Sunday Nights on the Lam: Columbus Day Edition

Technically, I'm pretty sure "Sunday night" actually means "the night when a weekend's worth of procrastination comes back to haunt you," which means that this installment of Sunday Nights on the Lam is actually perfectly punctual. But I think there are bigger things to worry about haunting us, because it appears that this week has seen several signs of the apocalypse. M.I.A. is pregnant, moose are appearing in various urban areas of northern Wisconsin (fleeing from Sarah Palin, no doubt), Barack Obama is advertising in a video game, and today I actually bought a suit without going into convulsions at the price tag. Clearly signs of our impending doom.

And if we will be judged on one thing, I firmly believe that it will be our long-standing failure to address a looming threat that we have ignored for far too long: namely, the threat of an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, attack against the United States. The never-ever-hysterical Heritage Foundation gives us the details:

An EMP attack is produced by detonating a nuclear weapon launched by a ballistic missile. Such a detonation—occurring high above the earth—produces a massive pulse of ionized particles that could damage many electrical and information systems. An attack would disrupt telecommunications, banking and finance, fuel and energy, food and water supplies, emergency and government services, and more, threatening millions of lives.

Fortunately, the nice folks at Heritage have the solution: Congress should declare an "EMP Recognition Day," drawing attention to the threat of an electromagnetic pulse attack by simulating its effects on Capitol Hill for a day. This would involve shutting down the cafeteria (no peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for you, Herb Kohl!), walking to work, shutting off the lights, and - horror of horrors - shutting off Blackberries. (Perhaps John McCain could fly quickly walk in and invent a solution?) So the next time the markets are failing, Iraq is collapsing, and Congress is doing nothing, don't worry - it's not because they're negligent; it's because they're getting ready for the apocalypse in the form of an electromagnetic pulse. (Via Tapped.)

Oh, one more sign of the apocalypse: the Packers are back to .500 with yesterday's 27-17 win over Seattle. Aaron Rodgers, playing with an injured throwing shoulder, managed to throw for two touchdowns; Greg Jennings and Charles Woodson performed exceptionally. Here are the big plays:

Incidentally, next week H-COW (the Harvard College Club of Wisconsin, if you hadn't guessed) will be tailgating for the Colts game, so drop me a line if you want to join us. Bratwurst in Cambridge? Now I know the apocalypse has arrived.

Sunday Nights on the Lam: XXI Edition

OK. Before we get to the usual irreverent Sunday night stuff, a quick detour into the world of things that are actually awesome: the AFL-CIO's Rich Trumka tearing into racism in the labor movement, via Ta-Nehisi. So very well worth the 7:40.

I'm pretty sure I recommend Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog every time I link to him, which I will do again today. Not only is he insightful and funny, he's also the most legitimate blogger I've seen use the term Mittens to describe Mitt Romney, which really makes me feel better about myself. Not so much for Frank Rich saying "OMG" - but that was pretty awesome, too.

While we're on the topic of badass people in the media: I already decided that Gwen Ifill was a badass on Wednesday, when it came out that she broke her ankle a few days before moderating the vice-presidential debate. (This automatically gives her way more badass points than J.Lo, who pulled out of judging the Project Runway finale on grounds of a "foot injury" - then proceeded to compete in a triathlon a couple of days later. Way to keep your priorities in order.)¹ Anyway - this discussion confirmed my suspicions. In my book, anyone who uses the phrase "blew me off" on Meet the Press is a winner.

Today was a pretty terrible day in sports for the state of Wisconsin (unlike last weekend, when the Pius Lady Popes - the only high school sports team that makes me wish I was Catholic - dominated a two-day volleyball tournament), so I'm going to replace the customary Packers clip with a really sweet catch in a presumably obscure Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference game: Edwin Baptiste for Morgan State. Here: Pretty damn awesome. Almost as awesome as Edwin Baptiste's official team photo.

That's all for tonight, folks - please take a moment of silence for the Packers and the Brewers if you get the chance, and think of me as I move us out of first place in the NFC North standings. But once you're done with that, have a fabulous week!

¹ If you're wondering how I found out about the J.Lo thing, it is not because I read Perez Hilton, which I do not, if that sentence was unclear in any way. Rather, it was Go Fug Yourself, which I highly recommend.

Sunday Nights on the Lam: Second Season Premiere Edition

As you're all discovering, one can only make so many excuses about the many obligations imposed by Camp Harvard, the existential crises induced by shopping week, and the importance of being "caught up on reading" for that first precious section meeting before the really and truly important things come barging back to the top of your priority list. For me, that intruder is Sunday Nights on the Lam, and I am pleased to announce its return.

Of course, the hiatus does induce a certain laziness - which, for me, is reflected in the sad, sad state of my "Sunday night thoughts" file, which reads: "Random sporting moments?" So hell - let's roll with that.

I'm pretty sure that thought was jotted down during the Olympics in a rather distorted state of mind - distorted not only because I watched unhealthy amounts of TV, but also because I took to waking up at odd hours of the early morning to watch the obscure sports (badminton, table tennis) with my father, who tends to be enthusiastic about any sport in which the players for the American, Swedish, and Singaporean teams are all disproportionately likely to be Chinese. I am a big fan of the obscure sports, not only because I have a limited tolerance for Bob Costas telling me what Michael Phelps' mom ate for breakfast but also because it's pretty fun to watch them. I mean, badminton is pretty sweet. Look at this:

Don't tell me you could do that.

Nor should ping-pong be dismissed out of hand as a sport merely for the basement athlete:

Actually, I think that the real lesson of this video is that there are a lot of odd-sport fans who also have weird taste in music. While searching for videos of Lin Dan (the "bad boy of badminton," according to my dad, who should know), I found one fan who really likes the Red Hot Chili Peppers, for instance.

Sadly, I could find no clips of the hammer throw set to inspiring music, which is probably okay. I was turned on to the hammer throw by one very enthusiastic New York Times blogger, who I can only assume was posted to the Bird's Nest all day and decided that watching people run in circles was not his cup of tea. So instead this guy decided he'd watch the hammer throw, and I guess he fell in love:

Two days ago, when I went to watch the riveting Croatia-China handball match, I thought I had discovered my new favorite Olympic sport. I was wrong. It’s hammer throw. Seriously. I used to think hammer throw was what the koopa troopas in the Super Mario Bros. video games did (Kidding, kidding). I have found the error in my ways.

I think I can see his point. I mean, look at this:

They just pick up this thing that has no resemblance whatsoever to a hammer, and then they whirl around, and around, and around, and around, and then they scream like hell, and I guess the dudes in the suits probably try not to get hit, and somehow it's the Olympics. Isn't that amazing? But I guess if you're not that impressed, you could watch the Mario version. I guess that Times dude wasn't so far off.

