'Factory of sadness'

A co-worker Michael Fagans shared this wonderful video of a Cleveland Browns fan ranting about the team's poor performance as he paces outside the team's stadium at night. The video from "clevelandthundercat" strings together a non-stop string of one-liners, including "all we do is pay you money to put us in a bad mood every week!"

There's just a bit too much polish in the camera angles and quick cuts for this to be truly off-the-cuff, but it's a great bit that many hardcore sports fans can sympathize with. Proof comes in his last lines:

"You are a factory of sadness!" he shouts toward an empty Cleveland stadium. Pausing, he adds, "I'll see you Sunday."

Oh how we all know that feeling. Classic. 

Creative spam technique

I ran across this creative bit of spam on my site today, in which tons of different urls were embedded into one short comment on my 10-month-old "Goon Squad" post. 

That post for some reason has been a spam magnet, generating four fake comments sine May. I quickly deleted the first three, which were very amateurish and made no effort to hide their intent. But in this latest go-round, a spammer embedded different links under individual letters, thereby cramming code for tons of different wristwatch sites into one ungrammatical sentence: "Thanks for you share it!!!!!!!" What looked  relatively innocuous on the surface was a snarl of spam underneath.

I've attached an image of the code rather than actual text so I don't replicate the spammer's original intent to drive search traffic. If you have good eyes and know basic html, you can track the secret message.

If only people this creative actually put their talents to productive use.

Grantland takes on MTV's early history

I wrote a few months ago about ESPN's new digital magazine Grantland and its commitment to stray beyond its foundation in sports. 

The latest evidence of that is a fantastic hourlong podcast on the early history of MTV hosted by gonzo journalist Chuck Klosterman (author of one of my favorite music books "Fargo Rock City.") 

Klosterman chats with Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum, authors of "I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution," on the origins of the network; why execs embraced Spring Break content (think beer money); why British New Wave bands got airplay over American acts, specifically black artists; and why hair-metal bands were among the few artists to show up on time for MTV appointments. There's even an interesting discussion of Billy Squier's "Rock Me Tonite" video, which Squier said effectively ended his career. 

This is a podcast that's great fun and informative, and one that makes me want to read the book, which hits stores in late October.