For those of you who interested in such things

This week’s Rolling Stone offers a guide to "The Essential Las Vegas," a list of things to do in Vegas. In case any of you are looking for things to do in Vegas. You know who you are.

Among their suggesstions: You can be reminded of how freaking old you really are by visiting the Pool at the Hard Rock, you can down a glass of Ass Juice at the Double Down Saloon, or you can see Tiny Kiss at the Hard Rock (not to be confused with Mini Kiss. Yes, there are dueling Little People Kiss tribute bands out there. It’s Vegas.).

Or you can shoot a Squad Automatic Weapon at The Gun Store, THE destination for all your gunnery needs, and the only store in Las Vegas “Featuring Lead Free Ammo for our customer's health and safety." They’re currently offering a $5 discount coupon on all machine gun rentals (AAA card not required.)

Another Day of Reckoning

From our Reconciliation Department comes the following corrections, all of them to mistakes occurring in the Debate recap post:

Mistake Number One: We goofed on the name of Curt Shilling’s wife. It’s Shonda, not Rhonda as we originally posted. It’s important to us that we get it right, because we saw what happened last time someone made Shonda Shilling angry…

Mistake Number Two: Numerous spelling mistakes, since corrected.

Now no more dwelling on the past. There's already been too much crying over spilt milk today...

Some Trespasses Cannot be Forgiven

It’s appropriate that the man who rapped over “Every Breath You Take’ releases a cologne named ‘Unforgivable.’

Heeding the Call to Civic Duty

Watched the big debate tonight because, well, one of us had to. The Democratic primary debates were surprisingly engaging, so we figured what the Hell, let's give it a go.

By our count, only 3 of the Ten actually remain in Massachusetts, and right about 6:45 PM, we began to think those other 7 might be on to something. Listening to these 4 candidates talk about how terrible our state was can be very demoralizing, and by 7:00 we had to agree with all 4 candidates - who in their right mind would want to live here?

Quick thoughts (it helps if you actually watched it. If you didn’t, then, well, you probly don’t want to read this anyway)

It’s appropriate that the opponents were seated by their place on the political spectrum- Deval Patrick on the far left, then the Green Party lady, then Christy Mihos, then Healey on the far right.

Deval gave a good performance, but we have a hard time remembering anything he actually said. He projected leadership and charisma, but then, so did Warren Harding.

Healey managed to define her position on abortion without actually using the word abortion.

“I think where we (Romney and her) disagree is pretty clear- we’ve always differed on choice and those differences have only become more stark over time, and I respect that there are differences of opinion there but I've always been pro-choice.”

Next question goes to.... Shonda Schilling? What the hell is Shonda Schilling doing asking a question?

We’d love to see Maria Stephanos’ contract for serving as sideline reporter/tomato for the debate. It must include a clause like this:

“Section 4. Ms. Stephanos will be allowed to introduce one question per round. Any audience question will be proceeded by a long shot of her, followed by a cut to the person asking the question, then camera will return to a medium shot of Ms. Stephanos, who will then re-ask the question before turning it over to the candidates. At the conclusion of the candidates’ answers, the camera will return to Ms. Stephanos for a close up, whereby she smiles and says something of substance, such as "and we’ll have more on education in just a bit . Back to you, Chris.”

That Green Party lady really hit the ball out of the park on the race-as-an-issue question. She’s very poised and articulate, too. Who knew? Doesn’t seem to like rich people tho.

Healey is incapable of answering a question without beginning every answer with “Deval says” or Deval did.” To someone who just came in form out of town, say an unlicensed illegal immigrant watching this debate on Telemundo, the impression they’d get is that Deval is the incumbent. Examples:

• When asked what policy of Romney’s she most agrees with, she manages to say “Its hard for me to imagine that my opponent Deval, confronted with that same situation…"
  
• In response to a question about Christy Mihos serving as a spoiler to the republican candidate: “The thing that concerns me most is that if Deval Patrick wins this election…”
  

This went on all night. Highly annoying.

Say what you want about Mihos, but we love his ads.

Why is Jasper White now asking a question? Is this a debate or a pilot for a new Improper Bostonian TV show? When do Eliza Dushku and Joey Mcintyre get to ask their questions? (By the way, Jasper White looks awful. We met him a few years ago –a big bear of a man. Here, as seen on the debate he’s shriveled, and his voice was weak and raspy. Is he Okay?)

