Wakin' up With Robin Meade & Headline News' "Morning Express"

In my view, there are three types of beautiful women in the world: those whom only women find beautiful, those whom only men find beautiful, and those whom pretty much everyone agrees are beautiful. It tends to be only women who find art-house-type women attractive, for example.* (*NOTE: This might be for a very good reason.) Further, it tends to be only men who find female adult film stars (or, additionally, the "FOX NFL Sunday" weather-woman Jillian Barberie) attractive. Then, there's that third group. What makes them so special that nobody finds their beauty appalling and/or disgusting?

I'm going to use the woman from the Mercury TV commercials as an example of this omni-likable, third type of beautiful. I do so because she's universally considered to be the most beautiful woman in the world, and there's nothing wrong with her at all. She's Harvard-educated and went to medical school. In her spare time, she works on developing enzymes to strengthen chemotherapy drugs, she grows enough corn on her farm to power 1,948 ethanol-based vehicles per year, and often performs minor surgeries on children in the Philippines. She's also definitely not slutty-looking, which is key. See, dumbass psychologists like to talk about "magic ratios" and "symmetry" in relation to what we think is hot. This is bullcrap -- what we want is to not feel threatened by somebody's attractiveness. If you gave the Mercury TV adwoman fake breasts and kept her face the same, few women would still find her attractive. (Men, of course, still would. This is both why we're awesome and why we're horrible, but mostly why we're awesome.)

The Mercury TV adwoman also knows what she's talking about. She confidently tells you to "put Mercury on your list", and of course, you do.* (*NOTE: Actually, you don't. Mercury cars have sold horribly over the past few years, to the point where Ford decided to ax the ad campaign late last year. But, you get the point.) Both men and women are inspired by confident, strong-minded women, and this woman is one.

Which brings me to someone else, who isn't the Mercury TV ad-woman but is close: CNN Headline News morning anchorwoman Robin Meade. For the past year or so, since around the time that I moved to Boston, I've spent many mornings sipping coffee and eating Honey Nut Cheerios watching her "Morning Express" show, because I'm interested in the news and I like to be entertained. And man, is this show entertaining. For starters, Robin is supermodel gorgeous. Look at this picture. Can you guess how old she is?* (*NOTE: Scroll to the end of this post to find the answer.)

Further, she is horrible -- absolutely horrible -- at reading a teleprompter. She consistently stumbles over her words, accents the wrong parts of sentences (e.g. "And what, of course, happened TO her?"), and sometimes I think she makes up the endings of stories that she couldn't read fast enough on the screen to interpret for us (e.g. "And then she died." Me: "Wait, what? Nancy Reagan died?"). There's some serious Ron Burgundy potential here; if someone broke into CNN worldwide headquarters in Atlanta and threw "Go fuck yourself, America!" on the teleprompter, she'd probably say it. She also works with a supporting cast of dudes who look like they hang out at Bar Anticipation, and women who look like they bite their tongues and then say really catty things about her behind her back. The unintentional comedy is prescient and awesome.

Finally, Headline News takes a non-Northeast-biased approach to the news. From watching "Morning Express" for a year, I've learned that although everything important happens in the Northeast, nothing interesting happens in the Northeast. For example, did you know that a factory worker in Bumblefuck, Kentucky went apeshit overnight and killed five of his coworkers? Or how about the fundamentalist minister in Whogivesafuck, Arkansas, who allegedly killed his wife in a fit of rage? Did you know that We Care About Our Troops? I had no idea, until I watched the daily "Morning Express" segment with that exact title. I've got news for you, Amurrica: Fox News Channel is the new, liberal outpost in news media. "Morning Express" is where real Amurricans go for their "news"*. (*And, by "news," I of course mean "soul-less sleaze.")

Anyway, I digress. In a 2006 survey, Robin was voted "Sexiest Newscaster" by Playboy.com by a landslide, with a whopping 40% of the vote (with, like, ten candidates! Although admittedly, one of them was Connie Chung). But somehow, I think she is more than that. I think she's one of America's most important newscasters. I believe that -- despite her incompetencies -- she represents exactly what people want to accomplish by watching TV in the morning. And in a backwards way, I think she represents the face of news in the 21st century. You see, a lot of bad shit goes on in the world each day, and I think if we took an objective, deep view about all of it we'd go insane. Maybe it's better (in a psychological, not a moral, sense) that we just kinda waltz through 5-second news clips about 15 different disasters reported by a former Miss Ohio beauty contest winner who can't talk good. (Or, alternatively, maybe not. But I'll leave that to someone else who writes here.)

In Canada, there used to be an Internet newscast called "Naked News", where the actual news was presented by attractive women who would striptease as the news was presented. This was a big hit - typically with men - and the fact that the news was serious is worth focusing on here. There's a huge argument in this country (and it's a very good one) that people - and young people in particular - don't care what's going on in the world. I bet I could speak to the 10 brightest friends I have about the current political strife in Zimbabwe, for instance, and I think only half of them would know what was going on. This actually really pisses me off, by the way. But, what if we could somehow combine nakedness and news here, in this country, with the fundamentalist Christians shutting the fuck up about it? Wouldn't this be a wonderful, beautiful thing? At the very least, wouldn't a few million young adults who never cared about the news before at least start to listen?

This is why you should vote for me for President. Stay classy.

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Answer from before: Robin Meade was born in 1969, and is 39 years old (!) . She's like the Roger Clemens of attractive women, but with no steroid scandal and no alleged affairs with 15-year-olds.

"Viva La Vida" Is a Pretty Good CD.

::dusting off my music critic horn-rimmed glasses::

OK, so it's been awhile. But Coldplay just released a damn good CD (album? effort? collection of songs released at one time? I have no clue what to call a music compilation anymore. I'm just going to call it a "CD"), and I feel compelled to write something about it. You see, around the turn of the decade whining in music was pretty popular. It was important for musically-inclined males to show a sensitive side, and to sing in falsetto as much as possible in order to woo female listeners (or, alternatively, hummingbirds). This led to the estrogen-izing of America, the weak dollar, and the first Stone Sour CD. Contemporaneously, Coldplay became a chart-topper based on music which consisted mainly of whining and falsetto singing in Parachutes and A Rush of Blood to the Head. Now I still like both of these CD's. But I've never really tried to be cool, and I love whining. So, I guess this makes sense.

