thank god for espn.com

just a little shout out for espn360.com.

with all the storms and freaky weather, cable here in NYC has been spotty at best- pixelated, intermittent, especially on HD channels.

they had the spain- italy quarter final streaming online for free.

thank you sports gods for saving me from missing even a second of the game.

oh, and vaya espana!!! ole ole ole ole… ole… ole…

does this make the gap cool now?

or is this what happens when actors have no lines to read?

pay the writers, dammit!

figwit dances when he’s angry.

**spoiler alert**

only nerds of the highest order will even be able to understand this post, much less appreciate it.

i have recently, and belatedly, discovered and fallen in love with the flight of the conchords.  this may surprise some of you that know me and my absolute inability to tolerate spontaneous singing interspersed in storytelling- comedic or dramatic.  it’s nearly an allergy and it’s thisclose to requiring an epipen when encountered in large or especially egregious doses.

the wonder of all life, of course, is the exception to these hard and fast rules.  usually when something is so exaggerated it becomes sublime.  like moulin rouge.  or the aforementioned duo from new zealand.  of course, watching the first episode when having just returned from new zealand helps, not to mention tobey, murray’s bulldog (nice surprise in ep. 11).  the sillyness, the cleverness, the absolute adorable leads, it all adds up to pure magic.

now, most of my friends of the female persuasion love jemain, who is sort of the main guy, but i, friends, i heart bret.  he’s just so unassuming and adorable.  and compact.  with amazing sweaters.  and the sign-holding mentality.  plus, his hiphop alter ego, rhymenoscerous, and homage to footloose in the last episode are amazing.  and hilarious.  and subtle.  just like him.  sigh.

when espousing the many merits of bret mckenzie (not at the expense of the ridiculous muesli-loving perfectly dead-pan jemain clement), i was informed that part of what makes the show even funnier and self-referential is that young mr. mckenzie was actually in lord of the rings, the pride, glory, and singular export (facetious) of their native land.  he played an elf with one line in Return of the King.  “Elf Escort” is his official credit.  awesome.  i love it.  and also, it makes me giggle because my friends sometimes use “watching lord of the rings” as a euphemism for geek love.  fine, it only applies to me, but they do, too.

imagine my utter glee when entering my new office (that of the ringwraith) and noticing a screen grab of Bret as an elf in Return of the King taped to my wall.  i pointed this out to a co-worker who duly informed me that Mr. Elf Escort is somewhat of a LOTR nerd-dom phenomenon.  Before the movie was released, before Flight of the Conchords, fans became obsessed with this background character in the first installment- Fellowship of the Ring.  He said nothing, yet he captivated many.  They apparently cried out: “

Frodo

Is

Great…

Who

Is

That?”

hence, the moniker Figwit.  He has fans.  He has websites.  He has figures (got one on my desk).  Jealous?!

I guess I’m writing this to point this out to the two or three other fans who somehow missed this phenomenon.

Or maybe, I’m concerned because I think my new office might be like 1st and 1st; the nexus of the universe.  I bring this up in case I disappear without a trace one day.

Check for a worm hole under my desk.

he’s the boom boom king.

heeeeeeeeee.  Today, 22nd September 2009, marks the 1 year anniversary of the day I saw Bret “FIGWIT” Mc Kenzie having dinner at Arturo’s on Houston.  The old school wood-fired pizza is amazing.  I had just finished up a birthday dinner for Ms. Savory and was walking out when I saw him in his oh-so-FOTC striped sweater and scarf sitting in a booth near the front.  His back was to the door, so I looked right at him and did one of those spin-around-my-pack-of-friends move muttering “ohmygodit’sbretohmygodit’sbretohmygodit’sbret” and then running out the door*.  I started jumping up and down in front of the joint clapping, saying “YAY” and trying to explain my excitement to the crowd I was with- not so much on FOTC or LOTR. In any case, the two women sitting across from him saw me and started laughing, and told him, who also started laughing.  Joy.  I made the Rhymenocerous laugh.  Yay!
*After my world famous Liam Neeson incident, I never, ever try and interact with celebrities, especially when they’re at dinner, and doubly especially if I like them and don’t want to know that they’re gross.

mooks, maoris and .357 magnums

hi kids.

