Andy Lee’s weblog

Last Saturday, several players from Oishi Judo competed in the 2006 Hudson Promotional. Dan Heinrich and I went down to lend moral support.

Here are video clips of most of the Oishi matches. In total it comes to about an hour of footage. The clips are in QuickTime format and require a fairly recent version of QuickTime (version 7 works; I don’t know about 6).

• Alan (tail end of one match, 00:26)
• Alex, clip #1 (3 matches, 06:39)
• Alex, clip #2 (3 matches, 07:57)
• Austin (2 matches, 04:03)
• Bob, clip #1 (1 match, 00:57)
• Bob, clip #2 (1 match, 03:00)
• Bob, clip #3 (1 match, 03:49)
• Bob, clip #4 (2 matches, 07:36)
• Bob, clip #5 (tail end of one match, 01:04)
• Caroline (1 match, 02:15)
• Ian, clip #1 (3 matches, 06:06)
• Ian, clip #2 (1 match, 01:25)
• Steve, clip #1 (3 matches, 03:42)
• Steve, clip #2 (1 match, 03:48)
• Steve, clip #3 (2 matches, 05:23)

Here are more notes on the 5th Ave. Apple Store opening. Meeting Ted Allen was only part of the experience.

While I was on line to get into the store, I chatted with two gentlemen behind me, Trent and Ron, who are friends. Trent is the editor of North American Film Review. I don’t know what Ron does, but he mentioned he used to work a lot with film. He also mentioned he wasn’t a Mac user himself, although his two daughters are.

We were on that line for two and a half hours. Ron kidded that if Apple would just give him one of the MacBooks they were giving away, he’d be happy to go away and make room for other customers. Wouldn’t you know, ten hours later, at 4:00 in the morning, long after I’d gone home, he would indeed win a MacBook. Check out his big grin in this photo from Apple’s “winners gallery”:

Ron, if you read this — congratulations! I hope it was worth the wait.

When it was almost time for the store doors to open, the crowd counted down the seconds, like it was New Year’s Eve. There was a big cheer and finally the wait was over — the general public was being admitted to the 5th Ave. Apple Store.

As we made our way to the entrance, a few outsiders tried to cross the barriers and cut into the line. Trent and Ron would have none of this — in particular Ron, who became quite vocal when this guy tried to cut in:

Not cool! When a security person came over, the guy tried to say he’d been waiting for two hours. Did he expect the rest of us to corroborate his story? He was summarily ejected. A young couple slightly ahead of me also got ejected.

I was impressed at how efficiently security removed the line cutters. They didn’t waste time asking questions or comparing stories. They quickly saw who didn’t belong and simply said “OUT.” John Timmer writes a little about the line cutters in his article at Ars Technica. I agree with his assessment that the crowd did a good job of self-organizing. I’d add that it was good at self-policing.

I was in the store a few minutes before I spotted my first celebrities. I heard a noise from the crowd and turned to see the three Saturday Night Live chicks — Maya Rudolph, Amy Poehler, and Rachel Dratch — coming down the glass stairway.

They were so cute, sticking together like girlfriends going clubbing. Later, when I was at the cash register, they were two registers to my left, getting MacBooks and iPods.

Not long after I saw the SNL chicks, I heard a small roar from the crowd and saw that Steve Jobs was coming through.

I think he looked rather gaunt. I hope his health is okay.

I wandered around the crowded store with my camcorder, getting bits of video here and there, enjoying my adrenaline high. A salesperson named Joe saw me trying a laptop and asked if I needed help. I didn’t, but we chatted a minute anyway. He was very friendly and not pushy at all. After a bit more wandering, I stopped and decided I could use his help, because I wanted to buy something. So I found him and got him to set that up for me.

While waiting to pay for my purchase, I saw the SNL chicks, as I mentioned earlier. I also saw Kevin Bacon. He was at the register to my right.

I asked him if he got his t-shirt in the Village. I had in mind a particular store it might have come from. But he said he didn’t know.

On my way out after making my purchase, I spotted Julianne Moore and James Woods.

Later I read that the store was packed all night, and more celebrities showed up, including Carson Kressley, Spike Lee, and Kevin Spacey. Incredible.

Today I went to the opening of the new Apple Store at 59th St. and 5th Ave. Several celebrities were there, and I’m afraid I found myself overcome with celebrity-mania, rudely pointing my camcorder right at the face of anybody I recognized.

My biggest thrill of the night was when I spoke with Ted Allen, the food expert on Queer Eye. At first I wasn’t sure it was him, because he was sitting so quietly by himself. I said, “Are you the Ted that you look like?” He said yes, and I told him what a fan I was. He said the Fab Five are all into their Macs, and he’s thinking of getting a 17-inch laptop. So of course I said, “You can never have too many inches.” Say what you want about me, you can never accuse me of letting a predictable double entendre go unspoken.