Then came 2005's X & Y, a CD that I've never been able to listen to completely (although it has a couple of singles that I like). There are some people (specifically, some people who write on Damaged, Inc.) who love X & Y, so I'm not going to bash it too much. It just kind of bores me, that's all. After such a middling effort, I had to think twice before shelling out $9.99 on iTunes -- because buying music legally is COOL! -- for Viva la Vida or Death And All His Friends (VVDAAHF, for short). Since Tuesday, I've listened to it 4 times. Once in my office in New Jersey, once in my Massachusetts office, once in my car (driving from NJ to MA), and finally on a long run on the beach in NJ. I don't know about other people, but I need to listen to a CD in a number of different places, doing a number of different things, before I decide that I like it. I also never like a CD the first time that I listen to it. Liking music is hard work, but it pays off.

The coolest thing about VVDAAHF is how restrained it remains while still being musically inventive. Perhaps the band was as bored with X & Y as I was, because they elicited a number of different types of music -- there's bluegrass infused throughout "Yes" and "Strawberry Swing", hip-hop on many songs but most notably at the beginning of "Lost!", gospel in "Death and All his Friends," and undertones of 80's dance music in "Viva La Vida" -- in the context of an album that is (as a whole) very reliably hard rock.

Reportedly Timbaland assisted in the production of the album, which by itself is a huge deviation from the art-rock influences (Jeff Buckley, anyone?) that motivated much of their earlier work. For those of you who hold negative attitudes toward art-rock, I must assure you that VVDAAHF is not art-rock. The lead guitar is consistently solid and meaningful, with moments of searing up-tempo bliss, as in the pounding crescendos of "Death and All His Friends" and the halting middle of "Life in Technicolor." I did wish that the powerful, driving music lasted longer, and that I didn't have to wallow through as much slow and melodic stuff in order to get there. This was a problem for me in songs such as "Lovers in Japan," which was one of my least-favorite songs on the CD. (This is a problem with Coldplay, and with pretentious bands in general. They definitely feel that listeners need to earn their way to the best parts of the best songs, and damn us for complaining!).

As a whole, however, I really enjoy VVDAAHF and I encourage you to listen to it (via legally downloading it, or otherwise, depending on your morals and ethics). It's very fun, good music to listen to at work, and the few places where you feel like you're being forced to eat your vegetables are well-rewarded with a delicious, musical dessert.

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Today is Thursday, June 19, and I am embarking on a "Spend No Money Today Campaign." Why, you ask? Because, between gas and going out drinking, I spent $75 yesterday and I'm going to spend another $75 (on the same two objects) tomorrow. Having $150 drained from my checking account over 3 days is far easier to tolerate than some higher number, so as a consequence I'm typing this post from my office, with a can of Chunky soup I've had in my office since last November heating up in the microwave. For the rest of day, I'll eat whatever is in my refrigerator -- I had a peanut butter sandwich and O.J. for breakfast (because I don't currently have much in my fridge), and I will have mac and cheese for dinner. Why would any man ever NOT want to live as a bachelor?

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Below is a random playlist I created and can't stop listening to in my car:

1) Tom Cochrane - "Life is a Highway" (One of the all-time, underrated awf-some songs of all time.)

2) The Proclaimers - "500 Miles" (Another awf-some song; song which attempts to qualify love by saying: "Hey, when I go out, get drunk, and throw up, you're the one I want to throw up WITH, baby!")

3) Rusted Root - "Send Me On My Way" (The hippie-est song that I like.)

4) Gerry Rafferty - "Baker Street" (There's this situation with some of my friends: we're out somewhere, and a song which is incredibly embarrassing comes on. Next, each of us immediately lights up and we realize that we all like the same, embarrassing song. Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street" is one of these songs, although I actually think it's kind of a cool song b/c Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters crew covered it about ten years ago.)

5) Eric Clapton - "Layla", Live, MTV Unplugged, 1992 (No substitutions allowed. One of the greatest live performances ever, when I was 9 years old I realized how great this version of "Layla" was and forced my mom to play the cassette over and over again. That's right, cassette.)

6) BB King - "Don't Answer the Door (Parts I and II)" (Perhaps the most misogynistic song ever. Great blues riff.)

7) Bell Biv Devoe - "Poison" (Perhaps the second-most misogynistic song ever, hilarious music video, great haircuts, love the nerd glasses on the dude sitting on the basketball hoop toward the end.)

8) Boyz II Men -- "Motownphilly" (B-B-Boyz II Men! That's right, 'cuz the East Coast fam never skipped a beat, I won't, either.)

9) Sam Cooke -- "Twistin' The Night Away" (The soundtrack to one of the best scenes in one of the best comedy movies ever -- "Animal House" -- an undeniably smooth and soulful song by one of the coolest cats to have ever purred.)

10) Huey Lewis & The News -- "Power of Love" (Don't lie and say you don't bang your head a little to this song. It's a good song, no question.)

11) Def Leppard -- "Hysteria" (I must be in love.)

12) Bruce Springsteen -- "Spirit In The Night" (The most opaquely drug-riddled song of the 1970's, and because The Boss is so damned wholesome and nice, nobody ever calls him out on this. I will be honest. This song is about getting housed -- no, no, worse than that, obliterated -- on just about every drug imaginable, and then doing ridiculous things thereafter. Throughout the song, he mentions people as if they went on some physical trip with him. These are people who don't exist; they're just different kinds of drugs that he took. This fact doesn't make me like Bruce any less (or any more), it just kind of is what it is. He may be an evangelical Rock God, but I believe in fair and balanced music criticism, and this is what you get. If you really want to be critical of Bruce, look at the lyrics to "Backstreets." Eh? Eh?)

