Delancey: Seattle’s Great Pizza Hope.

The much-buzzed-about restaurant became the Great Pizza Hope of Seattle long before its doors even opened. Why? Because the pair behind the operation is food-focused author and Orangette blogger Molly Wizenberg and her husband, Brandon Pettit, a composer turned chef, formerly of New York. Thanks to Wizenberg’s blog entries tracking the restaurant’s progress and Pettit’s loyal Twitter following, Seattleites have long been rooting for this little venture/experiment to succeed. Fortunately, it does.

I need to try this.

My first 3D movie! That gets it one star, because it’s a fun time. Another star for getting what I expected—a bunch of outrageous death scenes one after the other. The estimated budget for the movie is $43 million, which is more than any of the first three movies. My estimated budget for the 3D cameras is $40 million. The deaths look comical (which I guess I prefer over hyper-realistic), and there are extended shots showing the mutilated bodies and they’d fit better in Tremors. But the acting in that movie is leagues better than what you get in The Final Destination. Some people think 3D is a fad, but I enjoyed it and I liked what I saw from the 3D previews.

Disney to acquire Marvel Entertainment.

Based on the closing price of Disney stock on Friday, August 28, the transaction value is $50 per Marvel share or approximately $4 billion.

Under the deal, Disney will acquire ownership of Marvel including its more than 5,000 Marvel characters. Mr. Perlmutter will oversee the Marvel properties, and will work directly with Disney’s global lines of business to build and further integrate Marvel’s properties.

Snow Leopard calculates disk space in base 10. One comment brings up a good point: downloaded files will appear larger on the hard drive than the size stated on a website. But hard drives have so much capacity these days that anyone downloading even, say, a 4GB file has more than enough space and won’t worry about a few hundred extra MB here and there. But they’d probably worry about 70GB missing and this means a 1TB drive will show up as 1TB instead of 930GB. It’s an end to that confusion, but I really hate that the article I linked to calls it a fix to a “disk capacity bug”.

DJ Rok One’s eulogy for DJ AM.

I have learned so much about myself and music and life in the aftermath of his success. Beyond the US Weekly shit and the Nicole Richie shit, and the TV shows and Million Dollar Deals, beyond all that shit, this one guy loved djing so fucking much that he changed the face of music forever, in the same way that Curt did in the 90s.

Speaking of Michael Jordan, ESPN is counting down his top 23 most memorable moments leading up to his hall of fame induction. I love sports clips with the original announcers (as opposed to highlight clips set to background music). Having the original information graphics makes it even better. This should be good.

TMZ: DJ AM found dead. Sad that it’s so soon after getting a second chance surviving the plane crash last year.

Kevin Wildes was on the B.S. Report today. (Clicking this link will resize your window and open up the ESPN player.) He’s an ESPN producer (currently working on SportsNation) and one of my favorite guests on Bill Simmons’s podcast. When Kevin Wildes goes on the podcast, he presents three half-baked ideas (example from the past: a bar with movable walls that makes the room bigger or smaller based on how many people are in the bar, because 30 people in a small bar is fun but if it’s a huge place it just feels empty and 120 people in a small bar is too crowded.) This one was really good.

But I decided to post it because they mention an old urban legend that Michael Jordan essentially owns the rights to all footage of himself. And Bill Simmons confirms that it’s true (as much as Bill Simmons saying it’s true counts as confirming something, but that’s good enough for me.) And I think that sort of answers the question I had during May and June: why isn’t Michael Jordan in more NBA commercials? They absolutely could have given his last shot the CGI’d empty stadium treatment.

SLAM Online’s college basketball preseason preview: Washington (#9). I’m definitely excited for Thomas & Gaddy, which has the bonus of sounding like both a law firm and a mob family.

While it would seem like a less than ideal situation to bring an All-American freshman into the backcourt to run alongside a player who dominates the basketball as much as Thomas does, Washington head coach Lorenzo Romar landed the top pass-first guard in the country in Gaddy. The Tacoma product is the complete package for a floor general, possessing great size for the position at 6-3 and a well above average basketball IQ. Gaddy has the smarts and skills to break defenders down off the dribble and create for his teammates. It’s likely that he will find himself guarding the shooting guard position when him and Thomas are on the floor, but those two will be perfect complements for each other offensively.

And here’s the rest of the list so far:

• 25. Florida State
  24. Florida
  23. Clemson
  22. Illinois
  21. Georgia Tech
  20. Siena
  19. Michigan
  18. Oklahoma
  17. Minnesota
  16. Ohio State
  15. Mississippi
  14. Duke
  13. Butler
  12. California
  11. Connecticut
  10. West Virginia

Pitch: Comedians talk about and perform a joke known as The Aristocrats.

I decided to stick The Aristocrats on the Netflix queue because of Jeffrey Ross’s appearance on Bill Simmons’s podcast. He discussed the Hugh Hefner roast and Gilbert Gottfried in particular. I was about to write a summary of what Jeffrey Ross said, but I searched real quick and found a concise description:

Comedian Gilbert Gottfried was known mostly for his ranting and squinting until September 29, 2001, when, in the wake of the WTC attacks, he mounted the dais for the Friar’s Club roast of Hugh Hefner. “I started out by saying, ‘I have to fly to L.A. tonight, but I can’t get a direct flight: They have to make a stop at the Empire State Building,’” he recalls. “Then I felt the audience jump back.” At that point, Gottfried decided to launch into a ten-minute version of the world’s dirtiest joke, known in comedy circles as the Aristocrats.

Here’s how the joke goes (taken from the Wikipedia article):

The setup: The joke always begins with a family act going in to see a talent agent.

The act: It is described in as much detail as the teller prefers.

The punchline: The shocked (or intrigued) agent asks what the act is called, and the proud answer (sometimes delivered with a flourish) is “The Aristocrats!”

Apparently comedians used to get together, taking turns telling their version while trying to outdo the previous comedian. I was hoping this documentary would include full footage of Gottfried’s telling at the Hugh Hefner roast, but only part is shown. My favorite segment was Kevin Pollak doing an impersonation of Christopher Walken telling the joke. In the end, hearing the same joke over and over is about as fun as it sounds. And listening to the deconstruction of a single joke over and over is also about as fun as it sounds. It’s sort of like magic—what’s going on behind the scenes is a lot less fun than the actual performance. As interesting as the history is, ninety minutes is just too long for any single joke.