"Hello Michael, where do you want to go today?"

I have a GPS navigation system integrated with my car, so I'm not really in the market for a standalone unit right now. However, if my needs change and I do start shopping for one, you can believe that this one will be the first one I consider.

As seen in the Cruise Compass

On my recent cruise I had many issues with incorrect information being presented in the daily Cruise Compass (the onboard program listing the days activities).

Some of the errors were serious ones that caused us to expend a ton of effort to be some place a couple of different times only to find it closed both times, despite what was told us by the Compass and the cruise staff. Most of the other errors were simple grammar or spelling mistakes that were awful hard to overlook because they gave the whole thing this rinky-dink air, like the whole cruise line is being run by the high school journalism club.

This particular typo, though, they can make all they want as far as I'm concerned, because while they may be still in high school, I'm still in junior high.

The Gong Show... With Dave Attell

I've always been a huge fan of The Gong Show. If I ever get to see clips, I'm hugely nostalgic, which is quite strange considering I very rarely ever saw it growing up.

I was one of about 12 people who saw the movie version of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and since that time I've always been wondering why nobody's ever tried to make a modern day version of The Gong Show (and no, American Idol doesn't count). Just a couple of weeks ago, I was making a list of every mediocre game show that's had a modern day remake and wondering how it was that our national obsession with nostalgia had never revisited The Gong Show.

Today I received this bit of news, which announces the July 17th premiere of the all new Gong Show on Comedy Central, with host Dave Attell. One of my concerns was whether any modern remake would have the same goofy yet subversive sensibilities of its predecessor, and I feel really positive about this one. I'm a fan of Dave Attell, and can easily imagine him as an heir to Chuck Barrus. So, needless to say, I'll be watching this when it's on. Heck, I'd be trying out if I could only come up with something suitably retarded yet entertaining enough for TV.

So, until this new version hits the air, I leave you with The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo:

T-Shirt Sighting

During the intermission at the Wallace & Ladmo shindig, I saw a guy wearing the exact same t-shirt I got for a 5k I ran in Provo in 2001. It took my brain a full two seconds to process what I was seeing, because for most of that time it was stuck in the mode of thinking, "Hey, that's my shirt, the one I wear to do yardwork. Why did that guy take my shirt?", followed by "What would a 7 year old shirt from Provo be doing here?"

My brain was hung up on this because I wouldn't ever consider wearing a race t-shirt out in public. It's not that it's not a nice souvenir or something to be proud of. I've just got so many other t-shirts and nicer things to wear. And, if I were to wear it around, it probably wouldn't be 7 years later. To me that seems like advertising to passersby "I'm proud of this thing I did 7 years ago, and I've accomplished jack-all since then."

I didn't get a chance to ask the guy about it, because I couldn't figure out what I could say that didn't make me sound like the dork. "Dude, I've got the same shirt!" "America's Freedom Festival 2001, woo hoo!" "Yo, what was your time? I ran over 33 minutes..."

Ho Ho Ha Ha Hee Hee Ha Ha

If you were a kid in the Phoenix area between 1954 and 1989, a good chunk of your afternoon (and probably morning) was occupied watching The Wallace and Ladmo Show. If you were to meet someone from the area, you wouldn't even bother asking, "Hey, do you remember Wallace and Ladmo?". You can just take it for granted that it was just as much a part of their childhood as it was yours.

I originally became acquainted with Wallace and Ladmo from visiting my cousins in Mesa. When I was 8, we moved to Casa Grande for a year and had Phoenix TV stations, so I watched the show enough during that time to have some pretty fond memories.

My mom's cousin, Mark Arnett, is the producer of a little gang of folks that call themselves the "Citrus Valley Playhouse". What they do is perform on stage in the style of a taping of an old time radio show. Think Prairie Home Companion, but with a focus on Arizona culture and history. All the people involved are top notch, and it's really funny stuff.

Last night, they put on what they billed as "An All-Star Tribute to Wallace and Ladmo". They covered the history of the show and its impact on Arizona. And, they gave out their first ever "Citrus Valley Lifetime Achievement Award" to Bill Thompson (Wallace), Ladmo's widow, Patsy, and Pat McMahon (the utility player best known as "Gerald"). I never got to see them at Legend City or anything, primarily because I never got to go to Legend City, so getting to see Wallace and Gerald live last night was kind of a big deal for me.

