Mike Kullen weblog

More Australia - Walkabout at You Yangs & Serendip

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 06:43:21 -0800

As promised last week, I've now posted the wildlife photos from our Walkabout tour at You Yangs Regional Park & Serendip Sanctuary, outside Melbourne.

This set includes all the koalas and kangaroos, as well as lots and lots of Australian birds.

YABEPS

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 13:25:02 -0800

Yet another bald eagle photo shoot.

I went to Conowingo Dam again last Monday (my 3rd visit so far). The weather was supposed to be Mostly Cloudy, but we ended up with blue skies for most of the day. A fog had just lifted when I arrived, and rain started falling just as I packed up to leave, but in between was mostly beautiful, warm weather.

This time I was using our own camera (instead of the one I borrowed last time). I was trying out a new telephoto extension for our camera, which gives some extra zoom and also collects more light, which makes it easier to get a quick, focused shot.

I didn't get so many overhead flight photos on this visit, but there was one particular spot, on a low branch in a nearby tree, where two different bald eagles posed for close-up shots. First an immature eagle was feasting on a fish there, and then an adult eagle bullied that young one away from the perch, and proceeded to stay there striking poses for over an hour.

Best of all, I happened to have the camera running in video mode right when the adult chased off the juvenile, so I got a video clip of the whole event.

All in all, a nice, satisfying visit.

More Australia - Melbourne

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 13:05:21 -0800

I've finally gotten around to sorting through more of the Australia photos, so we now have the set from Melbourne. This includes a game of Australian Rules Football, a van tour around the city, a visit to the Immigration Museum, and some general wandering around town.

Next up, I should have some more of the wildlife photos from You Yangs Regional Park & Serendip Sanctuary soon. Update: Got 'em.

Iggles 2.0

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 14:02:39 -0800

A couple of weeks ago, I went back to Conowingo Dam for more bald eagle photos.

This time it was pretty darn cold, and there wasn't much activity until the electric company turned on the generator at 4:30pm (thus churning out the free fish). By that time, the light was fading, all the other people had gone home, and I could barely feel my toes. Even so, I took about 400 of my 800 pictures just during that last hour or so at the end of the day.

The point of this trip was mostly to try out a different kind of camera, a Canon Digital Rebel borrowed from Jane. I think it went pretty well for my first day out with a DSLR, but there's still plenty left for me to learn.

Trying to give my poor wife a heart attack.

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 22:25:18 -0800

Kathy's Giants are going to the Super Bowl. They tried to mess it up a few times (mostly fumbles and missed field goals), but finally managed to pull out the win.

Of course, this just means we can schedule additional heart attacks for the big game two weeks from today. Let's just hope it goes better than 2001.

Congratulations, Jo!

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 16:03:32 -0800

My sister-in-law is an incredible chef, and I found out today that the restaurant where she works, Momofuku, was rated #1 Best New Restaurant in NYC by the New York Times. Hard to get better than that.

And here I thought the coolest thing about Jo was that the answer to "How are things at work?" includes the phrases "knife bag" and "squeeze-bottles of pork fat".

Iggles!

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 07:10:21 -0800

I mentioned in my earlier post about Hawk Mountain that we got to see a bunch of migrating birds of prey that day, but no eagles.

That omission has since been rectified.

We were talking to Dan, one of the volunteers at Hawk Mountain, about what we might see that day, and how we were really hoping for an eagle.

"Well, if you want to see bald eagles, you should really check out Conowingo Dam, especially in the winter."

So I did.

As it turns out, besides having arguably the best hawk migration site in all of North America (Hawk Mountain) just an hour and a half northwest of us, we also have arguably the best bald eagle site east of the Mississippi just an hour and a half southwest of us.

