I've fallen in love with my fair maiden's voice
A website of such simplicity and breadth of choice
Your food will arrive with no muss and fuss
Just give it a try and don't be a wuss
www.seamlessweb.com
I've been on Seamless now for nearly two years and I couldn't live without it. Best feature: The ability to leave the tip on your credit card. When the food arrives, just sign your name and get your goodies. No fumbling around for money or change.
Da bomb!
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
The effects of Scrabulous
Hasboro won their fight to get Scrabulous taken off Facebook.
Dawn Summers lost an organ as a result.
WSP hopes Dawn gets better soon and that Hasboro would not be the corporate assface we know it is.
Dawn Summers lost an organ as a result.
WSP hopes Dawn gets better soon and that Hasboro would not be the corporate assface we know it is.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Batman: The Dark Knight review
Two words: Fucking Awesome
No other way to describe it. The movie is dense in plot, rich in character development and every word you've heard about Heath Ledger's performance is true. His Joker is complex, nuanced and genuinely terrifying. He makes Hannibal Lecter look like Barney the Dinosaur.
No other way to describe it. The movie is dense in plot, rich in character development and every word you've heard about Heath Ledger's performance is true. His Joker is complex, nuanced and genuinely terrifying. He makes Hannibal Lecter look like Barney the Dinosaur.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
I'm illin'....
Last Thursday, at about 3:00p, I started to feel cold. The A/C at work is up pretty high in the summer but never so bad that I would feel this cold. After all, we're in an office environment on a large floor and everything is usually relatively moderated as far as that's concerned. So it was pretty unusual when I started shivering. I went downstairs to get me a cup of hot tea (always helpful) and maybe even warm up outside. The walk outside did make me feel better, temperature-wise, but I still felt a bit weak in my legs and in my head. And I started sweating more than I normally would just going outside. A cold sweat.
Hmmm...
I felt my head, just like my mother would, for temperature. I don't know why this is a time honored method, because I don't think I'm super-human in my skin temperature reading abilities, but I'll be damned if I didn't feel a little flush on the forehead. I finished up my work day and headed home. By the time I made it back (a normally pleasant 15 minute walk), I knew I wasn't going in to work the next day. I was shivering and weak and I had lost my appetite already.
Thus began the really crappy weekend. From Thursday until Tuesday morning, I didn't leave my apartment. Ali, bless her beautiful (outside and inside) soul, brought me Shiksa Chicken Soup, which is to say a quart of Ben's Chicken Soup. She even stuck around and watched some TV with me. Project Runway. Sadly, I liked the show. Clearly, I had caught something serious.
Alone in my apartment for all that time, I played a lot of video games and managed to play some online poker too. I won two HORSE sit'n'gos (one with Matty Ebs in attendance) and gave back all my winnings at limit Stud/8 and Razz. I was drawing something awful this past weekend at those games. I'm not talking about "oh I missed the 3 cards I needed for a low". I mean I had 20 outs with 3 streets to go and I whiffed every one. That kind of bad.
Here's the worst miss I had:
The game is Stud/8 -
I'm dealt (Ah 2h) 7h. A guy with an Ace showing completes to $5 (this was $5/$10) and two people call. I call is well with 3 hearts and a 7 perfect low draw.
Fourth Street - 4h. Wow, could I have asked for a more perfect card? Even better, none of the callers in the pot had two low cards, so they were either all going high or I was at least leading the low draw. And a scoop was looking good too! It checked to me and I bet $5. Everyone called. At this point, I had 21 outs to improve my hand to either a low or a flush or both. In reality, it was about 17 outs given that a few hearts and low cards were already visible or mucked. Still, 17 outs on three streets gives me about an 85% chance of improving.
I'll make a long story short, but after betting and/or raising every street, I whiffed and ended up with Ace-King high. The winning hand for a $200+ pot (and the scoop) was a pair of 7's!
WTF!?!?!?
This was not the only time I missed that kind of draw and I became increasingly frustrated. Luckily, I played pretty well in NLHE and was able to make at least some of my money back, though I did donk off $25 sitting next to LJ at a little .25/.50 NLHE game. She quadrupled her buyin by playing nice and tight and getting paid off like a MOFO on AA, KK and JJ. I, on the other hand, flopped top/top against KK and AA and paid off both of them. Sue me for not thinking too much of the $8 in my stack at this stupid stupid game!
