Whoever dreamed up the branding on this should be shot.

Guess who won?
UPDATE:
Joke's on me. Turns out this is the 9th year of Ice Wars, so it was not a post-Sept. 11 concoction. But the name is still ridiculous, particularly in this post-9/11 world, so they should still be shot.

I love the Everlasting Blort for pointing out stuff like this Neiman Marcus Halloween Christmas ornament. As if it weren't insane enough already (who wants a Halloween themed Christmas ornament?), there is also the question, as the Blort points out in its headline for this item, of "the importance of proper font choice."

Thanksgiving was fun at the Bruner/Haspel residence. Seven Hungarians, one Italian and two Americans, including myself. Dinner was quite the success (thank you very much). Then about 11:30pm, another five or six Hungarian filmmakers dropped by to drink the last of my beer. Somewhere around 1am, I let them talk me into going out to a Harlem jazz club. Originally we were aiming for Showmans on 125th St., which I've never visited, even tho it's just a few blocks from my place. We got there to find it closed and pushed on to Lenox Lounge, which is perhaps a mile east of my place, quite the stroll given the sub-freezing temperatures here in NY of late.

The scene inside Lenox Lounge was worth the walk. 2am after Thanksgiving and the place had about 20 people in the front bar section, the jazz in the back room already finished for the night. Needless to say, the crowd is almost all black, tho giving no sense that this crowd of Eastern Euro trash was the least bit unwelcome. It's a cool ambiance: art deco decor, great juke box, uninhibited slow bumping and grinding, zero pretentions.

Soon after we settled in, a beautiful woman came over from the bar to chat with us. She happily informs us she is an actress and model, the first African American woman to be "one of the David Letterman girls," she mentioned among a list of her credits. When I said that I recognized her from the Letterman show, she acted like this was something on her resume she couldn't really comprehend herself. "White people humor!" she snorted in amazement, as if I could relate. "We do this one routine, 'Does It Float?' where we drop something like a microwave into a big tank of water and Paul and Dave talk about whether or not it will float," she explained, with an expression of utter disbelief.

Personally, I love the "Will It Float" segment. They had it on tonight's Letterman. Always good for a laugh. (FYI, a bag of road salt sinks.) But what would I know, I'm just a silly white guy, and that kind of stuff is funny to us, apparently.

She was quite the character and said other even wackier stuff, but I'll spare her the Google liability and leave it at that (thankfully for her sake I missed her name).

(Speaking of Letterman, Liza Minnelli was his guest tonight. Yes, she's seen better days, but she sang a song off her new album, Liza's Back (a follow-up to her prior smash album "Liza's Front," Dave quipped), titled "What Did I Have That I Don't Have?" and, boy, that lady can still sell a song.)

I passed on entertaining the Magyar movie makers again tonight at the Bulgarian Disco, but you may be able to read about it shortly here or here. Saving my strength for Saturday night's vodka latke Chanukah party. Friend Kevin asks, "Doesn't your crew ever get sick of each other?" Fair question, but thankfully not so far.

Quite smart, apparently. (Or at least very, very full of myself.)

Long before I started blogging, after I taught myself the rudiments of HTML and set up the Bruner.net homepage (not much changed over the years), I set up the Bruner Family Network, devoted (such as it is) to the genealogy of the Bruner family name. Granted, I know virtually nothing of genealogy, my own family's or otherwise, but I have written up what my dad has told me of our family history plus a bit of research on Ancestry.com, back when such searches were free.

(I learned, among other things, that great-great granddad George Washington Bruner changed the spelling from two ns to one, and that the earliest ancestor that I can track my own Bruner lineage back to is Johann Daniel Brunner, born in 1754 in Pennsylvania, pre-Revolutionary War. Fought in it, I suppose. We don't know where his parents came from.)

Anyway, the Bruner Family Network was kind of a set-it-and-forget-it project. A year or so ago, I figured out the guestbook feature, where one or two folks a week leave an entry, having found the site mostly through a search engine. I read all the entries, but I don't even regularly reply, as I have no information for them about who might know more info about their great-great-grandmother, and what else am I going to say, "Hi, isn't Bruner a great name?"

Today's guestbook entry, however, is worth noting. It's from Rick Bruner, a web marketing expert based in New York City. Not me, the other one. In fact, this Brooklyn-based Rick Bruner says he lives right down the street from another Rick Bruner. Apparently, this city is lousy with us. Who knew? (I threw away my white pages, as it was just taking up space and I always use the Net anyway. If anyone has one, I'd be curious to see how many Rick Bruners are listed in NYC. For "Rick Bruner" exactly, SuperPages has only me, at two addresses (old and new). Including Richards and Rs, there are only a few more of us statewide.)

This other 20-something Brooklyn-based Rick Bruner (of Ricksville.com) is a web design expert. Which is in fact quite fortuitous, as I have been looking for a competent designer for varoius client projects. Designers are generally so flakey I've had several bad experiences, but who can you trust if not another Rick Bruner?

