So I have just started a Vitamin Water frenzy. One of their flavors is called "XXX" here is my question; how were they ever able to discuss the creation of this flavor over email without their company Spam filters picking up on it.

I am stealing from Slinger again the Friday 5.



1. I think the fine the Patriots got was reasonable. As a fan I have mixed reactions part of me loves the fact that BB and co, have such a win at all costs mentality, but part of what I loved about the Patriots was the Team focus, being introduced as a team at the first Super Bowl, the genius plays they made. The fact that Brady had touchdowns with like 13 receivers last year. This tarnishes that, and in a way it hurts the players because it's not their fault the coaches were trying to pull a fast one. Still when you love a team, you love a team. I still say in Bill we trust.

2. Something that I spend way too much time thinking about is how going to college in the early part of the 21st century is so different than going to college in the late part of the 20th century. Someday I might write a book about this.

3. When it comes down to it my musical tastes are really just a series of songs that I listen to way too much then grow tired of and move on to the next song.

4. I want this day to be over more than usual.

5. Have a good weekend.

4. Since my Bike/Hike with

I have no problem telling my readers embarrassing stories of my childhood, ineptitude with women when I was single and other random facts... So here is my deal. London. I work for a bank in NYC I have been here for three years, need to challenge myself. There is a good opportunity there. It's a little scary, but its also exciting. I have been to London three times before so I kind of know my way around, and I really like the city, after NEW YORK, Dublin, Prague and New Orleans, its probably my favorite city. For my Chicago readers I do like Chicago, but have only been there once really and I just didn't see enough of it to fully grasp it, but liked what I saw. Anyhow the blog will continue as I move over there and hopefully can share my version of what London is like in the 21st century.

5 things. Sorry life has been busy lately.

1. It looks like October 10thish. The Lake will be moving to London for career opportunities.
2. There are many reasons to love Bill Belichick but this has to make you love him more.

"At this point, we have not been notified of the league's ruling,"
Belichick said in a statement. "Although it remains a league matter, I want to
apologize to everyone who has been affected, most of all ownership, staff and
players. Following the league's decision, I will have further comment."

"Any questions about the Chargers?" he pleaded in his standard other-
things-to-do monotone. "Want to talk about the football game? If not, I think
that statement pretty much covers it."

3. TBS has started showing the office at night. If you have never seen it now would be a good time to get started.

4. On a weirdly sombre note, yesterday was 6 years. That day and the after effects will forever have a profound impact on my life, but yesterday instead of feeling sad and wanting to dwell in the pain, I really wanted to get on with living. For that I feel a smudge guilty, but moreso I feel like I felt in late October of 2001 when I stood in a bar in Kansas talking to the cutest Kansan since Toto, that you can be respectful and acknowledge the impact of something, but there comes a time when you need to move on. I am not saying now is the time for everyone, but yesterday I felt it was the time for me.

5. My cell phone is about to die. Please let it last one more month.

So in an attempt to prove that my legs are not vestigial appendenges on Saturday the Dump and I went on a little adventure. 23 miles by bike and 17 miles by foot. It took us way too long, but that was due to a flat tire that turned into an episode of Macgyver and guaranteed good earnings for Target in the third quarter. The dump is a good friend, but I think by the end of it, we had either grown tired of walking, ourselves or each other. There are only so many times jokes can be repeated (especially about Larry Craig and Maria Sharapova) without the aid of beer before they become unfunny. Either way, I slept 12 hours on Saturday night and then woke up and felt pretty okay. The thing that has suprised me on all of these things is no blisters. My guess is that it has to do with the uniformity of the pavement and the overall slope of the walk, but still 17 miles walking and just some tight thighs and a sunburn, makes me think again about one day hiking the Appalachian Trail or starting a Forest Gump like cult. I am kidding of course, because next Sunday starts football seasons where you sleep until twelve and then spend 16 hours in front of the TV wondering if the third string wide reciever from the Vikings has more than fifty yards...

Appalachian State University is HOT HOT HOT

Great Game against Michigan

Today is free Ice Cream day in the lobby of our building. It is so much like Pretzel day on the Office that I can't even stand it.