Tonight is my band's gig at the 'R' Bar at 218 Bowery. It's 3 hours before the gig as I'm writing this but it won't be posted until tomorrow, most likely. Needless to say, we rocked!
Hmmm...
I felt my head, just like my mother would, for temperature. I don't know why this is a time honored method, because I don't think I'm super-human in my skin temperature reading abilities, but I'll be damned if I didn't feel a little flush on the forehead. I finished up my work day and headed home. By the time I made it back (a normally pleasant 15 minute walk), I knew I wasn't going in to work the next day. I was shivering and weak and I had lost my appetite already.
Thus began the really crappy weekend. From Thursday until Tuesday morning, I didn't leave my apartment. Ali, bless her beautiful (outside and inside) soul, brought me Shiksa Chicken Soup, which is to say a quart of Ben's Chicken Soup. She even stuck around and watched some TV with me. Project Runway. Sadly, I liked the show. Clearly, I had caught something serious.
Alone in my apartment for all that time, I played a lot of video games and managed to play some online poker too. I won two HORSE sit'n'gos (one with Matty Ebs in attendance) and gave back all my winnings at limit Stud/8 and Razz. I was drawing something awful this past weekend at those games. I'm not talking about "oh I missed the 3 cards I needed for a low". I mean I had 20 outs with 3 streets to go and I whiffed every one. That kind of bad.
Here's the worst miss I had:
The game is Stud/8 -
I'm dealt (Ah 2h) 7h. A guy with an Ace showing completes to $5 (this was $5/$10) and two people call. I call is well with 3 hearts and a 7 perfect low draw.
Fourth Street - 4h. Wow, could I have asked for a more perfect card? Even better, none of the callers in the pot had two low cards, so they were either all going high or I was at least leading the low draw. And a scoop was looking good too! It checked to me and I bet $5. Everyone called. At this point, I had 21 outs to improve my hand to either a low or a flush or both. In reality, it was about 17 outs given that a few hearts and low cards were already visible or mucked. Still, 17 outs on three streets gives me about an 85% chance of improving.
I'll make a long story short, but after betting and/or raising every street, I whiffed and ended up with Ace-King high. The winning hand for a $200+ pot (and the scoop) was a pair of 7's!
WTF!?!?!?
This was not the only time I missed that kind of draw and I became increasingly frustrated. Luckily, I played pretty well in NLHE and was able to make at least some of my money back, though I did donk off $25 sitting next to LJ at a little .25/.50 NLHE game. She quadrupled her buyin by playing nice and tight and getting paid off like a MOFO on AA, KK and JJ. I, on the other hand, flopped top/top against KK and AA and paid off both of them. Sue me for not thinking too much of the $8 in my stack at this stupid stupid game!
Tonight is my band's gig at the 'R' Bar at 218 Bowery. It's 3 hours before the gig as I'm writing this but it won't be posted until tomorrow, most likely. Needless to say, we rocked!
Monday, July 21, 2008
Almost Famous: a review
I finally got around to seeing Almost Famous, the movie, tonight. I can't believe it's taken me this long to see it. As far as coming of age movies go, it's definitely up there with some of the better ones I've seen. And the subject matter is right up my alley. The soundtrack is phenomenal. It's a real shame that they just don't make this kind of music anymore. It's hard to say what it is. Is it that the audience tastes have changed? Or is it the move from analog to digital that killed the sounds of yesteryear? Probably some combination of the two.
Kate Hudson was incredible as Penny Lane. Without a doubt, the highlight of the movie. They never make a gimick of her age or her background. She is who she is and she's happy about it, though not always. She ends up being used and thrown out and it's the 15 year old William who's the only one who can see the damage the whole circus has brought on everyone else. Just awesome.
Oh, the two best lines of the movie:
Topeka Party Go-er: "You wanna see me feed a mouse to my snake?"
Russell (on acid): "YES!"
Lester Bangs:"The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool"
That last one really kills me.
