For Those About to Iraq, We Salute You

After watching AC/DC's 1985 "Shake Your Foundations!" video, I'm surprised Angus Young's name has never come up among 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

Earthquake!

I was in the yurt when it started shifting. I felt safe in it (as opposed to other times when I've been in buildings during quakes). From an article just out on CNN:

The quake was predicted to occur, according a study sponsored by the USGS published in Science Daily in April. The study had predicted there was a 99 percent chance of California having a magnitude 6.7 of larger within the next 30 years.


Good to know they knew it was coming.

I spoke too soon

In the following day's paper:

The wrong animal was described in Friday's Capital Region story about the death of Akiho Miyashiro at Thacher Park. It was a blue heron that ate the fish in Miyahiro's Albany pond.

Side note: The only reason we know so much about Mr. Miyahiro, who was 87, is that he got lost in the fog and fell off a cliff. Had he died of a heart attack, the fate of his goldfish probably would not rated news coverage.

Should I call in the correction?

From a local newspaper story on the death of a distinguished Albanian:

Daniel and Millie Grossberg live next to the Miyashiros on Stonehenge Drive in Albany. They said Miyashiro loved nature, and had a beautiful garden and a goldfish pond loved by neighborhood kids. A blue herring recently ate the goldfish, Millie Grossberg said.

Keenan pointed out that an eagle could have dropped a live fish into the goldfish pond, which then proceeded to eat the other fish. But, as he noted, herrings are not predatory.

Who Are You, Third Guy on the Pineapple Express Poster?

You're not Seth Rogen.

You're not James Franco.

You're not Jason Statham, I know that.

So, who are you?

Oh, it's a rhetorical question. I could go to the official website and learn your identity. I could read the credits on the poster and see three additional names and figure it out by process of elimination, knowing that you're not Gary Cole or Rosie Perez.

But that's not the point.

I have walked past the poster many times.

I have driven by similarly designed billboards.

Text: ROGEN, FRANCO
Image: Three guys
Reaction: Annoyance

Will it keep me from seeing the movie? No, it won't. I've seen all of the recent Apatow-related efforts. Even caught Drillbit Taylor on a recent flight. (You really phoned in that script, Rogen.)

But don't push me, fellas.

This is like the converse to the annoyance I felt 20 years ago, when Young Guns came out.

Emilio Estevez: check. Kiefer Sutherland: check. Lou Diamond Phillips: check. Charlie Sheen: check.

Casey Siemaszko?

Who the %^&#& was Casey Siemaszko? And why was he getting equal billing with Hollywood's genuine young guns? (I know, I know, I'm giving Dermot Mulroney a free pass on this one; I didn't know him in 1988 either. But let's face it, things have worked out a little better for Mulroney, and at least he didn't have an absurd above-the-title name. Which was read aloud on the commercials—shih-MOSH-ko—much to my irritation.)

Wait: Maybe he is the third guy in Pineapple Express....

"Can you watch my things?"

Today at the beach, there was a mother next to us with four kids. She absolutely never shut up. I told Bernie she's the sort of person who has children just so there's a captive audience to listen to her non-stop stream of trivia. When she gathered the family to go for a hike, I was relieved. Until she asked me to watch her things.

She smiled fetchingly. As far as she was concerned, this was a formality.

We could be leaving as soon as twenty minutes from now, I replied flatly.

That's all right, she said, clearly confused that my response wasn't unconditional. She wasn't really worried about people, she emphasized: it's the birds that try to get into everything.

Was she asking me to fight off birds?

I'm not beating away birds, I told her firmly. I'd be happy to yell at people, I added, but only because she'd already indicated that wouldn't be necessary.

She flashed a knowing smile. Of course common courtesy dictated I'd step in at the first sign of trouble.

She went away. I returned to my book. And the birds went to work.

Stars on 45

Every summer I take Keenan to a mom-and-pop waterslide park at the northern fringe of the Catskills. One of its curiously entertaining features is its music selection. It consists of popular hits from about 1964 to 1984, weighted more heavily toward the later years, and entirely from K-Tel-type compilations. Missing are any songs by artists whose catalogs are strong enough to have not ever depended on such licensing: no Beatles, Rolling Stones, Elton John, Police, Billy Joel. Instead, just one trivia-contest answer after another. And you can't avoid hearing them - little 4" speakers are everywhere, compulsively so. Watching the 14 year olds gaze skyward in puzzlement at "Dueling Banjos" was worth - well, not the price of admission, but a few dollars, at least. (Considering that 14 year olds keep this place in business, it all seems somewhat cruel).

