Happy 30th Birthday Al

Happy birthday Alex... I hope you enjoy your gift this year, and you read this before I give it to you because there's a pretty big hint somewhere in this post (I wonder where...)

The Fine Print with Scott Boras

For some reason I've just now found out about The Brushback Report, which is basically a sports-themed Onion.com (but a few levels down in terms of presentation). Anyhoo, as a sample, there's an article there entitled "Boras Informs Matsuzaka It's Customary For American Agents To Receive 80 Percent"...the title says it all.

"I also explained to him that 80 percent here is different than 80 percent in Japan. You know, because of the metric system."

Spanish Castle Illusion, Customized

I found this on Slashdot....very cool. It's a customized version of the Spanish Castle Illusion (the image below is from our recent trip to Las Vegas) which I made at http://www.myopticalillusion.com/.


Directions: Remove your mouse from the image above. Focus on the black dot in middle of the image for twenty seconds. Keep focus on the dot while you move your mouse back over the image, and the image will appear to be in color. What's cool is that once you do move your eyes away from the dot, you see the picture for what it is: a black a white image.

So, how does it work?

This illusion forces your brain to see color in a black and white photo. It works by first saturating your visual memory with shade and line data, which occurs when you stare at the first picture for more than ten seconds or so. Upon flipping to the second picture, the spectral opposite of the original color data is imposed on the grey lines and shading of the photo.

If the illusions works, it will immediately begin to fade once you move your eyes. This is because a saccade, or a quick lateral eye movement, will effectively "clear" the visual memory buffer with the assumption that the eye is seeking a new pattern to focus on. Even though the visual memory buffer clears with a slight glance in any direction, you will still see a slight fading of illusory effect as the neurochemical saturation in your visual cortex fades.

That explanation was taken from an article at tripzine.com, which looks to be a site devoted to the study of all things scientifically psychedelic, so take it with a grain of salt (or whatever else floats your boat, I guess).

Time Waster: Find the Differences

You may have tried this one before. When you click on the link below, you'll see two nearly identical pictures. There are supposedly three differences; I can only find two. If you can find three, you are part of a very small group of elite people (and please, let me know where the third one is). Try it out:

http://members.home.nl/saen/Special/Zoeken.swf

Oh, and uh, sorry beforehand.

Mr. Matsuzaka

Daisuke Matsuzaka

It's a name we've recently read in all the papers and heard butchered on sports radio (it's pronounced Dice-kay, I think). The reason for all the coverage, however, is great news for us up here in Boston, as the Red Sox have outbid all the other teams in MLB in a blind auction just to have the chance to negotiate with the guy. I keep hearing about how good and informative the Gammons piece yesterday, but it's an ESPN inSider thing, so I can't read it until I subscribe. (yargh)

Say what you will, Yanker fan, but the Red Sox did not outbid everyone else just so that no one else could negotiate. That's just a foolish notion. The guy's unproven, sure (at least in this country), but I sincerely doubt that Theo and company would throw that kind of money around for someone they hadn't thoroughly researched.

So the next question is, of course, where does he fit in the rotation? Might it be:

• Schilling
• Matsuzaka
• Beckett
• Wakefield
• Papelbon

And if so, where is Lester? Who closes?

Mr. Matsuzaka, whether he knew it or not, just threw a really big log into the baseball stove, and it's starting to heat up.

300 - Battle of Thermopylae

So there's another movie coming out in March based on a Frank Miller graphic novel, and much like the last one ("Sin City"), this one looks great, not to mention full of CG. It's called "300" and is the story of the ancient Battle of Thermopylae, the battle in which 300 Spartans led by King Leonidas (and 700 volunteer Thespians) lost their lives against a massive Persian army led by Xerxes I (estimates range between 250,000 and 500,000 troops) in order to slow down the Persian invasion. The trailer looks kicakass and the more I read about this battle, the more interested and amazed I become. It's no wonder there is a movie coming out about it. I love the quote IMDB has on their page about the movie: "Spartans, this is where we fight. This is where they die!" -King Leonidas.

Was this one of those stories I was supposed to read about back in high school? See kids, Greek and Latin are cool.

I can't believe I just wrote that.

Live Action Transformers Movie

I may be the last to hear about this one, but seriously, a live-action Transformers movie?

Sign me up.

