This is one of my biggest internet sleuthing successes of the last year or so. Get excited for me, because that's the only way any of this will be interesting to you. About 7 years ago or so, Ben started working for the same company I did. We were bursting at the seams, people were jammed everywhere, 2 to a desk, etc. Ben ended up sharing an out of the way table with the printer. I sat around the corner and heard people asking Ben about print jobs all the time. I remembered hearing a This American Life about a guy in an office who sat in the hallway next to the copy machine. He was constantly getting badgered by people about the copier and no one really knew his name. In any case, I started telling Ben about this and figured it'd be no problem to find the show for him to listen. This was around 2005-2006 and the TAL website wasn't what it is now. Search was available, but it was terrible. I couldn't find the show. Anywhere. But I knew it was there. I knew it existed. And so every now and then when I thought about it, I'd try new search terms and variations on the TAL site and Google. Nothing. Ever! UNTIL the other day, I started fresh and happened upon this blog post talking about a very similar story and mentioning This American Life. Success! But wait. Unfortunately, since TAL changes their website every quarter or so, the link was dead. I knew I was close, though, and I persevered, finally finding Episode 241: 20 Acts in 60 Minutes and the mystery was solved. The reason I never could find it is this episode doesn't have a summary of all the stories so regardless of what I put in to search, the words were never there. In any case, I am now triumphant and Ben has heard the story.

Last week we from from Boston to LA and then flew back on Wednesday. The long flights gave me a chance to clear a bit out of my Instapaper backlog. I was going to do some sorting, but I though it was also interesting to see what order I read everything. Expect to see some, but not most, of this blogged over the next couple weeks. Especially good articles are starred. Check out the list, you'll find something to read this weekend.

Daring Fireball: Amazon's New Kindles.

Das Racist And Other Friends I Never Made In College | The Awl.

Dynamite the Levees: Amazon’s Triple Threat to Undercut the Consumer Biz | Epicenter | Wired.com.

Amazon's new Kindles.

The Sporting Scene: Baseball’s Wild Night : The New Yorker.

A VC: Minimum Viable Personality.

Rays, Cardinals to Playoffs: Baseball's Unforgettable Night - TIME NewsFeed.

**On Why We're Not Doing A Food Truck : Lonestar Taco.

Kal Penn: It's Time to Ignore the Paralyzing Cynicism and Get Engaged.

The Fraying of a Nation's Decency - NYTimes.com.

The Call of the Feral | HiLobrow.

Dishing - Boston food blog.

Dishing - Boston food blog.

Sam Sifton Out As 'New York Times' Restaurant Critic, Named National Editor.

Tomgram: Barbara Ehrenreich, On Americans (Not) Getting By (Again) | TomDispatch.

Very Deep in America by Lorrie Moore | The New York Review of Books.

Culinary school grads claim they were ripped off - Yahoo! News.

As a chain, value comes in simpler, hearty dishes - Food & dining - The Boston Globe.

**Jody Adams Under Construction - Boston Magazine - bostonmagazine.com.

How Whole Foods "Primes" You To Shop | Fast Company.

Eric Schmidt challenges teachers: get with the program — Tech News and Analysis.

Square, the iPhone Credit Card Machine, Goes Mainstream - Alexis Madrigal - Technology - The Atlantic.

Cochinita Pibil at El Centro - Feed.

**How to get $12 billion of gold to Venezuela | Felix Salmon.

**California and Bust | Business | Vanity Fair.

Bill Simmons' NFL preview has a some relatively bold predictions and a message about the value of togetherness - Grantland.

**Malcolm Gladwell on Bruce Ratner and the Barclays Center - Grantland.

**Coaching a Surgeon: What Makes Top Performers Better? : The New Yorker.

rickwebb's tumblrmajig (Disrupt, Disruption, and the Nobility of the Tech Scene).

**Chuck Klosterman interviews Bill James - Grantland.

**Everybody Loves Our Town – Full Chapter Excerpt | MTV Hive.

Why America Is Addicted to Olive Garden.

Are You Building The Right Product? | TechCrunch.

Q&A: Paul Ford, writer, nerd, father | DADWAGON.

American Drink | The Old Fashioned.

