Dis-credit

I bought the DVDs of the first 2 seasons of News Radio a few months back. Amazon had it for around $15 (it’s $30 as I check now). It’s one of those shows that I never caught regularly, but every rerun I’ve stumbled across has made me laugh pretty hard. So, since we had a double-strikeout last night with Netflix — Art School Confidential (terrible: we gave up and turned it off after 40 minutes) and For Your Consideration (even worse: we gave up after 10 minutes) — we decided to go back to Foley, Tierney, Hartman, et al. and have some guaranteed laughs.

There are only two problems with watching News Radio nowadays, and they’re both in the credits:

and

To paraphrase Tom Petty, I can’t decide which is sadder.

Alter-Native

Sorry for the lack of posts, dear reader. I’ve been pretty burned out, following that big issue of my mag, and haven’t slept too well. Sometimes it’s difficult for me to decompress after that. But I got 8 hours of sleep last night! This entailed turning in at 9:30pm, but hey!

I still didn’t feel particularly inspired to write this morning, but at least there wasn’t a strange buzzing in my head anymore. Yay!

Sicko, Psycho: what’s the diff?

I’m pretty sure when Michael Moore proposed that America’s healthcare system adopt the model of the NHS in Britain

Now, the British system is really government-owned, in the sense that the government owns and runs the hospitals, the government employs the doctors. And so, they work for the government, so it’s very much a government-owned and -run and -controlled program in Britain. And again, you know, everything is free.

— he wasn’t thinking of this guy and his pals:

No hike

I know I graced you guys with two straight weekends of great hike photos, but that streak comes to a close this weekend. What’s sad is that the weather today is absolutely gorgeous, and there are plenty of trails to hit.

However, I’m rendering unto Caesar this weekend, laying out the pages for that Top Companies issue. It requires a ton of nit-picky work, and if I don’t get this part wrapped up by tonight, it’ll be much tougher to finish the whole shebang before July 4th.

So, no great outdoors for me this weekend, but I promise to get out and take plenty of photos as the summer progresses, provided it doesn’t get beastly hot out here.

Meanwhile, here’s a pic of My Favorite Mermaid at last weekend’s Mermaid Parade at Coney Island:

Her group was Charlie’s Angelfish.

Virtual Memories Can’t Wait

Ahoy, ahoy, dear readers! Sorry about the lack of posts. I’m afraid I’m utterly swamped with that Top Companies issue of my magazine. There’s still a huge amount of work to do (writing two more major profiles and two minor ones, then laying out all the pages for production), so you won’t be hearing from me much until next week.

But I do invite you to check out the blogroll over on the right. There are plenty of neat websites over there, including a few new additions. A few years ago I decided to overcome the monotony of business travel by stopping at airport newsstands and buying magazines about subjects I had no interest in. I’d try to read them cover to cover during these trips.

It seemed like a good idea until the time I saw a pilot at the newsstand, searching among the gun magazines.

So go click on a link you don’t think you’re interested in. It’ll be fun; trust me!

(And I promise I’ll be back with Unrequired Reading on Friday morning!)

I’m not psychotic, but I play a psychotic on Xbox

When I used to play video games, I never got into survival horror or first person shooters. I was much more interested in turn-based strategy games on the computer (think Civ) and whatever the best NBA game was on a console. I also spent a bunch of time with my Sims, because it was like being an interior decorator for very sophisticated Tamagotchi.

Which is to say, I’m not much of a gamer. But I did enjoy this article about psychopathology in video games.

The Lady or the Colon

One of these links will connect you to AfterEllen.com’s Hot 100 list of hotties. Another points to a lengthy interview with Jane Jacobs about urban environments and convention centers. The third? Mark Cuban’s discussion about his colonoscopy.

Do you dare click through door #1? Or is door #2 more your speed? Could door #3 lead to the words, “Like every guy, the thought of being violated by a long tube is at the very bottom of the list of things I want to do on a summer day”?

Good luck, dear readers! I’ve randomized the links in tinyurl.com, so no peeking!

Door #1

Door #2

Door #3

Shock ending

I watched the first season of The Sopranos a year or two after it had aired. My excuse was that I thought it was overrated because most of the praise I heard came from my co-workers here in northern NJ. As it turns out, that first season was fantastic. But I heard that the second season was utterly terrible, so I never watched it, nor the subsequent ones.

Still, I sat down to watch the final episode last night, figuring Amy could fill me in on any backstory I was missing. A few minutes in, it occurred to me that this episode may get higher ratings in northern NJ than either the 1986 or 1991 Superbowl games.

SPOILER ALERT (so click “More” if you want to read the rest)

Continue reading “Shock ending”