Happy New Year!

Happy Fiscal New Year! I hope everyone was able to kiss an accountant at midnight. I had to settle for rolling around on a pile of money.

Well, not so much a pile as the four bills I had in my wallet. There were all ones.

Sigh.

Monday Tuesday Wednesday ...

Every now and then I think I would be really good as an advertising director, but then something like NuvaRing comes along ...

Basically they are trying to sell women on the concept that taking a birth control pill is a horrible burden, and that their lives would be immeasurably better if they just used a vaginal insert instead. Why go to all the toil of swallowing one pill a day when you could just have some kind of ring inside you for three weeks at a time?

I don't have to take birth control pills, and I don't know if they're a chore, but I have to think swallowing a pill a day is not too bad if the end result is not having to take care of a baby, which takes slightly more effort each day than swallowing a pill smaller than a Tic Tac. And if you forget to take care of the baby one day, it's not like you can double up on the caregiving the next day. You just go to jail.

But they actually wrote a jingle to convince you the pill sucks! This is right up there with the Visa Check Card ads which try to convince you that you're being a huge a-hole slowing down the entire financial system whenever you opt to pay with cash. Yes, lines are stacking up 70 deep behind you every time you don't use a Visa Check Card. You are slowing things down so badly that the women behind you will not have time to take their birth control pill that day. You are driving them to NuvaRing.

That's how the economy works! Everything is connected.

Happy Hour Trivia TONIGHT!

Come to the DC Improv around 6:30! Buy a ticket for Jim Florentine! Play trivia before the show! That is all.

Tags: trivia

Trivia Recap

There was a shake-up at the top in the fifth edition of Happy Hour Trivia as we have new champions: Pink Eye and the Brain. These young swains scored 22 out of a possible 30 questions with an October theme -- one round of monster questions in honor of Halloween, one round of questions from cemeteries (also in honor of Halloween) and a special "Octoberfest" round. Unfortunately, they're all part Bigfoot, so the photo is blurry:

Nipping at their heels were The Disgruntled (19 points) and the returning, excellently named Team Redundancy Team. Here are their pretty mugs:

Average scores were down a bit ... the questions might have been a little TOO hard. If I regret anything, it's the number of president questions -- the gravesite video had a bit too much commanders in chief. But no presidents in November, I promise!

New Podcast: Jim Florentine

Jim is a regular on Howard Stern's show, and he was also the voice of Special Ed from "Crank Yankers." This was easily the dirtiest interview so far. I just went with it, so if that's not your thing, skip it. On the other hand, if you like heavy metal, Jim talks about it for about ten minutes. You can get it all over at the Podcast page.

Tags: podcast, trivia

Face the Facts

Facebook is about a gajillion times better than MySpace. That said ...

1) Status updates are not the best way to let the world know your political beliefs. They're actually like bumper stickers. If I didn't already agree with you, I now hate your cause even more, because you felt it necessary to throw it in my face, and therefore I am now against you just for spite.

2) If you can't attend an event I've posted because you live more than 50 miles away from that event, no need to explain! I wasn't expecting you to travel from California for my $10 show. Sure, it would have been nice, and if you were a GOOD friend, you'd be there. But I'm OK with you not leaving an explanatory message. I'm cool like that.

How come ...

... no one has invented the female urinal? Instant gold mine. Sure, there are logistical problems, but I'm thinking some wall partitions would get the job done. Right? Right? Wrong? Right? The productivity gains from time saved in ladies' rooms would project out to about $5.3 trillion a year for the U.S. economy. It might save us from recession.

Back when I worked at a multiplex (i.e. the good old days), I had to clean men's rooms and women's rooms. The women's rooms were always about five times more disgusting that the men's rooms by the end of the night. Considering that men are genetically programmed to pee on inappropriate surfaces for spite, this is mind-boggling. Ladies: what are you doing in there? Fight club, where the primary weapon is urine?

Harry

You probably don't watch much Lifetime (because you don't appreciate that "The Golden Girls" is the height of Western civilization), so you're missing the great ads for a new movie starring Harry Connick Jr. as some kind of a cancer researcher. It features Harry running, in a labcoat and tie, down a hallway. He looks very upset. It's inspirational. You have to love a guy who isn't content with being the most popular jazz musician of his generation and insists on being a mediocre actor as well. You just didn't see that level of dedication from your Louis Armstrongs.

Anyone can be great at something. It takes real courage to walk away from that greatness to wallow in mediocrity. God bless you, Harry Connick Jr.

Tags: podcast, trivia

I Like Ike, or DDE Day

You can't always connect with a president from visiting their home -- you can guess what they were like, but in the case of the really old guys, they grew up in a totally different era. Anyone who never enjoyed indoor plumbing will always be a bit of an enigma to anyone who did. The modern guys, though, are a little different.

