Charm City Surf Company

Rain Rain Go Away

2008-08-25T16:11:00.005-05:00

Is it me or is this just wrong:

"China has long dabbled in rain dispersal and rain-making technology, using a vast array of chemicals to either induce or prevent rainfall.

Scientists have viewed the technology as promising, but acknowledge that no method has been developed to objectively prove that such techniques work."

They shot like 1,200 rockets/"rain making" technology into clouds so that it wouldn't rain on that cracked-up, Vegas-assed closing ceremony.

China makes me nervous.

Dual Hawks

2008-07-24T09:51:00.004-05:00

Centro-Matic and South San Gabriel, which is basically the same band, has a new album out. It’s on heavy rotation here at CCSC. Centro-Matic is like Dinosaur Jr. and Uncle Tupelo smashed together in Texas. And then they decided to have a “side project” that’s shhhh quieter, more refrained, nay moodier.

Occasionally they play out as Centro-Matic, sometimes as SSG.

Well, the album is called “Dual Hawks”. It’s like an old school “split” – half of the CD is Centro-Matic, the other half is SSG.

“When the Angels Will Put Out Their Lights” is like driving down the highway at 2 a.m. with all of the windows down.

RIP Slats!

2008-07-22T16:09:00.004-05:00

Estelle Getty, the diminutive(little, tiny, very small) actress who spent 40 years struggling for success before landing a role of a lifetime (oohhhkayyy) in 1985 as the sarcastic octogenarian (old person) Sophia on TV's "The Golden Girls," has died. She was 84.

After her success in "The Golden Girls," other roles came her way. She played Cher's mother in "Mask," Sylvester Stallone's in "Stop or My Mom Will Shoot" and Barry Manilow's in the TV film "Copacabana."

I wouldn’t really say that The Golden Girls launched her career but I’m sure she got paid.

That fing show was on for 8 fing years?? 8 years! How did they come up with 8 years of plot lines involving a bunch of old women crackin’ jokes about their dry vaginas?

Years of zingers – “Audiences particularly loved the verbal zingers Getty would hurl at the other three. When McClanahan's libidinous (whorish, see Pirate Hooker) character Blanche once complained that her life was an open book, Sophia shot back, "Your life's an open blouse."

Apparently her nickname on set was “Slats” - "Because she was so short, itty-bitty,"

Their nicknames were as lame as their zingers but RIP Slats, RIP.

GOCCO!

2008-07-14T15:18:00.004-05:00

We got a Gocco! It's so awesome and "easy to use"... if you know Japanese. We have to get a bottle of rum and read the manual, figure out what all of the pieces do, etc.

The one good thing that comes with the Gocco is a fanatical social media group. Man, there are blogs, chats, Flickrs, etc. all over the place for this piece of plastic.

Stay tuned!

Jesus, Marketing and Making the Top 10

2007-03-30T09:17:00.000-05:00

We were sitting around yesterday talking about the fundamentals of design, existentialism, and creamy vs. chunky peanut butter, when all of a sudden, Chris Sligh, recently booted American Idoler was thrown into the mix. Now here’s a complex character. He had the NERVE, nay the BALLS, to say that he didn’t want to “win” American Idol (gasp) but just make the top 10. He just wanted to stick around long enough because the top 10 contestants participate in the American Idol summer tour “that comes with a nice paycheck”. NO HE DIDN’T!! He’s in it for the MONEY! (gasp)

So, then you're thinking that this curly headed, doughy demon is a cold hearted snake (look into his eyes.. uh oh… he’s been tellin’ lies) but hold on CCSCers… he’s a Jesus fan!! He use to go to Bob Jones University, which is a fundamentalist Christian college buuuuuut he got kicked out for going to a “contemporary” Christian concert for "4Him". Now it’s not like he got caught hanging out with Tommy Lee and his pack of wildies snorting heroin off of a shaved spider monkey… it was a Christian show for God’s sake!! (literally). Bob Jones doesn't play!

