Time for another Friday afternoon best-of-the-web, where I filter out a bazillion things to bring you the coolest stuff I read and seen online this week. Enjoy…

• Family Guy Matrix Trailer - Epic, watch it and start your weekend with a smile
• Why leisure matters in a busy world - Interesting article about the importance of taking time off
• Twister bedsheets - No need for explanation here
• Become an expert with the power of deliberate practice - Steve Rubel applies greatness theory to the process of becoming an expert authority. Interesting read, especially for bloggers

I read. A lot!

Not just blogs. Books, magazines, cartoons, newsletters, I devour them. It’s the maven in me. And, I’ve shared a few reviews here, but I figure, it’s time to start doing it a bit more regularly. So, this is the first of my every other Wednesday drive-by book-review series (with a little effort, I might even be able to keep it going past today).

Why drive-by?

Because, I’m busy, you’re busy, so rather than listing out the table of contents and picking apart everything that was said, my purpose is more to highlight:

So, I’m hanging out with William Shatner at the Jet Blue terminal on Friday…

Well, actually, I am watching him in a mildly-creepy voyueristic kind of way as he saunters up to check in for his flight to Burbank.

My first thought is, “damn, his piece looks good.”

I’m losing my hair fast, so I am seriously tempted to ask where he bought his, but, then I remember…this is NY, we don’t do stuff like that. We’re just that cool.

It wasn’t so long ago…

You wanted to talk to someone down the hall, so, rather than tweeting, IMing or e-mailing, you got up off your butt, walked to their office and, stay with me, you actually stood in front of them and had a conversation. A real live, eyeball to eyeball, face to face, mannerism-twitching, body-language-revealing conversation.

God bless technology…

It’s made it so that we don’t have to move more than a mouse-click to share our message. All this has been great for productivity (not too great for stress and expectations) and allowed us to talk to people all over the world all day and night, even when they’re just down the hall.

Picture this…

You’re walking down the street and the shop in the corner has a big glowing sign that says, “Marketing geniuses. We can pack any business with customers, leverage cutting-edge technology, make the world talk about you and get customers to run screaming to hand over their life-savings.”

Wow, nice promise. Global domination in a day.

Then, you peer in the window and see a dimly lit office, beat up furniture, a single person behind a desk, an IBM 386 on the desktop, a rotary phone, dust all over the place and the guy behind the desk kicked back reading a newspaper, drinking coffee and having a leisurely lunch at 2pm.

Happy Friday all!

This morning, I launched a few subtle changes to the blog design:

• Bye bye sumo-dude. I took down the little sumo guy on the top right side in the get updates box. The sumo dude was cute, but wasn’t really adding much beyond being a distraction. Almost nobody clicked on his image or listened to the audio message.

I recently requested a proposal from a developer for some work. I filled out an online form, then a few days later received an e-mail asking ME to call THEM, so I could discuss the details and learn the price.

Are you kidding me?

First rule of business, 90% of the time, it’s not the best person who wins, it’s the one who calls back. If you want me to give you MY money, trust you with MY project or
allocate MY time, guess what…

YOU need to call ME. Not the other way around.

When I was in high-school, my Latin teacher smuggled in books of poetry to translate that the administration deemed too pornographic to include in the curriculum. There were no pictures or illegal acts. In fact, the content was downright tame, compared to what I and nearly every other teenage boy already had stashed around the house.

But, the powers that be deemed it too unsafe to read.

When I was in law school, we read about first amendment protection, then learned about it’s limitations when it comes to porn. And, again, we were given a standard by the United States Supreme Court…

So, following on the massive success of my recent “108 songs that’ll stop you from biting your cubicle-mate” post, I now bring you the funny-movie master list.

Fifty movies, painstakingly picked, hand-washed and professionally-framed to inspire hours of smiles, with links to the trailers for every single one (the trailers, alone, are worth the effort).

Please note–I have made absolutely no attempt to keep this list remotely clean, PC or otherwise remove offensive, idiotic, outright dopey, infantile, adolescent, goofy, suggestive, dry, sarcastic, satiristic or offbeat material.