The Smarmy Carny

Mitch Hedberg was one of the funniest comedians around. His comedy was filled with observational humor such as, "An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You should never see an 'Escalator Temporarily out of Order' sign, just 'Escalator Temporarily Stairs'. Sorry for the convenience". Back in June 2006, I blogged a few hilarious Mitch Hedberg quotes.

Unfortunately, Mitch died on March 29, 2005 of "multiple drug toxicity" (O.D.), and I thought we had heard the last of his hilarious ramblings.

This month, however, the Comedy Central label released a new Mitch Hedberg CD titled "Do You Believe in Gosh?". The CD is a live recording from two months before Mitch died and has plenty of material I had not heard before. The CD does have explicit language, but beyond that, this CD is simply hilarious. I certainly suggest you check it out!

Just a small sampling from the CD:

• My belt holds up my pants and my pants have belt loops that hold up the belt. What [is] really goin on down there? Who is the real hero?
• Is a hippopotamus a hippopotamus or just a really cool apotamus?
• In Venice, if you're not book smart but you do know what's going on, you've got "canal smarts".
• I taught myself how to play guitar, which was a bad decision because I didn't know how to play it. So I was a [bad] teacher.

Google is giving away $10 Million through Project 10¹⁰⁰ (pronounced as "Project 10 to the 100th"). The money will go to fund between one and five ideas that will help humanity in a great way.

The guidelines are extremely loose for this project: They would prefer submissions in one of the following eight categories: Community, Opportunity, Energy, Environment, Health, Education, Shelter, and "Everything Else" . . . So even if your idea doesn't fit into the seven extremely vague categories, they are still willing to accept it.

Sure, those very basic guidelines are great and leave it open to your own creativity, but what sort of idea are they really looking for? The example Google offers to us is the Hippo Water Roller, which essentially looks like one of those heavy rollers used to even out landscaping, but filled with healthy drinking water. This allows people who have to transport their water supply to easily roll 24 gallons of water at a time, compared with a 5 gallon bucket of water on top of the head.

You can upload an ancillary video to YouTube to help you express or display your idea, but the meat of the presentation must be filled out via the web form. Google has put out a video presentation for their project:

How many people could your idea help?

All you need to do is submit your idea via the website before October 20, 2008. The submissions are reviewed and on January 27, 2008, 100 ideas will be voted on by the general public/Webosphere. The top 20 submissions will then pass to an advisory board, who will choose between one and five ideas, which will split the $10 Million prize equally.

For those looking to get rich from their ideas, you might want to look elsewhere. As the site's FAQ says:

Q: What do I get if my idea is chosen?
A: You get good karma and the satisfaction of knowing that your idea might truly help a lot of people.

The $10 Million is not going to the people who come up with these ideas. The money is going toward the development of these ideas to help make them a reality.

If coming up with a great idea to help the world just isn't your "thing", you can always try to win the $30 Million Lunar X Prize that Google has also posted. For that prize, you'll have to do a lot more than come up with ideas, though. $30 Million goes to the first team to send a robot to the moon, have that robot travel 500 meters along the moon's surface, and receive back video, image, and data transmissions here on Earth. You might want to hurry on that offer, though: 13 of the teams have been working on this since September 13, 2007, so you've got some catch-up to do!

How can you possibly pass up Cold Stone Creamery's World's Largest Ice Cream Social?

On September 25, 2008 from 5pm until 8pm, Cold Stone Creamery is giving away free 3 oz. "Make-a-Wish"-sized creations. This free portion is about 60% the size of Cold Stone's "Like It" (small) size, which is approximately 5 oz. The stipulations are that your sample will be Emily or Jack's Creation:

• Jack's Creation — Marshmallow ice cream with OREO® Cookies, Chocolate Chips and Fudge
• Emily's Creation — Nutter Butter® ice cream with White Chocolate Chips, Kit Kat® and Yellow Cake

These are two new flavors created by two Make-a-Wish children named — you guessed it — Jack and Emily, who are 9 and 10 years old, respectively.

Why free ice cream? Cold Stone is doing this for a good cause: About 85% of all donations given during that time will go to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Visit these official sites for the full "scoop":

• Cold Stone Creamery's Promotions page
• Make-A-Wish Foundation's page for The World's Largest Ice Cream Social

Kahala Brands owns Cold Stone Creamery, and some of their other stores are also having giveaways during the last week of the month. If you live near Blimpie, The Great Steak & Potato Co., Samurai Sam’s Teriyaki Grill, or TacoTime you can grab some free stuff from those locations, too! Of course, don't forget to donate to a great charity while you're there!

On May 17, 1972, Don Gorske ate a Big Mac.

"No big deal," you might say, but Gorske never stopped. In that first month in 1972, he ate 265 Big Macs.

Due to his obsessive-compulsive disorder, Gorske continued eating Big Macs every day. In fact, Gorske has had less than 10 Big Mac-less days in those 36+ years since. According to the AP, Gorske recently hit the 23,000 Big Mac milestone. Currently, he generally eats two Big Macs a day.

What, you don't believe Gorske? Lucky for you, he has also saved all of his Big Mac receipts for all those Big Macs!

Gorske wrote a book about his experiences titled 22,477 Big Macs

Watch this video to get an idea of what the man is like . . . and no, he's not obese!

Here's to you, Mr. Obsessive Compulsive Big Mac Eater.