Dinner with a stranger...

An email from a stranger saying they'd donate $200 to charity if you'd have them over for dinner?.. sure, why not.

http://www.frankejames.com/debate/?p=118

Conan O'Brien - Old Time Baseball

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5RiF12hHeU

Hilarious, and definitely worth a watch! This may have been his last show at 12:30...

Manmen

Very Sopranos-esque shot eh?.. It's not really like that.. except EMOTIONALLY.

So I've been catching up on Mad Men, before the eventual watching of The Wire, which I've never watched (save the first 2 episodes, falling asleep to... the horror(!).) and man, it's pretty much sucked, until S02E04-5ish. Yeah, I've been watching it that long, sleeping aid than anything else. But since then, wow. Fucking amazing. Definitely not worth the initial investment, but starting at season 2 would be a good choice. Also, Gilmore girls, S01E01.

Now I'm gonna look up shit to back up that claim. The season 2 thing, not the Gilmore Girls.

wiki:
"The second season finale [...] posted a significantly higher numbers than the series' first season finale and was up 20% over the season two average. 1.75 million viewers watched Sunday night's season finale, according to fast national data from Nielsen Media Research. The cumulative audience for the three airings of the episode Sunday night (at 9pm, 11 p.m. and 1 a.m.) was 2.9 million viewers."^[16]

An aside: On June 20, 2007, a consumer activist group called Commercial Alert filed a complaint with the United States Distilled Spirits Council alleging that Mad Men sponsor Jack Daniel's whiskey was violating liquor advertising standards since the show features "depictions of overt sexual activity" as well as irresponsible intoxication.^[27] Jack Daniel's was mentioned by name in the fifth episode.

Maybe an inspirational thing?.. Yeah, i doubt it.

Again in '09?

ok, so they won a (the?) Guild for their first and second seasons... still, second season is actually worth watching. How many shows repeat?.. I don't really actually care.

Two Golden Globes for best drama and best actor (Jon Hamm as Draper - of 30 Rock fame) — and the Peabody Award.

Mad Men has improved ratings this season, averaging 1.5 million viewers per episode, compared with about 1 million the first season. Ratings have been rising in recent weeks, hitting 1.9 million on Sunday. - http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/televisionawards/emmys/2008-09-16-mad-men-weiner_N.htm

Ok, maybe no writer change, and maybe just more 'popular'; and I also liked Sex and the City.



Anyway, so tonight is the last night of an improve show at Bad Dog theatre re: Mad Men. I'll be there with my suit and jack.

UPDATE:


Good show! Hilarious at times, and they kept very close to the Madmen storyline, so although you probably didn't need to know the show, it certainly enhanced the comedy.

Escaped to watch the Sadies play a set or two last night...

‘JON-BOY LANGFORD & His SADIES’ 2 Sets @11:00 n 12:30 & ‘Jon & The Burlington Welsh Male Choir’ (25/30 piece) @10:00. $12.50 Adv @Tm-Hs-Rt-Ss. $14.00 @Door.

http://www.blogto.com/events/7995

As for Jon Langford: http://www.bloodshotrecords.com/artist/jon-langford

He was good, great!.. but, seemed tired and drunk by the end of the show. The Sadies were the Sadies and rocked.

Saturday morning roundup.

Internet book trading clubs... I'm still not 100% sold on reading books/magazines on a computer screen, but more than 50% sold. Not sure if I would do this, but for those who love paperback.

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Brooklyn indie scene. Makes sense. I do like a few of the bands they mention (No Age, TV on the Radio, Animal Collective) but the ties that bind to Brooklyn are very thin, at least as suggested in this article.

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My mom has always told me it's bad luck, money and love-life wise, to keep these types of flat-leaved plants in the house, especially in the bedroom. NASA apparently think otherwise.

For the record (with the better record), I may have to go with my mom on this one.

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Neko Case speaks to Chicago Public Radio. Listen here.

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Chicago's next big bands, exactly one year later!

meh???

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Beirut interview.

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Going to go make some pancakes. Not sure if they will turn out like this.
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Can't wait to try tilt-shift photos.

TD Bank Five Boro Bike Tour

TD bank what??

http://www.bikenewyork.org/rides/fbbt/index.html

I'm going to register.. $48 USD... See what there is!

wow.

Above is an actual picture, not a drawing, of Macropinna microstoma, who's eyes, seen here as the largish green balls, are inside its transparent head!

The things that look like eyes upfront are actual olfactory openings (umm... nose holes). Apparently this transparent head 'design' is to protect the eyes from stinging attacks as the Macropinna steals food from others! Here is a great video!:



More here: http://www.mbari.org/news/news_releases/2009/barreleye/barreleye.html

Katyn - Just watched... worth watching.

New Yorker: On September 1, 1939, Hitler’s forces invaded Poland; on September 17th, the Red Army did too, and the country was split into two occupied zones. The Soviets then captured around ten thousand Polish Army officers. What to do with them? Stalin was murderously prescient; he may have anticipated the future of the war—the coming German invasion of the Soviet Union, and the Soviet recovery and counterattack, which, in the event, rolled through Eastern Europe—and in that future he had his own plans for Poland. During April and May of 1940, the Soviet secret police, the N.K.V.D., shot nearly all the captured officers—many of them reservists who had built careers as engineers, doctors, and teachers—and dumped their bodies in mass graves in the Katyń forest and at other N.K.V.D. execution sites. At the same time, many other Poles held in Soviet custody were also shot. In all, more than twenty thousand people were killed. Then came the second betrayal: during the long Soviet domination of Poland after the war, the crime was officially blamed on the Nazis. It’s as if Poland’s grasp of the truth had been taken away along with its sovereignty.

IMDB: The film follows the story of four Polish families whose lives are torn apart when, at the outset of WWII, a great number of Polish soldiers (who are also fathers, husbands and brothers) fall into the hands of Soviet troops and later brutally become victims of Stalinism. The film also underlines the complicated circumstances of Poland's position both in the war and after.

New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2009/03/02/090302crci_cinema_denby

torrent download (1.4 Gigs): http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/4114241/Katyn.2007.%5BSubs.Eng%5D.DVDRip.Dolby.AC3%5B6ch%5D.DivX-LTT.4114241.TPB.torrent

Self adjusting eye-glass lenses, for $19.

"Joshua Silver models a pair of the self-adjusting glasses he developed for the poor. The glasses work on the principle that the more liquid pumped into a thin sac in the plastic lenses, the stronger the correction."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/08/AR2009010803492.html

Science tattoos!

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/science-tattoo-emporium/

Newer Beirut album

This one is better than the last; still too heavily produced for this type of music. For this type of music, I feel you need three mics tops with no compression. The second half, to me, doesn't compare, is barely listenable. But I can see people enjoying it.

Torrent: http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/4670034/Beirut_-_March_Of_The_Zapotec_-_Holland_%5Bmp3-vbr-2009%5D.4670034.TPB.torrent

Metacritic: http://www.metacritic.com/music/artists/beirut/marchofthezapotecholland

Review: http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/149187-beirut-realpeople-march-of-the-zapotec-holland