Month: October 2004

Ballgame over…Series over…Pennant’s over…. you know the rest. Pretty poor performance on the part of the Yankees. P– is probably not in a good mood…. I only heard it on the radio, but it sounded like it was the pitching that was at fault.

Listening to PBS’s Broadway series. It sounds something like Ken Burns’ Civil War miniseries documentary. While generally good, there are some serious gaps: what happened to the Three-Penny Opera (Mac the Knife)? They tag Show Boat as the first modern Broadway musical, although I think that Gilbert and Sullivan counts. Coincidentally, The Three-Penny Opera was based on another British musical, The Beggar’s Opera, which was performed on Nassau Street around the corner from J&R Music World in 1750. For more info, see Musicals 101.

For everyone trying to get an education at the Electoral College in this election cycle, check out Electoral Vote 2004. I don’t know how this guy can consolidate 41 polls a day.

Shoutout to ssw — two years at the same job! Congrats!.

Yankees v. Bosox – the saga continues. A historic Game 7 of the American League playoffs is on tomorrow.

Oh, and that stepchild National League playoffs, Houston v. St. Louis, is still on by the way – Game 6 tomorrow.

In the middle of all these sports, FOX has been promoting all its crappy yet-to-premiere new reality shows. And, I mean craptacular. I wouldn’t watch this stuff and the commercials are only making me want to avoid them – “My Big Fat Boss…” and then there’s “The Rebel Billionaire” to compete for Virgin’s CEO Richard Branson’s job (kind of watchable, but still silly – like I’m really supposed to believe that doing Branson-type stunts will really land someone his job of running the airlines and music and all that).

FOX’s promotion of the series “House, M.D.” is actually intruiging. Of course, I say that because I’m a big fan of the star, the British actor, Hugh Laurie, who’s playing House, a doctor who solves the causes of weird medical problems as if he were a cop. (a cooler looking version of NBC’s “Medical Investigation” – which hasn’t been nearly as cool as I was hoping it’d be). Laurie, though, is playing an American, so it’s jarring hearing his accent. But, he looks cool and I like that FOX is actually premiering a non-reality series.

Oh, and “The O.C.,” “The Simpsons,” and “Arrested Development,” are also being nicely promoted in the middle of the Major League Baseball playoffs. Hopefully FOX will get the ratings to show for this effort.

NY1 is doing an interesting comparison: “A Tale of Two Subways” – see how Tokyo’s system matches up with NYC’s.

Apparently, the attorney representing the woman suing Bill O’Reilly for sexual harassment is someone who was admitted to the NYS bar without going to law school. Slate.com’s “Explainer” nicely explains how the admissions process worked for this attorney (although, I think most of us lawyers who went through the NYS admissions process probably knew about this explanation already).

Slate.com’s Chris Suellentrop posts that he heard Presidential candidate John Kerry speaking French – but the recording was hard to hear (or else Kerry’s French is a little on the garbled side). An intruiging listen anyway for me (yep, studying French for years is good for something). (oh, and Slate readers ended up translating for Suellentrop; Kerry apparently told Haitian-Americans that he plans to help Haiti).

Bring on the Yankees v. Bosox. I’m so not eager for a Houston v. Bosox World Series (for a number of reasons, but I’ll let the readership figure out the implications)…

What do you do when you lose confidence in the system? What if you don’t know how the system can be changed? Do you reject the system or do you continue to participate in changing the system? What happens in the interim? We’re not up to that point in the election, but I am up to that point in yesterday’s competition.

Some stuff…

The whole flu vaccine shortage is quite a debacle; I like how this NY Times article demonstrates how the debacle crosses into areas of science, politics, human psychology (for instance, it’s amazing how news of the shortage turned into population panic, with the lines of people getting all angsty over not getting their shot; versus reasonable doctors on tv telling people, “You know, if everyone washed their hands, we’d actually have an easier time preventing flu…”), and law. Yep. Just what we need… in the middle of an insane presidential election season (see, complete crossover into everything in life as we know it).

NYC has its first Asian fire chief, as Sophia Kwok – a Brooklynite via Hong Kong – was promoted to deputy chief of EMS operations last week. Cool.

NY Times’ Hilary De Vries interviews Korean-American actress Sandra Oh – very interesting stuff on what it means to be Asian, female, and a character actor in Hollywood.

Yankees v. Bosox. Crazy stuff last night – the game started looking like a football game, with that score (Bosox lost, 17-6); impossible for Bosox to come back from a 3 game deficit – or… well, things remain to be seen, of course. ‘Nuff said there.

