Publius & Co.

Caption contest

Not me, the gf. You now have a sneak peak of this year's Christmas card, but we can't think of what the inside will say. This is where we need your help. Give us an inside to the card with the above picture (keeping in mind this *will* go to our families, including little grey-haired ladies) and win a genuine, hand-made beigli.

Leave all entries over at the girlfriend's blog, not here. I have no idea how or when a winner will be selected, so ask her.

Hockey WhoopAss Jamboree

I owe CalTechGirl not one, but *TWO* Whoopass Jamboree posts. My bad. In accordance with the rules of the HWAJ, I will now post the logo of her Carolina Hurricanes:

My dog can beat up your dog.

The gf and I were in our local petstore a week or two ago, when a woman comes in. She's looking for some special dog food for her "shih-tzu -- bichon mix."

Oh. You mean you looking for some dog food for your MUTT, lady!

Is there an original thought in the house?

I don't remember how I found the Atomic Bombshell, but she's a fun read. Here she discusses nine soon-to-be-released movies. I looked at her list, and realized there's not really an original thought there. They are based on a book, based on a cartoon, sequel, remake, sequel, based on a book/remake/sequel, based on a computer game, flogging a long-dead horse, and sequel.

It made me try to think of the last movie I saw that had an original script, and it may well have been Lost in Translation, a movie released over two years ago.

In full disclosure, however, I confess I don't go to the movies that often.

Buddy, I hope you went to the emergency room.

One of the blogs I post on received a hit from a Google search for sneezing ruptured hemorrhoid. No, my blog was *not* number one for that search.

Sports and the teams I hate

It's easy to know which teams I like and which teams I don't like. Living in the National Capital Area, I like all teams from Washington, even those with racist names. See, I'm 1/4 Cherokee and 1/2 Mexican (Indian Mexican, as opposed to European Mexican). Plus, I hate Daniel Snyder for raping the team when he first bought it. Stick to signing the checks, moron.

I hate all teams from Dallas.

I hate all teams from Pennsylvania.

I hate all teams from Florida, except for the Marlins. Poor fish; their owner is almost as big a dick as Dan Snyder.

I hate all teams from New York, which is interesting because it seems you can talk to any three people at random and at least two of them will be fans of the New York somethings. Especially in hockey, which is cool because my Caps beat the Rangers yesterday, so Michele, in accordance with the rules of the Hockey Whoopass Jamboree, must post my Caps logo. However, I am willing to give her a pass because it seems she's getting screwed over at work, if her side of the story is true (in all honesty, I have no reason to doubt her, but there's always the other side).

Michele, I wish you the very best of luck.

The Ride that wasn't.

Today is the last day of the 2005 Tour of Hope. The gf and I were scheduled, ready, and willing, to do the 10-mile fundraising ride. Toward that end, we both had raised $500.

Mother Nature decided to throw a wrench into the works. It's been raining steadily since early yesterday afternoon; different roads around the area are flooded, automobile accidents are occuring all over the place, power is out in various places, the rain hasn't stopped in hours, and the weather guys on the radio kept commenting that if this had been snow instead of rain we'd have several feet on the ground.

About fifty minutes ago, as we sat in my car at Glen Echo Park wondering when would be a good time to start getting the bikes out of the back, one of the volunteers walked up to us, asked if we were riders and when we told him we were, informed us the Ride had been cancelled.

Are we disappointed? Obviously, we are. We contributed several hundred dollars each for this, and though it was only ten miles, we were looking forward to it. As I've written before, my stepmother is a 4-year breast cancer survivor, my father has had skin cancers, and my mother died from complications due to cervical cancer when I was 12. The gf's father has also had melanomas, and, as she wrote, her cousin died from esophogeal cancer just three days ago. This ride was, for me, a way to honor those who had passed away and support those who haven't, as well as find a way to contribute to cancer research.

At the same time, I'm relieved. I've ridden in the rain and it's not at all fun. I've also ridden in large group rides, and despite all of the organizer's admonitions that this, "is a ride, not a race," there are the hammerheads doing the 50-mile ride who *have* to finish first, or top three, or top ten, and that's just to the stop sign just down the road.

Throw those guys into a mix with the relatively inexperienced riders doing the ten miler (the 50-mile and 10-mile rides meet at Glen Echo Park) and you've a recipe for disaster on dry roads, let alone roads that are wet. Put those wet roads next to a park, filled with trees losing their leaves, and IMO you could get a good betting pool going on the number of crashes.

They were right to cancel the ride. In all honesty, I don't know if the 50-mile ride was cancelled, but I know some of the roads they're scheduled to ride on. They're back roads in Montgomery County, relatively narrow (one lane each way with little or no shoulder), lined with trees losing their leaves. I can't see how it wasn't cancelled.