In fact, I'm already hoping our would-be partnership goes so well that we could eventually set up our own agency, The Rick Bruner Agency (or something, we'd work on the branding). Ideally, we'd hire only other Rick Bruners. If necessary, we might even consider cloning.

UPDATE:

Rick Bruner replies:

I think my wife would freak out seeing an office full of Rick Bruners.

Nice to hear from you, although I guess I should tell you my birth name was Richard. Oh well. I went by Ricky as a child Not Rick E. And later the Y was dropped and the name Rick just fit so well....

There is a Bar on 20th street called "No Idea" and they have name night where if you have the name assigned that evening you drink free. We could convince them to have a Rick Bruner night. Who knows with your site and popularity, we could drum up all the Rick Bruners in the world. I'm sure for free beer they would do it. And any Rick Bruner not into free beer, well he should change his name to Todd or something else....

Anyway nice to know there are others out there somewhat like me. (even if it's only in name.)

Take care

Rick Bruner

I too am Richard and was Ricky through high school. How freaky is that? (Not very freaky, I suppose.)

I was joking with Elizabeth that at the Rick Bruner Agency, we could go around referring to ourselves in the first person plural all the time, like "Rick Bruners will get back to you on that" or in the ambiguous third person, e.g., "Rick Bruner doesn't like that idea."

I think I'm going to have to become friends with this guy. I don't even care if he's a jerk, the potential for the goof is too funny. We could hang around together in bars just waiting for the opportunity to be asked to introduce ourselves, then with deadpans we'd pull out our respective business cards and then, when challenged, our drivers licenses. Would be a total chick magnet, I'm sure, were we not both married.

If there are any other Rick Bruners reading this, please drop a note. Two words: free beer.

All Mark (notice he tops my "Friends Who Don't Blog But Should" list):

Rick,

My childhood best friend, who lives in Florida, offered to send me three very valuable bottles of vintage champagne, but soon discovered that to do so would be a violation of state law, possibly a felony. I did a little research, and discovered an incredibly complex patchowrk of state laws governing the intra- and interstate shipment of alcohol, including wine.

It is completely forbidden to ship wine anywhere using US Mail. UPS and Fedex will ship it only among so-called reciprocal states, those who have agreements for the legal shipment of alcohol, such as California. But Flordia is among the most restrictive states.

On the other hand, it is perfectly legal for almost anyone to ship a handgun, rifle or shotgun from anywhere to anywhere. An unlicensed person can ship a rifle or shotgun by US Mail. (Unlicensed persons cannot ship a handgun by US Mail, but licensed ones can.) UPS will accept handgun shipments by Next Day Air only. Rifles and shotguns can be shipped by UPS ground service. UPS will accept shipments of ammunition. FedEx will only ship firearms via their Priority Overnight service. Ammunition must be shipped as dangerous goods.

What kind of country is this? Well, it's one that ruled by the large industrial interests, that's what. Most if not all alcohol shipping restrictions are in place to protect businesses, not individuals, although some laws, like those in Florida, wax poetically about how the laws are protecting the citizenry. What is it doing, however, is protecting the status quo three-tier distribution system in that state.

And it will only get worse with our current administration. Much worse.

Mark
www.wineinstitute.org
www.freethegrapes.org

Mark points out this Reuters story, Equip Americans with Terror Alert Beepers? and adds his comments:

This hairbrained idea is surpassed only by the (hopefully) now defunct TIPS program for spying on US citizens...

My first question is...after the beeper goes off, then what do you do? By their own definition (see below), this sytem is being proposed because "media broadcasts may spread news too slowly" for the kinds of emergencies they envision it would be used for. Can you imagine 7 million people in New York City simultaneously reacting to a nuclear or biological alert? What would the beeper say? "Terrorist with nuclear backpack reported on 39th St. and Park Ave?" Hell, I can't even get accurate, up-to-date traffic reports! This could turn out to be as effective as the old "duck and cover" exercises of the 50s and 60s.

Just got a note from yet another one-time Budapest expatriate journalist who just set up a blog: Harry's Place. I think I'm not supposed to mention who it is, as he writes for a major news service that doesn't care for its journalists to blog, but he lives in Italy, if that helps. (And, no, it's not Tim Randall. That was Harry's Bar you're thinking of.)

I did a double-take this evening flipping thru the current issue of the New Yorker (Nov. 25), thinking that my friend Elizabeth Spiers was secretly a successful poet (see page 78). Closer examination proved the poet spells the name Spires, and a phone call to my Liz confirmed it wasn't a typo. If she's actually living a secret life, I'd prefer to think it would be as a superhero, not an obscure poet. Who knows...