13) The Clash -- "London Calling" (Because every self-respecting mix CD should end with a punky song. The best mix CD I ever created ended with Green Day's "J.A.R.", a song that doesn't get played nearly as much as it should on the radio and that, when played, inspires me 100% of the time to play that scratched, semi-warped mix CD I created years ago. Yeah, every mix CD deserves a punk rock song. No question about it.)

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OK, that's enough for me. Stay classy.

Surviving the European Union

So I suppose I should introduce myself as the late arriving member to this blog. I, like my colleagues, yes I said colleagues even though we are all still in school, am an intellectual, of sorts. This can usually be translated to nerd, science geek, etc., and I’m also quite mad, angry not insane, or so I am told.

Following suit with everyone else I’ll discuss the current events of my life, which consist of the last few weeks in Europe and what I expect from the next half. I’m aware that there is a time difference and if you find that you can’t keep up with my line of thought; please feel free to wait 5 hours for it all to sink in.

So far on my trip I have gone to a wedding in Ireland, spent a week in Amsterdam and Belgium, a few days in Luxembourg and I am now in Ireland. I went to Amsterdam not because I am into all the extracurricular activities that are available there and illegal in the States but because it is pretty much the Graceland for people my age. That coupled with my never having had a vacation before made my decision to go, while I was over here for school anyway, an easy one.

Anyway, each country has been better than the last one, until Luxembourg but I’ll discuss that later. Belgium is by far my favorite despite my having to go to class and visit several key European Union institutions such as the European Parliament, Commission and the Court of Justice. No these aren’t random boring destinations, for in fact I am a law student and that made them obvious but boring destinations while in Europe and politics has never been one of my favorite topics. I suppose that is why I picked a major devoid of it, engineering. I learned the basic structure of the EU and a few other interesting tidbits which may all prove a waste of my time because Ireland failed to ratify a new treaty, which required a unanimous passing in all the EU member states. The New York Times has already proclaimed that the failure of this treaty would cause further turmoil in the EU and I have yet to see a single uprising, anti-Irish march or anything along those lines.

The best part of my week in Belgium is that I got to go to the Stella Artois Brewery for a tour. If you have not heard of Stella Artois or don’t like it I hate you. Going back to the EU, while I was in Parliament, the building itself being a testament to man’s need to overcompensate architecturally, the one thing I wanted to know about was the one thing none of our tour guides could answer, the EU’s approach to intellectual property, IP is a collective term referring to patents, trademarks and copyrights. After some investigation I found that the EU apparently is still developing its IP law and it’s not going to develop any faster now that Ireland rejected the Lisbon treaty.

Now for the other parts of my trip. I recommend everyone go to an Irish wedding, it was awesome, I think it could have been one of the most fun times of my life had I known anyone there. Amsterdam, the boat tours are awesome, mine conveniently dropped me off in front of the Amsterdam Hard Rock Café, which even more conveniently was located next to a Casino. I do so love my blackjack. What’s more is that I could sit at the table and light up a Cuban cigar, which is completely legal in Amsterdam, though smoking will be banned from the casinos in a little over a month. I’m not sure if it is true of all casinos in Europe, certainly different from all the casinos in AC, but I feel that black jack favored the players more than the casino. In place of a shoe there is a machine that is constantly shuffling the cards, which will eliminate most of the basic methods of counting and there are only 6 decks instead of 8. The other major difference is that even though you are not seated at the table, you can still gamble. I feel like the best comparison is going to the track and betting on the horse or dog of your choosing. Before I got a seat at the table I stood and watched the players to see who knew what they were doing and who had the largest stack of chips in front of them and proceeded to put my chips down in the smaller circles behind his/her betting circle. Needless to say, I have made up what I lost in the dollar to euro exchange rate.

Lastly, Luxembourg, what a miserable existence those people must live. Everyone speaks French but the majority of the writing I have seen is in German, I think, at any rate it is definitely not French. Everyone here is very trendy with their clothing and get offended if you can’t speak French, more so if you try and you speak and fail. Basically it’s like Paris only they don’t have any of the tourist attractions so they can all just bite the fattest part of my American ass. Because no one on this trip is fluent in French I have had to learn a bit, which I swore I would never do and for making me violate that dictum I hate the French even more. I’M GLAD YOUR TEAM HAS BEEN ELIMINATED FROM THE TOURNAMENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The tournament I speak of is the European Championship and with the exception of Ireland voting last Thursday I think every European has been glued to the tv watching it. Oh and I almost forgot to thank Thierry Henry for deflecting the ball away from the goalie into the net and putting the last nail in his team's coffin. I have to say I am beginning to once again enjoy a game that I used to love to play, VIVA ITALIA.

Thank goodness I’m in Ireland now, where I understand the people… somewhat… more on that next time.

In Search of Roommate...

So my current roommate is graduating with his Ph.D. this fall, and moving to Europe soon thereafter. This means that I am faced with the daunting task of replacing him in the master bedroom of the third-floor walkup we've split in lovely Watertown, Mass., since last August. There are a number of different ways one can find a new roommate. One way is to ask around at work. When work consists of a very tiny Psychology program, however, this doesn't work. Another way is to find a friend who needs a room. Unfortunately, I have few friends north of Westchester County, New York, so this option is out as well. Finally, there is Craig's List, the fall-back option of shame.

In case you've been hiding under a rock for the past half-decade, Craig's List is an online bulletin board where one can find anything from a new keyboard to a discreet foot-lover, from a room for rent to a kidney donor. In a sense, it epitomizes both the very best (extremely cheap commerce, transactions occurring seemingly at the speed of light) and the very worst (very shady, very decrepit-looking, extremely prone to Spam) of the Internet. To find a replacement roommate, I hoped that the pros of the Craig's List would far exceed the cons.

