Happy Hanukkah from Kim Il-sung & Me

Don't send a lame Holiday eCard. Try JibJab Sendables!

My Christmas list consists of just one thing this year

It can be found here

Playing Soccer with Binoculars

A Japanese comedy show has some guys put on binoculars and try to play soccer

Playing Soccer with Binoculars | Funny Jokes at JibJab

Santa Clarita Half Marathon

I ran in a half marathon (13.1 miles) last Sunday in Santa Clarita, a small town just North of Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley. I finished in 1:36:01, which put me at a 7:20 per mile pace. I'm prepping for a full marathon in January and my goal is to finish it in under three and a half hours, so I was pretty happy with how I ran in this half.

I was most happy, however, with the fact that the race was actually kind of fun and went by fairly quickly. I'm convinced that anybody can physically finish a marathon as long as you train properly. It's the mental challenge that's the real battle; you can easily convince yourself of anything after running for several hours, and the easiest thing to convince yourself of is that you hurt too much to keep going. Thus, my biggest worry before the race was that it might be my pessimistic mind running that day, which would make for a very long, painful run. The race turned out to be great for me, though, and I think there are a bunch of reasons for this:

1. The weather and setting were beautiful


2. The number of people running (somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500) was the perfect amount to give you lots of company, but never feel crowded


3. The people in the race were all very relaxed, friendly and happy, *much* more so than the robots I raced with in the triathlon


4. The course was visually diverse, with a nice mix of urban, suburban and desert-like surroundings


5. They peppered the course with a nice amount of cheer squads, bands and trucks cranking out music, which did a ton to pick up your spirits


6. The awesome headband and orange-lensed sunglasses I was wearing made me feel really cool...
   
   


7. I settled in with a group of about five people after mile seven, and they were running at the perfect pace for me


8. In that group of five, I ran directly behind a really cute woman in a bright pink outfit and therefore, frankly, don't remember much of miles seven through twelve

I don't mean to sound crude about it but, as I said, as long as you train enough, it's a merely a mental battle, and anything that gets your mind off of what you're doing is appreciated. Once I finished, I made sure to thank the woman and let her know that her pacing helped me out. I think both she and her husband appreciated it.

JibJab launches Sendables

Last week we launched what we're calling JibJab Sendables. They're essentially our version of e-cards,but please don't call them that; they are so much funnier and better than any e-cards you've ever received, and you'll soon be able to do things with them you've never been able to do with any other e-cards.

We've got lots of content in our library already and will be adding lots of new stuff every couple of weeks, so stop on by and check them out.

Below is an example of one of our Halloween Sendables:

Pumpkins | Funny Jokes at JibJab

Awesome

Night of the Living Republicans

Star in Your Own JibJab! It's Free!

JibJab's newest creation, a take on the classic "Night of the Living Dead", where you get to cast seven heads of your own . You can also make "Night of the Living Democrats".

Tim as a Killer Cop

Star in Your Own JibJab! It's Free!

There's an I in Triathlon

It's over - this Sunday I finally competed in and completed the triathlon I was training for, the LA Triathlon. It was good, and I did okay but, mostly, it's over. No great stories came out of it; no life changing moments occurred. It hurt a lot and, when I finally crossed the finish line, I was just overjoyed that it was done. Don't get me wrong: It was an immense feeling of accomplishment, and I am so glad I did it, but it just wasn't that much fun, which I expected to be (at least a little)



The results are here. I finished in 2:52 and was 74th out of 177 people in my age group (they stagger the start of the race, and send you off in waves based on your age group, so these are the folks you are competing against and mainly racing with). My swim time was horrible (as was my swim to bike transition time), my bike time was not great (though this was leg was the most fun - it was amazing riding on the blocked off and deserted streets of LA), and my run time was okay (though every step was pain). Without knowing what goal to set, I had hoped to finish in under three hours. I did this, but now realize I should have set a tougher goal. Again, I am happy with my accomplishment, but disappointed in my performance. On the positive side, if I was a 20-24 year old female, I would have gotten third place.



Three observations:

1. I know I have a big ego, but training and racing in one of these things has got to be the most ego-centric and self-centered things I have ever done. For the months of training, it was constant thinking about me, and how I was feeling, and what I was eating, and what would I be doing tomorrow to make time for me to train and think about myself more. The Saturday before the race was unbearably about me, and making sure I was all rested and nutritioned up for the race. By the end of the race, I was so sick of me. There is such a big I in Triathlon...

