This Month in GIF [November 2011]

November 20, 2011 Leave a Comment

This Month in GIF returns! Rejoice, denizens of the intertubes.

The magnificence above is the first-ever ROTI GIF creation, hand-crafted to celebrate one of the best campaign ads ever, and especially the terrifying moment at its conclusion that Daily Intel described as “Herman Cain is closing the curtains behind him at a shady motel, turning slowly, and making that creepy smile at a scared prostitute on the bed.”

As usual, C. Dave helped gather great GIFfage, and thanks also to Major Beans and LA Nicholson for helping me screen the semifinalists. Easily the most difficult cut of all, this month’s list of contenders was incredibly deep and varied, with over four dozen GIFs ending up on the cutting room floor. (I estimate at this point, my hard drive is about 60% GIF.)

Enough talk, it’s GIF time! [PLEASE NOTE: Things get a little NSFW (boobs) towards the end.]

Cat and Mouse

Beard Slap!

The WhiffNatural


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The Wit and Wisdom of Fredk

October 31, 2011 Leave a Comment

Today, ROTI brings you the tale of a gentleman whose creative and unique take on life inspired an entire neighborhood.

For those who lived near him, Fred was not merely an old man down the street. He was a constant presence in their mailboxes, often delivering his hand-written tales around the most festive holidays. He was a comedy genius that wasn’t afraid to push the boundaries.

Trying to explain how entertaining his prose was could never really do him justice — so allow me to show you the mailing he sent out for Easter, 2009.

Although he called himself simply Fred, the way he abbreviated “Frederick” in his return address stickers — see above for an example — led many of the aficionados of his work to dub him Fredk.

He was a retired engineer who worked for Raytheon for many years; during his illustrious career he helped develop both radar and the microwave. In his retirement, he bent his considerable intellect to the creation of homemade comedy pieces that inspired all who saw them. Read more of this post

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This Month in GIF [October 2011]

October 11, 2011 Leave a Comment

Another month has passed us by. ROTI turned 3 years old. We cracked the illustrious (not really) 200,000 pageview plateau. Now it’s time again for one of your favorite features, This Month in GIF.

C. Dave and I have conferred, and these are the finest GIFs we have discovered in the past 30 days…

As usual, we drew from all the GIF aggregator sites, the land of Tumblr, and the darkest depths of comment sections. As always, please send along any GIF magic you may discover for our supercommittee’s consideration.

Go Time!

I Would Greenlight a Movie Based on This Scene Alone

Halloween Is Coming!

I’m weirdly into this.

Lightly Steamed Adorbs

Scarier than The Human Centipede:


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Everything We Ate At The Big E!

October 3, 2011 Leave a Comment

The Eastern States Exposition, better known as The Big E, is the official state fair for all of New England. Located in Springfield, MA for three weeks in September, it’s an epic smorgasbord of food, rides, merchandise, cattle, and people-watching…

Now, all our Bostonian readers are currently reading this and scratching their heads, saying, “How does New England have a state fair that I have never heard of? I thought those mammoth state fairs were all in the Midwest.”

Believe it, Boston! Just because nobody who lives east of Worcester has ever heard of this annual event, that doesn’t mean that it is imaginary. It’s all too real!

Since state fairs are well known as hotbeds of unhealthy cuisine, Rumors on the Internets dispatched a team of fearless experts in the field of crap-cuisine (aka a posse of fatties) to taste-test everything The Big E had to offer.

This is their report.

The food at the Big E encompasses everything you’d expect from a state fair spanning all six New England states — it includes both regional favorites and the latest in vile fried-dough experimentation.

We tested two dozen items on offer and grouped them into five subcategories based on a proprietary formula (The Big E-Meter) that takes into account yumminess, audacity, creativity, aesthetics, and how badly we needed to lie down and/or purge after consuming them.

The five subgroupings are Highly Scrumptious, Decently Delicious, Solidly Edible, Moderately Gross, and Thoroughly Disgusting.

Highly Scrumptious

These foods were noted for not only their tastiness, but for their uniqueness and the creativity involved in their creation. Each one involved the frying process to some extent, and all packed a saturated-fattening wallop!

The #1 ranked food on The Big E-Meter was one that came as a total surprise to our taste testers. We had not expected to enjoy The Craz-E Burger, but there was no way we could show our faces at the ROTI offices after turning down a bacon cheeseburger on a glazed donut bun.

Behold!

Here’s what you would NOT expect from looking at this concoction, or even just hearing about it: It is really, really good. We quickly polished one off and ordered another. The mix of tasty donut, greasy cheeseburger, and salty bacon is incredible!

Other notable foods in this category: Read more of this post

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Ten Amazing Vanity Press Ads from the New York Review of Books

September 19, 2011 7 Comments

I’ve said it before: the New York Review of Books is my favorite periodical of all time.

The magazine pays for its superb content — critical reviews of nonfiction, fiction, and media,  along with trenchant essays  – with subscription fees that run up to $70/year…

They also run classified ads that are hilariously over-written. Here’s a personal ad that’s fairly representative of what you’ll find in the back pages: “DC-Based Male, Irresolute, Callipygian, has job, ironic friends, hair. ISO qualified female for exchange of the very same sly mockery, ridiculous stories, and heedless musings that got us here in the first place.” (The accompanying email address, which I will not post, sports a reference to a 19th century French writer. Of course it does.)

While the NYRB has not yet found a way to monetize the academic bitch-fights that take place in its letters section every two weeks, they also fund their operations with full-page ads from the likes of Oxford University Press, Getty Publications, Princeton University Press, and the MoMA, to name a few advertisers in a recent edition.

But other than the articles, my favorite part of the NYRB is the ads that vanity press operations run in its pages. These outfits, such as Xlibris, offer “self publishing and print on-demand” services to authors who can’t get their work accepted by the book publishing industry and simply refuse to abandon the idea of seeing their ideas in print. I’m not sure how these companies decide what books to advertise — whether it’s their best-sellers or, more likely, the authors who are willing to fork out a little extra dough for an ad in a fancy periodical. Whatever the background, these advertisements are almost always a treat.

Here are ten amazing examples from recent issues.

I’m going to start calling people “spiritual seducer” in everyday conversation. The person who offers me pizza when I’m trying to abstain and dangles a slice in such a way that I can’t resist? Spiritual seducer! The person who convinces me to stay at the bar just a little bit longer when I have something to do early the next morning? Spiritual seducer! The person who puts Keeping Up With The Kardashians on the television set when I’m trying to get work done? DEFINITELY a spiritual seducer!

I have a feeling R.T. Barnes has alienated a lot of people throughout his life with his “sense of humor.”

Am I wrong here, or has nobody ever proven that a snuff film has actually been made? I picture Madame Woo like Nic Cage in 8MM, prowling through the shady underworld of the Shanghai sex scene, obsessively searching for a real snuff film just so she can thereupon find and execute the guys who made it.

(That movie was kind of awesome, in retrospect. Especially the part when Machine pulls off his mask and it’s Frank Sobotka from The Wire.)

This guy is going to get sued for plagiarism by Fox News. The reason this guy had to self-publish is NOT that this book has any issues with publishability or marketability; it’s that Glenn Beck basically wrote this exact same book five times over.  Read more of this post

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