I started by posting a relatively detailed, coherent and kind rationale for why an employed, pleasant, non-pedophile human being would enjoy living at my apartment with me. I mentioned the perks of the apartment - reasonable rent and utilities, two balconies, and a spacious master bedroom - as well as its deficits - no central A/C, third-floor walk-ups promote cardiovascular health (to say the least), and let's just say those two balconies are somewhat likely to collapse in the near future (hopefully while I'm not sunbathing on mine). I was just as candid about myself. I emphasized twice that I like living in a neat apartment, because it's very important to me that my apartment remain neat. I also explained that I have a long-distance girlfriend and that I love the 26-time World Champion New York Yankees, because I don't want people to be surprised with these things down the road.

And then I waited for the replies to come to my specially-set up Google mail account. When they arrive, man are they interesting.

First of all, there is a lot of Spam mail. Here is an example of one letter I received:

I'm MR Mike Hill OF MAYLOLSTORE INC in United Kingdom.I came across your AD on Craigslist for your place to be rented out.I am interested in renting your place for my niece who will be coming to the US for some months vacation in the US. she will be staying in the place for the duration instead of an hotel due to the exhorbitant price.Please answer my following questions below:
1) I will like to know if your room will be available for 3 months starting from Match
2) I will like to have the description of the room, size, and the equipments in there to know what she will bring along when coming.
3) I will like to know the rent fee per month plus the utilities and if you require deposit.I will like to know if you accept paying the rent monthly
4) I want to know if you accept US postal money order/US Cashier's Check as a mode of payment so I can make an advance payment before her arrival that will stand as commitment.
5) Lastly, I will like to know more about you.
I will be very glad to have all this questions answered
Hope to hear from you soon
Best Regards

WTF is this? How come the extra "h" in "exorbitant" is so funny? I can't answer the second question but I'll try for the first. Apparently the scam hits after you reply to Mr. Douglass McGonigal from Devonshire-Upon-Avon. He'll next require just a small advance from you in order to get his niece to travel here from England. I would estimate that 75% of the E-mails I get are very similar to the previous one. By this, I mean that they are Spam letters written as if diction was taken from a customer service agent in India. Why can't any Internet scam artist use proper grammar, damn it? If I EVER receive an Internet scam E-mail that is written to my objective, journalistic standards, I will purposefully fall prey to it. This scam artist would deserve my money.

Some of the other E-mails I've received are funny, too. For example, Victor B. of Chris Hansen's kitchen writes: "Hi, I'm 24 years old male. Working in a consulting company. When can i come over and see the place?" My response: "Due to some problems you've been having lately with Megan's law, you are never seeing my apartment, Victor B."

Uladsislau Z. of the Island Mypos writes: "My name is Vlad, and I'am a graduate student at [name deleted] College. Do not have pets, non-smoker, have good references. Looking for a room in Watertown, area. Please let me know if the room is still available." Kind of a halting E-mail, no? Almost feels like I'm getting yelled at. Check out my response: "MUST WRITE MESSAGE STRONGLY!!!! ROOM NOT AVAILABLE, EAT BORSCHT!!!!!! Best, Fred." However, I concede that it could be kind of, sort of, maybe a little awesome to have a roommate named Vlad. Wouldn't I just have to eventually start calling the guy "The Impaler"?

Jackie D. of West Baltimore, MD, (maybe) writes (E-mail follows, in its entirety): "I am extremely interested.Please get back to be ASAP." I never reply back to Jackie D., because I know that Marlo Stanfield of "The Wire" moved on to killing people who exhibit terrible E-mail etiquette after quitting the drug game, and has already stashed her dead body in a vacant row house.

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That my posting on Craig's List resulted in a torrent of slimy, shady conversations with people shouldn't surprise you. The fact remains that I did receive a number of E-mails (that I won't post, because they're boring) that were kind, decent, and... well, "normal." In the midst of all this shit, what makes any communication normal? My girlfriend and I were talking about this on the phone last night. We decided that there is some kind of "meta"-sense that people who aren't creepy have, because in order to rise above the creepiness of Craig's List, one has to first understand how creepy it is. For example, the "normal" E-mails I received were consistently quirky and self-deprecating. They had attempts at humor (often at my expense), some of which were successful. They often mentioned explicitly how weird it is to meet with some random person, under the pretense of possibly living with them for 12 months.

Creepy people don't seem to have this sense. They just want to get laid, and/or kill me. I'm reminded of "Dexter", the Showtime TV series where the protagonist is a well-disguised serial killer. In the show, Dexter (the killer) is portrayed extremely sympathetically - oftentimes, I catch myself actually rooting for him to kill somebody. He is smart, successful, and sometimes charming, the kind of serial killer that never seems to get caught - but still, he is (very subtly) creepy. In advance, I realize that it can be a stretch to relate any TV show to real life in any meaningful way. However, I think that there is one aspect of "Dexter" which is presented so organically and clearly that it's worth mentioning. It is that, no matter how you try to cover it up, no matter how elaborate the ways you've devised to hide yourself are, you kinda are who you are. If you're the kind of person who needs to kill people, you're gonna kill people. If you need to do hard drugs, you're gonna do hard drugs. And if you feel the need to tell a prospective roommate on the phone that you're currently being evicted for not paying rent... you're never going to become my roommate.

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Finally, an awesome picture (thanks for the heads-up, Scott) from xkcd, the official web comic of Damaged, Inc. Check out the bald head, emo glasses, and goatee on the psychology dude. I know so many psychologists who look just like that:

The probability of God

I once said to my mother, "Show me a person who believes in God and I'll show you a person who doesn't understand probability." She didn't like that very much. I'm a scientist, she's not, and we don't always see eye-to-eye on these issues. But I'm also a teacher, so I decided to come up with a way to explain myself in more than one line.

Most belief in God or gods or some higher power comes from events that people consider to be unexplainable by simple mundane reasoning. Burning bushes, walking on water, immaculate conceptions and the like are usually the beginnings of such thinking, but the problem with all of these is that we have no hard, concrete evidence for them. So I'm going to put them on the back burner and focus on more common "miracles."