That's the home of Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower in Gettysburg, Pa., the one place they were actually able to settle down after years of globetrotting in defense of the free world and that sort of thing. Ike liked the area (he was stationed there early in his career plus he was a Civil War buff), it wasn't too far from Washington, and he had friends who lived nearby, so they bought a few hundred acres in the early It's modest, kind of charming, and straight out of the 1950s. Me and my (pretending to be sullen) friends stopped in, and I'm happy to report: It's your grandparents' house. Or it would be, if your granddad had personally defeated Hitler.

You get there via shuttlebus from the Gettysburg battlefield visitors center, and if you're lucky (like me and my friends) you'll get a briefing from one particular park ranger on your arrival. He won't tell you much about the Eisenhowers, but first, after asking every single person in the tour group where they are from and trying to make small talk about each location, he will relate a story from 1961, when his parents finally decided to "introduce him to the American Civil War." Apparently, this is a decision all parents make, like when to have the sex talk or explaining that you're adopted. Driving to the battlefield in an Impala they passed Eisenhower's driveway, his dad proudly barked (and the ranger does the voice), "That's where General Eisenhower lives!" As an 11-year-old, he did not appreciate how momentous this occasion was at the time. If you're bored by this story, please bear in mind that we had about an hour to visit the house before we had to catch the bus back, and my blood pressure went up about 20 points with each minute. The highlight was the ranger asking a question of my roommate:

RANGER: In 1961, something happened, and Eisenhower became just like you and me, do you know what that is?

MICHAEL: Why don't you tell me.

And then I had a rage-induced stroke. It was awesome! Once you're inside the house, things are much better. They give you a brief orienation speech in the living room -- probably the least lived-in room of the house (Eisenhower found it "stuffy") but the one filled with all the gifts Ike got as president or was able to loot from Nazi treasure troves. And it still has the old folks touch: there's a baby grand piano with a ton of pictures on top of the closed lid. It made me laugh.

After that you get a brochure and you're turned loose (within reason, you can't try on Mamie's bathrobe). It's a big house, it's not a luxurious mansion by any stretch. There are a few guest rooms, and a nice dining room, but beyond that it's all functional: smallish bedrooms, normal bathrooms, cushy den chairs with afghans draped over the back and that sort of thing. Their favorite room of the house was the back porch: white cushions on the furniture, a driftwood lamp, and most important, the radiation box.

Ike and Mamie liked TV, and why not? After commanding NATO for a few years and ruling the free world, why not relax for an hour or two a night? Together, they watched "I Love Lucy" (the cast came to the White House for a state dinner); Ike watched Westerns; and Mamie loved soaps. Apparently, she enjoyed "As the World Turns" so much that if she couldn't watch, she had a Secret Service agent take notes on the episode.

You can also spot the easel in the corner where Ike liked to paint. And he wasn't bad! He did paintings of his grandkids, landscapes, and flowers ... not what you'd expect from a guy who in his spare time liberated Europe from the iron grip of fascism. Mamie has her flourishes all over the house, too: The upstairs bathroom and the master bedroom are pink (her favorite color); the wallpaper in the entrance hall is a pattern she picked out of a catalog that has the seals of all 48 states and the territory of Hawaii (though as First Lady she was able to get a customized color scheme more to her liking); there's a kitchen she almost never used (Ike was the better cook, she said she could only make mayonaise and fudge).

There are some historical points. Eisenhower recovered from a mid-preisdency heart attack in the home, making it a temporary White House of sorts; he had a very tiny office off his den where he got the first calls about Gary Powers being shot down over Russia. (VERY tiny -- it's a mud room, but with two book shelves and a replica of George Washington's desk, and it was the de facto Oval Office. He signed bills in a mud room. Crazy). All the books around the house were owned by Eisenhower, and the guy had a taste for paperback Westerns, among other things.

If all that isn't enough for you, the place was a functioning cattle ranch and farm, and apparently a pretty good one. Like fellow ranch-owner LBJ a few years later, Eisenhower would take visitors (everyone from Churchill to Nehru) out to tour the stables, or work in the fields -- whatever tickled their fancy (in Churchill's case, getting drunk and shooting at Civil War reenacters). Eisenhower would poke his favorite steer in the butt with a shotgun until it stood up, a display that apparently became very popular among guests and very unpopular with the Secret Service, which had to study ways to apply sleeper holds on Angus cattle. The view here is from inside the no-longer-fucntional show barn.

It's a pretty spread, with mountains or rolling hills in every direction. A special treat for any visitor to the farm would have been a stop by the outdoor cage where Eisenhower kept the captive Adolph Hitler.

The story spread to the public was that Hitler had committed suicide in a bunker as the Allies approached Berlin, and that his body was recovered by Russians who secretively hauled it back to the Soviet Union. But in fact, Eisenhower managed to arrange the capture of the German leader, who was then held in this simple pen not far from the show barn. High-ranking visitors could squirt Hitler with a hose, yell names at him, blast non-stop klezmer music or force him to wrestle Eisenhower's prize cattle. Also, Mamie had his moustache dyed pink.

