For the first time in my favorite game show, Jeopardy's history, the contestants all finished with identical scores for a three-way tie!
That is so gangsta. Who is Bonnie Parker?
Check out the video clip (I heart You Tube):
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZV9vuKfVO04]
I love Alex's response when he sees the final contestants score: 'AH-HA!'
Update: From Metafilter's usual bookish crowd discussion, some have theories on this result not being as randomly odds defying as it appears on surface.
"Doofus Magoo" writes: The guy in the lead was grinning like the cat who ate the canary while the answers of the other two were being revealed, so I think he was deliberately angling for a two- or three-way tie -- and why not? He had to know the other two had bet it all, and regardless of whether he ends up with $16,000 in a tie or $16,001 as the sole winner, he gets his money. By bidding the lower amount he gets to make one or two other people very happy at no cost to himself.
In fact, you could argue that he benefits from this strategy, as he gets to compete again against people that he may be confident he can beat.
"SeizeTheDay" continues: I agree with Doofus (I don't think I've ever said that before...it's just so odd). The guy is apparently a puzzle wiz and a computer science professor. He clearly knew what he was doing when he made that bet. There might be a three-fold argument: one, he was doing the other guys a really nice favor by tying instead of winning outright (since 2nd place gets $2500 and 3rd place gets $1000); two, he was ensuring that he knew who his competition would be for the next time (dude has now won over $60K; he's clearly not dumb); and three, his name and face will always be in the Jeopardy record books for being a part of the three way tie. Pretty ingenious.
Hi, everybody. I was interested to see what kind of reaction my wager would get; you all have not disappointed me. :-)
So why did I do it? I knew that there had never been a 3-way tie before in the history of the show. (OntarioQuizzer is right that a kid had asked if there had ever been a 3-way tie before. I honestly don't remember hearing that question; maybe it registered subconsciously.) I saw the possibility to make Jeopardy history, and I took it. I've never had a philosophical objection to tie games, although I understand the strategic reasons why you shouldn't bet to tie. Making history seemed like a very special reason to bet to tie. Plus it's not every day you get to give away $32,000.
A story: This was the last show taped that day. As my family and friends and I were standing outside the studio absorbing the moment, the schoolteacher who brought the kids that day came up to me and said he wanted to thank me for teaching his kids such a lesson in sportsmanship and generosity. Two of the kids were standing there agog looking at me. It's a moment I'll always treasure and one that wouldn't have happened if I bet that extra $1.
I emailed the YouTube link to a close friend--a friend who generally immediately appreciates the wacky and exceptional--earlier this morning and her response was very indifferent. Am I the only one here that appreciates this event?
Like this. Update: It's actually $205 million.
MK: Lets see the Namesake sometime. MR: I dunno...
MK: I'm going to Barnes and Nobles tonight for the Jhumpa Lahiri/Mira Nair talk at 7. Come and scope out the girls. I'm sure there'll be a 9:1 ratio.
MR: Which Barnes and Nobles?
MK: Union Square...
MR: Shoot, I want to go, but I have to go to the gym.
MK: Well, I'll be there if you wanna join. And I'm telling you, there will be lots of chicks hoping to meet a nice guy. That's what we do...We go to bookstores hoping to meet cute intellectual types.
MK: It'll be girls night for everyone in the room, and whatever available boys that ask interesting questions to the author make prime targets.
MR: I go to bookstores to try and meet sluts.
Hey caffeineaholics: Just today from 10 am - noon, drop by your local nearest Starbucks for some free coffee. I'll be at the one on Crosby and Spring at 10 on the dot for my daily morning coffee, so come by then if you want to keep me company while waiting in queue.
I used to be such a Starbucks whore in college--by my senior year I don't think I paid for a single coffee at the one on Thayer Street thanks to the dope baristas there (most of whom I'm convinced were highhhhh during most of their shifts). I think one of the greatest things to hear in the world--after "Do you want to come up?" and "We're giving you a raise."--is a bartender or a barista saying "Don't worry about it" when you try to pay for your drink.
Photo taken at McDonalds on 27th and 6th Ave.
Rumor has it that the Coffee Shop in Union Square is currently closed down on account of the DOH? Can anyone confirm?? Yes, the place is cheesy with over priced drinks, a forgettable menu (although their burger always hits the spot, but then again ANY restaurant should be able to nail down a burger), unnecessarily too many bouncers with their 'game face' on, and only passasbly hot waitresses. And yet, I love it, because of all the good memories that place holds for me and my friends:
- 4 am breakfast there at the Coffee Shop after a night of partying on a Tuesday...on which I had a job interview at 8 a.m. From the bathroom of the restaurant, I called and left a message to the law firm saying I couldn't make it to the interview on account of the fact I was stuck in Boston. Why was I in Boston, you ask? "Because I was on a minority recruitment trip for my alma mater."
- Everyone meeting Naija.
- Eddie and I meeting up for lunch on a Saturday, because it's the first warm, mini-skirt weather day of the spring-summer (mini skirts on the ladies, not us--just to clarify). And while sitting outside enjoying the view and food, our Bloody Marys become just that: Bloody Marys, plural. Drunk dialing and rallying the troops would start happening around 4 p.m.
