Don't Be Cruel, Just Beat It

The L.A. Times reports that Michael Jackson has died. Someone will come up with a conspiracy theory fairly quickly; this is my attempt to beat everyone else to it. The following statement is entirely fabricated.

As everyone knows, Elvis faked his death back in 1977, and has since been living a comfortable retirement on a South Pacific island. What you may not know, however, is that Presley actually passed away last month at the age of 74. In an auction attended only by members of the Pentavirate (Jacko joined shortly after the release of Bad, filling the void left by Colonel Sanders a decade earlier), Jackson purchased Presley's island, and has faked his own death to retire to same.

The members of Duke Phillips Preschool wishes to send their condolences and prayers to Jackson's family.

I'm gonna be a supermodel

Everyone loved Suzanne Vega so much, now I give you:

"Ordinary Girl"

Go ahead, try to get it out of your head.

Slouching Towards Oblivion

I am contemplating (again) a site redesign, but in the meantime, I give you the misses from last week's trivia night. I've said this before, but this was almost certainly my last appearance at this particular trivia night. This time, it's not the general crappiness of the questions, but the fact that I no longer have any reason to be in Clemson on a Thursday.

Last week was the restaurant's 10th anniversary, so all questions are about events that took place in 1999. We had first place wrapped up, until we declined to guess which day of the month the restaurant opened. It was, apparently, an easy thing to guess, as we did not place, despite a healthy lead.

1. One of the most devastating earthquakes of the 20th Century struck in August of 1999, killing over 15,000 people in what country?

2. What popular Nickelodeon cartoon debuted in May 1999, with an episode entitled "Help Wanted/Reef Blower/Tea at the Treedome?"

3. Halftime: Name the three countries which joined NATO on March 12, 1999.

4. Which two oil companies merged in November of 1999, creating what was at the time the largest company on the planet?

5. Which Royal couple was featured on a postage stamp prior to their June 1999 wedding?

Guaranteeing me 25 extra minutes in Purgatory

Internet Meme Of The Week!

Inspired by a comment thread over at ALOTT5MA, I hereby stick in your head Suzanne Vega's "Tom's Diner."

Original version of the song is here.

The version you probably know is here.

(edited to remove the wacky suggestion that you reference Vega as often as possible for the rest of the week)

Return of the Son of Trivia Night

Bad questions abound! Bonus points for explaining why they're bad questions.

1. Which Spice Girl was first to have a baby?

2. What famous five-word phrase, spoken in Apollo 13 by Ed Harris, was never actually uttered by Gene Kranz?

3. Which Yankee hurler threw the 15th perfect game in Major League Baseball history?

Final:

4. The Sonny Bono Act protects an artist's copyrighted work for how many years after their death?

The Jailhouse Queen

As a combination late-birthday/graduation present, the w and I got backstage passes to last week's Death Cab For Cutie concert at Davidson College. Here follows my largely stream-of-consciousness review. Full disclosure at this point: I've been going to Death Cab shows since 1999, when they played places like the Go! Rehearsal Room in Carrboro and T.T. The Bear's in Cambridge. I've only met (drummer) Jason McGerr once, but I do know the other members of the band.

Parking was... a challenge. The parking lots looked a lot bigger on the map than they actually were. By the time we found a place across campus and made it back to the arena, it was 8:30, and we managed to hear a song and a half from Ra Ra Riot. I did like the tune I heard, and I definitely dig a band with a violinist and cellist on stage.

When their set ended, we figured out how to get backstage (people are very friendly when you're wearing a VIP sticker), and Ben Gibbard happened to be hanging out just outside the dressing room. We talked about the Carolinas, and whether or not Western Washington would be willing to give Ben an honorary doctorate someday. I got to introduce the w to Chris Walla, and I said hi to Nick Harmer, but I didn't get to talk to them. Back in the days when the band was still schlepping their own instruments, they used to come out into the crowd to watch the openers, and we'd have conversations, but that hasn't happened in about five years. I kind of miss that.

We went up to the floor to see Cold War Kids. They're the sort of band that I feel like I've heard before, but probably haven't - I had the same experience the first time I heard a Soul Coughing album. Not that CWK sound like Soul Coughing, they're more like White Stripes + honky-tonk piano + extra guitar. Anyway, they started out great, but they kind of bogged down after a while; the middle of their set had what I considered an unreasonable amount of falsetto, plus one thing with a constant vibrating bassline that just felt like something Beck decided not to put on "Midnite Vultures." Still, they finished strong.

It occurs to me that I'm not as enamored with being on the main floor as I used to be. When DCFC played Clemson (my first "date" with the w), we had floor passes, which was nice, but I just don't feel like standing up for that long anymore. Plus, people on the floor are irritating, like they feel like the communal atmosphere gives them license to push social boundaries. Our favorites tonight were the three girls who spent most of the set holding shouted conversations and texting their friends and started their own mini-mosh pit and generally ignored the band, then got annoyed with us when we decided to move in front of them because they couldn't see anymore.