Conowingo Dam is in Maryland, just over the border from Pennsylvania, where US Route 1 crosses the Susquehanna River (the dam itself is also the bridge for US-1). The dam has a hydroelectric generator, and the water that passes through the generator brings fish along with it. The fish, often stunned from getting knocked around in the turbines, make an easy lunch for eagles & other birds on the downstream side. Also, the moderate climate here makes this a good destination (with a steady food supply) for migrating eagles from up north, so the eagle viewing gets even better in the winter.

Last Sunday, I went for a few hours, and I took some pictures.

This was in late October, as the migrant eagles from upstate New York are just beginning to arrive. In another month or two, it should *really* get good.

Hawks etc.

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 06:43:11 -0700

I've added two new sets of hawk photos on my Flickr account.

First, a couple of weeks ago, I went to pick Kathy up after work, and a huge red-tailed hawk swooped right over my head, carrying its dinner. I (along with a very patient Kathy) ended up hanging out there in the parking lot for about an hour & a half, taking tons & tons of pictures. Besides the pictures, I also got some of it on video.

Then, this past Saturday, Kathy & I went to Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, a little west of Allentown. They have a couple of good mountain lookouts right on the migration path of several species of raptors, including various hawks, falcons, and eagles. We got some pictures of the migration, and also some closer views of rescued birds (a great horned owl and a red-tailed hawk) back at the Visitors' Center.

We were at the North Lookout for about 2 hours, and must have seen at least 100 sharp-shinned hawks, a handful of red-tailed hawks, and the occasional osprey, Cooper's hawk, American kestrel, northern harrier, and northern goshawk. We also saw at least a dozen turkey vultures go by, but those looked more like local scavengers than migrators (looping around at low altitude, rather than cruising with definite direction & purpose).

The official count that day included 2 bald eagles & 1 golden eagle, but we didn't get to see those. Guess that just gives us reason to go back...

Back from Upsidedownland

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 10:28:32 -0700

Kathy & I are recently back from a 3-week trip to Australia. We had a great time, and we have tons of pictures, but it'll probably take us a while to sort through the pictures & put them online.

For now, we have a quick photo preview from the first few days (outdoorsy stuff near Melbourne), and a more complete set of underwater pictures from snorkeling & scuba diving at the Great Barrier Reef.

That set of underwater pictures contains about 135 photos, narrowed down from 900, and we still have another 1,800 land pictures to sort through. I'll post more as I have them ready.

In the meantime, back to catching up on 500 other things...

Speaking of inside jokes...

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 21:38:06 -0700

Early last year, Ice Breakers mints had a TV commercial featuring various people exclaiming "Whoa!" upon experiencing their "Ice Cubes" gum, in response to one actress's mocking question, "'Whoa'? Who says 'whoa'?" The key to the gag was the final one, a cameo by Joey Lawrence reprising his trademark "Whoa!" from the TV show "Blossom".

In what appears to be a slightly more subtle in-reference, French's mustard now has a commercial featuring a voice that sounds exactly like Didi Conn, saying "Food loves French's." Conn, you may recall, played Frenchy in the movie version of "Grease".

If that's not actually Didi Conn doing the voiceover, it sounds like a clever impersonation.

Looks like Steven Soderbergh is reading my blog again...

Mon, 25 Jun 2007 21:08:16 -0700

In Ocean's Thirteen, did anyone else notice Al Pacino's character quoting the Paul Anka "The Guys Get Shirts" rant?

"I move quick and when I do, I slice like a hammer."

Fantasticks at Mum

Fri, 04 May 2007 12:35:24 -0700

It's that time once again. Time for me to exhort people to go and see a theatre production in Philadelphia that's about to close this weekend.

Last night Kathy & I went to see The Fantasticks at Mum Puppettheatre. It's an excellent show with a superb cast - they're not only technically skilled (great singing voices, very deft with the puppets, etc.), but also very expressive & just generally interesting to watch.