I often joke to friends that I think in either Bullet points or analogies. That is not exactly true, because I can also think in Venn Diagrams, or more generally in graphical terms. This site absolutely is fascinating for that aspect of my brain. I like it so much I am immediately adding it to my links.

Another Sports Jersey that always garners respect: Charles Barkley Suns Jersey.

One thing that bothers me is hypocricy. And yet I fully admit that I am a hypocrit. Think about that one for a few minutes.

All I know is that in the history of the world, there has never been a man with a wide enough bathroom stance that his foot goes over far enough in the stall that it touches another man.

TS Eliot said that April is the Cruelest Month.
The Lake says that August is the Laziest Month.

A few Odds and Ends to tied you over until I can get motivated to post more frequently.

1. I always garner immediate respect for someone wearing a Walter Payton jersey, even if they are homeless.
2. Superbad, is phenomenal, there is so much in those characters that are me, my friends and my brothers. If you have ever been around a cute girl and been not just awkward, but if awkwardness was a Natural Disaster you would be both Hurricane Katrina and the Johnstown Floods tied up into one that would be you, this movie will ring true, and again with so much heart.
3. If you have an extra 99 cents on your I-tunes giftcard, you would not be disappointed to pick up Whiskeytown's Lo-Fi Tennessee Mountain Angel. Its one of those simple alt-country songs that someday when I make a movie will be used in a montage about the beautiful girl that the hero is somehow lucky enough to be incredibly in love with and incredibly frustrated with at the same time.
4. You know you are getting old when your Golden Tee skills start to deteriorate.
5. One of my favorite lines from Anchorman. Ron is reading from the Teleprompter, I'm Ron Burgundy? and he reads it as if it is a question.
6. Yesterday this was an actual email I sent out encouraging some of my team members to go to a training session this morning. I hate myself. I would strongly consider going to this tomorrow. The end game will probably mean that New System is a bigger portion of our lives and its never too early to be in on the game.
7. The field and I are now owners of a car. That makes me feel more old than turning 31.
8. In a perfect world I would be a game show host.
9. When I was kid my dream was to dig a hole to China.
10. You know what is interesting, when I was around 12-13 I thought being a Ranger would be the coolest job on the planet. Over my 31 years I have met probably 10 rangers or so and except for one that was an Army ranger, none of them are knocking on Fonzies door.

I was thinking today about Graffiti. Graffiti like tattoos are things that don't naturally belong where they are but people put there to express themselves. As previously posted I do a lot of walking and biking in the area where I live. All told I probably cover a 20 square mile area on a semi-regular basis. Since the area is primarily urban with many overpasses, trestles and other graffiti conducive surfaces, I get to see a lot of graffiti. One particular tagger, if that is the proper term, I am intrigued by because he just tags every thing "ALOT". His work, and I assuming it is a male, is seen over most of the area I believe I cover, which means that he goes to some effort, or he owns a car, to put his message up. I have four theories as to what ALOT means?


1. His name is AL OT, but that would be obvious to people in town who know Al.

2. He is being very literal in his graffiti. He tags a lot of things so he posts what he does.

3. He is describing where he is tagging much of the time. In a Lot.

4. He has some motive that I cannot identify (which I know is just a lazy way of me saying I only have 3 theories, but...)

Merv Griffin was probably a Genius for many reasons. Number 1045 hasn't been mentioned yet by many. Inspiring the Merv Griffin episode of Seinfeld.

Oh look its our good friend, Jerry Seinfeld.

RIP.

I was thinking this morning about how the male mind works, and how things that we don't find attractive on everyone, become attractive qualities when we are attracted to someone. This was spawned by me getting up and going to the bathroom and coming back planning on at least a few more minutes in bed, but the field had already made the bed and put those dreams to sleep. Here are some more not really attractive, but in the moment become attractive qualities from my past.

1. Bad Handwriting
2. Wearing a Calculator Watch
3. One too many Tattoos.
4. A slight drinking problem
5. Psychology Major
6. Two different colored eyes
7. From Ohio
8. Big Ska fan
9. Collects Flip-Flops
10. Is working as a Waitress in Hooters.

I love lists.

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/lists/3AmandaMurphy.html

6 topics I would cover if I wanted to be a hack stand up comic today.

