2011

I hope you like posts that are essentially a series of random thoughts. You do? Excellent.

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I hope there's nobody out there playing a drinking game where you do a shot every time people stand up and clap during the State of the Union address. They're gonna be D-E-D dead.

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The 7-9 Seattle Seahawks hosted an NFL playoff game against a team with an 11-5 record. Remind me how terrible the BCS is again?

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I am connected to a TV show on MTV by a white maraca with a blue Star of David on it.

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Earlier in January I was a moderator for a local high school quiz bowl tournament, which is one of my absolute favorite things to do. If I could make a living reading quiz bowl, I'd very likely give it a shot. Before one game, the two teams were seated in their respective seats. A player from one team, seated on the end closest to the other team, looked at them and said,

"Hey, you know that trick where you make it look like you're moving your thumb?"

The kids replied that they did.

"Well I can make my whole thumb move and it looks like I don't have a thumb at all."

He proceeded to perform the motions of the trick and sure enough, when his other hand moved away it looked like he had no thumb at all. I figured, "Wow, his fingers must be really flexible for him to bend his whole thumb behind his hand like that."

Then he turned his hand towards his audience, showing them that he had no thumb on that hand at all.

After a couple of "am I really seeing this?" beats, the other team went nuts. "That's so awesome!" Because to high school quiz bowl kids, having four fingers and showing it off is awesome.

The kid said he's done that while giving talks in front of audiences in the thousands. I thought it was pretty cool myself. (not to mention that it could be a great way to psyche out your opponent before a big game)

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I haven't posted much about movies lately, and there are two reasons for this. The first is that I haven't been to any in several weeks. I think the last one I saw in the theater was Skyline, which was pretty bad, though it had its bright spots. The second is that I haven't even finished some of the movies I've received from Netflix. I get a bit into them, then get bored, or start thinking it's not worth finishing, or something like that. I won't bother writing about them.

Why else don't I finish? I seem to run into all sorts of other things along the way. Crops in Farmville need harvesting. Skins is about to come on. I need to go to the gym. (lost about ten pounds since Christmas, by the way). Right now I'm watching a French film called Le Samourai, and I paused it to check that I remembered how to conjugate -re verbs correctly.

(Le Samourai comes to us from 1967, the same year that gave us The Dirty Dozen, Cool Hand Luke, The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde*, In the Heat of the Night, and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Good night, what a year for Sidney Poitier...)

(* When I was in high school we had a quiz bowl question that every member of my team will swear up and down asked for "the Latin names of Bonnie and Clyde." We had no idea that they had Latin names. I said to the team captain, "Say Bonnus and Clydus." "I am NOT saying Bonnus and Clydus!" he said. "That sounds stupid!"

Turns out the question wanted the last names of Bonnie [Parker] and Clyde [Barrow]. Could have fooled us.)

The endings for regular -re verbs, by the way, using perdre--"to lose": perds, perds, perd, perdons, perdez, perdent.

See? I'm never finishing this movie...

Stay tuned until next time, when I tell you all about the wonders of Williams Grave Cleaning, L.L.C.