Keeping tallies

Molly, Lisa, and I went to see Suburbia on Sunday and we sat a few rows behind Fran Drescher. I'm not sure I would have recognized her, but her voice is unmistakable. Credit to Lisa for spotting her though...

Electronic voting machines already changing Democratic votes to Republican

Several South Florida voters say the choices they touched on the electronic screens were not the ones that appeared on the review screen -- the final voting step. Gary Rudolf touched the screen for gubernatorial candidate Jim Davis, a Democrat, but the review screen repeatedly registered the Republican, Charlie Crist.

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Random picture of the day

Since groceries at our local Food Emporium are so expensive, we've been ordering online from Fresh Direct. It's cheaper and we get the convenience of home delivery. The only issue is that we don't get to see what we're buying ahead of time. Certain items, such as carrots, are priced based on weight, but you can't order based on weight. You simply enter the number of carrots that you want, they pick them out, weigh them, and charge you accordingly. So in our last order, I ordered four carrots. I didn't realize that they would pick out freakishly large carrots to bring up the weight. Pictured above is one of my freak carrots alongside a standard baby carrot. I got three servings out of that thing...

Turd Ferguson

On Saturday, Karie and I attended a taping of Celebrity Jeopardy. The special, week-long event was taped in Radio City Music Hall. It was pretty fun, but I was amazed at how fast it went. When I went to the Daily Show, I spent more time waiting around than I spent actually watching the show. Jeopardy was much quicker and more efficient. We started waiting in line outside the theater around 9:30 and we were in our seats by 10:15. The show began minutes later.

The celebrities for our taping were Soledad O'Brien (CNN), Harry Shearer (Simpsons), and Isaac Mizrahi (Designer). Mizrahi was definitely the most entertaining as he was incredibly flamboyant and provided comedic relief.

Before the actual game, they ran through an entire practice round. Standing in for Alex during the practice round was some random guy. They played the entire game in the practice round and even included the "meet the contestants" part. I'm not sure if this is standard Jeopardy practice. (Eric?) The questions during this round were comedically easy. One category was called "stupid answers" and the clues contained the answers. For example, one clue was: (to paraphrase) In 1968, the Beatles released an album with a stark, white cover which gave it this name. Answer: What is the white album? (This clue was extra funny because they used almost the same question on an SNL Celebrity Jeopardy) During the actual taping, they used a category called "Stupid Answers: New York Edition." It was just like the practice round, but this time they were all easy questions about New York.

During the practice round, the people in the audience were answering out loud as if they were watching at home. Before the actual game began, Johnny Gilbert (the announcer) came out and told everyone to be sure not to call out the answers. Of course, no one heeded his request. After each question, you could hear murmurs of answers circulating through the crowd.

During commercial breaks, Alex Trebek took questions from the audience. Some were benign and boring, some were bizarre, and some were funny. One little kid asked which contestants Alex favored the most. One woman asked if he was a Yankees fan. (He answered that he was a Yankees fan, a Mets fan, a Redsocks fan...) One woman asked if his TV was working properly. This led to quite a few murmurs of WTF before Alex explained that his TV repair man had asked him if he could get a ticket for his mom. My favorite question was asked by a twenty-something guy. He asked Alex what year the Magna Carta was signed. Alex answered 1216 and the guy corrected him with 1215. This led to quite a bit of laughter in the crowd.

Each contestant got their own special category listing on the board. O'Brien's was C"NN", Shearer's was This category goes to 11, (he was in This is Spinal Tap) and Mizrachi's was Isaac-ly. One thing I want to note is that Soledad O'Brien went to Harvard and anchors CNN's morning news show, but failed to answer some key geographical and political clues. They didn't tell us anything about giving away show secrets, so I'll share. O'Brien got a daily double and said, "I don't normally take risks, but it's for charity, so $5,000." (Apparently she doesn't care about the charity getting money) Her question was this: "Name 2 of the 4 states with a double N in it's name. " She stared blankly at Alex until her time ran out. She didn't even get one.

Final Jeopardy was somewhat hard for the Celebrity edition. It was, "Of the 5 permanent members of the UN security council, which one is the smallest in area." I figured that O'Brien would be the only one to answer correctly. She didn't. She said France. A good guess, as it's the second smallest and is at least one of the 5. Mizrachi answered with "my apartment." and Shearer answered correctly with "United Kingdom." For what it's worth, I leaned over to Karie and whispered the right answer. I'm pretty sure that makes me smarter than the Harvard girl. (O'Brien is, after all, the woman who sent me an autograph that said, "To Koss.")

The episode will air on November 14th.

...Just a Dog Smoking a Cigarette Outside Pottery Barn

I heard an interview on NPR with Chuck Palahniuk yesterday and he was talking about his fan mail event. This seems like a cool opportunity, so I thought I would share it with you. If you mail Chuck a letter during the month of October, (following strict guidelines) he'll respond with a letter or package. He said that he's been known to send very interesting/unique responses.

The day has finally come! Chuck is allowing you all the month of October to write him letters via his agent at Donadio & Olsen. It's been about two years since the last fanmail window was opened and Chuck has been very busy inbetween. So many of you probably thought this day would never come again. But Chuck has set aside much of the Fall and Winter to answer every piece of mail sent to him. And I can tell you that he's already cooking up some new surprises for the reply mail he sends back to each of you.