Mark read my recent plot idea for an episode of the West Wing and replied thusly:

Rick,

I like your idea for the West Wing episode, but I think it might be a little too far out to depict the whole Internet down, unless it's the April 1 show. But I think it could be a good vehicle for speculating on just how vulnerable we have made ourselves to the technological foundations we more or less take for granted. I mean everything from basic electricity and water and oil to all the things that have been built upon this infratstructure, like the food distribution system, financial system, communications, etc. Just think of all the things you come in contact with every day that can be traced back to a few basic infrastructure components. Scary. Think of it. People get pretty weirded out when the electricity goes off for a few days after a big storm or an earthquake. But what would happen if the disruption were to be much more widespread? (I think it's called France!)

Mark

I agree compleletely.

A few days ago I posted a survey under the title Existential Survey: How Much Is 'The Pure Life' Worth? probing the question of what a life of sobriety (no booze, caffeine, cigarettes, pot or other fun nauty indulgences) and of austere eating would be worth to you in financial terms. I just noticed that the number of survey respondents has surpassed 100 (106 as of this blogging). That's big skip up from less than 20 last time I checked. I must have gotten a link from someone with a lot of traffic, but I don't track my log files on this site right now, so who knows.

Anyway, to celebrate this milestone, I thought I'd share a summary of the results to date:

Screenshot tally as of this posting.
Click here for the latest tally.

What do I make of the results? Clearly, people value vice.

• 8% of respondents said they already lived the monkish life, tho I provided no mechanism for distinguishing between those whose sobriety was a matter of necessity (health, far-gone addiction) versus a natural inclination towards purity.
• 27% place a relatively low value on sobriety, based on adding the above staight edges to the additional 19% who would be willing to live an abstenimous life for the lowest annual stipend, $100,000. Perhaps to those of you readers who live in the heartland and work as nurses, teachers, firefighters and other noble professions $100,000 a year sounds like a lot of money. But to me, a post-Internet Boom Manhattanite, $100,000 seems like a decent living wage, but not exactly what I would call great wealth.
• Nearly three-quarters placed a high value on sobriety, as the remainder from the above would require at least $500,000 a year in exchange for giving up beer, cigarattes and cake.
• 44% could go clean for a lot of money. 19% would do it for half a million a year, and another 25% would do it for at least a million (the larger share, 15%, wanting $10 million).
• 25% of Bruner Blog readers would not straighten out for any price. Fully a quarter of my site visitors would appear to be such hardcore abusers of drugs, fats and sugars that no amount would be enough for them to forego. Interesting.

I'll drink to that.

Reuters reports:

Laptops have always been a hot item but a 50-year-old scientist didn't realize to what extent until he burned his penis.

Reminds me of a dirty limerick:

There once was a man named Gene
Who invented a fucking machine
Both concave and convex
It could serve either sex
But, oh, what a bastard to clean

Thanks, as usual, to Mark (for the link; the limerick is my contribution).

Bumping the thankless Nick Denton from the top position in my Friends Who Blog linky love section is that of none other than my lovely wife, Adi! Yay! I've been nagging her for months to give it a try. Only catch is, it's in Hungarian, so I can't really understand what the hell she's saying about me to the world. Titled: "Adi a nagyvilágban" (or "Adi in the Big World"). We just set it up 10 minutes ago, so depending on how soon you see this post, she's still working on the color scheme, etc.

What do you bet Nick gives her link on his blogroll just to spite me?

Everybody's favorite Apple Computer stoner spokesperson breaks her long media silence and gives an interview to Brown University's Daily Herald. Details on MarketingFix.

There are two memorable dates for you. These invites are for friends only. Weird strangers reading my blog, thanks for visiting, but please don't enter my real world, at least not at either of these parties.

But, for the gang, we decided to have a Thanksgiving potluck for anyone who has nowhere better to go. RSVP ASAP so we have some idea of what we're in for. For Thanksgiving, I'll do a turkey (notice I don't say "we"), you bring a side dish, appetizer or desert, plus booze.

Friday the 13th is a wild holiday dance party, so bring your boogie shoes and a date or two. Plus booze. (Do we notice a theme here? BTW, if you haven't checked it out yet, the votes on the Vice Survey are pretty interesting.)

If I know you and you need directions to our place, drop me a line.

Wow, an icon of my generation in NY, Cana Jeans, is closing (NY Post story | Downtown Express story). My first thought was that it was a victim of the downtown recession post Sept 11, but I see that it's being replaced by a Bloomingdales (excuse me, that's not very SoHo) and that Canal is looking for a new location, perhaps around Union Square (tho, if they're no longer on Canal St., what's up with that name?).

This is more a story for Nick, surprised I beat him to it. NYT reports:

Muslims and Christians armed with daggers and machetes rioted in two Nigerian cities Friday, burning cars and attacking bystanders in a third day of violence over the Miss World pageant. About 100 people have been killed and 500 seriously injured, Red Cross officials said Friday.

Adi notes that the official Miss World site mentions nothing of the riots. Also, on the section of the site titled Eyes of Africa, the only text on the page reads:

During the four week run-up to the Miss World 2002 live event, staged on the seventh of December, news articles and information relating to Nigeria, the host country will be made available in this section of the site.

