What Nobody Involved in Politics Will Say

There's been a great deal of talk lately about Clinton supporters, specifically white women, defecting to the McCain camp in the general election.  This is a result of the disappointment that many Clinton supporters have felt from her failed candidacy.  What nobody is willing to admit and what is crucial to the coming GE, is that a large proportion of women vote on emotion.  Let us not presume that men do not vote for equally senseless reasons, such as what baseball team their candidate supports, but let us also admit that emotions play a bigger role in the female decision making process than the male.

If we follow that assumption we can understand that 1) many of the women who currently claim they will defect to the McCain camp are doing so out of frustration from the Democratic primaries and 2) when Obama smokes McCain in terms of likability and overall capacity for compassion in the forthcoming debates he will make huge inroads among this critical segment of the electorate.

Obviously it's controversial to discuss such a matter and I'm sure that some of the women who were reading this post have ceased well before reading this point but it's certainly worth consideration.

Lone Drinker VII

I haven't posted in a while due to a severe case of bloggers block but I'm home alone and sitting down to a magnum of wine and a chunk of cheese so lets kick back and kick off the gayest version of the Lone Drinker yet!

4:21: Glass #1. I have the Yankee game on mute and I'm watching the webcast of Meet the Press, this is not one of my cooler moments. I think that crack needs to be rebranded. A name change and a couple celebrity endorsements would go a long way to invigorating its consumer base. I propose "crevice" as a working name change. Crevice suggests a certain subtlety and sounds vaguely French. Additionally it's similar enough in meaning that we wont alienate our loyal consumers.


4:36: Glass #2. Tom Daschle is a very well practice political persona and that is all he is. He is not human. He is political persona.

4:38: I can't believe people buy into this lunacy.

4:42: Glass #3. Cigarette you very much.

5:07: Glass #4. Facebook is going to start running contextual ads based on imaging in profile pictures.

5:30: Congrats to the digger that found this page and I'll be sending in my resume to edit the UPI's website.

5:48: Two things: 1) If only we could control-f all of the elements of our life. 2) I don't believe in opening mail because I think it deserves its privacy.

6:00: Glass #5. Yankees lost, onto Smoking Gun Presents Worlds Dumbest Criminals 4 on truTV. I love the smoking gun but I've never heard of truTV. Hopefully I'm not as dumb as those they're about to highlight. I'm getting there.

6:04: This show is equally vapid and miraculously less entertaining than all of VH1's current programming schedule. Alcohol, do your thing...

6:09: Despite the presence of notorious douche bags Danny Bonaduce and Ron Kuby, this show is offensively bad. I'll give it one more commercial break.

6:25: I've read most of the articles nominated for 2008 National Magazine Awards recognition and really recommend Vanity Fair's City of Fear, one of the most compelling, most screen worthy examinations in journalism in the last 5 years. The New York Times Magazine's Where Boys Grow up to be Jihadis, and The New Yorker's Swingers. One article that is not, under any circumstances advisable is Everybody Sucks in New York magazine. The article is essentially a mainstream reporter denouncing the blogosphere due to her experiences with being exposed during her wedding and subsequent write-up in the NYT. The media business, and particularly print media, is not suffering solely from the flourishing of the internet. Far too much of modern media is directed at itself because far too many individuals in the media are wildly self-absorbed. I know because I went to journalism school and I'm in the media commenting on a magazine article about bloggers commenting on a newspaper piece on the author on my blog. This does not appeal to a large audience because nobody fucking cares about us.

7:12: Glass #7. Katie Couric on 60 Minutes feels like Walter Cronkite hosting an episode of TRL.

7:52: My lady friend returned home not long ago. She's makinv seafood gumbo in the kitchen. She's put the onions off to the side because she was devastated by their untimely demise. The tears flowed like water in a broken urinal.

7:58: Andy Rooney just complained about something.

8:08: Glass #8. I want to open up a bar based on the office work environment. Instead of booths there will be cubicles that can seat 3 or 4 people and instead of computer's there'll be televisions showing sport. The waitresses will all be dressed in sexy work attire and patrons will be able to call other cubicles to correspond (on work related matters). The receptionist's desk will be the bar and the CEOs office will be the VIP. Potential names include 9 to 5, The Office, The Grind and Monday's Off.

