We debuted a new feature over at mental_floss yesterday. The Analogist is an advice column that doesn’t give advice. Instead, I’ll tell you what your problem is like, using historical comparisons, sports analogies, political parallels – whatever means necessary.
Please consider me for all your analogy-making needs.
“Darko is really one of a kind. He runs the floor, handles the ball, shoots an NBA three and plays with his back to the basket. So you can slot him at the 3, 4 or 5. Okay, a few other guys can do that, too, but what sets Darko apart is his toughness in the post … Fact is, Darko plays in attack mode at both ends of the floor. The more you push, the more he pushes back.”
– ESPN analyst Chad Ford, before the 2003 draft
I will read more about the NBA this week than I do the rest of the year. Watching live transactions is very exciting to me. Greg Oden and Kevin Durant, who will be going to Portland and Seattle, respectively, have made us consider relocating to the Pacific Northwest. Ellen still needs some convincing. But Bailey and I have discussed this at length.
Here’s hoping the Nets don’t pick a 19-year-old seven-foot-eight Kurdish project who won’t be NBA-ready until the franchise has moved to Brooklyn. I will be opting out of my NBA fan contract once “New Jersey” is stripped from the logo. This is a subject we’ll tackle in greater detail later this year.
(Darko Milicic, who was drafted by Detroit #2 that year – ahead of Dwayne Wade, Carmelo Anthony and Chris Bosh – has not panned out.)
The editors of PC World recently named mentalfloss.com to their list of “100 Blogs We Love.” And the Chicago Tribune called the magazine “one of our 50 favorites.”
In other _floss news, I finally finished my “Things I Learned In Utah” article. I did not learn much. I had posted the long, drawn-out intro here a couple weeks ago.
The most memorable thing I’ve written in the last year was a running diary of my Sprint customer service nightmare. Memorable because it ended up saving me almost $700 in fraudulent charges. And memorable because I get an email a week from a similarly disgruntled Sprint subscriber begging for help (I have a much higher success rate than the customer care reps about which I’m bitching.) This was originally posted on YesButNoButYes. A much bigger megaphone.
My Marathon With Sprint
June 22, 2007
How the 108-year-old telcom giant stole my money, ruined my weekend, and drove me insane.
My Friday night was ruined before it had begun. Between 7:45pm and 1:15am, I would talk to seven different Sprint customer service representatives. My bill, which was $630 higher than expected, would be deemed both “an obvious computer error” and “completely valid.” I would be transferred and hung-up on and stranded on hold. One time I’d even be called back. I would be told I was the victim of a scam; I would be accused of concocting one.
I would be told nothing could be done and I would be lobbied to upgrade my text-messaging plan. I would strangely bring up the Saddam Hussein hanging, just making conversation.
And I would keep a running diary to document the madness.
6:52pm: While watching a documentary about the 1999 St. Louis Rams on my iPod, I receive this email from my wife: “Sprint has charged you another $600 for the BlackBerry you are now reading this on.” This kills the good feelings born from Kurt Warner’s improbable rise.
7:30pm: Now off the bus, I practice verbally jousting with Sprint Customer Care. I play all roles. Talking to yourself in your car is not crazy, I decide. Read the rest of this entry »
Wednesday was a big day for me. Two of my posts made their way into the Webpicks section of Cracked.com: a mental_floss quiz and a collection of Gary Coleman clips on YesButNoButYes. This must be how Slash and Axl felt when Appetite for Destruction and GN’R Lies were simultaneously in the Billboard Top 5 – the only time that ever happened in the eighties.* VH-1’s Best Week Ever blog also picked up the quiz.
I will now go back to writing self-indulgent stuff nobody reads, let alone links to (see my Greatest Hits series).
*I am not equating any of the Gary Coleman ads to “Used to Love Her.”
This was the written (email) portion of Justin Feinstein’s second-round Renegade interview, which I later posted. Actually, I posted this two months before he actually started. Probably not a great idea in retrospect.
A Few Questions
November 1, 2006
This could be the start of a highly enjoyable running feature, where I ask smart people stupid questions and marvel at their creativity. [Editor's Note: It was not.] Today’s guest is Justin Feinstein. You can read more of him at Guardedly Optimistic. And after this, you’ll want to.
