Lunch today

Today is pretty foggy and what I imagine to be London-y (I've never been), so I tried the split pea soup at Hale and Hearty Soups in the Chelsea Market . It was indeed hearty and very tasty. I had a small size and a half of a tuna wrap - they completely stuffed me. I think I'll just go with a small soup next time.

Mr. Softee

I'm ten floors up from the street but I'll be damned if I can't hear the Mr. Softee truck down there now.

name of my new MacBook

I came up with a good name for my MacBook as I drifted off to sleep on the bus to work today: Chiclet!

 

The MacBook looks like a white chiclet - it's smooth, rectangular, and shiny. And who knows, maybe I'll use my MacBook write a novel that'll be categorized as chick-lit. Not that I love chick-lit, but whatever the publisher decides is out of my hands.

 

I love it when form follows function.

Bruno Kirby, R.I.P.

It is with great sadness that we here at Mime is Money pay our last respects to actor Bruno Kirby, who died Monday from complications related to leukemia.

 

He had a long career: he was in such early-70s TV shows as Room 222 and the pilot of M.A.S.H.

 

Most notably for us, he played Rat Pack fan and limo driver, Tommy Pischedda, in This is Spinal Tap. The outtakes on the Spinal Tap DVD of Kirby crooning in his tighty whities is as good as anything in the released movie.

 

Bruno Kirby was certainly no fad.

 

Cat in the photo booth

Strange checking out my new MacBook.

Christmas in August

Yesterday, I ordered a white MacBook with 1 GHz RAM and an 80 GB hard drive. I can't wait for it to arrive - I feel like an eight-year old waiting for Christmas!

 

My six-year old Compaq PC is showing its age. I plan on reformatting the hard drive (again!) and installing more memory (if the thing isn't too old for that). I'm only going to use it for personal business- and work business-related functions; I'll use the MacBook for the fun stuff like ripping and burning, man! Maybe I'll buy a video camera somewhere down the line and make video films, Bren Bren! Yeah!

 

(That reference to video films and Bren Bren is from Brendon Small's cancelled cartoon, Home Movies. The character who said "video film" and called Brendon "Bren Bren" is Fenton, voiced by Sam Seder, currently of Air America's Majority Report. Every now and then you can hear Fenton's voice slip out when Seder gets agitated.)

After success with Family Guy, manatee takes on New York

If he can make it there, he can make it anywhere.

Summer Reading: Little Children by Tom Perrotta

I just finished reading Little Children by Tom Perrotta, who also wrote Election (they made that one into a movie with Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick).

 

Rather than being about literal little children, the book is really about adults behaving like children on a playground and infatuated, horny teenagers.

 

Todd, a stay-at-home dad, and Sarah, a stay-at-home mom, have a summer fling: they think they're going to leave their spouses and run away with each other. But what will they live on? Their giddy adolescent feelings for each other? Neither one of them has ever held down a job good enough to raise a family on.

 

In the primary storyline, Perrotta deftly recreates the feelings of desperation felt by a girl with a crush: in a flashback, Sarah is in high school obsessing over a theater geek and finally gets to kiss him. The next morning, her father drives her to the SAT test; on the way, Sarah is giddy with the assumption that she has a boyfriend. Her heart is broken when, in line for the test, her "boyfriend" coldly explains that the kiss was a mistake.

 

In the present time, Sarah obsesses over keeping Todd and over his pretty wife Kathy. Sarah parks her car in front of Todd and Kathy's apartment and sits there for hours waiting for a glimpse of Kathy. When Kathy does finally come outside, Sarah's heart sinks at just how pretty Kathy is.

 

Minor characters include a child molester with the mentality of a 10-year-old weakling being bullied on the playground, his present-day bully: an ex-cop bent on driving the child molester out of town, Sarah's husband Richard, whose philosophy is to never fool himself into thinking he can fight his base desires, and a group of stay-at-home moms acting like a snotty band of popular teens.

 

The book ends with a suspenseful point-of-view switching scene in which the major and some of the minor characters reach their respective epiphanies. Todd and Sarah even realize that they've been acting like irresponsible teenagers, though Todd has to be hit on the head to finally get it.

 

Little Children is a deceptively quick read: its dialogue and prose belie a deeper meaning than a mere chronical of events that take place over one summer.