I don't want to dwell on the usual questions that people have on first hearing of Mum Puppettheatre, but just to clear a couple of things up... No, it's not a "puppet show" in the sense that you might be thinking. It's theatre. There are actors playing parts. Like most plays, there are props, costumes, and other devices that help tell the story. In some particular plays, the actors seem to have more self-awareness about these devices, and awareness of the audience. The nearest comparison I can think of is "Our Town", with the narrator directly addressing the audience and explaining the sparseness of props & set pieces. In this show, you're simultaneously aware of the puppet and the actor, and the character in most cases lives in the combination of the two. The puppets interact in their own scale, but it's also useful to watch the facial expressions and eye contact of the actors (much like communicating in sign language, where you're watching the face as well as the hands that are making signs).

Anyway, we had never seen Fantasticks before, so we weren't just comparing what's *different* about this production, but enjoying it on its own, and it was very enjoyable. Lots of laughing, lots of emotion, and really impressive execution on the technical side throughout the show.

Our main reason for going was because we knew one of the cast members, Dave Jadico (well, I knew him - Kathy just met him last night). Dave was hilarious & fascinating to watch in a variety of roles (sometimes 2 at a time), including "The Old Actor" & Mortimer (his tragic-death-expert sidekick), "The Mute", orchestra (on mini piano, ukulele, and mandolin), and general prop master. I especially enjoyed some of the physical comedy with his props and his puppet characters, including the Henry/Mortimer bit with the flashlight - a little improv moment that's funny, then it seems played out, then it goes on even longer so that it's funny again (a lot like the Sammy Davis Jr joke that I mentioned from Bomb-itty).

The rest of the cast was equally strong & compelling - the young couple in love, the parental machinations, the dashing El Gallo (played like a young Ricardo Montalban)... all excellent, and well worth the ticket price.

Speaking of the ticket price, it's normally $30, but if you mention this review from the Phillyist web site, you can get tickets for half price ($15). Not bad at all.

So, to sum up, if you're in Philly, and it's not yet past May 6, go see this show. If it's after that, you can still catch Dave on stage at ComedySportz on Saturday nights.

"It looked like the flames of hell."

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 16:41:44 -0700

The plagues just keep on comin'...

Apparently this was a bad weekend for fires. First, early Sunday morning, near my sister's house in Oakland, a fuel tanker truck crashed & exploded into flames under an elevated highway, causing the roadway supports to melt & collapse. Nobody died in the crash nor in the collapse, and apparently the driver of the truck came out with only some moderate burns. That area will be a huge traffic mess for at least several months.

Then early this morning, a fire broke out at Eastern Market in Washington, DC, and basically gutted the place. About this time 7 years ago, I was in a production of No Exit on their stage at Market 5 Gallery. It was a great performance space, especially if you didn't mind some of the interesting smells of having portable toilets indoors. I don't know for sure if the fire hit this part of the building, but I'm guessing that the all-wood stage would probably be one of the first things to burn... :(

Update as of 5/1/2007: According to the Washington Post, the fire only destroyed the South part of the building (mostly food markets), but not the North part (art gallery & stage area): "The North Hall, where artists and craftsmakers set up shop, was spared."

Anniversary, plagues, etc.

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 07:14:42 -0700

Last week Kathy & I had our anniversary.

For our anniversary last year we took a trip to Jamaica, where we both got deathly ill, and Kathy had the worst part of it during the trip home, making for a thoroughly miserable bus ride, airport visit, and flight home.

This year, we're both pretty busy this month, so no time to take a trip. We decided instead to take a long weekend at home, and do lots of silly touristy stuff here in Philadelphia. But the curse nearly caught up with us anyway.

Day 1: Everything's just fine.

Friday night we had a fabulous dinner out at our favorite Melting Pot restaurant. Very lovely, and nothing went tragically wrong with that one.

Day 2: Start out running.

After a morning of lazing around the house and watching Charlie & Lola cartoons, our Saturday adventures began with the journey into Philadelphia. We wanted to go for maximum touristy flavor, so as we waited for the train into center city, we got out the camera and took pictures of sitting around at the train station. We got on the train and started moving.

