Steal your face

In what was perhaps the weirdest news I heard all week:

Apparently, when he's wearing a hat and you look really quickly at him, my grandfather bears a passing resemblance to Bernard Madoff, pictured here.


Thanks a whole bunch for the photo, Kathy Willens/AP Photo and ABCNews.com

Which is either sort of creepy-cool or just extremely creepy, depending on what time of day you ask me. Of course it also means there's an outside chance that - because of genetics and all - I will look like Bernard Madoff by the time I'm 80. But by then, Madoff will be about 115, and probably still in jail, so I don't think anyone will notice.

This all came up the other day when Grandpa was sitting with my aunt in NYC. Where, as you might know, Madoff is a pretty big celebrity these days. So my aunt noticed someone excitedly glancing over in their direction and whispering on his cell phone, "I think it's him!" After she set the guy straight, she asked my grandfather to remove his hat so there would be no further confusion.

I know you'd like to see my grandfather's photo so you could compare for yourself. But I don't want him to be bothered by the paparazzi, so just add a hat and a heart of gold to the photo above, and you're almost there.

Don't walk... run!

... to get yourself the hot new T-shirt from S and J Market.

The latest design is a tribute to the bustling metropolis of Norwalk, Conn., which is where the company I used to work for is based. (That sentence is phrased awkwardly partly because I didn't actually work there - I worked from home and just visited when they had Christmas parties and summer barbecues, which came out to roughly twice a year - and partly because I don't have the juice right now to figure out a better way to write it.)

As my former colleagues could attest (that's you, LDog!), I talked frequently, probably way too much, about my brilliant idea for a Norwalk t-shirt. Now, that idea has become a very wearable reality.

This S and J exclusive is sure to be the must-have clothing item for a very small number of trendy fashionistas for 2009! (And fashionistos, too. Since you're wondering, Yes, it's available in men's sizes.)

Take a look...



... and then click on over!

In other, less self-promotional news, Andrew Bird and his new CD have been getting almost Britney-size media coverage lately! Some of the hype started before I wrote my blog post about the new album, so I'm not taking all of the credit, but I will take a little.

If you're interested, which you should be, the New York Times ran this nice profile. But even cooler is Bird's latest entry in a sometimes fascinating New York Times blog that's written by a handful of songwriters - the neatest part is the audio clips of one new song as it evolved from demo to album. And on this page on NPR's web site, there's a link that'll let you listen to the entire new disc for free! Which is a pretty good deal.

Hold that line!

Way to stand your ground, U.S. Senators!

You really did an awesome job sticking to your guns when it came to your pledges that - I'm paraphrasing a little - "No way in hell!" would someone appointed by Illinois' embattled governor G-Rod be allowed to take over Barack Obama's senate seat.

You dug in your heels. You held news conferences. And you held out for, what was it, about two days after Congress reopened for business? You sure showed that Roland Burris. He might have to wait like a whole week before he gets to change his first name to Senator.

With such steadfast commitment to your beliefs, it is truly amazing that you're not more effective at doing your job - fondling interns. I mean, governing the United States.

Do you believe in gosh?

I'm certainly not saying the message is wrong, but I think the folks behind the Athiest Bus Campaign in London might need some help with their marketing strategy.

Because if there's one thing that blows about organized religion, it's that part where adherents try to convince everyone else that they're right and you're wrong.

And putting that message on a big bus ad? Yeah, I don't think that's going to help. Although people are usually so rational about their religious beliefs - I'm sure they'll want to take time to reconsider when they see "There's probably no god" whizzing by them in traffic.

Now, a quick word about the title of today's post: I thought the god-gosh thing made it appropriate to the theme of this entry. But it's a dual-purpose title. Because it's also the name of a very funny Mitch Hedberg CD that was released posthumously (first use of that word on SFTC, I'm pretty sure) a few months ago.

As astute SFTC readers know, the very name of this blog is a rip-off of a Mitch joke. I like to think of him as the patron saint of my site, although I'm not really sure if there is such a thing.

One funny clip from Do You Believe in Gosh (the CD, not the post you're reading) has Hedberg, during a live performance, observing that there's an "Improv" sign somewhere on the stage, before adding, "I had a bad set here last night and they added an E to the end of the sign." Later, he asks: "Is a hippopotamus a hippopotamus... or a really cool opotamus?"

More Mitch-isms here. Long live Mitch.

At least they didn't spell it "sirveigh"

I think the people who conceived and/or executed this survey are a little dumb.

Here's why I say that: If you're attempting to reveal the cities Americans named as our "favorite and least favorite cities to live and work" - never mind that the phrase is missing a well-placed "in which" - you might want to make sure you wind up with two distinct lists.

