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Why It’s Important to Have an Expansive Vocabulary

July 16, 2008

When I was home in Virginia, my dad, who is retired Navy and works as an ordnance handling supervisor for a military defense contracting firm, told me a wonderful story apropos to tonight’s vocabulary tournament (as if the word “ordnance” were not apropos enough!), and which I hope I will do justice to in the retelling.

In a local (to me) news item I apparently missed back in ‘06, a Tomahawk missile used in training exercises was being transported from Rhode Island to the Navy base in Virginia when the driver of the truck carrying the missile got into a serious accident on a freeway off-ramp, sending the missile out of the truck and onto the side of a road in the Bronx. Everyone promptly freaked out.

A firefighter on the scene called the number on the side of the missile’s box, and got someone in my dad’s office.”There’s a missile on the side of the road!”

When asked to read, over the phone, the wording on the box, the firefighter read “It says ‘inert missile.’”

“Okay,” said the person in my dad’s office. “It’s an inert missile.”

“IT’S AN INERT MISSILE!” shouted the firefighter. Then, back into the phone: “What’s an inert missile?”

The boxes for training missiles are now marked “INERT MISSILE (NON-EXPLOSIVE).”

Vocabulary Killed the Radio Star

July 16, 2008

Tonight is the Chelsea Market Vocabulary Bee. My co-host Jonathan pointed out: “We killed a radio program!

Turns out hip young people don’t actually want to listen to NPR on the internet. (Personally, I am disdainful of audio and video on the web. When reading a news site, if I click on a headline and discover a video instead of an article, I am annoyed, and usually just click back to where I came from, preferring not to know about that news item over having to watch some slow, stupid video narrated by a slow-talking person. Every time I’ve clicked on a link to a page on NPR.com, I’ve had the thought, as the page loads: I hope I can get the information I want from the synopsis without having to click on the audio. If I do click on the audio, I always get bored and frustrated before the speaker gets to what I want. I have always approved of NPR, but never actually listen to it unless I am driving a car, alone, which happens very rarely, as I live in New York).

If you do not share my disdain of audio, you can listen to our appearance on NPR’s Bryant Park Project here. It was great while it lasted….

Monday Evening Stand-Up at Pete’s (all the good things you missed)

July 15, 2008

My new comedy intern, Eve, a college student whose resume boasts a “Skills” section including “singing (mezzo soprano, up to D above High C); dialects: RP, Cockney, Dublin, French, German, Russian, Italian, Alabama, and Brooklyn; semi-fluent in Spanish, some Irish Gaelic, some ballroom dance, some bellydance, some poi spinning, sewing, hand-stitching, knitting, painting, use of jigsaw, making miscellaneous objects out of a variety of materials such as wire, masking tape and Styrofoam,” has written the following review of last night’s show at Pete’s:

This Monday at Pete’s saw half a jury’s worth of funny young men, as well as host Jen Dziura, whom only two-thirds of that description fits. After Jen offered tips on PSA’s and street harassment, our guest comics covered such topics as sex, drugs and brunch.    

Charlie Kasov, author of this week’s Time Out New York Joke of the Week, shared his trip to the Netherlands and enlightened us with his views on global politics.

Jason Schneider, who has appeared on the Howard Stern show and Comedynet’s Young Comic Showcase, recounted his struggles with fatness and therapy.

Pat Stango– host of the show Don’t Touch Me There at Piano’s– poured forth a stream of diverse observations on everything from racism to subway graffiti to televised pedophilia.

Mike Lawrence, high king and emporer of nerddom, is only living to see Batman. In the meantime, however, he made us laugh with historical humor and tales of dating woe.

Andy Wood is from Portland. He is an experienced landlord, streaker and friend to weirdos.

Dave Cope claims the title of Finest Snuggler This Side of the Mason-Dixon Line, runs several fictional businesses and has a penchant for pointing at interns with his toe.

It was a testosterone-driven show, swathed in the soothingly acerbic estrogen blanket that is Jen Dziura, and documented by yours truly,

~the comedy intern

Next show:

Monday Evening Stand-up at Pete’s

Monday, July 28th

7:30pm

709 Lorimer St (directions here)

Free

Photo Tour of Virginia (no swearing allowed)

July 15, 2008

Swearing is illegal, but you can have a license plate that says “O POOP”?

Wet Seal should shoot itself for this.

The whole display. Display of anti-feminist iniquity, that is.

When I saw this, I first thought it said “Double Chin.” How apropos!

Yes, a curling iron will burn your eyes. Jesus.

Santa vs. Satan: The Official Compendium of Imaginary Fights

July 14, 2008

Jake Kalish’s Santa vs. Satan: The Official Compendium of Imaginary Fights, in which I am quoted on matters including who would win a fight between Voltaire and Voltron, is now available on Amazon and in Barnes and Noble in the “Humorous, Helpful, and Odd” section.