After CWK, we decide to find seats in the upper area. We make the mistake of going to the student section, which are bleachers as opposed to actual seats, but at least we're sitting. They start with "The Employment Pages." A song from Facts (five albums and several eps ago)? Here's a question for your favorite bands: do they prefer tours when they're supporting an album, and thus playing mostly new stuff, or the tweener tours, when they have two or three new songs they're toying with, and can otherwise play anything they want? Personally, I prefer the non-album tours.

Davidson's arena, by the way, has a fantastic sound system. The w told me she had earplugs, but she meant *she* had earplugs, not several pairs of them. But the sound hear manages to be clear without being ear-splittingly loud. It isn't even distorted up in the bleachers.

The lighting for this tour has some good and bad things. I particularly liked the LED "tears" during at least one song. But the bits with a couple of spotlights expanding and contracting in patterns were, at best, distracting.

The set is mostly tight, except Ben gets lost in the middle of "Movie Script Ending." They have a chuckle on stage, and then just jump right back into the song.

More annoying people: some guy starts shouting "You're awesome! Woo!" during the quiet part of "I Will Follow You Into the Dark". Several times. You, sir, are a douchebag. Sit down.

They move on to "I Will Possess Your Heart." This is the new "Transatlantacism," with the long buildup and kickass bassline. I have to think they wrote this song thinking what a blast it would be to play live. Too bad this means they probably won't play "Transatlantacism." They do, however, play "Fake Frowns," which I haven't heard live in a long, long time. Awesome.

The set ends, they leave the stage, everybody keeps cheering, of course there's going to be an encore. Still, that doesn't stop the two coeds behind us from completely losing their nut when the band comes back out on stage. I can only assume that this is their first show, ever. They start the encore with "What Sarah Said," and there's even more screaming. Seriously? The most depressing song in, let's face it, a catalog of depressing songs, and folks are bouncing off the walls. Then there's a song off the ep - I really want the ep now - then "Soul Meets Body," and then "Transatlantacism!" This is my favorite Death Cab live song, mainly because I'm waiting for the time when Nick simply snaps the neck off his bass. The song ends, we wander back across campus to the car, and find our way to the nearest Waffle House.

I could also play one on TV

When I went off to college, in a far-away city, the folks and I decided it would be a good idea if I signed up for some frequent-flyer programs. You know how the applications have the boxes to check for your salutation (Mr., Mrs., Ms., etc.)? Well, I checked "Dr." At 20, I found this to be hilarious. Whenever I have called customer service, I have been referred to as "Doctor." Again, this was much more amusing to me at 24 then at 34.

The official ceremony is not until May, but, as of yesterday, I am pleased to report that I am no longer living a lie. Now, if only the advanced degree actually came with a job.

Another vague post

Let's say you have a plan. The goal of this plan is not relevant; maybe it's to colonize Mars, maybe it's to ensure the Detroit Lions win the Super Bowl. Part of this plan, though, involves poisoning a number of people. Not a large number of people, just a few. This is done covertly, and even if it is discovered that these people have been poisoned, the cause will be attributed to asbestos or unwashed spinach or something.

Would you make a list of these people? Would you leave this list in a place where anyone, at all, could find it? Would there be any possible reason to have a paper trail of this particular deed?

No, YOU are!

When I was in college, I was in a fraternity. This is apropos of very little, except that I'm about to tell a story involving my little brother, which is a frat thing; I do not actually have a younger brother.

Anyway, one night, my little brother, aided by some goading from his housemates, made a phone call which... well, let's just say he probably still regrets it. Before we go on, I will point out that he was not much of a drinker, and in particular was not drinking that evening, in my recollection. I don't know if that makes it better, or worse. But I digress. The next day, I talked with him about how to make amends. Our house President talked with him. His pledge trainer --- whoops! We don't have those, uh, his "New Member Liaison" --- talked with him.  At that point, he trudged off to some afternoon activity. However, that's when the fallout really began. As brothers began getting home from class, they stopped by our room.

"Is Skippy (note: not his real name, nor, despite my efforts, his nickname) around?"

"No."

"Well, when you see him, tell him I want to talk to him."

This conversation was repeated over a dozen times. Most of the brothers wanted to talk to him. Several of their girlfriends wanted to talk to him. Some guy I had never met before wanted to talk to him. Finally, it occurred to me to start getting annoyed, and I asked one person why he wanted to talk to Skippy.

Person:"You heard what happened?"

Me:"Yes. I talked to him about it. [President] talked to him. [N.M.L.] talked to him. Why do you need to talk to him?"

P:"Well, a lot of people are angry."