8:38: Holy crap the MTV Movie Awards are on tonight. This is the pinnacle of modern culture. May or may not return tonight.

One Show Recap

I'm blogging for the One Club at various events during their One Festival this week. Below is my latest post, future ones can be found here:

The Allen Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center was one of the best advertisements of the evening. With 50 foot high floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on Columbus Circle and a three piece jazz band sounding like they were performing at Carnegie Hall the evening’s cocktail hour started out very promisingly. Somewhere around 600 people made their way to The One Show last night for the most distinguished advertising awards in the biz – and to throw a few back, flirt a bit and eat some appropriately name jumbo shrimp.

The event was a collection of very talented, eclectically dressed people of seemingly all persuasions. Some of the attendees wore suits or ball gowns while others could just have easily been banging away on their Macs in a Brooklyn coffee shop.

For me it was an interesting (and first extensive) look into the advertising industry and an opportunity to collect business cards like I was having a raffle for a free lunch at the end of the evening.

“At One Show events the people who have come up want to help the people who are coming up,” said Phil Growick, the Managing Director at Jerry Fields Associates (A Company of The Howard, Sloan, Koller Group according to his business card).

And it really did seem like that. At one point I was talking with a guy (Greg Hahn from BBDO) who looked like a less mysterious version of Jack White just having a casual conversation and later he collected an award for the HBO Voyeur ads – the coolest of the night in one man’s estimation.

“It’s the best of the best,” Hahn said. “There’s a lot of inspiration here and you get to see the gold standard of the advertising industry.”

The awards themselves were hosted by Tom Papa who was funnier off the cuff than scripted. And the music played throughout the show was Vampire Weekend type, super hip, but not in a too-cool-for-school-kind-of-way stuff.

All in all a very cool show, and some of the better adverts I’ve seen this side of five or six Super Bowl’s ago.

Check back in tomorrow for a recap of the Student Awards Show.

Jeopardy Savants

I've written before about the poor strategic decision making that is a rampant phenomenon among Jeopardy contestants.

Two particular instances occur over and over:

1) A contestant has his opponents more than doubled in money going into Final Jeopardy and thus cannot lose (unless he pulls a Clavin). He then bets everything he can minus one dollar to ensure victory. In real life would this guy (think typical Jeopardy contestant) really bet 4,5,6 thousand dollars on his ability to answer one question? There is a logical disconnect between game money and real money but game money is real money. In fact, this game plan only makes sense if the contestant is uniquely competent in the Final Jeopardy category, it happens far more frequently.

2) A contestant is ahead going into Final Jeopardy but has not doubled up her opponent. She then bets enough to beat her opponent by $1 (assuming her opponent bets everything he has). This strategy is designed to send home a known quantity (the opponent said contestant has already beaten) to be replaced on the following day by an unknown quantity (a different contestant). This strategy is also nonsensical. If a contestant has beaten her opponent through single and double Jeopardy she should welcome the opportunity to play him the following day.

Today's Jeopardy episode featured another interesting scenario peppered with misguided strategy. The returning champion (Contestant A) was awarded with both Daily Doubles in Double Jeopardy. Both times he bet unnecessarily large sums of money in an attempt to separate himself from his opponents. When Final Jeopardy rolled around he had about $15,500 and his two opponents had something like $12,400 (Contestant B) and $12,200 (Contestant C). The Final Jeopardy topic was Royalty Wives (or something like that), a seemingly difficult category. Now, Contestants B and C should certainly have realized that if Contestant A was going down it was not going to be as a result of under betting Final Jeopardy, if he was going to lose he was going to get the question wrong. Therefore Contestants B and C know that he's going to bet $9,301 or more (in fact he bet $9,400) and should factor it into their decisions. In the case of Contestant B the information regarding Contestant A isn't particularly informative. Contestant B still needs to protect her slim lead over Contestant C and thus must wager nearly all of her money (she wagered all of it), but this information to Contestant C is very instructive. Contestant C must realize that the only chance she has of victory is for A and B to get the question wrong, as such she must limit her wager to within the loss A would incur under the circumstances of a wrong answer (she must not end up with less than 15,500 - 9,301 - and technically she probably shouldn't bet anything).

Anyway, as mentioned A bet 9,400, B bet 12,400, and C bet something like 9,000. All answered the question incorrectly and now A will return for another day.

