The other brother Gowda writes this about the funky yet vaguely creepy Little Superstar vid racing around the web:

“…the kid dancing is actually kei at age 4; on the cot is my uncle
surrounded by several of our cousins. it’s rare footage from the gowda
archives. don’t believe me? check out the way kei exhales at the end
of the clip. and, the dance moves! now you’re seeing, aren’t you?”

Well that’s just ridiculous. Judge for yourself:

Me at age 4? No way.

I had to be at least 5 in that video. Any younger than that and they won’t sell you cigarettes in India.

Sometime in college, couple days before Halloween, we had a party to rock and my roomates had already gotten pretty dope getups: Specs (token art guy) had made a dupe of Belushi’s SNL bumble bee get up and Day (token rich guy) had rented a full-size green foam Gumby outfit to ape Eddie Murphy’s angry take on the beloved claymation character. Land Shark outfits were sold out, and I wasn’t 100% that some drunk Kappa Kippa Koopa Delta dressed up as Neptune wouldn’t try to harpoon me with his trident in an attempt to testosterone the panties of his little mermaid sorority trophy date…so the clock was ticking, and I was sh*t out of ideas.

Until I remembered: I had recently stolen a clock. Not sure why. It was about a foot across, white hands on black face, hanging in the main atrium of the student union where a couple of thousand fake adults between the ages of 18-21 strut, stumbled and charged through every day and night. Wrapped snugly in my traditional 4 month bourbon blanket against the ridiculously cold autumn precursor to the impending Syracuse Sack Icing Winter ™, it seemed like a really, really good idea at the time. Exact details have been recounted to me as involving a industrial-sized trash can cum makeshift ladder that I apparently fell into hiney first and had to be extracted from by my soon-to-be ex-girlfriend. I smelled like banana.

Soon-to-be-ex, like, as soon as she pulled me Keds first out of the trash can, if I recall. Which I don’t. So that may be a lie. She may have dumped me after we decided to use her living room to film “Curse of the Hand of Death” the full contact karate movie we made, fake ketchip blood and all. Which got an ‘A’, by the way. Even with the permanent-stained living room footage on the cutting room floor. So who’s the dumbass now, eh?

But that’s another story. I wore a fez (which was ironic, because off set I pretty much dressed like Fez), I was the evil Kipi, putting cigarettes out on random kung-fu lackeys. Walt was my paladinesque half-brother Clint Steel, shirtless and in day-glo flowered jams. The soundtrack was Slayer and the Patridge Family. It. Was. Magic.

Biz? Mellow? Binger? If you’re reading this and have the movie, email me toot sweet. I think we may just have our ticket to YouTube Director-dom!

Anyway, so the clock, plus listening to seminal Public Enemy opus Yo! Bum Rush the Show about a hundred times that week while playing dominoes on the porch instead of going to my Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence midterm, got my mind thinking back to those golden high school years driving around in Fat Pete’s candy apple glossed Monte Carlo SS thumping to P.E. Chuck D. And Flava Flav. The Flav. The King of Cold Lamping.

The ultimate costume.

Half an hour in JC Penney’s Active Boys section and a quick stop at the Sunglass Hut later, we three walked through the local mall to the cheers of ladies, gentlemen, boys and girls of all ages. Seriously. The upstate New York masses didn’t know who the hell the yellow beach ball or the green dildo were supposed to be, but damned if they didn’t holla for the freaky beat funk of the sweet, sweet Flava.

God bless those children. Every one.

Next time on a very special OhMyGowda!: MTV’s reality series “Flavor of Love”. Brilliant commentary on our America’s lust for fame over recognition for true merit and, barring either, infamy over fame? Or intestine splattered car wreck of culture that you just can’t look away from? Tune in and cast your vote!

If you’re not down with feed readers (I prefer NetNewsWire myself) you can now get notification of new posts to OhMyGowda! via email.

To sign up just submit your email via the tiny form at the top of the sidebar. Then, click on the verification link you’ll receive in your Inbox in a few minutes.