(Is the 24-person, national Ride cancelled? To be honest, I suspect--and hope--it was not. They've support vehicles trailing and leading them along, the team is trained to ride together in a double-echelon paceline, and the small disciplined group is significantly easier to control then 1500+ untrained riders. I suspect they know how to handle themselves well in the rain.)

(One thing I'd like to throw in about this ride: As I said, the organization says it's a ride, not a race. At the same time, included in our kit are timing transponders so you'll know how long it takes to ride. To say that's a mixed message is putting it mildly.)

The day isn't a total washout. The Closing Ceremonies have been moved indoors, to the JW Marriott, where we can pick up our t-shirts and where, as the volunteer who delivered the bad news to us said, "Lance will do his thing." It's indoors, so we won't be outside for four or more hours in the rain (the complete ceremonies were scheduled to run from 9AM to 1PM). The gf and I won't be rushing to get home and get dressed for our evening plans, and, more important, members of Discovery Channel are supposed to be there, and I forgot to bring a Sharpie along.

(UPDATE: The webpage has finally put up the cancellation notice.)

Friday Rat Blogging

Misto One of the girls--could be Zoe, could be Neiko--chills out in the hammock.

Thanks for setting the record straight, sweetie.

Imagine that.

I found this quiz over at Suzie's and while I normally eschew such memes, this one looked like fun. I'm hardly surprised at my result:

You Are A: Mouse!

Some people are scared of mice while others find them cute and cuddly. As a mouse, you forage for food and manage to sneek into everything, but prefer to stay out of sight. The phrase "quiet as a mouse" isn't for nothing, however surprise one and expect a squeek! Your small size is part of what makes you a mouse.

You were almost a: Duck or a Monkey
You are least like a: Groundhog or a ChipmunkTake the Cute Animal Quiz

Oh, yeah. Hockey.

Yes, I know the Caps start playing tomorrow night. I'll be there, but I'm not as excited about it as I used to be. I'm still hurt there wasn't a last season.

Just some random links for your entertainment.

Hopefully, you haven't heard about this. Easy contest--create a trailer for an already existing film, only make the trailer a completely different genre.

Howzabout The Shining as a chick flick? And for another example, howzabout West Side Story as a zombie movie? Or Titanic as a horror movie?

Moving on, I'm taking you back to archive.org and their cartoon collection...expecially those brought to you by the leatter "B" for Betty Boop.

So I'm at lunch and, just for grins, I take a look through the list of cartoons, and I see a version of Snow White featuring Betty Boop. Now, I've seen a couple of Betty Boop cartoons before, and they were nothing special. The cartoons were sickeningly sweet and corny things where Betty was a librarian or something, and certainly not the sex-pot flapper Betty you see these days.

What made me decide to watch it was a surprise in the notes and in the pre-cartoon credits: Vocal Chorus, St. James Infirmary Blues, sung by Cab Calloway. Yeah, that Cab Calloway.

Cab's song was great, but believe it or not, it paled next to the cartoon. Remember how I said Betty Boop was boring? *This* Betty wasn't; she was hothothot, in a dress that might be too short for a streetwalker, a garter on one leg, and a wiggle in her walk that would get noticed by a dead man. The cartoon itself was something Salvador Dali might have drawn, only it wasn't him, it was Max Fleischer, and it was weird. I won't spoil it for you; just watch it, enjoy the music, and notice how the queen uses her mirror for more than just pumping her ego.

I immediately did some more research, and found that was the third time Cab Calloway appeared in a Betty Boop cartoon. He did three total; one of them includes the earliest known footage of Cab Calloway (in a little teaser at the beginning of the cartoon). I highly recommend them--
Minnie the Moocher: Yes, *that* Minnie the Moocher, complete with references to cocaine, opium, and prostitution. This is the one with the earliest known footage of Cab Calloway, and it also featured the Max Fleischer patented Rotoscope (during the walrus sequence).
The Old Man of the Mountain: Betty at her sexiest, and more Cab Calloway, both live and rotoscoped. Man oh Manischewitz is this good stuff.
I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal You: This one will certainly have the PC Police up in arms for it's portrayal of African Savages. Ignore that and enjoy the live and rotoscoped performances by a gentleman named Louis Armstrong.

More notes on research--the big difference between the Betty Boop cartoons I've mentioned by name and the ones I saw that were dull was the MPAA and their rules that, I imagine, deemed Betty too sexy and made Fleischer tone her down. Her skirt grew a back and a longer hemline, Bimbo the Dog and Koko the Clown disappeared, and the plots were reduced to saccharine sweetness. Betty's career took a nosedive after that, and the world is poorer for it.