Also, the passion the movie has about music is extraordinarily visceral. At least it was to me. How I feel watching that movie is how I felt on the carpet of my brother's room going through his LP collection while he was out of the house. That was a big no-no, by the way, since he had a state of the art record player with a top of the line needle. But I did it anyway. I first heard all of the music from the movie on the floor of his room. It was always musty in there, and it smelled like stale cigarette smoke. I heard the albums Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Let It Be, Tommy, Led Zeppelin II, Goats Head Soup, along with countless others in that room. I remember the dirty orange shag carpet feel on my knees as I flipped endlessly through crates of records and stacks of old .45's. I remember the fear I felt when I didn't know how to thread the tape through the Reel to Reel machine and ended up chewing up the first minute of Led Zeppelin I. I remember the red covered WHO music book where I first learned the lyrics to Baba O' Riley, the first song I ever learned the lyrics to.
This movie took me back to all of that and made me remember why I loved music in the first place. And if that's not an endorsement of a movie, then I don't know what is.
Kate Hudson was incredible as Penny Lane. Without a doubt, the highlight of the movie. They never make a gimick of her age or her background. She is who she is and she's happy about it, though not always. She ends up being used and thrown out and it's the 15 year old William who's the only one who can see the damage the whole circus has brought on everyone else. Just awesome.
Oh, the two best lines of the movie:
Topeka Party Go-er: "You wanna see me feed a mouse to my snake?"
Russell (on acid): "YES!"
Lester Bangs:"The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool"
That last one really kills me.
Also, the passion the movie has about music is extraordinarily visceral. At least it was to me. How I feel watching that movie is how I felt on the carpet of my brother's room going through his LP collection while he was out of the house. That was a big no-no, by the way, since he had a state of the art record player with a top of the line needle. But I did it anyway. I first heard all of the music from the movie on the floor of his room. It was always musty in there, and it smelled like stale cigarette smoke. I heard the albums Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Let It Be, Tommy, Led Zeppelin II, Goats Head Soup, along with countless others in that room. I remember the dirty orange shag carpet feel on my knees as I flipped endlessly through crates of records and stacks of old .45's. I remember the fear I felt when I didn't know how to thread the tape through the Reel to Reel machine and ended up chewing up the first minute of Led Zeppelin I. I remember the red covered WHO music book where I first learned the lyrics to Baba O' Riley, the first song I ever learned the lyrics to.
This movie took me back to all of that and made me remember why I loved music in the first place. And if that's not an endorsement of a movie, then I don't know what is.
Friday, July 18, 2008
ABBA = Nazis
Frida Lyngstad, one of the two females in the original group, ABBA, was the product of a Nazi eugenics program.
Hey, I can't make this shit up:
http://gawker.com/5026706/gay-hero-revealed-to-be-nazi-super-baby
So there you have it. Proof positive that ABBA is evil.
Hey, I can't make this shit up:
http://gawker.com/5026706/gay-hero-revealed-to-be-nazi-super-baby
So there you have it. Proof positive that ABBA is evil.
Wanna feel better about yourself?
Then read this. If you think *you* have problems, it probably doesn't comapare to the team of psychiatrists this woman is going to need.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
The Oracle of Facebook
Ever since I got on Facebook, not all that long ago, I've been as enamored of it as you can be with an online application. It's such a leap forward from MySpace that I'm sure the folks at MySpace were shitting themselves the first day it came online. I like to think of Facebook as the MySpace that adults can use. And sure enough, there are many many many adults of all ages who use it. It's got a clean interface, it's super easy and intuitive and it's great at allowing you to browse for connections to other people. In fact, it makes it fun to do so. So much so that people have dubbed it 'crackbook' for its addictive traits.
As a quick aside here, I think the whole analogy of comparing addictive things to crack by putting the word 'crack' into them (EverQuest = EverCrack, Facebook = Crackbook, Cooked Cocaine = Crack) is kinda worn out. But it still gets the point across. Moving on...
I've added a whole bunch of people as friends in the last few weeks and it seems that the more people I add, the more faces I see that I want to add. Like a snowball rolling down a hill (another overworn analogy), the list keeps growing because the more connections I make, the more potential connections I have to add. I've even made a few connections to people that have been coincidental, in the sense that I had past connections with these people I didn't know about.