1. You’re on the A train on a Monday morning. Both you and the person to your right are drinking hot coffee out of Thermos-like mugs. You have two choices:
a) Accidentally spill the complete contents of your mug on the person sitting beside you.
b) Have that person accidentally spill his/her mug on you.
What’s your choice, and why?
Note: You do not know whether the person is a sweet young woman or unhinged maniac, wearing Zubaz pants or a $3500 suit.
Bailey and her older cousin Maggie spent some time together on Father’s Day. They weren’t much for posing, but I caught a few shots.
Read the rest of this entry »
Bailey’s favorite thing to do was sniff Maggie, then jump around excitedly, as if the ground were on fire. My amateur photography skills could only catch the first part.
[Technically, this ran on mental_floss, not jasonenglish1. Read the original post, plus all the write-in memories here.]
Memories of Action Park
January 22, 2007
“You know you’re from New Jersey,” the chain email I receive roughly twice a year keeps telling me, “if you remember Action Park and were seriously injured there.” I assume every state has a similar list. Not being from those states, I can’t say for sure.
While I don’t count myself among the casualties, I was briefly knocked unconscious during a tumultuous tube ride down the Colorado River Rapids. That was in 1995, the second consecutive year we were ejected from the Park. I was merely guilty by association, wandering around in a daze, possibly concussed. On those same Rapids, a friend decided to tackle the Action Park employee monitoring the starting line, taking her down with him.
This seems crazy in retrospect, but Action Park was a lawless place. A place where people drowned in the wave pool on a regular basis. A place that tested a full-loop water slide with crash-test dummies (the dummies were decapitated). A place that bought the town of Vernon additional ambulances, to keep up with the volume of injuries.
How many people actually died at Action Park? Ask anyone born in Jersey between 1970 and 1984, and you’ll hear a ranging toll. Twenty. Thirty-six. North of 100. Eight percent. But the real answer is only six. Let’s review:
Action Park shut its doors in 1996, and has since reopened as Mountain Creek Waterpark, with an increased emphasis on safety. So far, no deaths have been reported.
I realize this is a pretty narrow topic. But if anyone has any good Action Park stories, we’d love to hear them.
My Greatest Hits clip show continues, using the word “Greatest” loosely. In honor of Father’s Day, I’ll re-post this discussion of the best-and-worst TV dads.
Father’s Day Filler
June 18, 2006
This place is a work just barely in progress. As I attempt to choose a layout, I figured it would help to post something. I crawled into my archives and pulled out this, from Father’s Day ‘05.
To celebrate Father’s Day, TiVo has put together a list of the Top 25 TV Dads. Here’s the Top 5:
1. Cliff Huxtable (The Cosby Show)
2. Sheriff Andy Taylor (The Andy Griffith Show)
3. Pa Ingalls (Little House on the Prarie)
4. Howard “Mr. C” Cunningham (Happy Days)
5. Ward Cleaver (Leave it to Beaver)
The creepy Father Dowling publicity photo notwithstanding, I would have given Mr. C the top spot. But I think a more interesting list would be The Worst TV Dads. My list starts with three…
Ross Geller (Friends) — Entire seasons went by without even a mention of little Ben. They paraded out that kid from Big Daddy a few times, but Ross was borderline deadbeat. When Rachel was supposed to move to Paris with his second child, Ross didn’t show an appropriate level of dismay. Like many unhappy parents, it seemed like the writers just regretted Ben’s conception.
Frasier Crane (Cheers, Frasier) — He pissed away his thirties in the bar, then picked up and moved 3,000 miles away from his toddler son. It doesn’t take a psychiatrist (or an insightful radio talk show host) to know Frasier had parenting issues.
Derek Morris (Saved By The Bell) — The only way his son could get through to him was on a football-sized cell phone.
Honorable Mention: Paul Young (Desperate Housewives), Darrin Stephens (Bewitched) Joe Simpson, Toby Ziegler (West Wing), Richard Hatch.
jasonenglish1.com turns one today. Last June 16th, I launched this site with lots of help from Noah Brier – and without any real vision for what I wanted to do.
It showed.
But I wouldn’t expect many changes in year two, except perhaps the layout. I’m waiting for a designer friend (or stranger) to owe me a favor.
