making a good impression

In 2006, I watched Boston's Fourth of July fireworks from a friend's boat. As dusk fell, I fiddled with the settings on my camera, and wound up with this shot that looks like something Claude Monet might have come up with if he had been gazing at the Boston skyline in the 21st century:

a most sensational, inspirational, celebrational, bohemianational rhapsody

I fell in love with The Muppet Show as a kid. Then in college, one of my roommates and I used to watch it on Nick Jr. between classes every morning. She just sent me this link, and it cracked me up!



Glad to see the Muppets are alive and well!

a light subject

Visited the coast of Maine this week.  Here's Portland Head Light in early November:

fifth anniversary of the greatest day ever

'Nuf Ced.

milling about

In October of 2003, I drove by the Bambino's old house in Sudbury, MA. I parked in front for a minute or two, stared at the house, and said simply, "OK, Babe, you've made your point. Enough already!"

A week later... well, I guess he had one last hurrah. But he must have taken my advice and gotten over it, because the following year order was restored to the universe.

Right down the street from Babe Ruth's old residence is the Sudbury Grist Mill. Here's a picture from that day:

think pink

It feels like summer outside this weekend, so how about a nice, summery picture o' the day? This is from Ardastra Gardens and Zoo in Nassau, Bahamas:

what would you give?

This spoof of a MasterCard commercial featuring Dennis Leary is as poignant and funny now as it was then...



Some things truly are priceless!

let the games begin

With the Red Sox' Opening Day just four days away, it's time for a picture from last year's home opener:

i'd rather be rich than stupid

Here are my top 11 favorite "Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey," as seen on SNL. (Why 11? Well, it's kind of like 10, but better.)

11. To me, boxing is like a ballet, except there's no music, no choreography and the dancers hit each other.

10. Somebody told me it was frightening how much topsoil we are losing each year, but I told that story around the campfire and nobody got scared.

9. I believe in making the world safe for our children, but not our children's children, because I don't think children should be having sex.

8. Laurie got offended that I used the word "puke." But to me, that's what her dinner tasted like.

7. How come the dove gets to be the peace symbol? How about the pillow? It has more feathers than the dove, and it doesn't have that dangerous beak.

6. The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face.

5. If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.

4. The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw.

3. As the light changed from red to green to yellow and back to red again, I sat there thinking about life. Was it nothing more than a bunch of honking and yelling? Sometimes it seemed that way.

2. It's easy to sit there and say you'd like to have more money. And I guess that's what I like about it. It's easy. Just sitting there, rocking back and forth, wanting that money.

1. Maybe in order to understand mankind we have to look at that word itself. MANKIND. Basically, it's made up of two separate words "mank" and "ind." What do these words mean? It's a mystery and that's why so is mankind.

Here are a couple of other "Deep Thoughts" lists.
And the official site.

plane and simple

Math buffs beware! Planarity is a simple but addictive puzzle game where you attempt to arrange the vertices of a graph so that no edges intersect. In graph theory, this is called a planar graph. I've gone up through level 24.

mo' video

Say hello to my cat, Mo:



She was born in 1995, and was named after that year's American League MVP. Her full name is Maurice Victoria Penelope J. Cat. (Note the first 3 initials. And yes, the "J." stands for Jay.)

a shell of my former self

Continuing with my travel photos, the following was taken on Sanibel Island, Florida, in 2005:

i hope i'll be safe at home

One of my favorite monologues is George Carlin's "Baseball and Football".

You know the one:

Football is concerned with downs - what down is it?
Baseball is concerned with ups - who's up? Are you up? I'm not up.

A transcript is at Baseball Almanac. Video is below.



The only part that makes no sense to me is this:

In baseball, during the game, in the stands, there's kind of a picnic feeling; emotions may run high or low, but there's not too much unpleasantness.
In football, during the game, in the stands, you can be sure that at least twenty-seven times you're capable of taking the life of a fellow human being.

Apparently he's never been to a Red Sox/yankees game...

But apart from that, it's one of my all-time favorite bits.

"i have a mind like an elephant...

...In fact, elephants often consult me."

- Noel Coward

Here's a photo of a mama and baby elephant I took at the St. Louis Zoo in 2005. Click it to enlarge.

ministry of silly flash animation

Click the image below to see this silly walk in action, or generate your own at the Silly Walks Generator. (Click the image, click "Click to Begin", then click "Play this walk".)


Important advisory: This silly walk was performed by a professional cartoon lumberjack. Do not attempt.

love that dirty water

I'll be sharing in this blog, among other things, photos I've taken over the years. I took the following from the Esplanade in Boston in 2004. Click it to enlarge.

this will always make me laugh

Always.



I love the dead serious "closer face", even while dancing the jig in his underpants!



Yoooooouuuuuuk!