Not many things make me laugh to the point of tears, but this concept did. You are probably scratching your head, and this is why the tentative title of my autobiography is, "I Guess You Had to Be There." Regardless, the Eisenhower farm is astoundingly neat.

FUN EISENHOWER FACTS!

• One of seven children, Ike joined the army in hopes of a free education, and ended up as one the most successful soldiers and statesmen of the 20th century. So there's nothing wrong with being cheap, ladies.
• The Eisenhowers always loved entertaining. Both played piano: Mamie played by ear, and Ike knew enough to bang out some 50-verse West Point songs when entertaining military buddies. Tapes of Ike playing such songs were played inside the D-Day landing craft to motivate troops to run toward the beach.
• Upon retirement from the Army, Eisenhower purchased a fancy car which drained his entire savings. He was able to afford the ranch only after receiving more than $600,000 for "Crusade in Europe," his memoir of World War II. His children's book, "Amphibious Assault on Candy Island," was less successful.
• Eisenhower enjoyed golfing and had a putting green in his back yard. He also had a skeet-shooting range, and a man-hunting setup similar to "The Man With the Golden Gun."
• Mamie believed a woman over 50 was entitled to stay in bed until noon. And this was BEFORE Craftmatic adjustables. After Ike's death, Mamie kept books and papers on his side of the bed to make it seem less empty. Sweet.
• Eisenhower enjoyed cooking, and his specialty was "Pennsylvania Dutch breakfasts": Shoo-Fly pike with a fried egg on top. Yummers.
• Ike entertained numerous world leaders on the porch, and nearly caused nuclear war by forcing Khrushchev to watch "Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts."
• Ike enjoyed giving visitors tours of the Gettysburg battlefield, especially tours indicating how HE would have done it.

Tags: presidents

Charge!

Eisenhower (see yesterday) was only part of my Saturday; I actually suckered some friends into visiting the farm by promising a trip to see the battlefield. Because who doesn't want to spend a Saturday wallowing in the gore of history? We hit up the Cyclorama, which back in the late 1800s would have been the closest thing to HD television; it's a big painting that completely encircles a room and shows the height of the 3rd day of battle, in exciting OIL PAINT! Plus they have a light and sound show to go with it -- FAR better than Pink Floyd. I can't reproduce it here, but we did walk around the field afterwards, and if you were a reasonably patriotic (or unpatriotic, depending how you look at it) guy in 1863, there's a chance this is what you would have seen on July 3:

The top is the view of a Union soldier, minus a bunch of smoke and some dead bodies, a few seconds before a line of 12,000 men a mile wide stepped out of the trees and started coming for you. With guns, to boot! The bottom is what Johnny Reb would have seen looking back the other way, right before he got to march across an open field while his friends were turned into Grade-D hamburger all around him.

That's the field for Pickett's charge at the Battle of Gettysburg, and had things turned out a little different that day we might all be cleaning our teeth with banjo picks right now. Or, projecting out, maybe we'd all be speaking German. Or Tagalog! The world would be different, is what I'm getting at. The Confederates made it to the Union line, but it took everything they had just to get there, and blammo, Lee loses, the war turns around, and the South loses. More Americans died in 3 days at Gettysburg than in five plus years of Iraq, but in return we got to have one of the best countries in history. Sometimes war is the answer! Bumper stickers be damned!

I don't know what the pep talk would have been before Pickett's charge, but it must have been a good one, because I don't think I'd be terribly motivated to walk a mile slightly uphill in the open in July heat wearing a wool uniform toward guys with cannons and guns defending a fortified position. I would stop to tie my shoe, or say I had something in my eye, or take an informal poll amongst my colleagues to see if anyone would maybe, perhaps, be interested in shooting our commanding officer in the face repeatedly and then heading off for a drink.

But it could have been worse! You could have been asked to run up a STEEP hill.

That's Little Roundtop on the top and Devil's Den on the bottom. To think you could have stopped to play amongst the boulders, right before a Confederate stabbed you in the back on July 2. Whee!

Of course, with all those dead people, you need a cemetery, and the dedication of said cemetery is what brought Lincoln to Gettysburg on Nov. 19. He wasn't the primary speaker. How the president of the United States and commander in chief of the Army during an active civil war doesn't get top billing, I'll never understand, but Lincoln actually spoke second, after a TWO HOUR speech by some other chump lost to history. Today there's a big monument where the speaking platform used to be, and a plaque with the full speech. Plus a neat tribute from visitors:

Respect

If the children are our future, in a lot of ways, the past is screwed.

I don't think you have to walk around a battlefield in deadly silence, but there are some things that require pretty basic respect, like, oh, I'll go out on a limb here .... cemeteries. When we got to the Gettysburg cemetery, a group of kids was screaming at each other, and some were actually skipping over top of graves. Skipping. And no parents thought to stop them.

