We've spent so much time invested in the Patrick Stewart/Ian McKellan relationship that we've ignored the awful truth: they don't know a goddamn thing about each other. How will we ever go on?
Previously in Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart
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Rumsfeld: 'I know I don't know' if my tax return was done accurately The Hill (blog) Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld filed his taxes on Tuesday with an added twist: A letter telling the IRS that he had no idea whether his return was, in fact, accurate. ADVERTISEMENT. “Despite the fact that I am a college graduate and I try hard to ...
Bob Ross was a consummate teacher. He guided fans along as he painted “happy trees,” “almighty mountains” and “fluffy clouds” over the course of his 11-year television career on his PBS show, “The Joy of Painting.” In total, Ross painted 381 works on the show, relying on a distinct set of elements, scenes and themes, and thereby providing thousands of data points. I decided to use that data to teach something myself: the important statistical concepts of conditional probability and clustering, as well as a lesson on the limitations of data.
So let’s perm out our hair and get ready to create some happy spreadsheets!
What I found — through data analysis and an interview with one of Ross’s closest collaborators — was a body of work that was defined by consistency and a fundamentally personal ideal. Ross was born in Daytona, Fla., and joined the Air Force at 17. He was stationed in Fairbanks and spent the next 20 years in Alaska. His time there seems to have had a significant impact on his preferred subjects of trees, mountains, clouds, lakes and snow.
The Bob Ross name and images are trademarks of Bob Ross Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission.Paintings by Bob Ross featured on PBS’s “The Joy of Painting.”
Of the 403 episodes of “The Joy of Painting” — whose first run was from 1983 to 1994 and which continues to air in reruns on PBS stations nationwide — Ross painted in 381, and the rest featured a guest, most frequently his son Steve Ross. Based on images of Bob Ross’s paintings available in the Bob Ross Inc. store, I coded all the episodes11 using 67 keywords describing content (trees, water, mountains, weather elements and man-made structures), stylistic choices in framing the paintings, and guest artists, for a grand total of 3,224 tags.12
I analyzed the data to find out exactly what Ross, who died in 1995, painted for more than a decade on TV. The top-line results are to be expected — wouldn’t you know, he did paint a bunch of mountains, trees and lakes! — but then I put some numbers to Ross’s classic figures of speech. He didn’t paint oaks or spruces, he painted “happy trees.” He favored “almighty mountains” to peaks. Once he’d painted one tree, he didn’t paint another — he painted a “friend.”
Here’s how often each tag that appeared more than five times showed up over the 381 episodes:
Now that we know the basic probabilities of individual tags, we can also find the joint probabilities of some of these events. For instance, how often do a deciduous tree and a coniferous tree appear in the same painting? We know that 57 percent of paintings contain a deciduous tree and 53 percent of paintings contain a coniferous tree. According to our data set, 20 percent of paintings contain at least one of each.
What’s more, we can also find the probability that Ross painted something given that he painted something else, a statistic that’s called conditional probability.
Conditional probability can be a bit tricky. We know that 44 percent of Ross’s paintings contain clouds, 9 percent contain the beach and 7 percent contain both the clouds and the beach. We can use this information to figure out two things: the probability that Ross painted a cloud given that he painted a beach, and the probability that he painted a beach given that he painted a cloud. You divide the joint probability — 7 percent in this case — by the probability of the given — 44 percent or 9 percent, depending on whether you want to know the probability of a beach given a cloud or a cloud given a beach.
The biggest pitfall people often face is assuming the two probabilities are the same. The probability that Ross painted a cloud given that he painted the beach — essentially, how many beach paintings have clouds — is (0.07)/(0.09), which is 78 percent. The vast majority of beach scenes contain clouds. However, the probability that Ross painted a beach given that he painted a cloud — or, how many cloud paintings contain a beach — is (0.07)/(0.44), or 16 percent. So the vast majority of cloud paintings don’t have beaches.
I figured out the conditional probability of every Bob Ross tag against every other tag to answer the following pressing questions.
What is the probability, given that Ross painted a happy tree, that he then painted a friend for that tree?
There’s a 93 percent chance that Ross paints a second tree given that he has painted a first.
What percentage of Bob Ross paintings contain an almighty mountain?
About 39 percent prominently feature a mountain.
What percentage of those paintings contain several almighty mountains?