Throwing up in the booth (I only vaguely remember) and giving Cy the middle finger afterwards (or was it during the up chuck situation?). I think I might have then pushed my water on his fries. I'm not sure. Actually, this is a bad memory.- Six of us squeezing in around one of their tiny tables outside.
- Countless brunches recapping the scandals of the previous night. These brunches usually involve a lot of high fives and fist pounds and "Exactlys" among attendees.
- Endless strategizing sessions.
It's our diner as Tom's was to Jerry, George, Elaine and Racist Kramer.
UPDATE: Coffee Shop has reopened.
This bit of news, courtesy of the ever brilliant and vigilant members at Metafilter (myself, cough, included), that the New York Times's "Select" aka Times Select--which provides access to their columnists, designated articles, and archives--is now FREE if you have a ".edu" e-mail address, and that made me very happy because I was able to use my current Columbia University e-mail for this. However, I'm not sure if the "alumni.brown.edu" will work.
(Via) I don't even really know how to recap this investigative piece about mysterious letters anonymously sent to various random students at Grinnell College. The writer, herself (himself?) a recipient of one of these letters decides--almost obsessively--to track down the author of these creepy notes. Although I don't have the energy or time to research its veracity, it does make for a super fascinating read. I can see it being expanded into a novel or even a film.
As early as 1992, students at Grinnell College, a small liberal arts school in Iowa, began receiving strange, anonymous letters in the mail. The letters contained homemade greeting cards with crudely drawn pictures—men crawling on the ground, toilets and trash cans, twin closet doors—and jokes that didn’t make any sense. Q: What would a duclod like about the land of the giants? A: Standing in two closets without touching either knob.
In one mysterious letter the sender defined the made-up word duclod as the fusion of two words, dual and closeted, meaning a person who hides his or her sexuality from both gay and straight people. Another letter described the duclod as “bisexual, homophobic, heterophobic, confused.”
The letters were always sent in groups, from four to seven cards reported at a time. They were always postmarked from different, seemingly random parts of the country and always sent during school breaks. Mostly, the letters targeted gay and bisexual seniors. Sometimes they were sent to the student’s school address; sometimes home, possibly in an effort to out the student to his or her parents.
That’s all anyone knew for 14 years.
It's all very creepy stuff. To read it...click here.
So this news item is a few days old now, but it's still worth mentioning I think: some douchebag extraordinaire mugged and attacked two old women in New York City. I mean, seriously old women. Try, 85 and 101 years old respectively. Anyway, these attacks were caught on tape, but the perp hasn't been caught. Over a thousand calls, according to this comprehensive coverage by the Gothamist, have been made to Crimestoppers, and while some are helpful tips to the cops that might lead to the arrest of this jackass, a lot of the calls are also from irate citizens mainly calling in to tell the police "...what they themselves would like to do to the suspect when he's caught."
And Mr. T also called in and said, "I pity the fool!...after I get done with him."
This whole situation has a slight comic book tone to it. Spider Man is going to swoop in at any second and apprehend this guy. Then he's going to spidey on over and deliver some flowers to the two old ladies.
Or maybe I'm just really excited for Spider Man 3.
If working extremely late in an empty office on a very tedious project, do not listen to bleak and somber music because such a combination will make you want to follow Franz Reichelt's plummeting footsteps.
Who is Franz Ferdinand Reichelt? Or rather, who was Franz Reichelt?
Franz belongs to that rara avis of brotherhoods in human history, who like Icarus dare to fly as high into the heavens as possible--not metaphorically, poetically or symbolically--but actually, literally. These men don't just dream. They act and do with a temerity you and I dream of, yet fear. Unlike men like Icarus, Charles Elwood "Chuck" Yeager, and R. Kelly, who were obsessed with believing they can fly, touching the sky, and thinking about it every night and day, Franz on the other hand, was preoccupied with teasing gravity and floating gently down from the sky (or from the top of the Eiffel Tower...) like the very first snowflake of a winter.
Ignoring the naysayers and their vociferous doubts, with their heads looking forward and up (into the future?), these demi-gods strap on their proverbial wings or in Franz's case, looking forward and down to walk the proverbial plank.
On February 4, 1912, Franz climbed to the top of the Eiffel Tower and looked calmly out into the cool Paris cityscape. He wore an overcoat, but it was no ordinary overcoat. It also doubled as a parachute. Ingenuity! Passion! Art! Function! Fashion!
Did he test this jacket on a dummy to ensure that it worked properly as you or I would have done? No. When you want to climb Mt. Olympus to look Zeus in the eye, you don't send a sherpa up there first.
And so we go back to Franz, the humble tailor with a big dream, standing atop the world. Just him and his parachute-overcoat. A paracoat, if you will.
And then?
Icarus flew too close to the sun and plunged back to where the meek and mortals dwell. Chuck Yeager found that his ceiling was the sky and the great black space beyond was forever closed to him. R Kelly pissed on underage girls.
