Josh Reynolds

The bee went great! I was a little worried that by 8:45 only Karl had shown up (way to be on time Karl!)but then Douglas, Amy, and Heather showed up and I knew that that was enough to make some spelling magick. Add to that the fact that a gentleman poked his head in and I said "Spell?" and he said "Sure!" and brought in this woman with him. Matt and Julie were their names and they were lots of fun. Julie won two spelling rounds for a grand total of twelve bucks. Amy won two rounds as well despite her claims that she can't spell. By the end of the night more people had entered including Bill Carney of the Jug Addicts. In the end it was a success and as far as I could tell everyone had a good time and I guess that's the point.

I emailed Jen from the post below about trying to set up a spelling bee off where we could see whether Prospect Heights or Williamsburg had the better spellers. I still haven't heard back. I think that would be very much fun.

Ok, on to other things.



I was calling up companies for my job the other day when a woman I called told me that she loved my blog. I was shocked. I was almost speechless. She told me that she had googled me trying to find my work phone number and found this blog. She read it and said she really enjoyed it. I wish that I could better convey how totally surprising this was and the absolute last thing I was expecting her to say. I was pretty psyched actually.

As you may or may not know there is a rival spelling bee that goes on here in Brooklyn at Pete's Candy Store. I'd not heard too much about it other than they don't give away cold hard cash like the Josh Reynolds Magickal Mystery Spelling Tour. While shirking work I was googling around and found the blog of the woman that runs the rival bee! And they also had an NPR thing done about them. Holy co-ink-a-dink Batman! Anyway, she's got a real nose for publicity and has done all sorts of getting herself and her bee out there. She is even getting The Strand to sponsor her bee with tote bags and such.

Who can I get to sponsor my bee? Toys in Babeland?

This site is more interesting than I first gave it credit for.

Spelling Bee time again!!!

Yes, this Wednesday at Freddy's I will once again be slinging words your way! This is your opportunity to win big bucks and lord it over everyone that you are a fantastic speller and they can't spell C-A-T right! YOW!

Alright...8 pm Jan. 26th. Dollar to enter and winner takes all!

Thanks to Andy, Jared's name is now spelled correctly. At least in some places. I was too lazy to change them all.

Some of you may remember about a year ago when I declared "douchebag" to not be funny anymore. You may also remember that this created quite a stir in the comments.
I'm back with a new proclamation which many of you may find controversial.

Making fun of Carrot top is over. There it is. I've said it. Discuss.

Now, on to some weird Carrot Top stuff. Apparently he's big into charity work including this shot here where he is pictured with an oddly short and portly Ronald McDonald.



There are more pictures on his site of when he flew in an F 16. ????????????

Ok, also check this out and this.

First of all I'm very surprised that no one commented on the fact that Glen Burke is credited with inventing the high five! I personally thought that was fascinating. You didn't, huh? No matter! Check this out!

Via weird links.

Your Famous Blogger Twin is Dave Barry

Funny, witty, and clever! You always have a ton of offbeat links to share

Uhhh....

And then I actually looked at the site and, well....

Via Kotaku

Check it out. Click on the little guys.

Glenn Burke. This is a very interesting story.

Here is a nice round up of other Iraqi bloggers along with a link to Riverbend.

Thanks for the plug Dean.

And, nice Prospect Heights site Andy.

Do you think Jared has ever been to Prospect Heights?

Me like.

I'm not a huge Jared fan but this is a nice picture:

I'm not a huge Scarlett Johansson fan but this is a nice picture.

My buddy Anon. would like to hear me pontificate about tattoos. There sure are many bad tattoos out there and I almost got many of them. Thank goodness I never got, for instance, "VEGAN" in huge letters down my arm. Thank goodness I never got "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" tattooed on my feet. Perhaps you are thinking that I am ignoring what you may think of as my tattoo mistakes such as the "BDW" on my leg which stands for "Billy Dee Williams" or perhaps the image of the guy with the gas pump in his head "Knowledge is power!". However, I don't consider them mistakes really. While I, well I was about to say I wouldn't get these now but I'd get the "BDW" again, don't think these tattoos are brilliant by any means they are still very dear to me despite their goofiness.

Now I'm going to get judgemental. There are some tattoos that I just don't like.

1. Tribal is easy and cliched to hate but hate it I do.

2. The Taz is also cliched to hate but have you ever met anyone you liked with a Taz tattoo? I didn't think so.

3. Barbed wire receives no comment.

4. Unless Calvin is pissing on something really clever then Calvin tattoos are out. What would be clever? I don't know. Leave something in the comments if you have any ideas. If I think it's funny enough I'll get it. I will say that Calvin pissing on "custom text" was kind of funny. However, I also laughed when Carlos and I walked past a movie shoot on Saturday and Carlos yelled "Roll 'em!" so make of my sense of humor what you will.

5.Yin Yang...no.

I'm not going to pretend that I'm a political analyst since I'm clearly not (you are more of a Jared analyst--ed.)but the Seymour Hersh story about how the U.S. is planning airstrikes very likely is true. However, I would think that with the army stretched thin like it is now that the U.S. wouldn't go off and start a war on a different front. True, I don't know what the Iranian government's reaction to being bombed would be and they may be to cowed to do anything unless there is a full scale invasion. Who calculates that sort of thing?

A subject many people laugh off but is very important is prisoner rape. I was pretty much ignorant about prisoner rape until a few years ago when I read a story in a 'zine about a young guy "Donny the Punk" who was jailed in 1973 for trespassing and then gang raped at the jail under the guards watch. The story was very graphic and horrible. After his ordeal Donny started Stop Prisoner Rape.Please visit this site, and if you decide to read some of the stories here remember they aren't for the faint of heart but I think it would be well worth your while.