Ross was also amenable to painting friends for mountains. Sixty percent of paintings with one mountain in them have at least two mountains.
In what percentage of those paintings is a mountain covered with snow?
Given that Ross painted a mountain, there is a 66 percent chance there is snow on it.
What about footy little hills?
Hills appear in 4 percent of Ross’s paintings. He clearly preferred almighty mountains.
How about happy little clouds?
Excellent question, as 44 percent of Ross’s paintings prominently feature at least one cloud. Given that there is a painted cloud, there’s a 47 percent chance it is a distinctly cumulus one. There’s only a 14 percent chance that a painted cloud is a distinctly cirrus one.
What about charming little cabins?
About 18 percent of his paintings feature a cabin. Given that Ross painted a cabin, there’s a 35 percent chance that it’s on a lake, and a 40 percent chance there’s snow on the ground. While 72 percent of cabins are in the same painting as conifers, only 63 percent are near deciduous trees.
How often did he paint water?
All the time! About 34 percent of Ross’s paintings contain a lake, 33 percent contain a river or stream, and 9 percent contain the ocean.
Sounds like he didn’t like the beach.
Much to the contrary. You can see the beach in 75 percent of Ross’s seaside paintings, but the sun in only 31 percent of them. If there’s an ocean, it’s probably choppy: 97 percent of ocean paintings have waves. Ross’s 36 ocean paintings were also more likely to feature cliffs, clouds and rocks than the average painting.
What about Steve Ross?
Steve seemed to prefer lakes far more than Bob. While only 34 percent of Bob’s paintings have a lake in them, 91 percent of Steve’s paintings do.
One useful lens we can apply to this sort of data — where we’re comparing vectors of information — is a clustering tool. The idea behind clustering is to determine how close certain groups of data are to other points in the data set. Researchers use clustering analysis in all sorts of areas — from biology to consumer marketing — as a way of segmenting a population of, say, plants or people. It allows us to find interesting subsets of data based on how similar or different certain subgroups are from the rest of the set.
I used an algorithm to divide the entire set of 403 paintings from “The Joy of Painting” into clusters of similar paintings. I wanted to know whether it was possible to identify the 10 basic paintings featured on the PBS series. To do this, I ran a k-means clustering analysis of the paintings.13 The results were mixed.
First, let’s look at the clusters that make intuitive sense. The clear winners are:
A cluster of 50 paintings tagged “snow” and “winter”
A cluster of 28 paintings each with an oval white-space frame
A cluster of 35 paintings of ocean scenes.
These were the kinds of clear clusterings we were hoping to find. Each has a common theme and falls under the banner of iconic Bob Ross images. He painted about one beach scene and one oval-framed image per season, and about two scenes with snow in the foreground per season. It makes sense.
Here are some clusters that also make sense, but don’t tell us a whole lot about Ross’s favorite kind of painting:
A cluster of 13 paintings by guest host Steve Ross
A cluster of 7 paintings containing a bridge
A cluster of 11 paintings containing flowers
A cluster of 30 paintings containing a fence or a barn
A cluster of 33 paintings containing a waterfall.
These clusters identify some tags that appear in only a few paintings, but the groupings are not supremely helpful in defining what Ross painted. For example, flowers were very rarely the main focus of a painting, and we already knew how many times Steve Ross appeared on the program.
The final two clusters were the most broad:
A cluster of 95 paintings that had trees and at least one mountain
A cluster of 103 paintings that had trees but no mountains.
Not supremely helpful, but still quite interesting. Clustering analysis is an appealing tool for this kind of data but hardly has all the answers.
To learn more about Ross and his work beyond what I already knew from the data, I called Annette Kowalski, who founded Bob Ross Inc. with the painter and remains the steward of his work.14 She confirmed something I had discovered in my review of hundreds of Ross’s landscapes: His work isn’t defined by what is included in his paintings, but by what’s excluded.
“I can think of two times he painted people,” Kowalski said. “There was a man by a campfire,15 and two people walking through the woods.”16 Indeed, our data shows that Ross only painted a person — in silhouette against a tree near a campfire — one time.
The Bob Ross name and images are trademarks of Bob Ross Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission.One of the few Bob Ross paintings in PBS’s “The Joy of Painting” that featured a person.