1. Cell Phone Ringtones
2. Then segue into people who use Bluetooth
3. Then transition into the pointlessness of taking your shoes off at the airport
4. Then I would discuss reality TV
5. Then I would compare and contrast President Bush to Gilligan from Giligan's Island (including impressions of Alan Hale and Jim Backus)
6. Then I would talk about Hilary Clinton.

From Peter King:



This is as perfect a quote summing up the Bill Belichick approach to a season as you can read -- no matter how maddeningly boring it is. After the first practice of camp the other day, Belichick was asked about his expectations of the team this year.
"I think right now what we're trying to do," he said, "is correct the mistakes from this morning and go in and have a meeting and put in the stuff that we have scheduled to go in this afternoon and try to go out and have a good practice this afternoon and that's really where we are. It's one practice after another. It's putting one foot in front of the other. We're just day-to-day right now. There's no light at the end of the tunnel. We have a long way to go and a lot of work to do and I'm not really worried about anything down the road or a month from now or two months from now or any other team in the league right now. I think we just have to work and get better each day and there are so many things that we have to work on that that is where our concentration is.''

Tom Snyder died. I wanted to write a little bit of a personal rememberence of him. Snyder had the show after Letterman for most of the time I was in college. My friend, number 13 and I would joke that we were the only people in that part of Rhode Island watching. But here are three memories of Tom, that proved even then what a Genius he was.

1. Charlie Sheen had just finished his rehab stint, this was probably 95, 96. Snyder has him on to promote his comeback movie. But Snyder doesn't softball him questions about how good he feels now that he is Sober, or what it was like to go back to work. My memory is hazy but three of the questions I remember him asking that made for phenomenal TV were:

1. So what is different about having sex on Coke?
2. Does sex feel different when it's with a prostitute?
3. What do you do after you are finished with a prostitute do you have a
conversation?

And since it was live, there was nothing for Sheen to do but take it and answer.
2. Tom would always start his show with a story. One of my favorites was he once did five minutes on buying gas in Beverly Hills. Moreso than Garrison Keillior or Spalding Gray, or even one of my Hero's Eric Bogosian, if someone wanted to be a storyteller I would have them watch a few hours of those opening stories. He had no studio audience, he would laugh with the stage managers, he would read email forwards. It was compelling televison in a way that we may never see again.
3. Tom would refer to things as short-hand, and in a way when I refer to the field as the field, it is an honor to him, who refered to his lady friend as the companion.

So when I heard the news this morning I was sad, but I know somewhere Tom is having a Colortini with his Dogs and his mother.

I am blatantly stealing from Slinger. The Friday Five. (Although with the understanding that I just know that he uses the title, and I am not sure if the Friday Five refers only to Music, but it will in this case).
5 Songs that have been ruminating in my mind for the last few days.

1. Radio Cure - Wilco. When it comes to forming opinions I usually stick to my guns. If I like something I will always like it, and if I don't like it, I won't. When Yankee Hotel Foxtrot came out, all my musically in friends were talking about it like it was Pet Sounds. I listened and was unimpressed. When I got my I-pod I put the album on anyway, over time it has won me over.
2. Follow You Follow Me - Genesis. Written in the period in between Peter Gabriel leaving and them becoming the quintessential big 80's band. It was in Chuck and Larry and is really a great song, and reminds you of what talents they could be when they wanted to be.
3. Lovers in a Dangerous Time - Bruce Cockburn. I only came to this song because I heard the Barenaked Ladies version. Great song and really a great artist. Pacing the Cage is another great song.
4. Addicted to Love - Robert Palmer. "You'd like to think that you're immune to the stuff oh yeah, closer to the truth is, you can't get enough, you know you're gonna have to face it you're addicted to love."
5. Fake Plastic Trees - Radiohead. The only time I was ever in a float plane and flying over the forests of Northern Ontario, about to begin a nine day canoe adventure, this was the song that was playing on the Boombox that say in between me and the pilot. "It wears you out"...

And those are my Friday Five.

I have never understood the fascination with Scrubs. I think primarily because Zach Braff grates me like a whining cat scratching its claws on a blackboard. But Gutfeld has a good take here.