Mike’s House

Today I was waiting for the train, and some young guys were tossing a football, back and forth.

At some point, one must have dropped it, as it bounced off the floor, on to the track below.

They seemed to deliberate jumping down there to retrieve the ball, and I had a shutter waiting to catch that, but they must have thought the better of it.

When would you risk jumping down there? Other than the obvious, you know, screaming baby and such. What would drive you to taking that kind of risk?

One of the oddest things happened today.

I went to the gym - and to those of you jumping up, no, that was not the odd thing - and as usual, when I leave the house, I lock both locks, and drop the keys into a very small inside pocket in my jacket.

After my workout, I gear back up and head home, and when I reach the front door, I go for my keychain (it’s a cool black one, a great present from my man Dan!) and notice that one of the keys is missing. Odd.

I dig deep into the little pocket and find the missing key.

How does a key “escape” the confines of a circular metal ring?

So I don’t usually do any kind of prouct reviews, and tell you what I’ve bought, but this one takes the cake.

As some of you may know, I’m incredibly lazy. In fact, so lazy that the idea of having to look for the remote corresponding to the activity I’m looking for tires my mental faculties.

Most of you out there that have a television typically know the scenario I describe:

You have a TV remote, that does the cool functions that your awesome TV can do. You have a cable/satellite set-top box that has all sorts of specialized functions, particular to your provider. You may have a DVD-player, gaming console of some sort, and more (I have an XBox 360).

So having all these remotes and controllers gets annoying, and your couch side coffee table gets cluttered, and you have to find the remote you want whenever you want something, and then the TV needs a screen tweak, so you have to find THAT remote, etc. Some remotes offer a little cross-functionality, for example: my cable box remote can be programmed to use the basic (power, volume, mute) functions of my TV. But not everything.

Did I mention that I’m lazy?

So the people over at Logitech have probably figured out that I exist, and so do many others like me, and created a whole line of remotes under the branding of Harmony remotes. That’s cool. And they went one step further and made a special one for my Xbox 360.
I bought it for a great price of $79.99 at J&R, and it took me less than 20 minutes to pop in the software CD, for it to update itself and the remote with upgrades, and download device profile lists off the ‘Net.

The guide was nice and simple, and walked me through a simple series of questions and answers, that I believe anyone of any technical ability could do. Then it took my devices and made a list of typical activities that I might use the devices for and built “Activities” - which run multiple commands, such as “turn on TV, set to Channel X and turn on set top box” all with one click. Nice and simple.

It works surprisingly well, and I just put all other remotes into the drawer for now. Hopefully I’ll forget that they are there!

I may have written about this place before, but I’m going to again.

Sunday night, I headed over a couple blocks towards the South Street Seaport, and on the way, there’s this nice little place that’s pretty unobtrusive, a great little neighborhood place.

Fresh Salt is its name, and it has great little neighborhood feel, in an area that has precious little neighborhood feel to it.

Once there, comfortably at the bar, I ordered a beer from Maggie, a lovely young 20-something behind the bar. She was running the iPod playlist with great music, some oldies but goodies, some more modern, and then fell into a complete album of Sweet, which was enjoyed by all.

She had mentioned that her friend Katie would be coming by later, and had requested that Maggie mix her a cocktail, including tequila and grapefruit juice. So she consults Mr. Boston, and comes up with a couple of drinks - neither of which sound all that great.

So after another few minutes of contemplation, I offer up a mix of my own, on the spot creation, as I have been known to do before.

• 3 parts tequila
• 1 part Cointreau
• 3 parts grapefruit juice
• top off with Sprite/tonic/seltzer (to individual’s sweet tooth level)
• splash of Grenadine

She made a taster, and liked it enough to make a couple for Katie and Annie when they arrived.