Oh, what a sad, ironic world we live in. The irony doesn't really help. It only makes it more painful, because you're intelligent enough to see it but too powerless or unmotivated to do anything about it. Here's more irony: most Americans just don't care, because they have no idea where Nigeria is.

UPDATE 11/23/02:
Miss World has since picked up her skirt hem in horror and fled to good old Protestant London. Nick must be gleeful.

I just recoded the Bruner Blog tonight, figuring out the basics of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in the process. Life is good. Life is very good.

First I bought the book "Cascading Style Sheets 2.0 Programmer's Reference" by Eric A. Meyer. It completely sucked. I couldn't understand a word of it. (Here is my Amazon member products review page, where I rant about how bad the book is and give it 1 star.)

Then I bought this book: "Core CSS" by Keith Schengili-Roberts, and life was good again. A much better book, very easy to understand.

So far, I've just scratched the surface of CSS (a very powerful formatting language, a subset of HTML), but already I was able to recode this page so much more elegantly. It shouldn't act all screwed up anymore, if you've had funky experiences with the site framework jumping all over the place in the past. That was due basically to the fact that I'm a lazy hack and the code was so crappy you can't believe it. I got into the habit years ago of coding everything by hand in a text editor (UltraEdit is what I prefer for the PC, though I sorely wish that BBEdit would develop for the PC, as it's a better program, but only for the Mac). When I finally got around to redoing the whole thing in Dreamweaver, turns out there's a reason that program sells so well. My old code was just atrocious (I really can't emphasize that enough, and enjoy doing so).

Anyway, everything's spic and span now, brand spanking new and other cliches with "sp-k-n" sounds in them. Should load much faster and behave it self from now on. Now tomorrow night I need to do the same to ExecutiveSummary.com, the site that actually pays the rent around here.

Was minding my own business this afternoon and my Internet connection went down. Who knows why. Presumably something screwed up at Road Runner, my ISP. (Years ago I came up with he motto "I never met an ISP I didn't dislike," although Road Runner has probably been the best of the lot so far.)

Got me thinking of an episode I'd like to see of the West Wing. Josh comes into his office in the morning and asks Donna if she'd had a reply to her email from so-and-so senator or whatever, and she comments that the Internet is down. He says, "What do you mean the Internet is down?" She says it went down half an hour ago, the techies are looking into it. "They think it's our ISP." "Our ISP?" he says "Who the hell is the White House's ISP?"

Turns out, it's not just the White House, it's everywhere. The Internet is down. The whole thing.

Remember that great Nike commercial (what other kinds of Nike commercials are there?) during the Y2K hysteria showing the guy jogging on January 1, 2000 with stop lights blinking, cash shooting out of ATMs, missles doing curlycues in the background? A whole episode of West Wing like that.

Cyber Terrorism scares me, mainly because it seems we're incredibly vulnerable yet no one really talks about it. I'm only surprised it hasn't happened bad already.

In my case, however, it turned out to be just my ISP (back on half an hour later).

Got this sad little email today. Can anyone help him out?

Hi,

I cued up my West Wing tape to the right spot but forgot to set the timer on the VCR. So I missed tonight's West Wing. If you have it recorded by some stroke of luck I will pay dearly to get it from you.

Pathetically yours,

Jacob Shwirtz

UPDATE:
He replies:

the really funny thing is that i HAVE a tivo but i record all the west wings to good old vhs and save them

Interesting that crime in NY is actually still setting record lows, but the perception of crime is on the increase (NY Times piece).

Only 13% of draft-aged young Americans could find Iraq on a map, according to a new international survey on geography by National Geographic (MN Star Trib story). Canadians didn't do much better.

All hail Mad Magazine.

Click to enlarge image (the text is very funny).

I spent the previous weekend down at my friend Mike's new farm. During our many pointless conversations, we came up with an existential question that intrigues me. Imagine there were some ridiculous philanthropic foundation willing to pay you a generous annual living stipend on two conditions:

1. You had to totally give up all "mood altering substances": alcohol, caffeine, cigarettes, pot, etc. -- whatever floats your boat
2. You had to eat a strict limited diet of boring, nutritious foods

The ground rules are straight forward. You would be monitored and tested sufficiently that if you tried to cheat on the above two rules, you would get caught. Your food would be prepared for you or closely supervised to assure that it not be the source of any more pleasure than necessary to assure your health. You would be supplied with a cook, who isn't particularly talented in the kitchen beyond nutritional science. You also would not be permitted to substitute the loss of alcohol, cigarettes and other drugs with legal stress-reducing drugs such as a nicotine patch, Valium, Prozac, Zoloft, etc. (unless you are currently so prescribed for prior medical reasons).

