philly

Godcast

The NY Times has the scoop on the Godcast a.k.a. getting your Sunday sermon on your mp3 player of choice, if you're one of the cool kids, that would be an iPod. I'm not cool enough for an mp3 player.

Mr. Lewis, who regularly attends services of the National Community Church in Alexandria, Va., listened to the sermon while he was at the gym, through a recording he had downloaded to his iPod. Instead of listening to the rock music his gym usually plays, he heard his pastor's voice.

"Having an iPod is a guaranteed way to get the sermon if you're going to be out of town," Mr. Lewis said, adding that he listens to the pastor's podcast at least once more during the week, usually while driving to work, even during weeks he makes it to services.

The podcast knows no boundries. WWJC — that's, What Would Jesus 'Cast.

And on the topic of podcasts, I just listened to the latest offering from Blankbaby Media. I urge anyone who happens upon this post to listen to this podcasted post if only for the last two or so minutes where Scott brings to the forefront a girls's choir singing a cover of the Divinyls's Touch Myself. I'm serious. You can't make that shit up.

Politics 101 Quickie

A nice turnout of over twenty-five people at the Neighborhood Networks Politics 101 gathering tonight. Representative Babette Josephs was in attendance, it was nice to see her in person after getting literature from her office at my old apartment.

Lots of issues were raised and discussed in this smattering of new members and Neighborhood Networks board members on from the start, myself one of the newbies. I'll have a recap of what went down and what's to come in the coming days, weeks, months and longer with Neighborhood Networks, I hope good things.

Law School and Mario Kart

My buddy AK's lawblog 1L Hell has an incredibly awesome post, probably my favorite out of the dozen or so posts he has up so far very early into his first semester at law school. He compares law school to one of our favorite pasttimes of college: Mario Kart. So good is it, I must quote it in its entirety.

Law school, my friends, is like Mario Kart. If you are the student, let's just call you Wario, who talks all day in class to try and impress the professor while also trying to burn all the students during the first two weeks, you will undoubtedly fail, or get hit by the ominous spiked blue shell, in the long run.

If you get too far ahead of your reading, you run the risk of driving directly into a fake-item bomb, or worse yet, a patch of 5 strategically placed bananas. You will never know what curve your professor will throw you late in the race, and you need to be prepared for that by not overpreparing.

If you start outlining before you know what the professor really wants of you, you'll be trying the jump on Koopa Troopa Beach at 150cc while someone else in your rally has lightning. It's a terrible idea, and you will undoubtedly smack into the wall while your classmates sail through the pass, or worse yet, stomp on your head.

The best advice I've been given about 1l, is to sit back and prepare in the middle of the race, while always keeping a 3 red shell defense handy. If you happen to get a Starman, an outline from an upper level student with the same professor, you should time your use and use it wisely. If you cash it in too quick, it may not be useful in the end. However, if you wait too long, Luigi might pass you and get the coveted A.

Watch out for other students who clearly have the Boo, or ghost weapon, in their sights. Peak over to their screen to find out if they're planning to use it, if you have to. They wish only to sit back and wait till you have a good weapon, like the clear understanding of the cases built through hours of hard work, and steal it. Do not ever let them steal your Starman, especially if they try to convince you that they will trade their green shell for it.

Lastly, your fellow law students are your friends. If you instead make them your enemies and battle them at Skyscraper, you'll all fall off together. Nobody will do well at school. You need to work with them, to 'rally together,' so that everyone can do well.

I know that there will be pleny more eggcellent observations to come.

HBO: Rome

One thing I will be doing while Lady is at class and studying is watching the new HBO series Rome which I missed last night, but is already on On Demand. I'll be watching that right when I get home. Sweetness.

Is it a Ranch?

Lady found time in her busy busy full time employee/student duties to forward me this LA Times article: 'Burnishing an Image at the USA Corral' about what the hell it is that W bought and vacations at down in Crawford, TX. Is that stupid thing a ranch?

From the article, I learned that the plot of land spans 1583 acres and that twenty years ago, anything under 300 cattle was not considered a working ranch, but times have changed. There are currently four or five cattle on the whatever-it-is. I'm still not calling it a ranch. I'll call it his gigantic Texas property.

The article also points out how this was an attempt, I'd say pretty obvious, to downplay his upbringing of a New Haven, CT born, Andover, Yale, Harvard schooled [I wouldn't say educated] son of a Director of the CIA, Vice President and President. Can you get more north-eastern elitist than that?