When we analyze the structures he painted, it appears Ross preferred the simple to the elaborate. He painted 69 cabins, 25 fences in various states of disrepair and 17 barns. More complex man-made structures are remarkably rare in his work. Bridges appear only seven times. Boats and mills, twice each. Ross painted one dock, one lighthouse and one windmill over his 381 episodes.
There’s something about the structures Ross painted that has gone almost entirely unnoticed by fans, according to Kowalski.
“I will tell you Bob’s biggest secret. If you notice, his cabins never had chimneys on them,” she said. “That’s because chimneys represented people, and he didn’t want any sign of a person in his paintings. Check the cabins. They have no chimneys.”
She immediately added, “I’m sure you’re going to call me tomorrow and say you found a chimney.” And I did! But it took a lot of hunting. In season 7 episode 1, “Winter Cabin,” there’s a chimney on the cabin (featured above in the third row, center column). But the fact that a chimney appeared once in 381 paintings doesn’t really diminish Kowalski’s point.
When it comes down to it, “The Joy of Painting” was never really about painting. Even Kowalski, who runs a company that sells Bob Ross-branded painting supplies, believes most viewers aren’t in it for the art.
“The majority of people who watch Bob Ross have no interest in painting,” she said. “Mostly it’s his calming voice.”
Something weirdwill happen at a landfill in Alamogordo, N.M., on April 26: Spectators will gather to see an excavation that will reveal whether millions of “E.T.s” were buried there in 1983. Not progeny, of the extra-terrestrial himself, but unsold copies of an Atari video game that has been branded time and time again as the worst ever.
This is how the story goes: After the gargantuan success of the 1982 film (adjusted for inflation, it made $1.1 billion at the box office), gaming giant Atari decided that it wanted a piece of the sci-fi pie. After negotiations, it managed in August 1982 to get exclusive rights for an “E.T.” game for the Atari 2600 console. The problem was, that left designer Howard Scott Warshaw with only five weeks to get “E.T.” ready for the holiday season.
The result was a debacle. Users hated its graphics, bugs, bumpy transitions and “all-around awfulness.” But this is where it gets odd: Reports at the time claimed that while guards kept reporters and spectators at bay, Atari dumped 14 truckloads of gaming paraphernalia — including, or so legend says, millions of unsold copies of “E.T.” — in the Alamogordo landfill and covered it all with cement.
Until the big dig late this month, speculation will continue. But, in the meantime, was “E.T.” really the worst video game ever?
Our starting point is Wikipedia, the home of the crowdsourced, sometimes wobbly referenced opinion. We took titles listed under “commercial failures in video gaming” and checked how many copies were sold according to Vgchartz, a database of video-game-sales figures. We only included the first version released of a game and summed sales across all gaming systems to date (the titles listed below were manufactured for Atari 2600, Dreamcast, PC, Play Station 2, Play Station 3, Super Nintendo, Wii, X360 and Xbox).
Vgchartz’s data suggests that we should cut Atari a little slack. Racking up 1.97 million in global sales, “E.T.” far surpassed other games dubbed as commercial failures. Four games on the list didn’t even sell 10,000 copies. Atari’s “Pac-Man,” released in 1982, managed to sell 7.81 million copies to date (for reference, “World of Warcraft” has sold 10.05 million copies), but the company didn’t come close to selling the 12 million cartridges it manufactured because the home version was thought to be such a poor substitute for the arcade game.
Here are the “commercial failures” that sold at least 10,000 copies:
So, why is “E.T.” in the “Encyclopedia of Video Games” as a legendary failure? Over-heightened commercial expectations. By 1980, Atari was labeled as the fastest-growing company in U.S. history. Its operating income leaped from $174,000 in 1976 to $323 million by 1982 (but “E.T.” together with several other management missteps led to a $539 million loss just 12 months later).
Expectations of the game itself were similarly high. Atari reportedly ponied up $22 million for the rights to the brand and was so sure it would be a success that it produced 4 million cartridges. (Those cartridges cost about $4.50 to $6 apiece to manufacture but had a retail price of $39.95.)
Regardless of whatever’s found in that landfill in New Mexico, the data shows that the object of our criticism shouldn’t be the “E.T.” game, it should be the expectations around it. If you’re in the area and want to watch the excavation, here are the details.