It's strange that people who are smart enough to make it on Jeopardy are so miraculously stupid strategically.

On Friday I depart for a friend's bachelor party in New Orleans that happily and intentionally coincides with Jazz Fest. I will be taking copious notes and blogging about what is sure to be a monumentally dangerous trip. Keep an eye out for my best Hunter S. Thompson impression.

People are Strange

Hello and welcome to another addition of "Weird Shit People Search for on Google and End Up at This Blog." I've put an extra slathering of hair gel on to host today's event and I'm planning on inappropriately touching all the female contestants. Let's get started.

10. "Young Stiper": it's good to know there are retarded perverts out there.

9. "Commercial Mexican Dishware": As opposed to Indie Mexican Dishware?

8. "Excessively Jealous, Wife": big fan of the comma, gotta have the comma, (quick recommendation, Vampire Weekend has a song called Oxford Comma that I can't stop listening to, it's the new Young Folks)

7. "Child rape scene": it horrifies me that somebody is searching for this and even more so that they would end up at this blog (actually less so), wtf? Somebody call Chris Hansen.

6. "Living with a q-tube": I have no idea what this means.

5. "Wife sister areshole": Ditto number 6 (a search of areshole on google provides an interesting experience, I'm impressed that Urban Dictionary has the capability to be first on google with a term that "isn't defined yet but these are pretty close". Well done urban dictionary, well done. (btw, Urban Dictionary is defined thusly: A place formerly used to find out about slang, and now a place that teens with no life use as a burn book to whine about celebrities, their friends, etc., let out their sexual frustrations, show off their racist/sexist/homophobic/ anti-(insert religion here) opinions, troll, and babble about things they know nothing about.))

4. "My wife slept with the man blogspot": It may be time for marriage counseling.

3. "Gaysenator": is that one word or two?

2. "Wax replica of your private": I have to admit that one was me.

1. "Vintage Sunglass blogs": It'd be a lot cooler if this was.

All Over the Map Quotes of the Week

The cover of Vibe Magazine has this gem from Lil Wayne “I’m more afraid of life than death,” it’s unclear as to whether this quote is deeply profound or entirely inane but it would require reading an article on Lil Wayne to find out so it’s kind of like the amount of licks it takes to get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop.

Today in the Wall Street Journal Peggy Noonan quotes Pope Benedict:

"The right use of reason" prompts us to understand that violence is incompatible with the nature of God

Only the leader of the Catholic Church could distinguish between proper and improper uses of reason.

Vatican Three should definitely forbid the Pope from making any appeal to “the right use of reason,” or reason at all for that matter.

George Karl, Head Coach of the Denver Nuggets after the win over Golden State that essentially sealed the Nuggets playoff birth: “If I call practice there will be a revolution.”

Couple things. Those are not the words of a man in control of his team. Those are the words of a coach who is afraid of his team. Those are the words of a coach who should definitely be fired. Also, it’s interesting that he used the term revolution instead of mutiny. Karl definitely thinks very highly of himself and revolution would suggest a higher self-regard than a mere mutiny.

“Why do all hybrid cars look slightly retarded?” - YFBFB

NYC to Outlaw Flatulence in Public Places

Mayor Michael Bloomberg today announced city plans to deal with those that dealt it in the city’s latest move to curtail disagreeable behavior.

“This is a great day for the city of New York and for sensitive olfactory neurons everywhere,” said the mayor inside city hall – removed from the city’s still rank outdoors.

The decision comes on the heels of the city’s ban on trans-fat which followed closely behind the city-wide ban on smoking in restaurants and bars.

Initially intended to be put into effect in June, the blowhard prohibition has been moved back to August to follow the July implementation of the trans-fat ban.

“We thought the ban could be more strictly enforced following the trans-fat regulations,” said Policed Chief Raymond Kelly.

Opponents say that Mr. Bloomberg’s gone too far in his desire to control the behavior of New Yorkers.

“I’ve been farting around this city for 53 years,” said Crown Heights native Noah Stankiewicz, 53. “The Mayor and the fat cats in city hall are unsympathetic to the little people…with digestive disorders.”

Other city residents are excited about what they will say will finally put an end to odorific subway trips and hellacious elevator rides.

“I can finally breathe,” said one long-time Upper East Side resident.