Pick a Peck to Pickle Beckett

That's Danielle Peck. Cute, isn't she? I'd never heard of her before this morning, but apparently she's "a rising star in the [country music] industry". Tonight, in a big boost to her burgeoning career, she'll be singing the national anthem and "God Bless America" at the Jake.

I'll admit that I'm not up on the current crop of country stars. They're basically interchangeable mannequins with booth-sweetened voices who sing pop songs with a steel guitar. So maybe Danielle is an up-and-coming mannequin. Or maybe, she got the gig because she's Josh Beckett's ex.

Josh Beckett is starting for the Sawks tonight, you know.

As a Yankees fan, I'm predisposed to wish all sorts of plagues upon the Boston Bastards, the Southie Swine, the Chappaquid Dicks. So I'm thrilled by this turn of events. Way to go Tribe! I just wish they'd do more. Invite Manny's hairstylist to throw out the first pitch. Bring back the reliever cars and have Youkilis' rabbi drive it to the mound. Whatever it takes.

On a more serious note, I'd probably just ask Danielle (live and on the Jumbotron) how Josh *really* gets all those blisters on his finger.

via Deadspin

Tricky Dick served spotted dick by Cavett, Dick

I've been really enjoying the Dick Cavett blog at the Times. The most recent posting is full of awkward silences, crickets chirping, and a comic bombing. But that's what you get for trying to do standup while waiting tables.

I guess it was out of some dumb desire to amuse the waiters that I grabbed up two menus. Approaching the famous seated pair from behind, I piped, “Our specials today include the Yorba Linda soufflé, the Whittier College clam chowder . . .” I invented a few more fictional Nixon-related specials; you get the idea. At least I self-censored any Checkers or Watergate references.

Interestingly enough, while Cavett's final joke woulda killed any other audience, I think Tricky Dick pulled an awfully funny one out on not-Tricky Dick with his "How are his knees?" line.

"We didn't free the rednecks just so they would have nothing to do."

The Assimilated Negro has a guest post on Deadspin today about Rick Clark's dream of getting some of those black and latino entertainment dollars into the hands of Miller-sippin', tabacky-chawin', left-hand-turn-makin' rednecks. Good stuff.

Also, I think about the ease with which anyone can play basketball, baseball, football. That seems natural to me. All you have to do is round up some people and a ball. NASCAR, on the other hand, is a sport that requires rounding up an army and invading another country for fuel.

Sooooo, look, I don't want to be a hater. Really! NASCAR deserves its little bit of space. We didn't free the rednecks just so they would have nothing to do. But not every dreg of American culture needs diversification. Maybe if I'm properly "edutained" and watch cars go in circles for 5 hours I might change my mind, but for now I'm going to stay working on my Jessica Biel audition tapes and advising fellow Minority-Americans (awwww, that means all of us) to hold tight and not buy their 4-year-old a race car just yet. At least wait until 2009 when we get our 2 trillion dollars. Then you'll have enough to throw some rims on that piece. Or as Mr. Clark prefer to call them, "urban hubcaps."

My reality show pitch

New idea for a reality show (co-authored with my friend The Latin Snake): The Dane Cook Show. Every week, without commercial interruption, we get to watch Dane Cook get dragged behind a different vehicle over different road surfaces.

The show is brought to us by the maker of that week's vehicle!

Tune in next week when Dane is pulled over sand dunes in a Ford F150!

Poker Cheats caught redhanded

Cheaters never prosper. Well, they do. They make a shitload of money. But eventually the truth will out. Not usually. But sometimes. When it's not a sitting government but rather an off-shore online poker site, the truth will out. Looks like some (extra, "accidental") data was crunched and cheaters were found on AbsolutePoker.

So the poker detectives turned their attention to this observer. They traced the observer’s IP address and account name to the same set of servers that host Absolute Poker, and also, apparently, to a particular individual named Scott Tom, who seems to be a part-owner of Absolute Poker! If all of this is correct, it shows exactly how the cheating would have transpired: an insider at the Web site had real-time access to all of the hole cards (it is not hard to believe that this capability would exist) and was relaying this information to an outside accomplice.

This is why online poker needs to be legalized and regulated in the US.

Bateman: Empire of the Moon

I believe this mashup needs no snarky commentary from me. Enjoy!

via Occasional Superheroine

"Do we look like a bunch of zapheads to you"?

This might be the funniest McSweeney's story in months. "From the 'Forum' Section of Welding Enthusiast Magazine", by Danny Wind:

It was a beautiful summer day, and I was out in the park, surrounded by happy picnickers, welding a copper lap joint with my Lincoln CV-305/LF-72. Just when I thought the day couldn't get any better, who should walk up to me but "Dandy Don" Meredith.

