Sosa Update
 

Well, duh. You only cork one of them at a time. And you make it your "practice" bat, because you definitely want to warm up with a bat that's lighter than the one you'll use during games. Everybody does it, right?

25th Hour (plus bonus accent material)
 

Ted Connover wrote Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing and remarked that he never saw anyone raped or knew of anyone raped in the prison. While I am certain that rapes do occur in prison, there now seems to be a perception (fueled by gangsta rap, Oz, and women's prison movies like Caged Heat) that everyone who goes to prison is sexually assaulted. I don't think that is correct, though I'm certain that I don't want the opportunity to have first-hand knowledge.

Having spent the past 25+ years in California, I hear most accents on television and in movies (instead of in person). I was surprised to hear a Linda Richman-like accent from a woman shopper when I worked at a department store one summer. I remember an interviewer at OCI had a strong accent that I couldn't place until about halfway through the interview, when I realized he sounded just like an uncle. I was distracted until I placed the accent.

On the soda/pop issue, it's soda if you're in California (maybe the far-Northern counties say "pop," the whole board knows I haven't been camping since the 80's, so I wouldn't know for sure.)

I liked all women with southern accents until I heard a woman with a deep, backwoods version. I still love the more cultured version. If all women in Charleston have that accent, then please send Bar Exam and law firm salary info to jack_manfred@hotmail.com.

I also like most British/Scottish/Welsh/Irish accents for women. Cockney was even okay when Samantha Fox was speaking (yes, I know, but I was 14 when she was played on the radio, cut me some slack). In college there was a woman in my dorms who still had a British accent from her childhood. Fantastic. Years later I found she was the roommate of a friend of mine and learned that guys called the house just to hear her accent. She could have paid for college with a phone sex service, but she found the whole idea perverted.

If I could have any accent, I'd pick a Scottish one- nice rounded vowels and a lilt. Name me a woman Ewan MacGregor couldn't have if he wanted. (Granted he's good looking, but I suspect a blindfolded woman would be happy as well.)

I knew 2 people from San Diego who swore to me it was pop in SD. In Seattle it's pop. In SF it's freakin soda. And in LA I heard it both ways enough times that I didn't feel like a freak ordering a pop.

On the East Coast, I have isolated the soda/pop line in NYS as falling somewhere around Syracuse. In Albany, its soda. In Rochester, its pop.

Pop is prevalent in the midwest. Soda in much of the Northeast (except for parts of New England that use tonic or others completely non-sensical terms).

n(this discussion must just thrill TM)cs

Soda v. Pop
 

It's been posted before, but it's a goody - http://www.popvssoda.com/ (soda v. pop study with four color map and great list of things people call soda other than soda, pop, or coke)

25th Hour (plus bonus accent material)
 

I didn't realize we were including foreign accents. If so, for me it's the particular accent that Indian, South Asian, Indonesian and Sri Lankan women have when educated in British schools. My heart melts when I hear Lakshmi Singh on NPR.

Soda/Pop and accents
 

I've managed to successfully avoid the situation by referring to carbonated non-alcoholic bevarages by brand name, or failing that, by generic flavor-type.

"Excuse me, do you have a Diet Sprite? Well then do you have any diet carbonated lemon-lime beverage?" Or "I'm going to the store to pick up some Diet Coke or other brand of diet cola."

If I could have any accent I wanted, it'd no doubt be Aussie. Those guys get laid like carpet. It almost always makes one more appealing. Exception: Rachel Griffiths, who is unappealing with or without her aussie accent.

str(not really surprised that the 6FU finale received little or no comment here)8.

what we talk about
 

I'm not there yet, but this is funny.

"There's a great moment in Barry Levinson's classic film Diner in which the young husband Shrevie, played by Daniel Stern, is asked by one of his buddies if he's happy being married. "I don't know," he sighs, before proceeding to air a big but. "When you're dating, everything is talking about sex. Where can we do it? Why can't we do it? Are your parents going to be home so we can do it? ... Then when you get married, you can get it whenever you want. You get up in the morning, and she's there. And you come home from work, and she's there. And so all that sex planning talk is over with ... I cannot hold a five-minute conversation with my wife."