Donny was the head of SPR until his death in 1996 from AIDS which he got as a result of being raped in jail.

I found out today that Jayson Williams named his daughter "Whizdom". Oh lord.

That is all.

'nuff said.

Despite chiding me for soliciting subject ideas Heather stepped up to the plate and suggested I blog about Gorman and I's night working as bartenders at an Irish/Argentinean wedding reception. There's not tons to say except that the brother of the groom drank a half case of beer himself (we counted) and some guy brought a bottle of homemade absinthe which Gorman and I had 8 shots apiece of. It didn't really have that much of an effect of me besides allowing me to make "green fairy" jokes all night but Gorman said it made him feel funny. I thought 8 shots would have done the trick and I would have had some sort of Moulin Rouge kind of thing happen but no such luck.

I crack my neck a lot. For the most part it is harmless it seems but then sometimes lately when I do it it almsost seems like I'm doing myself some kid of weird spinal damage or something because I feel kind of strange afterward. Does anyone else have this experience?

You know when you walk in the room and say something that you think is funny and all you get is a "Huh."? That just happened. I thought that saying "I feel great even though we ordered fifty buffalo wings!" would at least garner a "You rascal!" grin but no dice.

No ideas yet? C'mon people!

Well, surprise surprise, the moon Titan looks just like Mars but in black and white.

Titan:



Mars:

Green. I'm green with envy.

I'm really trying to come up with some interesting stuff for people to read. So once again I'm appealing to you(!) to tell me what to blog about. Otherwise you are going to get more Jared Fogel type stuff. And, really, does anyone want that?

I know office tales are usually popular so I'll see if The Genius comes up with anything good today. It's hard for him to top the tale of how his family spends almost a thousand dollars a month on cell phone charges but he does consistenly top himself so let's all cross our fingers.

My friend Maddy started a blog recently. She moved to Hawaii about two years ago and it seems to really have sat with her pretty well.

Ah Hah! I caught you! You were thinking about Jared Fogel too weren't you?


Official Subway site is here.


A negative take on Jared's past.

I only included this one because someone who was quoted was named "Pamela Puke"

Aw, nuts!

I was all set to write a long screed about goofing off and how it gets a bad name but then I realized that about all I had to say about the subject was included in this sentence. So forget it.

Is anyone else totally mystified by this Prince Harry in the Nazi uniform thing? What he hell was that about? Dressing up as a member of the Wehrmacht is a bad idea no matter who does it but a member of the royal family? What goes through your mind as a public figure when you do this? "Good thing there isn't any media attention on me!"? I have to agree with the Israeli foreign minister here that

"I think anybody who tries to pass it off as bad taste must be made aware that this can encourage others to think that perhaps that period was not as bad as we teach the young generation in the free world."

The CNN story mentions that William was at the costume party where Harry was dressed as a Nazi(William was dressed in a homemade lion/leopard outfit) and the theme was the totally ripe for stereotyping "Native and Colonial". "Native and Colonial"? Sheesh. Why couldn't Harry have dressed up as a palm tree or something?

And in the "No he didn't!" department I have gone and splurged on a blogad for myself. Why would I do this since my blog is updated sparodically and mostly filled with pictures of stuff that only I think is amusing? I admit it probably wasn't the best use of my fifteen dollars but my ego feels better knowing that at least some new people might come across the page and read it.

Anyway, it will also make me post more now that there is this new phantom audience out there. Not that I don't already appreciate my audience I have now. Darlings, I love you all. Really. But there needs to be some fresh blood here and perhaps we'll get some good comments.

On to the new frontier.

If there is something I like it was those Choose Your Own Adventure books. This one is my favorite:



Via this site.

The existential CYOA:



A great one I think I've linked to before but the link seems to be dead now. The cover remains:



Holy lord! This is a Lego Star Wars Choose Your Own Adventure!

My legs are sore. This weekend was the first time in my life I have ever ice skated and while it was not as horrible as I was expecting (full of broken bones)it was certainly a lesson in humility. It being the first time I had ever skated I wasn't too good with the lacing of the skates part of the whole thing and so for the first half of my trip around the rink where I was falling and clutching the wall I was working with a handicap. As I was going around not only was the falling and skidding out of control but there were many kids along the wall as well and I was very afraid because one false skate from me and one of these tots was going into traction. Thankfully this didn't happen and Heather who was helping me along the wall as sweat was dripping down my face noticed that my skates were loose and tied them tighter for me. This did make a huge difference and while the rest of the way wasn't smooth sailing necessarily it wasn't just overwhelming, ankle dragging, awfulness either. After we finally made it around Heather parked me on a bench so that she could skate around without the Josh shaped albatross around her neck. I hung out on the side with the skate bunnies comparing foot woes and watching some of the other people we came with rock the rink. I would have gotten back out there for another try but it turned out that the back of the ice rink had been cordoned off for kid's lessons so I thought that it would be best if I didn't push my luck too much and try to make it across with the benefit of a wall at some point. I was feeling a little humiliated by all this (not TOO much but a little) until I saw another guy about my age get on the ice and have just about as much trouble. Then I felt a little better. I wasn't the only 30 year old out there getting his ass handed to him on a plate by the Prospect Park ice rink.

Courtesy of the Monger here is a joke:There has been a lot of talk about metrosexuals lately. I consider myself more of a heteropolitan.

What is a heteropolitan? Discuss.

This is an exciting precedent.

Who doesn't remember freshman year and the timeless hilarity of "I'm gay!" signs next to your drunk friends? These guys are living the dream people.
It's nice what you can find when you just google "drunk people".

Or, "drunk pumpkins".


Or, "drunk squirrels".

Wowza! These Ukraine pro-democracy types are just my type!

Via Art.