Over at the Virginia monument (at the center of the Confederate line that advanced during Pickett's charge), one kid showed his respect by repeatedly making fart noises. And no parents thought to stop them.

Finally, at Little Round Top, a few kids thought it was fun to grab stones off of one of the walls (real or replica, does it matter?) used by Union defenders and start throwing them down the hill. And no parents thought to stop them ... but my roommate did! He yelled at them.

I applaud this. No one does this because it's thankless; best case scenario, you get no reward, worst case, you are harrassed by angry kids or horrible parents who yell at you for trying to do the job they aren't doing. We should all snap as much as possible, if only to restore moral order to the universe. Admit it, you feel good when someone hauls off and yells so angrily at teenagers in a movie theater that they're shocked into silence. And you aren't completely disgusted by a guy who punches a teenager in the face when they cut the line on him at McDonald's.

In conclusion, it takes a village. Thank you and good night.

Movie Review: Choke

It might seem strange that a movie about a sex-addicted colonial theme park worker who regularly visits his mother in a mental hospital and fakes choking in restaurants to bilk money out of the people who save him would be a little bit dull, but somehow they managed it with "Choke." It's not a bad movie, and it has a few genuinely entertaining scenes, but it's not really sexy, or hilarious, or touching, or anything. Even the colors and lighting are dull. Plus Sam Rockwell always looks like he woke up in a gutter.

Basically, you can watch it, and appreciate it, but the whole "beaten down by life" vibe makes it pretty tough to get invested. It's over the top content-wise, but not effort-wise. The movie made me very curious about the book, which I imagine has to be a lot more involving.

Preview Review

Apparently the target audience for "Choke" skews gay, because two of the trailers were for "Noah's Arc: Jumping the Broom" (flamboyantly gay black guys) and "Another Gay Sequel" (flamboyantly gay white guys) which could be competing for the title of worst movie ever made. There's a point where flamboyance (of any kind) can't make up for awful, and that point was crossed about 2 seconds into each preview. But thank god we live in a country where people of every race, gender and orientation are free to demean their subculture by making horrible movies!

Probably the toughest thing to be in America is a flamboyantly gay black man. If you're a flamboyantly gay white guy, sure, there are people who will despise you for being gay, but at this point there's enough general tolerance in the national atmosphere that you can probably find a way to survive. Flamboyant black guy? Yikes. You're coming from a harder-edged subculture; people are already making black guy assumptions about you, and then when they see that you're flamboyantly gay, things just aren't adding up in their minds. It would be a interesting experiment to get a theater full of straight guys (tell them they'll be seeing something entirely different), lock the doors and then show "Noah's Arc." I think at least three people would have a stroke.

As for you bicurious eskimos, well, godspeed.

Tags: history, movies

Speech or Debate

I'm watching the debate and I think I'm about to have an aneuyrism. If that's not the right spelling of aneuyrism, then I think it's a sign the aneuyrism is starting.

• If you were talking with someone, and you asked them a question, and they gave a 15 second response, then changed the subject to, say, ultimate fighting, that would be annoying, right? And if they did that five questions in a row, you'd want to punch them in the face, right? Right?
• I really hope that McCain sits in somebody's lap when answering their questions.
• Hey, did you know that because Americans landed on the moon in ten years, we can do ANYTHING? Only, the moon landing was an engineering problem which could be solved by direct application of resources that were a small fraction of national spending. But I'm sure the economy can be solved pretty quickly, because we're AMERICANS!
• We all have to make sacrificies, apparently. I vote we sacrifice cows to Ba'al. It's worth a shot.
• If someone would just say, "Let it burn," then drop the mic and walk off the stage, I would vote for them. Regardless of party.
• Uh, I like McCain, but he just said that fixing Social Security is easy, and then didn't say how to do it. Buuuuuuuuuh? Since the government will be bankrupt in a generation, or we'll be paying taxes at European rates (or at least you will, I don't make money), I think there's a strong case for a youth-oriented party that will completely dismantle Social Security and Medicare. Yes, I'm advocating generational warfare. WILD IN THE STREETS!
• What I'm getting tonight is that both Barack Obama and John McCain are horrible people who have never made a good decision ever. If they would just be nice to each other.
• So far, no one has snuck behind their opponent and made the "jerk off" motion. Sigh. For the love of god, this is boring. So unbelievably boring.
• Ooh, good question from Brokaw, "Is health care a right?" McCain said it's a responsibilitiy, Obama straight up said it is a right. Blunt questions like this are so much more intriguing that anything that allows laundry lists of proposed policy. Policies have a slim chance of happening, but fundamental beliefs last forever. For example, if the question was, "Jessica Alba or Penelope Cruz?" it would help a lot of undecided male voters pick their candidate.
• Actually, my dream debate is two guys in a room with no audience arguing over the purpose of government. And wearing clown costumes. That's actually a very important part of the dream.
• Every question is "a great question." Come on, tell them their question sucks.
• OK, let's say we get Bin Laden tomorrow. What does that really change? Not much, although his head would make a lovely topping for the national Christmas tree. But, Obama just spanked McCain pretty good about bombing Iran. It's a fudge but a good one.
• I bet Afghanistan would be better if we gave them tax cuts, national health care, and more green jobs. Although I guess growing poppies is probably a green job.
• "Naked Aggression" would be a pretty good name for a porno with a diplomatic theme.

