I never (ever) watch CNBC, CNN or any of that crap, but flipping through the Tivo on my way to the Red Sox game, American Originals: Budweiser caught my eye. Despite the network it was airing on, I marked it to record. It did not disappoint. If you like beer and the history that made it an American icon, I’d definitely watch this special.

One thing I (ignorantly) didn’t realize was how much of the beer market the big companies control. Seemingly independent brands like Leinenkugel, Stella and Stella Artois are all owned and/or distributed by the big 3 breweries (Anheuser-Busch, InBev, MillerCoors). This made me think, “hey, I should build a database of beers and their breweries so everyone could know this,” but like everything else on the Internet, someone beat me to it: The Ultimate Beer Resource.

“…its got a Hummer limo inside of it where they’re shooting a Jay-Z video…” classic!

Although it wasn’t large, it was still painful to get rid of my stack of Playboys this past weekend. As I approach my 30th birthday and the coming of my second child, I simply ran out of space for the Mag that Hef built. Sure I could have put them in storage for a monthly fee or gone through them removing the important stuff (the articles obviously!), but it just wasn’t worth the effort.

It did give me 2 ideas though:

1. Playboy should offer up a digital collection of their magazines. Men have been collecting piles of the magazine for over a 1/2 century. But those things are hard to store. If you subscribe or buy an issue, Playboy should offer some way to login and review them digitally at any time while the print copies sit in storage or something.

2. There should be donation bins like the ones for clothes that bring my old Playboys to the zitty-faced teens that need them most.

Maybe I shouldn’t share these…

Frets on Fire is an open source (aka free) PC game that looks, feels and sounds exactly like Guitar Hero. Even though I don’t own GH, I’ve been addicted ever since I picked up the white axe and rocked out to Free Bird. Frets on Fire has a very similar feel to it and you can even turn your keyboard upside down and pretend its a (very geeky) guitar.

The best part about Frets is that it lets you create in-game songs from your own music collection. For some unknown (probably dorky) reason, the game only supports .OGG files (an open source and painfully obscure alternative to MP3), but there are lots of conversion tools available on the web. Regardless, adding your favorite Zeppelin or Devo tune to the game adds a whole new level of involvement.

Warning: lots of NSFW language throughout.

Superpowers are a dime a dozen these days. Flying, x-ray vision, laser beam eyes… all commonplace superhero gimmicks. However, there’s one superhero, less super, more hero, that forgoes all that shit: Batman–the self trained, excessively equipped, bad ass crime fighter.

But how feasible is it that someone could truly become a ninja-trained, gadget spewing vigilante? In a new book called Becoming Batman author E. Paul Zehr, associate professor of kinesiology (”the science of human movement”) and neuroscience (”scientific study of the nervous system”) at the University of Victoria in British Columbia (”Canada”), aims to answer just that.

Scientific American recently sat down with the author to chat about the book and all things Batman. From the discussion:

“How many of us do you think could become a Batman?
If you found the percentage of billionaires and multiply that by the percentage of people who become Olympic decathletes, you could probably get a close estimate. The really important thing is just how much a human being really can do. There’s such a huge range of performance and ability you can tap into.”

I don’t know about you, but I’ll be first in line for this book when it comes out in October.

From the completely useless, but totally awesome department: Beerhandle, a snap-on handle for beer (and soda) cans. Not only does it give you a better grip on your beverage and prevent your sweaty palms from warming up your beer, but it also comes in 4 colors, so you’ll always know which can of Schlitz is yours.

All of these amazing features can be had for just $9.88.

Min Online compiled the top 5 men’s interest mag sites. Somehow they left LiveManly off the list. Here’s their top 5:

1. Esquire.com
2. Complex.com
3. ESPN: The Magazine
4. Men’s Health
5. GQ

Target is offering the 20GB Xbox 360 for $299 this week and throwing in a $25 gift certificate to boot. The deal is only available in-store, so if you’ve been waiting for a 360 price drop, now’s your chance to pick one up.

This looks like a move to clear the shelves for a new 60GB model, so don’t expect these 20GB models to hang around for long.

This is what the “I Kissed a Girl Video” should have been. Louis XIV, I salute you! (probably NSFW)