it’s been a tick since i last checked in with you, but i have been up to quite a bit.  i dropped into hong kong for a kip, caught on movies via qantas in demand, went to very many meetings, got a new roommate, took a bus tour up to northland and a boat through a hole in a rock, made friends with a traditional maori dance troupe, accrued 30K frequent flyer miles and shot some guns.

since so much has happned, i guess it’s best to sum up the highlights and key takeaways:

1. qantas has better business class than cathay pacific,
2. spiderman 3 was the biggest let down in my movie going career since, well, ever, i guess,
3. australia and new zealand may only be separated by the tasman sea, but they are worlds apart,
4. kiwis say “awesome” more than americans,
5. the all blacks might be the coolest rugby team on the planet.  but i’m such a poser, i’m basing that statement on the trivia from my bus tour driver and the cute jacket that i bought at the auckland airport,
6. i didn’t go to the “lord of the rings part” of new zealand (of which there are several), but i did go the house where the treaty between nz and england was signed, as well as the world’s biggest war canoe,
7. i am now, officially, a tree hugger.  there’s a kauri tree, somewhat like the american redwood, in new zealand that the maoris believe bring you good energy if you hug it, so i complied,
8. got some good business done,
9. signed on some new agents,
10. took on even more duties since my domestic counterpart is leaving the company, but will get to have some fun with it,
11. nz also has law and order a lot, though i was often too jetlagged to make the 8:30 showtime,
12. yes, flight of the conchords is  popular there,
13. there is a store in australia called mooks.  seriously.  it’s very trendy.  can’t figure out why it hasn’t made it to the us, though…
14. LA still sucks, but having a gps in your car makes it almost bearable,
15. LA kind of rules for having a gun club downtown that you can go to, rent any kind of non-automatic and shoot.  i tried a glock 9 mm (what the coppers in nyc use- thought it might be prudent to give it a test drive in case i go that way).  also tried a .357 magnum revolver with .38 caliber bullets.  MUCH better for target practice,
16. next time i want to try rifles and shotguns,
17. i’ll probably never make it as a sharpshooter,
18. hailed the return of russel crowe during 3:10 to yuma, which needed a better director to handle that star power,
19. ate like crap,
20. watched t.o. devour the giants on sunday night football, which is the only way i could ever tolerate a dallas-led giants loss,
21. saw bubba on letterman whilst in oz.  still love and worship him and need his new book,
22. decided elvis should rise from the dead to take out all those responsible for the “viva viagra” campaign- pfizer, the ad agency and the people in his estate that OKed that deal,
23. was amired by a hot (female) bartender for my choice of drink (whiskey on the rocks) and my job,
24. got worked on by an aussie physiotherapist and was massively impressed.  he thinks i should be much more healed and is going to hunt for someone in new york to help me,
25. i love bubba.  i know it’s a repeat, but i like round numbers.  and i really love him.

oh, and the catalan has been IMing; he can’t wait for me to visit.  i gotta try and swing that.

and now for something completely different…

i am leaving tomorrow for a well earned and much needed ten day sojourn to the canary islands and the fine city of barcelona.  i’m so freaking out trying to get things done that i have yet to pack or even realize that i’m actually, really, truly going on vacation.  it’s been forever.

all that being said, i thought it might be an appropriate time to weigh in on the mid-season slum fest that is summer tv.  some highlights:

• age of love (mondays, 9 pm, nbc).  the premise of this show is that mark phillipoussis, bachelor aussie tennis pro, is looking for love.  the diminutive husband of everyone’s favorite perky skeletal morning show hostess, mark consuelos has cooked up an interesting “experiment” for our love-lorn man from oz.  a bunch of hotter than they have any right to be “40 somethings” vie for his attentions against a group of generically implanted brain dead “20 somethings.”  ok.  this show is awful.  horrible.  train-wreck appointment television.  and yes, it’s on my dvr.  because every week i say i’m not going to watch it and then joel mchale serves me an incredible montage of nonsense that forces me to tune in.  BEST PART: the fact that the premise is drilled into your head every five to thirty seconds with voice overs, visual cues, symbols and text.  also, there’s a digerydoo nailed to the wall of mark’s bachelor pad.