"Hey hon, do you have the camera?"

"No, you had the camera. You mean...?"

Oh crap. Must've left the camera on the bench at the train station.

On a Saturday, these trains run about every 20 minutes. The stops are all about a half-mile apart. If we get out at the next station, we could probably walk/run back to our station, and (assuming the camera's still there) we could hop on the next train and still (barely) make it to our 3:00 tour in the city.

Start running. Or rather, jogging. Or rather, stumbling uphill in a slightly-faster-than-walking gait.

The first half of the journey back home is all uphill, for about a quarter-mile. Jogging & wheezing soon gave way to walking & wheezing, but we eventually got back to our starting point with about 10 minutes to spare.

I came to the bench where we'd been sitting. No camera.

A guy approaching the station sees me looking confusedly at the bench. "Did you leave a camera here?"

"Yes."

"We found it, and figured we'd hold onto it and put up a sign at the station, rather than just leave it lying around. We live in the first house right over here, and my wife was actually just in the process of making the sign. Hold on, I'll run back and get the camera."

He's carrying a folded-up baby stroller, and was visibly on his way to meet up with friends on the opposite platform, waiting for a train in the other direction. He jogs back up to his house, stroller still in hand. He's in the house for a minute, then comes back out with the camera.

He hands the camera to me and goes running off again, because by now his train has arrived and is waiting on the opposite platform. Fortunately his friends are over there to hold the train for him, but he still has to run down the path, through the tunnel under the tracks, and up the stairs on the other side, still carrying the stroller, to get to the train that's waiting there.

Way above & beyond the call for an act of neighborly goodwill.

So, friendly neighbor guy (I never did get his name) got on his train, and a few minutes later we got on our train (with a firm grip on the camera this time), and we continued on our mission. Gotta remember to write him a thank-you note...

Day 2, continued: Quack.

For the anchor day of our tourist weekend, we went for the ultimate cheesy tourist event, the Ride The Ducks tour, where you ride in an amphibious bus/boat, first around the streets of Old City Philadelphia and then down a stretch of the Delaware River. Upon boarding, you're issued a little plastic duck-call toy, and you're encouraged to quack on various occasions throughout the trip.

On cheese, it did not disappoint. Captain Fred can break out enough embarrassing puns & juvenile jokes to put any father of middle-school children to shame. I resisted the temptation to answer any of his riddles about "quacking up" or about exactly where the Declaration of Independence was signed ("At the bottom!"), but I finally gave in & answered the very last one on the drive back to the visitor center: "They had to build this brick wall around the cemetery. You know why they had to put up the wall?" "Because people were *dying* to get in!" I swear, I was Captain Fred's best friend after that. I'm not proud. :)

Day 2, continued some more: Poissons de poison.

After the tour, we wandered around center city for a bit, and ended up at Caribou Cafe for dinner. It's kind of a fancy place, but they were nice enough to let us in with our jeans & sneakers and no reservation, probably because it was still early, before the prime-time dinner crowd would arrive.

On the window of the restaurant, there's a sign for "Steak Frites, Escargots, Poissons". So we decided to get all 3. Escargot for an appetizer, then Kathy had the Steak Frites (steak & French fries, basically), and I got the featured special of fish. The waitress introduced it as "escolar", and when I asked what that was, she said it's also known as "Hawaiian butter fish" or "walu". It sounded interesting, and presented well. Everything was delicious.

For dessert, we went to Naked Chocolate Cafe for some very intense "drinking chocolate". Not so much like your average American hot cocoa, but more like a chocolate bar melted into a cup. About midway through my 6-ounce chocolate, I had the distinct sensation that I had drastically overdone something. It felt like the same reaction I have to cigar smoke. Very uncomfortable, and very much wanting to stop whatever it was that may have brought me to this place. So I left half of the chocolate, which is not at all like me.