M:"Yes, three people have mentioned that to him. He feels bad. Why do you need to talk to him?"

P:"To let him know that he's made a lot of people angry."

M:"Oh. I never would have thought to do that."

In the end, what really bothered me was not the staggering number of people who thought that they were going to offer some unique perspective on the situation. It was the readiness with which they were willing to dispense their bile, without really knowing what had happened (none of the people present at the incident, it should be noted, came by to talk).

I think about this incident whenver I see things like this note, in which one participant of Top Chef gets, well, a bit catty about another contestant. Certainly, she probably shouldn't have said what she said. Probably, she regrets whatever she said, whether or not the quote is accurate. But the followup is inexcusable; the 200+ comments read like a contest to see who can come up with the meanest, most vitriolic response. Very few of the commenters claim to know Casey Thompson, or to have any knowledge of the actual goings-on during the final episode, and those who do are shouted down.

I stopped participating in most forms of Internet discussion a while ago, because I just had no stomach for the folks who came in determined to ruin someone else's day. There are forums where people participate in reasoned, respectful discussion, to be sure. But this kind of anger just seems like the norm, and makes me wonder why it's tolerated.

Oscars Trivia!

Something to do while you're waiting for the Barbara Walters special to end:

1. When was the first televised Academy Awards program?
2. What was the first Best Picture winner?
3. Who has the most Academy Awards for directing?
4. How many times have all four of the major acting Oscars gone to non-Americans?
5. What individual has won the most Academy Awards?
6. Name the only two men to have won three Academy Awards for acting.
7. Name all three films to have won the "Big Five" awards (Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director).

Final: Who holds the record for most Academy Award nominations without a win?

(This may or may not be a hint: The answer to this question does not depend on tonight's results.)

Working Title

I'm not sure what to do about trivia this week. It was "movie trivia" night, which we figured was in honor of the Academy Awards, but instead of asking questions about, you know, Oscar-winning films, we got a bunch of crap along the lines of "what was the name of the dog in Next Friday?"

Maybe I'll post some of our misses later, but more likely I'll come up with some better movie trivia before Oscar Night. Stay tuned.

He'll tell you what he wants, what he really really wants

This week's trivia ended badly, as we decided to guess on the final question, and missed, costing us a tie for second. We never get the tiebreaker questions, anyway. Irritatingly, a fairly clear error on one question is what put us in the tie in the first place. Our "misses:" 

1. How many toes does an ostrich have?

2. Which President is on record as having given the longest inaugural speech?

3. Who was the first male tennis player to win Grand Slam titles on all three playing surfaces?

4. Which diva's "Reach" was the theme song of the 1996 Summer Olympics?

5. What Nobel Peace Prize winner referred to meeting the Spice Girls as one of the greatest moments of his life?

Useless Information

Because I have no other way of generating content: Trivia returns!

This may only be for a week: it happened that I was in town on a Thursday, I decided to go, and after two hours of recycled and otherwise easy questions, I'm in no particular mood to go back. The current writing crew is, apparently, completely out of ideas, as there were rounds (plural) of questions that I've heard before. In fact, I'm pretty sure they repeated the final question (ordering Kevin Costner movies). Yes, I've been doing this thing for two-plus years, and you're bound to hear the same question once in a while, but it isn't like it's impossible to come up with a good trivia question, or at least a new one. Anyway, here's my miss, and a couple others I made up.

1. In what country was roulette invented?

2. During the Olympic Parade of Nations, which country almost always enters the venue first? Also, what is the exception to this rule?

3. We all know Johnny Depp's first film was A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Kevin Bacon was in the original Friday the 13th. But name the mega-stars whose early work includes these 80's horror films:

a) Leprechaun

b) Cutting Class

c) Return to Horror High

4. Who was the last member of the Whig party to be elected President of the United States?

Happy Almost-new Year

Well, every year I get started on the posts later and later.

All in all, 2009 looks to be a banner year for the Preschool. I'm living in a new town (well, I'm sort of living in two towns right now), with a new person, and, with any luck, will soon have a new job. "Luck," of course, being the operative word. All this excitement is not without downsides, though. The new town meant giving up the old job. Chances are, the new job will be in yet another new town, which means the w might also get to experience the joy of a job search in what might be charitably termed a "tight" job market. And, most importantly, I'm rarely around for trivia night anymore, thus dealing a devastating blow to the major source of content around here. And, sadly, no replacement seems in the offing; the w did find an ad for trivia night at a local pub, but when we went there for a drink on Saturday, we found the place shuttered and "For Lease." Not a good sign.

There are content possibilities: No way am I detailing the academic job search, but I could always bring back the cooking segment. In the meantime, I'll fill space by looking at how I did on last year's resolutions.

