Kimmel is a genius

Jimmy Kimmel (@jimmykimmel) 5/31/10 5:52 PM by "we", he means KITT too @DavidHasselhoff Farewell, Gary Coleman. A great guy to work with, we'll miss him terribly. http://bit.ly/bTH7Y2

Sent with Twitter for iPhone

The Genius of QVC

Loved this story. What a great quote below.

The Genius of QVC: 
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/06/the-genius-of-qvc/8091/

"The answer is that you tell a story—a story about the viewer, and the product's place in her life. That's how my mother knew she wanted color-coded storage containers, and thousands of other viewers knew they wanted perfume they couldn't smell."

(via Instapaper)

Danika Baby

She was about 5 feet from me in the pits. True love.

This is an actual backpack...

OffandAway Travel Deals Launched

My buddy, Mike Walton, launched his travel deals website, www.offandaway.com. Sounds like it is off to a great start. The deals are ridiculous:

"@michaelwalton: 2 Nights in a suite @ the Venetian just went for $97.75. That's what we mean by great deals - http://offandaway.com" -- via Twitter

Also, I really like how the site is laid out. Congrats Mike!

Angie's List Soap Box Derby

Friday Chill Music (May 28, 2010)

Stealing John Hamiltons Mix again this week cause I'm on the road. 

John Hamilton (@jhamilton2005) 5/27/10 10:50 PM Check out my new @8tracks mix "33forever's second May 2010 mix" at ♫ http://8tracks.com/mixes/120575

Sent with Twitter for iPhone

Cool Bench Art in Indianapolis Airport

This makes me smile everytime I see it. Well done.

Anatomy of a Hangover in Dallas

Josh Schwartz tries on 'Fun Size', written by Max Werner

I'm very excited by the news that my buddy, Max Werner, got a movie script called Fun Size picked up by Josh Schwartz, the guy who did the OC & Gossip Girl. I know what you are thinking and yes, I think finding my signed OC Script (scroll back to last week's posts) was the final piece of karma love that propelled Max into potential stardom. That or his job on Colbert. Most likely it was the signed script though.

See the link: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/film/news/e3i653c072dd63127c8430cac664007b9cf

Thanks Belloni for the heads up!

How to Quit

Cute story with a lesson by Derek Sivers, who continues to be one of my favorite bloggers.

Mark Lisanti on Lost

Mark Lisanti's hilarious take on Lost's final episode. He writes one every week. I'm just as sad that's Mark's column is ending as Lost.

Better guyliner: Richard Alpert or Dissolute Flash-Sideways Charlie?
While Richard had the more consistent, natural-looking application, Charlie seems like he told a Beverly Center MAC makeup artist to “I wanna look like Liza Minnelli after a week-long crying bender.”

All I Have Left...

Sad, I've been buying so many Kindle books,

that this may be the last time I give used books to a library

World Cup

I played A LOT of soccer growing up and I can't wait for the World Cup. I had a blast watching matches in NYC bars last time around. I'll never forget being in a packed bar on the East Side as Brazil took on France. The bar was going nuts as each fan base had staked out its area. The beer was flowing and there were tons of jerseys on display. Brazil was the overwhelming favorite but Zidane controlled the game for France and they ended up winning. It was a blast and I'm excited to do this in SF this year.

Here's an awesome commercial that got me in the mood. via Chris Lin.

Broken Bells at the Regency Ballroom

Just Cause

Champagne Supernova. Heard another Oasis song this morning and it reminded me of how much I love this song.

Friday Chill Music (May 21, 2010)

I'm hijacking John Hamilton's Indie Playlist from last week for this week's Friday Chill Music. Hope you like it.

Wait, you want more? One playlist isn't enough?

You're in luck, here's Matt Ziser's excellent 2010 (vol 1.) playlist.

Seeing Adam Carolla do Improv with Bain & Hegarty

How I'm Listening to Music at Work Lately

Moon & Jupiter

Awesome picture of the Moon & Jupiter by File Magazine. In their honor, I'll link below to YouTube videos for my favorite Cat Power song, The Moon, and Drops of Jupiter from Train (a little cheesy but oh well).

Couldn't Agree More

Whether you are looking to join a startup or big company, or just want to do something on the side, I think this is great advice.

"Don’t worry about a resume, just build something.

Every decent startup gets a flood of resumes every week.  I was lucky, in that my resume was the We Are Hunted app on Boxee.  That was the proof of my capabilities.  If you want to work at a startup I’d advise you don’t work too much on your resume and instead work on building something you love or that’s useful to you.  By building something useful, you have tangible proof of what you are capable of doing what value you can bring to an organisation."