2. Gearheads are rampant in the Tri world. I think I was one of the only people without a several thousand $ Tri bike and Tri wetsuit (I rode a normal road bike and wore a regular surfing shorty wetsuit). I felt the same joy in passing them as golfers using $30 drivers do in outdriving people using $300 Callaways.



3. Why have none of my friends ever told me that I run like the villain from Terminator 2? Check out this video of me finishing the race (I am the guy in front with the robot-like running form):



Wow, I seem so negative about things. Did I mention that my Tri career has only just begun ?



Update: They created nice free summary report
of our performance.

New JibJab Starring You! dance

Me dancing with some past and future? Presidents


Star in Your Own JibJab! It's Free!

Stunning slow-motion video ad

A Tale of Two Coasts

I was on vacation last week here, which is located on the Northern part of the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It was an fantastic vacation filled with great friends, food, drinks, games and, of course, beach time. I want to buy a place here with these people, global warming be damned.

But the vacation is not really the purpose of this post. Although we were largely sedentary during the week, we had bursts of athletic activity. On these occasions, whenever we went running or biking, every other exercising person we saw or passed on the roads nodded, smiled, waved or greeted us. It was actually quite nice and made the East Coast heat and humidity bearable.

Then, when I got back to LA yesterday, I got heckled and mildly bullied by my fellow exercisers.

I was on bike ride on Labor Day and stopped at a light, fairly oblivious to my surroundings. The light changed and I slowly accelerated. The next thing I knew, I was surrounded by about 200 other bicyclists, 100% of them in their tight-ass, neon-colored, matching bike outfits. They had some momentum, so they began to swarm and surge past me, both on my left and right side, clearly trying to intimidate me, the lone biker. Then some jackass calls out "nice kit and bike combo", and a few of his buddies laughed and echoed what he said. I assume they were making fun of the fact that I was wearing normal gym shorts and a loose fitting gray and black mountain biking shirt (or, as they called it, kit), rather than one of their road biking ensembles. The swarming then got a little more aggressive and I finally had to pull over and let them all go by.

Three things about this whole thing bugged me:

1. I had chosen my clothing specifically so I didn't look like the prototypical pelaton wanna-be-member (i.e. them)
2. The swarm actually slowed me down, as they weren't actually going that fast. If you're going to be a bully, shouldn't you at least back it up with some effort?
3. When did bicyclists become tough guys? Have they looked at themselves as they clickity clack around Starbucks with their giant coffees?

Chalk one up for East Coast/Southern friendliness.

Final thoughts on the accident

Okay, this is the last post on this, I promise, but I need to get some final points down before moving on:

• It seems my invoice to the seagull palls in comparison to the emergency room's: The total tab for my visit was $11,082 (!), but my health plan says it's only paying $2,585 of it. Thus, someone has to eat the $8,497 difference, and my health plan assures me that it's not me...

• When I was freshly injured, bandaged and oozing, I was never sure what amazed me more:

• Strangers who would see me and immediately talk to me like we old friends; or

• Strangers who would see me and act like nothing was going on with my face. I would watch their eyes and they would even somehow avoid looking at the wounds.

• About 82% of people had the same initial reaction upon hearing my story: "Oh my God...was the seagull hurt?"

• About 97% of people would barely let me finish my story before they launched into their own story about how they injured themselves (which hardly ever had any connection to faces, bikes or birds). I quickly learned to keep my story short so we could get right to their very important story of stubbing their toe 3 months ago.
  

Tennis ball and bird collide

Tennis Mishap - video powered by Metacafe

I didn't pray over my bird...

Flight of the Conchords - "A Texan Odyssey"

Nice sunset, unfortunate sign

Recovery, but with baggage

My face is healing nicely and it looks like the bird strike will result in just two lingering things:

1. Two small scars where the stitches were: one that is hidden within my eyebrow and one crescent-shaped one on my cheekbone

2. A slight fear of ocean-based critters. Example: I was out in the ocean doing a training swim yesterday morning and saw that there were a pod of about five dolphins about fifty yards ahead of me and directly in the path of where I was heading. Very cool, right? As, I got closer to them, I began to hear their clicking and and screaming in the water. Still cool. When I was about twenty yards from them, I realized that there were actually about ten of them and they didn't seem to be afraid of me. Okay, interesting. When I got to within about ten yards of them, the clicks and screams getting quite loud, I realized that they weren't moving out of the way and I would soon be amongst them. This is where the slight fear kicked in and I decided to turn around and swim in the opposite direction. How lame is that? Most people would love to swim with dolphins once in their life. I guess I will be saving my experience for Sea World.

UPDATE: Maybe it wasn't fear, but instead good instincts

UPDATE #2: Okay, maybe this isn't so funny

JibJab's new thing: Starring You!

