I hired this guy as entertainment for my upcoming birthday party, he’s great:

Mexico US Absolut Ads
Originally uploaded by deejamahl05.

I bet this got them some free press, that’s for sure. What do you think?

Recently, at a dinner party, I learned about Yelp. Yelp is a website where people review all sorts of things. I’m particularly interested in restaurants because I like to eat. So I started making bookmarks of restaurants I want to try and I started reviewing restaurants I know. You can see my Yelp profile here.

In this week’s Yelp newsletter, I was granted the honor of being a Top Yelper. This distinction lies somewhere between a Nobel prize and getting a root canal. Even my photo made it to the newsletter:

If you think I photoshopped this (right, like I can do that), then I’m greatly disappointed in your lack of faith. Just see for yourself. If you design to sign up yourself, please be my friend. I could use a friend.

The website for the reunion of the Zack family we had a few weeks ago is now finished. It’s cool, it even has a guestbook – have you left a note yet?. And a PDF with every birthday and anniversary in the family. And other wonderful surprises.Above is the logo used on the beautiful t-shirt we all received for the occasion (as seen here). I use it every Saturday night to go out to clubs. It’s a big hit with the ladies. For the few readers who cannot read Yidish transliterated using Spanish phonetics: You’re out of luck. I will leave you wondering what amazingly clever joke it says.

I was looking for a game show theme song last night for a personal thing I’m working on (more on that next week). I needed to be able to convert to other formats, so the iTunes Store was a no go (they didn’t have it in the DRM-free iTunes Plus format).

So I decided to give AmazonMP3 Store a try, since all the music they sell is unprotected, plain MP3.

Overall the experience was very good. You browse the (limited, I hear) selection and preview the songs all through your web browser. I use Amazon a lot so I know my way around well.

Then, the first time you buy something, it makes you download a little application that handles your purchases (see image). This program is available for Mac and is surprisingly simple, Mac-like and works as advertised.

My song got downloaded and added to my iTunes library in seconds. I was pleasantly surprised by the whole experience and can see myself shopping there often. The track I bought sounds like one of those demos that come with your $30 Casio keyboard we all had when we were 10, but that’s a different story (and is the original album’s fault, not the MP3 format).

Sure, I mentioned it before. But still no one will complain.
Best website ever.

This is how you can use your MSN Messenger nick to piss off your friends:

This is my cousin Alan Kirsch singing Don’t Cry by Guns N’ Roses. The video was shot around the time people last heard about Guns N’ Roses: 1991 or so. I may start a petition to get Alan to go back to the haircut he had in the video.