You could compensate for these lacks of mortal pleasure with any other material and service indulgences you see fit. You could get all the exercise you want. Your sex life is your own business. You could live where you want and wouldn't need to work, but could if you wanted. In short, you could use the stipend to live otherwise however you like. If, however, you were ever caught having a hamburger, a beer, a cup of coffee or whatever, you'd lose it all. The stipend and all accumulated assets would vanish and you'd be immediately back to your life today.

What is the minimum you would need to make up for those sacrifices of indulgent food and booze, caffeine, etc. in an annual living stipend?

There's nothing funny to say about this, despite a number of obvious Pee Wee jokes. When actor Paul Reubens was caught masturbating in a porno movie theater back in 1991, I thought he was the undeserving victim of an over-zealous vice squad with nothing better to do than hang out in porno theaters. But hearing now that he was allegedly involved in a child porno ring, I'm so bummed. Of all fucking things. I always really liked his acting and was delighted to see some six months ago or so a pilot for an insane game show You Don't Know Jack, where he was the host (never saw it again, tho).

But child porno. There's not much you can say about that. I see he's denying the charges, claiming to be the victim of blackmail. For his sake, I certainly hope he's right. Even if he is, I wonder if he can rescue his career a second time after charges of being a pervert. On the other hand, Michael Jackson is still putting out records...

I should have blogged about this a while ago, but I got distracted. Some four weeks ago or so Elizabeth introduced me to her friends John Hiler and Here I Type. Much fun (and beer) was had by all. At the time, many moments from the evening seemed worth blogging, at least in as much as we laughed our asses off for hours and we are all bloggers, after all.

At this point, however, I remember only a couple hightlights. One was Here I Type's long, hilarious story of a recent disasterous date, but that is probably better left un-blogged, at least by myself. The other, bearing no relationship to the former, is the word "misandry," which Here I Type correctly guessed (based on its Latin (?) roots), in answer to John's question, was the gender opposite of "misogyny" -- that is, "the hatred of men." Why is it, John pondered, that we are all familiar with the word for the hatred of women, but the word for the hatred of men is so obscure. Particularly considering how much more deserving men are of hatred than women, when you come right down to it (my sentiment, not necessarily John's).

How obscure? The word is not in my go-to dictionary, the 1500-odd-page Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (10th edition) or on Webster.com or in the Oxford American Dictionary. It is, however, in the Oxford English Dictionary, as well as on Dictionary.com. Odd.

Also, John, FYI, my favorite phrase of the night is an available domain: morallowground.com

Mark Haas has assembled this nice slideshow of the Danube running through the center of Budapest.

We FON (friends of Nick) had a bit of a fright this evening. (I told him I wouldn't scoop him on this, but what the hell.) Around 10:30 this evening, I got a call from a guy named Tony with a thick NY accent asking if I knew a Rick Denton (a boring little detail that he got our names mixed up, but the hyper-realism helps the story telling, no?). Anyway, the guy says he's found Nick's wallet, address book, passport and other papers on the street up by his place at 110th St. and 3rd Ave, and he had come all the way down to Nick's apartment in Soho to return it to him (he's the nice New Yorker), but Nick wasn't there. He'd found my name in Nick's address book, could I help.

Well, I helped as much as calling Elizabeth to get her to go meet the guy, because she lives a lot closer to Nick than I do. (Real manly thing to do, getting a young single woman to go meet some stranger on NY's Lower East Side at 11pm under dubious circumstances.)

Elizabeth meets the guy and gets Nick's stuff. Meanwhile, lots of phone calls to various friends to see who has last seen Nick. One fact seems most ominous: Nick hasn't blogged all day. Elizabeth and I agree that is indeed creepy. Adrienne calls Ildi and in hushed tones they contemplate: he hasn't blogged all day. I actually went so far as to call the police. Elizabeth and I agree it's probably not worth pointing out to them the significance of the fact that he hadn't blogged all day.

(First call to the number listed in the phone book for the police, strangely a 718 area code, which is Brooklyn, informs me the number has been changed and no more information is available about the party I'm trying to reach. You would think the NYPD would pop for call forwarding, but big city deficit and all. Next attempt I get a cop after 20 rings who seems to take me seriously but then disconnects me in an attempt to transfer me. I call again and after 20 rings the number disconnects itself. I call again and after 20 rings decide they're probably not going to find him tonight anyway, so we'll wait to see what the morning brings.)

The morning (around 12am) brings Nick, apparently safe and sound. Pickpocketed, I gather (that would be the mean NYer). All's well that ends well, I suppose, minus a few dollars. Moral of the story: blog every day. And send Tony a box of chocolates, or something. His uncommon kindness certainly outweighs the meanness of a run-of-the-mill pickpocket.

UPDATE:
What a melodrama. Here is Elizabeth's take on it. And Nick's (with lots of bonus link, including my nasal, anxious voicemail to him). It is quite amusing this was such an incestuous bloggy thing.

And for the record, I didn't actually file a missing person's report. I was calling to inquire what the cops advised (which Elizabeth agreed was a good idea, it wasn't just me being a worry wart), but I never got through anyway.