 

Recommended!

Pee Wee's Playhouse

I've been watching Cartoon Network's Adult Swim's reruns of Pee Wee's Playhouse (Wikipedia's entry) and it really takes me back to the late 80's/early 90's. I must have seen every episode three or four times because I remember them with great clarity.

 

I also find it hilarious that it's showing at 11 at night when the kiddies are supposed to be asleep. My sister was watching it at the tender age of 5 and I at 13.

 

I absoultely love the first season. It was an absurd mixture straight out of a John Waters movie. Everything fits together: the wonderful incedental music by Mark Mothersbaugh; the strange toys; the puppets; the speedo-wearing, buff and tan Tito the lifeguard; and the Divine Mrs. Steve.

 

The second season started up the other night - wow, what a disappointment. I forgot how much things changed. And not for the better, in my opinion.

 

In the first episode of the second season, Pee Wee is redecorating his playhouse and everything's under drop cloths. I guess this is their way of easing the kids at home into the big changes.

 

And those changes in order of what irks me most are:

• Captain Carl (the always funny late Phil Hartman) is gone
  
• The incedental music of Mark Mothersbaugh is replaced by that of The Residents and is more like traditional cartoon music than Mothersbaugh's subtle stylings
  
• the cute and sassy Dixie is replaced by the trio of flowers who now announce the King of Cartoon's arrival (lame!)
  
• the bedroom-eyed Globey, who always looked as if he were looking directly at whomever was talking to him, is replaced by a new cartoony, beady-eyed one (although the French accent remains)
  
• there's a new King of Cartoons (and a TV to replace the film projector; Pee Wee was righteously disappointed when the new King bestowed upon him the TV)
  
• beefcake Tito the life guard (hey, everything can use more Tito!) is replaced by Ricardo the soccer player who wears more modest shorts and a shirt (a shirt?!)
  
• the playhouse kids (did you know Opal was played by the ill-fated Natasha Lyonne?) are gone
  
• the "Divine" Mrs. Steve is replaced by Mrs. Renee

Thankfully, Lawrence Fishburn remains as Cowboy Curtis. (hoooo-whee!)

 

I'll still watch, but I'll feel cheated.

 

 

 

Jersey Shore literature

Salon is doing a series of book discussions focused on where in the world the book is set. Today's article by Susy Hansen is about the literature of the Jersey Shore. The first book on her list is Frederick Reiken's Lost Legends of New Jersey .

 

I read this a couple of years ago and found Reiken's discussions of the Shore to be pretty much just an expansion of those "You know you're from the Jersey Shore if..." emails. Great for people who grew up in Jersey and moved away, boring for people like me who still live here. FYI: The book only focuses on the Shore in the first half; it moves up to North Jersey thereafter.

How to take the bus from Aldrich Road in Howell, NJ to New York Port Authority

I recently took the bus from the Aldrich Road Park and Ride in Howell, NJ to New York Port Authority. When I take a mode of transportation I've never taken before, I like to do a little research about fares, tickets, parking and all that. I couldn't find much on the web about daily parking at the park and ride so I set out in the real world to find out and am sharing my knowledge with you here.

Note: At off-peak hours, the bus to NYC doesn't stop at the Aldrich Road park and ride, instead it picks passengers up at the bus stop on Route 9 North just before Aldrich Road. You can park at the park and ride regardless of where you board the bus.

Schedule: You can find the PDF schedule (valid as of July 28, 2006) for NJ Transit route 139 here at the NJ Transit website.

Costs (as of July 28, 2006):

• The bus costs $12 one-way. It seems that you can't buy a round-trip ticket, so you'll have to buy two one-way tickets.


• The park and ride costs $.25 to park for 3 hours. You can park for a maximum of 24 hours.

To use the park and ride when boarding the bus in the park and ride:

1. Buy your ticket(s) from the Colonial Coffee Shoppe in the Aldrich Plaza strip mall, located at the Southwest corner of Route 9 North and Aldrich Road.




2. Park your car in the park and ride, just behind the strip mall on Aldrich.

   
   

   Daily parking is in the West side of the lot (the side furthest from Route 9).

   
   

   Daily parking spaces are numbered. Only monthly permit holders should park in non-numbered spaces.
   