"That's some nice-looking work you're doing there," Don said to me. "I used to do a bit of welding myself, back in the day. What is that, a metal inert-gas welder?"

There's a little drop off from the heights of the first entry to the third, but still good stuff.

Don't deprive yourself. Click through for the Dandy Dan payoff. You know you want to...

Maudlin Autumn

A cricket solos
Echoing summer's refrain
His symphony rests

ARTC Radio Sound-pictures

I found a great site the other day: the Atlantic Radio Theater Company, which produces original, old-style radio drama. I was first excited to see they've got a production of Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth, recorded back in '04, featuring Harlan Ellison. If you've never heard Uncle Harlan do a dramatic performance you've missed out. He's got amazing presence and fantastic control over his vocal talent.

I was also intrigued to see there's a "2001 Dragon*Con performance of Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett, adapted for audio by David Benedict, featuring John Rhys-Davies as Lupine Wonse." Since sme and I were indirectly discussing Pratchett in comments this weekend, I thought it quite apropos.

An audience of one

Odd thing happened today. The usual light traffic through here was lighter than normal - partly attributable to pre-weekend dropoff for sure, but it stood out to me as being particularly slow. Even some of my regular visitors hadn't come by in the morning. That was before lunch. Afterwards, my traffic increased to a few hundred percent above normal.

I'd been linked from Neil Gaiman's blog. (By the way, for those who might wonder which generates more traffic - a link from Gaiman or a link from Ken Levine - Morpheus wins the kewpie doll.) What I found especially odd about the link from Gaiman (odd, but nonetheless gratifying to my ego) was that in the post in question I'd done little more than quote Gaiman!!!

Sure, I'd juxtaposed an anecdote of his about infixing "fucking" with another post that appeared only a few days later doing the same, but I'd really brought nothing new to the table. It was all very strange to me. But it led me to think a little about one of the aspects about the new media paradigm that I've never seen anyone mention before.

Frequently (*still*, shockingly) wags will discuss the power in the hands of ordinary citizens to make their voices heard through the "power of the Internet". A lone underwear-clad blogger, his fingers stained permanently orange from Cheetos - like Will Leitch¹ - can challenge the authority, reputation, hegemony, and market reach of one of the most powerful media companies in history. Josh Marshall can build a new model for a media company in the flower district that regularly scoops and out-analyzes The Times, The Post, and the Weekly World News.² Limitless distribution is available to anyone with a connection to the Internet with a price that approaches zero. It's clear the old push model has to compete mightily and only retains its built-in advantage of authority.

However, that's not why I'm writing this.

Did I mention that Neil Gaiman linked to my lil piece o' crap site? Who the hell am I?

While I'm thrilled by the fleeting uptick in readership (pretty much all those people came and went without staying around, thereby missing anything funny, profound, or interesting I might have to say³) it doesn't mean nearly as much to me as this: Neil Gaiman linked to my site. Which means he read at least one post on my site, probably more (after all, he'd want to make sure I'm not completely bat-shit before sending his readers here.) This ranks up there with Levine making two distinct compliments about our team's quality of humor after our scene was performed at the Sitcom Room and telling me he was enjoying reading my blog posts from that weekend.

Yes, I'm that needy.

But it's a little more than that in this case. The paradigmatic change I'm talking about isn't that one person can be heard by many, but that a nobody like me⁴ can be read by some of his idols. Honestly, at this point you get Harlan Ellison to curse me out for ripping him off and I can die happy.

I suppose the sensation I have today must be the happy inverse to the one all the sports bloggers feel every time their hard work gets stolen by the WWL. The opposite feeling political bloggers feel when the MSM fails to properly credit their sources. A man I've been reading for over twenty years read something I wrote⁵. The key isn't that I can publish my thoughts for everyone to see; rather, it's that those thoughts might be seen by anyone. Even a giant in his field.

---

¹ I am, of course, kidding. I'm sure Will Leitch does his best work commando, with Dorito-stained fingers.
² Again, kidding. TPM may have broken the USA firing scandal, but they've never beaten the WWN to the punch on a Bat Boy story.
³ If nothing else, it's funny for me to imply I'm ever interesting, interesting for me to imply I'm profound, and profoundly arrogant for me to imply I'm funny.
⁴ Bwahahahaha! Sorry. Me playing the humility card...now that's funny!
⁵ Yes, I've not forgotten it was just a post of two block quotes and some connective tissue.

Too much gentle gentile sex

There's video above, FeedReader
Poor Annie. It's clear the poor dear has only ever had sex with goyim. If she'd ever been fucked by a Jew, she'd know we've already been perfected.