There are so many obscure sports I'd love to talk about - team handball, synchronized swimming, trampoline - but it's about bedtime, so I'm going to leave you with my all-time favorite of ridiculous sports, especially when it's 3 AM and you totally weren't expecting it to come on the TV: the racewalk. Now, I don't mean to deny that racewalking is a legitimate sport that requires a tremendous degree of talent - I mean, these people walk faster than I run. But now that I've acknowledged that, I hope they'll acknowledge this: DAMN, racewalkers look silly. There are scientific reasons for this, I suppose, but that doesn't make the arm-pumping and hip-swiveling any less hilarious. Just look:

Damn.

That's all for tonight, folks - send over your obscure sports obsessions; I'll give them their proper due.

Sunday Nights on the Lam: Cheese Curds, Booyah, and Beer Edition

Hello from sunny rainy flooded Wisconsin, where I have been happily lodged for most of the last month (fortunately, without any water damage). As anyone who has ever talked to me, walked past me when I have a Green Bay Packers logo attached to my person somewhere, or been within shouting distance when I am watching a football game is painfully aware, I love this place, almost as much as I love foisting every possible Wisconsin reference on unsuspecting passers-by. Sadly, I get fewer opportunities to do that when I'm actually in Wisconsin, since most of our unsuspecting passers-by already fully appreciate Brett Favre and frozen custard and have no need of my promotional comments. But it's come to my attention that tonight is Sunday night, and that I haven't offered an edition of Sunday Nights on the Lam for a long, lonely five-week stretch. So we're going to combine my two passions - Wisconsin and inexcusably belated blogging - for this live-from-Wisconsin edition of Sunday Nights on the Lam.

First, it's baseball season, and according to accuratebobbleheadlist.blogspot.com, my new second-favorite blog, that can only mean that the Brewers are giving away bobblehead dolls! For the uninitiated, these little figurines usually bear the likeness of some popular player, but here in Milwaukee, we honor the true stars - participants in the sausage race, in which people costumed as a bratwurst, a hot dog, a chorizo, an Italian sausage, and a kielbasa race around the field at the bottom of the sixth inning of every game. Consequently, fans who attended today's 7-3 beatdown of Sam Novey's beloved Orioles were rewarded with a bobblehead figure of a Polish sausage. As awesome as a bobble-sausage is, though, even I will admit that it can't quite top a Memorial Day Weekend bobblefoot day. Apparently the Saint Paul Saints, a minor-league team over yonder in the Land of Slightly Fewer Lakes, handed out this tribute to Larry Craig:

Now, if that doesn't make you appreciate baseball, I don't know what will.

On the subject of sports, folks here also do love their hunting, and not just the shooting at varmints that passes for hunting in Romney-land. The corresponding pro-gun attitudes have sometimes reached frightening extremes - for example, in 2005, we came dangerously close to passing a concealed-carry bill that would allow guns in daycare centers. However, happily, we haven't gone quite so far as the Missouri car dealer who gave away a free gun to everyone who bought a car. Perhaps another argument for alternative energy - with gas prices this high, people are really getting desperate to sell a car.

Finally, if you're wondering about the title of this post, it's a reference to a song from a fabulous musical called "Belgians in Heaven," by Fred Heide and James Kaplan; it was performed regularly during my childhood (and possibly still today) by the American Folklore Theatre in Door County, Wisconsin. (Where is that? If Wisconsin is shaped like a mitten - and no matter what Michiganders and Michigeese tell you, it is - Door County is about where the thumbnail starts. Picturesque, I know.) Sadly, they haven't yet hit YouTube, but it is an excellent show, and it features a hilarious song with the chorus:

Cheese curds, booyah, and beer
That's what I like to hear
I may be kinda pokey,
But I say, "Okey-dokey!"
To cheese curds, booyah, and beer.

I love this song not only because it's an awfully catchy polka, but also because it celebrates three of Wisconsin's greatest sources of calories, two of which you've probably never heard of (you can guess which two). Cheese curds, although they probably sound fairly artificial, are actually fresh cheddar cheese, before it's processed and aged; they are the only food product I know of that are fresh if they squeak in your teeth. Fresh curds are tasty raw, but as far as I'm concerned, they are infinitely better when fried - those of you lucky enough to have a Culver's nearby can experience that particular delicacy. Booyah is a chicken stew of probably Belgian origins whose name, long before it was a short-lived expression of triumph when I was in approximately the fifth grade, originated as a botched transcription of the French "bouillon," properly pronounced. And beer - well, you know. However, you may not know how John McCain feels about beer:

All we need to do is circulate that video, and Barack Obama will take Wisconsin by double-digit margins.

That's all for this week's (or, more probably, month's) edition of Sunday Nights on the Lam. Enjoy your summers, and visit Wisconsin!

Sunday Nights on the Lam: Reading Period Time Travel Edition

I officially give up on all pretense of regularly posting "Sunday Nights" on actual Sunday nights. I trust nobody will be altogether brokenhearted.

Today, tonight, or whatever the hell time it is, we're going back to school. First, to high school, before anybody's Gmail started sprouting little blinking orange chat boxes in the corner - in fact, before anybody had Gmail. All the way back to AOL Instant Messenger. And you might feel like you're too sophisticated now to even admit that you had AIM and a screen name with the number '16' in it somewhere, but don't worry - DavidAxelrod and Howard Wolfson still do! Apparently they "exchanged pleasantries" online last Wednesday, on the day that may or may not go down as the final excruciating morning after of this interminable primary season. Though the "pleasantries" are presumably not on the public record, happily, a couple of bloggers have offered their own interpretations. First, a commenter on Ben Smith's blog at Politico takes this guess:

TheRodster42: lol ur toast
WolfieSweater69: stfu, we won IN
TheRodster42: lol NC pwned u
WolfieSweater69: rev wright said wut?
TheRodster42: lol typ white person...

But I personally prefer Ana Marie Cox's rendering:

KewlSweater (9:26:06 PM): yt?
AxStache (9:26:55 PM): y
KewlSweater (9:27:01 PM): we got the white ppl! suck on it!
AxStache (9:27:12 PM): sorry am 2 busy sucking on our 14 PT WIN! PWND!!!!!
KewlSweater (9:27:40 PM): :(
KewlSweater (9:27:45 PM): u don't have to be so mean about it.
KewlSweater (9:28:01 PM): dude rlly, this like, totally blows….
AxStache (9:28:04 PM): i know bro. srsly, i feel for you…
KewlSweater (9:28:07 PM): it’s really curious how much this blows…
AxStache (9:28:14 PM): i know man, but it doesn’t blow as much as Penn!
KewlSweater (9:28:16 PM): LOLOLOL
AxStache (9:28:17 PM): LOL!!!!!
KewlSweater (9:28:19 PM): SRSLY!!! LOLOLOL J ;-)
AxStache (9:28:21 PM): ROFL ROFL….i think i laughed so hard i made my mustache crooked!
KewlSweater (9:28:22 PM): LOLOLOL
AxStache (9:28:23 PM): heehee
KewlSweater (9:28:25 PM): i miss you
AxStache (9:28:29 PM): i miss you too
Phil4Hill (9:28:30 PM): hey guys what’s up?
KewlSweater (9:28:35 PM): um….hey

God help us all, we probably sounded like that once too.