And thus is revealed the great secret problem of adulthood--finding things to talk about once there's no more talk about sex. Of course, you can find other people with whom to talk about having sex, but that's an awful lot of work--more, if you get caught. You can talk about work, which for most people is a subject gleefully and immediately abandoned at quitting time. You can talk about one of the pastimes you have developed to replace talking about sex--barbecuing, for example, or watching "Six Feet Under"--but these are invariably less interesting than talking about sex, and you and everyone else knows it. But the human being is a determined animal, and more and more people, especially men, are finding an acceptable substitute: Golf."


http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/fea...ki.html#byline

edited to add:
"I'm not there yet" = I don't do the golf thing

Make Your Reservations Now...
 

The social event of the summer...

Lebowski Fest is an annual celebration of all things Lebowski.

The 2nd Annual Lebowski Fest is July 19th , 2003 and will include:

• Unlimited Bowling and Free Shoe Rental
• Celebrity appearance by Jeff "The Dude" Dowd
• Big Lebowski Costume Contest
• White Russians, Sarsaparillas, and Oat Sodas
• Trivia, Farthest Traveled, and Bowling Contests
• What-Have-You

2nd Annual Lebowski Fest
Saturday, July 19th, 2003
AMF Rose Bowl | Louisville, KY
8 PM to 1 AM - $12

Men are vain
 

Plastic surgery catching on with men.
NEW YORK, June 4 — What looks good on the goose looks good on the gander too, a new survey shows. Men are turning to plastic surgery and cosmetic procedures to brighten up their appearances at a faster rate than women, according to a survey released Wednesday.
MEN’S USE of fat injections to soften deep wrinkles leaped 497 percent last year from the previous year. Women’s use of the injections fell 36 percent, according to the American Academy of Facial and Plastic Reconstructive Surgeons survey.
Men’s use of Botox injections to eliminate frown lines rose 88 percent, while women’s Botox use fell 8 percent, it said.full story here you vain men

what we talk about
 

A good alternative is to talk to your wife about her friend's sex lives and live vicariously through that. It helps if your wife has some decent looking friends and if those same friends frequently turn to her as a confidante or a therapist type figure, if you will.

accents
 

I'm not sure I buy the whole "Seattle accent" thing--I've never been able to discern one, but maybe that's because it's the same as the "Willamette Valley accent" I grew up with. For sure it's not Vancouver inflected--we had a client in Vancouver, and every person I ever talked to on the phone there talked FUNNY, and when I was on hold the people on the radio talked FUNNY too.

I think the most annoying accent is rural Utah--not just fark when you mean fork, fail when you mean fell and vice versa; there's also a weird Scandinavian-inflected lilt, and glottal stops, kind of like Minnesoootan without the flattened vowels. The name's not Hansen, it's Hantsen. Bleah. I'm just thankful growing up in Oregon saved me from any genetic predisposition to talk this way.

tm

The Woman Chaser
 

According to The Internet Movie Database, The Woman Chaser isn't available on DVD or VHS, unfortunately. I saw it pop up (in a color version) on cable. If you have Tivo, I think you can program it to record a movie that you're trying to find.

Sunscreen
 

Here is the problem with neutrognea products- they all have a scikly sweet smell. Remember when they were odor free? The cosmeticky stuff (i had gotten some eye cream and had to wash it off bc I was getting nauseous) is just cheap perfumed to death. However, if they keep that shit out of te sunscreen let me know.

Of course, epicuren has two sunscreens- a sports and an invisible zinc. i am guessing you dont need the aesthetician to order it online. I havent tried it yet but I am hoping it is the one sunscreen that wont run into my eyes and sting em ( and I have tried Kiehls, Mario Badescu, MD Forte and Skinceuticals- all do it).

Why does the Skinceturicals invisible zinc sunscreen burn my skin? Its supposed to be the best.

Sunscreen
 

THAT visibly firm line is the shit that smells sickly sweet. In an inspired moment of fiscal responsibility, I decided to buy drug store stuff (cetaphil, neutragena) and was sorely disappointed. DS,. sometimes I think you live on some bizarro planet. DC people have accents? Visibly firm smells like blood? There was something else you said recently that left me going WTF? but I cant remembe it. Sort of makes me question whether you are the true authority on everyting I have always thought you were for years. Maybe you are Cliff Clavin?