My symptoms only got worse after we got home. I was fine after a couple of hours, but it wasn't until several days later that Kathy showed me where the Wikipedia page about escolar details the common "gastrointestinal symptoms following consumption". Apparently this is just a known feature of eating this fish, and yet restaurants seem to serve it, and suckers like me seem to eat it. Well, once, anyway. I think that's one that I'll remember to avoid from now on.

Day 3: Hey, I know that dude!

On Sunday, we headed back into Philadelphia for dinner and a show, but not in that order.

We had tickets to a 3pm matinee of "The Bomb-itty Of Errors" at 11th Hour Theatre Company. I hadn't heard of this group before, but this show was written by the same guys who did "Nerds://A Musical Software Satire", which Kathy & I both loved, so we were very psyched to see it.

On a Sunday afternoon, I'd expect a small, dead crowd, and on a Sunday afternoon under the flooding rains of a noreaster, I'd expect them even smaller & deader. So imagine my surprise when we came into a lively room of about 40-50 people, and I knew *two* of them.

Right after we sat down, Madi Distefano, the teacher of the acting class I'm taking, came and sat right in front of us. She was there with her daughter and some friends.

Then I was looking through the program for the show. The DJ (in the sound booth right next to our seats) looked vaguely familiar, even through big, dark sunglasses, a giant afro wig, and a hat. Then I read that this was, in fact, Mark Valenzuela, who was a few years behind me in college. We were in Nomadic Theatre together, and we acted together in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (coincidentally, another wacky adaptation of a Shakespeare play).

Who knew I was so plugged-in to the theatre scene in Philadelphia?

Oh, and if you have the chance, you should totally see Bomb-itty (it's here until April 29). It was excellent. Even my teacher said so. There was one part (a joke involving Sammy Davis Jr.) that had me laughing so hard I was gasping for breath for several minutes. Right up there with Little Miss Sunshine, in terms of the danger it posed to my health & safety. Go see it.

After that, a lovely dinner at Roy's. No ill effects from dinner this time, so I had all of my chocolate dessert plus half of Kathy's, trying to catch up. So after another anniversary dinner that couldn't be beat, we went to sleep and didn't get up until the next morning, when things started to fall.

Day 4: Plagues & strange noises.

On Monday, Kathy & I had both taken the day off. It was going to be nice not to have my alarm clock go off at 5:30, but I awoke at 5:00 anyway.

I could swear I heard Kathy in the next room (or maybe downstairs, I wasn't sure) moving boxes around or looking for something in the closet. Just the sound of footsteps and some thumping around. But no, Kathy's right here. That's odd. The random thumping noises continued.

Now let's think about this rationally. No, it's not a burglar. These thumping noises are slow and not accompanied by any clattering or crashing like you'd expect if someone was moving in the dark in an unfamiliar space, or trying to get out in a hurry. But seriously, what the hell is that?

I knew we still had that storm moving through, but this didn't sound like rain, so I figured maybe a tree branch was hanging low and bumping into the house or something. Worst-case, maybe such a branch had poked a hole so a squirrel got in? Time to go take a look.

I checked the guest room, checked downstairs, checked the basement. No water getting in, no holes in the house, all good.

Finally, I looked outside.

Snow.

Big piles of wet, slushy snow. Here in the second half of April.

Mind you, we got married on this day a couple of years earlier, and had a beautiful sunny day of 70 degrees. But this year we had mounds of wet, slushy snow. It was apparently accumulating on the branches of the pine tree that towers over our house (directly above the guest room), then the high winds were blowing it loose in fist-sized clumps, which were thudding onto the roof.

The sound, as well as the incongruity of snow in late April, just kept reminding me of the scene from the movie Magnolia ("Exodus 8:2"), where frogs are raining down on everything. Of course, in the movie, they come crashing through the roofs of houses & cars, so I kept expecting the crashing noises to follow.