And while we're in the earlyish stages of our adolescent swaggering, let's revisit what I assume to be a confrontation that everyone but me had with their parents: the inevitable fight at the first appearance of text messaging charges on the cell phone bill. (I didn't have a cell phone until I moved out for college. I had suspicions that my parents harbored secret Luddite tendencies when it took us until approximately 1999 to purchase an answering machine, but the cell phone thing more or less sealed the deal.) At any rate, apparently kids these days without a texting plan are subjecting their obliging parents to large bills, which the parents grouse about - understandably, since the idea of paying fifteen cents for every 'lol' a child transmits, in lieu of actual snickering, to his best friend sitting ten feet away would raise my hackles, too. A presumably disgruntled parent named Nigel Bannister (very British, which, in fact, he is), who also happens to be a space scientist, was presumably so disgruntled that he calculated the relative cost per byte of transmitting information via text message versus the cost of transmitting information from the Hubble Telescope. The result: at five pence per message (which, I will have you know, is far cheaper than my non-plan), texting is at least four times more expensive than sending data from the Hubble. To earth. Which, you know, is a long way away.

But enough of that heady stuff - let's back up a little further to your first pimple and, hopefully, your last NSync CD. (Remember: yours, not mine.) Back up to a time when this headline would have been unimaginably hilarious: "Great Tits Cope Well With Warming." Sadly, it's actually about - well, I'll let you figure that out, because I want you to click the link and share in my disappointment. I'll just say: screw you, BBC News.

Finally, to elementary school, that idyllic time of coloring hours and playground games, with this super-cheesy entry in MoveOn's contest to produce an ad for Barack Obama. (You can see the other winners here.)

Now, isn't that just cute enough to turn your stomach? I'll leave you here, just like those kids - happy, holding hands, and with absolutely nothing interesting to do, now that some brat has killed your game of Red Rover.

PSYCH! (There's another throwback.) A late update from the adult world, probably more adult than we'd like to be at this point in our lives: Today, the House Republicans circulated a memo claiming:

Through our “Change You Deserve” message and through our “American Families Agenda,” House Republicans will continue our efforts to speak directly to an American public looking for leaders who will offer real solutions for the challenges they confront every day.

Which is problematic in itself, since the idea of an "American Families Agenda" sounds a lot like the much more boring version of the homosexual agenda (think Mom Jeans). But there's an even more fitting link: apparently "Change You Deserve" is already the slogan of an antidepressant. How very, very telling.

Sunday Nights on the Lam: Reading Period Has Gotten To Me Already Edition

Okay, I concede that it's Monday. I have little to no excuse. (Actually, I do: not one but two papers. I love reading period!) But hey, Green Bay has two Monday night games next season. And my season lasts all year. (Kind of like baseball - it just won't stop, even when every event is unreasonably long and you could get to all the interesting bits in about five percent of the time.) So what follows is an unapologetically late edition of Sunday Nights on the Lam, following the theme of... no theme at all!

In semi-political news, an interesting court case has come up in Greece. Those of you vaguely conversant with queer history (or perhaps mythology?) will know that the term 'lesbian' comes from the island of Lesbos, home of the poet Sappho, who, despite the fact that very few of her works have survived to the present day, is widely considered perhaps the founding mother of lesbian poetry. (Representative sample:

Come back to me, Gongyla, here tonight,
You, my rose, with your Lydian lyre.
There hovers forever around you delight:
A beauty desired.

Even your garment plunders my eyes.
I am enchanted: I who once
Complained to the Cyprus-born goddess,
Whom I now beseech

Never to let this lose me grace
But rather bring you back to me:
Amongst all mortal women the one
I most wish to see.

Not, in my opinion, the steamiest of love poems, but I guess that's enough to get you the rainbow letter in ancient Greece.) Anyway, the island continues to exist, in that persistent way that elements of founding myths do sometimes, and apparently some of the straight islanders are all upset about the term's present connotation. So a publisher from the island and various other offended citizens are suing the Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece to prevent them from using the world 'lesbian,' on the grounds that being associated with the gays is so humiliating that it violates the islanders' human rights. Now there's the humanitarian crisis of the century.

For reasons I can't recall, although it's not on my usual blogroll, I was reading Boing Boing the other day and stumbled across this post about the newest frontier in what might be described as the New Yorker cartoon genre of consumer items: things that 95% of Americans, myself included, are just not cultured enough to get. Marjin van der Poll, a name I am reproducing here not because I have any idea who he is but rather because it's a sweet name, has designed a chair, of sorts: a cube of 0.04" thick steel that comes with a sledgehammer, which you use to bash the chair into any shape you like. (Or, to put it in artsier terms, you "hit and pound it into your own perfect piece of functional art.") The basic model (cube plus sledgehammer) costs $5924; for just $794 more, you can have the distinct honor of owning a chair "pre-formed" by van der Poll himself. (Who comes up with these prices, anyway?) There is also a video of the chair being customized. Sort of a modern, much more expensive, and infinitely less comfortable take on the old-fashioned art of sitting in a chair until it develops a groove the shape of your butt, I guess. I am reminded of the seventy-ninth thing that white people like: modern furniture.

I can't think of much else to add, so instead I'll just share the reason why I haven't found any actual content for this post: I've been going through Nerve's list of the 50 Greatest Commercial Parodies of All Time, a fabulous compilation that's a little SNL-heavy - but since SNL sort of dominates the genre, this is pretty fair. I'll leave you with something you might consider old, but since I haven't watched it in a while and it had me giggling tonight, I'll call it a classic: Robot Insurance.

That's all for this week's edition of Sunday Nights on the Lam. Watch out for those robots!

Sunday Nights on the Lam: It Ain't Over Till the Grey Lady(1) Sings Edition

This post is brought to you live from my dorm room, which sounds unexciting, but if you were here, you'd realize that the atmosphere is still thick with the excitement of prefrosh weekend, the first of two times in a Harvard student's life when some piece of College-issued paraphernalia will irreversibly brand you as younger than everyone else on campus.² There were a lot of good moments, including a great intro meeting, a sweet evening of partying like Republicans (the first time, and hopefully only, in my life I've ever popped my collar)³, and Sam Novey dressed in a donkey costume (much more appropriate than this). But my personal favorite was our unqualified beatdown of the Republicans in a debate about health care. You will probably get the gist of the debate if I tell you that at one point, the Republicans claimed that the single biggest cause of preventable death in the United States is gun violence related to the crack cocaine trade.⁴ It doesn't get much better than that.

