btw).

Shazam had no trouble recognizing the thrashing metals guitars from the action part at the middle of the trailer, nor the classical guitar at the end of the trailer, and it correctly identified both bits of music as the same song, "Welcome Home" by Coheed and Cambria.

I still wanted to know what the ambient song was at the beginning of the trailer so I gave Midomi a try. I'd used Midomi several times before to identify songs that were in my head because Midomi can also recognize songs that are sung or hummed (Shazam only works with original recordings played into the mic). Midomi not only recognized "Welcome Home" but it also correctly identified the ambient song on the first try as "The Captain" by The Knife.

So there you have it, the songs in the "9" trailer are:

• "The Captain" by The Knife
• "Welcome Home" by Coheed and Cambria

It's funny cuz when I first saw the trailer at Shane's place, I told him I honestly thought the music was really cheesy. But after watching it many times, I have to admit that the music is very fitting for the energy of the trailer. It builds an excitement that will hopefully sustain until the movie is released on 9/9/09 (also a tad cheesy and yet so perfectly fitting). Seriously, I'm so ing excited, I'm shaking.

I played Wii Fit today for the first time in 150 days and I think the Balance Board feels neglected:

And yes, that's a SpongeBob SquarePants, a Baby Jesus Butt Plug and a Maromi plush on top of my TV. And no, the Baby Jesus Butt Plug has never been "used" because it was a gift from a friend (who shall remain anonymous [merely to create mystery]) and it makes a nice covertly subversive decoration.

WWBJBPD?!

A star-studded cast turns out for Marc Shaiman's "Prop 8 - The Musical" from FunnyOrDie.com.

This musical not only exposes the hypocrisy of homophobic Bible-thumpers who "pick-and-choose" which verses to obey, but it also makes an economic argument in favor of gay marriage.

It stars John C. Reilly, Neil Patrick Harris, Andy Richter, Margaret Cho, Rashida Jones, Sarah Chalke, Maya Rudolph, Craig Robinson, and Jack Black as "Jesus H. Tap-dancing Christ."

Also starring Jordan Ballard, Barrett Foa, J.B. Ghuman, John Hill, Rashad Naylor, Nicole Parker, Allison Janney, Kathy Najimy, Jenifer Lewis, Lake Bell, Katharine "Kooks" Leonard, Seth Morris, Denise "Esi!" Piane, Lucian Piane, Richard Read, Seth Redford, Quinton Strack, Tate Taylor

"Abomination!"... "Obama Nation!"

Sometime between when I first checked my email this morning and when checked it just now this afternoon, I noticed that Gmail looked kinda different. Then I saw the announcement at the top about "New! Colors and themes" in the Settings. After trying a few themes in the top row, I quickly spotted the "Ninja" theme at the end of the themes list. Now I can't help but smile and think "Holy crap! Ninjas invaded my Gmail!!!" every time I check my email...

I especially love the little red Shuriken (ninja stars) that replace the "Starred" icons.

There are many other themes, some based on simple color schemes, some with adorably cute characters (Sam really likes the Zoozimps theme but she is super jealous because she doesn't have the themes yet) and there are several "natural" themes that apparently change according to the time of day and the weather of your location. My inner nerd wanted to go with the "Terminal" theme but the bloodthirsty assassin in me lopped off the geek's head with a swift katana chop and so I'm sticking with the Ninjas:

Read more about the Gmail Themes over at the Official Gmail Blog.

UPDATE: Nov. 20, 2008

I didn't notice it yesterday but it appears that even the Ninja theme is dynamic, possibly changing throughout the day like the nature-based themes. At the footer of individual email messages there is a ninja and his little geisha lady friend doing various activities.

This morning they were greeting each other like this:

By late afternoon the vs Monsterninja and the geisha had both put on considerable weight and they were dressed up as sumo:

And right around 6:00pm PST the ninja and the geisha sat down for dinner:

There are probably more activities that the ninja and the geisha do throughout the day so I'll just have to keep checking. Hmm, I wonder what they do together around bedtime...

UPDATE #2: Nov. 21, 2008

Apparently night time is fight time for the ninja and the geisha.

Last night they were fighting each other:

And tonight they were fighting a monster (dragon maybe?):

At first I thought it looked like the ninja was of the monster and that he was hiding behind the geisha but then I remembered that ninjas are badasses and I realized that the ninja was really just working up a sweat as he tried to feed the geisha's fat ass to the monster.

UPDATE #3: Nov. 22, 2008

I've been keeping an eye out for it after a visitor named Kiran commented yesterday that they'd seen the ninja and the geisha having tea, and even though I thought "tea time" was more like 4pm, right around 2pm today I saw this:

Speaking of tea, Sam FINALLY got Gmail Themes early yesterday and she's using the "Tea House" theme, which also has an Asian-style Gmail logo like the Ninja theme.

UPDATE #4: Nov. 23, 2008

I pulled an all-nighter last nite working on a project for a friend so I was actually awake at dawn to witness the ninja and the geisha spend their early morning cleaning house:

I guess their place gets pretty messy after a long night of fighting monsters and each other. And then around 8am the ninja tried to make nice with the geisha by offering her some flowers:

I doubt a badass assassin like the ninja would give the geisha flowers "just because" so I wonder if he is apologizing for whatever it is that he does every night that sparks a fight. Or maybe he was practicing his mad katana skillz on some wild flowers and after a few chops he realized that he can use the flowers to lull the geisha into a false sense of security so that he can practice his slicing action on her neck...