Around 7AM on January 21st, 2014, a small group of protesters gathered in the driveway of an understated $1 million four bedroom family home in Berkeley and unfurled a hand-painted banner that read "GOOGLE’S FUTURE STOPS HERE."
The house belonged to Anthony Levandowski, a Google engineer best known for leading the self-driving car project. The protesters claim Levandowski left his house on a previous day wearing Google Glass, carrying a baby and a tablet, but only paying attention to the tablet. Today, however, Levandowski did not emerge. The protesters passed out a two-page flyer to Levandowski’s neighbors and loitered. After about 45 minutes, they left to go block the path of a private Google shuttle bus.
"People like Levandowski are gentrifying neighborhoods, flooding the market with noxious commodities, and creating the infrastructure for an unimaginable totalitarianism," the flyer said. It encouraged people to block buses, steal from the techies they babysit for, and take down surveillance cameras.
The flyer is signed, "the Counterforce."
The Counterforce objects to the tech industry altogether
The rent has long been high in San Francisco. Aggressive land-use policies restrict the amount of new housing that gets built, while greedy landlords have started evicting long-time tenants on flimsy pretenses in order to shake off rent control. But in recent months, rapidly rising prices have stoked resentment toward tech workers who are seen as gentrifiers.
Some activists have zeroed in on the private company shuttles that stop at city bus stops but only pick up their own employees. Others are shaming developers and landlords, attempting to pressure them into letting tenants stay.
The Counterforce is more ambitious. Named after a resistance group in the Thomas Pynchon novel Gravity’s Rainbow, the group objects to the tech industry altogether. "We want to destroy the capitalist system, create a new world without an economy, and push back against the alienating technologies that are coming to dominate the cultural and physical landscape," a representative tells The Verge in an email.
It’s easy to criticize the tech sector for things like its lust for personal data, zealous belief in its vision for the world, and enthusiasm for throwing insane amounts of money after inane levels of convenience. There’s also the timely argument that the internet has led to the surveillance state under the National Security Agency. There is even a case to be made, despite its overwhelmingly popularity, that the internet itself is bad (see Pynchon’s most recent book, or the active debate in the Orthodox Jewish community). What if we were to give up the productivity gains of the Industrial Revolution and stick with musical instruments, printing presses, and windmills, as the Counterforce suggests? What if we were no longer obsessed by the desire to, as one of Pynchon’s anarchists put it, "Draw ever more complex patterns on the blank sheet"?
The Counterforce wants to start that debate. But despite the sexy name, it’s not the group to argue for it.
"Sorry about the rent stuff."
Four protesters visited the San Francisco home of Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, former Silicon Valley poster boy, and now a partner at Google Ventures, at around 10:00AM on Sunday, April 6th. Rose’s wife Darya came to the door, where they handed her a flyer and started chanting, "Your bubble’s about to bust, your Google belongs to us" and "demanding interface" with her husband. Shaken, she shut the door and called Rose, who was down the street building a skate ramp for a nonprofit organization.
Compared to the rhetoric, the actual confrontation was mild. A representative for the Counterforce sent a short video from the encounter to The Verge for publication, adding that, "We think the video would add something to the conversation, as it makes it all very human, mundane, and awkward."
The video shows a girl who looks to be in her 20s and features the voices of another young-sounding woman and two men. They accuse Rose, who is sitting on a garden wall on the sidewalk, of driving rents up by funding startups through Google Ventures.
"Sorry about the rent stuff," he says. "It’s mostly landlords though, right?"
"No, it’s people like you," one of the girls says. "You’re creating five jobs for some guys who are sitting around in a rompus room [sic], you know, doing yoga," a man’s voice says. "And then we’re serving you guys coffee."
"You’re creating five jobs for some guys who are sitting around in a ... room, you know, doing yoga."
Rose tries to score a few points by noting that the group is filming video that they plan to post on YouTube using an Android phone, both owned by Google. (The Counterforce says it is not hypocrisy to use free technology. "Our group is diverse and we spend our lives mostly offline," they say in an email. "Some of us use smartphones more than others. Nearly all of us agree that technology and information are addictive for various reasons.") The video ends anticlimactically after the group confronts Rose with a joke he made in 2008 on a podcast about stabbing women in the chest with scissors.
