What I hear you saying is...

So I bought a cheap pair of shorts at a local shop, thinking they would get me through at least a few days until I could do some real shoppng.

15 years later... they are still in my closet.

What's remarkable about these shorts is that, though I actually have articles of clothing that are even older, these were still in heavy rotation.

These were the lounge-about Saturday morning scrubs that were just barely passable for a breakfast at the pancake house.

They have been to remote areas of Thailand, and have crossed the Appenines on bicycle. They've been to Alaska and down the Grand Canyon. Over the years, the cotton became softer than any silk, and the fabric had become grooved and stretched like a trusted baseball mitt.

Oh, and they had some quality Japanese-English nonsense written on the tag:

Surf Company

Long narrow board, usually modern, standing on it you can glide at high speed on the top of the highest waves good luck

So it saddened me this morning, as I was cleaning my closet, to find them crumpled at the bottom of my summer clothes box. This -- I thought -- is no way to treat an old friend. True, I could probably go on wearing them for another 5 years, as the paint and garden stains contine to accumulate, but I want these shorts to go out with some dignity.

And so today, after one more fitting, I have decided to retire them. I have not decided the exact fate, but it will defintely be a cremation of sorts. Probably the Topix parking lot. Eulogies, as well as cash and food donations are welcome.

Speaking of Topix and saying goodbye to another old friend...

Goodbye .NET ! We hardly knew ye.

It started in 6th grade, when I doused Kimmy Yandell and Lise Christensen with itching powder. That led to a well-deserved 2-day suspension from school.

In high school a friend and I built a golf course in my neighbor's front yard, including ball-washer, bench, sand-trap, and pin. Then we drove around spray-painting the word "not" on every stop sign we could find. (it seemed funny at the time). Some of those are still up today.

In college, my first roommate was from an East Coast boarding school, so I learned an entirely new set of tricks like how to "penny" a door, shaving cream in the LP sleeve under the door, and of course "surfs up!" (trash can 3/4 full of water, propped against someone's door). I can still hear the screams. By the time we were sophomores, we just got drunk and lazy with Sharpie pens whenever one of our buddies passed out. Liquor and permanent marker don't mix -- especially when used on exposed areas (e.g. one's forehead) and/or on weekday nights.

The fun continued... When my manager at Apple turned 30, we covered her entire cubicle with reams of printouts with the numbers "30" printed on them. We left 30 voicemails wishing her a happy 30th, probably 300 emails, etc. etc. She retaliated on my 30th with a donut tidal-wave in my cube. Sounds great if you're a donut fan, but the grease starts to get pretty rank by the first afternoon. By the 4th day, you realize you just can't eat all the donuts...

But these are all the work of a "prank-amateur". Like all great works, serious pranks take significant planning and dedication. Lots of colleges are famous for their pranks - Dartmouth and CalTech to name a couple. And the Stanford-Cal Big Game has generated quite a few good ones.

But this video below took serious cajones. These guys from Columbia are Artistes.

There's a nice collection here of 5 of the best college pranks currently on YouTube.

When I was working at PayPal in San Jose, I was always amazed with the people that were commuting from the city on CalTrain. The idea of spending the time it takes to watch a feature-length movie on a rickety train getting to work each day makes me cringe.

Then CalTrain came up wih an express schedule and had the audacity to call it the "baby bullet".

Please.

The only bullet associated with this "express" is the one I'd put through my head if I had to ride it everyday. Even a tongue-in-cheek connection with Japan's Shinkansen -- aka Bullet Train -- is a crime.

So the last time I was in Japan, I took a 30 second video of a typical Shinkansen trip from the passenger's view, to show these SF commuters what they were missing. This is taken from a Hikari, which is not even their fastest train in service (the Nozomi).

No tricks, this is actual cruising speed at around 175mph. Turn up the volume. Hear that? No lurching of cars churning down the track. The turbine whine and air rushing past the cabin is all you hear. You can have a quiet conversation, while snacking on the bento and sake you just bought from the service cart. You may as well be on a jet.

Even the train-type names are poetic: Kodama, Hikari, Nozomi ("Echo", "Light", and "Hope").

So say what you like about CalTrain's (cough) express service.

Just don't call it a "bullet".