The trailer is definitely of the teaser variety, and so far it looks good. With a cast consisting of Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, John Turturro, Tyrese Gibson and Anthony Anderson, among others (I think I saw Bernie Mac on the list), I'm extrememly interested to see what kind of storyline they come up with. Although the special effects are going to be badass and probably enough to get most of us to the theaters, we all know that sometimes a bad plot and/or bad acting can make a movie a huge disappointment. IMDB has a lot of information on its pre-production status so far.

There better be a Bumblebee in there somewhere, that's all I'm saying....

Last Page of the Internet

I never thought I'd get there, but I did: The Last Page of the Internet.

R.I.P. Jack Palance

Jack Palance died yesterday at the age of 87. This man had an illustrious career and to me always represented scary villans and tough S.O.B.s, and had what I believe to be the all-time best airy, raspy, evil voice. I remember him as the host of Ripley's Believe It Or Not, as the short lived big boss Grissom in the first Batman movie, and as the comicly scary Curly in City Slickers. My favorite Jack Palance moment: him doing one-handed push-ups on stage at the 1992 Oscars.

Rest in Peace Mr. Palance.

Vegas '06- Part 7- "Celebrities"

At any given time in Vegas you're liable to run into a celebrity. The Lovely Mary (TLM) and I were no exception this trip as we ran into no less than 5 famous people. Ok, ok, so they aren't exactly superstars or household names (as a matter of fact I didn't even know most of their names at the times we saw them), but their sightings prompted a "hey, there's that guy", or a "wasn't he in that commercial?", or at least a "look, it's [enter wrong name here]", so they must be somewhere between lists D and Z, right?

It all started off last Saturday night at the Mandalay Bay when we found ourselves wandering through bullriding fanatics and fight lovers when out of the corner of my eye I saw a woman parading a blond wig and a loud, tawdry, and very revealing dress through the crowd. It took only a glimpse of her face (yes, that's what I was looking at!) to recognize her as "Hottie" (real name Schatar Sapphira Taylor) from the first season of VH1's "Flavor of Love". She was the one who tried to cook a chicken in the microwave for Flav's mom and later got dismissed for having been exposed as an actress (and I use the term extremely loosely). I pointed her out to TLM, who acknowledged her identity with a simple "bleh", and when the encounter came up later in conversation, she described "Hottie" simply as "Dasty" (dirty+nasty)...'nuff said.

The next night TLM and I went to check out the Fashion Show Mall (guess which one of us found that place) and we stopped afterwards to have some tapas at a place called Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba. We were just finishing off a beef empanada, some chicken and ham croquettes, and some very tasty sangria when I looked over and saw a tall, long haired man eating with a his jet black cowboy hat placed delicately in the seat to his left and a short-haired blond placed on the one to his right. I knew he looked familiar, and soon realized he was one of those professional poker players I'd seen on ESPN. In fact, he was probably the only one I'd even be able to recognize at all, and he had one of those catchy nicknames, too...in this case, "Jesus". It wasn't until we spoke to one of TLM's coworkers later that night that we learned his name is Chris Ferguson, and besides being good at poker another of his claims to fame is that he can pitch a playing card through a carrot. I guess we all gotta be good at something, eh?

During one of our jaunts down the strip, we were passing through the Luxor's casino when TLM noticed a crowd gathering near the hotel's entrance, so we walked over to take a look. People seemed really excited, so we assumed it was someone big. Eh, not so much, but at least it was someone whose actual name we knew: Criss Angel (yeah, he spells it that way) who's a close-up illusionist and has a pretty entertaining show on A&E I've seen a few times called Mindfreak. We asked around and got an unusually large amount of information about the event from these two middle-aged women who could hardly contain themselves (who knew this guy commanded such unabashed fanaticism?). Anyway, they told us he was moving his base of operations to the Luxor (from where, who knows) and that the event was the official welcoming ceremony. We were also told that he was going to perform an illusion to be taped for season 3 of his show in the cordoned off area we were standing right next to. Well, after waiting for about half an hour and being prompted by some producers to cheer for the cameras a few times, he finally makes his way into the hotel, stops to thank the people for being so supportive, turns around, and leaves. Now that's what I call tricking people.

The quickest psuedo-celebrity sighting I had was Greg Proops, who has had guest appearances on all kinds of shows and is probably best known for his improv work on "Who's Line is it Anyway?", though I remember him from a short-lived favorite show of mine on Comedy Central called "Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn" (unfortunately, Colin Quinn's modus operandi of "laugh at me and not with me" is what killed it). Anyway, he walked briskly by me in the Mandalay Bay casino looking pretty desheveled, and I got the sense he either just lost a lot of money at some table or bombed on stage. My theory is that all comedians (and magicians for that matter) are inherently depressed, so maybe that's just how he always looks when not on stage or on camera.

