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On Friday night Robert and I went down to Flattop Johnnie’s. Normally we would just go down to drink but the bar was crowded and the pool tables weren’t so we rented a pool table instead. Since Robert and I are gamblers we gambled on every game. The first game Robert decided that the winner would need to buy the first beer. While I was excited to win the first game it was a bit of a bittersweet victory buying Robert’s beer for it. So after that I pushed for loser buys the beer. After a few rounds we ran out of things to gamble for because there is only so much beer and appetizers we can drink so we tried to get creative.

The first creative gambling suggestion was to play for making fried eggs. The loser had to provide eggs and fry them for the winner. I won that game too. We tried to get suggestions from the waitress but her main suggestion was to have the loser wash the winner’s car. Since Robert doesn’t have a car that was out. Finally we switched to playing darts and I opted to win a more complete breakfast from Robert including toast, bacon, and coffee. Robert did win a few games and we had a good time chatting with the bartender and taking blurry pictures of her. We also were waiting to play darts behind a pair of mismatched people where the woman was incredible looking and the man was completely unattractive. Robert kept pushing me to get a photo of the woman but without the flash it wasn’t easy to do.

Dave K. came back from Chile this week to start his business school experience. He stopped by Matt and Kate’s place after we had a social get together to watch NFL playoff football. Matt B. also attended. We found him on the street as he was walking home from Staples with a large paper shredder and offered him a ride as we were going to the thrift shop to donate more clutter from the apartment. The main item we were donating was the two brown vintage 1970s Bose speakers that had been mercilessly clawed at by the Housman family cat Jackson throughout the ‘80s. So we put Sarah on Matt’s lap and the paper shredder on Kim’s lap in order to fit everyone in the car with the two gigantic speakers. The first place we tried to donate it to was the place where we had donated a ton of items a few weeks ago but this time I was there doing the donating instead of Kim and Sarah. The guy took one look at me and said “I’ll pass” on the speakers. So we made Matt B. carry one of the giant speakers to another thrift shop around the corner where a nice man pulled a shopping cart up to us and took the speakers away as we ran out the door before anyone asked questions.

I was listening to the NPR radio on Saturday as I was driving back to pick-up the pug dog after Kate made a specific request to have us bring him for the second half of the NFL Sunday. The radio show was about comic book artists who started a company to bring US comics to foreign markets. The first comic they were working on was a version of Spiderman for the Indian market. The comic stars Pavitr Prabhakar instead of Peter Parker. Instead of just translating the comic they localized it to fit the market which meant many very interesting changes. The characters aren’t as connected to science and technology as they are to ancient cultural deities. So Spiderman doesn’t get his powers from a radioactive spider but instead through some spiritual connection to another life. The Doc Octopus character doesn’t have mechanical arms but instead the multi-armed demon arms from Indian literature and art. Even the stories need to be changed because western plot lines involve a hero who sets their own destiny and path while eastern stories involve a hero who is fulfilling a destiny with forces around them greater than themselves controlling them. The broadcast is available on NPR.



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Last night was the big Pats game. My dad and I were there for the whole game. It was great to finally see a game where the Patriots clearly beat the Colts and was one of the first decisive wins I’ve seen the Patriots have in the playoffs. The past few years there has been so much whining by the Colts and other teams that they would have won against the Patriots if one call had gone another way. Since the Jets blew their chance to beat the Steelers we get to play a strong team in the next round. It would be most fitting if the Pats could beat the Steelers decisively next week and then win the Superbowl against the Eagles. Then the Pats could have a case with no arguments against it that they are the world champions and didn’t catch any lucky breaks to land them in the winners circle. I also loved the swirling snow queuing just as the game was about to start knowing that the snow is a big challenge for a visiting team from a dome stadium.

Folks in the park were calling out “Cut that meat” based on the Peyton Manning Mastercard commercial. Mastercard is the only company still making good commercials. The ones with the dog finding his way home were great too but it is hard not to laugh at the Manning ads. The winner for most annoying ad campaign for me at the moment is the Jared Subway ads. I don’t have anything against Subway. I actually like the Indian family that established a Subway a block away in Coolidge Corner. I just don’t believe that anyone who has been thin for more than four years can keep claiming that he got thin eating sandwiches and is staying thin by doing so. They either need a new fat guy or something else because I can’t watch Jared without wanting to gag myself anymore and soon that Indian family who owns the Subway down the street are going to pay for it.

After I returned from the game Sarah and I decided to watch a movie. Unfortunately for us it turned out to be bad movie night. We had rented Before Sunset the sequel to Before Sunrise so we tried to watch it. Both movies are plagued by a low budget all dialog based way of exploring the two characters. But unlike Before Sunrise, Before Sunset is pretentious and very boring. We had to turn it off halfway through the two-hour conversation between the two stranger characters so I don’t know the ending. I am sure they will make two more of them over the next 20 years. After Sunset and After Sunrise where eventually Ethan Hawke and the French girl meet in old age homes and funeral parlors.

So we turned one bad movie off only to see another bad movie. We also had rented The House and Sand and Fog. It is by some Russian guy who probably watched Jennifer Connelly in Requiem for a Dream and wanted to make another downer of a movie with JC as an idiot drug addict. Connely’s character was annoying rather than someone you could be sympathetic towards and the overall plot based on a foreclosure would drive any lawyer crazy and the relationship with a cop with family problems would make any real police officer wonder whether the officer in this movie was lobotomized before he got mixed-up in the plot. I like Ben Kingsley but I had to wonder what race or background Kingsley is from. In this movie he is Iranian but he played Ghandi. To me he looks Caucasian.

This morning we attempted go tube sledding with the pug dog. It was less than simple given that we had to hand pump the tube sleds and our journey to find a suitable site for sledding was epic. We started with the plan to go to Albemarle in Newton where I have fond sledding memories but when we arrived there after some clever driving to locate the slowest possible route we learned that the Fessenden school had decided to build a new facility and road where the sledding hill once was. So we went back to the Newton Centre playground and tried again. While we were spending twenty minutes lightly inflating one of the tube sleds a group of twenty children started-up a snow football game at the base of the hill. So we took a few slides down crashing through little kiddos with my 205 point frame at forty MPH knocking them down like candle-pin bowling pins before Sarah determined that the added liability and necessary insurance coverage for killing children was beyond our means. So we packed-up and returned home.

I have been trying to market Viapoint and among my tasks was to create an account in MediaMap, a site that is designed for PR professionals. They do have some public resources including some magazines that request help from the community of PR folks to find them sources for their stories. This week Woman’s World was putting lots of feelers out for stories including fun ones like this one.

"I need a story about a woman who was addicted to shopping, details of what she bought, how she paid for all of it, where she stored it, etc. Also need a story about a woman who was addicted to clutter - piles of newspapers stacked everywhere in the house, things all over the place, couldn’t throw anything out. These women must be cured now, and everything must be great again. Please help! Nancy Minikes, Research Editor"

I also followed a link to a site called Trendsetters.com because they were looking for people with a scoop on the sexy side of the Sundance Film Festival. They did have some good information on the current state of affairs of online dating. Among the areas pointed out was an online dating site for tall people (or people who date tall people) called Tallfriends.com. I would like to post a really short person on the site who loves to date tall people or just join the club to see how tall they really get. Are we talking about six five women here? I also found that one of Jeremy’s better ideas has been productized and monetized by someone else. His idea was to create a dating site for rating people on other dating sites. It is available through lemondate.com. At least he can finally get revenge against some of the women who stood him up because he had a roommate.