Ageism?

Erica is convinced that's what she experienced at a consignment shop last week.

In one of her annual cullings, she came up with her usual three piles of clothes. Garbage/rags, Goodwill, and real good stuff that should go on consignment or given to someone she knows and likes.

She's never had that much luck with local consignment shops, but her consignment collection this year was 5 bags, so she had to figure something out. We're talking dresses and gowns that went for $100, $200, $300 - one does have to look hot and stylish at The Travers, you know - and higher-end basics from Banana Republic, Ann Taylor, Ralph Lauren, etc.

She asked around, and someone recommended a new place. Here's their ad, and Erica's notes:


A couple 20-something girls working the register. They look at her, give the bags a very cursory perusal, and don't want anything. Five bags, maybe $1000 worth of clothes. Nothing.

Ooooooh Kaaaaaay.

So, Erica does the next best thing - gives the bags to a fellow teacher of hers, who's much lower on the pay scale (Erica's in her 18th year.)

P is very happy to get them. As was her 18-year-old daughter, who promptly tore through the bags and stole half of it.

This was the e-mail:
"In fact, I was going to contact you to let you know that K [the daughter] actually found a few things she really liked. She is going out tonight with a few friends and is wearing one of the shirts. She seemed to like quite a few things. I let her go through the bags with me. She told me that out of the ones she picked "we could share." Nice of her, right? Anyway, thanks again for the clothes. You definitely have great taste. After going through the clothes, it's even more bizarre that they wouldn't take them."

Yes, the exact same clothes that Plato's Closet didn't want from the "old chick," were highly desired by a 18-year-old who goes to high school in a snooty area (and really, what high-school girl isn't image conscious?)

The next step is for K to take some of those clothes back to the shop and see what happens. We'll keep you posted.

Movie Review

Finding Neverland

Well, so much for a light, escapist movie on a Friday night.

Jeebus Tittyfucking Christ, was the room dusty tonight. That's my only excuse, because I sure as hell wasn't wearing my contacts. If the scene at the end, with JM Barrie and Peter sitting on the bench and that boy's big blue eyes welling with tears doesn't just break your heart and fill you with hope at the same time, then you're just not human. Oh yes, there may be tissues involved. But not in the porn kind of way.

I went into this with no background on Barrie the man, other than he wrote Peter Pan. I've not read nor seen anything else he's done. For all I know, he's a one hit wonder. I'll have to find out more. It's funny, as much as I love to read, and I do so constantly, I never seem to catch up on my list, much less make progress. I swear, if I won the lottery, I'd play golf, work for charity, travel, and read. And I still wouldn't feel like I read enough.

Johnny Depp is his usual great self, Kate Winslet is very good, and Freddie Highmore as the real-life Peter is just friggin' outstanding.

4 stars.

Movie Review

Babel

Wow. I honestly still don't know what to make of this. I think I really like it. The basic structure, I definitely like. Three separate stories, seemingly unrelated, yet all linked in ways soon to be discovered. Layers of an onion, I guess, peeled away.

I don't know that I can even discuss basic plot points without revealing too much to those that still intend to see it (maybe it's on your queueueueue?).

Some good socio-political commentary. And I must echo all the critics who positively fawned over the Japanese actress Rinko Kikuchi,who played the deaf/mute girl. A truly amazing portrayal of youth, vulnerability, and sadness. She alone is worth the price of entry.

4 stars.

Movie Review

Empire Falls

Well, more of a mini-mini-series. An HBO original, based on a novel by Richard Russo. He's probably my favorite short story writer, yet I've never read any of his full-length novels. As soon as I fucking get Cryptonomicon off my table, I'm ready to attack the stack, and I will soon rectify the Russo/novel situation. I will probably start with this very story, because it's so fresh in my mind, and because it's not that often I get to do the book-movie thing in reverse. Usually, I've read the book, and dread the movie, or possibly look forward to it with reservation.

In any case, I highly recommend this 2-disc set, which we Netflixed. A stellar cast (Ed Harris, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Helen Hunt, Robin Wright soon-to-be-ex-Penn, Paul Newman, Aidan Quinn, Joanne Woodward, Dennis Farina, and on and on), a stellar character study.

Miles Roby (Ed Harris), is a simple man (note: not simpleton), living a quiet life in a quiet town in Maine. He wants more for himself and his daughter (he's soon to be divorced), but is afraid to pursue his dreams, crippled by the ever-present fear of change. There are always reasons, always excuses. Even his current responsibilities are just crutches, really.

You must watch this.

5 stars.

Hellooooooo....

Wow, it's been a while since I've written something original, as opposed to just some silly link.

Time to step up to the plate.