Afterward, the Counterforce released a statement demanding that Google donate $3 billion to build anarchist colonies around Northern California where people could live for free, thereby solving the housing crisis. Meanwhile, another group or groups using the name the Counterforce have claimed responsibility for blocking shuttles that transport Amazon workers in Seattle.
Andrew Leonard wrote in Salon that the Counterforce was taking the San Francisco protests to a "new, absurd and potentially dangerous level." "What is wrong with these people?" echoed Leo Laporte, the host of the popular tech podcast This Week in Tech, who interviewed Rose after his encounter. "This is so ridiculous!" tweeted Gary Shapiro, the head of the Consumer Electronics Association. "Tech being vilified in San Francisco again."
"I find it ethically questionable, singling out individual people," says Enrico Moretti, a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of a book that estimates that every new tech job creates five additional jobs outside the tech sector. "I don’t think it’s representative of how people feel about this. That said, I think it’s working."
The more obnoxious tactics do seem to be getting attention. In December, Max Bell Alper, a union organizer, pretended to be a Google employee yelling at protesters. He was initially condemned by other organizers, but some changed their minds after the video went viral. Protesters have continued to block buses on their way to work, but they most often grab headlines when there’s a twist. In Oakland, one group slashed a Google bus’ tires and threw a rock through its window, while another protester vomited on the windshield of a Yahoo shuttle.
On Friday, a third Google employee was personally targeted by another protest led by a group called Eviction-Free San Francisco. Jack Halprin, an attorney at Google, attracted a small crowd of protesters to his home angry about his attempt to evict seven tenants, possibly so he can occupy the entire building himself.
"I don’t think it’s representative of how people feel about this. That said, I think it’s working."
"I would draw the line around, if anybody was to get hurt," Erin McElroy of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, who was at the Halprin protest, says when asked which protest methods cross the line. "I’m not opposed to pointing out certain higher-ups for what they’re doing by any means. I think that is effective." Companies have started to respond to the unrest; Google made a donation to provide free public transportation for low-income youth.
A growing class gap exists in San Francisco and, as with the Occupy Wall Street movement, the have-nots have found a target. The more extreme protests reflect a growing dissatisfaction that is reinforced every time the disenfranchised see a tech shuttle make its daily rounds or read about school teachers and disabled children being given a 90-day notice to leave their homes. The Counterforce is definitely a fringe element. The question is whether it could be an indication of what’s to come if the class gap persists or gets worse. The group is confident it is at the precipice of a complete anarcho-primitivist rebellion against the technocracy.
"Get ready for a revolution neither you nor we can control, a revolution that will spread to all of the poor, exploited, and degraded members of this new tech society and be directed towards you for your bad decisions and irresponsible activities," the group wrote in an open letter to Google. "We advise you to take us seriously."
'it’s just the U.S. military going about its business, building vast and other-worldly architectural structures that the civilian world only rarely sees'
A huge pyramid in the middle of nowhere tracking the end of the world on radar. An abstract geometric shape beneath the sky without a human being in sight. It could be the opening scene of an apocalyptic science fiction film, but it’s just the U.S. military going about its business, building vast and other-worldly architectural structures that the civilian world only rarely sees.
The Library of Congress has an extraordinary set of images documenting the Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex in Cavalier County, North Dakota, showing it in various states of construction and completion.
Taken for the U.S. government by photographer Benjamin Halpern, the particular images seen here show the central pyramid—pyramid, obelisk, monument, megastructure: whatever you want to call it—that served as the site’s missile control building. Like the eye of Sauron crossed with Giza, it looks in all directions, its all-seeing white circles staring endlessly at invisible airborne objects across the horizon.
I can’t tell you exactly why, but diners can taste the difference in food that’s made with love and passion. It’s much like a singer who knows all the right notes, but the song falls flat. It’s not until he or she is invested in the words does the song come to life.
While not every dish was perfect on my review visits to Prubechu, it was clear that chef/owner Shawn Naputi cares deeply about what he is doing. He is from Guam, and at this modest restaurant that took over the space of Roxy’s Cafe, he and co-owner Shawn Camacho share their connection for their homeland on the five-course fixed-priced menu ($40).
It is to my knowledge the only Chamorro restaurant in San Francisco, and it’s another example of why food is so exciting — it connects people to their homeland and gives others a glimpse of where they’ve came from.
