I Can Do This

I can’t resist. The Frogger episode of Seinfeld aired tonight on the local FOX affiliate, and for me there may not be another scene from the whole series that gives a bigger laughter payoff than this one …

Although Kramer did almost all of the slapstick on Seinfeld, George Costanza takes a great turn here. I love how he holds his hand up to try (in vain) to signal the oncoming truck to stop. That gesture and the look on George’s face are reminiscent of Curly Howard, the funniest member of my beloved Three Stooges.

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I Dub Thee …

This afternoon I was shopping at the wholesale club for deodorant/antiperspirant for a female member of the household, as I had neglected to purchase some on a morning supermarket run. After analyzing the posted unit prices, I determined the best deal was on this product:

So, with the approval of that household member, who was with me, I bought a 3-pack.

This reminded me, strangely enough, of my proclivity for nicknaming colleagues at work and my sons.

Phillies Win Leaves Inquirer at a Loss for Words

From the dead trees edition of this morning’s Philadelphia Inquirer, page E1:

Usually it’s their losses — and there have been many — that merit coverage like this.

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Rub a Hubdub, What Will be News, Bub?

I’ve been having a bit of fun playing Hubdub.com, “the news prediction game”. There’s no cost to play.

Hubdub lets you test your skill at predicting the outcomes of real running news questions

In the fall and early winter, I was refining an idea for a site based on predicting news. Hubdub has taken my idea further — and come up with something much more compelling — by turning the concept into a game. (That’s one of the troubles with the Internet: Someone almost always beats you to a good idea.)

Anyway, at Hubdub you compete against other players for play money — Hubdub dollars (H$). On each question on which you make a prediction, you wager as many or as few H$ as you want, limited only by your account balance. The more certain you are of the correctness of your prediction, the more you wager. Some questions are yes or no and the rest are multiple choice.

Bobbie Gentry’s Mystifying Mississippi Tour

A couple nights ago I celebrated the return from the dead of my car tape player by listening to a Personics mix tape, “Stalking the Red Zone,” I created for Mrs. QC prior to the birth in 1991 of our oldest son. (The “Red Zone” was a term we used to describe the phase of pregnancy beginning with week 38.)

Having slapped the tape into the player without looking at the song list, I was taken by surprise by the sound of “Ode to Billie Joe” by Bobbie Gentry.

This song was a huge hit — #1 on the Billboard pop chart for four weeks with three million copies sold — in the summer of 1967, the second of my many years as a fan of Top 40 radio. I was 10 at the time.

Gentry’s lyrics tell the story of a family’s dinner table discussion of the suicide of Billie Joe MacAllister, a local teenage boy, from the perspective of the family’s teenage girl.

Was ‘McCain Would be Better Than Bush’ an Obama Gaffe?

In minutes I’ll cast my vote with pride — well at least without holding my nose — in the Pennsylvania presidential primary for Barack Obama. One of Hillary Clinton’s final attempts before today’s primary to exploit a possible Obama gaffe was to disagree with Obama’s statement that John McCain would be a better president than the much despised Chimpy McFlightsuit.

Obama’s exact quote April 20 in Reading, PA:

You have a real choice in this election. Either Democrat would be better than John McCain. And all three of us would be better than George Bush.

Clinton’s response later that day in Johnstown, PA:

We need a nominee who will take on John McCain, not cheer on John McCain.

I’m not finding the clip of the Johnstown speech I saw on TV in which after Clinton said the above she went into a Q&A call-and-response with the audience: She would say something like ‘John McCain wants to continue Bush’s disastrous economic policies. Would that make him a better president than George Bush?’ and the audience would say ‘Noooo!’.

I’ll consider two questions.