Ha, ha, ha, we can all still go bankrupt. I'm very glad to hear the bill supported by credit card companies to limit the ability of individuals to declare personal bankruptcy has failed. Sure, I'm up to my ass in debt personally, but I'm still optimistic I'll dig my way out when the economy picks up. It's not for my own sake (yet) that I celebrate this, but because the bill was so insanely unjust. Screw the credit card companies. They send me three direct mail pieces a day trying to entice me to ruin my credit, then they get upset when I want to reclaim my life?

So, Adi has been back since Monday, and life is goooood. :-)

More good news (beyond our being reunited after six weeks apart during her digital film editing course): she was recently invited by Lucky Frog Films to edit their new short film, currently in post-production. We just sat down to watch their earlier film "Jigsaw Venus," a 10-minute short that received an honorable mention at Sundance Film Festival 2000. It is really terrific, a sweet, wordless story of a chance romance. Check it out if you get a chance (unfortunately, I don't see it for free on anything like iFilms or AtomFilms).

Fred Rogers, aka Mr. Rogers, has written a new book titled Mister Rogers' Parenting Book, hence he's doing the promo circuit. I happened to catch a bit of the interview with him today on the NPR show Fresh Air (Real Audio file). There came a point in the interview when he started talking in the voices of the characters of his classic TV show, King Friday the 13th, Daniel Striped Tiger, Henrietta Pussycat, etc., trying to engage the interviewer to play along with him. I heard him do the same thing on an interview with the NPR show This American Life (Real Audio file) a few months earlier.

The result was the same in both cases. You can hear the interviewers positively squirming. How do you respond to a guy talking baby talk to you, particulary when you grew up with those voices from childhood? Answer: you giggle awkwardly and rush to change the subject. It was so painful I had to turn off the radio this time, laughing nonetheless.

This is amusing, doing the rounds of the Blogosphere today.
<duh> The page is supposed to come back 404. Read the text. </duh>

I just discovered this: WhoRepresents.com. This must be a life-blood for journalists in the entertainment industry, as it tells you who are the talent managers for actors. The only drawback is that the domian can also be read WhorePresents.com. I guess it's appropriate either way.

Amazing. Steven Berlin Johnson posts three things to his brand new blog, and Nick gives him a place on his coveted blogroll. I've been begging Nick for a spot on his blogroll for months, and nothing, despite the fact that we hang out on the weekends. These FT men and their damned integrity.

I'm assuming this is legit. I recognize some of the quotes. (Via Mark Haas)

This poem is composed entirely of actual quotes from George W. Bush. The quotes have been arranged for aesthetic presentation by Washington Post writer Richard Thompson.

Make the Pie Higher
by George W. Bush

I think that we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses.
Rarely is the question asked,
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the Internet become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?
They misunderestimate me.
I am a pit bull on the pant leg of opportunity.
I know that the human being and the fish can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope, where
Our wings take dream.
Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!

What I want to know is when he said "I am a pit bull on the pant leg of opportunity," did he mean that he would bite the pant leg and voraciously cling to that opportunity, or that he would simply sniff at the opportunity and then piss on it?

Thanks to pal Glenn Fleishman for pointing out that our friend Toby Malina is a finalist for this ridiculous Microsoft contest:

The judges have chosen ten semifinalists, and now it's up to you to cast your vote for Ms. M.o.X.i.e. (Microsoft Office v. X Integrated Experience)! Ten entrepreneurial women from coast to coast have made it to the final stage and earned the chance to win $10,000 and a new iMac loaded with Microsoft Office v. X. All semifinalists will receive a copy of Microsoft Office v. X.

I'm just glad that the blogger Moxie isn't in the contest, or it might be a tough choice for me on voting. Anyway, please click and vote for Toby.

Our new site MarketingFix got picked up on Blogdex! Yay! I feel like a proud dad.

Shout out to my buddy Cameron Marlow. I have to say that even after befriending Cameron over the summer, I still used to check Daypop more often than Carmon's Blogdex, even tho they did similar things (namely showing you what are the most popular stories in the Blogosphere at any given moment) and Blogdex had been around longer. I think as much as anything it had to do with the previous black background on Blogdex that makes sites so hard to read.

Well, just in time for the apparent death of Daypop, Blogdex has a new look and seems to be better about getting titles right on features it points to (hmmm, actually on second thought, it could still use some improvement: the homepage for the new site Movelink comes up on Blogdex's list with the title "You Fucking Bastards!"), as well as some other new improvements (I love the "A Year Ago Today" feature, as if blogs were already historical markers). Well, Blogdex is now my primary stop for bloggy news (at least until Nick ever gets his thing together, still billed as due out Sep 02 on his homepage).