Here are two frames from a video bit that Ted kindly did with me while a friendly Apple salesperson held my camcorder. Ted was very generous and patient and funny, which was all the more impressive considering that I was a yammering dork. Note that I tried to pick two frames where not only did he look good, but I looked as little as possible like a bum. Clearly I could use a Queer Eye makeover myself, or at least a haircut and better clothes.

When we finished our video bit, the woman who’s standing behind me in the first picture asked me to take a photo of her with him, which I did. My memory is fuzzy, but I have the impression I was a bit pesky in the way I asked him. Again, he was patient. The woman mentioned that she often sees the Fab Five in her neighborhood, which is Chelsea. I said I live in Chelsea too and I never see them.

Hm — a charming woman in my neighborhood who shares an appreciation for Queer Eye, and I didn’t talk more with her? I have so much to learn.

Based on the anecdotal evidence I’ve been seeing, it looks like Apple is doing a good job of pleasing new customers.

• My friend Sheila got an iPod Nano after her Rio died. She likes it, but she complained about how addictive the iTunes Music Store is, because it’s so easy to buy music and have it show up on the iPod without any of the work she used to have to do. I’ve had similar experiences with the iTMS, where one song purchase keeps leading to another. I don’t know if Sheila will ever get a Mac, but she certainly qualifies as a happy Apple customer. She was also happy with the help she got at the Cambridge, MA, Apple Store.

• Last year my cousin Peter was given an iMac DV by a friend who was upgrading. Despite the machine’s age, it runs OS X perfectly well, and Peter likes the fact that it doesn’t get infected by viruses. This week I’ll be helping him buy an Intel Mac Mini.

• A few nights ago, I was in a dinner group and talked to a fellow who’s about to get a Mac and is excited about it, because of the ease of use and the beautiful screen and the absence of viruses. He’s sick of Windows blowing up on him all the time. He’s signed up for Mac training and support, to make his transition as smooth as possible. He was persuaded to make the transition partly because his father has a Mac and is happy with it.

• Today I came across a great blog posting by a Web developer who was once a diehard PC user. He now fully admits he is one of those people who will bore you to death with his praise for the Mac.

  Here’s one of his observations:

  Mac users are better looking. I took my wife to the Apple store so I could buy a laptop bag and she said, “Gosh. I should send my single friends here. They could pull.” As compared to the time I dragged her to the computer fair off Tottenham Crt Rd, “These people smell. Can we leave?”

This is a follow-up to an earlier post about an ad I saw for DIY Network.

I just saw a slightly different version of the ad. It’s slightly more creepy because Paul buzzes the power drill suggestively during the “kitchen of your dreams” line: “Wanna wake up to the — buzz, buzz — kitchen of your dreams?”

However, there’s an additional bit at the end that changes the tone of things. It may or may not have been in the first version I posted — if it was there, I must have chopped it off by mistake. In this additional bit, the woman is fully dressed and obviously satisfied by Paul’s performance in the kitchen. She says “So… how are you in the bath?” And he says, “That’s another show, ma’am.”

I’m much more comfortable with this part than with the lead-up to it, partly because he wipes the goofy look off his face when he answers her. I thought that goofy look made him look like a nut. More importantly, she’s now the one in charge. She is fully dressed and awake, and in a mood to make sexual innuendos about further services he can provide. This is better than him barging in on her in her pajamas.

Here’s the newer version: [Click here to play video]

Is it just me, or is this a creepy commercial?

A woman in her pajamas gets something from the refrigerator.
A man’s voice shouts “HI,” scaring the bejesus out of her. Whatever she got from the fridge flies out of her hands as he towers over her.
He says, “I’m Paul Ryan, the host of DIY’s Kitchen Renovations.”
The woman rubs her eyes in disbelief, as if she’s trying to tell herself this is not happening.
Paul whips out a power drill. He says, “Wanna wake up to the kitchen of your dreams?”

I suspect the ad’s creators were trying to play this as a humorous twist on those commercials where a woman’s fantasy man magically appears, like the lumberjack in the ads for Brawny paper towels, or like Fabio in the ads for I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter. This guy is certainly a twist on the typical fantasy man, but not in a nice way. He startles a woman at a vulnerable moment, proceeds to talk about himself while holding a power tool like a gun, and never notices that she looks terrified the whole time. This doesn’t remind me of a Mr. Clean commercial; it reminds me of an episode of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”

It’s possible I’m overthinking this and should just lighten up, since I’m no expert on advertising. It’s possible you could argue that she plays up the physical comedy well enough to make it funny, not creepy. Here’s the whole video, so you can judge for yourself: [Click here to play video]

Update: here’s a follow-up.