In 6th grade I wore this in public

and thought - knew - I was cool.

Christmas Movies

Well exams are finally finished. I've been at my folks house for a couple of days now and I am settling into being a lump on a log.

In the Christmas Spirit, here are my top 5 favorite Christmas movies:

#5 - Elf
This is a new addition - I saw it for the first time about a week ago, and I've only seen it once. But, I thought it was great. I laughed out loud . . . a lot. It was a great Will Ferrel vehicle, and it did a good job mixing in the message of holiday cheer.


#4 - Scrooged

It's been too long since you watched this. This is an under appreciated classic. Take Bill Murray at what was probably the height of his comedic career and mix in the greatest Christmas story of all time, and what more could you ask for?


#3 - The Grinch Who Stole Christmas


I'm not sure any comment can do this one justice. I saw this in the last week and couldn't stop asking "Where would the world be without Dr. Seuss?"


#2 - A Charlie Brown Christmas


This year, I actually fell asleep in the middle of this. Well, maybe it was closer to the beginning. That fact not withstanding, there is no better movie to get you up and running when you are having a hard time getting in the swing of Christmas spirit.

#1 - A Christmas Story

This is THE movie, the big one, the queen-mother of Christmas movies. There is a reason TBS or TNT or whatever Turner network pulls the long straw each year runs this movie non stop for 24 hours, and there is a reason that people always tune in. That is the same reason that I got it for my family on DVD. There are too many great scenes to count - too many favorite quotes. Too many classic moments. You can walk into a room of ten people you have never met and they will all have a favorite scene, which they can quote, and they might all have different ones. But each will be unassailable in its perfection.


Merry Christmas.

First in Flight

Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first successful man-powered airplane flight, near Kitty Hawk, N.C. on this day 103 years ago.

And that is why North Carolina has the dopest license plates in the union.

attitude

The Carolina Panthers are having a terrible year on the field - but one of our best "off the field" years that I can remember.

Ours is the franchise that released one of it's wide receivers after he was arrested for murdering the woman carrying his child. About a year later, one of our ex-running backs was killed when his estranged wife blasted him in the chest with a a shot gun. No charges were filed against her because he was violating a restraining order. Later, we released one of our offensive linemen when he skipped a court date for domestic violence charges.

A special teams player of ours was released after several DUI's, including an arrest where he had pills rolling around on the floor of his car. Steve Smith once jumped a fellow player in a team meeting and broke his eye socket. Almost the entire offensive line from our superbowl has been linked with a doctor in south carolina who apparently proscribed testosterone cream - a banned substance in the NFL. Our old punter was also implicated, and after he got a dui we sent him to Denver, where he has subsequently been replaced because the team doesn't like his off the field problems.

But this year, this year we have (so far - knock on wood) not had off the field problems. This article in the Post lists arrests of NFL Players this year - is it a coincidence that 3 of the better defensive teams in the league (Bears, Chargers, Bengals) all have a lot of players who have had run-ins with the law? Maybe it takes a certain attitude to play football at a consistently high level, and that attitude also gets you into trouble. Take away the outlaws, and you take away the edge that makes the difference between good teams and the best teams.

If that is the trade that we have to make, I'm fine with it.

list available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/nfl/longterm/2006/nfl_chart_12162006.html

article available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/15/AR2006121502134.html

Batteries not Included

These land lords better watch out, or some alien robots are gonna come down and foil their whole plan . . .

D.C. Tenants Move From Building in Fear
Owner Denies Wrongdoing in Vandalism, Threat and Arson

By Allan Lengel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 10, 2006; C01

In trendy Adams Morgan, in the midst of a protracted eviction battle this fall, came the broken windows, cut electrical lines, a death threat from strangers pounding on doors and a brazen arson that caused a fleeing tenant to fall from the second story and break her leg.

The District recently ruled in the tenants' favor in the eviction fight, saying they did not have to move out while the landlord renovated the worn, three-story, gray-brick apartment building to bring it up to code. But it was too late.

By last week, all but one family had given up and moved from the 12-unit building at 1846 Vernon St. NW, a block from the bustling 18th Street entertainment strip. And that family plans to move, too.

"We were very scared to live there," said Rabia Begum, 20, a Montgomery College biomedical student who had lived in the building. "You don't know what could happen."

With a shrinking pool of affordable housing, landlords in Washington frequently urge tenants to move so they can convert apartment buildings to condominiums or, as in this case, renovate rental units. But the battle on Vernon Street between the management and tenants, most of whom are from Bangladesh, was especially ugly.

Tenants have accused management of orchestrating a campaign of fear and violence to get them to give up their rent-controlled apartments to make way for extensive renovations that ultimately would generate higher rents from new tenants.

The building's co-owner, Perseus Realty of Washington, denies any wrongdoing and suggested last week that tenants were behind the vandalism -- perhaps in search of financial gain.

full article available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/09/AR2006120900838.html

p.s. - You get some pretty 'interesting' hits if you google "batteries not included." This is by far not the weirdest one:

hey baby, wanna get to know me?

I am a terrible party-goer when I don't know anyone at the party. I have a tendency to latch on and just hang out with a few people all night, rather than get around and talk to different people. Part of that is because I don't especially enjoy niceties and would rather engage in more in-depth conversations with people. But of course, a bigger part of that is because I am not at all an extrovert - the two are surely related.

So this morning on NPR Steve Inskeep did a piece on Jeanne Martinet, author of The Art of Mingling. Of particular note for those of you who happen to get trapped in a corner over by the hors d'oeuvres with me (so you can't even use "getting a bite to eat" as an excuse to leave) are her methods of escaping a conversation:

The human sacrifice: Where you escape a boring conversation by grabbing some other poor guest and throwing him into the conversation in your place.

The smooth escape: This is for getting out in the middle of someone's long arduous and boring story when it would be rude to just leave in the middle. It involves three steps: (1) Take control of the conversation (i.e. interrupt and respond to an irrelevant detail of their story) , (2) change the subject, (3) then make your break.

Read more and listen to the story here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6595823


on the iPod:
Super XX Man, Vol. XI : A Better Place

think you're having a bad day?

This actually happened to me in Boston - summer 99. It's true.

MeTube

So maybe I'm a little slow on the uptake, but I haven't really "gotten" YouTube - until now. Here are two precious performances that you & I probably never would have seen otherwise.

Howlin Wolf (Note that one of the guys who posted a comment noted that he had never heard of Howlin Wolf until Taylor Hicks turned him on to him - who wudda thunk it?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dF51597U7Xs

or this video of CSNY playing Neil's "Down by the River" (which I found thanks to Aquarium Drunkard)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=yYZ50PjDTi8


I'm sure there are tons more of gems out there. Now, if only I could load these videos onto my iPod.