With all that, it took some time, but I eventually did get back to sleep until a more decent hour.

Day 4, continued: More strange noises.

Later in the day, the snow had mostly been washed away by rain, which then tapered off to just a light mist/drizzle by early afternoon. It was turning into a nicer, more peaceful day.

Around 3pm, when I was at the back of the house, I heard the noise of a sharp crash or snap outside. My mind instantly jumped to that giant pine tree towering over our house. The noise was big enough that I imagined it as the sound of the top 20 feet of the tree breaking off. Of course, if that were to happen, it would be followed closely by another big noise of the tree landing on something (possibly us). While half-expecting to hear that other shoe drop...

"Kathy, you OK?"

"Yeah."

"What was that?"

"I don't know."

"Sounded like it might have been a big tree or something."

"I'll look out front... Oh my God! Oh my God! There's a car, and it's upside-down!"

Indeed it was. Right in front of our house, on our moderately steep hill, slick from the rain, a car apparently swerved off the road, bounced off a low wall of loosely-piled stones in front of a neighbor's house, and rolled onto its roof.

Now, as a person who (A) used to be an EMT many years ago, and (B) once was in a similarly inverted car crash, I had sort of a unique sense of familiarity about this situation.

You're first on the scene. What do you do?

By the time I even got to the front door, Kathy was already on the phone calling 911. We ran outside to see what's going on, if anybody was trapped inside the car, etc.

Other than being upside-down, the car seemed mostly intact. It was still mostly holding its shape (not squashed down or anything), and there didn't seem to be any external danger (moving parts, fire, fuel leaks, etc.). Nobody had come out of the car yet, and it was pretty quiet, other than the horn that seemed to be stuck in the honk position.

The car hadn't hit anyone else, but there was another driver who happened to be coming up in the other direction, and saw the crash happen. She was now out of her car and coming to get a better look. She & I came around the driver's side of the crashed car, where the driver was in the process of untangling himself from a seatbelt and climbing out. He looked fine (other than a bit dazed), seemed to have no trouble moving, and he hadn't said anything. He was able to get out without much trouble in a matter of seconds.

We asked him if there was anyone else in his car. No.

We asked if he was OK, if anything was hurting. He's fine.

He kept pacing around, looking at the car, looking for the pack of cigarettes that had fallen out of his shirt pocket.

Usually in a car crash, the common injuries (which might go unnoticed) are head trauma and back/neck injuries, and all this walking around is not going to help him if he's got any of those. Kathy ran inside to get a chair, so we could have him sit down, away from the car and out of the road. One of our neighbors who's a doctor had walked over, and was asking the driver some questions to make sure he's OK.

All of that was within about the first 2 minutes and then the first of several police arrived. Pretty darn quick response time. Ambulance & fire truck similarly appeared within about 5 minutes.

As far as we could tell, the driver was completely uninjured. Not even a bad scrape or anything. Eventually, the towtruck crew got the car turned upright & hauled away, the ambulance & firefighters drove off, and the owner accompanied the towing crew back to base, while the main police officer followed along.

Looking at the street an hour later, you wouldn't have guessed the scene that was there a little while ago.

So anyway. A nice quiet weekend at home for our anniversary. We're just hoping for an *actually* quiet one next year.

Eclipsing is not what I do best.

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 21:21:53 -0800

I wasn't sure whether to go with the Matt O'Donnell reference or the Bonnie Tyler reference. I guess history will decide whether I made the right choice.

In any case, I've determined that I haven't yet figured out how to work all the manual controls on this camera in order to get a decent moon photo.

Tonight we had a total lunar eclipse, with the moon fully in Earth's shadow from about 5:45pm to a little after 7pm EST. From about 7:00 to about 8:00, as the sunlight was beginning to spread across the moon again, I was standing in a field under a sky of thin, fast-moving clouds, trying to snap a photo any time a gap would appear in the clouds.

