Bumbershoot Review: Facts and Figures From "Why Failure? Why Cuteness? Why Now?"

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• Breaking up with girlfriend
• Jumping rope
• Smoking weed
• Avoiding parking tickets
• Turning my wife on
• Bio 101

Percent of Bumbershooters who think the smell of failure is burnt popcorn, according to same survey: 42.

Best instance of unintentional humor at Bumbershoot: Cheezburger Network CTO Scott Porad's slideshow on failure at first refused to load.

Most depressing insight into lives of Cheezburger employees: "I don't think people involved in running the site have ever had much success in making LOLcats."

Most intriguing speaker introduction: "This summer she animated small pieces of trash in her van," said of filmmaker Britta Johnson before her lecture on the uncanny valley.

True statement of the day: "Even Tom Hanks without makeup and with a bunch of weird crap on his head looks more human than the animated version" in The Polar Express, said Johnson.

Most useful vocabulary word learned: Neoteny is the scientific word for looking baby-faced. Bonus: Its Wikipedia page compares Pomeranians to fetal wolves.

Most inspired audience question (asked in a totally deadpan tone): "Why der teh LOLspeakz?"

The second installment in the Why This, Why That, Why Now series, "Why Vampires? Why Abe Lincoln? Why Now?" will be today at 2 on the Words & Ideas Stage.