It comes from a post by Nick Crocker on how to join a startup. But I think it translates to pretty much everything in life. Experiment, try something, see where it takes you and iterate. I think one of the worst legacies of an MBA is the emphasis on planning before you get going. MBA's sell the comfort of a process, but many of the case studies they use to teach process are derived from companies that got off the ground because of the "Just Build Something" approach.

Legacies are written in hindsight. Don't let the logical, tidy, package-like way startup success stories are told intimidate or mislead you, or worse, keep you from starting something today.

Found It!

I know what you are thinking, where did that OC script about the the guy from UC Berkeley & Kellogg, signed by the entire cast that I bought at Kellogg Charity Auction Ball in 2007 go?

Well, it was lost in my old roomate's basement for two years. But now it's back, in all of it's glory. Let's take a moment to rejoice. Cue the music.

Pretty Interesting

via Alex Bain Favorites

Uh oh, pop up ads on TV now...

One of Those Days

Yesterday was one of those days where the stars aligned and an impromtu day of hanging with friends ensued. I had a great yoga practice at The Pad in the morning, a nice lunch at La Boulange (not pictured in the graphic below) and then did a little bar tour of SF with a pack of friends that grew at every stop.

Over the last year I've been enjoying the documentation aspect of this blog more. I imagine I'll look back on it in 20 years with a lot of smiles. Foursquare check-ins help with documentation, but I'd love to find something a little more thorough. Any suggestions?

Pat & Conan

My friend Patrick Concepcion started his own design studio a few years back. I was blown away by his work back then. Now I'm blown away by is client list too. He did the Conan Tour Poster below. That's a shot of Conan & Patrick next to it. Check out his site because he does a lot of music stuff too. Very proud of Patrick.

Friday Chill Music (May 14, 2010)

Eclectic but I hope you like it.

OH about Cats

Veronica: OH: "Say what you want about the Internet, but it's really done a lot for cats."

via Alex's "favorites" on 5/12/10

iPad Review

Alex Bain wrote an excellent iPad review. I agree with it pretty much 100%. I'd like to add a few points:

• If you enjoy riding an exercise bike, the iPad is an amazing device for reading & responding to emails and for reading blog posts. I spent an hour on the bike Tuesday morning and caught up on a ton of email and reading. It's great because the device is so easy to work, I can still exercise hard, but also get a lot done.
• Instapaper Application is a must buy. It turns web articles into easy to organize and read posts. It's invaluable to me now.
• Your niece can draw cool things on it. The kids love it.

Overall, it gives me the same sense of freedom I felt when I first started using a Blackberry in 2000. I never thought it would be a big deal, until it started changing things in little ways for me. Last week I spent an hour doing email inside of La Boulange, my favorite yuppie coffee shop, instead of sitting in front of a computer. It allows you to untether, which is hugely valuable for me. The iPad is a delight.

The Most Interesting Patient...

I have a good friend who is in treatment for cancer. I think about her and her husband (my close friend) all the time. I know it's been tough for them but an attachment that came over the wire from them made me smile. It's a picture posted by someone in their hospital and is a spoof on this advertising campaign. It made me smile ear to ear.

Apologies...

...for the slow posting, but things have been busy at Kenny Kellogg Headquarters. Please enjoy my new favorite song, Laredo by Band of Horses. They're streaming the first three songs off the album at Band of Horses HQ. You can listen to the Laredo studio track there.

I Do This All The Time...

...and I like the shot.


By Neil Pasricha's in THE BOOK OF AWESOME

The Best Thing About An iPad is...

...that your niece can draw you a smiley face on it.

Derek Sivers on Thor's Day

Great post by Derek Sivers, one of my favorite bloggers. I highly recommend subscribing to him. My favorite part:

"I love that we're living in a time where it's so easy to learn.

Like the date asked, “Why are you so into this?” - When I was a kid, you had to be “so into” something to go to the trouble of going to the library to find books on a subject, or going back to the card catalog to find related books.

It used to be that if you overheard someone say something, you'd just remember and repeat it, without looking it up for yourself, because it wasn't worth the trouble.

Now you can start to dive into any subject with some whimsical web browsing - an alternate to watching a TV show. And because I invested so little time into it, I'm emotionally less invested into subscribing to it (“signing my name to it”) - and can see it as just an alternate point of view."

Friday Chill Music (May 7, 2010)

I'm heading out a little early today to check out my nephew's baseball game in Fresno. This week's soundtrack is all about the road trip.