Of course, the debate wasn't all fun and games, because lo and behold, we were repeatedly accused of attempting to create a "socialized" health care system, despite the fact that we were advocating a very straightforward version of the Obama/Hillary mixed public/private system. Never fear; I managed to brush my shoulders off and move on with life. Still, I think, that just goes to show you, I think, that it's kind of difficult being a Democrat. Being right is just such a burden.

More than that, there are an awful lot of demands on the average liberal's time. For one, there's maintenance of this really complex brain:⁵

And there's never a moment's rest, because even when I'm finished with my weekly panicking about global warming, blaming America for everything, and polishing of the sickle in my shrine to Karl Marx, I have so many other liberal obligations to attend to. Of course, the homosexual agenda is awfully pressing. Going out of my way to buy my hourly triple-shot extra-hot soy latte from the barefoot hippie collective in the next town, rather than the nice family-owned store down the block, burns an awful lot of transit time, even though I'm pretty sure that not supporting the patriarchy is worth the extra effort. And there's all that bicycle maintenance (I just couldn't bring myself to burn fossil fuels, especially not in an American-made car), consciousness-raising, and hemp-weaving.

Given all of these constraints on my time, I must confess, it's pretty difficult for me to find time, between chats with Jane Fonda and sips of Chablis,⁶ to settle down with that old liberal standard: the New York Times. Nonetheless, today, after a long and hard weekend of recruiting impressionable young minds into the elitist liberal ivory tower that is Harvard, I felt that I deserved a break, so I settled down in front of my RSS feed and found out some interesting things in the Times.

Naturally, lots of articles really spoke to my world of rampant promiscuity and sexual fluidity, like this one about young gay couples getting married⁷ and this one about the complexities of legal marriage when you're transgender. In both cases, of course, the Times dared to insinuate that LGBT folks might actually be people, too - a truly radical proposition.

My sense of comfort was a little bit disrupted by the audacity of the Times' decision to offer some excuse for John McCain, should he fail to capture the presidency: it's not that he's old; it's that the 1930s sucked. Nonetheless, out of habit, I soldiered on. But what I found was not so much an infiltration by the vast right-wing conspiracy, but rather reporting on some pretty obvious stuff.

For instance: did you know that Florida has problems with elections sometimes? And that people buy less in recessions? Me neither! Thank you, New York Times!

Also enlightening was the fact that, much to his owners' dismay, 2002 Kentucky Derby champion War Emblem does not want to have sex. The horse's obstinate refusal to impregnate every mare he meets has cost his owners an estimated $55 million in stud fees. Now, in my book, fathering seventy kids is not exactly reluctance, but I guess standards are different for horses employed to make babies. A suggestion for the owners of Shadai Stallion Station: MAYBE HE'S GAY. That's probably why the Times has an in with him.

But the single most disappointing article I found in the Times this week was this seemingly innocuous piece on one Melissa Clark's quest for a perfect chocolate pudding. The first page or so is fun to read; it's about the author's decade-long search for a good chocolate pudding recipe. I found myself drawn into the story, even wishing her well.⁸ But then we got to this fatal line, when she's starting to expand her odyssey into variations on custard:

Back in my kitchen, I tried something new. If I wanted an American-style pudding that was ultraluxurious, the trick would be to reduce the cornstarch and increase the eggs and chocolate to compensate for the loss of thickening power.

At the same time, I would make pot de crème and pit it against my best stove-top efforts.

But why stop there? I’d also investigate flan, which is baked custard gilded with caramel. And what is ice cream? Frozen custard!

On behalf of the great state of Wisconsin and of dairy-product lovers everywhere, I would like to bring you, Melissa Clark, and the general public the following message: ICE CREAM IS NOT FROZEN CUSTARD. According to the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 21, Chapter 1, Part 135, Section 110(a)(2):⁹

Frozen custard shall contain 1.4 percent egg yolk solids by weight of the finished food: Provided, however, That when bulky flavors are added the egg yolk solids content of frozen custard may be reduced in proportion to the amount by weight of the bulky flavors added, but in no case is the content of egg yolk solids in the finished food less than 1.12 percent.

In short: frozen custard is made with eggs; ice cream is not. Now, to borrow from John Edwards, this is personal for me. As you would have to be daft not to know by now, I grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, home of lots of dairy products and, more importantly, lots of people who have come up with an unceasing stream to concentrate as much fat and sugar as humanly possible in those dairy products. Hence, frozen custard. Kopp's, Gilles, and Leon's (the inspiration for Arnold's Drive-In from Happy Days!)¹⁰ were all staples of my childhood (and adulthood, too). One of my principal reservations about Massachusetts, as much as I love this bluest of states, is that you people don't seem to have any frozen custard. So I can't stress enough that frozen custard and ice cream are two entirely different delicacies. I will also happily advance the argument that frozen custard is categorically superior - but you won't believe it until you taste it. Hence, I publicly issue an invitation to Melissa Clark and all of you lovely DemApples readers: come visit me in Wisconsin, and I will take you out for frozen custard. You may never go back.

That's all for this week's edition of Sunday Nights on the Lam. Thanks for taking time out of your busy liberal day to read!

¹ For the sake of transparency, I will be straightforward about this: I didn't know whether to say 'Grey Lady' or 'Gray Lady,' so I decided by Google Fight. A friend and I pioneered the technique of using Google Fight to make choices last week in the dining hall, while searching for ways to objectively confirm our mutual sentiment that pie is better than cake. Which it is.
² I am referring, of course, to the red folder. The second time would be the lanyards issued to freshmen on their arrival. Honestly, though, who wouldn't want to display their dorm room key?
³ Probably not surprising given that I also don't own a polo shirt.
⁴ I should add, for the sake of being gentlemanly as well as because these are my actual feelings, that it's always a pleasure to debate the Republicans - but this was especially fun.
⁵ Courtesy Conservopedia, although I'm sure they wouldn't have been very courteous if I'd actually asked. On a related note, it's really refreshingly ironic to see a fair-use statement on a conservative website.
⁶ Sorry. Is that appropriate? I don't actually know if that's even a stereotype. I come from Miller country, so you'll have to forgive my ignorance of the more elitist mechanisms of inebriation.
⁷ Featuring Harvard's own Assistant Dean of the College Paul J. McLoughlin II!
⁸ Not to mention really freaking hungry. Like I am right now.
⁹ I am not making this up.
¹⁰ Which I've never watched. Why bother when you have the real thing?

Sunday Nights on the Lam: Monday Night Football Edition

DUN DUN DUN DUN... you know the song! Oh wait, you don't? Here you go. (For the record, the Bears still suck.)

I'm pretty sure I've never used the Monday Night gag to excuse a late installation of Sunday Nights yet, so I'm playing that card now. (Last week was a bye week.) This entire post will be an attempt to compensate with things that may or may not make you smile.

