Flight Patterns

While checking out my favorite website for finding flights for my yearly pilgrimage to Chicago this year, I stumbled upon this video of U.S. flights patterns. It's cool and strangely beautiful.

World Series of Pop Culture

I've recently become obsessed with auditioning for VH1's World Series of Pop Culture, if only because I happened to catch the finals last year and knew the answer to the last question even though neither team did (Hillman College. duh). So today I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to come up with team names. See how many of these random references you can get....

Death to Cousin Pam
Large Marge Sent Us
East Beverly High
Save Surely
Team Teamocil
Team Guttenberg (I was trying to think of something having to do with Cocoon: the Return and couldn't)
1.21 Jigowatts
Enchantment Under the Sea
California Raisins
Skippy, Kimmy, and Steve
Seinfeld Sux
Batteries Not Included
Midseason Replacements

p.s. In my search, I also came across the creepiest imdb quote page ever

A funny guy pops his Star Wars cherry

Whether you like Star Wars or not, check out this article by Michael Morrison, who actually watched more TV than me this weekend. If only because he not only references Spaceballs, he references Full House, too.
p.s. he has a blogspot blog just like me! I can only hope that some day I, too, will be headed towards online television commentary fame

I miss Sunday

It was a red-letter day for me yesterday, folks! With some persistent re-jiggering of my tv antennae, I now not only get NBC consistently, my9 is now pristine. (I just need to find some shows to watch on that channel). To celebrate, on one of the laziest Sundays on record I watched:
4 episodes of Alias
a documentary on POWs who escaped from German camps in WWII (only to be caught and shot, sad)
half of Moulin Rouge
the Fox animation block (starring Kiefer Sutherland in one of the best Simpsons of recent memory)
the parts of Brothers & Sisters that Treat Williams was topless in
a Scrubs rerun
an episode of COPS (Sin City)

Who can blame me for not having time to clean my apartment or work on any of my freelancing? Especially when I took the time to take a shower, and put on a bra before the food delivery guy came!

I heart my new phone

My office phone became possessed this week. It would suddenly go on speakerphone for no reason, sometimes when I wasn’t even at my desk. Then all the buttons stopped working. Luckily, I work at a giant corporation, so after my cubiclemate called the phone department, it took about 15 minutes before I had a shiny brand-new dTerm series E, with my extensions pre-printed on it! The cord isn’t all tangled up! The receiver is all smooth and silky. I can’t wait to get my germs all over it.

Here’s a pic of the dTerm series E I found online. She’s so purdy!!

Writing Prompts for Seniors

Every Thursday I saunter down to Washington Square North where I teach a writing class for senior citizens. It’s with a mixture of joy and resentment that I teach this class: old people are pretty unruly, and all seem to think very highly of their own opinions. The best part of the class, though, is when I dole out writing prompts and see what they come up with. Below are some of the ones I’ve gotten the best responses from.

1. Describe a moment when someone said “I love you.”
2. Describe a favorite toy from your childhood
3. Of all the bedrooms you have ever had, which was your favorite?
4. Write about the traits you got from your mother.
5. Describe what your father did for a living and how it affected you.
6. What does love taste like?
7. Who taught you how to drive? Describe your experience.
8. Have you ever been in a car accident? Describe the situation.
9. Describe what your hometown or neighborhood was like when you were growing up.
10. What was your favorite Halloween costume you ever wore?

Beam of light in a corporate world

Easily the best thing about my office building is the vertical scrolling LED sign above the front door.



It doesn’t have company announcements or stock quotes or anything—it’s a piece of art. Someone told me it’s by the famous artist Sophie Calle, and I hope so because I love her (if only because a fictionalized version of her appeared in one of my favorite books, Paul Auster’s Leviathan). While I’ve waiting for the elevator or for a coworker, I always read it, and then often forget what it said only moments later. Only once have I seen it say the same thing twice, and every now and then I’ll catch a glimpse of a “nipple” or “penis”—so very uncorporate. Anyway, I’ve been writing down some of the scrolling messages and here they are:


fathers often use too much force

absolutes are quicksilver results are spectacular

It’s hard to know if you’re crazy if you feel like you’re in danger all the time now

If you’re worried about an attack you should stay awake or sleep lightly with your limbs unfurled ready for action

MAKE AMENDS

going with the flow is soothing but risky

I often awake with tears running down my cheeks

Bodies lie in the grass some have been murdered and some are picnicking

death came and he looked like a rat with claws

Me: Making Your Netflix Experience Better

Don’t get too jealous, but I recently received an invitation to fill out a survey online regarding my experience with Netflix. I’d taken “quick” surveys before, asking on what day I received “Project Runway Season 1 Disc 2” and so forth, but this survey was serious: it was all about you, my friends. Part of it was easy: “Do you pay attention to Netflix’s taste-in-movies similarity rating?” (YES!!), but part was more challenging: “Are your Netflix friends close friends or casual acquaintances?” (most of them are people I’ve met in singles chatrooms who I coerce into adding me as a friend and then continuously recommend Fisher Stevens movies to them so...close friends!) Perhaps because I have “more than five” Netflix friends, and I answered “yes” to “Did you recently notice a change in the Friends homepage?”, Netflix asked me for further comments. I made sure to word my criticisms carefully, so they wouldn’t be offended when I mentioned the site’s inability to set default views, and praised the “streamlined” nature of the new design. I also requested an easy way to recommend movies to friends without having to think of witty notes to leave with them. Because what do you say, exactly, about Short Circuit 2?

That's right—I haven't posted in over a week and this is all I have to say

I’m following this Anna Nicole Smith baby fiasco verrrry carefully. Definitely more carefully than someone who subscribes to Harper’s and reads the NY Times every day should. And I have to say: I’m a little jealous of all the guys jumping up to say they’re AN’s baby daddy. I think that’s pretty much the ultimate sign of being a babe—you’re stupid, depressed, and have been known to marry for money, yet people still want to claim your child as their own. This is quite the opposite from today’s episode of Judge Hatchett, which I attended the taping of (if you look carefully you can see me 3 rows behind the defendant). In it, a woman claims that a man (her former ice cream truck driver) is the father of her 6 year-old child, but he doesn’t seem to remember sleeping with her at all. Needless to say, he WAS the father, unlike poor Howard K. Stern, who probably never did sleep with AN, even after their non–legally binding commitment ceremony.

Gross, huh?

I know you were hoping for a pic of me with my new glasses, but instead you're going to have to settle for this optical scan of my left retina. I paid 20 bucks per eye so I figure I better get my money's worth.