I'm no longer quite the Ryze fanatic I was when I first discovered the service, but I still find it interesting. Now Ross Mayfield did what I had at one time thought of: started a Ryze "tribe" on blogging. Tribes are an interesting feature on Ryze, letting like-minded folks identify their common interests, but it still leaves something to be desired. E.g., on this Blogger Tribe page, Ross has hand coded all the members of the tribes linked to their respective blogs, but not, unfortunately, to their Ryze pages, which should be an automatic feature of Ryze tribes in my opinion. Anyway, I'm sure most of you couldn't give a hoot, so I'll leave it at that. Just wanted to give a shout out.

Just one of the things I've been busy with lately: MarketingFix.com. Four blog buddies and I have launched this collaborative weblog about Internet marketing. If that's your bag, check it out!

Wired reports: "The U.S. State Department says Saddam Hussein's oldest son is a murderer, rapist, torturer and smuggler. He has also been known to send death threats by e-mail." Apparently from this email address: udaysaddamhussein@yahoo.com

Caught a bit of an interview w/ the author on the radio. Sounds interesting: a dictionary of rap slang.

I love this:

The secret is not a calm disposition
It isn't a deep inner strength
It isn't yoghurt or yoga or a good physician
The secret of longevity is length.

Garrison Keillor is truly our modern day Mark Twain. The guy is a such a great and prolific writer. I've been a fan of A Prairie Home Companion for years, proud to admit it. (I'm the East Coast child of Minnesota emegres.) Keillor is eminently qualified on the topic of this poem, having done A Prairie Home Companion in one form or another since 1969.

This is an excerpt from a longer poem titled "Longevity" from the Oct. 2, 1999 show, which one of their nameless web people tracked down for me. Thanks, whoever you are.

I haven't been blogging hardcore for a few weeks, so forgive me if everyone's already blogged about this, but what happened to Daypop now? It apepars to be dead again. Too bad, it had really enjoyed that site, but it appears to be dying a slow death for a while. I hope Nick jumps in soon with whatever he's working on.

I'm not going to vote today, and I blame the media. Sadly I'm not refusing to vote because of any principled stance. Nor am I not voting solely out of apathy and disgust with the system, tho close. No, the ugly truth is I am not voting because I'm a chronic procrastinator. (Boy, I hope no clients read this thing.)

Okay, I guess do have some personal responsibility in the matter. It's not only the media's fault, just mostly. I moved a year and a half ago 20 blocks within Manhattan, and I kept meaning to get around to updating my voter registration address. But, I had so many other things to do... Never did. As election season approached, I thought about it a few more times, but I actually made the call only three weeks ago. Turns out, that was already too late by a few days. You need to have registered your change of address by the same deadline as new voter registration: Oct. 4.

Hmmm. For all the money politicians spent on campaign ads, you would think some of them might have taken the opportunity to remind us of that important date. After all, low voter turn out is a fairly endemic problem for our struggling little democracy, isn't it? The media loves harping about it, so where was their public service announcement drive? Or government spending or political will?

Okay, this sounds lame in light of the fact that I'm obviously part of the problem, a "bad citizen." Whatever. I was only going to vote for the Marijuana Reform Party candidate for governor anyway (as Democrat Carl McCall is going to lose regardless of my vote). I admit it, I've inhaled, but I'm not exactly a marijuana activist. But in the shower this morning, I had to agree with the guy's platform (I noted earlier that I heard him in the governor's debate a couple of weeks ago): stop wasting money prosecuting dope smokers and distributors, legalize it (regulated like alcohol & cigarettes), cut out the crime, tax it, and legalize industrial hemp industry, and spend all that saved expenditures and new taxes on education, after-school programs and drug rehab programs, and you'd make a material boon to society.

Yeah, as if that might really happen.

The candidate only needs 50,000 seats for the party to be eligible for representation in all offices on state-wide ballots, which the Party views simply as a platform to keep the issue in front of voters. As a marketer, I can respect the efficiency of their strategy. It's one election return I'll be looking for tomorrow.

UPDATE:
Turns out none of the four "fringe" candidates got the requisite 50,000 (40,000?) votes necessary to qualify as standard parties. Bummer. I hope it wasn't by just one vote short...

I am amused at this AP story about NY Mayor Bloomberg telling the media they're too focused on criticizing instead of reporting on positive developments. After no reporters were interested in follow up questions on a new child mentorship program the mayor presented at his daily press conference, he told them this, according to the AP piece:

“Given the amount of space that you spend talking about when children go wrong, I’m sure there must be lots of questions about how we fix the problem rather than just sensationalize and criticize,” he said.

After pausing a moment, he said, “Nothing? OK. Thank you very much,” and walked briskly out of the room before reporters could ask him about other issues.

I was just checking out Mehanata's web site, and I can't stop chuckling. The web site describes this Chinatown establishment as a quaint ethnic restaurant:

Serving authentic Bulgarian & Southeast European foods, Mehanata is perfect for a quiet evening among friends in a typical atmosphere. The friendly staff and the live entertainment will definitely satisfy even the most complicated tastes. So if you have never experienced Bulgaria before, rush to Mehanata.