As we’ve said, the Green Party candidate really, really, REALLY hates rich people. And, about 40 minutes into the debate we get a hint why:

“I make about 20-30 thousand dollars a year, I have my entire adult life.”

That’s about $2,500 less than a veteran manager at Christy’s Market takes home. Ugh.

Deval Patrick doesn’t like the fact that the Green Peace lady hates rich people, bc it means she doesn't like him. To win her over, he explains that he wasn’t always rich- he grew up poor in Chicago. (until he came here, attended prep school, and began his meteoric rise that ended with him wealthy and “managing thousands of people across several continents.” ) We don’t think that explanation helped win her over.

No Comment

One of the questions we’ve asked ourselves since we returned to the World Wide Web: “Where are all the comments?”

When we relaunched this site, we deliberately chose a scheme that allowed our viewers to participate in this discussion. And the results? After all these posts, only 2 or 3 comments to show for it. By the end of last week, we were feeling lonelier than a stuffed animal abandoned on the side of the highway. Of all the ungrateful, lazy-assed, player-hating…

It turns out we had our Comments section turned off. Only registered blogger.com users could get through, and the rest of you were denied the ability to Comment. Sorry.

We’ve fixed it, and now all of you can comment to your hearts content. So go ahead. Comment. We’ll sit back and let you catch up on all that you’ve been desperate to say. Now if you’ll excuse us, we want to read more about this Leprechaun theme park that Michael Jackson is building in Ireland..

An appreciation of the Hancock tower

A Boston icon approaches its 30th anniversary and is the subject of a 3,000 word profile in the Globe. The online version includes a nice set of photo galleries with audio. The best is this one on the "Tuned mass dampener" the pair of "Three-hundred ton weights (that) keep tower tenants from feeling motion sickness in high winds." Well, most of the time. We like the idea that hanging above the head of every Hancock office worker are two 300-ton lead weights.

The article gives ample space to reflections by David D'Alessandro, the Hancock CEO at the time it was sold to the Candians. Included is this passage where he describes his 1st day of work at the Tower:

"When D'Alessandro moved in four years later, on June 25, 1984, the new Hancock vice president was accustomed to the bustle of New York, and he was more than a little taken aback by the tower's sedate corporate culture.

There was a cardiologist on staff and a 26-bed infirmary. Workers were paid in cash from a cart pushed by a payroll employee. The company had its own dental clinic, barbershop, and company store that sold clothes and cosmetics at a considerable loss.

D'Alessandro quickly went to work firing all of them, one by one."

Ok, so we made that last sentence up. But still, the implications of what happened are pretty clear –all these adorable little Bostonians soon disappeared from the tower, bc they aren't there today.

Evacuate? In our moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their chances.

Only a few days after the primary, it's still too early to see how the Governor’s race will play out. Who will win - the idealistic young leader and his band of devoted followers determined to bring about regime change, or the tough, law-and-order candidate willing to stop at nothing to hold onto power? We think we know which side these guys are rooting for…

You can have our ballot when you pry it from our cold, dead fingers…

It’s primary day, and we celebrated it like we always do, by not voting.

Several of the Ten are independents, and we resent the stupid notion that we need to declare ourselves a Democrat or a Republican just to cast a primary ballot. Like asking us to convert to Catholicism for a day if we want to tailgate at a BC football game, or converting to Judaism if we want to enjoy a delightful knish at Zaftigs.

In the meantime, if its excitement you want, you’ve come to the right place. Are you ready for some action? Do you live for excitement? Can you handle the pure adrenaline rush that’s sure to follow after what we’re about to give you? If you answered yes to all of these questions, then you’re ready for… exciting photos of people voting! Courtesy of Boston.com.

Someday, Maybe, Possibly

We’ve only been paying a little attention to the primary season, but this Deval Patrick phenomenon has been pretty exciting. (Don’t believe us? Just ask Kerry Healey, possibly the most excited of anyone about his Primary victory, not counting Deval himself.)