I Take Requests, Saturday!

Awright! Time to put it on the table once again. This Saturday, "I Take Requests 4" returns to the DC Improv Lounge. This show is one of my absolute favorites: it lets me combine a lot of the different projects I enjoy working on into one evening.

For $10 you're getting a trivia contest, some cool videos, 45 minutes of stand-up and a grand finale that combines comedy, live performance and music. I put a lot of work into each edition of "I Take Requests," and first and foremost I try to put on a good show for the audience. Come on out to the Improv on Saturday and judge for yourself! The more the merrier.

This time out, the finale is designed to bring together a nation fractured by politics ... basically, for $10, you'll once again learn to love America. That's a total steal.

Tags: I Take Requests

S-A-T-U-R ...

Last call for alcohol, folks ... seats are still available for this Saturday's show at the DC Improv Lounge. Come on out. The world is horribly depressing lately, with uninspiring politics and horrible economics. Wouldn't you rather enjoy life, and watch me impersonate Ray Charles? Of course you would. Come out Saturday! It's a good time, guaranteed.

New Podcast: Greg Giraldo

I got to talk to the "Tough Crowd" and "Root of All Evil" star in the DC Improv Lounge this morning. Interesting, animated guy. The interview starts out a little slow but it definitely picks up at about the four minute mark. Depending on your sensibilities, this is either really funny or really offensive stuff.

Anyhow, you can judge for yourself over at the Podcast page.

Tags: I Take Requests, podcast

The World is Ending!

Maybe my favorite part about the financial crisis is how every day, the government tries to do something shocking, drastic and new to stabilize the markets / short-term lending / the suicide rate of hedge fund managers, and every day things get worse. It's like a zombie movie! We're about one week away from a press conference where Henry Paulson throws his shoe at the economy and then tries to hide in a cabin in the woods.

That being said, here's my personal plan for saving the markets:

We ritually sacrifice Jim Cramer on top of the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange. If half of this stuff is psychological, having that guy out of the picture definitely takes the energy level down 18 or 19 notches.

And that's it! I'd also like to take this time to congratulate wire service photographers, who this week managed to take about 1,500 photos of stressed-out white guys in rumpled shirts with the sleeves rolled up, holding their head or covering their face, either staring at or unable to look at a trading board. Seriously, is that the best you can do? That shot is so tech-bubble. Can't anyone take a photo of a broker doing a line of coke off a dirty toilet seat just to calm his nerves? So that we really understand the seriousness of the situation?

Show tonight!

I Take Request 4 is tonight! You should probably be there.

Vacation

I am SO STRESSED about this whole economy thing that I'm going on vacation for a week, starting tomorrow. If you wanted to be more accurate, you'd say that I'm doing nothing in a different location for a week. But nonetheless, I probably won't be updating my blog much, so you might have to wait a week or so to learn my super important thoughts on the house where Woodrow Wilson died. Patience.

Oh, and one last thing ...

Go Phillies.

Tags: economy

Permanent Vacation!

You can pick up a lot of different souvenirs on a cruise, but is there any momento better than the constant feeling that you're still on a boat? I hope it never ends! Walking to the refrigerator has never been this fun.

Old Business

I am back from a very fine vacation, but before we get into that hot buttered mess, some belated thanks:

The night before I left was "I Take Requests 4" at the DC Improv Lounge. My sincere thanks to everyone who came out for the show. I've been very lucky to have four sold-out programs, and I hope everyone there had a good time. The new finale was a karaoke video for the Ray Charles version of "America the Beautiful," and I hope to have that posted for you before the week is out. Special thanks to brother Dave, who made the trip in from Pittsburgh to watch, and Allyson, who once again kept all the wheels spinning perfectly.

The fifth edition should happen in 2009, and by then I hope to include 20 total challenges ... that's 20 different subjects suggested by you, the readers of this blog. I hope to see you there!

Vacation: Where I Was

I was sailing for seven glorious days on the Carnival Valor. It was a great time, but I should note that of the 3,000 passengers on the boat, no one looked like the passengers from a Carnival TV ads. A few passengers did look like they had eaten the Carnival ad people, though. And yet they still wore bathing suits! Possibly the bathing suits taken from their much smaller victims. Huh.