This camera (Olympus C-770) is mostly a point-and-shoot, but it has 10x zoom, a decent built-in lens, and a bunch of optional manual controls (manual focus, aperture, shutter speed). I had the camera on a tripod on a park bench, and I tried to do all the manual settings that I've been reading about, but I still feel like the white light was coming out way too bright, so even on my best shot it's impossible to make out any detail other than a giant ball of light.

My ideal would be something more like this one on Wikipedia (also taken tonight), with visible dark & light areas on the surface of the moon. Perhaps that's a bit ambitious for not having an SLR camera with a fancy lens, but I'll keep trying. There's another lunar eclipse coming in August, so I have 5 months to practice on regular full moons and get my technique down. We'll see how that goes.

Update (3/5/2007): The first step on my journey - Bruce pointed out to me that by default Flickr shows EXIF information from the photo, including the camera model and the settings used. E.g., this page has search results for all photos tagged with "eclipse", taken with an Olympus C770. Hmm, some used the same settings I had...

Trying Atom

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 13:55:07 -0800

A couple of years ago I hastily threw together an RSS feed for this web site, but I kept the format very sparse so that I wouldn't run into errors (no links, no text formatting tags). I'm now in the process of updating this from loosely-defined RSS standards to the more precise Atom standard.

My old RSS feed was at http://www.salubrio.com/mike/index-rss-full.xml. My current test of the new Atom feed is at http://www.salubrio.com/mike/index-rss-full4.xml. Once I settle all the formatting issues, I'll probably move over to another new filename to reflect that it's more Atom than RSS.

But for the moment, I'd just like to ask any of the people using RSS readers (Google Reader, Bloglines, Thunderbird, etc.) to let me know if the new test file works in the reader. Does it?

Update (3/3/2007): Another one to try, this time including images: http://www.salubrio.com/mike/index-rss-full6.xml

Just another morning with Matt O'Donnell

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 17:28:18 -0800

On the local morning news here, Matt O'Donnell is one of the anchors. His sense of humor seems to have been honed at a fraternity or an all-boys high school, always full of snarky comments and especially innuendo for the blonde traffic/weather lady, Karen Rogers. His comments are easily the most compelling reason to watch the show, always walking that line between merely inappropriate and downright obscene. It's delightful to watch.

Sometimes it's just silly stuff like this, after a report on 6-foot-tall longstem roses at Valentine's day (paraphrased from memory):

"Bet you'd like one of those roses. / 6 feet? That would eclipse me. / Eclipsing is what I do best."

My favorite so far was earlier this week (unfortunately I didn't catch it on video), when one of the transitions back from commercial showed kids building a snowman on a slushy, muddy snow day. Matt's female co-anchor Tamala Edwards (who plays straight-man to Matt's clowning) made some throwaway comment about "That's got to be the dirtiest snowman I've ever seen." Unable to resist an easy target like that, Matt had to raise the ante: "But if it were a dirty, *naughty* snowman, Karen would be all over that, right, Karen?"

If anything ever happens to Matt, I have a feeling Karen's husband would be a prime suspect.

But anyway, today we had not one but *two* examples - the first one was facilitated by a teaser for a later story about pole dancing (almost too easy), but then the later one was completely out of the blue. And Karen seemed to play along with both, in that awkward way that makes it even worse.

Priceless.

Here's the video.

(Random aside: like my previous citation of bizarre segues on the local ABC news, this one also featured footage of an abused dog - perhaps that's an omen, my signal to fire up the Tivo?)

Nerds!

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 12:11:44 -0800

Last night Kathy & I went to see "Nerds://A Musical Software Satire" at the Philadelphia Theatre Company. It was awesome. We haven't laughed that hard since "Little Miss Sunshine".

It's only playing at this theater until next weekend (Feb 25), and the decent seats are not cheap, but even so, we're considering going back to see it again.