Our favorite quote of Mr. Sligh’s, that hurt the most was, “I wanted to make the tour. I wanted to be able to make music for my living, so I don't have to work at the marketing company that I was working at." (gasp) NO HE DIDN’T! That must be one suck-ass marketing company if the American Idol summer tour looked more promising. But then again, he might have had to market Jesus and there aren’t a lot of Point of Purchase design opportunities there. Sooooo then we started talking about how we would LOVE the opportunity / challenge to market Jesus. CCSC could make Jesus the new Wii. Jesus would be so damn cool that our e-commerce site would have to go on a load-balanced server. So, someone out there, maybe Bob Jones… if you’re listening… hire CCSC and we’ll make Jesus bigger than John Lennon.

Without Coffee...

2007-03-28T11:17:00.000-05:00

This just in… CCSC staff addicted to caffeine / coffee.

We have just had the realization, here at the CCSC Hit Factory, that we are addicted to coffee. We are in the acceptance phase of our addiction. Not only do we realize that we would not be able to function without its fluidic goodness, we would go quite mad. I think it’s safe to say that coffee, not Al Gore, invented the Internet. Coffee got us on the moon. Coffee gets most of us from point A to point B. CCSCers drain one full pot of the stuff every 4 hours – that’s about 2 pots a day - not counting, what we call, Ridealong Joe. Ridealong Joe is the coffee that you take with you from your home to your place of business - the Starsky to your Hutch. Ridealong Joe is a messy bitch and not for the faint of heart.

Good News
Worlds tallest man ties knot.
He’s 7’9” – a herdsman by trade, she’s 5'6" – a saleswoman. She’s 28. He’s 56. Sounds like the only thing they have in common is that they are both from Inner Mongolia. But if you dig deeper, maybe it’s their love of dolphins that bonds them. Apparently, Bao, the tall one, was in the news in December after he used his long arms to save two dolphins by pulling out plastic from their stomachs. “The dolphins got sick after nibbling on plastic from the edge of their pool at an aquarium in Liaoning province. Attempts to use surgical instruments to remove the plastic failed because the dolphins' stomachs contracted in response to the instruments, Chinese media reported.(in Chinese)” So the surgeons stood around, scratched their heads and said “We need some really long arms… call Bao, the herdsman!”. He saves the plastic loving dolphins, thus winning the love of Xia, the short one, while remaining the tallest man on Earth.

Bad News
The Olsen Twins are very rich and continue to go out in public.

Rippin' Rails

2007-03-26T10:11:00.000-05:00

Well, it looks like the CCSC site will be developed using “rapid prototyping of web-based enterprise applications” from THE FUTURE! That’s right… the future. Some sites are actually being programmed in this new, fandangled Ruby on Rails stuff… but not many. We here at CCSC are willing to try new things, especially when these new things have traveled through time in a super-duper secret time machine.

We are told that having the site programmed in Rails is going to make future development (from the future) easier (we guess for our team of developers) and we were also told that the FIGHT part of our site will be really, really “SEO friendly” - which sounds sexy… so we’re all for it.

So, other than making executive decisions on programming languages and working on designs, we here at CCSC have not much more to report.

Oh... CNN.com... the top story was about the probable release of Anna Nicole Smith’s autopsy results… and some random bad news stuff from Iraq and Iran.

We also love how CNN slips in casual language into their headlines. This headline, for instance, stood out - “Guard accused in failed hit on Iraq deputy PM”. The word “hit” struck us as a funny descriptor. The word “hit” is something used in mafia/mob/organized crime related movie scripts. We guess “assassination attempt” was too many characters and the headline would have been wayyyyyy long, hence bumping it to a less significant section of the home page designated for bad news and “Brad, Angelina have picnic with growing family” would have taken its place (happy news).

Almost forgot...

2007-03-21T12:56:00.000-05:00

Please go to www.charmcitysurf.com and see our not-so-developed site. It's better than a stick figure that's wearing a hard-hat (ok, maybe he's not wearing a hat), digging a hole with the message "Under Construction". And yes, we are going to update the "Coming in November 2006".

You get the picture.

Welcome.

2007-03-21T12:46:00.000-05:00

So we hear this "blog" thing is taking the nation by the short hairs and saying "HEY... umm... BLOG!" Everyone now has a blog. Kind of a weird word if you say it a lot "Blog blog blog".

This is our way of putting down some thoughts as we try to start a creative endeavor. Basically we are starting a t-shirt company and a creative "factory". We want to design, design, design and possibly paint our way through 2007.

Sit back. Relax. And Blog!