May 2007

A week or two ago I linked to a video clip my friend made: Casino Royale with Cheese, a seriously funny film about how James Bond would handle being paired with a really annoying partner. It’s a great little piece of web satire that’s now been nominated at the MTV Movie Awards! Go vote for it!

It’s hard to believe that it’s been over a year since I read Krakatoa — The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883, by Simon Winchester. Because I loved that book so much, at some point around Christmas I bought A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906. I was not disappointed. Winchester managed again to make plate tectonics quite thrilling. It’s a fabulous book and — like Krakatoa — it’s amazing to learn how much of today’s political, religious, and socio-economic landscape has been influenced by monumental shifts (literally) in the planet’s physical landscape.

I finished the tale of San Francisco’s epic disaster late Sunday night and was pleasantly surprised to find that my fiancée had another of Winchester’s works sitting on one of our bookshelves. I read The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary on Memorial Day. I forgive the author his predilection for obscenely long titles because his writing is so brilliant. This third book was as awesome as the first two I read and I’ve added everything else he’s written to my Amazon wishlist.

On Sunday night we had dinner at The Lodge Steakhouse on La Cienega in Beverly Hills. The place was almost empty and for the better part of the night we had the entire large dining room to ourselves. For some strange reason this dark, rustic, wood-grained, hunting-outpost-themed restaurant was blasting hair-band hits of the late 70s and early 80s from a speaker inconveniently situated directly above our table. Aside from that oddity, though, the meal was delicious and the service was good. I’ll assume that there were so few other diners because of the holiday, because the steaks were perfect, it wasn’t that expensive, and it’s in a great location. Give it a shot if you’re looking for a nice New York strip.

Note: Just before chocolate desserts arrived in the nearly-deserted room, the hostess sat a party at the table right next to us. It was — coincidentally — the former neighbors of my fiancée’s parents: Hilary and Haylie Duff, along with Kevin Connolly (”E” from Entourage).

Great quote in an article at Gizmodo on the futility of enforcing copyright law:

According to blueprints from the Acme Company, the MPAA will next attempt to mount a large red rocket and light its fuse while aiming it at the place where the Malaysian movie pirates are eating strategically placed birdseed.

Friday Five: Websites I Currently Find Myself Visiting Multiple Times Each Day

• LifeHacker
• Metafilter
• UrbanDead
• What Would Tyler Durden Do?
• The Double B

According to bonkworld’s Amazing Days Calculator, “This is day number 12,386 for people born on June 26, 1973.” I’m mildly irritated that I didn’t do something special for my 10,000^th day on November 10, 2000. Must make a mental note to celebrate my 15,000^th on July 20, 2014. Hopefully by then I’ll be able to zip over to Maui with my jetpack.

The “assisted living facility” where my grandmother lived — Indigo Manor in Daytona Beach, Florida — just sent my mom and uncle an automated form letter. It was something along the lines of, “Please tell us how satisfied you are in the care we gave your loved one.” They’re really not very bright over there.

If my mom and uncle are still too upset to do so, I’m going to be the one sending them a reply: “We were completely satisfied … right up until the day you dropped her and broke her femur, then allowed her to spend over 36 hours in agony before telling anyone what had happened. Y’know. Right before she died because of complications from the emergency surgery. Aside from that, though, you were terrific.”

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Major bummer: The Samsonite® Black Canyon 22″ Wheeled Duffel that I ordered last week is out of stock and won’t arrive for at least two more weeks. My dad’s got one of these and I’ve been hunting for it online since early last year. I finally found one and was hoping it would be here in time for Memorial Day. We’re going to a friend’s wedding in the Ojai Valley. Now it looks like I’ll have to use my old craptacular bag. Damn.

My Five Eight Favorite NPR Names

1. Cokie Roberts
2. Nina Totenberg
3. Mandalit del Barco
4. Korva Coleman
5. Nora Raum
6. Corey Flintoff
7. Liane Hansen
8. Sylvia Poggioli

Casino Royale with Cheese

Tonight I found a pretty cool Photoshop Tutorial and used it to edit one of my favorite photos of the J.R. Bean Saloon on Thames Street in Bristol, RI. I’ve never actually been inside the place, but every time I’m in town I find myself taking shots of that wall. The one on the left is my original. The one on the right is my modified version. Click either one for more detail.

   

A few days ago a friend from a long, long time ago recently reinstalled AIM and contacted me out of the blue. While we were chatting I started to mention something about a road trip I’d taken in another life. I was going to say that I had once gotten lost in Washington D.C. on my way to Philly via I-95. What I found interesting was that — after years of living in Los Angeles — I almost referred to the East coast’s massive superhighway as “the” 95. My brain caught my fingers before I’d typed it that way, but it started niggling at me. In LA we honor all of the highways with the definite article. It’s not just 405. It’s the 405. You’d never tell someone, “Take 101.” You tell someone, “Take the 101.” Nobody — afaik — on the East coast refers to “the 95″. The only highway in Florida that gets a the is The Turnpike. In LA every highway gets a the.

And how about this? In Florida if you’re telling someone how to get from Jacksonville to Tallahassee you would say, “Take I-10 West until you smell the Seminoles.” But in California if you’re explaining how to get from Century City to Santa Monica you would say, “Take the 10 west until it ends.” Same road.

Anyone else ever notice that?

100 Movies, 100 Quotes, 100 Numbers — This is a really, really terrific example of YouTubery.

Great stuff from Ernie: Mister Wong, the Offensive Social Bookmarking Portal