In semi-political news, it certainly made me smile to find out that Alberto Gonzales is still unemployed. Seniors, despair not! If you're having difficulties finding a job, just make friends in high places. They might not be able to get you a paid position, but they could probably come up with a good euphemism for your state. Witness:

“Maybe the passage of time will provide some opportunity for him,” said one Washington lawyer who was aware of an inquiry to his firm from a Gonzales associate. “I wouldn’t say ‘rebuffed,’ ” said the lawyer, who asked his name not be used because the situation being described was uncomfortable for Mr. Gonzales. “I would say ‘not taken up.’ ”

At the risk of my own enjoyment of schadenfreude,¹ I'll be generous and hope that Gonzo can take a lesson in resilience from this Russian guy, who got (literally) stabbed in the back while drinking with a friend, staggered home, and slept it off - until his wife woke up and realized there was still a knife sticking out of his back. For a guy who woke up with a six-inch knife in him, he seems awfully forgiving:

"We were drinking and what doesn't happen when you're drunk?" he was quoted by Komsomolskaya Pravda as saying.

I guess Dick Cheney's made that excuse, too.

Equally badass: it was recently revealed that Pearl Cornioley, an agent in the French Resistance during the Second World War, was originally assessed as best suited to be a "subordinate." As it turned out, the assessment was quite radically wrong; she ended up parachuting into France (badass), commanding three thousand resistance fighters (super-badass), and wearing sweet hats (most badass of all). I aspire to be that cool - and to be photographed in those sunglasses - when I am 92.

Finally, since Pennsylvania is upon us and we've probably heard enough random claims to fill up a... uh... well, an entire six weeks' worth of presidential debates, a little something from xkcd.

We'll close with alternative sports: the Hipster Olympics!

That's all for this week's edition of Sunday Nights on the Lam, Monday-night style. Don't corrupt the prefrosh!

¹ Don't judge me for the Spongebob video. I searched to no avail for videos of "Schadenfreude" from Avenue Q proper, but I had no luck. Apparently World of Warcraft interpretations of songs from popular musicals are a dime a dozen these days, so I just linked the most unexpected setting of the song I could find.

Sunday Nights on the Lam: Flashbacks Edition

Greetings from the depths of everything that JSTOR has to say about prisoner reentry! The spectre of rapidly approaching academic doom that lurks somewhere in that intricate logo is kind of frightening me right now, and I'm starting to wish that I were still in simpler times. Maybe high school, when there were IB exams and drama - wait, maybe middle school, when there was even more drama - wait, maybe elementary school. But elementary school took place when we wore stirrup pants. Damn! Apparently I invented that magical time. But I'm going to recreate it anyway.

The classic childhood staple, of course, is Oregon Trail, the old Apple IIe standby that taught us all how to navigate the rapids, make it to Walla Walla, and die of dysentery. To this day I have never carried more than a hundred pounds of meat back home from a hunting trip. (True fact!) Yet despite my instinctive familiarity with the trail, I have to say that until today, I'd never read the official game description:

Try taking a journey by covered wagon across 2000 miles of plains, rivers, and mountains. Try! On the plains, will you slosh your oxen through mud and water-filled ruts or will you plod through dust six inches deep?

How will you cross the rivers? If you have money, you might take a ferry (if there is a ferry). Or, you can ford the river and hope you and your wagon aren't swallowed alive!

What about supplies? Well, if you're low on food you can hunt. You might get a buffalo... you might. And there are bear in the mountains.

At the Dalles, you can try navigating the Columbia River, but if running the rapids with a makeshift raft makes you queasy, better take the Barlow Road.

If for some reason you don't survive -- your wagon burns, or thieves steal your oxen, or you run out of provisions, or you die of cholera -- don't give up! Try again... and again... until your name is up with the others on The Oregon Trail Top Ten.

Sorry, that's actually really lame. Don't read that. It might crush your hopes and dreams. Instead, go to Gamespy and download the Oregon Trail ROM. (Technical stuff: For Windoze users, there's a presumably functional Apple IIe emulator linked on the page; Apple folks, since I forget which one worked for me, you're on your own. Legal stuff: don't use ROMs you don't own, or something like that, although I feel that fifteen years of enrollment in the Milwaukee Public Schools should entitle me to one of their old Oregon Trail licenses.)

Speaking of bulk licenses, here's someone's brilliant DHTML version of Number Munchers. It brought me back for sure, right up until I got eaten and the popup said... well, you find out; I promise it's worth the psychological horror of having the graphical representation of yourself being eaten by a drooling purple monster. Really.

And while we're on the topic of math games, much to my surprise someone has made an online version of that Lemonade Stand game, which I had totally forgotten about for the last ten years or so. Go learn math! Or profiteering! Or something!

But the other undisputed classic of our times is Carmen Sandiego, in all of its iterations - the various computer games, and the venerable TV game show. The original game, I believe, was Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, which Gamespy makes available in its really, really old-school format. (I recall eventually moving on to the Deluxe edition, but that's a level of graphic sophistication too far for this blog post.) But that was never quite as exciting as the game show, which I used to watch with a mix of great enthusiasm and great disdain, in the firm belief that I was so much better at geography than those damn slow kids who got to play the map game. Of course, last summer I discovered a few full episodes of Carmen Sandiego on Youtube, and I discovered that those damn kids were an awful lot better at geography than I am as a semi-adult. As an ego check, I submit to you a (relatively easy) map game, plus the Chief being awesome as always.

Also, here is a(n amazingly grainy) video of my personal favorite source of clues, The One and Only Plastic Diver Guy! (Interestingly, with a clue about the Charles.)

Finally, also in the category of things I had repressed as totally as my kindergarten stirrup pants, the spinoff from that show, "Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?"

I cannot believe that people voluntarily went through all of that just to bring our generation a PBS game show. There must be a few thirtysomethings out there whose friends have absolutely never ceased tormenting them about those time travel suits.

Ordinarily I'd close with sports, but I figure that those kids running around was enough of other people exercising for today, and it's not like there are any important basketball games going on. That's all for today - happy reminiscing!

Sunday Nights on the Lam: Spring Break Comeback Edition

Hello, hello, hello, and a big welcome-back to my fellow bloggers and other Harvard students! For those of you who live out in the Real World, I offer apologies for the infrequency of updates in the last week, but know that we were all on spring break, in sunny locations like Toronto (from which, I'm told, there are no lines of communication but telegram, which makes me rather disappointed that I never learned Morse code in my three years at Samuel Morse Middle School) and Milwaukee, about which I've already complained. Since we were out tanning most of the day, there wasn't too much time left for posting anything more than the occasional snarky movie trailer and small-town MySpace sex scandal. But now we're back!

...There, a whole week of DemApples in one paragraph, and one of my favorite Craigslist rants too. Am I done yet?

Of course not! But I do have to confess, now that I've revealed my super-secret blogging methods and don't have anything else to lose, that my "Sunday Nights" file is totally empty. It doesn't even say "Elk-calling?" So I will indulge in a practice that is, depending on who you ask, either the scourge of responsible blogging or the foundation of blogging itself: namely, linking to other blogs.