And I promise never to sell or reuse your information for anything even remotely related to advertising, spam or anything else without your express consent.*

That’s it. Now whenever I post something, you’ll get an email alerting you of my latest blither blather.

*Unless there’s free shrimp cocktail involved. Or enough money to buy Mama Gowda that seaside condo in Mexico with the waterfall. But if I had to pick? Shrimp all the way. Or maybe we could work out a timeshare thing. I gotta check with her first. Call me.

I’m currently a product manager at Eurekster, Inc., search technology start-up and creators of the swicki. (The name’s derived from search + wiki = swicki.)

My purpose in this internet life is to empower folks to build community-powered search engines on any topic they can imagine, built on our technology that lets internet users and search engine owners decide what search results deserve top ranking. (Our basic product is free for anyone to use at www.swicki.com).

This is different from standard search engines because when you search on those sites, the order of their results are based on stats from what the whole world is clicking on. On swickis, the community that uses your specific search engine decides what’s important.

(There’s about 100 other damn sexy things about our technology, but that right there is definitely the most Halle of them all.)

Why is this cool? Let’s say, for example, you did a search on the term ‘extreme’ using your usual search engine. You’re top results would be links to sites for an international computer hardware company; the Extreme Sports TV channel; and a tech tutorial on extreme programming techniques…because those are the most popular searches in the world.

But if you’re like me and spent most of your youth meandering just outside of Providence, Rhode Island, who’s highlight exports for the last 30 years include mullets, acid-washed denim skirts and guys with perms riding Harleys, when you do a search on ‘extreme’ you’re more likely interested in seeing top search results pertaining to 80’s almost-metal yet definitely-hair band Extreme, perhaps the greatest of southern New England’s contributions to American music. Can you even hum ‘More than Words’ without breaking into tears? Yea. Me neither. And I bet you there’s a few thousand other Nuno-philes who feel the same way, all seeking that one web resource to learn more about their favorite power ballad song smiths…because regular search engines certainly aren’t tuned to our needs.

So why not build a search engine geared to me, you and our air guitar-lovin’ legions? Why not build an expert and community-driven search engine yourself? The #1 resource on the web for 80’s Hair Bands, like Extreme?

Well, a visionary swicki publisher has done just that in the time it’s taken you to read this far into this blog post. You check out his piece of the social search revolution here.

And when I say ‘visionary’, I mean me. And when I say ‘done’ I mean I built that swicki in the 20 seconds between writing that last paragraph and this one. Getting a swicki off the ground is super easy. Learning how to further tune it using our advanced tools, including skinning it to match up with your blog or site, is more than moderately habit-forming. And once you realize you can monetize your swicki through our 3rd-party advertising system…well, insert barbaric yalp here, my fellow believers in the American Internet Dream.

Check out some other hot sites that are using swickis to laser-target their community’s interests, with much slicker visual results than my quick demo (do a search using their Community Powered search boxes to see our rabbit run):

TechCrunch

NetNoir

Popular Science

I’ve really only covered the basic about swickis here, and you should read more for yourself. A few good places to start: our swicki directory, showcasing the 20,000+ swickis already created by site publishers and topic experts who’ve made claim on their piece of community powered search heaven, our FAQ describing the cool features of swickis in greater detail, and the Eurekster blog to read more on what’s happening with Eurekster right now.

p.s.

Dear Halle,

Um…I really do think swickis are amazing and incredibly useful, but I swear they’re not hotter than you. I just needed an attention-grabbing headline. Did you get the sculpture of you I sent? It’s made of the same kind of clay that Tootie used to make that bust of Jermaine…and that that woman used in the Lionel Richie video. “Hello…is it me you’re looking for…Halle?” Call me.

p.p.s.

Dear Readers,

Seriously? Swickis are way hotter than Halle. Check ‘em out now.

I wanna dance like Ze Frank.

I wanna rock like Tapes ‘n Tapes.

I wanna taste like shaved meat.

I wanna learn how to use Photoshop.