So Nate Shelkey fans! You know who you are! This Sunday, I’ll be reprising my sports opinionated Santa Claus character on ESPN. Sunday Countdown. From 11-1. Or is it 2? Anyway, I should be all over the show this year with little Santa intros and teasers and not just the show opener like last year. Enjoy!
So it appears I passed up the chance to go to the top public high school in the country… Thomas Jefferson School for Science & Technology was just rated the top public school. My dad wanted me to go to this when I was in junior high. I applied to humor him, got in, and then went to West Springfield instead. Reasoning? I didn’t want to go to no school for nerds! But more to the point, not many of my friends were going. But still… I wonder what would have happened if I went. Where would I be now?
[Sidenote: Just checked... WSHS is not on the list. But Robinson, Lake Braddock, and Woodson all are on it! And Langley and McLean are highly rated. Whither WSHS?]
You can’t trust the Post. Yesterday, I was intrigued by this story in the news… this Long Island woman was murdered possibly by her husband and supposedly they found her body slathered in peanut butter. And here comes the even crazier part: because the police think the killer[her husband?] thought that it would make it more attractive to wild animals so they would eat her and dispose of the body.
Nice. Although, I think it’s sound thinking. Whenever we wanted our dog to eat a pill we’d cover it in peanut butter.
But it turns out it’s a false story! I like to think the Post editor was reading the reporter’s story and thought, hey this isn’t juicy enough. We need something else! And then looked around the room for inspiration and saw the half eaten PBJ from lunch. I also wonder how you apply peanut butter all over someone’s body. Do you use a knife?
I just purveyed the food offerings at Grand Central on my lunch hour because people had been hyping up the Grand Central Market. I was confused greatly by the market because I thought there would be an area to buy a sandwich but it was all just food you bought by the pound. Except sandwiches. So then I descended deeper into the depths and hit the food court. Which was pretty nice. The offerings are much more unique than your standard Wok n’ Roll style food court.
Then I found a seat. And began to get uncomfortable as a little group beside me started fighting. It was with two guys and a woman who I first thought was a man. The woman was berating one of the dudes for sleeping “in a restaurant”. And that the policemen had been here two times already. Mind you we weren’t in a restaurant but I wasn’t going to quibble. Then I noticed that they had a stroller. But I didn’t see a baby. Hmmm… then I started to get the idea that they were homeless.
The lady screamed at him and left. His friend briefly left with her, trying to get her stay? And then returned, hugging his friend. They agreed to go. Then I noticed that the guy had a security jacket on. In trying to get up, he was having trouble with his chair. He then knocked it over and kicked it and said something to effect of “Ain’t no chair gonna get in my way!” Then they left.
WHAT? It made me wonder: 1) Was there a baby somewhere and I missed it? (doubtful but scary if there was) 2) Did they steal a stroller from some unsuspecting parent? (sad) 3) Was he really a security guard(doubtful and scary but not as scary as the idea of there being a baby)? 4) How did he steal a security jacket from a security guard?(impressive!)
Food for thought. (From the food court, natch.)
Soooooo…. what’s new?
Well, Kenny’s show is finally up. You can see it here:
I’m not in it till the finale(prolly “airing” in late December) but the first episode has Alison Becker and Jon Glaser. And later on you’ll get to see Aubrey Plaza and Ben Schwartz. (And Jordan Carlos, Stephen Colbert’s black friend.)
Check it out!
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In other news, I haven’t done Song du Jour the last two weeks because I’ve been busy getting ready my one man show for a workout. AND… I started a new day job. So a bit of a time scramble and didn’t have time to do the songs yet. Had to pay the bills. But it seems like it could be fun with the new jobby job. One fun thing is I work at the Daily Planet. The lobby has this giant globe. It’s ridiculously huge. So that feels important.
I’m getting ready for Bond on Friday. So very stoked to see that. Although, I think Kathrine is even more excited than me. She’s been watching Bond movies to get geared up.
Also, my cat Jake doesn’t understand the concept of daylight savings time. He still scratches on my door at what used to be 7 o’clock. Which is now 6 o’clock. It’s maddening. But I still refuse to sleep with him during the night. He moves around too much.
Finally, Top Chef premiered last night and it’s in New York this season! I didn’t get a chance to watch it yet as I started to fall asleep watching Heroes at 11 pm(I’m catching up on all my tv from this week). So I took that as a sign not to push it and I will watch Top Chef tonight.
I will have a song for this week but prolly won’t post it till the weekend….