Last, and maybe least, we were on our plane home and I looked across to see this guy sleeping, facing me (so I could get a nice view of his open mouth and maybe a little drool). I noticed the emblem on his hat said "Mike the Mouth" and had some playing cards on it, and that rang a distant bell with me. Later in the flight, I overheard him identifying himself to the guy next to him as a professional poker player, and in fact he was Mike Matusow, not surprisingly also known as "Mike the Mouth" (modesty gets you everywhere, including flying coach). I didn't talk to him much, but did find out he was on his way to Foxwoods for a tournament. What I should have asked was what "professional poker player" meant. Does he get sponsored to play or has he just won enough poker tournaments to have earned the title? Either way, I reserve the right to hate on him for playing cards for a living. Besides, he had a fanny pack...

In any case, there was no Cameron Diaz, Robert DeNiro, nor Christopher Walken to be found during our stay, nor would they have any particular reason to be, I suppose (though I hear Walken is running for President in '08), but we saw enough at least to write about.

Maybe write too much about...

Vegas '06- Part 6- "Le Reve"

Much of the smalltalk during the week hovered around the many Cirque du Soleil shows currently in Vegas, which were good and which ones we should go to. Eventually we settled on "Le Reve" showing at the new Wynn hotel at the other end of the strip.

First, some clarification. According to the Cirque du Soleil website, "Le Reve is in no way associated with Cirque du Soleil". I can understand how they have a whole page dedicated to this topic as no one we spoke to didn't identify it as a Cirque show. There's all kinds of confusion about this, due mostly to the fact that there is an actual Cirque show called "O" which is also water-based, created by the same guy (Franco Dragone), and put on by the same billionaire (Steve Wynn). So: "Le Reve" is not a Cirque show.

But it is still incredibly entertaining.

When The Lovely Mary first got the tickets, I admit I was a little skeptical. Exactly one minute after we entered the theater, I knew I had no reason to be, and frankly when it was over I was amazed. With the exception of the 2004 postseason, I can't think of any other event I've experienced that was more enjoyable, and I'm not afraid to say so. As had been the case a few times with me before (like when I initially hated on "24"), I completely misjudged the quality of a show before having seen it.

This is officially a glowing revue for (the non-Cirque du Soleil show) "Le Reve". If you're there and aren't sure what to see, go see that.

Vegas '06- Part 5- "IN-N-OUT Burger"

There's lots do do in Las Vegas, without a doubt, but every once in a while you see something you just can't resist. As The Lovely Mary and I looked out of our hotel window, we saw such a sight: an IN-N-OUT Burger.

Now there are lots of great restaurants and other places to eat everywhere up and down the strip. Seeing that familiar red sign and big yellow arrow, however, reminded us that we didn't have to break the bank to get some good food. Before you knew it, we were at the website finding directions, and thinking about how long it's been since the last time we got to eat at one (there are none out here on the east coast).

Mmmmmm......double-double, baby, just like we remembered.

Rumsfeld who?

Buh-bye

"It's Patrick in a Romp"

Well, the Deval Patrick victory as Governer of Massachusetts ("It's Patrick in a Romp" -Boston Globe) just goes to show that overly negative smear campaigns like those we are used to seeing from the GOP don't always work. The recent Republican tactic of taking an opponent's strength and making it seem like a weakness (see Kerry/swift boats and McCain/POW time) won't fool voters anymore.

This is a good thing. Now all we have to do is get voters to see past those cleverly conceived short phrases the GOP comes up with like "cut and run" and "stay the course". These phrases are chalk full of implications that people can't deny at face value; of course we want to "support our troops". The intended manipulation is of course to conveniently associate these phrases with political issues to which people would otherwise have to give actual thought.

Imagine that...politicians trying to make people believe something instead of understanding it.

Vegas '06- Part 4- "Programmers in Vegas"

All I gotta say is, it's amazing how quickly things can change around here. When we got here, there were lots of bullriders and fight-lovers, and now, due to a Microsoft conference all week, all we see are techie types, many of which look exactly as their sterotypes depict (sorry, mini-hate there). I'm sure the casinos were happy to see them, too, as they had money to burn and unbeatable systems of gambling to follow (there's a reason casinos make money). Good luck, guys.