Big Bird Inspiration

I finally dug out some Netflix last night. I've had these discs just sitting somewhere in my apartment. I had been on a documentary kick lately. And I have "March of the Penguins" (which I'm halfway through) and "The World According To Sesame Street".

The Sesame Street doc is amazing. It covers the process behind bringing a Sesame Street show to three new countries--Bangladesh, Kosovo, and South Africa. It's pretty cool how they don't just pump out dubbed versions of the Street to foreign countries. They try and develop a whole new show based on the culture and identity of that country. So the characters are often different. For instance, in Bangladesh--they have a tiger because that is their national animal(the Bengali Tiger). (Also, I am completely ignorant and didn't realize that Bangladesh used to be East Pakistan[they are on separate sides of India])

The Kosovo and South Africa segments were particuarly interesting. In Kosovo, they were trying to teach kids not to hate each other. And you have some very tense meetings between the Serbs and Albanians involved in the creation of the show. That was heart breaking. Because they would ask the creatives if they should have one name for the show for Serbs and Albanians or two different ones. And everyone was agreed it should be different. To have one that was the same wouldn't seem right apparently. The producers also asked about doing something on empathy. They asked for any thoughts on the subject. Complete silence. So they moved on.

Then they asked a bunch of kids if they would want to know what Serb kids did for fun and vice versa. Some kids were curious but some kids were defiant and angry at the mention of the other ethnic group. This one kid screams, "Albanians burned our house down!"

In South Africa, they decided to create a character who was HIV positive. And that was pretty heart warming. But then you saw all the backlash that was in the U.S. about it. Kathrine is in Lesotho right now for Habitat for Humanity. So I was thinking about her while watching this. Apparently, South Africa has one of the highest infection rates of HIV in Africa(and the world), and Lesotho has an even higher one. As a result, you have a lot of orphans.

And perhaps not uncoincidentally, Kathrine was building a orphanage this weekend.

They showed a clip of the HIV Muppet, Kami, and she is holding a memory box that her mom made her so that she can remember her after she died. It's pretty poignant.

Anyway... if you are a Sesame Street or Muppet fan, or just like interesting documentaries, check it out!

Dare I Eat A Peach?

Romantic Or Just Plain Wimpy?

Perhaps you've seen this? It's about a guy who saw some girl on the subway then went home and drew a picture of her and bought a website to try and find her.

Well, turns out he found her(that's her in there in the picture, people). But the verdict on whether or not things are going well or not have yet to be discovered.

But I'm torn by this. Of course, we all have been in this guy's situation right? We've all seen someone on the subway we liked, thought about going to up to her/him, but then ultimately Prufrock'ed in the end.

Electronic Due Diligence
Or maybe you actually did put in a Missed Connection post. To any avail? I once put in a MC post and I was really amused how quickly girls responded. But they weren't the girl. People always want to be that missed connection. You'll notice on the MC board that people draw it out. They slowly provide more and more details(jeans and curly black hair on the 6 train at Union Sq, you were reading a book--how many people could that be?), but they don't want to be very specific because they want to prolong it as long as possible.

The dude named the website NY girl of my dreams. A bit of hyberbole though because he knows nothing about her. He just thought she was hot. He's essentially James Blunt but with visual media. But I bet most girlies found this dude pretty endearing.

Grow Some Onions
I just think you gotta step it up though. He should have just talked to her. Although that might have been high on the stalker factor. I remember there was a girl at school that I had a similarly huge crush on. I called her Dream Girl. (See? Everyone does this.) For at least three years, I tracked all of my contact with her. I would become overjoyed when she stood in front of me in line in PC Duke's(the fast food dining hall at JMU) and dropped her id.

Then I had her name. But I didn't end up really talking to her till I met her at a party senior year. She was a nursing major. Anyway, what's my point? I waited too long, too late, and nothing came of it. By the time, I met her for realsies-I already was dating someone. And it was too late. We were graduating.

A Dream Deferred
And now she works at a fertility clinic somewhere in Northern Virginia. In the ro-co made of my life, maybe I would meet her later donating there.... Hmmm... maybe I need to get to work on this story.

Marathon Notes

Watched the marathon this weekend... to try and spot my friend Tim Cooper. And to just cheer in general. That's one of the fun things about New York. How many freaking people come out and support the runners. I heard it was 80,000. There's 30,000 people running. So that's pretty amazing.

Anyway... some twib notes from the experience:

--Watched from the 24 mile mark in Central Park. Saw Lance Armstrong cruise by with his little motorcade. The best part though was the guy in front of Lance. He was pissed. I guess the water people were all paying more attention to Lance than him so he didn't get his water till the last second or something.

--Absolute bedlam at the end of the race.

--I know that people need those little metallic plastic thingies to keep them warm afterwards, but at what point can people take them off? I saw peeps with them still on 3 hours later. I think they were milking it.

--I am a jerk. (See previous sentence.)

--Some shennanigans at the end of the day, I'll release more info on this later, as I think it's supposed to be under wraps for now.

--Strangest part of the day, seeing a sign at the finish line that read, "I don't agree with you, but I will always love you. Mom"

WTF?!!?! That's the encouragement for the end? Also, it makes you wonder what is Mom not agreeing with? Is he/she gay? Or does the mom simply have a problem with marathon running or fitness in general? Fascinating. I wish I had a picture.

--End of the night, went to Slate for Tim's party and here's the shocking part people----THERE IS NO MORE BURGER PIE. That's right. They took off the burger pie from the menu. We ended up having an approximation of the burger pie. And it was good. But it wasn't the same. This just means Ben Rodgers and I can open our Burger Pie restaurant in earnest.

Booo Metro! Shame on you.

Whilst reading my morning Metro.... I spied this headline:

"Cops looking outside The Box for rapist"

This is a story about the recent rape/robberies in the LES outside of the nightclub called The Box. What the hell are they writing a snarky headline for a rape investigation!?!? This make me mad. That's like writing something like, "Police taking shots in the dark" or "Police drawing blanks over investigation" for the Sean Bell case. Or even, "Authorities in a grind, over strip club shooting"

Come on people, this is just straight news. There is no need to start inserting puns, where puns need not go.