Don’t ignore Tim Cook’s sexuality | Felix Salmon.

Susan Olsen, who you may know as Cindy Brady, from The Brady Bunch, also makes Fluff art. Her work is currently showing at Bloc 11 Cafe in Union Square, Somerville. Union Square is the home of this weekend's Fluff Fest. I know all of this because that's me on the Cooking Contest Judge page right under the astronaut and State Representative. No offense, Mr. Astronaut and Ms. State Representative.

Our friend Ali made a video of the pop up restaurant we put together in May. It's only a minute and I'm psyched with how it came out.



Also, our summer project Eat at Adrian's got a nice review in the Boston Globe.

Eat at Adrian’s is part of a motel, and the atmosphere is fairly basic, aside from the view of Cape Cod Bay. The food, however, is anything but. The menu incorporates seasonal ingredients and local seafood, including a sampler of fish charcuterie. One evening it features a pot of cod rillettes, fish pate with pickled mustard seeds, smoked salmon, and fuchsia beet-cured scallops. These are accompanied by a variety of pickles (sunchokes!), mustard, and toasts.

Click through for the rest. Yes, we have a drink called the Honey Badger.

In more exciting news, tickets for this year's Ice Cream Showdown are on sale right now.

Unlikely Words posting has been sporadic the last couple months, mostly because other projects have gotten more priority. I've been meaning to post an update on this stuff, and hosting Kottke.org this week seems like a good opportunity. First, other places on the internet you can find me posting most often: Unlikely Words Tumblr, @eatBoston, and @UnlikelyWords.

The biggest project is Eat, a food event and pop up restaurant company. My business partner, Chef Will Gilson, and I have dabbled in a little of everything over the last year or so, but things are going well. We've produced pop up restaurants in the Taza Chocolate Factory on Valentine's Day and the British Consulate among other places. The Bacon and Beer Fest sold out in 2 minutes, and many of our other events sell out in less than a day. Eat at Adrian's is our summer long pop up installation in a restaurant in Truro on Cape Cod. If you're out that way and looking for an amazing meal, stop by. Chris Piascik does almost all of the art for our events and it's excellent every time. Here's me talking about pop ups on Greater Boston. Here are some pictures of our pop up in a hair salon that you NEED to see. And here's an AP story talking about our pop ups. We're having a good time so far, feeding people well, and making them happy though our events and pop ups. I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes.

East Coast Soul is Boston's best young wedding band. My friend, Dave, asked if I wanted to manage them, and how could I say no to managing a wedding band? I couldn't and it's awesome.

I've posted about Pets Are Superheroes before, but not recently. Chris and I had an idea that pet owners see their pets as superheroes and everyone else should have the opportunity, too. We haven't been able to push this too hard lately because Chris is too busy, but I have faith he'll figure out how to get more superheroes out there.

That's about all that's come to fruition lately, but there are always other things bubbling about. If you came over from Kottke, thanks for checking out Unlikely Words.

The Burning House is a Tumblr asking people what they'd take out of their burning house.

If your house was burning, what would you take with you? It's a conflict between what's practical, valuable and sentimental. What you would take reflects your interests, background and priorities. Think of it as an interview condensed into one question.

The photos of future-rescued items are poignant and haunting in a way, possibly mostly because the early submissions are from photographers and designers... I've definitely spent a lot of time thinking about what I'd take from my burning house, and it's mostly "grab the cat". Of course I don't have a good back up for my computer, so I'd want to grab that, and hell, why not, the hard drives. Looking through 4 pages of The Burning House, there's only one cat, which means people were being artsy instead of serious or they don't have cats.

I actually went through The Burning House experience about 10 years ago (a story which I still really need to put on here because it's awesome). I brought my computer and NOTHING else, not even the charger.


Via Derek and Buzzfeed

Continuing a tradition from 2008 and 2009, here's a look back at 2010 featuring some of my favorite posts on Unlikely Words and other stuff I did. Consider clicking through to see some things you might have missed.

