Author: Mark

Silly but funny video. [YouTube]

Ummm sorry but Super Metroid should have been first, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night should have at least been in the top 10 and so should have Shenmue. Still an interesting list to go through if you are a videogame fan. [Link]

I’ve always had a thing for fax machines. To me they felt like mini teleportation machines, you put a document in one machine then it comes out again in another. I just found out HP has something similar but for emails. It was a mini printer created for people who don’t have a computer, you just plug the printer to the Internet and it will check your email and then print out any new ones you receive. If only there was a way to reply back…. [Link]

[Amazon]

Today was the famous International Hot Dog Eating Competition in the US. Me and some friends have been talking about this competition for a few days now and I had a feeling Kobayashi was going to lose because he had an injury (jaw problem). I turned out to be right because he lost to Joey Chestnut who is now the world champion. Kobayashi who was the champion for the past 6 years straight managed to eat 63 hot dogs in 12 minutes compared to Joey who ate 66. [Link]

Kobayashi is still the hamburger eating champion (97 hamburgers in 8 minutes). [Link]

A friend of a friend just got back from Iran and while he was there he took these pictures of an ATM machine outside a bank. A friend of mine sent me these pictures of an ATM machine outside a bank in Iran. I guess thats were Xerxes does his banking.

Picture 1
Picture 2

Allofmp3.com was finally forced to shut down by the Russian government BUT they right away launched Mp3Sparks.com instead. You could even log in with your allofmp3.com account with no problem..

This campaign for chocolate dipped Altoids is currently my favorite for the year.

Half Deer Edwards
Banana Hands
Blow Hole Bob
Australian Double Back

The Ministry of Information Interior has a competition to find the best driver in Kuwait. You can apply online and the grand prize is I think KD250.
To qualify you need to:

1) Own either a car or motorbike
2) Not have gotten any traffic violations between 07/31/2006 and 01/07/2007
3) Not have had any car accident between 07/31/2006 and 01/07/2007

To enter the competition visit the MOI website. [Link]

I am Am I the only one who finds this competition funny? Funny or not I am still going to sign up.

update: Imagine if the cops start recruiting drivers…

“Hi, sorry to pull you over but we’ve been tailing you for the past 30 minutes and we’ve noticed your driving skills are unparalleled. We would like you to consider signing up to the “Role Model Driver of the Year” competition because we think you have a strong chance of winning. What do you say?”

I downloaded season 1 of the 80’s cartoon, Danger Mouse a few days ago and yesterday I watched a few episodes and it rocks! I used to love it when I was a kid (I think on Saudi channel 2) but even watching it now the show is still really good. His sidekick Penfold is probably the dorkiest of all sidekicks ever but he’s also the funniest. The James Bond franchise should seriously take a look at Danger Mouse and learn a thing or two. You can watch the intro to the cartoon on youtube by clicking [Here]

I would be curious to see the first MTC commercial…

[YouTube]

via kottke

I just lost a bet in the office. Someone said McDonalds delivered and I said no. Turns out they do! Their delivery number is 2472221. Weird.

update: added their delivery flyer

Last month I went down to Beirut to film an MTC-Vodafone commercial and yesterday it was finally aired on TV. I just uploaded it on YouTube if anyone wants to watch it.

[YouTube]

I couldn’t mention this before because I didn’t want to reveal too much but we managed to find and get the rights to the old Kuwaiti song “Everything OK“. Many of you might recognize it since I posted about it awhile back.

If you didn’t see the pictures from the making of
you can click the following links:
Egypt – Day 1
London – Day 2
India – Day 3

As part of a promotion for the upcoming Simpsons movie, 7-Eleven turned a dozen of its stores into Kwik-E-Marts. They will also be selling items which had previously only been seen on the TV show like Squishees and Krusty cereals. There is a whole flickr photoset of one of the branches which you can check out by clicking [Here].

[YouTube]

Tonight I passed by the recently opened Burger Bar in Kuwait City. I got there and found the two parking spots in front of the place empty so I parked my car and got down when the Holiday Inn security guard came up to me and told me I couldn’t park there. Since Burger Bar is located adjacent to Holiday Inn downtown, the security guard told me I wasn’t allowed to park in the two empty spots outside the restaurant. He told me I had to park across the street. I thought that was strange but wasn’t in the mood to argue and just went back into my car and parked on the other side.

The place from the outside looked like a Japanese restaurant and when I looked through the windows I saw what looked like Japanese waiters. I thought to myself this must be the wrong place, even Nataly was like “Mark this looks like a Japanese restaurant”. Once we walked around to the main entrance we saw the Burger Bar logo and realized we were at the right place. We walked through some dimly lit candles outside (very Japanese-ish) into the restaurant where we were greeted by waiters dressed in red silk clothing and black bandannas which again was very Japanese-ish. The place was empty except for one table with two men so we sat down wherever we wanted. We had two choices for seating, what looked like long benches or one of the booths, we chose the booth since it looked more comfortable. Our table was the smallest in the restaurant and I think it could easily fit 8 people. I don’t know if they were made for extremely overweight people or they believe that people eat in packs like hyenas but whatever their reason, it felt really awkward having the whole table for just me and Nat. The music that was playing was loud and guess what genre… it was country music. So, so far the place looked Japanese, had Japanese looking waitresses dressed in Japanese like clothing, playing country music and serving burgers. Pretty strange combination but I was like whatever, its “different”.

We got the menu and I decided to order the mozzarella fries for starters, the mushroom burger for my main course and a junior cheese burger for Nat (junior = slider). The waitress asked me what I wanted to drink and I told her Pepsi. She then replied saying they didn’t have Pepsi. I looked at her surprised thinking to myself what the hell, no soft drinks?? So I asked her what do you mean you don’t have Pepsi? She was like we don’t have Pepsi only Coca Cola. I was like god damn woman I thought you meant you didn’t have any soft drinks! Pepsi, Coke whatever its all the same.

The food arrived a while later and was fairly disappointing. The fries firstly weren’t that great, there was only a small portion of mozzarella over them and they weren’t even melted right. The burger had a strange flavor to it. The actual hamburger bun was great but the meat tasted like “kafta”? I am not sure what but it wasn’t very burgery.

Overall I wasn’t impressed. The mushroom burger was for KD2.500 and that was one of the cheapest burgers on the menu, the majority were around KD4 and KD5. The fries I believe were super expensive costing KD2.700 and they were sooo not worth it. Nats slider cost 750fils which is slightly more expensive then Burger Boutique which brings us to the question, is Burger Bar in the same league as Johnny Rockets and Burger Boutique? Hell no. Final score 2.5 out of 5. Although the Japanese Cowboy look is strange, the design of the place is still pretty cool. Other positives are lots of parking spaces across the street and the fact that you don’t have to call 4 years in advance to book a table is a plus. Food is lousy though but might be worth a visit just to check it out.