• rock of love with bret michaels (sunday, 9 pm, vh1).  don’t let the lack of flavor flav or new york get you down, kiddies!  vh1 goes back to the bottom of the cultural barrel to bring you a rock and roll version of flav’s quest for a “lady.”  tattoos, implants, drinking, cursing, cat fights and eyeliner abound.  despite my junior high love for ricky rockett and my new-found surreal life inspired love for cc deville, i have nothing for bret.  about all i can say for him is that he seems to make sense.  within his frame of logic of course.  HIGHLIGHT: the abuse of alcohol that precipitates subtitles, which are as filled with nonsense and ambiguity as the speech that inspires it.

• scott baio is 45.. and single!  (sunday, 10 pm, vh1).  no, it’s not chachi in a house full of sluts vying for his attention.  it’s the documentation of scott’s journey to explore his fear of commitment including his hiring of a life coach, cutting off his girlfriend, guy time with his trio of buddies in LA (think entourage fast-forwarded twenty years), including wayne, the older brother from “the wonder years.”  he’s charming, fucked up, and the premise is interesting.  his coach makes him visit all his exes to figure out what went wrong (including his first.  none other than…. joanie!!!).  BEST PART: previews of him having to cut off his ‘turtle,’ the guy that can’t get laid without him, so sabotages scott’s attempts to better himself.  OR when he “bumps into” cliff howard at his agent’s office.  OR when turtle II tries to get said agent to book him a job.  OR when he calls henry winkler who answers the phone “scott baio, as i live and breathe…”  and all this on the first episode.  i have high hopes for this one.

• World Series of Pop Culture (Tuesday, 9 pm, vh1).  simultaneously allows you the opportunity to frustrate yourself with how much you can’t remember and horrify yourself with how much you know about this shit.  i mourn that sunny d can’t participate because she works for viacom and that we were both turned down for who wants to be a millionaire pop culture edition, despite passing the written test (damn you, abc!).  BEST PART: an entire category dedicated to my boyfriend, alec baldwin.

• the spelling bee/ don’t forget the lyrics (i don’t know and i don’t care).  another one of those pop cultural two-fers.  i’m not sure which is the chicken or which is the egg, but i do know that it matters not a bit.  one has joey fatone from n’ sync and the other one has wayne brady.  no, i’m not kidding.  satan’s come a-collecting, i guess.  BEST PART: the “final countdown” sequence that the soup has used to wonderful effect.

• the closer (Monday, 9 pm, TNT).  the best show on summer tv, hands down.  for reals.  it’s interesting, well written, well acted and fun.  kyra sedgwick rocks wither her ridiculous outfits, clever ruses and pathological sweet tooth.  her character is probably the most fully realized female character ever to grace the small screen.  she’s not perfect and there are no apologies.  also, she has the HOTTEST boyfriend- an fbi agent named fritz (played by jon tenney).  he’s sexy, smart, and just puts up with her shit without being a lapdog.  also, it has j.jonah jameson (j.k. simmons) as her perturbed former lover/ boss, the security guard from mannequin and detective daniels- a black, not crazy version of angelina jolie.  BEST PART: did i mention fritz?

sidebar: for those of you who wonder what kind of tv floats bubba’s boat, it seems that the once and future president(s) tivo 24 and grey’s anatomy.  sunny d got to see the mrs. speak at viacom yesterday.  she said she was amazing.  and i said, finally, i’m investing in the right thing.  that’s right: hillary ’08.

blast from the past

do you guys remember this?  i think it only aired in the ny, nj, ct tri-state area, so the local yokels’ ears may perk up a bit.  for the rest of you, the beat may seem familiar as it is the basis for the busta rhymes song “dangerous,” from which he also took many of the lyrics.  apparently, he only realized it after the song had been released and hit the top of the charts.  he tried to do the right thing by the psa council, but they didn’t mind.  some accountant or something wrote it and i don’t think it was ever copyrighted.  

 lorla, this one’s for you:

how do you mourn the man who taught you to silence a gun with a potato?

oh no, you guys!  mr. wizard died today.  i’m so sad; he was awesome.  he’s probably the reason i love science so much. 

i do not want to hear from you kids who don’t remember when a cable box resembled a blender, except the buttons brought you to hbo, espn, cnn, a fuzzy porn channel and nickelodeon instead of puree, blend, mix and chop.  the man used to do things in his kitchen set that were so awesome and fun.  and when you made a rocket out of the cardboard roll inside of a paper towel roll and some baking soda and set it off in your kitchen, your mom couldn’t even really get mad because it was science.

i remember learning how to make so many fun and interesting things on that show.  damn.  he was like a mashup between captain kangaroo and macguyver- it doesn’t get better than that when you’re a kid. 