In all fairness, this was actually a bug that seems to have now been fixed. Still, sometimes you've got to wonder what's going on in the strategy meetings at some of these papers.

In response to the impending Zell purchase of Tribune, an editorial in the Baltimore Sun bemoans the issues that face papers today. A lot of it is stuff we've heard before. Charge for content. Deal directly with Aggegators. Disolve the AP. Make evergreen content like reviews more easily accessible... etc.

But there was one new point I had not heard before:

The federal "Do Not Call" registry, launched in 2003, was a great excuse for papers to stop recruiting subscribers. First they reduced hiring telemarketers, which saved money and helped hit quarterly profit targets. Then, of course, circulation fell, which saved even more on newsprint costs.

But you can see where this ends up, and it's time for papers to again spend serious dough on promoting their off-line product, which still generates most profits. This may involve better ad campaigns, reducing subscription prices or massive door-to-door sales.

Simultaneously, newspapers must push hard for Congress to enact a "Do Not Call" exception for newspapers similar to the one in Canada.

Yeah. Because nothing is going to motivate me to subscribe to a newspaper more than a cold call in the middle of dinner.

Though we are staying on the opposite side of the island, pre-trip research taught us that the best local food is in and around Hilo. So, on our third day we made the two-hour drive to eat what there is to eat.

Here are two places we thought were great:

Hilo Farmer's Market
We are regulars at the farmers' markets in the Bay Area, so were very interested to see what a Hawaiian version would be like. We weren't disappointed. All of the tropical staples you'd expect are there: Pineapple, Mango, Papayas, Bananas, etc., and many are ridiculously cheap (we bought 5 papayas for $2.00) But there are a lot of exotic fruits that I'd never heard of, let alone tried. For example, I'd never heard of a Star Apple before. It's a beautiful, purple plum-like fruit that has a delicate flavor like a super-ripe persimmon. If you are staying in a condo and prepping your own breakfasts, you can load-up on a week' worth of goodness here.

Two Ladies Kitchen
After the market, we walked a couple of blocks to a mochi shop we'd read about called "Two Ladies Kitchen". The shop was so small we almost missed it -- the inside is about as large as a phone booth. But, there are a lot of Japanese-Americans living in the Hilo area, so our hopes were high that we'd find something good.

Jackpot!

Their mochi is better than most of the stuff I''ve had in Japan. The texture is amazingly soft, even after refrigeration, and their anko has just the right amount of sweetness. Their ichigo-daifuku are the size of baseballs, and they use local strawberries that are ultra ripe. Bottom line: if you like mochi, then you must visit this shop at all costs if you are on the Big Island.

Two Ladies Kitchen
(808) 961-4766
274 Kilauea Ave
Hilo, HI 96720

If you are a doughnut fan, no trip to Hawaii is complete without devouring some hot, fresh Malasadas. If you've never had them, Malasadas are fried yeast-dough rolled in sugar and often stuffed with a cream. Kind of like a beignet, only covered with granulated instead of powdered sugar. They were originally brought by the Portugese settlers in the late 19th century, and are still really popular in Hawaii today.

My favorite place for Malasadas on Oahu is Leonard's, and this place often gets written up in guidebooks as the best in the islands. However, there is no Leonard's on Hawaii, so we had to find another shop. Luckily, our cravings were well satisfied at a place called Tex Drive-in.

Tex is in the town of Honokaa on the north side of the Big Island, about half-way between Kona and Hilo on Hwy 19. It's easy to find if you keep your eyes open.

They have a bunch of flavors, but I really liked the plain and the Bavarian. Is Tex better than Leonards? It's a tough call, but I'd probably have to side with Leonards because the fluff-to-mass ratio is higher, and the malasadas themselves are a bit smaller and easier to consume.

But I'd definitley go back to Tex again. They also have a great lunch menu of drive-in food, including a shrimp burger that was quite tasty.

As a bonus for reading to the end of the post, it's worth mentioning that they have really clean bathrooms in a stretch of highway where there isn't much else. We saw an entire tour bus of Japanese tourists pull over for what seemed to be this purpose alone.

Extra bonus thoughts: I know what you're thinking, Keith P. You want to know if there are any In-and-Outs in Hawaii, so that we could attempt the most audacious sandwich ever attempted...