1. Get the PhD. Well, oops. I'll have it in May, though, I swear.
2. Brown-bag it more. I was helped tremendously by the 12:20 class I taught in the fall, which kept me from even eating lunch most days.
3. Less red meat. Less butter. Less sugar. Definitely less red meat - it helps a lot that the w doesn't like it much - but I do like me some cookies.
4. Way less pizza. I was doing better on this the first half of the year. I can, however, count on one hand the times I hit Todaro's AYCE buffet.
5. Stop using sponges to clean the dishes, as they are, apparently, nothing more than slightly soapy bacteria farms. We do have scrub brushes in the kitchen now, and I try to use them for most things. Still, the sponge is terribly convenient for cleaning knives. I'm still working on this.
6. Reach 400 on the 1001 Movies You Must See list. I was well ahead of the pace through the summer, but then the getting-married and writing-the-dissertation bits got in the way, as did the seemingly interminable sequence of 1950s Japanese dramas in my Netflix queue. I ended the year having seen 104 movies on the list, giving me a total of 370. Of course, by now, the list has likely been updated, so who knows where I am.
7. Ride the bus more. I definitely pulled this one off, even if it occasionally involved driving halfway to campus, parking at the grocery store, and riding the bus from there. I usually went shopping on my way home.

A Post Few of My Readers Are Likely to Understand

A graph G is strongly asteroidal if it contains three vertices a, b, c such that there is a path between any two of these vertices that

1. Does not contain the third vertex, nor any neighbor of the third vertex.
2. Does not contain two consecutive vertices that are adjacent to every neighbor of the third vertex.

This? Is my job.

Fun Fact: There's only one Stephentown on Earth

Okay, so last week really was my last trivia night. Maybe. I'll have to spend some time in Clemson next semester, and the w is convinced I'll be arranging things so that I'm there on Thursday nights. We'll see. For now, savor the misses from last week's victory.

1. In what southeastern state might you find the towns of Frog Jump, Only, and Sweetlips?
2. In what southwestern state would you find the town of Ding Dong?
3. What freshwater mollusk produces red or pink pearls?
4. Which family of trees includes both the largest and fastest-growing living thing on earth?
5. What is the more common name of herpes zoster?

Where have all the tan M&M's gone?

Because I ran across this while I was cleaning out my bookbag: trivia returns!

1. What original Lifesavers flavor was nearly removed from the roll in 1999, after Nabisco announced that it was "not Y2K compliant?"

2. How many times did Marshal Mathers, a.k.a. Eminem, flunk the ninth grade?

3. What country's first nuclear weapons research facility is now a tourist attraction known as "Nuclear City?"

4. What film, starring Tupac Shakur and Janet Jackson, was banned from the Cineplex Odeon Universal City in Los Angeles, out of fears that it might cause trouble in the trendy City Walk complex nearby?

5. What part of the Britney Spears doll's anatomy do you push to get her to sing?

Tomorrow will likely be my last trivia night in this town. Goodness knows what direction this blog will take afterwards. Will I find a new trivia night in Winston-Salem? Start writing my own? Reprint all the Ken Jennings questions I miss? Stay tuned.

Been a Long, Lonely, Lonely, Lonely, Lonely, Lonely Time

Okay, so, Fall Break has stretched into an extended hiatus, as wedding and honeymoon time have been supplanted by research time and job-application time and write-the-dissertation-already time. I have a brief moment of blogging time tonight, though, so I return with a question:

Curriculum Vita or Curriculum Vitae? Or does it matter? My understanding was that "Vitae" was plural, but still acceptable usage (similar to "criteria").

Se Habla Ingles!

In case you haven't noticed, the Preschool has been on Fall Break. There was no trivia last week, and there probably won't be any this week. I am pleased to report, however, that on October 18, the f officially became the w. In the next few days, there will be a recap of our honeymoon in Mexico, or at least a recipe for fried bananas.

I thought it was Jimmy Durante!

Trivia night got off to a rocky start, when I arrived to find that the rest of my team was absent. A couple of early misses had me thinking about leaving at halftime, but, ninety minutes and a couple of lucky guesses later, an improbable victory gave a much-needed infusion of cash to the Preschool's coffers.

The difficulty level of trivia has been a lot higher lately, but I feel like the ones I missed were actually pretty easy. Judge for yourself.

1. What singer was the subject of the Hello Gorgeous Museum in San Francisco, which gave out wigs and fake noses to visitors wishing to impersonate her?
2. What multi-faceted character did comic Don Rickles voice in the movie Toy Story?
3. What medical procedure, applied to humans, did the World Health Organization decry as "against human integrity and morality?"
4. What clothing line, a spin-off of Phat Farm, is designed for urban women?
5. Who was the first athlete to be named Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year twice?
6. Final: What Steven Spielberg movie did Senator Tom Coburn bash NBC for airing, citing its "full-frontal nudity, violence, and profanity?"