Since we didn’t get our fifth visitor until our fifth month, there’s a good chance you missed some early material. For the next week, in the spirit of catching up and nostalgia and laziness, I’ll re-post one vintage entry per day. Then I’ll move on to more dog photos and crazy predictions.
Our first entry comes from September 25, 2006, after I noticed a humorous relationship between a product placement and the witty banter on House. So I rigged up my camcorder to take a screenshot.
Product Misplacement
September 25, 2006
It hasn’t been a good year for Dell. Slowing sales. Exploding laptops. Blogosphere disparagement. And it seems like every Dell now comes with a customer service horror story.
While good PR has been hard to come by, at least founder Mike D. can slip top TV shows a few dollars to bring Dell products into your living room.
That’s where a smart and disgruntled writer comes in. During this season’s second episode of House, Dr. House bites the hand that furnishes his promotional consideration.
“Why don’t I have a high-def in my office? I’m a department head. Tissue characterization is impossible when the pixels are the size of Legos.”
As you can see in the picture above, the pixels he’s complaining about clearly belong to Dell, a company outed as a paid sponsor in the credits.
While I’m not an Emmy-winning writer on a hit TV show*, I would imagine being told to write a product into the script is a source of contention. Glad to see the placement so organic to the plot.
*If I were, my show would be called Representing. Our main character, a disgraced former sports agent, would represent regular people (from grocery store cashiers to whipped boyfriends) against the forces keeping them down. The show would be a Scott Baio vehicle, and it would be a blockbuster.
I’ve had a request to post additional photos of my coin jar. People take their counting seriously. These should give you a little perspective.
Almost 300 people have ventured a guess. I’ll hit up the Commerce Bank tomorrow.
How much confidence do you have in your coin-counting ability? We’re bringing this jug to Commerce Bank on Saturday. My local branch has a fancy counting machine, which I believe they call the Penny Arcade.
If you’re compelled to take a non-educated guess, head over to mental_floss. Guess right and win big prizes.
Until last week, I did not know MTV Unplugged was still on the air. But they’re starting what they’re calling their 18th Season this year. Their math is slightly fuzzy, but never mind that now.
My latest mental_floss quiz covers a few memorable moments from this MTV series. Just how memorable? Take the quiz and let me know how you did.
I started this entry on my flight home from Utah. Rather than keep these rambling thoughts in the purgatory that is my Drafts folder, I’ll just dump them here. What’s the opposite of being all over the place? No place at all? That’s what this is. Here you go, live from two Sundays ago.
If you’re reading this near the Wyoming-South Dakota border, I’m 37,000 feet above your head. My left foot is tapping furiously to Rick Allen’s contagious and odds-defying drumbeat from Def Leppard’s “Let’s Get Rocked.” This is one of 1,600 songs made available to me through Delta’s in-flight entertainment system.*
This foot tapping was not a problem until the in-flight beverage service placed a Coke precariously close to my trusty Apple iBook.** I’m very worried about a spill and the subsequent stickiness.
Let me pause to pound my soda.
This rendition of “Let’s Get Rocked” is from Rock of Ages, a Def Leppard anthology I didn’t know existed. My last Def Leppard CD was Adrenalize, off which “Let’s Get Rocked” was the first single. They played this song at A Concert for Life, the Freddie Mercury tribute – a strange choice for an AIDS benefit unless you think “rocked” means “educated on the finer points of HIV transmission.”
I know I possessed this album from 1992 to 1997, but don’t remember bringing it to college. Ten years is a long time to not own something, and so I’ve ascribed Adrenalize a possibly unwarranted sense of nostalgia.
[Finish up, then go into Utah stuff.]
*This might sound like paid product placement. I assure you it is not. I’d much rather be watching the Yankees-Red Sox game, but the satellite TV portion of the in-flight entertainment package is not working right now. But I must say Delta landed sky miles ahead of my expectations. Before last week, I did not know they were still in business, let alone streaming Def Leppard’s greatest hits.
**Another non-product placement.***
***Don’t let all this footnoting give you the wrong idea. Apple, if you want me to act as a compensated brand ambassador, just say the word. And send me your latest MacBook Pro.