Besides Wallace and Gerald, there were a lot of other notables there: Tempe mayor Hugh Hallman, former Attorney General Grant Woods, Dan Harkins (president/CEO Harkins Theatres). They had video appearances from Phoenix mayor Phil Gordon, current Attorney General Terry Goddard, and a handful of newscasters and DJs and things. The most exciting VIP for me, though, was Maricopa County Sherrif Joe Arpaio. When I first saw him before the show, he was flanked by four deputies, ostensibly for security, but most likely to check everyone's citizenship papers.

For the big grand finale last night, they gave away Ladmo Bags. On The Wallace and Ladmo Show, kids who attended the tapings could get their seat number picked to be the lucky recipient of a Ladmo Bag, which was a brown paper bag labelled "Ladmo Bag" and filled with junk food, an autographed picture, and sometimes small prizes from the sponsors. To get a Ladmo Bag was a big huge deal. Most everyone knew someone from their school or church that had received a Ladmo Bag. If you had never got one yourself, though, you never quite got over the resentment.

They gave away 50 bags last night by delivering them to the seat numbers they had previously randomly drawn. You could try to argue that these weren't the real thing since they weren't given away on The Wallace and Ladmo Show, but I don't buy that. The bags were endorsed by Wallace and Pat, and each bag was hand-lettered by Wallace himself, so I'm pronouncing them bona fide. I didn't get one, but the middle-aged woman three seats down from me did. I had overheard the woman saying that she had gone to school with Ladmo's daughter, and Ladmo was her brother's coach, so she had some personal connection that brought her there that night. When I first sat down, she had expressed her envy of the paper Ladmo tie that I had picked up at the VIP reception before hand. When she got that Ladmo Bag, though, the shoe was definitely on the other foot.

When the usher handed her that bag, she was stunned and shocked, which quickly transformed into this joy the likes of which I haven't seen before. It was clear within the first two seconds that receiving this Ladmo Bag was the highlight of her whole year, if not the whole decade. She pulled a couple of things out of the bag to look at, but I think she was afraid to dig into it too much for fear the whole bag would run off or something. She held it tightly to her chest, and when she was walking out of the theater, she had both arms wrapped around it like it was the most precious possession anyone could ever own. So, I was pretty bummed that I didn't get a Ladmo Bag, but seeing just how happy the bag made her took a little bit of the edge off of my resentment.

Creepy Man

I'm in Phoenix for a couple of days for a convention. Tonight, after we got to the hotel, I thought I'd get a little exercise by going down and swimming in the pool for a little bit. In the hot tub next to the pool was a group of about six or seven twenty-something girls. Besides them, there was no one else in the pool area.

My first thought was that the girls are probably thinking to themselves, "Oh great, here comes this hairy fat creepy man down to the pool, putting a damper on our young girl style". But, when I was getting into the pool, one girl shouts to the other, "Hey, are your boobs real or fake? Didn't you get a boob job?" Then, they all proceeded into a conversation where they demanded to see each others' "boobs", and talked about who had the best set. Then, they went on to discuss which boy celebrities they thought were the cutest.

This whole time, I was getting pretty upset because not only did they not think of me as a creepy man, but they were apparently not thinking of me as a man in their presence at all. I was dismayed that they weren't at all threatened by me. I have to concede that at least part of me would rather be regarded as a pervert than not be regarded at all.

First Day Guidelines

To all new employees:

This should go without saying, but an incident today with our new intern has prompted me to issue the following memo reiterating our corporate policy on appropriate first day behavior.

The fundamental tenet of appropriate first day behavior is this: When other people are working and are trying to find you to help out, try to make it a point to not be sitting at the front desk computer playing solitaire. When your boss looks at you incredulously, do not make it worse by complaining how hard it is to win.

On the second day, this may be acceptable. On the first day, however it is not.

Exceptions: If you've been hired for our solitaire department, the above policy does not apply to you.

Monkeys in People Clothes

I came across this article at Ars Technica today, which summarizes a recent paper in the journal Science written by several leading primatologists (including that Jane Goodall tramp).

The gist of the paper is that the frequent appearance of chimpanzees in the media misleads the public into believing that chimpanzees are not an endangered species. The authors asked survey respondents to look at pictures of various great ape species and identify which was endangered. Although almost all respondents correctly identified gorillas and orangutans as endangered, only 66% of respondents identified chimpanzees as an endangered species. When pressed for followup as to why they thought chimpanzees weren't endangered, the most common response was that their prevalence in the media was an indication that they were doing just fine.

The journal article goes on to assert that it's not just the appearance of chimpanzees in media, but specifically their appearance as caricatures that is the cause of all this. I'm guessing they're on to something. It seems true that if you see a chimpanzee on TV or in a magazine, it will more often than not be wearing people clothes. And chimpanzees wear people clothes far more often than all other primates put together.

