Comic for Wednesday, April 9th, 2008

Posted: 8:00 am, Wednesday, April 9th

Excellent op-ed on Bloomy's shot-down plan, including a proposal regarding one of my favorite punching bags, the SUV. Lovely! I'm all for it!

Continuing, kind of, the conversation about the subways froms yesterday, here are a few cool subway demographics. The second two are just links from the first article, but are awesome enough to stand on their own. Here's the morning's distribution of riders, a population chart of the 1/9 line at 66th Street, and an awesome illustration of my line, the F-train in Brooklyn. I accurately take either the Jogger or Blogger station on this map. There is no more accurate description of Park Slope ever written than, "You've gotta come see the baby!"

Good take on the idiocy of paying $2.6 million for the rights to pizza.com. Speaking of web news from the year 2000, there was just an item on the CW11 morning news about Facebook's IM system taking on AOL. Can anyone tell me what AOL does these days? I remember back in the 90s, I needed it to actually access the interweb at my parents' house, but is that still what it does today? Is it a service provider as well as a portal to the web? Frankly, I didn't know it was still around. Haven't seen an ad for it in the metro area in a year or two, since that campaign with the concerned mom holding her baby in the boardroom.

It's been years since I thought about the Dana Carvey Show, which is evidently available through some weird NBC YouTube site these days. All except for the skit that both made the show incredibly famous and doomed it into oblivion (as well as the show's policy of mocking its weekly title sponsor). I think I heard somewhere that there were in the show, but, ye gods, check out the second clip on that page - 1996 Carrell and Colbert! Carrell looks astoundingly like he does now, but check out that 'do on Colbert. A little longer and he's got the Dan Cortes going on there. (Always the most jarring of the Seinfeld guest stars.)

A buddy from the (old) office forwarded this to me yesterday - a massive, massive baseball bio project. It's got about a hundred entries so far and I'm not sure if it's a wiki sort of thing or what (nope, it's not, just looked it up - the SABR in the url should've tipped me off)(SABR is the Society for American Baseball Research), but the end goal is a bio of everyone to ever suit up for a major league ballclub. Hopefully they'll get as much of the Negro Leagues as possible, too, even though oftentimes it's hard to separate fact from legend in the Negro Leagues. They've done a good job on the Spaceman, so I'm on board with this experiment.

A final snapshot from Five Bucks World HQ to leave you with to start your day. Despite her having a job and me, um, not, I'm still up before 2.0 because I find it easy to get some writing done early in the morning. So I wake her up today to let her start gathering herself before breakfast, and she just looks at me and says, "I'm gonna shiv you." Not even six months in, I'm already being threatened with a shivving. Super! If I ever miss an update with no explanation, send the police.

bullfrog

Grafe -- Wednesday, April 9 2008, 08:57 am

Our household has also turned off the heat, albeit involuntarily. Our always stingy and nearly useless heat pump has decided to become completely useless. We're averaging mid-fifties on the thermometer. Thank god it's supposed to start acting like spring around here today.

A shiv? That speaks to 2.0's brilliance that she was able to come up with a shiv first thing in the morning. Most people would only be able to come up with the standard weapons, which are, of course, a lead pipe, a rope, a revolver, a candlestick, a wrench, and a dagger.

Most of our condo complex seems to have turned on the AC because it has been above 75 for more than three days. In essence, Austinites are entering our shut-in days just as parts north come out of hibernation. My goal is to try and make it to May 1 without the AC, but given that the inside temp got up to 79 yesterday, I don't think we'll make it.

Wouldn't you need a library or conservatory to actually commit a murder with a lead pipe?

Colonel Mustard for the win.

Still chilly here in Northern Missouri. Southern Missouri is about ready to build an ark with all of the rain they've had.

I wouldn't dare open the windows until the temperature moves past 60°.

Wow, I've always thought Jim Gray was kind of a total stick in the mud, but this is beyond awesome. Improv Now and NBC sports got a full announcing team, cameras, fake fans, mascots, a JumboTron, and the GoodYear freaking blimp to make a random Little League game the biggest thing ever for a bunch of kids. It's really awesome.

http://gawker.com/377657/improv-everywhere-gives-little-league-team-their-best-game-ever

Steak cooked to order? Sure beats hot pockets in SDH.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/09/dining/09campus.html?_r=1&ref=dining&oref=slogin

2.0 is right--morning people deserve to die early, preferably choking on those worms they like so much.

Yeah, but you say that about *everyone*.

I like the idea that I am brilliant for threatening to shiv my husband.

I don't.

"Heat pump"... Grafe - tell me this is a Southern thing? I expect a furnace to have flames and fumes shooting out of it. Maybe I've lived in the Midwest too long?

Citing weather concerns, the Yankees scratched rookie right-hander Ian Kennedy from his scheduled start on Wednesday night against the Royals.

My god, what wimps.

Eat me, Yankees.

6-2

They're just a horseshit franchise, Tree, what do you want out of them?