This Wednesday: Get Sesquipedalian at the Vocabulary Tournament

July 14, 2008

To get a taste of previous Vocabulary Bees, read the event recaps on the Chelsea Mind Games site.

Following the Vocabulary Tournament, at 9pm, will be Dorothy Von Irony’s Hour of Comic Literature and Literary Comedy, hosted by Abbi Crutchfield.  Abbi wrote a review of the Dorothy’s show two weeks ago and another one of last week’s.  

Come drink PBR with us and get disestablishmentarian.  (Not antidisestablishmentarian — that would be no fun at all). 

Lil Wayne looks just like Alfred E. Neuman

July 11, 2008

Hasn’t anyone else noticed the striking resemblance between the rapper behind “Tha Carter III” and the icon of MAD Magazine?

Of course, maybe I shouldn’t talk…

Obamarama: I’m about to see the man in person (if I can get a glimpse around this giant marble column)

July 10, 2008

Hola! I am liveblogging from the Women for Obama fundraising breakfast taking place now at the 53rd St. Hilton. There are over 3,000 people here, most of them women, and the line snaked from 6th Avenue, into and around the lobby, and around the perimeter of the first floor before we were allowed through security (metal detectors and bag-checkers whose insignia says “Secret Service Uniformed Agent”) and up another escalator to what is — as someone in line near me said — the biggest ballroom in New York, which I imagine is really saying something.

A week or so ago, I paid $250 for a ticket to this. The Intrepid Young Journalist said, “Oh, you’re going to that? I’m going to see if I can get credentialed.” This morning, he said, “You’ll see how unglamorous my job is when you see the pen they keep us in.” From here at table 174, it looks like he has a conspicuous lack of a fruit plate, but a better view.

I’ve been noticing that emails from the Obama campaign are becoming somewhat more populist than even I am comfortable with. “You, too, can have dinner with Obama!”: meaning that four or six or ten people will be chosen by raffle from the pool of people who have donated at least $5. “When Obama accepts the nomination, he will leave the convention hall and instead deliver his address in an open-air speech to 75,000 supporters! On the very grass!”

Obama misstepped months ago in calling the blue-collar people of Pennsylvania “bitter.” Most are not; they are aspirational. I think I object to being grouped in with “ordinary people like you, meeting in their homes, community centers, and coffee shops.” No one wants to be called ordinary. A male friend once said that, when most men watch baseball, they have this idea, deep down, that if they ran into A-Rod or Derek Jeter or whoever in a bar, they could hang out, that their baseball heroes would think they were cool guys, cool guys who even had some hidden baseball talent or insight. You have to scrutinize every game, in case it comes up later, when you’re hanging in the bar with A-Rod or Derek Jeter or whoever. Just as many blue-collar folks want an end to the estate tax because they, personally, expect to somehow become millionaires and leave that money, undiluted, to their children, so too do many people who give their money and time to politics expect, deep down, that they will someday become much more important and influential, and will meet their candidate in a pub or boardroom somewhere, and say, oh, I saw you speak back in ‘08. No supporter would turn it down, but no supporter’s real fantasy is to be the person who donates $5 and wins a lottery to meet Barack Obama; it’s a celebrity fan club model of politics.

A couple months ago, I was thinking, I finally have the cash to support a candidate, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I gave $600 during the primary. “You bought an ad,” said the Intrepid Young Journalist, by which he meant that I paid for a single showing of a commercial in ever-crucial Pennsylvania. Now that donations are going towards the general election, I thought, maybe I can attend one of those fancy $1,000-a-plate dinners, like in the movies. I checked BarackObama.com’s “Events” section — lots of apartment parties and gatherings in Union Square. Hippie coffee klatsches. I went so far as to write to the campaign: “I would like to donate a more substantial amount of money to you, and as part and parcel of that experience, I would like to sit in a room with Barack Obama. How can I do that?” Someone called back and said I was on a list. When I got the email for this event (there was a $1,000 a plate dinner last night, and a $250 “women’s” breakfast this morning — hmmn) and RSVP’d, the woman on the phone asked, “Who told you about this?” No one, I said, shrugging off the question; are campaigners working on commission? She really wanted to know: “How did you find out about this?” Why not put it on your goddamn website, I thought. There are plenty of people like me who have $250 and are not offended by the suggestion that we might donate it and eat fruit plates in a hotel ballroom. “I wrote to the campaign,” I said. “Oh, great!” (I am now at table 174, behind a marble column).

Obama’s sister just started speaking; more soon!