To understand what a miracle really is, we need to look at what the word's become and work backwards from there. People say surviving a terrible car crash is "a miracle." A pregnancy that occurs after doctors say people are unable to conceive is "a miracle." Lately everything seems to be "miraculous" though, everything from finding the right doctor to finding a bathing suit that fits. And that's how I came to the conclusion: a miracle is nothing more than something unlikely.

Now, I understand that technically a miracle is the hand of God, some act of the divine. But for me to recognize the hand of God, it would have to violate the laws of physics because anything else could have happened without God's hand. Since I'm fairly sure we do not yet even know all the laws of physics, I cannot see the hand of God. So without the ability to recognize a defiance of the laws of physics, it seems most people have taken to altering the definition to 'something extremely unlikely by known laws of physics.'

Because of this, people see things that are very unlikely occur and decide to attribute them to a divine power. This is completely understandable and has a huge history. In fact, I'd make the claim that religion arises from a lack of understanding. Don't know why the sun's moving in the sky? A god on a golden chariot is driving it. Don't know why the crops are failing? God's angry with you. Even, as a child, don't know why that loud thunder noise is coming from the sky? God's bowling. You can even trace the death of polytheistic religion to the gaining of knowledge of the universe. You simply need fewer gods to fill in fewer holes. That's probably a post of its own though.

So, without further ado, the point: probability is deceptive. People see two people together that compliment each other perfectly, one fills in the other's gaps and together they can accomplish more than either could fathom alone. They feel that this combination is so highly unlikely that the two must be "meant for each other." In other words, this did not occur in accordance with any universe following the laws of probability, there is some divine plan. Their relationship is a miracle.

But is it? Yes, the odds of those two getting together are probably very very small. That's probably not nearly enough "very"s, in fact. Our couple is improbable, but is it unlikely? After all, there have been trillions of couples since the beginning of time. What are the odds that one of those couples would be this couple? They're actually very good. They're likely 100%.

Most people can't get their head around this, so I'll explain:

Let's start with something everyone can understand: a coin toss. I toss a coin, you decide whether its heads or tails. You guess heads, I uncover heads, you win. I uncover tails, you lose. Now let's expand this idea: An enormous coin toss tournament. The contest has 100 rounds, and is set up in bracket form. So to win this tournament, you have to win 100 consecutive coin tosses.

What are the odds of someone winning 100 consecutive coin tosses, you ask? 7.9 x 10^-31. I'd say anything with that sort of minute probability qualifies as a "miracle," wouldn't you? No? OK, make it 1,000 rounds. I don't feel like looking up the probability of that, but keep going until you're happy. Make a day of it. (NOTE: I got bored and calculated it on excel. At exactly 1,023 rounds the probability becomes zero, according to Microsoft. Maybe we should set that as our "miracle" threshold.)

So we can agree that the probability of this event occurring is prohibitively small. But what is the likelihood? 100%! Someone will win this contest, and thus win 100 consecutive coin tosses. If I ever come across thousands of really bored people, I'll prove it.

So, show me a person who believes in miracles and I'll show you a person who doesn't understand probability. Maybe God's going a little far. After all, someone had to organize the contest right? Stay tuned...

The Eric Clapton Experience

Without further ado, a recap (as I remember) of an amazing concert experience:

4:00 PM -- I decide to leave my apartment now, extremely early. This is a risky move; I may get there way too early, and I may get stuck in two hours of rush-hour traffic no matter what I choose. My only other option is to leave after the evening rush, around 7 PM, which I decide against because I don't want to miss a minute of Clapton's set (I would have, if I'd done this; score one for the Fred-ster and solid decision-making).

4:50 PM -- I'm on Interstate 95, driving south toward the Comcast (nee Tweeter) Center, tonight's venue. Oddly, I know of two concert halls that were once named Tweeter Center. First was the Tweeter Center in Camden, NJ, which dropped the title early this decade (the name probably switched to the Mass. venue). When I moved to MA last fall and heard radio ads for concerts at the Tweet, I thought it was odd that New England-uhs were being shipped so far away. Silly me -- and silly name, I imagine, because no concert hall seems to want to keep it.

I stop at Walpole, Mass. (home of 90's alt-rock one hit wonder band Harvey Danger) and grab some nondescript pepperoni pizza from a Papa Gino's at the Walpole Mall. In case you've never heard of it, Papa Gino's is a pizza chain that's everywhere in New England. They're like Papa John's, but with garlic and positive attitudes toward wife-beating. Their pitchman is New England Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi, who had a stroke a few years back caused by using steroids. Anyway, I knock back two slices and a medium Mountain Dew, because I'm tired and need caffeine. Then, I get back on the road.

5:45 PM -- I arrive, and I'm the first one here it seems. The doors don't open till 6:30, and I don't have my ticket anyway. No alcohol is served outdoors, which is a shame. I find a dark, cool, mossy rock and sit on it, thinking about mushrooms, "Super Mario Bros. 3," and how my jeans are going to get wet. I wait for Ken (Brainpan) to arrive.

6:15 PM -- Ken arrives, and he doesn't have the tickets either. We expect the rest of our party (who has the tix) to arrive some time before 8 PM, so we stand and wait. Did I mention that it was 55 degrees and rainy outside? Oh, and the Tweet is an outdoor venue, and we have lawn seats. Under ordinary circumstances, this would really grind my gears. But, the anticipation of an exquisite rock show is keeping these thoughts out of my mind. We grab sausage, peppers, and onion sandwiches.

7:10 PM -- People from New England are weird. Almost everyone who walks past us is wearing some garment announcing their allegiance to the Red Sox, Celtics, or Patriots. Of course you like these teams, you're in New England! If you're in some different place, where people from lots of different, diverse backgrounds coexist (e.g., New York City), then it makes some sense to announce who you root for. Here, you're being redundant and provincial and plain stupid. Who are you proving yourselves to, the 4 people wearing Yankees caps out of 19,000?

Ken and I discuss how the concert would proceed if the Patriots were in charge -- Ken decides that everything would go fine until Clapton is about to begin his set, and then the lights and sound would go out. Zing!