The Philadelphia Debate and Big Media’s Dumbing Down of Americans

There is a lot of talk on and off the ‘net about the ABC News Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton debate a couple nights ago in Philadelphia, the last debate before the important, but probably not critical, Pennsylvania primary now just four days away. The consensus at the progressive political sites I frequent — and in the nearly 20,000 (at this writing) comments about the debate at ABCNews.com — is the questions chosen by moderators Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos did not address most of the issues of pressing concern to ordinary Pennsylvanians and their fellow Americans. Furthermore, the consensus is most of the questionable questions, if you will, were directed at Obama. “Appalling”, “degrading”, “debacle”, “execrable”, and “tabloid” are among the common choice words debate viewers have used to describe it at ABCNews.com.

Here is a sampling of blog posts and debate reviews critical of ABC’s handling of the debate:

• Sweet Jesus, I Hate Charlie Gibson Democratic Debate Wrap-up
  by Eli (Firedoglake)
• An open letter to Will Bunch and George Stephanopoulos by Philadelphia Daily News journalist Will Bunch (Attytood)
• In Pa. Debate, The Clear Loser Is ABC by Washington Post columnist Tom Shales

I agree with these criticisms. Some organizations — MoveOn.org and the non-partisan Free Press — have started campaigns to formalize public displeasure with ABC News. I’ve lent my name to these campaigns and I encourage you to join me.

So what’s going on here?

Dream: Hosting ‘Countdown to Graduation’

The morning of April 3 I woke up to the alarm all sweaty and started laughing. Mrs. QC asked why. I told her about the dream I had been having. It was about high school graduation — we went to high school together.

I’ll get to the dream but first some basic differences of fact between the dream and real life. They’re not critical to the narrative but for the record:

• We (Mrs. QC and I) graduated high school on a Friday. In the dream graduation was on a Monday like my college graduation.
• We were in the class of 1974. In the dream I was in the class of ‘84. (I don’t recall Mrs. QC in the dream.)
• Our graduation was held indoors in the afternoon. In the dream it was outdoors at 6 pm.

(UPDATED — again, w/ OT bonus) Will the Anti-Choice Movement …

UPDATE #2:
Funny how I keep unexpectedly running into articles relating to this subject. This one, from Salon.com, like the Becker-Posner posts linked in Update #1, does not address the behavior of Asian Americans or the reaction of the US anti-choice movement. It does, however, give more specifics on the prevalence of sex-selective abortions in India and the cultural factors behind the practice.

(Off-topic but worth checking out: the Whiz Biz TV commercial from Australia linked to in the first sentence of the Salon.com article linked above. Sometimes I get a Flash ad when I click that link so here’s a Whiz Biz link that should work right for you.)

UPDATE #1 published April 7, 2008, at 9:49 pm EDT:
Coincidentally I found the following blog content relating to the topic of sex selection in the anthology book of blog excerpts I mentioned in a QC post earlier today. Both of the following are from a blog co-authored by Gary Becker and Richard Posner.

• Becker: Is Sex Selection Undesirable?
• Sex Selection–Posner’s Comment (follow-up to Becker’s post)

Although Becker and Posner don’t address the behavior of Asian Americans or the reaction of the anti-choice movement, they do add interesting background and perspectives.

Blogs Becoming Books

This March 30 NY Times article (hat tip to WordPress.com’s house blog) tells how Random House has given a humongous advance to Christian Lander, author of the blog Stuff White People Like, to author a book version of his blog.

The price, according to a source familiar with the deal but not authorized to discuss the total, was about $300,000, a sum that many in the publishing and blogging communities believe is an astronomical amount for a book spawned from a blog, written by a previously unpublished author.

Industry insider Sara Nelson, quoted in the article, says Random House will have to sell 75,000 copies just to make back the advance.

The NY Times article also mentions a couple of other blogs that are spawning books:

• I Can Has Cheezburger (Gotham Books)
• Skull-A-Day (Lark Books)

So if you’re a blogging colleague, redouble your efforts. If you’re thinking about taking the plunge into blogging, dive in. Maybe you can earn a good living from blogging.