Our Minister of Information once served as a low-level speechwriter in the Bureaucratic Service. His evaluation of Patrick’s campaign is as follows:

“Brilliant. The most cynical campaign we’ve seen in years. He served voters a steady diet of pablum, and, predictably, they ate it up like it was dolphin-safe chocolate pudding produced by Oxfam-approved Fair Trade farmers in Bolivia. Our two favorites: “Together we can.” (the apparently non-copyrighted campaign slogan), and “If we win, it will be a victory for people.” (Sorry, buddy) (last soundbite via PBS's Boston /common, 9/19)

Can’t believe he got away with this stuff. If we ever submitted anything like that to our boss, we’d be kicked out on our asses. It’s brilliant, really, because if you tell voters what you’ll do if you get elected you run the huge risk that after the election people might actually ask you why you haven't done what you've promised. Better to just keep it vague, and let the voter fill in the blank themselves. That way, 4 years from now, you can look your disillusioned voter in the face and say “I never promised you that.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault. I never said I’d actually make Massachusetts a better place to live. I just said we could.”

Ten Men and a Movie: Black Dahlia

While some people were out helping the terrorists win, two of the Ten took in Black Dahlia over the weekend. Our take? Not really a good movie, but alternately strange, bizarre, violent and frustrating. Don't let the title fool you – this is really a movie about the relationship between 2 LAPD detectives in the 1940’s and the woman they shared (or maybe just spooned with; the relationships aren't always that clear) . To be honest, we still don’t know what to make of it, but we do know one thing: this movie represents the happiest three minutes in KD Lang’s life. (If you've already seen it, you'll know what we mean).

As for the tone of the movie- not quite Film Noir, not quite a straight period piece. Remember the baby carriage rescue in the Untouchables? Now imagine that if in that scene, Kevin Costner arrived a few seconds too late and the baby carriage continued down the stairs was impaled on one of the statues in the train station. Then you’d have this movie.

Random thoughts from the movie:

• It’s a De Palma movie: shades of the Untouchables and Body Double, but here he tries to reach the level of LA Confidential and Chinatown. De Palma tries hard to capture what it was like in LA in the late 1940’s, when men were men, women wore tight sweaters, and lesbians were called ‘Lez’s’. He doesn’t quite get there. People were laughing out loud in our theater, but we’re still not sure if they were laughing at the dialogue, or if they were laughing because they had a sick sense of humor.
  
• In the middle of the movie is a dinner scene that may live on forever once this movie hits DVD and the youtubigans get ahold of it. Laugh out loud funny, but also creepy.
  
• The movie’s called “The Black Dahlia,” but to get to the Dahlia case, you sit thru a twenty minute backstory that, ultimately, was useless. It explains in full detail how the two cops came to be partners. This explanation involves police salaries, an LA proposition that asked voters to raise taxes, and a boxing match. If you like to eat popcorn during your movies, (and who doesn't?) we'd advise you to skip the long lines before the show and wait until the movie begins to go out and get your popcorn, check your messages, make some phone calls, play some video games, etc.
  
• Hilary Swank is one more HGH injection away from developing a Barry Bonds skull.
• Scarlett Johansen did not do a good job. She was clearly overmatched. This took us by surprise- she’s been good in other movies (and was great as guest host on SNL, so good we almost went out and bought our own chandelier the next day) but so far she's made her name playing young women on the verge of maturity. Is it possible she just can’t pull off playing a grown woman yet? This movie called for her to play the Kim Basinger role in LA Confidential, but it was an awkward performance lacking any confidence. Watching her fumble with her 1940’s era cigarette holder was like watching us try to eat jellybeans with chopsticks. (But she does redeem herself near the end; let’s just say there’s a scene where the story requires Woody Allens’ favorite tomato to run down a staircase in a tight sweater. De Palma, bless his heart, made sure it was a long staircase.)

Bottom line- if you’re a CSI fan or a fan of the Black Dahlia case, we don’t recommend this movie. We do recommend it if: you’re a big De Palma fan, if you have a sick sense of humor, or if you really, really like Josh Harnettt.

One last note: We saw this movie at the Boston Common theaters, which meant we had the joy of watching the Popcorn Cart Guy at work. For those of you who’ve been there, you’ll know what we're talking about. He’s the tall gangly guy who comes into the theater 20 minutes before the show starts with a loud clanking cart full of, in his words, “POP!corn …Cannnndaaaay.. Soda…”

He then stands there and raps with the crowd until the previews begin. In addition to being the deliverer of medium-sized drinks and snacks to the moviegoing masses, he gives an audience the exact running time of their feature and previews of upcoming releaes. We’ve also seen him flirt with the ladies and deftly handle the occasional heckler. He’s been there for years, and we’re big fans of his work. The recent showing of Black Dahlia was no exception.