The original itinerary: Fun Day at sea, Grand Cayman, Honduras, Belize, Cozumel, Fun Day at Sea. Unfortunately, the people of Honduras' Isla Roatan had no consideration for vacation scheduling and decided to have road-blocking civil unrest over increases in electricity costs, so that was kiboshed. It's a great plan: we have no money to pay our bills, so let's shut down the only source of income for the island! If everyone on the boat had the option of chipping in an extra $5 to help Roatan make ends meet, I think I could have had an extra day of snorkeling. Or, they could have organized a shore excursion in which cruise patrons get to fire bean bag guns and tear gas cannisters at impoverished protesters -- because vacation is about trying new things!

Also, Belize was struck from the schedule thanks to a tropical depression. So the actual itinerary: Fun Day at Sea, Grand Cayman, Fun Day at Sea, Cozumel, Progreso, Fun Day at Sea. If you've never cruised before, "Fun Day at Sea" means "you are stuck on the boat so we will try to sell you things." You have the option of having a great time drinking and relaxing on the deck, but why do that when you could be buying art? According to the brochures in your cabin, it's super fine art by modern masters. Never mind that Carnival has more than 20 ships cruising year-round and they probably have art auctions on most of the boats. The art YOU are buying is high-quality stuff. Guaranteed!

Notes on Things I've Eaten in the Last Week

Potato Ball: I ordered this item (at a restaurant in the Everglades) based solely on its name, since I generally enjoy potatoes and any food in the shape of the ball. I did not go with the picture on the wall, which showed a pile of ten or so breaded balls in cross section, each revealing a center that appeared to be uncooked dog food. When it came out from the kitchen, however, it was one fist-sized ball, and it was DELICIOUS. It was like a hushpuppy, but made from potato instead of corn, and with a hot, seasoned meat filling that was significantly better than uncooked dog food. I especially liked the garnish, which was a lime wedge with a toothpick stuck in either face. Finally, an establishment that recognizes that when you're sucking on a lime wedge, one toothpick is seldom enough. Also on the menu, but unordered by me, were "gator bites." After watching a half hour presentation on aligators and the need to protect them, you have the option of eating aligator. I love America.

Cherries Jubilee: They had great dessert choices onboard the Valor, and since I've never had a flaming dessert I made sure to try the cherries jubilee. Well, guess what? They don't burn things at your table, because boats are a "huge fire risk" and one tiny mistake might "kill everyone on board." And they have the audacity to call themselves the fun ship.

Hot Dogs: I am somewhat of a hot dog aficionado, but it's another thing altogether to have 24/7 hot dog access. When you're on a Carnival cruise, you are never more than three minutes from a hot dog, unless you are the kind of person who would take maximum advantage of that kind of opportunity, in which case it might take you five to ten minutes depending on your waddling speed. Why isn't this their entire advertising campaign? What says "vacation" more than unlimited hot dog access? Just so you know, I wasn't two-fisting hot dogs for six straight days. But it's very relaxing to know that I could have, while wearing unflattering swim wear, and I STILL wouldn't have been the ugliest person on the boat.

Lucky Charms: Before a shore excursion at Cozumel, Mexico, we skipped the cafeteria and had breakfast in the dining room, which meant I could order Lucky Charms off a menu. As in, "I will have the Lucky Charms, and the lady will have the Fruit Loops." I had to do this. About one hour later, following a violent ferry ride, most of the Lucky Charms had enjoyed a two-way journey. The whole incident has made me question the actual luckiness of Lucky Charms. If you've had a distinct lack of luckiness after consuming this cereal, please contact me at your earliest convenience. We're a few cases from a class action.

Tags: I Take Requests, vacation

The Ocean Blue

We were sailing the Caribbean on Columbus Day, the same week that Columbus landed there 516 years ago. There have been slight improvements to shipbuilding technology since the 15th century, such as: water slides; 24/7 hot dog access; jogging tracks; sports bars; miniature golf courses; and turndown service. But aside from these tiny modern amenities, it was like reliving the Columbus experience! Yes, you might have been able to float the Pinta on one of the Valor's three swimming pools, but when you get down to the essence of it all, we're all just people on the open seas, looking for adventure, and playing video poker until we arrive at adventure. Get in touch with history. Take a cruise.

Some more cruise notes:

• If you want some privacy but you don't want to be stuck in your cabin, go to the jogging track. You'll probably be alone.
• No one plays shuffleboard! I figured there'd be 30 to 40 courts, but there was only one, and hardly anyone played. This might be because the scoring system for shuffleboard is very complicated: score points by getting your disc entirely inside the 10, 8 or 7 portions of the triangle. Any disc landing outside the triangle is a 10-point deduction. You also lose 10 points for shooting out of turn, stepping over the baseline, talking in your opponent's backswing, taking the name of the lord in vain, spilling any portion of an alcoholic beverage, sneezing, making direct eye contact with anyone in a higher social caste, stealing your opponent's linament, breathing out of turn or riding your shuffleboard stick like a pony in celebration. The first person to negative 1,325 points loses.
• The Valor has a "heroes" theme, and so every stateroom bathroom has a ceramic plate with the image of some heroic person on it. Our bathroom had an image of Betsy Ross, if Betsy Ross had just opened the Ark of the Covenant and not closed her eyes. Really, it looked like her face was melting. Every time I went to pee, I was staring at Betsy Ross with advanced leprosy. I'll try to get you a picture before the week is out.

