The Week's Inanity: The Most Awkward Hug Ever, Looping For Your Pleasure

It's probably not fair to spread a context-free GIF of the McCrory/Foxx bro hug, BUT I CAN'T STOP WATCHING IT
Jeremy Markovich,

I WAS AT the Charlotte Chamber press conference for the annoucement that MetLife was bringing more than 1,300 hundred jobs to Charlotte. Mayor Pat came. I know, Mayor Pat is the governor now, but here, he was Mayor Pat again. Cracking jokes. Grinning like he'd stolen something

He was introduced as the governor. "It's Pat, guys," he said. Total Mayor Pat move.

Then something remarkable happened. At one point, McCrory introduced Anthony Foxx, Charlotte's current mayor. The two haven't always gotten along. 

"Let's get a picture of us smiling," McCrory said. Foxx jumped up and ran into McCrory's arms, making a sad grimace, the kind you might make in acting class if you were practicing sad grimaces.

Foxx smiled again. Then grimaced again. Then smiled again. Mayor Pat consistently made his Mayor Pat face the whole way through.

I was standing in the back of the room. That would make an amazing animated GIF, I thought. I ran back to the television station. I picked out ten frames from the video of the press conference. I made one.

I had a good long talk with a bunch of folks about this image, which loops over and over again– an endless snapshot of an infinitesimal moment. A still shot captures the face. The video shows the moment, but only once. But a GIF, God bless it, shows the same moment over and over again. If you stare at it for ten seconds, you've seen Foxx's face twist five times, and it keeps going. It's passive. You don't have to do anything. You load it, and watch it go ad infinitum.

And thusly, an animated GIF will haunt your dreams. Several people said they could not stop watching it. It's like a Morris Jenkins commercial. It gets in your head and, no matter what you do, YOU CANNOT GET IT OUT.

Is it out of context? Yes. Is it hilarious? Yes. Is it fair? Debatable. He did make the face.

The time scale upon which we live our lives is continually shrinking. We used to read the paper every morning. Then we caught a little bit of the Today Show. Then we started reading tweets. And now we have GIFS. 

It's hard to say what this means for society. So i'll just say this:

Also from GIFland: The NoDa table-throwing brawl.

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I went to Selwyn Avenue Pub to watch the Duke-UNC game. Have you ever been to Selwyn Avenue Pub? They have a big outdoor patio, and when it's cold outside, they crank up a dozen portable propane heaters and gas fireplaces to warm the outside up. If the polar ice caps melt in our lifetime, Selwyn Avenue Pub had better be willing to run a penguin rescue.

I digress. Selwyn Pub certainly attracts a certain type of clientele, as evidenced by the tremendous @HeardAtSelwyn Twitter feed:

There were a lot of flip flops and shorts at Selwyn for a March weekend. Alas, I had no collar to pop.

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Ric Flair has been to North Korea. To be the man, you have to cancel a 60-year armistice with the South. RELATED: Let me introduce you to Kim Jong-Whoooooooooooooooooooooun!

From Reddit: Here's a cover letter from a guy in Charlotte who claims he invented the moon, will fight bears, and has reverse-engineered a door. Don't all jump at once, hiring managers.

There was a commercial for Rold Gold a while back where Jason Alexander is in the stands at a hockey game and the goalie gets hurt. The coach turns to Costanza and tells him to get into the game, and he makes all sorts of saves. I REALLY wish that would have happened last week at the Cats/Nets game:

Via Chris Littmann: A tremendous comment on a story about Tyrus Thomas in the Charlotte Observer. As Daniel Hartis notes, "I didn't know e.e. cummings was a Bobcats fan."

Categories: Blog Links > Week in Inanity, The Buzz, Way Out

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