Moral of this story: Kids, keep those dreams of grandeur locked up as just that, dreams. Martin Luther King had a dream and look what happened to him. Wow, that was terrible. I can't believe I just wrote that (although will that dream ever come true?).
Actually, the moral of the story is this: Kids, dream and follow those dreams. Just don't follow a crazy man with a parachute-jacket over the edge. Let him test it out while you take the stairs down. Yea, that's the message of this entry: Kids, take the stairs...and avoid R. Kelly. Always.
Who knew the word "terrorism" can actually have a milk-coming-out-of-nose "LOL" effect? The specific sentence?
Click link above for more context.
Recently, I had the opportunity to ride the new N Train. This baby is a sweet ride, let me tell ya'. This baby is a sweet ride. Its aesthetics reminds me of the silver bullets that dash around the 4,5,6 track, but it's clearly a better and improved version.
I'm particularly loving the digitalized LED signs (similar to the L train) that lets you know what the next stop is without having to decipher the muffled and distorted 'wa-wa' announcements of the MTA driver. This might not seem like a big deal to those of you who live on Union Square or whatever, but sometimes the N runs randomly local and other times express, and that's a pretty important distinction--whether the N is local or express--if I want to get home in a timely manner.
These new trains also have a handlebar that runs along the middle of the car, which is convenient for those rush hour crowds. That feature means I no longer have to "hold onto" the ceiling (difficult considering its flat surface...) when I find myself unfortunate enough to be stuck in the middle of the car with seemingly nothing else to latch onto.
The roommate, Chris, wasn't so into the harsh and unforgiving fluorescent lighting, but I sort of like it. It gives the trains a certain sterile ambience that, in some way, assures me that I'm in safe hands as I hurtle through the deep tunnels and over the East River.
I can't wait until these trains are added to the D line.
This entry might possibly be one of the least sexiest topics I've ever written about. Again, this ought to be added evidence of my extreme dorkism and nerdocidity.
Pretty much my favorite thing to do around the apartment is to sit around and invent new nicknames and different ways to address the resident monster-slash-dog, Luca.
There's the simple yet effective: "Luccccaaaaaaa."
My favorite way of greeting him however is (and in my best James Earl Jones impression, which would actually make it possibly the WORST impression of him in the entire world): "Luca...I am your fathaaa."
Seriously, this is so fun to say. Try it.
"LUCA..I AM YOUR FATHA."
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO."
The other derivative to this is to say, "Luke...[pause]-a, I am your fatha."
The other day though, I came up with a new variation: Luca Fiasco. Gangsta, right?
UPDATE I'm listening to their new album right now...and I'll can I say for now is "Wow." What a perfect thing to listen to on a Sunday morning.
So Wilco is probably like my favorite band in the world (excluding hip hop groups like Tribe and such). I first got into them when they performed during Spring Weekend at Brown my sophomore year and (this rarely happens to me) I got sucked into their music.
So if you are a Wilco fan, note this bulletin that they posted on their MySpace:
We're hosting a sneak preview of the new Wilco album tomorrow, Sunday, March 11 from 2 pm to 2 am GMT, 10 am to 10 pm EDT and 7 am to 7 pm PDT.
Come to http://wilcoworld.net/sbs/
Shibby. Be there or be square.
UPDATE: I recently received a message on MySpace regarding this entry I wrote (see after jump) from January about a Wikipedia entry on Spring, Texas that I came across for some research I was doing for work. Apparently, the hyperbolical entry was written by the nephew of the guy who wrote me on MySpace. It seems the nephew and his friends wrote the Wikipedia entry (highlighting one of the negative aspects to an open source knowledge bank) and the nephew's mother is none too happy that her son and his friends wrote their full names on there on the big, scary Internets. I copied and pasted the Wiki entry, and since then, she's asked me to remove their names. The mother probably watched a bit too many episodes of To Catch a Predator, but hey, the last thing I want to do is piss off a mother, so I'm fulfilling her request.
I said this before, but women sure love to have editorial control and deletion powers over EVERYTHING.
Honestly though, if her kids are savvy enough to go onto Wikipedia and make edits, then they are probably taking a gander at other websites that she wouldn't be too happy to find them visiting. Just an FYI.
Don't ask me why, but I had to do some quick research on the town of Spring, Texas and one of the sources I checked was Wikipedia. It's generally a good advice to not use Wikipedia as the sole source or primary or even secondary source, because you get faulty or exaggerated claims such as this one I found for the entry on Spring, Texas:
Spring Texas is a place where people live such as CH, BS, CC, AS and TR. It also includes Trinity Lutheran School, which is the best school in the world.
That is a bold, bold claim. Replace Trinity with Brown and now we're talking. *Cough*
I'm not too inspired tonight to write anything, but I do have a question for all ya'll. I noticed recently that the song on my MySpace profile was removed by Wilco. I'm in need of a new song to put up on there. So, any suggestions?
Luca's ass. And Luca likes it.
But Kristin sniffs his ass because he has a medical condition.
Correction: Kristin likes to sniff Luca's mouth AFTER he's licked his own anus.
She has to smell his mouth after he's licked his own anus to check to see if his ass arthritis is acting up.
THAT is love.