Part of the humor is a wealth of nerdy references - various computer things plus Star Wars, Star Trek, and other cultural icons - but even outside of that it's just hilarious, very energetic, and very well performed.

I don't want to spoil too much of the plot, but I do need to mention that there's a lightsaber battle onstage involving Bill Gates. If that statement alone elicits a positive reaction from you, then you'll like this show. If not, you're really missing out.

I should also mention that Kathy (who got these tickets for me as a surprise) also went the extra mile & booked us for a night when they had a "talk-back" session with the cast after the show. The actors all seem really great, and in particular Jim Poulos (playing Bill Gates) just seems like the nicest guy you'd ever meet. As we were leaving after the talk, other actors disappeared back to backstage, while Jim came out and continued chatting with audience members. When we got outside, we saw him waving down a taxi for an older woman from the audience who was having trouble getting around on the ice & snow on a cold night. Helluva guy.

If you go, you would do well to get seats downstairs, not in the balcony. We've sat in the balcony there before, and discovered that it can be a problem if your legs are more than 8 inches long. Besides, you want to be close enough to smell exactly what Steve Jobs is smoking in his scene with Woz. :)

It's called the worst news-teaser segue in recent memory.

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 12:47:50 -0800

Last night Kathy happened to turn on the TV right when ABC was doing a teaser for the upcoming news broadcast. It's a 10-second segment, and I would assume they tape these things at least a few minutes in advance, and yet this apparently got through:

"I'm Rob Jennings. Coming up tonight on Action News, new developments in the Anna Nicole paternity fight, it's called the worst case of animal abuse in recent memory."

Judging by the images on screen, it would appear that these were intended to be two separate stories, but I didn't watch the newscast, so I can't say that with absolute certainty.

I'm guessing that the teleprompter left out something important in the middle, such as "[Pause. Change gears. Perhaps insert a conjunction.]"

Slice like a hammer

Sat, 10 Feb 2007 08:08:38 -0800

Everything I need to know about surreal musical collisions I learned from mall food-court background music.

Last night I was at the mall, sitting by the Sbarro's, when something caught my attention in the midst of the bland jazzy ballad that was playing.

No, I must have imagined it. Sometimes one's brain can subconsciously attach patterns & meaning to something just to try to recognize it, but... Wait, there it is again.

I needed a witness. So I called Pax.

"Quick musical question for you. To the best of your knowledge, did Tony Bennett ever do a cover of the Soundgarden song 'Black Hole Sun'?"

In my experience, those words had never been strung together in the same sentence before. But if this song was really out there, then perhaps that was my fault.

As it turns out, it wasn't Tony B, but Paul Anka. It's from his album "Rock Swings", full of similarly incongruous big-band covers of modern songs. And since we live in the age of iTunes, 5 minutes after learning that, I own a copy of it.

In looking up some details about Paul Anka on Wikipedia, I happened upon a link to "The Guys Get Shirts", a surreptitiously recorded, profanity-laced tirade that Anka once leveled at his musicians after a show. It's full of great lines like "When I move, I slice like a [bleep]in' hammer." Very funny stuff.

But even beyond all that, I think my favorite part was when I started listening to the album and heard track 1, the Bon Jovi song "It's My Life". Now, with all the Bon Jovi songs out there, why not go for an earlier, more iconic one like "Livin' On A Prayer" or "You Give Love A Bad Name"? Then he got to this couplet from the original Bon Jovi lyrics:

"My heart is like an open highway / Like Frankie said, I did it my way"

Except the Paul Anka version changed that second line slightly: "Frank said, he did it my way".

The main difference is just a pronoun, and it seems pretty subtle, but it's hugely important when you realize that Frank Sinatra's signature song, "My Way", was actually written by Paul Anka. Thus, "Frank said, he [Frank] did it my [Paul's] way."

He really does slice like a hammer. Or hit like a knife. Or whatever.