Now, I've got to admit that I'm the world's greatest advocate for monkeys in people clothes (the word monkeys used here generically to mean all great apes and lower order primates). However, because of my strong stand on monkeys vis-à-vis clothes, I feel a little bit of responsibility to ensure that I'm not unwittingly undermining the efforts to protect these creatures that God so generously provided for our amusement. I hereby resolve from here on out to no longer display any depiction of any primate wearing people clothes without some sort of explanation of that primate's status as an endangered species. I believe strongly that it's now my duty every time I display a monkey in people clothes to warn other people that if they appreciate monkeys in people clothes, they will need to support conservation and protection efforts so that we may always have plentiful supplies of monkeys to dress in people clothes now and for generations to come.

2008 Oscars

Two observations on this year's Oscars:

• Becki and I watched the whole thing, and were a little dismayed to notice that out of every film nominated in every category, we had only seen two, Ratatouille and Once. Yes, it's true, we need to get out more. Are you volunteering to babysit? And to maybe, you know, chip in a little for the popcorn? No? I thought not...

• Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova won the Best Original Song category with Falling Slowly. I did not expect this, and from the looks on their faces, neither did they. But, I am thrilled by this, and I wish to use this space to give them "mad props", as I believe that's what the kids are saying these days.
  

Project Genesis

Royal Caribbean Cruise Line is launching a new ship next year in their new Genesis class. This ship will be, at 220,000 tons, almost 50% larger than the current largest cruise ships in the world (also Royal Caribbean's). This is also larger than virtually every ship ever made with the exception of a small handful of supertankers.

I don't believe I would ever pay to travel on such a ship, although I certainly wouldn't turn it down if it were free. Even though I'm turned off by such a large ship, I am totally amazed by the fact that a ship of that size is even possible, and even more amazed that the cruise line can make a business proposition for building such a thing. In reading about the new Genesis ships I stumbled across a naming contest that invited people to submit their proposed names for the two ships that make up "Project Genesis".

I submitted Behemoth of the Seas and Leviathan of the Seas, both keeping with Royal Caribbean's "____ of the Seas" naming tradition. I had great visions of the two great ships locked in battle at the end of the world. I was pretty proud of myself, but I had the distinct feeling that I wasn't the first to come up with this. I searched through the wide wide world of web and found a few posts on cruise forums that showed that others had in fact had the same idea. I'm so disappointed when I find out I'm not as clever as I think I am.

Ignoring my disappointment for a moment, I was very pleased at some of the other naming ideas that I saw represented on the cruise forums.

There were a few attempts to try to tie in to the "Project Genesis" codename:
Paradise of the Seas
Eden of the Seas
Peter Gabriel of the Seas
Phil Collins of the Seas

I was hoping to see some more prog-rock references, like a King Crimson of the Seas. I was also hoping that Project Genesis could expand to a three ship program so that we could see ships that collectively could be named the Emerson, Lake, and Palmer of the Seas. Alas, those ideas seem to be exclusively mine.

There were a couple of attempts to tie the ship names in to the "Project Genesis" from Star Trek II, but those are way too nerdy to show here.

There were a few attempts to dig on the problems associated with a ship of such a large size:
Disorientation of the Seas
Confusion of the Seas
Bewilderment of the Seas
How the Hell do I Get to the Dining Room of the Seas?

Then of course, there were the inevitable jabs at the sheer size of the ship:

Enormity of the Seas
Immenisty of the Seas
Gargantuan of the Seas
Giganticness of the Seas
Monstrosity of the Seas
Colossus of the Seas
Mammoth of the Seas
Titan of the Seas
Brobdingnag of the Seas (look it up)
Ginormous of the Seas
Oprah of the Seas
and my favorite, That's No Moon, That's a Space Station of the Seas

Discussion of the ships also veered towards speculation as to what onboard features the new ships may have. While all cruise ships have swimming pools, this one is rumored to have a full olympic sized one. The largest cruise ships will have a basketball court on the upper deck. This one has a football field. The Voyager and Freedom class ships have a sort of mini-mall on board. This one has a full-size replica of the Mall of America. Some previous Royal Caribbean ships have had 9 hole miniature golf courses on the upper deck; this one is regular size. One of the Costa ships has an auto racing simulator; this one will have a full race track. Royal Caribbean ships all have a rock climbing wall; this one had an actual mountain installed. Repeat ad infinitum.