Note, there are some really mellow songs in here because when I'm driving at night I enjoy a few good, mellow ones to smooth out the ride.

Hope you enjoy.

Ben's Friends Patient Networks - May 2010 Update

Ben's Friends, the patient to patient support networks that I co-founded continues to make a lot of progress. In April we did 151,000 page views for an average of about 5,000 per day. That's up from 143,000 (per day avg of 4,612) in March and 115,000 (4,107 per day) in February. Not too shabby!

You can see below that we changed our homepage to a super sleek looking design. It's a work in progress and those site snapshot images you see at the top will be replaced by a picture of Ben and some of the folks on the network.

A couple other fun facts:

• We have the annual TAAF Annual AVM Awareness Walk this weekend in San Francisco. We sold over 150 shirts on the AVMSurivors.org network to raise money for the charity and about 50 people from the network are flying in. Sports Basement was a huge help in making the shirts!
• Our videos explaining Ben's story and why we started the networks have been watched 2,750 times on YouTube alone!
• We started a few more networks and are up to 11 networks now. We're planning on opening another 10 in June so if you have a need or a relative wants something started for them, please let us know and we'll do it.
• Greg, Haley & Michael all officially volunteered to help us recently, which brings the team to six and we couldn't be more thrilled!

Everything is going really well and we'd like to tell more people our story. If you have a PR lead or know someone who knows someone, please make the connection. The networks make a huge impact in people's lives and our only frustration is that sometimes people have a hard time finding us.

Everyone Should Have...

...A Little Gold In Their Portfolio.

Sunday Morning 12

Long-time readers know that every December I put together a hangover/make-out mix cd called Sunday Morning. About 50 friends & family get it every year and the last two years, the Kaisers & Meyer-Coronas have been kind enough to host launch parties. Let's just say Sunday Morning is kind of a big deal.

Paulita from NYC is a big fan and has been all over me for the back catalog, so I put Sunday Morning 12 up for her and I hope you enjoy it too. Let me know what songs you like the best in the comments!

May your make-outs be joyous and hangovers be mild while you listen to Sunday Morning 12.

Me as Han Solo!

JibJab's new Star Wars episode is amazing.

A Kenny Kellogg Fan Club?

I can't believe I'm typing these words, but David Hegarty started a Kenny Kellogg Fan Club page on Tumblr. Read that last sentence again! :)

Dave's blogging platform is Tumblr (which I love but I'm stuck on Blogger). The coolest part of Tumblr is that you not only post content on it, but read other blog content through it. Tumblr acts like a Blog Reader too. So Dave finds that he never checks Kenny Kellogg because it doesn't appear in his Tumblr stream. He told me this at dinner on Sunday night and I gave him a bad time. He was man enough to step up and create a hack that imports my feed & full post into Tumblr. The Kenny Kellogg Fan Club was born!

Off and Away Launch List

My buddy, Mike Walton (also a Kellogg alum) is launching his new online travel startup, OffandAway.com in a few weeks. I've heard bits and pieces and I really like where he is going. You are going to want to try this service, believe me. Since you're going to want to try it, you might as well sign up for his email launch list (I did). Who knows, you might win a free trip to Vegas.

Congrats to Mike and the rest of the team. I can't wait for the launch to be here!

Great Song for a Late Night

Take It to the Limit

@lattekelli, 5/3/10 1:06 PM

Kelli (@lattekelli) 5/3/10 1:06 PM Guy helping me w/mattresses gave me his card & I said "Jan is my mom's name! Coincidence!" Then "Jan" told me it's actually 'yawn'. Awkward.

Sent with Tweetie

Cool Pic

Great pic by David Nightingale on Chromasia

Godson's Birthday Gift

Request a Sketch - Tag Savage

Last week my buddy Alex Bain posted about a cool online artist named Tag Savage who does a sketch of you from a picture you send him. Tag's service is called Request A Sketch and I gave it a shot. I thought mine turned out great below. Thanks Tag!

Heaven

Cool to See People Protesting Arizona Decision

Jeremy and I having lunch at Faralito in the Mission

Jen on Green Shoelace

My friend, Jen Verzosa is a budding writer and has started writing band reviews on Green Shoelace. I enjoy Jen's writing because she has a strong pace to her voice. Reading her is kind of like listening to a Ramones song, and it works. This little quote captures her style and attitude perfectly:

"I, a working schmuck, had a case of the Mondays but, shortly after a quick “dinner” of Red Bull and cigarettes, I was ready to rock."

Jen's a cool woman with a great writing voice. I can't wait to read more of her reviews!