As if it’s not hard enough to be a teenager dressed to the nines in a formal outfit that probably cost too much and won’t change your life in the way you’ve always dreamed of, in a room filled with other teenagers awkwardly swaying/pawing at each other, why not strap fried chicken to your arm and just call it a night? To wit: KFC is peddling customizable chicken drumstick corsages for those discerning promgoers looking to go that extra weird mile.
If you’re sniffing the distinct scent of publicity stunt, we’re with you: There are only 100 available, and you’ll have to bring a coupon in to get your own chicken when the time is right.
Looking for a corsage that will make your date’s eyes light up and her mouth water?
This KFC drumstick corsage is the Secret Recipe to making sure this year’s dance will be one you both remember.
Don’t delay. Order today! Only a limited edition of 100 chicken corsages are available.
Just like the last piece of chicken in the bucket, when they’re gone, they’re gone.
The corsage kits come with a $5 KFC gift check that said date can present at his or her local eatery and choose which kind of chicken will satisfy your date’s appetite. It’ll rest on a town of fresh baby’s breath, while ” out-of-town corsages will have silk baby’s breath.”
If you happen to attend a prom that doesn’t come with dinner included in the price of the ticket, this is actually a pretty economical choice. You can gnosh while you wait for your mother to take the 19,003rd photo of you and some guy whose tuxedo was way too big and whose name you won’t remember 14 years later anyway so whatever, just hurry up.
i love that barrowman’s response also distances him from the contestant "hahahaha women do laundry right john? you with me, john?" "don’t lump me in with you, you fucking martian”
This is what I’m talking about when I keep saying that men have to deny the endorsement. This guy wanted Barrowman’s tacit support or agreement for his sexism, as part of bonding through humour. John went nope.
Local news video of the alleged perpetrator of that shooting in Kansas City screaming "Heil Hitler" while cuffed in the backseat of a police cruiser. Video after the jump ...
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (AP) — The man accused of killing three people in attacks at a Jewish community center and Jewish retirement complex near Kansas City is a well-known white supremacist and former Ku Klux Klan leader who was once the subject of a nationwide manhunt.
Pope Francis poses for 'selfies' after Palm Sunday homily Fox News April 13, 2014: Pope Francis poses for pictures with faithful at the end of a Palm Sunday service in St. Peter's Square, at the Vatican.AP. Vatican Pope Palm Sunday-1.jpg. Pope Francis, background center, walks in procession as he celebrates a Palm Sunday ...
multitask suicide: to which bar(s) do we donate this?
Tired of cocktails that include rhubarb-bacon bitters or crystallized foie gras garnishes? Well have I got a book for you.
The Signature Series isn’t really a book so much as a life experience. At least that’s the goal of New Jersey-based author Erik G. Ossimina (aka “EGO”), who has collected 100 of his own homegrown recipes and self-published them in this weighty, 8.5 x 11-inch tome. Ossimina’s recipes are, well, unique and … er … potent. Let’s just say you’ll need to stock up on Everclear if you hope to make many of these concoctions at home.
As for the other ingredients, they’re quite varied, as the beverages run the gamut from martinis to tall drinks on the rocks to punches to Tiki cocktails. At least one is designed to be set on fire, so take the appropriate precautions.
One cocktail, the first in the book, is composed of Jack Daniel’s, “Absolute Vodka,” and Pepsi. A straw is also ordered.
Another drink (#8) is actually a series of three shots: 1 1/2 oz. each of green creme de menthe, Jagermeister, and Everclear. “If you have to walk alone and do all three shots yourself then I applaud you,” writes Ossimina. (FYI: The first page of the book discusses alcohol poisoning and what to do if you suspect it.)
“The Train,” drink #34, consists of five shots followed by a Budweiser.
If I have to pick a favorite, and that is tough, I may have to go with The Widow Maker (#49), which is vodka, Southern Comfort, and gin, mixed with equal parts Sprite and “Bartles and James Strawberry Wine Cooler.”
I mention the order of the drinks because the name of the book, The Signature Series, suggests how it is supposed to be used. Each recipe page is abutted by a blank page — a page which you are supposed to sign when you complete the consumption of the adjacent cocktail. Then, when you’re all done (or have had enough), you are supposed to pass the book down to your son or daughter, so they can continue the tradition of the Signature Series, creating, per Ossimina, “an historical record that will recount on the times shared over the years with your family and friends.”