Say Cheese

What the heck, here are some pictures. You earned it.

In the front is Senor Frog, a lovable scamp who inhabits ports of call all over the Caribbean. Without good guys like him providing yards of beer to people getting off of cruise ships which already have tons and tons of booze on board, vacations would not be possible. The building in the background is the legislative assembly building for the Cayman Islands. Their congress is across the street from Senor Frog's, which makes for one of the most convenient lobbying arrangements in the world, and also explains why the national motto of the Caymans is "No Fat Chicks."

This is en route to "Sting Ray City," a lovely sand bar on Grand Cayman where numerous giant sting rays will swim right up to you and then smear their evil slime all over your legs, making you jump forward into another slimy, evil sting ray. It's awesome. The guy shown on the front of the boat actually grabs some of the rays, and then puts them in your arms so that you can be face to face with the devil's emmisaries to the sea. The only drawback to Sting Ray City is that when you have your snorkeling gear on, you are forced to look at the lower half of everyone else from the boat. In many instances, this is not a good thing.

The colors are just better in the Caribbean. This is Playa del Carmen, which is a short ferry ride away from Cozumel. It's short because it's very fast -- 26 knotts for half an hour. It sometimes SEEMS a little longer, if you're puking your guts out, which I happened to be doing. You'd think the risk of extreme vomiting would be enough to prompt some kind of warning from the cruise ship travel desk, but you'd be wrong! Instead, you just sit on the ferry and find yourself asking, "Why are they handing out plastic bags before the boat starts moving?"

What makes the puking better is the video the ferry company plays for the whole trip, which includes a practical joke reel of people being scared by a guy in a gorilla suit. Even if you close your eyes, you can still hear the great music and laugh track, which is stereotypical Mexican television stuff (i.e. a notch below "Laff-In").

Do this all first thing in the morning and it's about 20 times better than a cup of coffee. We went to Playa del Carmen to catch a bus to Xcaret, which is like a Mayan cross between Colonial Williamsburg and a zoo, with an underground river that you can swim in, just like the Mayans, but with lifejackets and several stops for potato chips along the way. They have a Mayan ball court, which I'm guessing is fake. But it has neat skulls!

There are slightly more impressive Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza, a majestic and crucially important site which you could walk on until a few years ago. But apparently the Mexican government finally decided that the ruins were getting ruined, because now you have to stay at the bottom. BOOOOOOOOO! BOOOOO historical preservation! I want a nice view!

A lot of people were sacrificed there, and their hearts were fed to jaguars, because this would help the crops. Wall Street should look into this. Those deaths are now honored by 400-500 vendors wandering the grounds trying to sell souvenirs for a dollar. And they are aggressive! They usually start with the "Excuse me sir!" but in the tone that usually precedes "My wife was just hit by a bus, can I borrow your cell phone?" It's hard to ignore that tone, so when you look over, they try to sell you a small figurine of a guy in a sombrero taking a nap. In the states, you wouldn't see such craftsmanship anywhere outside of South of the Border.

MEXICO!

Tags: vacation

Phillies Fever

You cheer for a team all season long, you watch and listen whenever you can, and after six months they reward you by falling miserably short. Then you get drunk. Or at least that's how it usually works! This year, though, the Phillies have made it back to the World Series, for the fourth time in my life and the second time I can actually remember. The last time was 1993, when I was a senior in high school. That year, I couldn't watch game 6 against the Blue Jays because I had a marching band competition. We finished playing on the field, ran back to the bus and were changing into street clothes. One girl on the bus had a walkman and listened to the radio broadcast as Mitch Williams pitched to Joe Carter; she related each pitch as it happened. We were all pumped, ready for a game 7, and then the girl with the radio screamed.

Here's hoping for more great October memories!

Tags: baseball

New Videos: Fishsticks, Finale

Here are the videos from "I Take Requests 4," on October 11. The first is a few minutes on fishsticks -- the 18th and most recent challenge, put forth by a YouTube commenter whose real name I do not know. But what the heck! The second video is the grand and patriotic finale. It's me doing more singing, this time the Ray Charles version of "America the Beautiful." Enjoy!

Challenge Accepted: The Color Blue

The 19th challenge subject is going to be "The color blue," as suggested by Charles Butler. Charles was in attendance at the Lounge on October 11, plus he picked a nice and vague subject, so he gets preference here. I'll see what I can come up with!

Tags: I Take Requests, challenge

I'd Rather Be in Philadelphia

By midnight tonight, it's entirely possible that the Philadelphia Phillies will be the 2008 World Series champions. IF I play my cards right.