So I met the two ladies, now drinking “The Katie” and they were joined by a couple of other guys, and then I was regaled with not one, not two, but three great stories from the three ladies. One was about Katie’s neighbor - Rick something - and how he’s pretty odd. Then Maggie told us about the time her roommate passed out and locked her out of her own apartment. Finally, to close off the evening, Annie told one about a friend (?) of hers that had crapped his own pants, bought a new pair on the way home, and managed to lose both of them while trying to change pairs in between moving subway cars.

Ah, the memories.

Now, at this point I had probably too much to drink, so I proceeded to close my tab, and stumble off home.

Here’s to next Sunday!

So today I went out and saw the spankin’ new The Simpsons Movie (2007).

I must confess, I’ve never been a huge fan of the yellow-skinned animated characters - they have cased me to smile now and then, but they were not “spectacular!” and “totally rad, dude!” to me.

Maybe it’s because the comedy influences I had when in developing years ranged from the old-time USA comedians (Jack (more…)

So my good friend Erez sent me this via email, and I thought it was pretty darned awesome. A company comes together to do something as strange and creative as this, now that’s a company that everyone wants to work for.

So check out how they’ve taken an old idea of recording yourself lip-syncing into a whole new realm.

See it here: (more…)

The Storytellers: Eli’s Coming: Why ‘Studio 60′ Fell
A weekly entertainment blog.

A good friend of mine wrote this in-depth review of what happened to a really good show and the brains behind it.

Enjoy. I did.

So yet again Israel’s doing something a little weird.

Saturday night, we were over at some friends and caught wind of something playing in the background on their computer. One of the other guests freaked outin happiness and started to sing along.

On further investigation, this is a song written by Israeli band “Teapacks“(a friend of mine actually shows up in one of their music videos). The song sounds a lot like their other songs, and is in three languages - English, French and Hebrew.

So I’m not really impressed by the song itself - but I have to consider the fact that Israel’s choice of song has caused a lot of ruckus in international news, as well as first being rejected from the Eurovision contest, and then allowed after appeal.

It’s pretty interesting - Israel’s history of the Eurovision. Joined the contest in 1973 - and got 4th place.

Then, only five years later, a first place win! And then another! The first, a somewhat gibberish song, the second “Haleluyah” - you may have heard it.
Then silence for almost 20 years - with few high-placing songs - and then we bring on a transsexual singing some weird song about a Diva or such.

And Israel wins.

Important to mention - Diva took a total of 172 points - higher than both other Israel wins. Last year, however, the Finnish heavy metal band Lordi with “Hard Rock Hallelujah” took a record-breaking 292 points (just for a scale!) in Finland’s first-ever Eurovision win.

Israel, the land of wholesome historical values and entire neighborhoods cordoned off for the Sabbath - Israel wins with a Diva. Good for us.

And then - silence yet again, with some pretty lame entries over the past few years, and then we come to this year. Brilliance.

So go ahead, enjoy the show - May 10th for those interested. It’s gone to hell and it ain’t coming back too soon.

In any case, if you really want to push a button, I suggest you do it in the safety of your own home, by clicking right here.

Watch the clip here.

Thanks for reading.

So this weekend, I drove out to the folks, and had a nice time with them, and my sister’s family. It was very nice, we had some great food - Friday night, tacos and refried beans, oh, the memories from Texas, and on Saturday lunch - a whole spread of everything that’s good, thanks to my momma.

Cervesa, tacos and some wine was there. The wine was a nice Carmel young blend, but the bottle left me a little confused.

(more…)

So I found a nice little trick that someone put together and saw a good performance of it.

It’s a quickie one, a three card monte, and it took me about three minutes to figure it out. I also jotted down how the cards move, and I must say that it’s performed with a certain degree of elegance.

Enjoy.

EDIT: The “three card monte” that I referred to before is actually not a magic trick, but typically refers to a con, trying to get you to find the queen, etc.
I tend to use the term loosely when referring to any magic trick with three cards.

Thanks to Paul again for his attention to detail.