Category: Brooklyn

SSW mentioned this fall’s 4-way apartheid Survivor: Cook Islands today. City officials are appropriately outraged, but the question ithat occurs to me is whether there were this many Asians applying for the previous 12 seasons? Amazing Race has 2 Asian teams this year, apparently also to address the reality of the situation. The only Asian American to win a reality show was Dorothy Hui in Anderson Cooper’s The Mole 2 – the Next Betrayal.

The subway nerds ride the entire system in 24 hours 2 minutes. One of them is a U.Mich law student. More people would consider doing it if there were more restrooms than the measly 70 rooms out of 469 stations currently available. Maybe the people fighting over the above-ground street furniture could also do the subways and save everyone a lot of aggrevation.

Umm, yeah, sorry, the official announcement’s out: Pluto is the (Dwarf) Planet.  Not a planet (or at least of the major ones of our solar system).  Lots of corresponding videos on the story too – loved how CNN has as its space correspondent Miles O’Brien on the story (CNN.com has video where O’Brien talks to Hayden Planetarium’s own Neil DeGrasse Tyson on the topic of Pluto’s demotion – which Tyson had got on the bandwagon long ago).  As crazy as it sounds, the Trekkie in me would say – “Ohmigod, Miles O’Brien?” – which I’m sure this non-fictitious O’Brien has to put up with from Star Trek fans.  But, come on, Star Trek’s Chief Miles O’Brien was a great guy!  And, I’m sure he liked Pluto… or would like Pluto, anyway.
The gimmick of this upcoming season’s “Survivor” – wherein team’s are initially set by race/ethnicity (that is, before the presumed merger, where one tribe is made to determine the ultimate winner) – well, it just gives me pause.  A long pause.

Ah – “Scrubs.” As a tv show, it makes me both laugh and cry. So sweet and fantastic.

Caught most of the re-airing of the season premiere of “Prison Break” on FOX. Looks like Wentworth Miller’s Michael Scofield has an opposition that actually is on his level of cleverness. Michael’s love interest, the prison doc Sarah is left in a rather bemused mood (well, who can blame her?). His brother Lincoln’s ex-girlfriend/lawyer… well, let’s just say… poor Veronica.

An article on the man behind Elmo. Cool:

Mr. Clash, a six-foot-tall African-American puppeteer, created that bright-red Muppet monster from “Sesame Street.” You know, the one with the falsetto and constant laugh. Although Mr. Clash, 45, has been Elmo’s constant companion for 20 years, he has not been nearly as identifiable as most celebrities. So a common reaction from some black adults — children ignore him and talk directly to Elmo — is “Elmo is a brother!” Mr. Clash said.

“It’s pertinent,’’ Mr. Clash said of his racial identity, during an interview in his small Sesame Workshop office near Lincoln Center in Manhattan. He has just started promoting his book, “My Life as a Furry Red Monster: What Being Elmo Has Taught Me About Life, Love, and Laughing Out Loud” (Broadway Books). It goes on sale Sept. 5. [….]

Elmo was born in 1983, Mr. Clash writes. Mr. Clash was a Muppeteer in training when a “Sesame Street” colleague tossed him “a shapeless, soft bundle of red” — the show wanted a red monster — and challenged him to come up with a voice for the thing.

“His voice couldn’t be too primitive,” Mr. Clash recalled the other day. “He wasn’t as articulate at first. I’d used that falsetto voice in my characters before. When he gave me the puppet, I knew that was the voice.”

There is now a veritable Elmo empire, with dolls, puppets, videos and books, among many other products. [….]

Comic strip follow up: So, Mary Worth got mad at her stalker and slams the door on him. Yeah, that’s right.

Monday – nice weather.  Back at the office.  Uh, yeah, that.

I wonder at what point does one realize that one has been watching too much You Tube.

As part of Newsweek’s special on Law Schools, Hilary Clinton writes on why she went to law school.  And, Newsweek joins forces with Equal Justice Works (formerly NAPIL) to further pass on the iea of public interest in law.  Hmm.  Well, let’s try to get the message out there, I guess.

Missed Prison Break’s season premiere.  Oops.  Forgive me, Wentworth Miller.  😉  It still feels like summer, so I’m just not yet into season premiere mode.

Quiet little weekend.