I don’t know what it is about having to wake up real early and being totally unable to go to sleep at night. I’m going to have to get to Chinatown by 8:45 am to be picked up to go to Newark to judge a moot court competition. I’m catching up on old tv shows that I haven’t seen this week: Survivor (cool earthquake), Saturday Night Live (funny Town Hall debate parody), Tucker Carlson (spends a lot of time trying to convince you not to vote, idiot) , Enterprise (the other Tucker’s in Brooklyn).

Dallas BBQ opens up one block away, really bad. $6 for a fresh juicy rotisserie chicken is good eats. They are doing gangbuster business, taking far better advantage of the space there.

Ah, short work week means we’re that much closer to the homestretch called the weekend.

Presidential debate #3 – on domestic issues. Umm. Hmm. Talking about the Iraq war (again) is talking about a domestic issue (?) – well, I guess so, in this day and age. Wasn’t too wild about some of Bob Schieffer’s questions, but figured that it was just another draw between the candidates.

Seriously, the debates have been like the ultimate reality show (well, without the physical stunts anyway).

Check out this week’s Doonesbury – (i.e., look for comic strips for the week of October 11) – cartoonist Garry Trudeau, via the Mark Slackmeyer character, is directing readers to websites of editorials or other articles written by disenchanted Republicans/conservatives who disapprove of the current Bush administration (or, are too frightened of Kerry to overcome whatever obvious qualms they may have about the administration).

Not exactly the funniest Doonesbury this week (Wednesday (10/13/04)’s was funny though – Mark advises a college kid to borrow a laptop to read a Salon.com article on the conservative disenchantment of Bush/fear of Kerry; this is because said kid’s laptop is in the shop for repairs; Mark returns to check on said kid – Mark says, “Well?”; said kid says: “Oh…um, I’m still checking my e-mail.”)

But reading the articles Trudeau’s been referring have been very interesting (one citation to a John Eisenhower editorial – son of Dwight D. Eisenhower, was a Republican who says he will go independent this election year). Trudeau’s Moral: Getting different perspectives doesn’t hurt anyone; you might learn something (well, he’s not a favorite of the Bushies anyway).

The passing of Christopher Reeve, actor who will be remembered for his work as Superman and lobbying for many political and public interest issues.

South Asian Hindus of Queens celebrating Diwali, the Festival of Lights, a month early – to take advantage of the nice weather.

Plus, on Slate.com – “Ad Report” presents a review of the latest Burger King ad: wherein Burger King (and I mean literally – a person in robes and wearing a plastic mask with a BK crown) serves a guy a BK breakfast in bed. I think the ad is strangely funny, in a camp sort of way, although I wouldn’t give it the high grade that Slate.com’s Seth Stevenson gave it.

Enjoying what’s left of the three day weekend.

Local UPN station had plugged in to the Yankees game on ESPN on Friday night, and delayed broadcasting “Star Trek: Enterprise” ‘s season premiere until Saturday night, so I ended up accidentally taping 45 minutes of the game Friday night. I did end up taping and watching the season premiere; umm, I cannot make an honest assessment until Part 2 of the season premiere airs this coming Friday. Part 1, to say the least, left me thinking, “What?” The Enterprise crew continues to cease to amaze me; digital filming of the episode made for a clear looking cinematic look; and poor time traveler Daniels… his fate is bizarre, as usual.

Saw “Garden State” on Saturday. Good movie – sad, darkly funny. Decent soundtrack. Moral of the movie – it’s ok to feel and to live and all that. Oh, and actress Natalie Portman can act (as opposed to how George Lucas’ Star Wars reduced her talent to pretty minimal stuff); actor/writer/director Zach Braff (whose day job involves playing that screwy doctor J.D. on NBC’s “Scrubs”) – pretty interesting talent he has – to write and direct and act (and I think even produce?)…

Yankees v. Bosox – argh. How much more of the running soap opera can we put up with these two teams?

Happy Columbus Day. Geez, I actually miss Toyota’s Christopher Columbus Action Figure. ’nuff said…

Pei dragged me to the doctor on Saturday. I had a low grade back pain, and there were some kind of unusual bumps on my back. Pei thought the worst. Anyway, 2 out of the 3 turned out to be knots in the muscle fiber caused by too much stress, so I was given some muscle relaxants to help straighten them out. The third one turned out to be a benign lipoma, which should it grow will have to be removed surgically. The muscle relaxant knocked me out for most of Sunday morning, but I stayed at Pei’s house just to be cautious. Not exactly the best way to spend an anniversary, but at least we’re together.