If you were lucky, you might have chanced to see my luxurious sideburns in an elevator scene on 30 Rock last night. I had almost forgotten about this but I did some special extra work the other month and it finally showed last night. For those that missed it, Kenneth(Jack McBrayer) is challenged by Jack(Alec Baldwin) in the elevator and I am between their faces. Exciting! Disappointing! You be the judge. Anyway… it was still fun. Hopefully, next time I’m on 30 Rock I’ll be saying something and not background. Also, “featured”(?) from UCB were Christine Walters and Glennis McMurray. You can’t see Glennis in the shot, but just for uber fans… Glennis and I did our character histories and we were a couple.
Watching a pretty exciting Titans/Packer game today. It went to overtime because Rob Bironas missed a field goal with 4 seconds left in regulation. Titans win the toss, march down the field and then get to about the 30 yard line and start to kick a field goal on the third down(smart so they have a second chance!). Which is when Fox threw it to commercial. I thought ok, well, I guess they will just hold the field goal till it returns. Nope, then they threw it to the Giants’ game. And lamely had a pre game report and then finally showed us a clip of Bironas hitting the 41 yard field goal. Ummm… this is the same distance that he MISSED before to force OT! Why didn’t they hold for the extra 30 seconds to see what would happen? Disappointing. So instead we got to see some mind numbing pre game before the Cowboys completely crumpled to the Giants.
I was just walking outside and was impressed to see a bunch of people wearing costumes during the day. Adults. These people were not content to just don the costume for a few evening hours. They want to savor the whole day, so they freaking OWN it. For instance, went to an audition today and a horse man was manning(horsing?) reception. Professionally answering the phone and attending to visitors.
But my favorite was actually seeing this guy as Jack Sparrow on a street corner. Waiting for the light to change. In character. The whole damn time. He had his hands up in a fey drunk manner and was watching the light. When he passed me by, he fingered the fabric of my coat.
Then I met the horse man and did the audition. Caught the elevator and pressed down and then saw the floor go to “X”. What is floor “x”? No idea! I was worried I was crossing over in an alternate dimension. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, the doors didn’t open on floor X. It just paused for the longest time and then opened in the lobby. I could swear I didn’t see floor X on the way up. Was I supposed to see that? I feel like I accidentally discovered Narnia.
When I was traveling abroad, in order to make sense of whatever countries’ currency quickly, I developed my own economic indicator. I used a can of Coke. However much it took to buy a coke, I would then scale that to grasp how much things could buy. That was back when you could buy a coke for a buck(so it made an easy conversion), now it’s more like one twenty five or one fifty. Lately, I’ve noticed another economic indicator though–the price of pizza.
When I first moved to the East Village, I was alarmed at the price of pizza. Places started raising their per/slice price (PSP) from around $2 to then $2.25. And then sadly $2.50. At those prices, it makes so much more sense to buy a full pie because the per/pie price(PPP) is hovering around $12.
Then last fall, a place opened on St. Mark’s next to Kathrine’s apt. Their PSP was shocking. $1! What a steal! Of course, it was an introductory sale price and surely going to disappear after a week or so right? WRONG. It’s still here almost a year later, still flaunting their $1 PSP. We wondered how they could keep this up. They must be losing money.
But clearly they weren’t losing money, the other pizza shops in the East Village were. And most particular the one a few stores down. And like some great airline price war, it was on. $1 PSP! I noticed another pizza place as far away as 10th St being affected because they briefly put up a hand written sign with a $1 PSP. Now it’s $1.50. But they aren’t right by the original insanity pricing.
Neither of these two shops are like a traditional price war where there’s one big giant store that wants to edge out the smaller store by offering a cut rate price because it will be able to slash its profits until the other store goes bankrupt and they push them out of business. No, these are two small stores that seem if not Mom and Pop like one store johnnies. So who’s going to blink? I don’t know. But I hope it continues. I love this $1 PSP. Sadly, the rest of New York’s prices haven’t followed suit. So I’m still following the price of Coke.
Watching the Gints vs the ‘Burgh right now and they just showed the freakin’ Incline! For those of you not in the know… the Incline is this old timey amusement in Pittsburgh. It’s a people mover. For the people that live at the top of Mount Washington which is on the south side of the ‘burgh. For years, when my family would visit our relatives in Pittsburgh, people would tell us–oh you have to go to the Incline! Yins gotta go down nere to the Incline!
Well, one year? We went. It’s pretty boring. It goes up the mountain in these little cars at a pretty slow speed. It’s like riding an old timey escalator(it was built in 1877). At the top of Mount Washington, they have some penny arcade style amusements like stereo opticons and such. Again… pretty boring. Still, I have a found place in my heart for the Incline and was excited to spy it today. The announcers being dullards, let it pass by without a mention.
