For some people, the ultimate gift is something techy, like a Wii, an iPhone, or a GPS device. For us, it's a growler of beer, which we received over the holidays. The beer inside, "312." was nothing special. the growler, however, was refillable. more ›

We have several areas of faux expertise. Ones we've gained from many years of watching TV shows on the subjects, reading novels on the subjects, reading news stories on the subjects and just being generally interested in the subjects. These subjects are law, medicine and weather. Needless to say, we've spent many hours with the Weather Channel on in the background. We've even had a favorite Weather Channel meteorologist (Dave Schwartz, anyone?) and we have... more ›

more ›

We just came across Find Nearby, a site that helps you find what you're looking for in your local area. The site maps out where you can find a certain item for sale on Amazon, eBay, craigslist, and local retailers like Best Buy, Circuit City, Wal-Mart and Target who have the item in stock. Seems helpful sometimes when you don't want to wait for across-the-country or around-the-world shipping. And if you're a gaming nerd, you're in for some extra lovin' — there are special search sites for finding a Wii or a PS3. more ›

Before we begin, we'd like to extend our deepest sympathies to the family of James Kim. We are not, by any means, trying to discount that tragedy by juxtaposing posts about the Kims with more light-hearted posts. It's the nature of doing a compilation such as this one: we're trying to give a full slice of the goings-on in the Ist-a-Verse: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Londonist wants you to know where to... more ›

We're not even going to act like we're surprised that we had a repeat of the whole gamers standing in line all weekend to get a console story. Been there, done that... more ›

Those of us at the Chicagoist offices enjoy video games as much as the next person. It's not that uncommon for us to go head-to-head in a round of Mario Kart while we're waiting for new stories to post. Why, last week, we were on the last lap of the 150cc dinosaur track when KFed became Fed-Ex. The losers in last place driving the Goomba Kart decided that we had to post that story right then and there, and that was the end of our match. (Frakking editors...) more ›