Before Game 1, I had a cheesesteak to honor my hometown team, and they won.

Before Game 2, I had chicken. It was very good chicken, but the Phils lost.

Before Game 3, I had some leftover Steakum, so I had another cheesesteak. Phils win.

And while I was unable to watch Game 4, as I was attending a Dead Milkmen Concert, at a restaurant before the show, I had a cheesesteak. That sandwich, plus my proximity to the Phillies, meant a huge Phillies win. As I was driving home on I-95 past the stadium, J.C. Romero secured the final out and I got to see the fireworks go off over the stadium, plus all the people celebrating inside. Awesome.

I am back in D.C., but I made sure to purchase cheesesteak supplies today. Yes, I might end up with heart disease, but what am I gonna do, let down more than 3 million fans? That's not how Chris White rolls. If you'd like to join in and support the Phightin Phils, I urge you to eat as many cheesesteaks as you possibly can in the next four hours. And ACTUAL cheesesteaks -- meaning low-quality meat, a simple Italian roll and, if possible, Cheez Whiz. I know that Cheez Whiz isn't exactly "cheese" in the traditional sense, but if they called them whizsteaks there would be some marketing problems.

By the way, on Cheez Whiz bottle they insist that it's a great dipping sauce for broccoli. If you had a Venn diagram of people who eat broccoli and people who eat Cheez Whiz, I don't think those circles intersect. They're probably on separate sheets of paper.

Concert Review: Dead Milkmen

The Dead Milkmen are a Philadelphia punk band. They had one "big" hit, "Punk Rock Girl," and beyond that they toured for something like a decade. I have all of their albums but one, but I had never seen them live. So when my younger brother informed me that they were playing their first concert in years in the basement of a Unitarian church, we all decided to check it out.

The lead singer is fat, bald and middle-aged. He now looks like someone you would see pushing a shopping cart aimlessly in a Best Buy. But they can still do it! It was a very good show, even with all the hipsters there who really want you to know that they don't care what you think about them.

Tags: music, baseball

YEAH!

Phillies win! The last time you could say that on the final day of the season, I was three years old. Awesome.

I should probably be upset that a fundamental part of my identity has now changed, but you have to enjoy the good times while you can. I really do love cheering for the Phils. When I was a kid and I shared a room with my brother, I used to tune in the West Coast road trips on my radio with the volume as low as possible and lay on the floor next to the speaker; since it was past bedtime that was the only way to keep up with the team and not get caught. These days I don't make my home in Philadelphia, but now there's radio broadcasts on the Internet, sports bars with satellite TV, and a team in my new home that brings the Phils to town nine times a year. In the back of your head, when you're sitting through all those games (sometimes with friends, sometimes by yourself), you sort of know that it's all pointless in the grand scheme of things, but that's honestly half the fun. Even when you're sitting through losses it's a good time, and when they win it all, it's a GREAT time.

It was worth the six months of watching and listening this year just to see Chase Utley show human emotion. And thank god I don't have to eat any more cheesesteaks for a while.

What bias?

Remember, sensible people know there is no media bias. Slate isn't exactly beholden to newspaper standards of impartiality, but man, this has to be borderline embarrassing.

Tags: baseball

Wilson House

Woodrow Wilson didn't exactly gallop across the finish line of his presidency, what with being half paralyzed and not tremendously popular even in his own party. So instead of heading back to the healing waters of New Jersey, he set up shop in Washington, D.C., in spitting distance of the White House. What better tonic than to live in the shadow of your failures!

Woodrow lived on S St. NW from 1921 to his death in 1924 (he died in the house) and his widow was there through something like 1960. He didn't have money when he left the government, so he had to use his stipend from the Nobel Peace Prize, plus cash gifts from buddies, to afford the place, which was selected in part for its accessibility -- it had an elevator and enough wide, spacious areas for the good doctor to get around with the aid of his manservant. Oh, and it had enough rooms for him to have a manservant.

I got a partial (but free!) tour, highlighting all the social areas -- the Wilsons entertained all sorts of bigwigs, but since it was so tough for Wilson to get into formal wear, a lot of the time he'd take a powder and chill out in his library while his wife saw to the guests. They had a parlor decorated with White House swag, a nice-sized dining room and a sweet back yard, but the highlight has to be the library. Wilson spent most of his time there, shuffling back and forth from chair to bookshelf. It's a neat, stately room, with an interesting flourish: a roll-up movie screen mounted to the top of the bookshelf, and the movie projector to go with it. For 1921, that was one hell of a home entertainment system.

The garage also has a treat (at least through the end of the year), in the form of Wilson's Rolls Royce Silver Ghost Touring Car; he couldn't drive it, but apparently he enjoyed being chauffered up and down S St. It has orange highlights to honor his Princeton ties, and his initials, plus a swank hood ornament. Six miles to the gallon, baby.

Tags: presidents