We went to the “Sports night” at DSI improv last night. Had a blast and will return soon. Two teams of four were pitted against each other, competing for audience laughs in things like “four square” (four people acting out four 2 person improvs in different combinations as they rotate left or right), Da Do Run Run (rhyming to different names shouted out by the audience, with flops eliminated one by one) and “story telling” (in which eight players told the same story, picking up the thread instantly when the ref pointed to them, mid sentence or even mid-word.)

Here’s an article about the founder. My colleague Nick (third from right here ) has become of the regulars there and will be participating in next week’s 24 hour charity improv marathon.

Meanwhile, Starbucks regulars debate the ethics of mixing your own milk drinks for half the price Starbucks charges. Guess which side I’m on. (See Sep 6, 2006 7:17:20 PM)

Stacey Lynn Koerner: “The fabric of real communities in American life is slowly being rebuilt with virtual threads in online communities. Those threads are the building blocks of a new social ecology in which brands can both derive critical insight on consumer experience as well as serve as markers of identity in both the real and virtual landscapes. In combination with behavioral targeting techniques, these kind of data form living consumer profiles that can be mapped in digital media and mirrored in traditional media.”

http://www.historichillsborough.org/database/pagemaker.cgi?1156256903

Then and now.

Turns out the Triangle has more BAs per capita than DC, Austin, Minneapolis, Denver, San Jose…

Check out this ad by NXP, formerly Philips. I clicked through from an ad in the WSJ and was compelled to rubberneck.

Mark Warner is going to campaign in the virtual world Second Life.

…I want to work in advertising. (Via Seth Miller.)

Fortune Magazine opines: “It’s time to examine the clichés that the “experts” – chiefly analysts and economists from realtors and mortgage associations – used to convince Americans that what they’re seeing now could never happen.”

No, actually, that time was last year. In fact, I blogged about shorting housing stocks and newspaper stocks, mentioning then-current prices. In aggregate, those stocks are all down roughly 40% today.

Summer’s gone and the leaves are browning. We collected arrowheads, rattlers, BBs, tennis balls, mosquitos, blisters, sand, pinecones, water bottles, Fawlty Towers, cacti, surfing, double rainbos, chess, spaghetti bolognese and many fish big and small.