The Smarmy Carny

American Idol 6 is premiering on Tuesday, January 16, so naturally this Sunday's Site is Idle Idols, the web's home of the funniest American Idol auditions.

Idle Idols doesn't care about the winners and good singers. Idle Idols cares only about the William Hungs of this world. I know it and you know it: American Idol's entertainment value is derived primarily from the wacky, crazy, and lame auditions and the reactions this gets from the judges.

Idle Idols will attempt to blog each of the entertaining auditions throughout American Idol 6 and future seasons. For a trip down memory lane, you can also read through American Idol 5 audition notes that are posted there now. Rumor has it that previous seasons will also start to appear after the American Idol 6 auditions are over.

One of the highlights of Idle Idols are the Idle Interviews it gets from American Idol contestants. Thus far, it has already posted interviews from American Idol 4 reject and psychodiva Mary Roach as well as American Idol 5 rejects "Crazy Dave" Hoover, screamo boy Ryan Hart, and "Everybody Dance Now" Laurence Soares.

Idle Idols describes itself as such:

Idle Idols celebrates the phenomenon of breathtaking American Idol auditions — and not in the good way. When we say "breathtaking," we're thinking less of "exciting and thrilling" and more along the lines of "astonishing" or "I'm out of breath because I just ran four miles away from that horrid act."

Kelly? Reuben? Clay? Taylor? Never heard of 'em.

This is the world where William Hung is king. Other celebrities include Mary Roach and "Crazy" Dave Hoover. These contestants taught us that quality singing isn't nearly as entertaining as a good show. Bad singers, outrageous outfits, and your everyday, run of the mill psychopaths . . . that's entertainment!

http://idleidols.com/

Idle Idols is a sister site of The Smarmy Carny. Enjoy!

For the latest Black Friday posts, check out blackfriday.smarmycarny.com

Black Friday Deals!

Black Friday @ GottaDeal is up and running again for this year's Black Friday season! In the spirit of the season kicking off, I'm answering a few questions about Black Friday and GottaDeal. To keep up on my Black Friday posts, just keep an eye on the Black Friday category.

When is Black Friday?

Black Friday is always the day after Thanksgiving. In 2006, that will be Friday, November 24.

What is Black Friday?

Sales, sales, and more sales! It's the day to completely clean up on thousands of items. Save hundreds of dollars on large ticket items like computers and HDTVs. Get smaller items completely free. Jaw-dropping savings all over the place. It's the day to buy every single Christmas present for your entire family.

Of course, it's not called "Black" Friday because it's depressing, but because business often move from losses (red) to gains (black) for the year on this day. Though many people refer to this day as "the biggest shopping day of the year," this is not the case. The weekends preceding Christmas, along with Christmas Eve, top Black Friday in terms of sales. Black Friday is, however, the busiest day of the year as far as the number of shoppers.

How do you find out about Black Friday deals?

By far, the best place to find out about Black Friday before the deals are published is via GottaDeal.com's Black Friday site and forum. In addition, you'll want to buy the newspaper on Thanksgiving to get all the Black Friday inserts to make sure you're not missing any deals.

Why aren't there any ads posted yet?

If you're reading this any other month than October or November, it's because the ads are usually posted some time near the end of October. If you're really drooling for the information as soon as it's available, keep a close eye on the GottaDeal Black Friday forums for the information first. It's not as pretty when it first shows up, but you're getting the scoop! If you really just want an idea of what types of deals you can look forward to seeing, check out the thread outlining Black Friday deals since 2003. (Last year, GottaDeal posted deals for the following stores: Wal-Mart, Toys 'R' Us, CompUSA, Best Buy, K-mart, Sears, RadioShack, Costco, and many more!)

Why GottaDeal?

Whether it be GottaDeal's Black Friday page or the GottaDeal forums, the site is by far the Black Friday site. GottaDeal hosts most of the Black Friday ads (including scans of many of the ads) before anyone else. Right on the Black Friday page will be a list of store icons that will link to Black Friday deals as they pop up. Of course, you can also sign up for periodic e-mail alerts to keep up on the developments as Black Friday approaches.

GottaDeal also offer a few nice features on their Black Friday site. My favorite feature is the Black Friday Shopping List. Registered users can select Black Friday items from a list and add them to a personalized shopping list.

The forums are also an invaluable tool for communicating with others about deals and details. The community is quite helpful, and this year brings a better, easier to navigate layout in the Black Friday forums. Not only do the new ads show up here first, the community also scrounges for additional coupons both online and offline to increase your discounts and savings. Post a list of items you're looking to purchase on Black Friday and where you're headed, and someone might suggest which stores to hit first, or maybe even point out a better deal at a different store. Additionally, there is a Black Friday Basics section to answer FAQs like "Can I price match BF items?" and "Can I get BF deals online?"

Even though it was just a click away, I finally discovered Lists of Bests, which is part of the 43 Things family. Read more about my 43 Things at Random Fodder.