RIP, Don Herbert. 

things to do on a rainy day

that is if you’re an enormous nerd like me.

1.  Watch a Lifetime movie starring Jenna Elfman as a woman obsessed with a surgeon who has invented an entire relationship in her head (as well as a gauzily-lit psychiatrist and a contempt of court-prone journalist).  Best line from the court-appointed psychiatrist: “she has seven of the ten traits of an assassin.”  …?  I didn’t know these had been catalogued.  Fortunately, the good people at Lifetime TV have their eyes on things.

Aside: Thank god people don’t diagnose themselves with imagined illnesses based on Lifetime plots like they do on WebMD.  My friend Christina jokes that she hates that website because somehow, whenever she feels ill and researches her symptoms, she ends up with a diagnosis of testicular cancer and the prognosis does not look good.  The Lifetime result would be neuro-eroticism (Jenna’s official diagnosis) or imaginary child syndrome (featured in an excellent production starring Rita Wilson and Victor Garber, by the way).

2. Color in your coloring books.  Yeah, you heard me.  I do indeed have coloring books.  And man, do I need some new ones.  At this point I’m pretty much down to the German Sesame Street coloring book I got as a freebie at an old job.  It’s not very challenging, but it is awesomely sterotypical as several of the scenes face pages that firmly instruct kiddies on exaclty which colors to use and how one must play properly. 

3.  Brush your teeth a lot.  For some reason, being lazy makes my mouth feel dirty.  God help me if a Freudian gets a hold of this sentence.

4.  Watch Empire Strikes Back.  Awesome, it is.

5.  Play word games on a website designed for seven year olds.  It’s not that I’m looking for easy- I can usually nail the Sunday Times crossword in half an hour flat- I just need enough points to buy my virtual pet some food and books.  I don’t want my red, bowtie wearing penguin to be considered stupid, after all.

6. Whatever you do, don’t clean, organize, balance your check book, pay bills, write to people or make overdue phone calls.  That sounds like work, man.  And we cannot have that on our rainy day off. 

7. Write inconsequential entries on your blog to bide time until the Psychic Detectives marathon begins. 

YES, I am totally one of those nerds (LOST theories)

I’m having yet another one of those HOLY SHIT moments about LOST, this one specifically relating to last night’s season finale.  So, if you’re not caught up, be warned, spoilers and ridiculous theories abound.

 1.  I think Jacob is in the coffin at the Haffs/ Drawlor* Funeral Home.  Jack would care because his life sucks after leaving the island, but Kate does not because her life has obviously improved. 

2.  Thanks to the bigger nerds out there, we know that the obit that so messes Jack up is for J…. antham of New York (for sure ruling out Sawyer) and the date of the obit is April 5, 2007.  How do we know this?  Because of the blessed geeks with HDTV out there who recognized the headline in the paper as belonging to an actual LA Times article:

april 5th story

obit closeup

Scratch that, I’m back to thinking it’s Locke- maybe as an amputee (that’s why the coffin seems small).  There’s no confirmation that Locke doesn’t have a last name that he doesn’t use.  After all, the real “Sawyer” wasn’t much of a father, and admitted he went by many names, so Locke might be the name of one of his foster parents.  But if it IS Locke, why didn’t Helen (Katy Segal) at least come?  You know what, it’s definitely Locke. 

Back to Jacob, we know that the creators have a serious thing for English philosophers, especially proponents of utlitarianism (which I totally studied my sophmore year in college and promptly forgot).  The icon of which is Jeremy Bentham.  Why can’t Jacob’s last name be Bentham?  He doesn’t have to be the Jacob on the Hanso board of directors- if he was, why would he allow Ben to kill all of his staff? 

Bentham’s biggest influences were John Locke, David (Desmond?) Hume, Jean-Jacques (Danielle?) Rousseau- see a pattern here?  All the people with whom the Island has an extra special connection.  Also, John (Kate) Austin-  a philosopher with ideas about moral and written law.