8:15 PM -- Our cohorts (Ken's friends from Rutgers, awesome folks, BTW) arrive, tickets in hand. This is good, because my gullet requires cold beer. We go inside and wait in the customary beer line. I hand the attendant my ID and he hands it back, telling me I'm too young to be served. This strikes me as odd, because I was born in 1983 and have been drinking legally since... that's right, 2004, when I turned 21. As it turns out, people under 25 with out-of-state ID's cannot be served at the Tweeter (HA! See! I called you Tweeter!) Center, and people under 30 can't be served unless they have a secondary form of ID. We all agree this is fascism, and I have Ken buy me a Harpoon I.P.A. because he is 39 years old. Clapton is about to begin.

9:00 PM -- Clapton's nickname is Slowhand, and this makes perfect sense as he winds his way through an eight-minute rendition of "Little Wing" that absolutely blows my mind. Sir Eric is doing things with a guitar I've never seen/heard done before, and he makes it look easy. Later in the set, I mention that he seems to converse with his guitar. Nothing seems rushed, and he's always in rhythm. His rock is never hard, because it never needs to be. I once referred to Yes as the Don Mattingly of rock acts; Clapton is Greg Maddux.

9:25 PM -- Clapton is playing with his blues accompaniment, and he's playing a lot of stuff that is out of the mainstream. I'm a little lost, but the music sounds great. Clapton's age comes up in conversation; I guess he's 60, although he looks (and plays) much younger than that. The two main things everyone seems to know about Clapton are extremely macabre. They are: (1) That he once absent-mindedly left his toddler son on a high-rise windowsill, and hilarity did not ensue after the boy hurtled to his death, and (2) that "Layla," his opus, was a love song penned about his best friend's wife. When I was in fifth grade, I wrote a biography of Clapton for music class. I wish this report existed somewhere, because I want to see it. I wonder if I was Goth enough to mention either of those two things in it.

10:00 PM -- I dislike "eating sandwiches"* (*This is a "How I Met Your Mother" reference), because it hurts my pipes and I'm not terribly interesting when I eat them. HOWEVER, when attending a concert, I absolutely love it when people around me decide to eat sandwiches. There's something about the act that makes sense; it makes me calm and makes live music sound better. Once, after attending an indoor 4-hour George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic concert, my friend Morgan and I ate a half-dozen cheese dogs, just because everyone around us decided they wanted to eat sandwiches at the earlier concert. I mention this only because, while walking to the Port-a-Potties, I come across a lot of sandwich eating, which puts me in a different frame of mind. Unintentionally.

10:15 PM -- Clapton closes his set (I'm hoping I remember this correctly) with "Wonderful Tonight," "Layla," and "Cocaine." The crowd is going insane; lighters are everywhere. (People still do this?) The air is wet and damp and smells like summer is finally here. I feel great. Damn sandwiches...

10:18 PM -- I'm at the concert with 4 other Yankees fans, and we get kinda pissed when drunk Massholes chant "Yankees Suck" on the way out. Why do these people care about the Yankees so much, when the Yankees are in last place in the AL East? Sounds like an inferiority complex to me. So, we yell back "Let's Go Yankees," which doesn't go over well. You know, because we're in Southeastern Massachusetts. When the Massholes get snippy with us, we remind them that their Patriots went 18-1 last season, good enough for second best. They're now quiet.

11:00 PM -- Sitting in my car, listening to music, and waiting for any sign of movement in the gridlock in front of me.

11:15 PM -- Same.
11:30 PM -- Same. Ever wonder what happens if someone has a heart attack and dies in the middle of this traffic? It's gotta be worse than a pilot dying in mid-air, because in this situation NOBODY moves. I'm rooting for the overall cardiovascular health of each of the 19,000 of us at this concert -- at least for the next few hours.
11:45 PM -- Same. Now I'm starting to get pissed off.
12:03 AM -- Finally moving, if I get lucky I can be home by 1 AM.

12:45 AM -- WBOS-FM 92.9 just played the following songs in sequence: "The Freshmen" by the Verve Pipe, "All I Want" by Toad the Wet Sprocket, "When Doves Cry" by Prince, and "Flagpole Sitta" by Walpole, Mass.' own Harvey Danger. It might be because I'm exhausted, or it might be because I'm a huge loser. But I loved, absolutely loved, that four-song set. I sang along to every song. Also, my fuel gauge is critically close to "E" -- I might push the Santa Fe home tonight. Let's hope not.

1:03 AM -- I'm home. Hey, after I brush my teeth and such, I should write a blog about how cool tonight was! You narcissist...

Third Time's The Charm

I've said before that the hardest thing for a writer to overcome is a blank page. The task is even more difficult when you're not a writer, and practically impossible when you're as unimaginative as I am. At this point, I have written two long posts -- one concerning the inner workings of my twisted mind and another about pornographic video games -- and have deemed them "utter crap." I suppose that says something about me as a person, that when offered to write a blog about anything at all, the first two subjects I consider are psychology and pornography. In any case, both of my compatriots have written blog posts, and now to save face I must scramble. (Also, I'm running an experiment right now which means I have about 10 minutes to kill.)

I really thought it would be pretty easy to just sit down and write. I like to talk, and I have a lot of opinions about a lot of subjects. But it's kind of like when you're talking to a girl and she just says, "Let's talk." No subject, no direction. She just expects you to start up a conversation out of nothing, from scratch, instantly, but it has to be on a topic that you BOTH are interested in (alright, let's be honest: she just wants it to be something SHE's interested in. AM I RIGHT FELLAS?!). If you're anything like me, this is paralyzing, because at any moment of the day my thoughts are pretty evenly split between (1) zombies, (2) robots, (3) monkeys, and (4) boobies. Do you know a girl who is interested in having an actual conversation along those lines? Do you know how quickly girls are turned off when you ask: "Could a robot make the distinction between a human and a zombie, and if so, would Asimov's 3 Laws of Robotics still apply?" Because I do. Here's a little hint: very quickly. [Side note: I think I know what my next blog post will be about.]

