now picnic

Happy 4th of July! While you read, I recommend listening to Challenge Club's "4th of July" song -- kind of Bishop Allen/Album-A-Day-ish... it's sweet and catchy. (via The Sound of Young America's blog -- a radio show about things that are awesome.)

This may be a bit of a lazy-blogger's entry today, full of links to things you may have already seen, but here it goes...

Let's see. When I left off a week and a bit ago, spoons and I were off to Florida. We had a good time there, getting slammed about by big (for Florida) ocean waves (we still have scars...) and playing the board game Puerto Rico with the family. (good stuff!)

Here are a few things we've been talking about:

The NY Times review 'The Empire Strikes Back' Strikes a Bland Note: "'The Empire Strikes Back' is about as personal as a Christmas card from a bank." Ouch. (First seen on the Elephant Larry blog, from Stefan.) It reminds me of reviews of the most recent Star Wars movies.

Look Around You, Maths -- first saw this on Landon's page, and then we were talking about it at brunch yesterday at the Square Cafe. It's a really well-done parody of old-school educational broadcasting by the BBC.

Diet Coke and Mentos guys (via the EL blog, then talked much about it in Florida.) Really fun. You must have seen this already.