I am curious, as I know I have a small Illinois following, what are your thoughts on Obama?
(can I call it a Smallinois following?)

If you watch How I Met Your Mother and the Office. You can't tell me that last nights episode has paid off better than any Office Episode this season...

Although I did love the line last Thursday... "I give her a 10 for looks, but a 3 for describing herself"

I know its popular, but after three listens, the JUNO soundtrack sucks.

Here is what I don't understand about this whole Texas thing with all the wives. Have you seen these women. I can't imagine wanting one of them to be my wife much less 8 or 10 of them. I can venture that one or two of them have "Great Personalities" but the rest of them just look like Lunch Ladies, the kind that yell at you in front of the cafeteria when you try and steal a second milk.

Interesting thing that I am now going to declare (with some sadness). 30 rock has surpassed the Office in terms of funniness. Thursday's dinner party episode was funny, but and I emailed my friend this, what happened to Jan? Jan in the earlier seasons reminded me of many women I had met in New York. Type A, career driven, but also stumbling through mediocre relationships with other Type A, career driven men (who for the most parts were on the slightly okay side of Jerks). Many of them, often around the same age (or slightly younger) than the age I presume Jan to be, they make a decision to forgo the lawyer, banker, hedge fund guy who is nice, secure, but also when he is dancing with her at a wedding can't help himself from looking around the room to see what else is available. I can think of at least 3 very successful women who at that point chose a guy who is more "real", they choose the fireman, the police officer, the regional manager of a paper company.
What I don't get is why is Jan now a spazzy nutball. It doesn't make sense and it seems like she is a different character than she was before.
Plus now that Jim has the girl and is pretty successful, how can we root for him. I actually find myself rooting for Dwight, who has gone from the office weirdo to the office punching bag. And I don't know about you, but enough times of Lucy swiping the football and eventually you want to see Charlie Brown kick it.

Now excuse me I have to go sweep up saw dust with Gilly.

I have spent most of my life in a narrow geographic region (Philadelphia to New Hampshire on the east coast of the US). One interesting thing about being the UK is how weird it is being so far north. It is still only April so it is very cold here still (lows in the mid 30s F). The thing is that it stays light until around 8:15 already. That is how late it stays light in NJ/NH almost in full summer. The only other time I have this weird sensation of the temperature/dark/light phenomenon is the last time I visited Florida in January and it gets dark at 5 but is still in the 80's.

You know who I admire. People that want to screw around with the olympic torch.

#13 and I once got yelled at for "ruining a taboo" game in college. Anytime someone can ruin something that people take too seriously, I approve. All the better that they are doing it to protest human rights violations.

Mike and the Mad Dog Argue about Yankee Stadium (part 1)

These guys are the Sports guys on the radio in New York. Phenomenal

The Masters is this week. Next to opening weekend of football, no sporting event gets me more excited.

So your night is ending... those single people in the room are making their last minute attempts at finding friends. The line for the coat check is long. The bouncers are positioning themselves to move everyone on the street in search of cabs, buses or long walks. But wait there is one more song you get to hear. Three suggestions I heard were:

1. Last Dance - Too Literal
2. American Pie - Not a bad guess, actually has a similar sentimentality to the right answer
3. Don't Stop Believing - Don't know if they play it, but if they saved it for the last song, it would be waisting it.

The answer:
Put on my Blue Suede Shoes and I boarded a Plane, Touched Down in the land of the Delta Blues in the middle of the pouring rain.

Walking in Memphis? Really? Thats where you end the night?

someone much funnier than me, must have already said this, but with Charlton Heston dead I guess now someone can pry the gun from his hands

I love curling, in theory. It just seems like a sport that I could do. So last night on one of the other TVs they showed the semi-finals of the World Curling championship. You know who is the finals?

Germany and Australia...

Australia is good at curling????

so since being in London I have been at locations where people in their twenties, or people who pretend to be in their twenties go and dance and consume beverages. Most of the times I have been in such places is due to the fact that the only places in London to watch American sports, still shows American sports, but turn into a nightclubs after like 9. So last night under the auspices of watching the final four, I end up in one of those types places. For the most part I have been very impressed with the DJ's at these places. They all seem to cater to white kids who think they can dance but who also can rock. So there is always an interesting mix including the following music:

1. There is always a Grease medley
2. Always two or three Michael Jackson songs
3. Sweet Home Alabama
4. Summer of 69
5. There is always a Dirty Dancing medley.
6. Always a lot of Diddy, B.I.G.
7. Amy Winehouse
8. Some australian bands I have never heard of
9. Bon Jovi
10. Talking Heads.