You can upload your own head and then place it in a JibJab movie/dance, adding other heads if you want. This is me with Anna Kournikova. Cast yourself in one at www.jibjab.com/starring_you.



Star in Your Own JibJab! It's Free!

My invoice to the seagull

• $100 - Health insurance co-payment for ER
• $2.75 - Lg McDonald's milkshake to reward self for being a good boy in the ER
• $31.43 - First Aid supplies (bandages, goop, beer)
  
• $110 - Replacement bike wheel
• $125 - Replacement sunglasses
• $12 - Book I purchased while browsing online for sunglasses
• $25 - Electric razor (can't shave with normal razor due to scrapes)
• $20 - Health insurance co-payment for Doc to remove stitches
• $18 - Supplement pills to "support tissue health" (my Doc is a quack*)
• $12.43 - More beer

* Need proof? (1) the supplement contains "raw pancreas concentrate" (2) he had no idea what liquid bandages were

At least this didn't happen to me

Tim 0, Seagull -1

This seems like as good a time as any to actually do some writing here, mainly to prevent me from embellishing this experience in the future. So, what gave me the new face shown in these pictures? As I have hinted at it the titles, it was a seagull. Seriously. I am training for a triathlon being held in September, so was up early to get a 20 mile bike ride in before work. I had just purchased and installed some new clip-in pedals on the bike and was wearing my dorky new cycling shoes (they have Velcro straps as closures – need I say more?), so was feeling pretty squared away and, honestly, fast.

I left my apartment in Venice around 6:15 am and headed south on the Venice bike path along the beach. The path is curvy in this section and bordered by small mounds on the left and the beach on the right. Accelerating out of one of these curves (probably going about 20 MPH), I noticed about five or six seagulls to the left of the path about 50 yards away. I clicked my tongue at them to get them to fly away, which they began to do, but not quickly enough…

Before I had had time to react, I was surrounded by the birds including one that was headed right for my front tire. The next thing I knew, I heard flapping and then a large clang. The seagull had indeed flown right into the spokes of my front tire, thereby jamming the tire and jettisoning me over the handlebars. I flew a few feet forward, landing on the right side of my face on the cement path. I think I slid for a little and then finally stopped and sat up. I was wearing a helmet, so was still conscious, but I was only half aware of what was going on. I sat for a few moments, and then stood up to shake it off, quickly realizing that all was not well, as I stumbled around and half-fell, half-sat down on the mounds.



I sat there for a few minutes when a homeless guy (I think his name was Raf) came up to me and asked if I was okay. I mumbled that I was fine, as I really wasn’t in much pain, just very woozy. He then pointed at my eye and said, “Wow, you are messed up”. I had been wearing sunglasses and then reached for them and realized that the right lens was knocked out and the frame was shattered. In addition, my hand came away covered in blood and I realized I was spitting blood. Raf then went to get my bike off the path and stopped in his tracks: “Holy shit! There’s a bird in your bike”. The seagull was still lodged in the spokes, and was now very dead. Raf pulled the bird out of the spokes and brought my bike over to me, its front rim completely bent and useless. Raf then ran off and got me some toilet paper (keeping half for himself) so that I could wipe off some of the oozing blood. (Thanks for all the help, Raf)

I was actually feeling okay by then, so just picked up my bike and carried it the half-mile home. I then drove myself to the Emergency Care, were they remarked that they had heard lots of stories, but had never heard of a bird bringing a biker down by flying into the spokes. I was covered in cuts, and my neck, back, wrist, ribs and face all hurt, so they gave me lots of x-rays and even a cat scan for my neck and back.



So, what was the final inventory of injuries?

- Cracked cheekbone, causing some blood to seep in to my sinuses
- Six stitches on cheek and six stitches above my eye
- Strained back and neck (reactivating an old neck injury)
- A big tooth gouge in my inner upper lip
- Some slightly banged up molars
- Sprained wrist
- Bruised ribs, knees and elbows
- About 20 cuts and scrapes on my face, ear, hands, elbows, knees and ankle
- One dead seagull (you can see some feathers still on the spokes below)

My seagull face

..and his performance @ "Showtime at the Apollo"

The Performer: "Super Bad Brad"...

Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase

Tim, Rock Star

Get your own at Gizmoz.com

Bizarre Japanese Instructional Video

Teach English In Japan
|Funny Jokes at JibJab

Great song - "Driver's Seat" - from the 70's

No words needed - just watch this

Members Only Jacket Commercial from 1982
|Funny Jokes at JibJab

I've never seen this show, but this guy is amazing