The Infuckingcredible infix

Nifty confluence of language posts this week. First, on Sunday Gaiman had this to say about infixing:

My favourite conversation about language and words was before we went on the air, when Ian told us not to swear (as Radio 3 is only allowed one serious swear word per show) and also not to answer any question with an enthusiastic "ABSOLUTELY!" (which is apparently what writers tend to do). And when I said that I thus presumed that "absofuckinglutely" was right out, Deborah Cameron (Rupert Murdoch Professor of Language and Communication at the University of Oxford) enthusiastically explained to me that swearing is the only example of infixing in the English language and I was happy, for I had learned something.

Then today on Mindhacks we get this aside in a post about Steven Pinker's new piece in TNR about the psychology/neuroscience of swearing:

As an aside, once, whilst drinking with a psycholinguist (say that after a few pints) I was taught a useful way of quickly working out the stressed syllable in any English word - something which is apparently called the 'fuck test'.

Simply insert the word 'fucking' into the word, as if you were using the swear word for emphasis, and the syllable that follows the 'fucking' is the stressed syllable.

For example, absolutely -> abso-fucking-lutely. The stressed syllable is the third: i.e. absolutely. It works for every multi-syllable word I've found so far.

Which just goes to show that psycholinguists are some of the coolest melonfarmers in the whole of cognitive science.

So not only is "fucking" the only word to be infixed in English, when it is we can determine the stressed syllable of the root word!

Take me out to the White House

In other news, Chris Dodd surged past the Democratic front runners' fundraising efforts in the month of October. With his new overflowing warchest, he announced plans to name Bill Simmons and "that annoying Southie who doesn't shower daily" to his campaign staff.

Startups belong in Silicon Valley, Movies in LA

Paul Graham of Y Combinator gave a talk in the UK that apparently rankled. All he'd done was state an obvious truth: "startups would do better if they moved to Silicon Valley." In this essay, Graham lays out some of the reasoning for moving to the startup hub, but mostly sticks with the investment aspect. It's easier to get money in the Valley than anywhere else, even the number two spot for startups in the world:

Boston investors will admit they're more conservative. Some want to believe this comes from the city's prudent Yankee character. But Occam's razor suggests the truth is less flattering. Boston investors are probably more conservative than Silicon Valley investors for the same reason Chicago investors are more conservative than Boston ones. They don't understand startups as well.

What Graham doesn't cover in great detail is the rest of the infrastructure that's missing in other locations. Anyone who's ever tried to hire a top-tier, cutting edge software engineer out in the hinterlands (and yes, I count the PHX metro area and its 4.5 million inhabitants as "hinterlands") knows that the pool is ridiculously shallow.

That's not the case in the SV/SF area. There, the pool is deep and the networks as dense as dendritic fibers in the corpus callosum. Add to that the networking guys, hardware guys, marketing experts, tech sales pros, lawyers, etc. who actually understand how startups and tech companies work, and you can easily see how building a startup in SV is the right thing to do.

When I read this, I was oddly reminded of a post from Jim Henshaw about Canadian TV. Apparently spurning the lessons of Hollywood, SV, and Detroit Nagoya, Canada is trying to spread out film production.

The concept of Regionalizing production may satisfy politicians who want to see their constituents tax dollars spent locally. But you can't build a viable film industry that way. In fact, it's a sure-fire recipe for making sure it never happens.

Imagine asking most of the production companies in Hollywood to relocate to Pismo Beach if they want their project green-lit. Consider what Woody Allen or Spike Lee's films would look like if they had to be shot in Newark. Take your life in your hands and tell Robert Rodriguez he's giving up Austin for Padre Island.

And maybe give some thought to the "suppliers" of the industry. The people who have no say in what gets conceived or made. They rent cameras, build props and costumes, or sustain state of the art post houses. Now imagine how their profit margins (which have always been thin) are impacted by having to serve customers who have no choice but to work in areas where such operations are not resident because they couldn't survive and everything has to be shipped in.

There's no mystery that I'm not a country mouse. I like cities. I wish I lived in one. These are some of the reasons why.
Paul Graham essay via Sam Pullara

The Jarlsberg is on the table

Good golly! So far, so good. My face aches watching this show. Aches from smiling from ear to ear for a full hour. Actually, I think this episode was better than the "Pie-lette". So good, all I can do is spot check some of the greatness. And trust me, this will be incoherent unless you watched. You are watching, right??!?!

• small cheese box
• skeletons in the closet
• Emerson's knit gun cozies
  
• "Her information was valuable and the price was...pie."
• "You love secrets. You want to marry secrets and have little half-secret, half-human babies."
• Professor Landry and his batty rant about ritalin and botany
  
• Kissing through body bags while Emerson knits an escape
• Landry driving an Earth-killing Hummer
• "...and Digby considered how much he liked salt."
• plus, Glinda and Digby sang a duet while Manuel polished the floors!