March 2005

Here’s one for the “weird” file: GIANTmicrobes! I always wanted a stuffed rhinovirus!

We make stuffed animals that look like tiny microbes — only a million times actual size! Each 5-to-7 inch doll is accompanied by an image of the real microbe it represents, as well as information about the microbe.

link via 8 Ways to Sunday

I had a great Easter weekend.

• Dinner at La Loggia’s Friday night. (Inexplicably sans web site for linking. A great restaurant in Studio City. Don’t sit in the patio area if you can help it.)
• A fairly uneventful but relaxing Saturday topped off by The Upside of Anger. (A wonderful flick, I loved it.)
• Fell asleep watching Pierce Brosnan’s stint on Inside the Actors Studio.
• Up at 6 for a long-overdue 3.2 mi run on Sunday.
• Mass at Church and then dinner with the gf’s ‘rents followed by The Incredibles. (What a terrific movie! I can’t believe I waited so long to see it!)
• I also started reading The Promise of a Lie by Howard Roughan. (Only about 150 pages so far, but it has me hooked enough to continue.)
• Using the magic that is TiVo, a co-worker of mine recorded Green Day’s performance on Last Call with Carson Daly and we managed to rip it to DVD and then mp3, so for the hell of it, I uploaded for you an awesome live version of Jesus of Suburbia from American Idiot.
• For the grand finale I organized the rest of my ‘04 receipts and bank statements while listening to classic late 80s hair bands.

Amazing! According to this test I am an English Genius. It was not a surprise to see that I scored a perfect 100%, actually, on the advanced sections. What was shocking was that I scored in the embarrassingly-low 80s on what were supposed to be the simple sections. That, and the fact that I could perform under 90% on any section and still be considered a “genius” by this test. I wonder if that’s because I did so well or because so many others have done so poorly.

(I don’t know that “English Genius” is how I would describe someone with good skillz in the ol’ vocab department, though. Doesn’t that phrase just make you think that I’m a genius from Merrye Olde England?)

I just found one of the top ten funniest things on the Internet. Some crazy kids started making lists based on songs, and they are just hysterical. Here’s one of my favorites, but there are hundreds. You must go read them.

• It is time to:
  • play the music
  • light the light
  • put on makeup
  • dress up right
• perform certain tasks on The Muppet Show tonight
  • meet the Muppets
  • raise the curtain
• Affirmation to get things started
• Declaration that The Muppet Show is
  • Most sensational
  • Inspirational
  • Celebrational
  • Muppetational

link via Boing Boing

Almost every day I pass this squat, imposing building on my way to work. It makes me laugh every morning. Today I happened to simultaneously have my camera on me and get stopped at the red light across the street. I snapped this photo so you can chuckle at it, too.

Another Thursday night, another becky show at the Roxy. This was — if I remember correctly — the tenth Thursday in a row (excluding St. Patrick’s) that I’ve been there. This time I experienced Los Angeles parking nirvana when I got there. Not only did I get a meter right across the street, but it was broken. (I’ve since been told that parking at a broken meter is against the law, but I didn’t know that last night and I didn’t get a ticket, so the parking gods were smiling on me.) Another dinner at Rainbow Room and then just a terrific performance next door; becky’s been really going over the top lately. They threw in a few brand new songs, including a cover of the Beatles‘ Rain. After the show it was back to the Rainbow Room for a few hours of pizza and Grolsch with the band.

Congratulations to my little sister, Michelle! She just got accepted to Lesley University! Right in the middle of Harvard Square! How cool is that?

Yesterday I cut out of work a bit early, hopped on a Hawker 800 with my girlfriend and her family, and flew to Las Vegas to catch Cirque Du Soleil’s “O” at the Bellagio. Except for a quick trip to the Green Valley Ranch last year, this was actually my first trip to Vegas since I moved to LA. (We ate at Michael Mina’s — I had the lobster pot pie; it was incredible.) We goofed, though … dinner ran until almost 8 so we missed “O” — we thought it started at 8 but it really started at 7:30. Rather than cry over spilled milk, we decided to make the most of it and just played in the casino for a few hours. Then we jumped on a Citation XL and got home by 11:30. I had a great time; Vegas is pretty cool. Someday I’m going to have to go for a long weekend or something.

Sometimes it’s ultra-cool to live in Los Angeles. My girlfriend’s little sister is in town, so we went to Mr. Chow for dinner tonight. (It’s only the best restaurant in the universe, so if you ever get a chance, I highly recommend it. Sly Stallone and Burt Reynolds were sitting together at the next table, which was pretty nifty.) Then when I got home, suprise, there’s my buddy Rob guest-starring on CSI: Miami. (Yes, believe it or not it’s filmed here in LA.) And — hell — I forgot to mention that just the other weekend right on my street I bumped into and subsequently had Sunday brunch with Bill Caco.
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This month’s issue of Discover Magazine featured an article on The Math of . . . Changing Lanes. It was the usual drek on reasons why I shouldn’t drive like a maniac. It’s the sort of thing my mom would clip and mail to me with an “I told you so”-type note attached. Sneaking its way into the first column is this almost-too-crazy-to-believe fact:

… drivers are about 35 percent less likely than usual to die in an accident in the month after receiving a traffic ticket, and that driving fatalities increase immediately following the Super Bowl — 68 percent in the losing team’s state but only 6 percent in the winning team’s state.

So they’re saying that February (or, lately, with the longer post-season, March) *always* has more traffic fatalities than January (or February)?! That’s hard to believe. That’s very hard to believe.

I really love that I didn’t have to stare at the page and wonder. I knew immediately, based on the context of the rest of the site, what MFY Fan meant. In other news: I just got what is probably my fifteenth or twentieth Sox cap. There’s something alarmingly tragically poetic about a man so hopelessly searching the world for a cap to replace what was “the perfect cap”.

One of the biggest issues apartment dwellers have to face today is Invisible Donkey infestation.
link via 50 cups

I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical. So I figured I should share with you. Download my Pirates of Penzance “Modern Major-General” random-lyric generator and you, too, will be able to tell at sight a Mauser rifle from a javelin.

Add the function moderngeneral() where you want to print the lyric. I have mine in place of bloginfo(’description’) in my header.php file, but you can place it in your sidebar or anywhere you want.

Not many other people can say this: Today is the five year anniversary of my first blog entry. (This site’s been running for about nine years, but I didn’t start blogging until five years ago today.) It seems like just yesterday … but this is my 2,550th post …