Galley Reader M.C. sends along this fantastic story about how the Rube Goldberg contraption in the instant-classic OK Go video was built. Turns out, it was partly some NASA scientists geeking out in their spare time:

There were a few guiding principles behind the machine. No magic: Mechanisms should be understandable and built from found objects where possible. Small to big: The size of the modules and parts becomes bigger over the course of the video. One take: As in their other videos, the band wanted the entire piece shot in one piece by a single handheld camera. . . .

We learned something very important about physics in the process of making this video. It is much harder to make small things reliable. Temperature, friction, even dust all greatly effect the repeatability and timing of the small stuff. The first minute of the video failed at a rate that was tenfold of the rest of the machine. Remembering that rule about getting everything in one shot — if your module is further down the line in the video, you’re in big trouble if it doesn’t work! The machine took half an hour and 20 people to reset. 

It’s happening again.


The most puzzling part of anti-American soccer obsession is that it’s not like Americans don’t like the game of soccer. We all play it at the youth level and–for the most part–have a good time. It’s just that we graduate up to other sports and don’t have much of an appetite for soccer played at the elite level.


And what’s wrong with that? Our interest level in soccer is the mirror image of our interest level in football, which, comparatively few people play at the youth level, but which has great popularity at the professional level.


But the thing is, you never hear football–or baseball, or ultimate frisbee, or tennis, or cycling, or hockey, or curling–or any other kind of fans railing against people who don’t share their passion as if there’s something morally and politically wrong with them. Why is it that soccer fans care so much about what American’s don’t care about?


We’ll never know.


I, for one, choose to be soccer agnostic in an attempt to facilitate world peace. Imagine, for a moment, if Americans really did care about high-level soccer and put real effort into producing professional-caliber players.


Now imagine what would have happened if, in 2006, the U.S. had won the World Cup with the dastardly George W. Bush as president!


Really, the rest of the world should be grateful that we don’t care about their sport.


Update: The Czabe holds forth on why soccer doesn’t blow his skirt up:

There are many stupid things about soccer, but the lack of scoring remains the stupidest.

A 1-0 deficit, and your side is playing with the burden of 11 elephants on their backs.

A 2-0 deficit and you are now just out there getting some exercise.

A 3-0 defeat and the newspapers back home will call you an “embarassment.”

This level of scoring just doesn’t make sense. It is so hard to score in soccer, it would be like basketball played on 30 foot rims.

Soccer eliminates the most fundamentally exciting thing about sports: the comeback.

Elsewhere I have a review of Tom Bissell’s very interesting new book Extra Lives. Extra Lives is something new, I think: a travel book about video games. If you’re interested in games qua games, I highly recommend it.

The most interesting section is about Jonathan Blow’s Braid and the problem of dynamical meaning in video-game narrative. It’s worth the price of the book on its own.

Was talking with someone about the (criminally underrated) Minority Report the other day and immediately thought of Peter Stormare’s crazy, off-kilter performance in it, which is pleasantly unsettles the film and creates the kind of nearly-out-of-control atmosphere which you never see in Spielberg pictures.

And like Dennis Hopper, I’d argue that one of Stormare’s finest performances is in a commercial. What time is it?

Time to un-pimp za auto . . .

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuC6jeKjTdg&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

Pure. Gold.

I just got my copy of Galley Friend and Superstar Foodie Sherri Eisenberg’s book about Brooklyn restaurants, The Food Lovers’ Guide to Brooklyn.

If you live in (or visit) New York a lot, I highly recommend it.

Sherri has a blog about the book which is a fun read, too.

Galley Friend and Super Smark A.H. just passed along the most interesting article on steroids I’ve ever seen: A 2003 Stuart Stevens piece in Outside:

I’d read reams about cheating as an issue, but I’d never read anything describing what it felt like to do it. Obviously, the allure of victory was incredibly powerful—why else would the best athletes in the world risk their health and lives abusing these drugs? So I wondered, Do performance drugs make you just 1 percent faster and stronger? Or 10 percent? Are the enhancements so subtle that only elite athletes gain an edge, or are they powerful enough that an everyday wannabe like me would notice a dramatic change?

What follows is the author’s story of spending a year taking roids, and describing the experience. Fantastic stuff.

Update: Galley Reader J.O. says that this Sports Illustrated piece (mentioned only in passing in the Outside essay) is even better.

10:43AM “I’m afraid we have a problem and I’m not going to be able to show you much today… let’s just go take a look at some photos here… take a look at that.”

It says something–though I’m not sure what–that a large part of what people under a certain age remember most about Dennis Hopper is his Nike commercials.

That said, those commercials provided Galley Brother B.J. and I with hours of catch-phrase enjoyment: “I hear the footsteps.” “Like a freight-train–with stick-um!” “Like cosmic twins.”

Pure gold.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNbSsPQ1kLw&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_8uql9-1IA&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw80fkHb1mU&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

Choo-choo.