I'm sure (I hope) we're all familiar with the inimitable Stuff White People Like, which kicked off the trend of "Stuff [Demographic Group] Likes" blogs, at least in the very scientific sense of I heard of it first. They started simply, with the obvious candidates (the first three were coffee, religions that their parents don't belong to, and film festivals), but they've since branched out to covering White People in the News and White Spots. They're pretty much on target most of the time. Exemplary recent posts include "Music Piracy":

Advanced white people will also talk about how their constant downloading of music makes them an expert who can properly recommend bands to friends and co-workers, thus increasing revenues and exposure. So in fact, their “illegal” activities are the new lifeblood of the industry.

And "Having Gay Friends":

If white people could draft friends the way that the NFL drafts prospects it would go like this: black friends, gay friends, and then all other minorities would be drafted based on need and rarity to the region.

All this prescient analysis has landed the good people at SWPL a book deal, plus a host of imitations.

For instance, while we're on the topic of gay friends, there's Stuff Lesbians Like. I can testify to this, although I am probably biased in favor of the L Word-related items since I'm simultaneously blogging and watching the season finale (oy!). Representative items include "Threatening to Cancel Showtime" every time something dissatisfying happens on the L Word (which I would totally do if I had a TV) and "Craigslist":

Lesbians like to read the “women seeking women” section of Craig’s List - but not for dating purposes. Very few actual lesbians post on the W4W section of Craig’s List to find a date. Approximately 95% of the people who post on Craig’s List to find a date aren’t real lesbians. Most are men pretending to be lesbians or couples trying to convince a female to join a threesome.

Instead, lesbians post on the W4W section of Craig’s List to complain about and start fights with other lesbians.

Basically true.

Of course, we couldn't leave the boys out, so there's also Stuff Gay Guys Like. The site's pretty young, with only eight entries on the list, but it holds, I think, quite a bit of potential. Notable items include "Triumph Over Adversity," which would explain the Tina Turner and Madonna things, and "Real Estate." Quality. I will keep an eye out.

The more obvious spinoff category of "Stuff [Ethnic Group] Likes" is also well populated. Many of these are groups I am not qualified to comment on: Stuff Educated Black People Like (Howard University, Oprah, jazz); Stuff Desis Like (cricket, bargain hunting, Friends), so I will just link without endorsement. (Do notice the picture of a vat of frying samosas on the top banner of "Stuff Desis Like." That's stuff I like too, but owing to predictability, I've so far declined to create the blog "Stuff People who Like Fried Stuff Like.")

That said, there is one spinoff blog I can laugh at without engaging in acts of gross political incorrectness: namely, Stuff Asian People Like. It can be difficult to generalize across Asians (which The Onion pointed out as early as 1996), but if you ignore cultural heterogeneity and shit, this one is great. Some entries are glaringly obvious among Harvard students ("Piano and Violin") and Harvard tourists ("Peace Sign"). Others appear to fall into the category of stuff that Asians have produced that other people like ("Jet Li and Bruce Lee," "Jackie Chan," "Asian Buffets"). There are a few things that I think you have to go to China (or, you know, Asia - I don't discriminate like that) to fully appreciate - for instance, the durian, a frighteningly spiky fruit that I never knew existed until I looked up one day while walking to dinner someplace in China - which city, I forget - and saw a bunch of them dangling ominously and pointily over my head from a tree. They are so spiky that Singapore forbids people from carrying them on trains, or at least the blog says so. Finally, there are a few entries that we all knew were true but never thought about it. The prime example is "Aging Cookware," which is easily confirmed by a quick glance at my father's rusty cleavers, with which he assails a cutting board that his father-in-law made him as an anniversary present well before I was born, lo these two decades ago. In sum, you have my half-Asian full approval (think about that one) to laugh at this blog.

Sadly, for those of you looking to leave DemApples for solo projects (not that I would ever approve of that), the niche appears to be filled. I can't think of any unblogged demographic that's big enough to have a body of stereotypes already established in the public imagination, and that's either dominant enough (like white people) or positively stereotyped enough (like Asians) for said blog not to be offensive. But never fear - courtesy of The New Republic's contribution, "Why White People Like 'Stuff White People Like'," there's a whole new set of navels just waiting to be gazed at!

Now that I've probably offended everyone, we'll close with an important reminder from some puppets:

That's all for this week's edition of Sunday Nights on the Lam. Welcome back!

Sunday Nights on the Lam: Central Time Edition

With apologies to Brian Kaufman and the good people at OHT, this edition of Sunday Nights on the Lam is brought to you live from Wisconsin, on Central time. (In Central time? In Central Time? Whatever, we're an hour behind Cambridge - or fifty-three minutes behind Harvard, if you like.) At any rate, this will be an abbreviated version of Sunday Nights, given that I've only recently emerged from my Easter food coma, but I did want to further my ongoing project of exposing the East Coast to the wild ways of Wisconsin by - what else?! - talking about snow.

Now, typically most people, except for Markus, think of spring break as something like this:

Whether it's associated with Easter or not, the phrase "spring break" tends to bring to mind, you know, sun and grass and stuff. Except in Milwaukee, we can't see the grass, because on Friday the powers-that-be were kind enough to dump fifteen inches of snow on us. This delayed the departure of my plane home the next day by four and a half hours, resulting in me passing ungodly amounts of time in Logan Airport, which is, surprisingly, not more exciting than Milwaukee's Mitchell Airport, because the latter has TVs (hence March Madness) at all the gates, while my Logan terminal didn't. But I did make it onto the plane, where I was served fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies (I cannot emphasize strongly enough that this is the single most compelling reason to fly Midwest Airlines, should you ever need to be in Milwaukee, Kansas City, or Omaha). And when I got home, I discovered that my spring break was not going to be beaches and bikinis, but rather this:

And when we went to church this morning, someone had written "Happy Easter!" in the snow. I hope that makes you feel better about your spring break, wherever you're spending it.

That's it for this spring break edition of Sunday Nights on the Lam. Happy Easter if you celebrate it, and happy World Meteorological Day if you don't! I'll be back next Sunday, with hopefully better weather and almost certainly a few impending assignments.

Sunday Nights on the Lam: Footnote Like a Law-Review Editor Edition

I've been shocked and mildly disappointed that my pounds and pounds of fan mail¹ have never included an inquiry along the lines of:

Dear Eva,

I am amazed by the sheer volume of crap you've been putting out almost weekly since the beginning of November. Your devotion to Brett Favre, your sloppy HTML, and your really weird news stories about Beyonce and Hello Kitty are barely within the realm of human comprehension. So I want to know: how do you do it?