But here is the odd one, is that at the end of the night they always play the exact same song. I will give 25 pounds to the person who can guess by end of day Monday what that song is.

One thing you have to love about the British is their outlook on delays. I have been at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted airports and seen people look at the departures board to see their flights delayed. In America this results in a lot of frustration. People are frantically on their cell phones. We have all seen people angrily read books like the DaVinci Code in airports. The British however see that their flight or anything is delayed as a rational reason to stay in the pub longer.

One thing I question about the British however is their ideas on Transportation. Sure the Tube is exceptionally clean, and they don't even mind if you eat on the Tube. As an aside, sometimes on the weekends I do a fun thing I like to call "Tube Picnics" where I stop off at the local supermarket and while going to visit friends, a tourist site, or the aforementioned pub, and pick up a sandwich and ride the tube with my own movable feast. But anyway, when I worked in NYC, I arguably worked in the heart of the financial district for 7 of the 9 years I was there. From where I worked there were a plethora of transportation options, I could take the subway, trains to New Jersey, ferries, buses, affordable cabs, and in a pinch it was an easy walk to other parts of Manhattan. I was in Manhattan for five incredibly nightmarish transportation events and all of them it took me no more than double the time to go home. The five, for those keeping score at home were:

1. 9/11
2. The blackout
3. The day it poured rain and the subways went down (2007)
4. The subway strike
5. The GOP Convention 2004

So now I work, in arguably the new financial hub of London. They have set this up smartly in old docklands on a peninsula on the southern shores of the Thames. Good Ideas so far! But here is where it gets ugly, they have two train lines going in and out. They have some buses that go to places the majority of people don't want to go, and where there are no real connections to anywhere else. So last night the magic train that takes me and most everyone else to and from work was down. No problem, like all proper British employees we retired to the pub. It was however while on my second pint I realized the ultimate fear. What if the trains do not come back up. I am going to have settled in for a few hours with everyone else and then have to figure out my way home, and while I am doing that with a few thousand slightly to very intoxicated other frustrated commuters. In the old days my sense of adventure would have lead me to up my pint intake up and throw caution to the wind and prepare to ride such chaos like I was Patrick Swayze in Point Break. But the Lake can be responsible from time to time, so I left at 8PM. Here is the rest of my journey home.

• Wait for about half an hour to get on a train
• Take said train in the opposite direction from home
• Walk for about an hour, kind of knowing where I am going
• Check and see, yup trains are still down
• Take a bus towards home.
• Check and see, trains dead.
• Get to a bus stop, see there are throngs of people. Wait for third bus to come to finally get on
• Stand. upstairs on the bus for 40 minute ride home.
• Finally arrive home.

All told it took me about four times as long to get home as it normally does. My one saving grace is I checked the web and the lines were still down, and that was about the time the pubs start shutting down.

Can't wait to go to work this morning!!!!!

1. 
   

In college how many times when someone was invited over to watch a movie was a movie actually watched.

Yesterday, all told there were about 57 minutes in the office about Ironing... Sigh...

I am a bit of a pop culture aficionado. That may or may not be obvious. One of the toughest part about living in London, even though, I am also a complete Anglophile too, is that I miss American trash. Once I read that there is nothing called guilty pleasures, that if it brings you pleasure you shouldn't feel guilty. Now that may sound like something Eliot Spitzer said to his wife or Bill Clinton to Hilary, but when it comes to Pop Culture I disagree. I love Karate Kid, Dirty Dancing and Saved by the Bell. To me there are few songs that are more enjoyable than Total Eclipse of the Heart or More than a Feeling for that matter. Just because something is either made or loved by the masses doesn't automatically make it bad. I am sure if you have read this far and know my writing style, you know that this intro is a set-up for something. I commented to Slinger the other day, about it and that is Slingbox.
Slingbox is something that you can hook-up to your DVR (can you believe there are still people without DVR, their inefficiency is an affront to human intelligence and decency) and allows you to watch the television anywhere in the world over your lap top. As I type this it is 1243 in the morning in London and I am watching Tuesday nights Jeopardy. My subscription to Entertainment Weekly may not make it all the way to London, but at least I can still watch, Lost, How I Met Your Mother, and Saturday Night Live.

Today at work, I listened to and partcipated in a conversation that was as long as all other conversations about a specific topic in my entire life: Guess the topic:

A) The difference between Groundhogs and Hedgehogs
B) Ironing
C) Why Blowpops have a questionable brandname
D) Cardigan Sweaters

Answer tomorrow...

Best clean joke I have heard in a while

What did the zero say to the eight?

"Dude where did you get that awesome belt?"