I don't know what's funnier here

The mishap itself, or the guy crying for mama.

You tell me.

The greatest blog post in the history of blogkind

Would be this one.

You see, it's beautifully, amazingly, ridiculously funny, in a completely esoteric way. You get it, or you have no fucking idea what's going on.

"But there a million funny posts out there, full of esoterica," you say? Well, you are correct. I must grant you that.

They didn't take this much math. And they weren't about baseball. So they lose.

This one's for you, Mike.

Some T&A

Only good sites, I promise...

But dude, if you don't have good anti-virus and firewall, what can I do for you?

Klaudia
Klaudia again
Corinna, our favorite CGI masterpiece.
Amandine
Pia
Dasha
Tatyana
Sandra
Mona
Danae and Antea

Silly e-mail forwards

Some of these are old, some I haven't seen before, but what the heck?!

(h/t Erica)

New music - Free!

You know what I love? (Well, Erica, of course, but that would be "Do you know who I love?" you damned nit-pickers.)

Anyway, you know what I love? All these year-end "Best Of" music lists.

Especially the web sites that have that cool little embedded Flash player.

Especially if you can go to "view source" and find the direct link the the file right there in the HTML.

Especially when you paste all those links directly into an e-mail to yourself.

Especially when you get that e-mail, right-click on all those links, and "save target as."

Bam! 25 new songs, for nothing.

Yeah, I love that.

Sunday booze-bloggind

Lactaid Egg-Nog and Gosling's Black Rum? Yes, please. A. Also, a very nice ingredient list on the nog part. Milk, sugar, eggs, cream, vanilla, etc. The chemicals are WAY WAY WAY down the list. Great stuff.

Van Gogh Espresso Vodka. A++++. Wait, there's vodka in this coffee? Is that why I'm stumbling around the house like an idiot?

No, seriously. I fully acknowledge I drink a little too easily, so stuff like this is buttah to me. But take your average drinker, and pour them a glass of this, over ice. Say you have a normal 12-oz rocks glass, and they get 8 oz vodka, and 4 oz ice.

They will complement you on your drink mixing. They will think they have 1 oz vodka, 1 oz coffee liquer, and 6 oz something else. But they will be wrong. And they will soon be kissing the porcelain FSM. Because they will be schnockered.

This is the most dangerous, potent, delicious liquid in the world.

It should come with a disclaimer.

UPDATE: I just noticed the typo in my headline. I was going to correct it, but that just proves the power of the Van Gogh. Holy fucking booze.

I'd have something to say about this but...

...I just came all over my keyboard.

The talent in this little get-together is beyond comprehension.

This happens to me all the time.

If I had a dollar for every time a masturbating kangaroo interrupted my golf game...

Ok, then.

Oh happy day!

Today, my copy of the 2008 edition of this wonderfully nerdtastic book arrived in the mail. One of the three baseball books I buy every year, and probably the best of the three.

Cryptonomicon will have to take a break for a couple days while I do my cover-to-cover browse of all this statistical goodness.

Then I'll slowly attack the hard-core analyses chapter by chapter, especially the new WPA and defense stuff.

Mmmm, numbers.

I should have been a fucking actuary.

Have another beer!

Gotta pay those player salaries somehow.

And really, how difficult are those lyrics? No amount of beer should make you forget those six simple words...

Um, dude? No. Just no.

This man needs to go hunting with Dick Cheney. Stat.

Fun Pants? Are you motherfucking kidding me? Is your ass so fucking tight from Sunday through Friday that, when you finally "let loose" on Saturday, this is what you bust out of the old armoire?

For more Brooks Brothers, and some comment hilarity, see the girls at Jezebel.

Of course they do

Via copyranter.

Movie Review

Superbad

Best. Movie. Ever.

In case you were wondering why GM sucks so much

12 Cars with the Least Customer Satisfaction

Model / Satisfied Owners
Chevrolet Aveo (sedan) / 44%
Ford Ranger / 44
Mazda B-Series / 44
Ford Freestar / 44
Chevrolet Aveo (wagon/hatch) / 44
Chevrolet Equinox / 41
Jeep Grand Cherokee (V6, gas) / 41
Chevrolet Colorado (4-cyl) / 40
GMC Canyon (4-cyl) / 40
Buick Terraza / 34
Saturn Relay / 34
Chevrolet Uplander / 34


In other news, Honda sales up, Totota sales up, and GM sales down 11%.

What? People used to swear in the good old days?

This is awesome.