Of course, there was one way to hear the Beatles, sort of: The Stars on 45 medley. Incredibly, this hit #1 in 1981. Thanks to Wikipedia, I was able to clear up a few long-forgotten childhood mysteries:

1. Stars On 45 was a Dutch studio-only band with connections to Golden Earring.

2. The Beatles medley does indeed consist of the Archies "Sugar Sugar", followed by eight much earlier Beatles songs. I thought my memory had to be faulty, because how does this make any sense?

3. Stars on 45 actually played the music, this wasn't some early cut-and-paste job. The John Lennon impersonator is named Bas Muys.

4. The full title of the song (see image) remains the longest title all-time for a #1 song.

5. People really did dance to this in discotheques nationwide.

Windows Vista: a Thought

The other day a friend told me that her computer had crashed and tech support had told her there was no hope; she'd never be able to get her prized photos off her year-old Fujitsu laptop. I asked what she was running and she said Vista. I've never had the opportunity to use/misuse Vista, so I offered my services.
The box didn't boot in safe mode or any mode. The bios functions said the drive was working properly, so I concluded that Vista was hosed.

The laptop came with a 'recovery disk' to be inserted in such circumstances. I did a 'repair', which in a hour or so announced it had failed. It then advised me to reinstall Vista, and of course added the text line that I should have backed up my files beforehand- the eternal loop error of the Microsoft system-- I wouldn't be here if she had backed up her system, obviously.
I would have hung the drive off another one as a slave, but I didn't have any such parts lying around; I was going to have to try something else.

An internet search turned up Ubuntu as a possibility. I ran Ubuntu (a freeware linux kernel) from the dvd drive, had to do a few tricky things to force mount the folders (command line style) so I could see them, but I was in-- I was seeing her picture folders.
I was not as successful in having Ubuntu to see my external (mac formatted) drive to write to it, but no matter, I copied her data with a flash drive.

In conclusion, I keep wondering how Microsoft gets away with this, the closed, crashing operating systems, combined with people who don't back up their data. Millions of computers come shipped with this operating system, and from what I've read/experienced, it's just a bunch of bloatware. I could go on and on, but I will end with saying, you can use linux to recover your Windows data if Vista is hosed. Viva Ubuntu!

Salt in Wound Mysteries Presents: Tim Lincecum

Geoge Steinbrenner rode into the All-Star game with a full medical team. Willie McCovey somehow managed to make it, even though he was unable to walk. But Tim Lincecum didn't show up because of "flu-like" symptoms. None of the reports I've read simply called it "the flu." Because, let's face it, he's just another kid who got shit-faced on his big trip to New York. A lot of players had parties Monday night. So where are the pictures?

You Know the Housing Market Is in Trouble

...when real estate offices are available for lease.

Possible New Way to Learn Things

Seen at car wash in Woodland Hills, CA. Subjects included American History, Biology, and Chemistry.

The Definitive Going-Away Flyer

Going-Away Announcements

Retirement and going-away announcements are an underacknowledged folk-art form, characterized by incoherent design elements, maudlin sentiment, clip-art infestation, and nautical metaphors. For example, here is the flyer someone made for my friend Kristen's imminent departure to Michigan (she is a reader and very occasional commenter on this blog).

While a good example of the genre, Kristen didn't feel this went nearly far enough, so she asked our agency's art director to come up with the definitive going-away flyer, which I'm placing in its own post.

More New York Discoveries

My brother Paul has an unusual coffee mug in his house. He said our mother gave it to him, one of the many "drug company" gifts that have been bestowed upon us over the years. But this one was something I've never seen before:





So we have here a three-handled coffee mug. Aranesp, by the way, is a drug for chronic renal failure. Does this have anything to do with the mug shape?

Exclusively for Baseball Fans of a Certain Age

Every day I ride the PATH train. Recently, we've been encouraged to begin using the new SmartLink card, which you simply tap at the turnstile to go through.

Hey, I'm an early adopter, so I got the card. And now they're encouraging us to register our cards online. This allows you to automatically refill your card from home, while also allowing The Man to track your every move and eventually turn over this information to the robot overlords who will mercilessly hunt us down, and there is no escape, so don't even try.

I digress. Anyway, sure, I registered the card. Name, address, email, serial number on card—no problem. Standard operating procedure.

Then it asked me to give my card a nickname.

A nickname? That one threw me for a loop. Hmmm. What to call it, what to call it? Not enough time to throw an origami contest. So I typed in the first thing that came to my head.

And now my SmartLink card is nicknamed....Rico Cardy.