“Ladies and gentleman, the show’s about to begin. Before I leave, let me fill you in on some upcoming releases. Next week's upcoming movies include Flyboys, Jet Li’s Fearless, and…I’m afraid to even say it…

...Jackass Two”

At which point the crowd predictably erupted into cheers. The Popcorn Cart Guy just shook his head in disgust and rolled his giant popcorn machine into the lobby. The 10:50 PM showing of “The Wicker Man” was about to begin, and somewhere inside that theater somebody needed a soda…..

Good thing this guy wasn’t around during the Manhattan project..

Air Force Secretary wants to test less-lethal weapons on US citizens before deploying them against enemy troops.

"If we're not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation." via CNN.

There was another great nation that deliberately outfitted its warriors with non-lethal weapons, but history tells us that didn’t work out so well for them.

Reason to be concerned Number 2: He referred to them as “non-lethal” weapons. No such thing as a non-lethal weapon; any wepon, if not used properly, can be lethal. This is more than just semantics. If the Air Force is really proceeding under the impression that they can deploy a weapon that will always injure, never kill, well, they should know that never works out as planned either. (PDF file)

Some would look at this and say the tire is half full

We’re not one of those people.

The Ten AM vehicle suffered a flat tire this week, when a roofer’s nail the length of our forearm was embedded in the tire somewhere in the North End. No problem, right? Just change the tire and move on. Not exactly – not when the car was being driven by the only member of the Ten who had no experience with the manly art of automobile maintenance. He made an attempt to change the tire anyway, but it was an ugly scene. How bad was he? It went, well, something like this.

Fortunately, another member of the Ten arrived and the tire was repaired.

(A shout out to all the helpful passerby and fellow motorists who felt the need to inform us that our tire was flat as we drove down Commonwealth Ave at 5 mph with our hazards on. Wicked helpful.)

Hope You're Sitting Down When You Read This

Bill Stumpf, Co-Designer of the Aeron Chair, Passes Away at 70. For those of you who worked in the public sector, it’s a safe bet you’ve never even seen one of these chairs, unless you’re one of the lucky ones who managed to slip away from your cube farm one day and frolic oh-so-briefly in the land of the private sector. via Kottke.org

Lets Try This Again

From our Reconciliation Department comes the following corrections:

Mistake Number One: Yesterday's posting mistakenly referred to Sunday Nite Football as ‘Tuesday’ nite football. But don’t let that overshadow the far greater crime of giving Pink the controls for the Sunday Nite Football opener.

Mistake Number Two: Yes, we misspelled the word ‘separation’ and left it up for more than three days last week. When we finally realized our mistake, we dutifully bowed our heads in shame and surrendered our Akeela and the Bee coffee mug.

This corrections thing may become a weekly feature at this rate.

We are Sooo NOT Ready For Some Football.

Not if Pink is the new voice of the Monday Sunday Nite Football opening anthem. Blasphemy.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

We signed up for Norton Antivirus a few weeks ago, and since then our computer’s been exceptionally slow. We’ve seen Teamsters move faster than our PC these days. Now we know why.

Stupid Norton. As we were typing this posting, our PC interrupted us twice to inform us of virus alerts and necessary security updates we absolutely must download now. Its like working with a digital Richard Clarke.

Link Via John Daley.

Obligatory 9-11 Posting

A reminder of what it was like inside the Towers on 911.

And lest we forget, the reaction from the good people in Palestine that day.

The best story to come out of 9/11: The Marine who found the last 2 survivors.

“Karnes hadn't been near the World Trade Center. He wasn't even in New York when the planes hit the towers. He was in Wilton, Conn., working in his job as a senior accountant with Deloitte Touche. When the second plane hit, Karnes told his colleagues, "We're at war." He had spent 23 years in the Marine Corps infantry and felt it was his duty to help. Karnes told his boss he might not see him for a while.

Then he went to get a haircut.” via Slate.com

And, of course, let’s also not forget… How stupid some of us were in the days following 9/11

Fung Wah Isn't the Only Way to Die

While the MA Pike has been turned into the Fung Wah Autobahn, a high speed corridor where two competing Chinese bus companies hurtle buses full of passengers back and forth between New York at blazing speeds, New York is also seeing a discount bus battle of its own. But these buses don’t depart from Chinatown:

“Vamoose and Washington Deluxe are owned by competing Hasidic entrepreneurs from Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Washington Deluxe, which predates Vamoose by two years, obtained a settlement from a rabbinical court in 2004 prohibiting Vamoose from operating on the same New York-to-Washington routes. The religious court’s ruling was upheld in June by Justice Lawrence S. Knipel of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn. Andrew Citron, a lawyer for Washington Deluxe, said he served Vamoose with legal papers resulting from the justice’s ruling in mid-August, leading to the company’s recent temporary shutdown. Via the NY Times.