Yours,
Admiring Fan

Sadly, nobody has ever sent me this letter. But I will presume that it's gotten lost in the mail, and answer anyway. There is a file on my desktop (and yes, my desktop is Brett Favre) entitled "Sunday Night Thoughts." If I come across an interesting news story, blog post, or video during the week, I resist the urge to email it to the friends I think would like it (since those are always the same three friends, and they're probably getting really tired of my links), and instead I put it in the "Sunday Night Thoughts" file along with some snarky comment. Come Sunday night, when I realize how much work I have to do in the next twelve hours, I immediately begin to procrastinate by opening up that file, looking back at the links, pasting them willy-nilly into a new blog post, and cobbling together some fake transitions. (See: Expository Writing 20.) So there you have it - that's the sausage-making-like process by which your weekly drivel comes into being.

Sadly, tonight I opened up the file and saw but one link, sitting all alone by itself, with only a cryptic "Geekologie?" to accompany it. (For the record, Geekologie is pretty sweet.) That link led me to a New York Times story on elk-calling.

Elk-calling.

Really?

Really. Apparently some fourth-graders at Jessie Beck Elementary School in Reno, Nevada (home of Whoopi Goldberg's pre-convent character in Sister Act, if I recall correctly), have been training for the twentieth edition of the World Elk Calling Championship. At the end of all of this, someone was awarded $2,500 for imitating elken noises like "Mmm—eeee—eeew," "Eee-yow," and (in my humble opinion, the most poignant and moving) "Mmwheee wheee mmwhee." I haven't yet brought myself to listen to the associated audio file, but if you do, kindly warn me ahead of time so I can be in the bomb shelter when the fourth-graders' elk calls blow your windows open or make your roommates go postal.

At any rate, you can imagine the sense of dread that filled me when a Sunday-night file with nothing but a story about elk calling confronted me. So I did what I do best in times of trouble: procrastinated some more by reading my own old blog posts, in a search for good ideas. That led me to Improv Everywhere (not "Improve Verywhere"), which pulled off a prank at Starbucks that I blogged about last week. Believe you me, I spent plenty of time reading about their other shenanigans, but the one I deemed DemApples-worthy was entitled, simply, "Rob!" The idea is to replicate the phenomenon, common at sporting events where hot dogs are sold, of getting strangers sitting nearby to help you attract the attention of a friend who's making his way back to his seat and can't quite tell where it is - but all over Yankee Stadium. The stunt's namesake ambled out for some concessions at the beginning of the sixth inning; when he came back, his friends and some nearby strangers yelled at him, but he pretended not to hear and went back into the tunnel. He repeated the process, but gradually moved farther and farther away, to the point that most of the fans in right field got in on the "Rob!" act. After two and a half innings, he finally made it back to his seat, winning cheers from the entire section. Of course, I can't quite do it justice here - go look at the photos and video, they're mildly uplifting. Ah, the power of the masses.

Two other tidbits before we get on to sports.

First, the BBC's disability magazine is entitled "Ouch!" and features articles like "Disability Bitch vs Braille." I'm not totally sure how to feel about that one.

Second, Harvard's women's hockey team rolled over Dartmouth 5-1 yesterday in an excellent game. This sends them to the Frozen Four in Minnesota, where they play Wisconsin Thursday night. For me, this is like deciding which one of your children you like best. Fortunately for me (and unfortunately for my children?), I'll probably forget about the game until I go home two days later and somebody mentions UW. Hey, if Mary and Joseph left Jesus behind at the temple, I figure I can get away with a little neglect.

So there you have it, folks: an edition of Sunday Nights on the Lam cobbled together on not much more than elk-calling and a powerful desire to procrastinate. We'll close with a clip from The Protector, a Thai movie I've never heard of that features a fight between a Muay Thai boxer and a capoerista. Capoeristas are practitioners of capoeira, a Brazilian martial art that basically looks like breakdance-fighting; by chance, someone introduced me to it when I was a little kid, and I've always found it interesting. I should note that, at least in my understanding, capoeira is much more of an art than a fighting sport, which explains why, if you try to find capoeria fights on Youtube or something similar (a good use of an afternoon, if you ask me), you will get the sense that they're holding back blows - it's a demonstration of self-control, which is more important than landing kicks. But this clip, being part of an action movie, is obviously an exception. Take a look; I'm a fan.

That's all for this week's edition of Sunday Nights on the Lam. Never fear - only five days till spring break!

¹ Okay, that would actually be two pounds of fan mail, consisting of the loaf of strawberry bread and pair of socks my mother sent me for Valentine's Day. And I'm not even sure that she knows I write a blog. Still, your mom's your biggest fan, right?²

² To prove me wrong, send me fan mail!³ I'm a little bit wary of putting my address up on the Internet, though, so you'll have to be resourceful. I will tell you that it's at Leverett Mail Center, but for the sake of the people who sort the mail, please, don't send any mail without a box number on it, because it takes longer to sort. The one exception is if you send me mail without a box number that you know will arrive at Leverett on a Wednesday, because on Wednesdays, I sort the mail!

³Just kidding. You don't have to send me mail; a comment will do fine. But if you do, I like chocolate. A lot.

Sunday Nights on the Lam: Doubleshot Edition

With apologies for last week's absence, induced by Durkheim's position on religious pluralism (I'm still not sure what it is, which is probably a bad sign for the paper I was writing), here is a double dose of Sunday Nights on the Lam, for your procrastination pleasure.

We'll begin with the all-important topic of caffeine, which you can be assured was present in unhealthy quantities during last week's non-posting period. As some of you may have noticed, Starbucks outlets across the nation were conspicuously closed for a long, dark three-hour stretch a couple of Tuesdays ago. The reason: barista retraining. The Times suggests:

On the practical end of the spectrum, freeloaders will lose thousands of dependable seats, bathrooms, internet access and CD’s of Bob Dylan’s favorite songs. On the spiritual end, the angst bred by Starbucks’ ubiquity will have a chance to recede for a moment, hopefully leading to an epiphany or two.

I don't know what that means. I do, however, know that none of those alleged spiritual epiphanies came in dream form, as Dunkin' Donuts, determined to "ensure that no coffee lover is denied a delicious espresso-based beverage," reduced the price of its lattes and cappuccinos to a mere 99 cents.

Still, there's something uniquely conducive to the creative spirit about Starbucks. See, e.g., this brilliant performance by Improv Everywhere, which dispatched three people to set up ancient desktops (Windows 95!) in Starbucks like perfectly normal yuppies. The reactions are pretty good, including a number of people who assumed they were public computers and got in line.

Perhaps the same creative spirit that animated the desktops-at-Starbucks experiment also animated this composition, made entirely from system noises built into Windows 98 and XP:

Beware, the music stops after 1:31 or so and the rest of it is just the individual sounds used in the composition, which, as the video concedes, is pretty boring.

On the other hand, there's a lot to be said for Dunkin' Donuts, too; the New York Times tallies the doughnut expenditures of the various presidential campaigns. The Times was even good enough to do a little field reporting:

Andrea Rowell, assistant manager at the Dunkin’ Donuts in Concord, N.H., where the [Clinton] campaign spent $273 one day last month, said the workers ordered coffee, too. “It wasn’t just doughnuts,” she said.