The Bavarian Cream Luther Burger!

The answer, sadly, is Nein.

When I was a kid, I read more Archie comics than I care to admit. One thing I could never understand, though, was why Archie would always choose vapid, materialistic, air-headed Veronica, over Betty -- who was down-to-earth, available, and pretty damn cute for a cartoon character.

I was reminded of this conundrum recently when I learned that Tamarine and Vung Tau restauraunts are apparently owned by the same family. If Bay Area Vietnamese restaurants were characters in Archie then Tamarine in Palo Alto would have to be Veronica, while her sister restaurant Vung Tau would be Betty.

Tamarine is a place to go if you want to nibble on mainstream fare like fresh spring rolls (yawn) while sipping a saketini and staring at the beautiful people of... the peninsula. The environment, like Veronica, is up-scale and beautiful, but lacking soul. The food isn't bad, but it's over-priced and the portions are small, leaving you hungry and unsatisfied. Like Veronica. And it's probably a safe bet that there are actually no Vietnamese natives within 100 yards of your table, which would generally be a tell-tale sign that you're in for something authentic.

Vung Tau on the other hand is the place to go when you want a giant menu of stuff you'd never find at Tamarine.The restaurant itself is clean and unpretentious, like Betty. Their dishes are flavorful, balanced and delicious, like Betty. All the usual suspects are on the list, but the fare includes a lot of exotic stuff -- including frog's legs -- that i've never seen anywhere else. Okay, that's not exactly Betty... but this analogy is already pretty stretched!

There are three locations -- SJ, Milpitas, and Newark. We've been four times in the last month to the Milpitas joint, and the place seems to get better each time. I stopped reading the menu, and just look at what people are ordering. Then I just ask the waiter for whatever looks good.

Highly recommended are the "Shrimp Cupcakes" appetizer, and their noodle soups (ask for "dry" which gets you the soup on the side, and a sauce on the noodles). The duck soup with salad dish is also really good.

Sadly for you single guys, the Betty analogy ends with food and decor, as all of the serving staff are dudes :-)

Oh, and as a point of reference, I asked a native what her favorite places were in the area. Her top two choices? The original Vung Tau SJ and Vung Tau II Milpitas. 'Nuff said.

Here is their Menu in PDF.

Vung Tau II
1750 N Milpitas Blvd
Milpitas, CA 95035
(408) 934-9327

- Southwest groundcrew at the Phoenix airport on Friday, 4/27.

First, Skrenta writes about the cost of reaching the masses via the media-formerly-known-as-"mass" :-)

"The audience isn't huddled every night in front of three TV channels anymore. And you can't reach them with $5M of 1960 dollars. The audience is divided across 300 channels,dvds, tivo, itunes, youtube, bittorrent, flickr, mmorpgs, millions of other options. Saturation marketing costs something like $30+M for a few week blitz to launch a new movie. What if you wanted to saturate like they could in 1960, and drill your damn jingle into every consumer's head until there was no way they couldn't hear it when they saw the box in the drugstore? Costs to launch a new top-tier brand from scratch start at $150M now."

150M. That's some serious bank.

Then I wander over to VentureBeat and learn that a site called "Socializr" is getting sued by trigger-happy TicketMaster. Apparently, Evite -- who is owned by TicketMaster -- wants damages for copyright violations, claiming that Socializr plagiarized some invitation templates.

I had probably heard of Socializr through some medium or another -- probably a daily caffeine-induced scan of TechCrunch or Alarm Clock. But I didn't really know what they did, or cared for that matter. So many Web 2.0 companies, so little time...

But thanks to this lawsuit, I not only know who they are, but by association with Evite, I am now also much more likely to remember what they do. Furthermore, they're now polarized in my mind against odious Ticketmaster. Whether they are guilty of plagiarism is irrelevant: My distate for Ticketmaster forces me to conjure a warmer, fuzzier brand association with Socializr than I otherwise would have.

Now, I'm no expert on copyright law (or even an amateur) but I bet this one settles for well-south of 150M. Probably less than 10% of that? Maybe 1%?

So my question is (always mindful of the "All Press is Good Press" cliche): Are we getting to the point where a lawsuit becomes the most cost-effective way to boot-strap market yourself?