And seems like the flowers worked their charm because tonight the ninja and the geisha were rocking out with a little after-dinner jam session of Shamisen Hero: World Tour (for Wii, of course):

Then later, the ninja lit the lantern to set some mood lighting while the geisha got naked in the tub:

Hmm, I wonder what they're gonna do next...

UPDATE #5: Dec. 04, 2008

I haven't seen anything new that the Ninja and the Geisha do together since my last update, but I finally noticed something that the Ninja does by himself (no, not THAT) that has probably been there since Gmail first launched the Themes. I probably wouldn't have ever noticed if I hadn't read this blog post (Spanish) by Enma Ai, who left me a comment today. Enma had posted an image of the Ninja with a scroll and a brush that I hadn't seen before so when I went to email her to ask where she had seen it, there was the Ninja sitting with a scroll and brush to the right of the "Compose Mail" window:

I probably hadn't noticed it before because it only appears in the "Compose Mail" window, and not when I reply to an email. It's not that I don't ever email people. In fact, I email quite a lot, but apparently I just forward or reply to other people's emails instead of initiating the email conversations myself.

This is my new favorite shirt. It was the "Shirt of the Day" over at woot.com a few months back and I thought an anthropomorphized bento box was just the cutest @#$%ing thing I'd ever seen so I just had to buy one.

I love the little pickled egg licking the cupcake!

It's still for sale at woot.com.

MoveOn.org is promoting their endorsement of Barack Obama with this video inspired by Barack's "Yes We Can" speech.

The Los Angeles Times also endorsed Barack for President and said the following in an op-ed on Friday:

Clinton is an essay, solid and reasoned;
Obama is a poem, lyric and filled with possibility.

With Kucinich and Edwards out of the race, Barack is clearly the best candidate. It's too bad that I won't be in the US to cast my vote in person tomorrow for Obama...

I love playing my Nintendo DS Lite in the bathroom (pre-wipe of course) and it’s something I look forward to each day, especially at work because it’s really the only private alone time I get at work.

Last night I was at work late at Starz Animation in Toronto (ya I know, I completely neglected to blog about coming to Toronto to continue working on 9 and instead I’m blogging about playing video games on the toilet, but that’s just the way I roll…). Anyway, I was at work late and I had to wait to use the bathroom until after the cleaning lady had finished in there. I didn't want to look like a slacker so I resisted the urge to play my DS at my desk, but as soon as the cleaning lady was done, I flicked on my DS and headed into a stall for a little Mario Kart DS action. The toilet seat was still wet from the cleaning lady’s wipedown, so I set down my DS, already open and powered up, on top of the big double-roll TP dispenser and reached down to grab some TP to wipe off the seat. When I pulled on the TP to tear off a piece, the whole side of the dispenser flipped open, dumping my DS and one of the rolls of TP straight into the toilet.

In dazed disbelief, I stood there, staring down through the tube of the TP roll, which was too big to actually fall into the toilet, and I watched my precious electronic device sink deeper into the clean clear toilet water, still displaying the race-track fly-over animation. As the DS hit bottom, I snapped out of my stupor and sprang into action. I tossed aside the TP roll but shock set in again when I saw the beautiful glowing Dual Screens, for which the DS is named, fizzle out and dim to a barely visible frozen image of Yoshi at the starting line, his opponents just starting to speed away.

My heart sank as I plunged my hand into the toilet and snatched up my DS. It was dripping wet, a small piece of TP clinging to the top screen still displaying the same dim frozen frame. I flicked off power switch, grabbed some TP from the fallen roll and started to wipe off the DS, but it just seemed too wet.

"It's ruined," I thought. "There's no point." So I set the DS on top of the sticky Canadian Maxim magazine on the tank behind the toilet (where I should've set down my DS in the first place), wiped off the toilet seat, which was even wetter from the splash, pulled down my pants, and sat down. But nothing happened. It was as if my bowels were telling, "sure we waited a long time for the cleaning lady to finish in the bathroom, and sure we just about crapped ourselves when the DS fell into the toilet, but I'm gonna hold the fort down here while you use that brain of ours up there to figure out how to fix this so stop wasting our time sitting here moping and dry the damn thing off!!!"

So I pulled up my pants and ran out to find some paper towels. I took everything out of the DS that I could (DS game card, GBA rumble pack card, stylus, battery), dried it all off with towels and left the parts out to air-dry. I wished I had the special Nintendo "tri-wing" proprietary screwdriver so that I could fully disassemble it because it was clearly soaked inside and out. I was too impatient to see if it was still working, so after an hour of letting it air-dry, I put the battery back in and turned it on. The top screen was dim and flickering and after a few seconds it faded to black.

I thought for sure that I had just shorted out the DS, but I wasn't ready to give up so I collected the parts and ran back to my hotel room, where I remembered seeing a hair dryer in the bathroom. I used the hair dryer to blow-dry it inside and out for a good 10 minutes and then I left the DS disassembled over night, resisting the temptation to test it again.

I didn't have much hope the next morning as I put my DS back together, but when I turned it on everything seemed back to normal. Both screens were fully illuminated and the flickering was gone. After 30 minutes of testing it out I was convinced that my DS had completely dried out and survived full submersion in water without any permanent damage.

I swear, Nintendo makes a damn fine product.

And I've learned my lesson. I still play my DS in the bathroom but I keep it in my pocket until I sit down and I put it back in my pocket before wiping. I bet no one will ever want to play with my DS after reading this...

Tonight I shaved my head and left a mohawk. It was hard because there is only one mirror in my hotel room here in Luxembourg. I video taped it and made my own little Sports Racer intro for the show with ze frank. I wonder if Ze will actually use my intro, and even if he doesn't, I think it was the perfect way to spend the night before my birthday.