Both the Vamoose and Washington Deluxe lines were started in response to the Fung Wah phenomenon. After all, the problems with the Chinese carriers are well documented :

“In August 2005, a bus operated by Fung Wah Bus Transportation, one of the original Chinatown lines, caught fire only moments after its driver pulled off Interstate 91 in Meriden, Conn., forcing 45 passengers to flee. On Aug. 15 of this year, a bus operated by the Shun Fa line crashed on its route to Pittsburgh from New York and five passengers required hospital treatment. On Tuesday, a discount bus operated by Fung Wah heading to Boston from Chinatown tipped over on a Massachusetts highway, injuring 34 people. The driver was cited for speeding.” Via the same NY Times article.

But what about the Hasidic carriers? There have been some complaints. We’ve never ridden them, so we asked one of our associates who actually has and asked him for his take. Did he have any horror stories? This is his reply:

“No problems really, except every time I opened my window, the driver would get on his microphone and yell "Is there a draft in here? Did someone just crack a window? Whadaya wanna give us all a fever? Come up and get a sweater if you’re so cold.”

4 words you will NEVER hear us say again.

"The Phoenix NAILS it."

Well, they did. Read their Field Guide to Dorm Posters.

98 Degrees of Separation

One of the Ten took a flight back from Cincinnati to New York yesterday, and made some new friends. This is his story, as he relayed it in a call to Ten AM World Headquarters this morning.

(The member in question, above, is the littlest of the Ten, a man who stands only 5’ 3” tall. When we first started this collaborative, we were originally going to call ourselves the Nine and a Half Angry Men, until he threatened to walk out in protest. By the time he managed to climb down from his chair, the motion was defeated by a 6-4 margin and thus we became known as the Ten Angry Men)

Anyway, here’s what he had to say:

“I see this smoking hot girl get on the plane. She starts walking down the aisle toward me, and I’m hoping she sits next to me. Behind her comes this guy; he looks kind of familiar. Then I know he must be somebody, because behind him comes this 6 ft 5, 350 pound bodyguard. The bodyguard can barely fit on the plane, he's so big. Anyway, turns out the guy's Nick Lachey, and he sits next to me for the flight. "

"We start talking, and I tell him: ‘You know, I don’t watch any of that reality TV. But I just wanted to say one thing- I watched an episode of your show, where it took you and your brother 30 hours to plant some sod. It was the funniest fucking thing I’d ever seen. I became a huge fan at that moment.”

“What was he like?” we asked him.

“He was a really cool guy. He spent the weekend in Cincinatti, and was headed to LA tonight, then to London to start a tour. He was with some dark haired girl. She was dark skinned, not Italian, but maybe Phillipino…"

“That was Vanessa Minillo” we inform him. “She’s famous too.”

“Holy shit. She was smoking hot.”

“Yeah, she’s on MTV.”

“She was absolutely smoking. Cool girl, tho. Smelled good, too.”

More Fung Wah Follies

A Fung Wah bus flipped over on the MA Turnpike today.

"AUBURN, Mass. --A New York-to-Boston Fung Wah bus driver has been cited for driving too fast after a bus rolled over on an Interstate 290 off-ramp Tuesday, causing minor injuries to 34 people, authorities said. " via Boston.com

To paraphrase Danny Vermin, “We took the Fung Wah once….Once.” We wrote about that trip, an experience that led us to hate Fung Wah and all they stand for. They took a great thing (the $25 Boston-NY route, once operated by Coach USA) and ran it into the ground. Literally.

(photo at the top via via Flckr.com)

Crikey! indeed

Looks like Steve Irwin died doing what he loved, venturing into the Australian wilderness and aggravating the fuck out of the predators that live there.

Irwin died when a StingRay stung him right in his heart near Port Douglas, AUS. A “freak accident?” Hardly. In his line of work, we'd consider that a common household accident, akin to Paul Hogan being found dead underneath a tall blonde or Russell Crowe getting killed in a bar brawl incited by some smartass in the crowd yelling out "Freebird" during 30 Odd Foot of Grunts' 3rd encore.

And for those of you who didn't know, "Crikey means gee whiz, wow!"