“It could be like a rite of passage.” Presuming, I guess, that you can still get Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers 40 or 50 years from now.
Seven co-creators of Cards Against Humanity spent much of their PAX East 2014 panel soliciting suggestions that would, presumably, make it into future expansions for "the party game for horrible people." It's unlikely, however, that the audience expected to see their ideas realized quite so soon.
Here's a brief primer for those unfamiliar with the game. Cards Against Humanity can be described as an adult-oriented version of the card game Apples to Apples. In the standard version of the game, one player selects a black card, which contains a prompt of some kind — a question to be answered or a statement with blanks to be filled in. Each of the other players submits a white card (or multiple ones, if there's more than one blank) to respond to the prompt, and the first person selects what they judge to be the best answer.
The co-creators used the panel — which took place in a room packed with hundreds of Cards Against Humanity fans — as a giant brainstorming session. The panelists explained that they can spend hours coming up with cards and refining them, and with an original game and four main expansions under their belt, they've developed pretty high standards for new entries into the game.
"that's a tweet"
They quickly dismissed plenty of ideas, and often for reasons that might not have been immediately apparent to the audience. Sometimes the suggestions simply weren't funny, or they were too crass or too tasteless (in other words, crass or tasteless without being funny). Sometimes, the cards were too similar to existing cards. Some white cards wouldn't work with enough of the black cards; some black cards were too limiting. Some white cards worked as jokes on their own, but wouldn't fit as responses to black cards — "that's a tweet," co-creator Max Temkin (pictured above at left) explained.
But in many cases, the panelists found a nugget of something compelling about a particular card, then spitballed alternate ways of wording it. Comedians know that the presence or lack of a single word, or a shift in the order of a sentence, can make all the difference in how hard a joke hits.
One attendee suggested some version of the phrase "the floor is actually made of lava" as a white card. The Cards Against Humanity makers immediately tweaked it to "a floor that is literally made of lava. Later on, when the panelists were winnowing down the list of suggested cards, co-creator David Pinsof (fourth from left above) said, "I could lose the 'literally' on 'the floor made of lava.'" But the others downvoted that thought, and an audience vote agreed, so 'literally' stayed.
"a floor that is literally made of lava"
The panelists kept teasing a special surprise for the end of the show, and they didn't disappoint. Temkin began a video call with a woman who turned out to run a Boston-area printing house, and she brought her phone over to a press to show the attendees freshly cut sheets of the cards they had created together with the Cards Against Humanity developers less than an hour beforehand.
Temkin followed up with the kicker. The cards being printed at the time would be packed up and shipped to the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center for Saturday, April 11. He told everyone to find the pin taped under their seat — a pin good for a pack of brand-new, PAX-East-2014-panel-exclusive Cards Against Humanity cards that they had a hand in making. You can see three of them working together below.
And I’m a little bitty mama, baby and I ain’t built for speed
Cryin’ I’m a little bitty mama, baby and I ain’t built for speed
Aaaaaaah and I ain’t built for speed
I’ve got everything that a little bitty mama needs
I’ve got little bitty legs, keep up these noble thighs
I’ve got little bitty legs, keep up these noble thighs
Aaaaaah, keep up these noble thighs
I’ve got somethin’ underneath them that works like a bo' hog's eye
But when you see me comin’, pull down your window blind
And when you see me comin’, pull down your window blind
You see me comin’, pull down your window blind
So your next door neighbor sure can hear you whine
I’m gonna cut your throat baby, gonna look down in your face
I’m gonna cut your throat babe, gonna look down in your face
Aaaaaaaaa, gonna look down in your face
I’m gonna let some lonesome graveyard be your restin’ place
5
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As if it’s not hard enough to be a teenager dressed to the nines in a formal outfit that probably cost too much and won’t change your life in the way you’ve always dreamed of, in a room filled with other teenagers awkwardly swaying/pawing at each other, why not strap fried chicken to your arm and just call it a night? To wit: KFC is peddling customizable chicken drumstick corsages for those discerning promgoers looking to go that extra weird mile.
Tired of cocktails that include rhubarb-bacon bitters or crystallized foie gras garnishes? Well have I got a book for you.
