It is a busy morning and I am out of the office for a bunch of it. I’ll be back with more posts in the afternoon, but for now enjoy this classic Kids in the Hall sketch. Have I posted this before? I can’t remember. Still funny though.
Ever come down five minutes too late to move your car for alternate side parking only to find the Sanitation Department has slapped on one of those stickers that’s totally impossible to get off without leaving scratch marks and a sticky residue on your window? Councilman David Greenfield hates that too, so tomorrow he’s planning on introducing legislation to ban the stickers, saying fines are plenty for parking scofflaws. He asked the Daily News, “It’s a pretty punitive form of punishment. I mean, what’s next? We’re going to start slashing people’s tires when they don’t park on the correct side?”
I’m all for publicly shaming bad drivers and maybe even bad parkers too, but I agree that it’s a little extreme to make driving and parking more difficult — by blocking vision — for those who forget to move their cars for alternate-side parking.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for street cleaning, but I lived for four years on a crowded block that apparently required cleaning four days a week. Whenever I kept a car there — thankfully not all that often — I constantly had to juggle my schedule to make sure I could move it at the appropriate times. Huge pain in the ass.
Plus it was hard enough to find parking in the area that everyone basically just double parked on the opposite side of the street for the two-hour street-cleaning stretch. If you were parked on the side that wasn’t getting cleaned between 11 and 1 and you knew you had to drive somewhere at noon, you had to plan ahead of time to move your car to the other side of the street at some point before 11, then double park it at 11 so you could actually get out when you needed to. And it’s like, I got stuff to do besides shuffling my car around.
I think the people who do deserve scarlet letters for driving are those that try to go through the E-ZPass lane without an E-ZPass. Nothing on the windows, just maybe a bumper sticker that says “I SUCK” so that other drivers will know not to follow that person into an EZ-Pass lane next time.
He is the host of “Sports Show With Norm Macdonald,” which makes its debut on April 12, and which Comedy Central excitedly hopes will do for professional athletics what “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” did for politics.
His relentless candor as a joke teller and his all-over-the-map career trajectory have given Mr. Macdonald, a relaxed and casually vulgar comedian who grew up in Quebec City and now lives in Los Angeles, a reputation for rebelliousness that he says is undeserved. Though it may not be evident in his material, he says he is mellowing.
I’m using someone else’s computer at work today so I’m seizing this opportunity to read his entire allotment of New York Times articles for the month. Is that how it works? If so, sorry bro.
Anyway, good feature on Norm MacDonald, who — as you might have figured out — is something of a hero to me. The article discusses briefly his ousting from the Weekend Update chair, but doesn’t mention how terrible Colin Quinn was in Norm’s stead. I was a big Kevin Nealon fan and I didn’t love Norm at first so I thought I’d eventually warm to Quinn, but it never happened. The segment went from being the highlight of the show to the low point every week.
I also like that Norm’s calling the new show “Sports Show,” which is basically the anti-joke we’re going for — but never really selling — with “The Baseball Show.” Consider me psyched. TiVoing the hell out of this.
Rob Sheffield at Rolling Stone has a list of “15 Baseball Songs Better Than Centerfield.” I don’t love Centerfield, but it’s better than a bunch of these, I think. An entertaining list regardless. I’m reasonably surprised Belle and Sebastian’s “Piazza, New York Catcher” isn’t on the list.
Extremely interesting read about the future of technology. Via Sam.
Excellent. Via Zach. I suggested Dr. Dre’s “Keep Their Heads Ringin’,” because a) I think that’d be a pretty funny song for Tim Byrdak to come out to and b) That’s what I will always suggest any time the opportunity arises. Also: I wonder what Queens native Pedro Beato is going to pick. I hope he keeps it local. Run DMC? Mobb Deep? Cyndi Lauper?
Oh man, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” would be a pretty remarkable choice for anyone.
The Internet is abuzz this morning with something someone said on talk radio. I haven’t traced it all the way back to the source yet — I’m in Miami and I’ve got plenty else to do. But in response, I tweeted this:
I got a few responses. Some pointed out that criticism of sports talk-radio is no different from the teeing off on newspaper columnists that I frequently endeavor in this space. I never said it was. I choose to read the newspaper every day. I find it a convenient way to catch up on the local teams while I’m commuting. And I find it entertaining.
I choose not to listen to sports-talk radio — at least not very often and only if I’m feeling masochistic. I don’t fault anyone who does. If it offers you some value, by all means, keep listening. I just wanted to remind everyone that there is always a choice, and I believe a certain level of discourse is best left ignored. Plus, like I said, there’s music on.
Others said that sports-talk radio drives a lot of the conversation I respond to on this site. That might be true. But to that I guess I’d say: Who really cares? With sports and sandwiches and dinosaurs and everything else, there are always plenty of angles to discuss. If they are or aren’t driven by one medium, they’ll be driven by another.
But I’m curious.
[poll id=”21″]
Here is an amazing tumblr. The premise? Omitting the last panel of Peanuts comics exposes the underlying existential dread permeating them all.
It is only a couple of posts deep, but this Tumblr has just rocketed to the top of my Blogs to Watch in 2011 list, which I just invented when I saw this Tumblr. Via Jon Bois.
Tedquarters 