He's not a fucking rancher and he doesn't live on a fucking ranch. He's a shitty president. He's a shitty public speaker. I will say that the year of vacation in his five years on the job has kept him looking good though. As Jon Stewart pointed out a couple of weeks ago, presidents tend to leave office looking like shit, W, on the other hand, looks better now than he did when he was campaigning and is undoubtedly in better shape than he was in his coke and alcohol binging days.

Politics 101 Tonight

Building/updating my previous post on Politics 101 tonight at Tangier... The event is not being endorsed by Tangier nor Jack and there will not be free wings there. I have no idea how that info got onto the flyer that I was forwarded [and subsequently posted here {and edited above}].

That said, this will be a great opportunity for locals to learn a little more about the ins and outs of the local political scene here in Philly. I haven't made it out to a Neighborhood Networks meeting since its inception earlier this summer, but I'm eager to get involved. I think there will be plenty of overlap with its members and the various other Progressive, Liberal and Democratic groups around town, but I'm also sure that there will be new faces that I'm looking forward to meeting.

Don't get angry at our servers, the bartender, the rest of the staff nor Jack for not giving us what they never promised. This information comes to me directly from our wonderful DL server Catherine and Jack, the owner of Tangier.

For some free wings and $1 off drinks, head on over to Tangier tomorrow night for Drinking Liberally, with an emphasis on the Drinking part!

Lady Starts School

Today is Lady's first day of graduate school. She's excited and nervous, as I remember being when I started college many, many moons ago. Between work, class and studying, she'll have less time to spend with me which means I will have to spend more time doing, well, I dunno. I'm sure as hell not gonna sit next to her and watch her read, that's for sure.

Whatever it is I'll be doing instead of sitting next to her and watching her read, I'll undoubtedly be proud of her for working full time and going to school full time. I know how tough that is.

I was going to school full time and working full time while finishing my undergrad studies back in NY. I think I was going to class four days a week and working four days a week, yep, a full eight day week. No, really, I had class three full days and work three full days plus a half day at each. So, I really didn't have a 'weekend' or a 'weekday' - they were basically the same. The hour-plus trip from Westchester to NYC was a nice time to catch up on sleep that I didn't get while spending time out with friends at night and on weekends I'd normally be able to pull off on a 'normal' schedule. I also spent many a night on campus getting to know Lady. The first time we met was at around 2am as I was in the computer lab editing and rendering a video project. I kicked her butt and her friend's butt in Dr. Mario — if anyone in the Philly area would like to challenge me to a game of Dr. Mario, feel free to ante up. The rest is, well, history.

It's gonna be a hard two years or so of work and school, but you can always look forward to that debt at the end of the rainbow! And who knows, one of us could hit the lotto or something along the way.

Lady's last night of non-academia was spent making a delicious meal of Grilled Eggplant and Goat Cheese Sandwiches and cucumber and tomato salad. The recipe is up at Messy and Picky, but we forgot to think ahead and take pictures of the delicious concoction, we were both too hungry and it smelled too good. We watched this season's first episode of Real Time on On Demand [woo hoo to having cable again!] and a late night viewing of Ray which was wonderful — now I want a Ray Charles album.

10,000th Photo

There it is, #10,000. Taken Friday night over by 12^th St.

Not exactly the most riveting subject matter, but I wasn't paying attention to the image count as I was clicking away that night. I was originally trying to get another graff shot of that bomb sticker and then decided to get the whole plastic hanger in there as well just dangling from the parking sign. If only there were a dress or shirt hanging on the hanger.

The counter went right to DSC_0001.jpg on this shot as expected.

Sometime this week, this bloggy blog will scuttle over 100K hits.

PA for Judge Roberts

Just noticed a PAforJudgeRoberts.com banner ad on Philly.com. Blech. I'm not for Roberts. And Sen. Specter is pressing pretty hard for some serious scrutiny.

The ad is paid for by Progress for America, another one of those rosey-named groups. "Progress" for whom?

Roy Lichtenstein's Brushstroke Group

I'm not sure how we missed it yesterday on our way back from a [long and sweaty] jaunt to/fro Trader Joe's, but there's a new art installation on 17^th St between Ranstead and Ludlow Sts. directly across from One Liberty Place. Roy Lichtenstein's Brushstroke Group joins the Clothespin and LOVE sculptures in the area.

The semiabstract cluster, 29 feet high by about 30 wide, consists of abstracted brush strokes and a cantilevered "drip" painted in vivid red, orange, green, blue and white.

The sculpture is on loan from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation of New York to Duane Morris L.L.P., one of the city's largest law firms, which just moved into Union Plaza.

Wait, actually, we didn't head down 17^th St and we didn't head south of Market until Broad St, so we couldn't have seen it. Well, if it's not raining later on today when I head home, I'll stop by and snap a few shots over the 4' barrier.