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Mod-Happy Geeks Make Hot Rods Out of PCs Who needs Import Tuner or Pimp My Ride when you've got a mod shop for computers? The custom PC-rigging site was launched by Future US and is hosting a monthly "gladiator-style" tourney for $2,000 in cash and prizes, courtesy of Microsoft. We're not really sure what to say aside from that apparently geeks have testosterone too. So. When do the PC models debut? Is the MySpace Queen up for that? Oh wait, she's busy looking for love right now. Colbert Invades NYT to Verbally Dismantle Icons, Heroes, Presidents-to-Be We always knew elections were partly spectacle but nothing beats Election '08 (unless you live in Belgium). If only to prove how desperately our political society needs a clue, Stephen Colbert appeared as a guest columnist for The New York Times this weekend to trash-talk everyone relevant, including Obama and Jesus, and suggest that what the world needs is him (or his new book). Read it all here. And to think we honestly believed we were the only ones drinking on the job. Ain't blogging grand?! Canadians -- of All People -- Put the Bridle on Seduction Few things are funner on a Sunday than the prospect of watching 10 Canadian shorts on seduction. (Apparently Canada's inherited more from the French than just a moody passel of Quebecois.) But there's more to do on the Sundance Channel's Art of Seduction site than sit around watching politicians lie, pretty people lamenting their genetic burden, and devious webcammers (all of which we did). The seduction style quiz was among the funner surveys we've taken in awhile. As an added incentive to blowing 20 minutes on 40 questions, the site strokes your ego with an illustrated seduction guide for your type. Yum. Sometimes All It Takes to Send a Message is an Ornery Footballer and a Marker We probably only think this is funny for two reasons: 1. We like the idea of poking a meaty fat guy into livid confrontation The Hooliganograms are the classy invention of Cake, which is promoting Football Hooligans International, a new series on Discovery. It debuts in Europe this fall. If it somehow manages to be the emotional trainwreck Footballers' Wives was, it will probably be a success. NYC's Tourism Department Could Use a Little Magic NYC & Company, which serves as New York's marketing and tourism organization, has launched a component at NYC Visit to help tourists feel more local. For the most part the site is a gigantic press release and if it possesses the rhyme and reason its raving PR people claimed, we're not seeing it. Anyway, the new tourism effort for the Big Apple kicks off with a series of print ads and a TV spot, all of which are posted at the tourism site. The print ads are explosions of ... just ... stuff and they all make stark statements: This is Entertainment, This is Fashion, This is Food, This is Shopping, and This is Just Another Day. For the most part you get a Saks Ad Meets Highlights for Kids feeling. We're not crazy about it. But hey, maybe the ads are amazing when they're three feet long and accosting you from the side of a building. Photoshelter Monetizes Pictures, Adrants Has Dirty Mind, Little Else New LOL. So PhotoShelter's PR people emailed to say it's running a casting call for its image collection, which helps photographers make profits on pictures. If you register before November 5th, you could get 85 percent of transaction proceeds in your first six months. There is really nothing funny about that, or about anything PhotoShelter is doing to promote this effort, but the PR guy who wrote to us started his letter with some generic line like, "I came across your site and thought you might be interested..." And, partly because we think it's complete swill when somebody claims to "come across our site" before diving into a pitch, Steve emailed me and snarled, "Don't you hate it when people cum all over our site? I mean it's messy, man! It's mean! It's rude!" TurboChef Perhaps Promises More than It Can Deliver We really hate it when lame music gets in the way of our ambient in-the-zone iTunes mix. But that's really the only beef we have with this microsite for TurboChef, which in all other respects is suspiciously too cool to be kitchen appliance-related. The Oven Reinvented was put together by mono and it gives demonstrations on how the TurboChef cooks food. We watched the asparagus segment about six times. While cooking, the food sort of floats in midair while lasers shoot through it from both directions. It's so Teleportation Pod Meets Wolfgang Puck. In its pressie, mono calls TurboChef "15 times better" than the typical "me-too" luxury appliance. We're not really sure how the agency arrived at the number 15 but we're guessing it's probably similar to the way we pretended to count the number of times we saw the asparagus segment. (Actually, we only watched it once.) Radiohead Thinks its Fans Can Set Prices Just Fine, Thanks Radiohead, which according to Chuck Klosterman is somehow both over- and underrated as a band, has decided to take a stand against third-party online music dealers (cough-cough-iTunes) by letting fans decide what to pay for its latest album Rainbows. Manager Bryce Edge explained, "We're prepared to take a risk and we might come out looking very foolish. But we believe if your music is great, then people will pay for it." The 10 tracks are available on the Radiohead website and costs allegedly vary from nothing to 100 pounds (not the weight; the currency). In fact, we can't even open it because it keeps crashing from the mad rush of fans trying to get to the goods. Crush, Coupland Explain Why Seratonin Levels Drop Inside Office Supply Stores This is the first of a promotion by Crush, Toronto for Douglas Coupland's new novel The Gum Thief, "a story of love and looming apocalypse set in the aisles of an office supply store." We're going to take a wild shot in the dark and say the innocuous office supply is Staples, because use of the word staples, the brand Staples and the object staples has hit us a few times. Of course, we could be totally wrong. The spots cover three elements: protagonists Roger and Bethany, and The Glove Pond -- a novel inside the novel. Coupland narrates and each spot kind of makes us hate life, but in a funny way. We'd be receptive to reading the book, but mainly we feel compelled to sit around making staple animation. (See Bethany.) Panasonic to Reunite 'High Definition' Families With High Definition Under the premise that contemporary families have become little more than communal strangers, Panasonic tries bringing back family time with its "family" of HD products and this ad. Because nothing bonds like Shrek in HD. The ad debuted last week on ABC and USA Today and is part of Panasonic's Living in High Definition campaign. (Get it? "High definition"?) If you think your family could use some lessons a la Full House from Panasonic, you could win a spot in the program by entering here. Lucky households will make formal pledges to spend more time with one another and other super-exciting stuff. Thank Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners for this winner. 
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