Just retyping that I can't help cracking up. Mehanata, in case you don't know it, isn't really famous for its food. In my circle, anyway, is better known as the "Bulgarian Disco":

• "perfect for a quiet evening among friends"
• "a typical atmosphere"
• "the friendly staff"
• "the live entertainment"

It "will definitely satisfy even the most complicated tastes" as advertised. But the idea of anyone showing up there on a Saturday night looking for a quiet evening with friends is too hilarious.

When I left last night with houseguests Bill & Twinkie around 2am, it seemed so early. We made the mistake of staying mostly sober. The place was still thronging, half a dozen people dancing on chairs and tables in varying states of undress, all the usual suspects (Elizabeth, Ildi, Allison, etc.) staying put for the action as we left (Gaby made a first time appearance and seemed to fit right in)...

This morning, Twinkie stared shell-shocked at the clock over our homemade omlett noon brunch, marveling at how late she and Bill had been sleeping throughout their visit to NYC (Pacific Northwesterners, they've never been to the Big Apple before). They're morning poeple. "We're on Rick time," she said.

You don't know the half of it, Baby.

Whew! Houseguests just left this afternoon after four days. It was wonderful catching up with Bill and Twinkie (actually Laura, but isn't it a great nickname for a cute, chipper blond?). It was their first time in NYC, so I showed them a whole lot of fun: Bulgarian Disco last night, soul food earlier with other friends at Spoonbread, brunch at Barney Greengrass, and that was all just yesterday (to say nothing of Dana's excellent East Village rooftop Halloween party last Thursday). And, as earlier noted, it was wonderful spending the previous weekend with Adi in Portland. And it was excellent entertaining another good friend visiting NYC earlier the previous week.

That's about as long as it's been since I've blogged much of anything. I have to say, fun (and expensive) as the past two weeks have been, I'm looking forward to having a quiet week getting stuff done this next week before Adi finally returns home (at last) the following Monday (YAAAY!!!).

Glad to see I called this correctly back in August: NY won the U.S. Olympic Committee's designation for the international competition for the location of the 2012 Olympics. Judges told the NY Times that NY won based on its superior plan and presentation:

Several board members said that they sensed in recent days that sentiment was shifting to New York, and that NYC2012's forceful, funny and highly detailed presentation to the United States Olympic Committee today further swayed votes.

. . . 

San Francisco sold what it had to sell, but New York sold what the people here wanted. There was no there there in San Francisco's presentation.

That's pretty much what I said in August based just on their respective web sites. The Times said the judges also had a problem with my major objection to the California plan:

Perhaps the starkest contrast was in how the two cities laid out their plans. New York situated all but three of its venues within the five boroughs. San Francisco envisioned a "Ring of Gold" that placed some events within the city, but many others were in Berkeley, Oakland, Santa Clara, San Jose and Palo Alto, home to Stanford University.

It was worse than that. They had events staged as far from San Francisco as Sacramento, L.A. and San Diego, on the border with Mexico, for Pete's sake. It was totally stupid. It was the San Francisco Olympics at all, it was the California Olympics. Granted, the NY plan does have a few events in Newark, NJ, but that's about 20 minutes by bus. I love being right.

The Times piece has the judges saying that NY won based really on the better professionalism of its final bid presentation: more attention to details, specificity in the numbers, better presentation flash and pizzazz, better celebrity spokespeople (Woody Allen, Itzhak Perlman, Cardinal Edward Egan, Robert DeNiro and Rudolph Giuliani vs. SF's Tony Bennett and Robin Williams), better music Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" and Lennon's "Imagine" (vs. "I Left My Heart in San Francisco"?), and so on. Sounds almost like one big ad campaign, in which case SF didn't have a chance against Madison Avenue.

The International Olympic Committee is to reach a decision among international contenders in 2005.

Nice scene on the subway this Saturday early afternoon, heading into Harlem on the 1 train. Two Hispanic teenagers, sitting seperately, a boy about 14 scribbling away into his Palm Pilot, a girl, maybe 18, with her IBM ThinkPad on her lap, managing her MP3 collection. Between them, leaning against the doors, an Asian guy in his 20s writing in his Palm Pilot. Going for the grand slam, I took out my Palm to make notes on all this.

Underneath my sweather and jacket, I was wearing my NYC Bloggers t-shirt. I see there are five other bloggers registered on NYCBloggers.com at my 125th St. Harlem subway stop. I think I'll drop them all a note about my building showing up in last night's video (see below).

I just finished watching The Last Seduction, a reasonably good 1994 thriller with a serious bitch as its anti-hero (played well by Linda Fiorentino, of the first Men in Black). What was quite freaky, though, was that the film featured numous exterior shots of my apartment building, the setting of the evil bitch and her husband's NYC apartment. Very weird. I can't believe the interior was filmed here, too, though, as I don't think there are any apartments in this building that are so big anymore.