I have to say, nobody who's ever worked on a political campaign should be surprised by this.

While we're talking about political toroids, some brilliant intellect has created Obama-O's:

It was only a matter of time, given that logo.

In slightly less awesome food news, check out this eBay auction for a Pac-Man shaped potato chip. Unbelievably, the auction ended without a single bid, and now some poor guy is left with a stale potato chip.

Finally, this post caps off the week of Brett Favre's retirement from the NFL, and it wouldn't be complete without some clips from what I think is his greatest game in recent memory: the 2003 Monday Night game at Oakland the day after his father died. He threw for 399 yards, including four touchdowns, and the Packers beat the Raiders 41 to 7. This sort of epitomizes why we love him - that night he got big cheers even from Raiders fans, who are typically, to put it politely, assholes. So here's to you, Brett. Cheeseheads everywhere will miss you.

That's all for this week's double dose of Sunday Nights on the Lam. Have a caffeinated week!

Sunday Nights on the Lam: 540 Degrees of Awesome Edition

This week's edition of Sunday Nights on the Lam is brought to you by lots and lots and lots of reading about the EITC and the concentration of poverty in particular inner-city neighborhoods. It's exciting to see your hometown mentioned in your readings for class, but not so much when all of the readings are about poverty.

First, the primaries have officially spread to Obama, Japan, a tiny little fishing town that formed an Obama support group (after the fashion of a fan club, I gather, not an AA meeting) on February 4. The support group's founder is, of course, taking the credit for Barack's rise:

“He put up a good fight on Super Tuesday and then won seven consecutive contests, so I think our support did him no harm and, in fact, carried him in the right direction... That happens sometimes. You enter a restaurant and there’s no one inside, but the moment you sit down and order something, customers start coming in one after the other.”

I wouldn't go quite so far as to give them that much credit. But anyone who can find one of those sweet bean cakes with Obama's face on it will be my hero forever.

Elsewhere in the New York Times' "Mildly Offbeat News That Might Be Twisted to Have a Poignant Ending" section, we have coverage of semicolons in the city - namely, on one of those signs in subway cars urging people not to leave their newspapers all over the place. I'm all for proper punctuation (hence my membership in the Facebook group "Students for the Preservation of the Oxford Comma," which, at a mere 42 members, is sadly under-appreciated), but I don't think that a semicolon, as impeccable as its placement might be, really makes those signs any less lame.

Finally, I've been burning a lot of my time this week on reading the best of Craigslist, and I particularly appreciated this offer, which I feel epitomizes the culture of my home state.

We'll close with another badass taekwondo video, this one of some anonymous dude repeatedly executing a beautiful 540 kick - as in five hundred and forty degrees of rotation before he lands back on the ground. I love this sport.

That's all for tonight - and a happy twentieth birthday to Sam Novey! Sam, have a good time tonight, but please keep your pants on.

Update: I just discovered that I had improperly placed a comma in a sentence about how much I love proper punctuation. Oy! Don't go trying to find it, though, I fixed it. Sorry, grammar gods.

Sunday Nights on the Lam: New Sport Edition

This evening's edition of Sunday Nights on the Lam is brought to you especially in honor of President's Day, which enables me to go to sleep a lot earlier tonight than I would on a Sunday. President's Day, as the traditional time of the Harvard National Invitational Forensics Tournament, is also responsible for the hordes of high schoolers in suits you've been seeing this weekend as you make your morning walk of shame from the Yard to the Quad, or try to get some innocent printing done in the Science Center, or nearly run them all over on your bicycle (oops, that one's me). Having been one of those high schoolers in suits myself not very long ago, I say: pile on your scorn; it adds authenticity to their experience here.

In keeping with the theme of all things youthy, here's an interesting Facebook group: "On May 15th 2008, everybody needs to go out and panic buy CARROTS." The description is as follows:

Basically, a few nights ago, when I was very very drunk, I came up with the idea that everybody should go out and panic buy a certain product on a specific day.

I'm not quite sure what the reason behind this is is, other than the fact that a global shortage of carrots would be quite a laugh.

So, what I'm asking everybody to do, is on the 15th May, 2008 go out and buy a load of carrots. IF EVERYBODY DOES THIS, WE CAN MAKE THIS GLOBAL SHORTAGE OF CARROTS HAPPEN!

So far, so good - your standard drunken Facebook group, along the lines of "If 138,283 people join this group, I will proceed to create an event that is really just a witty excuse to request all of your cell phone numbers." But here's the difference: the Real Media actually covered it. I sense a growing sentiment of bemusement about exactly what it is that the kids are up to now.

Elsewhere in the What the Kids Are Up To Department, we have Lookin' Good for Jesus brand makeup, which was apparently objectionable to some Christians - who saw that one coming? As a result of the controversy, Singaporeans will no longer be able to visit their local Topshop (I don't know what that is, but their front page presently depicts someone who's about the size of my left leg, so I'm guessing it's one of those clothing retailers that isn't very popular in dairy-fed Wisconsin) and purchase Get Tight with Jesus Hand Cream. What a shame.

But who needs makeup when your face is fixed in wax? Not Barack Obama, whose wax figure was unveiled at Madame Tussauds' DC museum last week, just before the Potomac Primary or whatever it was called. He was situated, possibly awkwardly, in the Oval Office next to a pair of waving Clintons. (You can watch the unveiling here.) I think the sculpture is a little unflattering - does he really have those bags under his eyes? - but I guess that's just me.

Note, though, that the placement of Obama in such a presidential (not to mention socially awkward) setting does not constitute an endorsement of his candidacy on the part of Madame Tussauds; it's just a placement - after all, "maybe one day you'll see Beyonce behind the Oval Office." Oh wait! Beyonce's wax sculptures are "blatantly ugly, looking absolutely NOTHING like her"! Good point, good point.

Elsewhere in the Failing to Resemble One's Namesake Department, a rhinoceros born in captivity last week in Kenya was named Kofi Annan. The real Kofi seems not to be terribly offended.

I contemplated leaving you with a Dreamgirls video, but I understand that a number of people aren't liberated enough to fully and openly appreciate musicals. Instead, this week's YouTube will be a clip of perhaps the only sport that, in my mind, can even approach the greatness that is football. This is the gold-medal match in heavyweight men's taekwondo from the 2004 Olympics in Athens, and it's a pretty amazing spinning hook kick knockout delivered by Moon Dae-Sung of South Korea against Alexandros Nikolaidis of Greece, who was both the hometown favorite and at least four inches taller than Moon. For the impatient among you, the match proper starts at about 1:30 into the video and the knockout is around 3:20. What a beautiful game.

That's all for this week's edition of Sunday Nights on the Lam. Enjoy your extended weekend, and don't get kicked in the head!