…Hillary just spoke for about 20 minutes. She got in a clever quip about how, during the campaign, Obama got up every morning to go to the gym; she got up and got her hair done. She also said, “I think the long primary campaign was good for the Democratic Party.” Nice try.

Obama’s up! Going to go stand in front of a marble column.

Update: I was actually really interested to hear any candidate talk about “women’s issues” for 20+ minutes. All too often, “women’s issues” gets boiled down to “abortion” and then some generic stuff about “families.” This AP writeup of the event opens with Obama pledging his support for abortion rights; in actuality, I spent the first 15+ minutes of Obama’s remarks wondering if he was ever going to mention the issue, and sort of thinking that, since everyone knows the Democrat is going to be pro-choice and the Republican is going to be pro-life, maybe the election cycle would be a bit higher-quality if we all just shut up about it and talked about other things, which seemed to be exactly what Obama was doing. More interesting to me than “I will never back down in defending a woman’s right to choose” was “I won’t stand for a country in which a woman is forced to choose between her children and her career.” I don’t like it either, but is there a government solution for it? And should there be? (There was some mention of tax credits for childcare). Whatever your opinion, this is a far more interesting debate than turning every election into a rally for or against abortion. Obama also spoke of his wife Michelle’s feeling that, in balancing kids and work, she wasn’t doing either to as well as she would’ve liked, and that he realized he was “complicit” in her predicament.

At that point, they might as well have turned on the soft-focus lighting; it was as though Obama was playing a romantic movie role intended for Richard Gere, in which, standing on a beachfront near a lighthouse, he says to Diane Lane, “You know when you have trouble balancing work and the children? I admit — I’m complicit. Let me give you tax credits. And assuage my complicity by sexing you all night long. In the lighthouse.”

New Practical Joke (courtesy of my brother)

July 10, 2008

My brother works in a big-box home improvement store, and told me about a fantastic (and low-budget!) practical joke he played on a co-worker who LOVES his water ICY, ICY cold.  The guy comes in every day with a bottle of water, puts it in the fridge, and comes back to get it later.

And then, every time the guy left the breakroom, my brother microwaved the bottle of water and put it back.  All day long.  The guy would come in and sputter and swear, and attempt to remedy the situation by putting the bottle in the freezer, only to come back and find the bottle heated to a comfortable lukewarm.

The water bottle that won’t refrigerate?  Brilliant.  All hail my brother, Brian. 

look what Google dragged in

July 9, 2008

A reader wrote to say that he found my website by Googling the phrase “free candy.”  What he was actually looking for was this:  

TV and Trivia

July 8, 2008

My Brooklyn Cable Access TV show, “Monday Night at Pete’s Candy Store,” is still playing (in reruns) at midnight on Mondays (here’s the schedule).

I’m heading out of Virginia ever so shortly. Here’s me in my pajamas in my parents’ backyard (they’re quite decent pajamas):

This Wednesday is Team Trivia at the Chelsea Market:

A Photographic Tour of the Virginia Beach Dollar Tree Store

July 7, 2008

FROG. No, really. It’s not as catchy as “WWJD,” but our bejeweled little friend will have his day in the sun. You can fully rely on it.

Pansy Booster. It looks like a gag gift, but it’s just for your garden. Um, the garden outside a bar called “The Men’s Room” or “The Lightning Rod” or “Faggy McFaggerson’s.”

This is “Wormie the Water Sensor,” which changes color — to a nice, angry red — when it’s time to water your plants. You might want to keep your kids out of the Dollar Tree gardening section.

a trip to Virginia (no swearing allowed)

July 5, 2008

I am in Virginia, visiting my family.  I just had the pleasure of visiting a feed store in Suffolk with my brother, where we purchased 50 pounds of feed corn for $12.16.  Not because my brother owns livestock, mind you (although he has grown an incredible quantity of zucchini in his backyard, much like anyone who has ever tried to grow any amount of zucchini), but because he and his wife (the “other” Jennifer Dziura) are making beanbags for a game entitled “cornhole” to be played at tomorrow night’s backyard barbecue.

I bought a bunch of items at the Virginia Beach dollar store and am shipping them back to myself, which makes it more like the $1.50 store.I am enjoying a few things about suburban living, such as backyards, chain restaurants with booths and enormous, clean, empty bathrooms, and wide empty roads on which to drive.  Okay, so basically all of the things I like are personal-space related.  

Last night, my dad and I sat in the backyard and watched the fireworks going off miles away at Mt. Trashmore (google it if you feel the need), while various neighbors illegally set of their own fireworks in between rounds made by the cops.  After one neighbor’s particularly impressive display, a voice cried out from a house behind us, “THANK YOU!” 

Math Bee on Wednesday

July 1, 2008

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