For example, I recently added an old college girl-friend (a friend who's a girl, not the kind you sleep with and take out on dates who then breaks up with you in a hideous fashion) as a friend. We sent an email or two back and forth and that was pretty much it. She's married now and it's been 15 years since college so there isn't a whole lot to say. A few weeks after that, I got a random email from my oldest brother's *high school girlfriend* (the kind he slept with and took out on dates and broke up with him in a hideous fashion). It was strange that she would have found me because why was she looking for me? Wouldn't she naturally have searched for my brother, who isn't on Facebook, if she was looking to reminisce? When I asked her how she found me, she blew me away by telling me she was married to my college girl-friend's brother! What's more, she married him in 1990, the year I entered college. Which means that the entire time I knew my college girl-friend, her sister-in-law was my brother's high school girlfriend and I never knew it. Freaky.
The whole facebook phenomenon is like playing the Long Island Name Game every hour of every day. It's sick how close of a community you have and don't even realize it.
Another example. I added a friend from high school (also a platonic girlfriend) and as I was browsing through her friends (the best way to expand your connections), I came across an oddly familiar name. It was Jennifer Stevens Madoff. I looked at her picture, and I've never seen her before in my life that I know of, but the last name is the same as that of a friend I had in summer camp way back in 1984. Roger Madoff. Madoff is kind of an unusual last name, and the fact that this girl Jennifer had added her maiden name to her facebook profile would normally indicate that she was married to someone named Madoff (assuming she took her husband's name). But the weird part is her profile said she was in a relationship with someone named Jacob Dickson. Not divorced. In a relationship with someone else. I was confused. I went through the list of Jennifer Madoff's friends and one of them was an Eric Poritzky. Now Eric also went to camp with me so the odds of her being related somehow to Roger increased dramatically. But Roger was not in her friends list and I couldn't find a profile for him on Facebook. Roger was such a cool guy, even way back in camp, that I really thought it would be neat to get back in touch with him. I did another search and found not a profile, but a group called something like "Run for Roger Madoff". Uh-oh. That's not good, right? No one organizes runs for people unless there's something wrong.
Turns out Roger is dead.
I read the description for the group and it seems that my old friend, whom I hadn't seen since I was 13 years old, contracted Leukemia in 2002 and died in 2006. A picture they had of him confirms to me it's the same guy.
I was, and still am, heartbroken. True, this guy wasn't my BFF or anything, but I have such fond memories of us spending time together in camp. We did a lot of great stuff together; softball on the 'B' team, Tennis, camping, hound and hares. Roger was just about my speed at everything and he was one of the more geniunely nice and sweet kids in my group. Besides, it's awful to think that anyone who's in their early 30's would be dead from anything but a drug overdose, car accident or gunshot. There's something unholy about taking a man so young and full of promise as I'm sure Roger was.
This is exactly how I felt when a friend of mine from high school, Jason Dobin, died in 2003 from Cystic Fibrosis at age 31. He was an actor of great promise and the most consistently funny guy I've ever met to this day. His comic timing was actually dangerous and there was more than one instance when a well placed one-liner would cause the car we were in to swerve into oncoming traffic while the driver shook with laughter. What a waste of promise and potential. I feel more sad for the world that didn't get to know him.
Both of them, actually. This might very well be the great defining capability of Facebook actually. It not only keeps us in touch with people we've missed throughout their lives, but it also reminds us that not everyone is still here.
Or maybe I'm just being melancholy right now. It's hard to tell.
As a quick aside here, I think the whole analogy of comparing addictive things to crack by putting the word 'crack' into them (EverQuest = EverCrack, Facebook = Crackbook, Cooked Cocaine = Crack) is kinda worn out. But it still gets the point across. Moving on...
I've added a whole bunch of people as friends in the last few weeks and it seems that the more people I add, the more faces I see that I want to add. Like a snowball rolling down a hill (another overworn analogy), the list keeps growing because the more connections I make, the more potential connections I have to add. I've even made a few connections to people that have been coincidental, in the sense that I had past connections with these people I didn't know about.