Now, as always, there are some very important ground rules Chuck has in place that you all must adhere to. The consequences for not following these rules will be Chuck does not reply to your letter... or even worse, it never gets to him and ends up in a trash basket at his Agent's office.

The Guidelines:

- Letters must be postmarked within the month of October, 2006. I'd encourage people to start writing their letters this last week of September, and then hit the post office the first week of October. Don't do a mad rush in the remaining days of October the way people did last time. The earlier you get your letter sent off, the quicker he'll reply to it.
- No packages are allowed. This includes sending him books you want signed. Letters only!
- Please type out your letters in a clear, legible font. No hand-written notes. No oddly colored ink or papers. Chuck will toss these letters for the ones he doesn't need a map to figure out.
- Return addresses must be made super-clear and be printed on both your envelope AND on the letter itself, and like the letter, be typed out in a legible font. Put it this way, if Chuck can't read your return address, you'll never hear back from him.

Last time around, Chuck asked you all to state your goals. This time around, he'd like to hear more about that, but he'd also like to hear about a recent accomplishment you're proud of. Work, school, a baby...

He also stated that it takes up to four months to respond to some letters -- just
because of that inevitable bulk that comes in the last few days of the window. So to make sure someone gets a response, they should use a mailing address that will still
be valid for the next six months.

Important: Also, remember that the way this works is, you write Chuck your letter. He reads it, responds with his own letter/package, and that's it until the next fanmail window. Every year we do this I get people begging me to let them send a follow-up letter to Chuck to thank him for the reply letter he wrote them. What these people fail to realize is that everyone wants to do that. So you'll just have to be patient with your Thank You letters, or better yet, tell Chuck in person how much his reply meant to you next time you see him read.

Okay, start your engines. Fanmail window opens on October 1st, 2006. Please address your letters to the below:

Edward Hibbert
Donadio and Olson, Inc.
ATTENTION: CHUCK PALAHNIUK FANMAIL
121 W. 27th St. Suite 704
New York, N.Y. 10001

Have fun!

Random picture of the day

Lisa and I went to Bryant Park to study and we passed this scene on the way there. I'm not really sure what the deal was. There were a few people standing around taking pictures, but for the most part, no one seemed to care. Two police officers were standing nearby, but didn't appear concerned. There were no police cars, fire trucks, or even a tow truck. It was bizarre...

Update: I asked about this at work and someone told me that they're filming a movie there. I don't have a citable source, but it makes sense.

State turned blue (What is that you said? You gotta whistle in the wind and again...)

I am happy to report that the latest polls show the democrats leading in both the Senate and the House races for the first time in...well, a really long time. (2002?) So what caused this shift in voter opinion? It must be the awful mess we got ourselves into in Iraq, right? Nope. Ok, so then it's the brushing aside of Habeas Corpus? The legalization of torture? The rewriting of the Geneva Conventions? Illegal wiretaps? The secret prisons? No, of course not. The American people aren't concerned with such petty issues. The recent swing in the polls is no doubt a result of the Foley scandal. Don't get me wrong, I'll take the lead regardless of the reason, but come on, seriously? What is it about this country that causes us to turn a blind eye to everything except a sex scandal? The 90s were a time of a roaring economy and peaceful prosperity, (for the most part) but all that people remember is an intern and a blue dress. Now we're in a time of crisis where our civil liberties are being tossed aside like yesterday's spinach and the whole world sees us as imperialistic aggressors, but the biggest news to come out of Washington is a horny, old, gay, alcoholic, priest-abused Congressman pedophile. Absolutely, it is a problem. Absolutely, there should be an investigation. Absolutely, if the GOP was covering it up, they should be held accountable. But come on, why is this the only thing people can use to get interested in politics? I love discussing current events, but most people I interact with on a daily basis have little to no exposure to world and political events. When the detainee bill was passed, I was hard pressed to find people to discuss it with. Now, it seems like everyone is an expert on FL-16 and Mark Foley. (except maybe Bill O'Reilly) As soon as the scandal fervor dies down, everyone is going to go right back to the rock they so love to live under. It's frustrating.

And on a side note: It doesn't really matter what the polls (or the electorate) say, because as long as we're using Diebold voting machines, the Republicans are going to mysteriously win...again.

Engrishtastic

Coming home to find menus waiting for you is a common occurance in New York. I came home today to find these two and I just had to share them.

There is so much wrong with this that I don't feel the need to even comment...

It's a good thing they printed this as a numerical list because I would hate to have to read it in paragraph form.Their customers aren't known for their grammar...or punctuation...or making very much sense.

That is good news. Not only has their deal expired, but they printed it to specifically point that out.

Giving In

I started this blog nearly a year ago with the intention of using it strictly to share entertaining stories from my life in New York. I was hesitant to even do that much because I have a negative stereotype of bloggers. Most blogs are little more than people whining about their feelings or posting links to youtube videos and I didn't want to fall into that category. Now, however, in light of recent requests, I'm going to open it up to a little more opinion. Nothing all that entertaining has been happening in my life lately, so there hasn't been anything to post.

The one thing that has been on my mind lately (or always as it may be) is politics. I am a big fan of www.electoral-vote.com. It compiles the latest polls for senate and house races and displays them in an easy to view map of red and blue states. I recommend that you check it out.