Lists of Bests allows you to create and find lists of products, places, goals and people. From the Pulitzer Prize to the Oscars and beyond; you can start the list yourself or find existing lists. For example, I have already added myself to several lists, such as:

• Academy Award's "Best Picture"
• Roger Ebert's "The Great Movies"
• 50 States of the USA

You can also start your own personal lists like "My Top 10 Favorite Books," "My Films for Computer Geeks," etc. There are three types of lists: award lists (lists of particular award winners), definitive lists (lists from other publications that are set in stone), and personal lists (created and edited only by you).

The most fun part about Lists of Bests is that when you add or create a list to your profile, you can easily check off your progress item by item. Especially useful is that, when I checked all of the Academy Award Best Picture winners that I had seen, those movies were already checked off in the "Roger Ebert's 'The Great Movies'" list when I visited it.

Here are the lists I have completed:

Here are the 5 lists I am still working on, but closest to completing:

What are you waiting for? Go get started today!

One entertaining game that can easily waste an hour of your day is Guess the Google. Head over to the site and click "Launch Project" to play.

In Guess the Google, you play 20 rounds. In each round, 20 pictures appear. What they have in common is that they are the results for a Google Image search on a particular word. You have 20 seconds to guess that word. You get a bonus point for each unused second left after you guess the word.

This is a fun little game. I've come back to it a few times and still enjoy it. Perhaps in a couple weeks I will post about a similar set of Google-based games that require two-player competitive/collaborative efforts.

A grocery list

This week's site is The Grocery List Collection. Just as you might think, the site collects abandoned grocery lists, scans them, and places them online.

There are currently 1100 lists posted, and plenty of them are mundane — but that's what a grocery list is, isn't it? In the mix, you'll find some interesting lists, like lists of completely unrelated items, lists from the anal retentive (like me), lists worth five dollars, and lists with bizarre items such as kitten faces or poop bags.

You'll see lists from hastily written lists on Post-It Notes to carefully written, multi-column lists on notebook paper. You'll see the world's worst spelling. You'll see the various ways to mark off which items you have retrieved, from check marks to scribbling items off to no marking at all, which happens to be my method of choice.

Other than the pictures of the lists, there's not much else on the site. There are a few features missing from the site that I would have preferred: A rating system and a comments system would have given a community feel to the site and would have brought me back repeatedly. Also, keywords/tagwords would have been nice, particularly if each photo listed all the foods on it, so you could bring up all of the lists including bananas or rank food items by popularity. I have a feeling that either of these would probably require a site overhaul, though. It's too bad.

smarmycarny.com

Head over to Websites As Graphs and punch in any website. Watch as the script forms a graph of the site. The result? You'll get a graph of the site, just like the one of The Smarmy Carny pictured here. More accurately, the graph is of that webpage not the entire site. Based on the definitions for the colors, it is less like a network map and more like a graph of the webpage layout. Each dot refers to a different tag on the page, including links, images, tables, quotes, etc.

The bottom of the page informs you about what type of tag each color refers to, but I wish I could hover over the dots and see exactly what I'm looking at. I'd like to be able to say, "That dot right there is the picture about Websites As Graphs," but I can't.

Many people have posted their pictures on Flickr under the tag websitesasgraphs. In fact, the site claims that this was the #1 tag on Flickr over the last full week of May. Good times.

Snopes.com: Rumor has it.

Snopes is an urban legends reference page that I have been reading for almost ten years now.

You'll be surprised at what's true and what's not. Keep in mind that a story doesn't have to be false to be an urban legend. According to Snopes, here are the three conditions to be fulfilled for a story to be classified an "urban legend":

1. The story circulates widely.
2. The story is told and re-told with differing details.
3. The story is said to be true.

Some stories you've believed and retold others for decades turn out to be false. Stories you've rolled your eyes at turn out to be completely true. Here are some items that might surprise you:

• Does hair grow back darker/thicker after it has been shaved?
• Is celery a "negative calorie food"?
• Do the horses in Young Frankenstein neigh every time they hear Frau Blucher's name because "blucher" is the German word for "glue"?
• Will you get cramps if you go swimming less than 45 minutes/an hour after eating?
• Was a suicide captured in the background of The Wizard of Oz?
• Does eating turkey make you drowsy?
• Does the Swiffer WetJet pose a danger to dogs and other household pets?
• Did Kentucky Fried Chicken change their name to KFC to remove "Chicken" from their name because their mutant birds could not be legally considered chickens, or was it to remove "Fried" from their name in order to seem healthier?
• Was the Titanic screening The Poseidon Adventure when it hit the iceberg?
• Is Jell-O made from bones and hides?
• Was an actor killed during the filming of the chariot race in Ben Hur?
• Do Twinkies never expire?
• Was television's Mr. Ed a horse?

Snopes is an overall great site to spend time on. Whether you're looking for some interesting reading to pass the time or settling a bet on whether Pop Rocks and soda pop will kill you, Snopes is the place to be.