This year, I had the incredible honor of guest editing Kottke.org (TWICE!), and that's about all I've ever wanted to do on the internet. With Scott, I created 815 Sentences About Lost, a project where I got 108 people (some of whom you've heard of), to write a total of 815 sentences about Lost. I made 2 Keep Calm posters: Fried Clam and Curry Prawn and Keep Calm and Fuck You ooo ooo oooo. Here's my offering to the Miracles meme: Fucking Beignets. Chris and I recapped Mad Men all season with original drawings and thoughts. Lastly, I stepped up my food game by producing and promoting some events like, Ice Cream Showdown!, the 2010 Boston Bacon & Beer Festival, and Guacaholics Anonymous. Here's an I Write Like Analysis I did before I Write Like fell off the face of the earth.

Even though it was 2009, I'd be remiss not to mention the Jersey Shore Nickname Generator, which continues to bring in a lot of visitors, and the success of which was a giant surprise. Thank you, Snooki. To celebrate the final season of Lost, I watched Season 5 and transcribed Everything Hurley Said, Everything Sawyer Said, and in my first piece for Esquire.com (WHAT?!), Everything Locke Said. Later in the year, I did Everything Tracy Jordan Said.

I loved this picture of a guy biking upside down, this infographic showing Mars' failure at the Olympics, this picture imagining an after-school brawl between Calvin & Hobbes vs Christopher Robin and Pooh, and this picture of Kermit and Jim Henson.

Remember: Don’t Be Diculous, Kitten Thinks Of Nothing But Murder All Day, and
anything unrelated to elephants is irrelephant.

Someone took the time to calculate Charlie Brown’s Baseball Statistics, while someone else compared Massachusetts voting data to Netflix rental patterns to find that Cities That Voted for Scott Brown Like Paul Blart.

I liked The Pig & The Butcher, a video of Vadim the butcher breaking down a pig. The Red Sox traded for Bill Hall in a salary move more often seen in the NBA. Remember how big curling was at the Olympics or the I Can Walk Like A Penguin commercial from when you were growing up? "No, wait, there's an invisible monkey" was my favorite commercial this year, even though I'm not sure it even aired.

You know who impressed me this year? Surprisingly, Jimmy Fallon. The History of Rap with Justin Timberlake, Jimmy Fallon, and the Roots was really well done, as was this trailer for an imagined movie where Boo Boo kills Yogi for the reward money.

The Humpty Dance turned 20, Matthew Wilder's Break My Stride is even older, and my street flooded again.

Peyton Manning’s Interception Quote was great, and so was this Randy Moss Remix, this trailer for the fake Commando: The Musical, and this soccer save.

I liked, and posted, a lot of biking and skateboarding videos this year, this one of bikers jumping into a pond was fun, while this video of a 23 Year Old Guy Learning How To Ride A Bike was exactly what you would expect.

Manute Bol may or may not have had a hand in popularizing the phrase, "My bad", and 3 new new dinosaurs were discovered.

This video of the little kid from Back to the Future III is creepy, as is this death spiral of ants. This dad telling his son he wasn't a single lady was hilarious, and why Saturn has a ring is related. Did you know Mexican Coke might not actually be made with real sugar?

Here's a picture of Bears Riding Horses, an Investigative Look at the Nitrous Mafia (you should check this out), a picture of Danzig carrying kitty litter, a list you don't want to be on, and Bill Simmons’ List of Comedy MVPs Since 1975.

Happy New Year, everyone! What did you like?

My favorite movie growing up was Commando, so this trailer for a musical send up resonated in a number of ways. I want to become rich so I can bankroll Commando: The Musical by Jon and Al Kaplan. I remember every single one of these scenes and I was happy they included Arnie gearing up at the Army Navy store. That was always the best scene. Remember when he was just an actor?



Via TDW

It's pouring rain out and has been for the last 2 days. The fire alarm went off about an hour and a half ago. We all went out for 20 minutes, got soaked, and then they told us we could go back in, but the alarm "wouldn't reset for 15 more minutes." It went on for another 55 minutes. Jon made a video of office antics so you can get a taste of what it was like. I'm the one with tissue in my ears. It worked.

My latest @eatBoston event is today and tomorrow. Ice Cream Showdown! The best ice cream shops from the Boston area setting up in a parking lot to support deserving local organizations. This year is 2 days in 2 different parts of town. Full info including participants, T Shirts, etc at the link above.