As an example: I can already tell that this little thing I'm writing will be a disaster, because I know how weak it is to write a blog post about writing a blog post. Once I finish, I will stare at the "Publish Post" button for a little bit, highlight the whole thing, consider deleting it, actually delete it, then hit "Undo" to get it back, and waste more time considering what to do.

Wait... hang on a sec...

OH MY GOD. HOLY FUCKING SHIT. I'd like to dedicate the remainder of this post to Digg, for pointing me to this article. It's like the Internet knew what I was writing and gave me a link to satisfy me.

Now, for those of you who didn't read the article, crazy scientists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine taught monkeys to control robots with their little freaking monkey brains, with the excuse that is used to justify any type of brain research, no matter how outlandish: "It could lead to a cure for Alzheimer's! Somehow!" Basically they stuck electrodes into the monkeys' brains, restrained their arms, and gave over total control of a robotic appendage. Eventually our cousins learned to feed themselves and flip off the researchers with their shiny new arms.

Combine that information with this one, about a monkey trying to kill fish with a spear, and you have set up a terrifying scenario. See, originally we were able to control a monkey outbreak because we were bigger and smarte... actually, on second thought, most of us are just bigger than they are. You'll notice that they weren't teaching "gorillas" to control the robots; the last thing we taught gorillas to do was sign, and seriously, when was the last time a deaf person was a threat to humankind?

But monkeys were always relatively harmless. Most were tiny, and all were furry and sufficiently humanlike to be almost lovable. But having been prodded their entire lives, castrated, vivisected, and ground up into a fine powder and snorted by mad scientists, I can imagine that they'd harbor more than a little ill will towards their human overlords. Now imagine them suddenly having access to technology that is aeons ahead of their evolutionary age. Specifically, robots. And they've watched us long enough to figure out how to hunt like ancient cavemen did. We've suddenly lost our edge, the same way the woolly mammoth did when we learned to throw things.

Let me put it another way. Imagine if gigantic aliens came down to Earth, enslaved us for a thousand years to perform experiments on us, and then thought it would be a hoot to teach us to use their apocalyptic "SunFucker" death ray. What do you think would happen?

Given the choice between a robot revolution and a monkeys-armed-with-robotic-exoskeletons revolution, I'll take my chances with the robots. Mechanical death engines are bad, but at least they aren't mechanical death engines driven by vengeful little animals.

So thank you, University of Pittsburgh. You've given me another reason to be terrified at the zoo.

We Got Fun and Games

Please allow me to preface the following by letting you know I am not a movie critic nor have I ever claimed to be. I don't even have good taste, apparently. Case in point: I love Jar Jar Binks. I think he absolutely saved what would have been a terribly boring movie and I wish he was in New Hope as well, so that wouldn't be the only movie I've watched more than ten times and only stayed awake through once.

That said, I'll review Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Let's start this review with the start of the movie: the gopher, or prairie dog, or whatever varmint it was. I still don't know why it was there unless it wanted me to get my "wait, what the fuck?" face on early in the movie so I could just hold it there for later.

A lot has been made about the crazy stuff that happens in this movie, and I want to just touch on that briefly before this moves further. If you have a problem with the level of "realism" in the movie, go find a shot gun and shoot yourself in the face. Or just watch the other three movies and realize what a complete douche you are. See? He's survived much crazier things than atomic bombs with much less than a refrigerator. Now go get the shotgun and have at it.

Now we move on to what IS new in this installment, Shia LeBeouf as Mutt, Indy's son. If that's a spoiler for you, then I'm sorry, I'm working on a cure for stupid, I'm just not done yet and you're gonna have to wait longer. Until then continue to try to bite your own ear. Anyway, the name Shia LeBeouf is a bit hard to spell, so I propose an alternative: Terrible Casting Call. Better yet, let's just stop calling him altogether.

George Lucas, however, seems to think he's the next Harrison Ford. After casting him in Transformers last summer, he put him back in action again this year. Last year, though, he was supposed to be an awkward kid and sometimes bumbling idiot, something he slides quite naturally into. This time he was supposed to be a greaser with a good brain in his head, something he does about as well as an elephant trying to play a mouse. But chew on this a second, people: Lucas repeatedly casts him, makes him Indy's son, AND gives him a character eerily similar to Harrison Ford's in the movie Lucas used to give him a career, American Graffiti. Coincidence that he tried to give him Indy's hat at the end of the movie? I think not. I'd like to think Ford ad-libbed taking it back.

The larger problem with the casting call here, though, is that I racked my brain throughout the movie to think of who'd play a more convincing greaser and came up empty. For reasons definitely worthy of their own blog entry, there is absolutely NO ONE who could have filled that role properly, at least not in the right age range. Young men these days are a bunch of womanized pansies and Hollywood is on the forefront of the movement. If you shave anything but your face, you pee sitting down in the ladies room, end of story, you can put your balls outside by the curb for the neighbor kids to play with.

On the other hand, and I'm injecting this in here because I actually really liked the movie as a summer blockbuster even if not an Indiana Jones movie, I really like how they portrayed the Russians. The Nazi's in the first three movies were caricaturized versions of what we imagined Nazi's might be in our worst nightmare's and I'm glad they stuck with this for the Russians. The Russians are caricatures straight out of Cold War propaganda and kudos to Lucas for not going PC.

So let's cut to the chase here, though, because there's one part of this movie that everyone has issues, save for my dad who would have been more than happy if "Rosebud" meant a flying saucer navigated by an army of T-Rexes. Aliens. Let me show both side of the saucer here.