But I was wrong, dead wrong. Robert Edward Auctions, which is a seriously high-brow baseball collectibles company, got their hands on an 1898 MLB document that is rife with expletives. It seems at the time, MLB wanted players to avoid using "any indecent or obscene word, sentence, or expression" on the field (or have directed at fans). So they sent a out a league-wide document that gave examples of what they didn't want players saying. Here are some of the "brutal" things they didn't want to hear, and remember, this was a league-wide, uncensored, document that was sent out.

"You cock-sucking son of a bitch!"

"A dog must have fucked your mother when she made you!"

"You cunt-lapping dog!"

"I fucked your mother, your sister, your wife!"

"I'll make you suck my ass!"

She rises in the east

Just in case you fucking Republicans didn't quite get what your party is about

Trying to maximize the last year of GOP rule to screw America as much as possible:

Business lobbyists, nervously anticipating Democratic gains in next year's elections, are racing to secure final approval for a wide range of health, safety, labor and economic rules, in the belief that they can get better deals from the Bush administration than from its successor.

Hoping to lock in policies backed by a pro-business administration, poultry farmers are seeking an exemption for the smelly fumes produced by tons of chicken manure. Businesses are lobbying the Bush administration to roll back rules that let employees take time off for family needs and medical problems. And electric power companies are pushing the government to relax pollution-control requirements.

"There's a growing sense, a growing probability, that the next administration could be Democratic," said Craig L. Fuller, executive vice president of Apco Worldwide, a lobbying and public relations firm, who was a White House official in the Reagan administration. "Corporate executives, trade associations and lobbying firms have begun to recalibrate their strategies."

Sunday beer boredom

So, Bill and I have been brewing for a few years now, and we've always used Warsteiner bottles, because that's one of my favorite winter beers (the Dunkel).

They're a pain in the ass to cap, and that leads to one or two duds per batch, but the last two times we used them we each had to pour out 12+ bad bottles. That's unacceptable.

I since switched to drinking beers using the more common bottle used by Sam Adams, Saranac, Dogfish, and pretty much every other craft brewer. At BJs yesterday, I was looking for a case of Sam Lager, but they only had the mixed Winter case.

Four each of Lager, Winter, Old Fezziwig, Holiday Porter, Cream Stout, and Cranberry Lambic. I didn't really want that, but there was nothing else that interested me, so I figure that would be an interesting beer-blogging experiment, if nothing else, especially on the heels of Toast's little experiment last week. Of course, that was a little unfair, pitting a rookie up against the Master, but still the key point was this: This is a perfect example of what can go wrong when American craft brewers recklessly expand their catalog...

Absofuckinglutely. Every time I see that ad where they ask people how many beers Sam Adams makes, and the answer is 27 or something, I just cringe. At least 20 of those are a waste of time.

So, in short order:
1) Sam Adams Lager - B. The perfect "standard beer." You know that if you walk into the divy-est of dives, with tap after tap of Coors, Coors Light, Michelob, MGD, Bud, Bud Light, you'll at least be able to get Sam in a bottle, if not on tap. And you can enjoy your evening.

2) Old Fezziwig - B-. Darker Sam Adams. A little maltier. OK.

3) Holiday Porter - D. Really? That was a porter?

4) Winter Lager - D. Watery, and a touch of cinnamon. Winter my ass.

5) Cranberry Lambic - F. Putrid fruit juice, with a hint of beer. Never, I repeat never, buy a "lambic" or otherwise fruit-adjuncted beer from an American mass-market brewer. No sense of taste, class, or moderation. Beer for chicks who don't like beer.

6) Cream Stout - B-. Not bad. Creamy and Stouty, as labeled. Just mediocre in its category, that's all.

UPDATE: Fridge, in his drunken-Giant-fan revelry, went and gave the Holiday Porter a 4.

Let me revisit this, in full-blown beer-blogging style:

Sam Adams Holiday Porter, 12 OZ, 5.8% ABV

The Pour: Standard pour, thick head, but very lightly colored for a porter.

The Color: Completely opaque. I held it up to the brightest light I have here in the cave, and see that the base color is reddish.

The Nose: A little burnt toast over malt. A touch of coffee?

The Taste: Again, the burnt toast, with a slightly creamy mouthfeel. A good amount of hop bite, seems out of balance with the style.

The Verdict: C. The second impression worked out a little better, but still, nothing to write home about. Beer. If you handed me one of these, I wouldn't complain. Not what I would want when thinking of a "holiday porter" though.

OK, maybe I was too flip the first time, but I'm still not seeing it.

That's OK, different strokes. But I'm glad I revisited it. And I'll make sure it's the first beer I drink tomorrow before the MNF game, just to see what else I can get out of it.

I'm sure Michelle Malkin will be all over this...

A right-wing "reporter," sending in false dispatches from Iraq?

Inconceivable!

Cheat With Giuliani