Merry Christmas! Some stuff to keep us entertained at this time of year…
Time Out New York has a terrific hot chocolate list. The list looks soooo tempting – and decadent – and… not cheap… dare I dip into the wallet, in the midst of Xmas shopping, for this… Hmm…
Time Out New York also has a nice holiday walk through midtown.
Just a question: if everything’s on sale before Christmas, what’s left for the after Christmas sales?
And, I just find the Lowe’s Christmas commercial with the APA couple to be great. They’re APA’s! And, she’s just buying a power drill for her tool-crazy husband, and he’s just pretending that he’ll be surprised for Christmas! It’s so normal and so… American! (now, if only I can find a link to the video).
Ken Jeong in the Pepto Bismal commercial – that was a little over the top. I think a little Jeong is okay; too much and it’s a little creepy and not funny. Plus, he’s a medical doctor in real life (see his imdb entry, after all); maybe he can actually tell us if Pepto really is any good for the holiday over-eating. Well, maybe medicine and comedy don’t quite work, but Jeong’s pointing out the foolishness of holiday foods wasn’t that much fun.
I haven’t had much in the way of Christmas cards this year, beyond those so far from a few friends. Slate has an interesting article about whether Facebook killed the Christmas card. Well, I still believe in Christmas cards, so I still send them out (holiday cards, at the rate I’m going; thankfully, there are days of Christmas/Kwanzaa and even New Year’s Eve/Day left!). But, the Internet is both a curse and a blessing…
And, in case you haven’t gotten the perfect geek Christmas present – seriously: a Voltron USB drive? Angry Asian Man says it does come with a Blazing Sword AND an episode of the cartoon! And, it’s officially licensed by the Voltron people. But, it does not mean you get 5 thumb drives that form into one Voltron. Aww. Still: one can totally geek out on this.
PBS Newshour’s Jeffrey Brown did an interview with Garry Trudeau, on the 40 anniversary retrospective of Doonesbury. Kind of cool that Trudeau made some observations about the next generation: Alex Doonesbury and her dating Toggle, the Iraq War vet. (I’m still puzzled by the whole Jeff Redfern’s misadventures in Afghanistan – Jeff is such a weirdo; but otherwise, the struggles of the armed services in war and at home as portrayed by Trudeau has been rich stuff).
Because we’re lawyers here at triscribe: in light of my current superhero obsession (wherein I’ve been reading a bunch of graphic novels / compilations of Batman and friends), it’s kind of fitting that the ABA Journal and the NY Times covered this fascinating blog (blawg?), Law and the Multiverse, by lawyers who ponder on the legal implications of the superhero world. Thumbs up!! (someone has to answer questions about whether Batman’s searching and seizing is unconstitutional and whether Superman can be a US citizen or is a really illegal alien (literally), and whether Hank McCoy (Beast of the X-Men) has a claim under the Americans with Disabilities Act as a mutant). Awesome!!!
Because Santa showed up a lot in the DC and Marvel worlds, the Law and Multiverse people did a legal analysis of Santa’s actions. Cool…
Some pictures of snowmen:
Slate had a slide show in honor of winter solstice earlier this week. Some of the snowmen in the slide show are creepy looking snowmen (which had me laughing like an idiot for some reason). Unsurprisingly, the photo of the snowcouple of Central Park were the cute snowman/woman; the Tokyo one was funny; and yes, the creepy ones were creepy…
I loved the NPR photos of “Snowmania” – where the snowmen’s poses were inspired by Calvin and Hobbes’ snowmen stuff. These photos were kind of sick and funny.
At Columbia, my undergrad Alma Mater, had this weird tradition of the announcements/voice mail lady reading the “T’was the night before Xmas” poem (yes, voice mail lady was real!). And, Clement Clarke Moore, the man who wrote the poem was a Columbia prof prof. Here: we have Harvard scientist saying that the idea of Santa and flying reindeer came from hallucinogenic ‘shrooms…. Thanks, Harvard!
From Time’s Techland section: Links to holiday tv things. To paraphrase the writer of this blog post, Merry Christmas, to everyone who celebrates; everyone else: have a great weekend! (and enjoy He-Man and She-Ra fight Skeletor and Hordak from ruining the season’s greeting for everyone).