The Hopp Stop

• Cut the Rope, a very fun iPhone/iPad game, has a free holiday version out. Recommended.
• Marco the Tumblr gets to use an enduring rotary phone with his Verizon FiOS connection.
• Spencer Hall with another hilarious column at Every Day Should Be Saturday, this time centering on the West Virginia hiring of a football coach-in-waiting.
• The Times has been running a series over the last week on the 1960 plane collision over NYC that resulted in a plane crashing in Park Slope. This article on the state of the neighborhood in 1960 is a great read if you’ve seen the vitality of the neighborhood today, or are interested in urban planning and post-war urban decay in US cities. It’s remarkable how much of urban decay was caused by a combination of lending practices (encouraging a move to suburbs by middle-class whites) and racism.
• This post, another in the Park Slope crash series, has a great 1960/2010 matched photo of the wreckage.
• I love the National, so I really enjoyed this Pitchfork interview with Aaron Dressner, one of the musical forces behind the band.

• Let’s start things off with some fresh sunset photos from one of my fellow DRA founding fathers, Chris Walton.
• I think my recent link posts have fired up the spambots, as I’ve been getting some amusing spam comments (they never show up on the site, as WordPress’ spam filter does a nice job catching them). Here’s a response to my post on Gmail setup under iOS 4: “Unhappy for the  analyze, but I’m truly fatherly the new Zune, and comic this, as compartment as the excellent reviews few additional fill have longhand, testament cater you terminate if it’s the aright prime for you.”
• Ha ha, the Taiwanese video site NMA (they quickly put together videos of current events and computer animate them, such as Tigers Woods crashing his truck or Stephen Slater jumping out of the plane) has a video up on the Chinese Confucius Peace Prize, celebrating “peace from the Chinese perspective”. Love it. And I love the armed giant Pandas serving as Chinese soldiers.
• Wild to see the aftermath of this 1960 plane crash in Park Slope in Brooklyn, given that I now live blocks away from the crash site.

Yesterday was a rainy day in LA, so we decided to visit the Annenberg Space for Photography in Century City and then see a movie at the theater across the street.

The Annenberg Space had a great career retrospective up for two of the best sports photographers of the 20th century (and both are still working), Walter Iooss and Neil Leifer. The exhibit was a treat for me, as a huge sports fan (and lifelong Sports Illustrated subscriber, as the two contributed much of their work to that magazine) and budding photographer, but I think the rest of our group enjoyed it as well.

The movie, however, was not to the same level. Metacritic gave it a 47 rating, in the yellow zone, which usually means “mediocre but enjoyable.” I think the rating should have been more around 35, in the red. Not worth the time. There was a ridiculous cross-country treasure hunt (which Vanessa reports was not in the book), a “hip, urban sidekick” satyr who cracked wise to obnoxious effect and some tiresome “missing daddy” Psych 101 plot elements. Oh well. For Vanessa’s sake, since she enjoyed the books, I hope the second book is better and has different screenwriters.

Yesterday the Boston Globe’s Big Picture blog ran another great photo post, focusing on dogs and sleds. Most of the photos (but not all) involve sled dogs. Check out the post here. Here’s one of my favorite photos:

Sled dogs in a pen

Vanessa and I spent the weekend in Carmel. Some photo highlights are up at Flickr. Of note are the awesome automobiles we saw (Lincoln Versailles! flames galore!) and Vanessa’s super-special French toast, which was basically a piece of toast turned into an elephant ear you would get at the state fair.

Check out the awesome license plate seen on Valencia Street here in SF. I need to go check out some LOL cats now. K thx bai.