Mets – celebrate 20th anniversary of the 1986 Amazin’s – and memories of the hijinks that they had. Then, as of Sunday, we have to worry about pitcher Tom Glavine’s arm condition. Mets beat the Rockies, with El Duque Hernandez playing a great game, and on tv, Ron Darling and Gary Cohen and Keith Hernandez were taking about… Chuck E. Cheese? (apparently, the Rockies’ pitcher once did a gig at Chuck E. Cheese as Chuck E. Cheese in his struggle to become a major league baseballer). But, Met fans do worry…

The whole Mary Worth comic strip saga continues, as Mary’s stalker continues not taking her no as no. Uh, Mary, call the cops. Please.

Meeanwhile, over on the Judge Parker comic strip, where Judge Parker’s son, Randy, is going to run for the judgeship – well, those backroom politicians are going to try to screw with Randy’s candidacy by implying that he’s an in-the-closet homosexual man, by virtue of his avoiding marriage with a woman (considering that he was about to marry a woman who’s in charge of a multi-billion-dollar semi-religion, and can’t go after a female CIA agent because, well, she’s CIA, these backroom politicians are real idiotsl; well, maybe they’re not implying anything about his heterosexual manhood or his sexuality; maybe they’re just bugging him about his committment problem; eh…). Dirty politics and mudslinging enter the world of soap opera comic strips.

Monday night: the season premiere of Prison Break on FOX. Hmm. Dare I watch? I missed the season finale (uh, yeah, the actual escape from prison), but Wentworth Miller as the daring prison breaker Michael Scofield – well, he’s still drool-worthy, but that reason alone isn’t enough to watch a crazy show. Hmm… well, we’ll see…

The reviews are out for “Snakes on a Plane” – hmm, considering the hype, sounds like the critics don’t hate the movie.  (pardon the weird linking) — hmm, now I’m tempted to watch.  Just for the thrill of seeing Samuel L. Jackson say the key line that’s been going around on-line…

And, tonight – local Channel 13 PBS is airing a Masterpiece Theatre marathon of the Forsyte Saga all night tonight.  A high brow soap, but a soap nonetheless, as prominent British lawyer Soames Forsyte deals with his personal hubris and pent up rage in marrying a woman he really shouldn’t have married and his extended family confronts their own sins.  Great stuff, just for the nutty melodrama.

Entertainment Weekly has Hugh Laurie a.k.a. House on the cover.  The man wasn’t even nominated for an Emmy, yet still delivers the goods.  And to think that this week, FOX re-aired the powerful episode where Dr. Foreman almost dies and House goes to extremes (as usual) to cure him.

ABC re-aired the Grey’s Anatomy Super Bowl episode – wherein Grey meets Bomb Squad Guy, who faces an unceremonious end.

George W. Bush’s summer reading… Camus’ The Stranger.  Funny, I would never have pegged the president reading French existentialism.  Plus, from what I remember of the book (having read the English translation way back in high school), the narrator was… well, having serious existential problems (Mersault had quite a disconnect from normality/mainstream society; I mean, come on, he was a murderer).  If he really is reading Camus, I guess that means his taste in reading is slightly “better” than Bill Clinton’s (who, one summer, was reading one of those mystery novels I’d read, if I remember correctly).  Eh.

Poking around the Usenet groups and the web’s assorted sundry, I found this article that summed up why the latest Mary Worth comic strip storyline is on the bizarre side: Mary Worth got a new strip writer, who’s putting the focus on Mary herself.  The stalker is still stalking Mary.  Yikes.

Oh, God, I bought another book at Barnes and Noble.  At least it was a bargain book and a good price: hardcover for paperback price for Ngaio Marsh’s “Artists in Crime,” a classic Inspector Alleyne story, wherein he solves a very strange murder at an artists colony and meets and falls hard for the artist, Agatha Troy and faces what will be known as his Seige of Troy… I wasn’t going to say no to that!

Monday: Went to Grimaldi’s and Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory with the gang. Mmm. 😉

Eight planets or 12? I prefer 8 – why keep counting Pluto? What coincidence that I’m in the middle of reading up on the planets and the astronomers are trying to figure out what to do with our solar system. And, why are astronomers sounding like lawyers in trying to define “planet”? Hmm.
Judge Richard Posner posits that USA needs its own MI-5, in light of how that British organization foiled the terrorist plot in Britain. Hmm.
Ming-Na (formerly known as Ming-Na Wen), soon to be on a new FOX show. Well, not sure if it’s a show I’d watch (kind of like her last (very quickly cancelled) show was so not a show I watched at all) – these serial thrillers think they’re all jumping on the 24 bandwagon.