Coming at it from an Indiana Jones perspective, there are two reasons we should have no problem at all with aliens in the movie. First, they were worshiped by a group of ancient people and what we see is a place where ancient ceremonies took place. In this way, its nearly identical to Temple of Doom, where ancient ceremonies were once again revived by the return of ancient stones (just sub in crystal skulls for those weird easter egg rocks). Second, the Indy movies have ALWAYS dealt with religion, in Raiders and Crusade it was Judeo-Christianity, in Temple it was some weird tribal cult, but it was always religion. Many people have called belief in aliens the new religion, and I'd credit George Carlin as getting there first. They're largely invisible, enormously powerful creatures that come out of the sky and can both help and harm us in countless and unstoppable ways. They are gods for some of us. So why NOT have aliens in an Indiana Jones movie?

I'll tell you why. Aliens are modern. Scratch that, they're beyond modern, to a time point in our technological progression we may never reach. Indiana Jones has always been historic. It was set in the past and the characters delved deeper into the past, beyond the pasts of our grandfathers and great great grandfathers. Yes, the culture that worshiped the aliens was ancient but the beings were not. The Templar Knight in Crusade was ancient. The ghoulish witch doctor in Temple was current, but had the appearance of something transported from the past, not the future. Or some other dimension. God that was terrible. Anyway, the problem here is that they did a very good job of setting the time period and then completely destroyed it with a flying saucer. Yes I can hypothetically come up with a multitude of reasons why it should have been OK, but it wasn't.

So, in summary, I thought this was a tremendous summer blockbuster popcorn movie, as were all the previous Indiana Jones movies. But it wasn't Indy. And Frenchy LeBeauf needs to disappear.

Welcome to the Jungle

What you are reading now is an expert collaboration of friends, united in the name of blog awesomeness. It is the brainchild of one too many beers and one too many good ideas. Our goal is to write about what we want, when we want to write it. Our interests are mostly similar, but our differences should make this space really fun. There are no rules (except to type nothing that could get any of us in trouble with the law, our mothers, or Ph.D. advisers).

My name is Fred, and I'll get the ball rolling by explaining (another reason) why I hate to go to the gym. Now, I like the idea of physical fitness very much. Even some gyms can be nice places. The one I go to is clean, well-lit, makes above-average smoothies, and sometimes girls smile at me when I work out, which is nice. This stands in sharp contrast to some other gyms I've attended in my life:

• This gym (Summer 2007) was almost entirely populated by the elderly. It smelled like Lotrimin AF (not just the men's locker room -- the whole gym), and the staff did not provide free towels for early morning showers. So, why did I really like this place? With Grandma and Grandpa too busy moving 1-lb medicine balls around their flabby middles, I had the weight room to myself most of the time. And, as you'll learn later in this post, pure, Into The Wild-like isolation is my key to a successful workout.
• This gym (Fall 2006 - Spring 2007) was in a part of New Jersey that everyone -- even people from other parts of New Jersey -- hates. The average car in the parking lot was a BMW 530i, even though nobody inside sounded remotely intelligent. Let's just say a lot of "waste management consulting" went on in this part of the Jerz. My high school had a better locker room, and I've already written about all the male genitalia I saw while attending this gym. Free bath towels were a plus, although I have fears that they weren't washed after each use.
  
• I actually really liked this gym (Summer 2005-Summer 2006). It's a shame that it's in the worst location possible, surrounded by 18-wheelers and bad drivers of ethnicities I won't mention. The one time I technically did something I never should have done in order to improve my physical strength* (*Oops! Call Congress), it was at this gym.
  
• ...AND the Rutgers gyms sucked so bad, I will not even respect them with a link.

From the above list, I may have convinced you that I know a thing or two about gyms. (I've at least convinced you that I switch gyms like ripped Italian dudes from Staten Island switch boyfriends.) I really do like to work out, and sometimes I work out regularly. (Other times I smoke cigars and drink Scotch until I can't feel feelings anymore, but that's not really my point.) My point is that I hate working out around other people, which is kinda uncomfortable to say.

So naturally, I'm going to write about it for you to read, since me being uncomfortable = AWESOME.

You see, it's a natural law of mankind that 10% of the people in any room are horrible, human-eating douchebags*. (*This may not be the case in schools, universities, or hospital maternity wards.) However, that ten percent figure turns into 33% when the room is a gym or fitness center. This is because horrible, human-eating douchebags also like to work out, specifically to get buff.

Think about all the really skinny people you know: how many of them would harm an insect, let alone another human? That's right, none of them. They don't care about getting big as much as they care about factor analysis or watching xkcd. Now, think about the giant, muscle-bound people you know. They're really scary, right? That's because they want to be that way. If a person isn't doing manual labor or playing pro sports for a living, they're building muscle only to make themselves look good to other people (lame) or to feel better about themselves (even lamer). They're the kind of person who thinks it's OK to resemble a bison, and that makes them horrible, human-eating douchebags.

And this HH-ED -- with their Tarzan-like ripped tank tops and ridiculously bulging muscles and inappropriate grunting and inappropriate locker room activity (the stories I can tell ::shudder::) -- makes going to the gym a miserable experience for my kind of person. You know who you are. Fitness is a challenge, but you kinda try hard sometimes because you feel your brain is too smart to die young. You might lift weights or cross-train, but nothing too serious. And when some behemoth comes up to you -- always too close -- takes the weight you're looking for so they can work out a muscle you never knew you had, a little part of you that used to want to be fit dies.

A skeptic might say, "Fred, you weak little man. Why not just ignore these people? You're clearly making excuses not to go to the gym." I would say, it's impossible to ignore someone who focuses every ounce of their effort on being noticed. Why do you think these guys wear ridiculous, pink popped-collar shirts when they're "at the club"? They want the attention, and because they're so good at it, they often get it. (I'll leave the skeptic's final point up to you, because I don't have an answer for it. Maybe I am making excuses, because I would rather sit at home and play Xbox. I sure do like video games.)

Now, I don't want you to come away from this blog post discouraged. There are ways around the HH-ED. For example, go to the gym before 6 PM. If your gym is split into two sections, one more hardcore than the other, stay out of the hardcore one. Whatever you do, stay away from mirrors -- HH-ED's cluster around them, like flies to a blue light. And remember, whenever you do get discouraged, that these girls all have herpes.

Stay classy.