I'm no statistician, but I'd think a credible survey would produce 10 cities on the favorites list and - see if you can follow me here - 10 different cities on the lineup of least favorites.

Not this survey, which tells us that exactly four out of 10 - again, not a statistician, but that's gotta be right around 40 percent - four out of 10 cities that the greatest number of respondents are dying to live in are also among the 10 cities where we really don't want to live.

For the record, Chicago (which surely deserves its place on the faves list), Las Vegas, Los Angeles and New York were named in both Top 10s. Or the Top 10 and the Bottom 10. Or whatever.

On the other hand, the report does include the astute revelation that "Detroit has a bit of an image problem." Ya' think?

Now that I think about it, that observation about Detroit makes the news item my favorite one of the year, as well as my least favorite.

Earworm

It might have been irrational, but I was hoping that the arrival of the new year would mean that every radio station in Los Angeles would see fit to rethink the gargantuan amount of airplay they're giving Coldplay's Viva la Vida. I was thinking somewhat less than once every 16 minutes would have been great, but so far, no such luck. (If you're somewhere other than L.A., is it this bad in your town?)

Which reminds me: When the song first came out last year, a group-you've-never-heard-of called the Creaky Boards made a big stink about Viva sounding very similar to one of their songs. At the time, it seemed like they had a point, although I think my brain has been chemically altered by hearing the Coldplay version six times a day for the last year, so I have no idea if they've got a case.

Then, while searching for that Creaky Boards video, I discovered that quasi-cult-hero-guitarist Joe Satriani waited until December to decide that Viva also sounds eerily similar to an instrumental he wrote in 2004. Again, I can't tell because my mind has been Coldplayed into submission.

If there's one thing you can learn from all of this, it's that the dude from Creaky Boards has an insane mustache.

Flipping you the Bird

OK, time to get this party started again.

It was around this time last year that I was reveling in the discovery - thanks to a "Best of 2007" recap on NPR's All Songs Considered - of a handful of CDs (or downloads or whatever we're calling them now) that would quickly go into frequent rotation on the ol' iPod. The latest releases by Ray LaMontagne, Arcade Fire and The National, none of whom I'd listened to before, were particular favorites. I liked The National's "Boxer" and Ray LaMontagne's "Till The Sun Turns Black" so much that I eventually also bought earlier albums by both of them.

Another disc I picked up last year was Armchair Apocrypha, the 2007 album by Andrew Bird. I had been a big Bird fan back in my wild-n-crazy Chicago days*, mostly on the strength of The Swimming Hour, which he recorded with his excellently named band, Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire. But the next few albums didn't really do it for me and I was nonplussed by his performance at Lollapalooza** in 2006 (although that might have been because I was wearing a cast on my foot and it was roughly 300 degrees), so when I finally heard Armchair last December, it was like a big sonic hug.

The point of all of this is that I was very pleased to learn that Mr. Bird is playing a show here in L.A. next month to support another new album... and even more pleased to learn that Ticketmaster let me pay them all sorts of ridiculous surcharges (seriously, why don't they also add 10 percent for the privilege of looking at their web site?) to secure two pretty decent seats to said show. And even more pleased, if that's even possible, that the world's most beautiful wife has agreed to attend said (said?) show with me. Because going to concerts on school nights isn't usually her thang.

In a very hackneyed sense - a hackneyed, musical recommenation sense - I guess you could say I just gave you the Bird. Which might not really be that funny, but for reasons that'll become clear in about five seconds, it reminds me of a strange thing I saw during our mini-vacation last week.

We were sitting at an outdoor table, waiting for our food at this ridiculously great roadside cafe in Big Sur, when we heard a car horn followed by the distinctive metal thud-crunch of two cars colliding. Being native East Coasters, we fully expected a nasty brouhaha, or a at least a kerfuffle or set-to. Certainly, someone could have - you saw this one coming, right? - flipped someone else the bird.

So we turned to watch the crashee, a twentysomething woman, jump out of her Hyundai. Realizing her car had sustained no noticeable damage, she broke into a huge grin and crowed to the crasher, a seventysomething man in a Jaguar: "It's all good! Noooo problem!"

And then, as if to remind everyone watching that we were squarely in the middle of the land of the supremely laid-back - and I'm not making this up - she hopped over to the guy who had just backed into her car and gave him an emphatic high-five. "It's totally OK," she gushed. "Plus, it's a rental car anyway! I don't care."

A little hard to imagine the situation going down the same way back home. Kumbaya, my lord. Kumbaya.

* Not actually very wild-n-crazy.
** See? A tiny bit wild-n-crazy.