3. Remember your parking space number.




4. At the park and ride bus shelter, go to the machine with the big 'P' on it and pay for your parking.
   

   Follow the instructions on the screen.
   

5. Sit back and wait with joyous anticipation for your bus.
   

To use the park and ride when boarding at the bus stop on Route 9 North: I suggest parking your car at the park and ride first, walking to the Colonial Coffee Shoppe to get your tickets, and then walk up to the bus stop.

Helpful Hints

• Sometimes buses from the Academy bus line substitute for NJ Transit. So don't be surprised if you wait in line at the Port Authority at the gate that says it's for NJ Transit route 139 and then get to the bus and find Academy bus #500-something. You can politely ask the driver whether or not the bus will be stopping at your stop.
  
• Don't sit directly behind the driver if you plan on talking to your companion or on your cell phone. I've learned this from experience. Apparently, if you look out the window while talking, your voice in full volume travels up the window to the driver and distracts him. The driver will get very angry and start yelling at you to keep it down.

Update (8/3/06):Here's the Wikipedia article about bus 139.

President Garfield died there

I'm reading Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation and while trying to find where the old Francklyn Cottage was in Long Branch, NJ (where President Garfield died; I think Vowell might tell me, but I'm not at that part yet), I found this cool website of old prints chronicling Garfield's death.

 

Hat tip to Annabelle for bringing up the story a couple of months ago and reminding me to read this book. (I hope she doesn't mind the pseudonym I gave her!)

 

If I had a million dollars

Audrey Hepburn's black dress from the first scene in Breakfast at Tiffany's is going up for auction. Le sigh.

Kill, Do, or Marry

Ok, gang, let's play Kill, Do, or Marry!

For each choice, tell us if you would kill them, do them, or marry them. Give us a little explanation for each choice to make this fun.

You can just play with choices of the opposite sex, or for even more fun, play with both sexes!

Here are your choices:

Women:
Katie Holmes
Angelina Jolie
Gweneth Paltrow

Men:
Keanu Reeves
Woody Harrelson
Robert Downey Jr

Go!

Yeah yeah, she's cute, but what's her thetan count?

Only Scientologists can see Suri-with-a-fringe-on-top.

Look out, Plankton! The oil companies are comin' ta git ya!

Geez, I didn't think Plankton was that bad.

This is weird - when I did a Google search for the Spanish company that's partnering with the Spanish University of Alicante to make the oil, Bio Fuel Systems, I found a company called BioFuel Systems based in England.

The only thing I can find that mentions Bio Fuel Systems, the University of Alicante, and plankton is the Reuters article.

And I realized after reading the article more closely that nobody's name is used. The article only attributes a "press dossier" from the company.

The article does say that Bio Fuel Systems was created this year, but I would think that a cutting edge company that released a press dossier would have a Web site containing that very dossier.

So I guess Plankton is safe: I wouldn't count on gas from that process any time soon.

Don't marry a gossip

I admit it - I'm hooked on My Life on the D List, the reality show that follows Kathy Griffin around doing her D list-y things. I find it funny - she's funny and she tells a good story. And I'm all about the story telling these days, which is why I listen to The Croncast, because I'm trying to hone my own story telling skills so I can start writing good fiction.

Anyway, back in May, Kathy Griffin divorced her husband, Matt, who was heavily featured in the show, because he stole about $72,000 from her.

So Kathy went on Larry King and told her story and Matt doesn't like that because it's a private affair. He hasn't been blabbing about it, so why is she?

Uh, hello? Because she's Kathy Griffin, queen of gossip, and this is a really juicy story, that's why.

You should have known what you were getting into, buddy.

Howell is safe

An Asbury Park Press article reported that Howell is the 11th safest town in the whole country.

I can attest to that. During the recent Independence Day four-day weekend, about half of our neighbors were shooting off firecrackers and bottle rockets and not a one caused a fire. Neither did I hear about anyone losing any fingers.

Cats that Look Like Hitler

The name says it all:

www.catsthatlooklikehitler.com

My b/w cat does not look like Hitler, although he does tend to bark (meow?) orders at me quite a bit.

The Monks!

There's a new documentary out about The Monks, a band from the 60's made up of U.S. Army GIs stationed in Germany. I first learned of them from a WFMU video. The documentary doesn't have international distribution yet but rumor has it that the band will reunite for a late-2006 tour.