But the Bentham kicker is this thing called the Panopticon.  You gotta look this thing up.  I’m sure the similarities to the island and it’s different stations are no coincidence.

panopticon for dummies

or for those of you with even more free time than me:

panopticon for philosophy majors and/or masochists

Oh!  Also, since Patchy (Mikhail) seems to be immortal (surviving harpooning, brain aneurysm, etc.), as does Richard (mr. eyeliner), maybe they were born there OR came to the island aboard The Black Rock?  Richard was wearing pirate-y like clothes in Ben’s flashback to his youth and Mikhail’s got that eye patch.  Visual clues?  Normally, I don’t love all things pirate (in fact I now hate them, thank you Disney), but there IS a galleon on the island.

I know tomorrow I’ll have changed my mind again and found tons of new evidence to back up my new cockamamie theory, but I’m sticking with this for now.

Good thing we only have till February 09 to expound these theories.  As long as ABC and co. keep us going with the fake ads and websites and guerilla marketing…

we’ll all have forgotten about it until the DVD comes out.

* an anagram of Flash Forward

other goodies:

ben’s diary

jacob

mt. fuji is a very shy mountain. hai! aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh hai!

cue up the Vapors, it’s time for my “observations on tokyo” email.

Shortly after writing my last entry, I got up, got out and went shopping in Shinjuku. This led to three, no four, observations:

1. Nearly everyone in Tokyo is really well dressed. At all times. For all occasions.
2. Shopping seems to be the national sport as all the centers, malls and department stores were stuffed to the gills with browsers and buyers.
3. This place is not nearly as Americanized as is portrayed in the media. Aside from the proliferation of Starbucks, of course.
4. Hai! It’s like “smurf.” It seems to mean everything. You hear it all the time. At the beginning of sentences, as punctuation, in the middle of words…

Also, people are a lot louder than I expected. I was in a trendy store called Laundry buying the expected hilariously translated t-shirts. There was a sales girl, very nice, helping me out with her arsenal of english language shopping phrases so that I could use my inane hand gestures a wee bit less. Anyway, when not helping me, she was just yelling. Of course I have no idea what she was saying, but I could tell that she wasn’t talking to anyone in particular and all the sentences trailed off in a “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hai!”

I took one of those guided tours that I generally avoid like the plague, this one to see Mt. Fuji and the hot springs at Hakone. My well earned “day off.” We drove out to see the mountain, which is way cooler even than it looks in photos and on TV. It totally stands out from the mountains around it, and seems ultra special. Apparently, it’s also a very shy mountain, as it likes to hide behind the clouds, so if you see it, you’d better take pictures immediately. Since it rained like crazy yesterday, there were mudslides and we couldn’t get too close. We went to a peace shrine instead, which was beautiful.

Then off to lunch at a hotel (I was the only person on a bus of forty that chose not to have “western style” chicken, but opted for the Japanese lunch instead. Weird.) then cable cars over the mountain to the springs. Any of you who know me well are going to be very proud when you see the photos of this thing.

Then, we got to Owakudani Valley with all the springs, reeking like sulphur as hot springs tend to do. The draw for this place, though, is that they boil eggs in the sulphur and iron filled springs, which turn black from the combination of minerals. They say if you eat an egg, you add seven years to your life. I bought “one” (which turned out to be six) for the novelty, convinced it would be disgusting. It tasted just like a regular hard boiled egg. Score seven years for me, without foul effects. I shared four of them with French Canadian pilots and stewards and then brought the last one back to the hotel for a snack (14 years!!!); my bag may never be rid of the smell.

Then we took a “pirate ship” across Lake Ashi. I don’t know why it’s a pirate ship. Our guide suggested because the other company runs plain boats, it gives them an edge. Ridiculous.

Finally, I took a bullet train back to the city and then walked around for a while looking for that section of Tokyo that you always see in the movies- you know, the Blade Runner looking part. I think I found it, but I’m not sure. This city has so many downtowns.

I lucked into a subway station (my own line, no less). Lucked into guessing which might be my stop by comparing general locations of landmarks and ended up a block from my hotel. Oh, and I found the gaijin. They’re on the subway. I was wondering where all the whiteys were.

That’s all for today. I have real business meetings tomorrow, all day. Then Harajuku for ridiculous souvenir shopping on Weds before I head out.

Ah, Tokyo, I barely knew ye.

Ciao, kiddies.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, no Law & Order, at least not yet. These people are clearly missing out.