For example, I recently added an old college girl-friend (a friend who's a girl, not the kind you sleep with and take out on dates who then breaks up with you in a hideous fashion) as a friend. We sent an email or two back and forth and that was pretty much it. She's married now and it's been 15 years since college so there isn't a whole lot to say. A few weeks after that, I got a random email from my oldest brother's *high school girlfriend* (the kind he slept with and took out on dates and broke up with him in a hideous fashion). It was strange that she would have found me because why was she looking for me? Wouldn't she naturally have searched for my brother, who isn't on Facebook, if she was looking to reminisce? When I asked her how she found me, she blew me away by telling me she was married to my college girl-friend's brother! What's more, she married him in 1990, the year I entered college. Which means that the entire time I knew my college girl-friend, her sister-in-law was my brother's high school girlfriend and I never knew it. Freaky.
The whole facebook phenomenon is like playing the Long Island Name Game every hour of every day. It's sick how close of a community you have and don't even realize it.
Another example. I added a friend from high school (also a platonic girlfriend) and as I was browsing through her friends (the best way to expand your connections), I came across an oddly familiar name. It was Jennifer Stevens Madoff. I looked at her picture, and I've never seen her before in my life that I know of, but the last name is the same as that of a friend I had in summer camp way back in 1984. Roger Madoff. Madoff is kind of an unusual last name, and the fact that this girl Jennifer had added her maiden name to her facebook profile would normally indicate that she was married to someone named Madoff (assuming she took her husband's name). But the weird part is her profile said she was in a relationship with someone named Jacob Dickson. Not divorced. In a relationship with someone else. I was confused. I went through the list of Jennifer Madoff's friends and one of them was an Eric Poritzky. Now Eric also went to camp with me so the odds of her being related somehow to Roger increased dramatically. But Roger was not in her friends list and I couldn't find a profile for him on Facebook. Roger was such a cool guy, even way back in camp, that I really thought it would be neat to get back in touch with him. I did another search and found not a profile, but a group called something like "Run for Roger Madoff". Uh-oh. That's not good, right? No one organizes runs for people unless there's something wrong.
Turns out Roger is dead.
I read the description for the group and it seems that my old friend, whom I hadn't seen since I was 13 years old, contracted Leukemia in 2002 and died in 2006. A picture they had of him confirms to me it's the same guy.
I was, and still am, heartbroken. True, this guy wasn't my BFF or anything, but I have such fond memories of us spending time together in camp. We did a lot of great stuff together; softball on the 'B' team, Tennis, camping, hound and hares. Roger was just about my speed at everything and he was one of the more geniunely nice and sweet kids in my group. Besides, it's awful to think that anyone who's in their early 30's would be dead from anything but a drug overdose, car accident or gunshot. There's something unholy about taking a man so young and full of promise as I'm sure Roger was.
This is exactly how I felt when a friend of mine from high school, Jason Dobin, died in 2003 from Cystic Fibrosis at age 31. He was an actor of great promise and the most consistently funny guy I've ever met to this day. His comic timing was actually dangerous and there was more than one instance when a well placed one-liner would cause the car we were in to swerve into oncoming traffic while the driver shook with laughter. What a waste of promise and potential. I feel more sad for the world that didn't get to know him.
Both of them, actually. This might very well be the great defining capability of Facebook actually. It not only keeps us in touch with people we've missed throughout their lives, but it also reminds us that not everyone is still here.
Or maybe I'm just being melancholy right now. It's hard to tell.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Go Pros...Go!
At the Main Event, Mike Matusow and Phil Hellmuth are still in the running, and fairly healthy, with 79 players left out of 6844 at the end of day 5.
I would LOVE to see a pro take down the main event this year, or even just final table it, because it will go a long way towards proving that being a professional and knowing how to play the game still count in large fields. I believe that in my heart. Not to mention that a name pro winning this thing will help out EVERYONE in terms of visibility of the game. After the carnage that was the UIGE of 2006, we could use a boost now that things are starting to loosen up again.
I would LOVE to see a pro take down the main event this year, or even just final table it, because it will go a long way towards proving that being a professional and knowing how to play the game still count in large fields. I believe that in my heart. Not to mention that a name pro winning this thing will help out EVERYONE in terms of visibility of the game. After the carnage that was the UIGE of 2006, we could use a boost now that things are starting to loosen up again.
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