Tag: TMIIMBTNOTW

We’ve reached the end of the road for the ill-fated Mind-Blowing series, friends. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

When we did a writeup of a self-making bed on TIME.com, a concerned commenter worried that such a miracle of modern ingenuity could malfunction and seriously injure someone. To which I humbly suggested sleeping with a Bed Knife to cut yourself out in case of emergency.

There would be two SKUs available: the Classic Bed Knife, which was basically just a knife, and the Deluxe Bed Knife, which contained a reading light attachment.

I also ate terrible pizza from a vending machine located at the nearby community college.

And with that, The Most Insanely Important, Mind-Blowing Tech News of the Week series met its end. There was no real push behind killing it. It was just a lot of work and it was late June at the time, which meant I had to kill the AC in my office every time I shot it, which meant it was really hot in there and I was wearing fancy clothes.

Oh, and nobody was watching the videos. And news dries up in the summer so I was running out of material. So there’s that. Goodbye, fun series.

In this episode of the ill-fated Mind-Blowing series, I invent what I still believe to be the ultimate exercise equipment: a drone-mounted taxidermized cat that chases you.

I can’t claim all the credit, of course. The Joggobot: Cat Copter Edition is a brilliant amalgamation of two also-brilliant ideas that I didn’t come up with. But sometimes invention is about making existing ideas better.

And bonus: today I learned that the past-tense of taxidermy is taxidermized – not taxidermied.

In this, a largely music-themed episode from the ill-fated Mind-Blowing series, I visit Brazil, drink too much, get a tattoo, and forget the entire trip.

This was also a pivotal and influential time in the history of corporate buzzwords. Everyone – and I mean everyone – was doubling down on things. Including KFC, which doubled down on the Double Down!

In one of the more calorically-dense episodes of the ill-fated Mind-Blowing series, I shotgun two delicious Twinkies in rapid succession. It was a good day.

For you aspiring film-makers out there: a) don’t take advice from me (I’m lazy) and b) this type of interview-yourself shot is largely about timing.

Film your first sequence and try to leave pauses for your other self, then play back the first sequence while recording the second. If the timing gets away from you while you’re editing, go to a full shot of one of yourselves for a bit to get things back on track.

One of my favorites in the ill-fated Mind-Blowing series, we get to see what life would be like with a sassy talking vacuum and break stuff in a high-tech ghost town.

This vacuum charges until noon, lays around on the couch, demands money, dates a floor buffer, and sneaks booze – just like real teenagers, but a little different.

I also remember thoroughly enjoying shooting the ghost-town sequence and putting together the nonsensical Mother’s Day gifts. You rarely get a good, fun week when you’re in the media and this was a good, fun week.

In this episode of the ill-fated Mind-Blowing series, I do my best impression of a sick Cameron Frye from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: “Let my Dougie goooooo.”

I remember coming home from a one-day visit to TIME HQ in New York and feeling immediately sick.

It could have been the round-trip ride on a dirty Amtrak train. It could have been the shoulder-to-shoulder lifestyle of the city that never sleeps. It could have been that years of working from home have left my immune system about as strong as wet paper.

At any rate, I powered through it. Fun fact: the Nyquil was actually orange Gatorade.

Apple has enjoyed great success over the years, but one thing it hasn’t capitalized on is a refrigerator that can make toast.

In this episode of the ill-fated Mind-Blowing series, I chide Apple CEO Tim Cook for himself chiding what would be a wonderful invention.

And despite this video being from 2012, nobody has capitalized on this idea yet – which means there’s still time to capitalize.

I’d do it, but unfortunately I lack the time, skills, resources, drive, gumption, wherewithal, connections, people skills, looks, je ne sais quoi, intangibles, street smarts, book smarts, and general temperament to get it done successfully.

The Retoasterator you see in the above video is NOT real, in other words. Just great special effects.

As we continue our foray into the ill-fated Mind-Blowing series, gird your loins for some next-level special effects.

Now, making a hologram-like effect isn’t rocket science but I remember my overlords and peers at TIME being very impressed by it – so take the wins where you can get them.

If you’d like to try it yourself, set the camera up on a tripod and record your scene without you in it. Then, without moving the camera, get into the scene yourself and do your thing. Then when you’re editing, place both scenes on your timeline with the “you” scene above the blank scene. From there, set the “you” scene’s transparency at 50% or whatever looks good.

Boom: you’ve got yourself a video that, in 2012, would have impressed people at the world’s most influential news magazine.

My life would have been a lot different had I been able to buy Instagram in 2012 – also, I invented a thing.

And like all inventions, you need good marketing. The thing I invented also had that, and I found out that my wife liked when I showcased my boundless musical talents.

I called it The Foetie. It was a cell phone holder for your shoe. And much like this TMIIMBTNOTW video series you’re watching, it flopped.

Fun fact: me saying stuff like “Consider this my video cover letter” and “Better act quick before someone else hires me” were thinly-veiled cries for help, as I was not enjoying my time at TIME during this time.

Like all hardy Midwesterners, though, I crumpled my feelings into a little ball and stuffed it waaaaay down into my tummy, then spent another two and a half years there before ultimately being laid off.

In this, the second episode of the ill-fated Mind-Blowing series, we have a finance gag and drooling.

Admittedly, this is probably the weakest episode in the series, which didn’t help my overall cause.

Nowhere to go but up from here, though, and there were a few sight gags that kept this one afloat.

To this day, this is still my favorite video series I ever created. It was also a colossal flop.

I had been watching a LOT of The Daily Show at the time – this was back in 2012 – and came up with the idea of a weekly tech news show that focused almost exclusively on nonsense. I called it The Most Insanely Important, Mind-Blowing Tech News of the Week.

Like I said, it flopped. And it was a fair amount of work. I kept going for probably longer than I should have, but they were fun to make and fun to watch. I remember calling into the Friday morning editorial meetings at TIME and listening to all the editors watch it in the New York conference room while I was in Boston. Good times.

In this, the first episode, I break out my lawyer character: Douglas B. Douglas from the law firm of Douglas, Douglas, and Douglas.

I would make a terrible lawyer but I’d like to think I’d make great lawyer commercials.