Golbanamaniarta!

From the mind of Mr. Announcer

2009-10-05T20:19:00.001-07:00

Since the new "Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" began, I'd been mystified by the unnatural-sounding inflection Andy Richter used when announcing himself in the opening. I finally made an audio clip to point this out, located here. (His usual line is "and I'm Andy Richter," but on this particular night, he left out the "and" for whatever reason.)

On the Friday, October 2 show, he finally changed his inflection to something that sounds much more natural to me: here's that clip.

Of course, it remains to be heard whether he'll stick with the new inflection.

I also wish his line was "And me, I'm Andy Richter" (kind of a tribute to the late Ed McMahon), and, especially, that he got to sit on the couch for all the segments after the monologue, the way he did back when he was on "Late Night" with Conan, rather than being across the floor at his podium.

What to look for on "Parks and Recreation" next season

2009-05-23T15:06:00.001-07:00

Here's my apartment (indicated by the red box), as seen in the background of the final episode of the first season of "Parks and Recreation." It was actually even better-looking on TV than it is in this screen shot. At night, it turns out, the Spanish tile roof on top of the building isn't visible, which is good for maintaining the idea that "Parks and Recreation" takes place in Indiana.

This scene was filmed over the night of April 17-18.

Remembering Chessie

2009-04-16T22:42:00.000-07:00

One of Chessie's favorite places to sit: my lap, while I was sitting in my Ikea Poang chair watching TV.

Here's a photo Lille took with the self-timer on her camera last October, when she and Brian were at my place to watch Game 2 of the World Series.

(Also a rare photo of me wearing glasses!)

Bye-bye, sweetie pie

2009-04-07T13:50:00.001-07:00

Chessie: 1999-2009.

(My favorite picture of her. More here.)

The beginning of the end for Twitter

2009-04-02T21:16:00.000-07:00

I just joined. Follow me: http://twitter.com/trainman74/

Found text: the Nacho.org FAQ

2009-03-14T23:41:00.000-07:00

Found this on my hard drive, with a "last modified" date of September 21, 1998. There's no longer a nacho.org web site; I can't remember if this ever actually made it to that site when it was up and running. Hmm, I haven't had nachos in quite a while...

The nacho.org FAQ

By Jim Ellwanger

I. Nachos

Q. What is "nachos"?

According to the dictionary, a nacho is "a tortilla chip topped with cheese and a savory substance (as hot peppers) and broiled." When you have more than one nacho, preferably a giant plateful, you have "nachos."

Q. Why is 1969 significant?

Not only did the first moon landing occur, not only were there two 45-minute-long series running on prime-time TV, but the word "nacho" was first used in English, at least according to that same dictionary. It was obviously the greatest year in the history of mankind.

Q. "In English"?

"Nacho" means "flat-nosed" in Spanish. Picture a triangular tortilla chip with a curled-over tip. You might describe it as having a flat nose. Get it?

Q. Can nachos be baked instead of broiled?

The nacho.org consensus opinion is yes, at 350 degrees.

Q. Isn't it a good idea to keep an eye on the oven to make sure the nachos aren't burning?

That would be a good idea. Thanks for reminding me.

Q. How about the microwave?

The microwave may be a convenient place to dry off your wet cat or small dog, but nachos were meant to be savored, and that includes all aspects of nachos, all the way from purchasing the ingredients to settling in with a "Reader's Digest" in the lavatory the next day. But especially the cooking and, of course, the eating.

Q. How healthy are nachos?

Who cares?

Q. I do.

After your first bite of nachos, you won't anymore. Trust me.

II. Nacho Night

Q. What is Nacho Night?

We gather together to eat nachos every week, sometime in the evening. We take turns as the nachomaker.

Q. What is the origin of Nacho Night?

The phrase "We should do this on a regular basis." In other words, it has a similar origin to "Twelfth Night," "Nightline" and "Hockey Night in Canada."

Q. What night is Nacho Night?

It used to be every Thursday, but that was back when we were all college students and we could plan our schedules that easily.

Q. Are there any Nacho Night customs?

Somebody dripping salsa onto something. The "something" used to be, exclusively, a pair of pants, but now has become various other inanimate objects, including, but not limited to, shirts, tables, carpets, sleeping cats, and abstract paintings.

Q. What if I wanted to start my own Nacho Night?

I'd say, "Go for it, dude!" You'd laugh, because I'm not really the "dude"-saying type.

Q. Can I spell it "Nacho Nite"?

Can you get in an accident by playing with your Lite Brite while on the Thruway on the way to Rite Aid? No, really.

Q. How has Nacho Night helped the economy?

As of this writing, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up over 2500 points since we started Nacho Night. Meanwhile, the economies of countries where they probably have Sushi Night or something aren't doing so well.

III. Cheese

Q. Nacho cheese?

You mean the kind that comes in a can? Good Lord, no. We shred our own. It's cheddar and/or Monterey Jack for me.

Q. How about "pepper Jack," I think it's called?

Whatever grips your chip.

Q. Huh?

You know, like "whatever floats your boat," but nacho-related. I just made it up.

IV. Savory Substances

Q. What kind of salsa do you use?

It varies. Whatever that week's nachomaker decides to buy.

Q. What strength?

Not Baby's First Salsa, and not "You'll Bleed Out All Your Orifices" strength, but anything else should be fine.

Q. What's everyone's favorite salsa?

I think the last time we took a vote, La Victoria won, but if I remember correctly, that was on a night when we'd had La Victoria salsa, so it wasn't a fair vote.

Q. What brand are they alluding to in those Pace commercials as being "made in New York City"?

I don't know, but I wish I did, because it obviously must be really good salsa that lots of people are buying for them to afford to have a salsa factory in New York City. Think about it...the cost of land and labor are higher in New York than just about anywhere else in the U.S., and then there's the cost of having all the ingredients shipped in from a long way away. (They don't grow too many tomatoes on Long Island, for example.)

Q. Isn't it possible they're just using "made in New York City" as a short way of saying "made by a major diversified faceless corporation that could care less about one particular product"?

Yeah, but what isn't made by a major diversified faceless corporation that could care less about one particular product these days?

Q. So aren't you all just tools of The Man?

Yes, but we'd all like to eventually become The Man, and that's how you start out.

V. nacho.org

Q. Wouldn't it take you less time to become The Man if you had a .com address?

The journey of a thousand nachos begins with a single bite.

Q. Do you have that on a T-shirt?

No, I have salsa stains on a T-shirt. And pants (see above).

Q. Philosophy aside, what's the real reason.

The man (not The Man) who owns nacho.com is holding out for lots of money from a major diversified faceless corporation.

Q. What if I have a question that's not answered here?

Is it nacho-related?

Q. Mmmmmmaybe...

If it is, e-mail me. If not, make sure your subject line is "tellme" and e-mail the best question-answering service I know of.
Now go away. There's nachos to be eaten.

Last updated September 21, 1998

Caution sign

2009-01-29T19:43:00.000-08:00

Look out: there are zombies in Austin!

Garbled

2009-01-21T10:06:00.000-08:00

Back when I worked as a closed captioner, when I would tell people what I did at my job, sometimes they would say something to the effect of, "Oh, I thought they just had computer software automatically translating people's voices."

No, they do not, and BoingBoing shows you why ("England reveals that the whom and and in the thousand 1006 hundred and was last illusion...").

Employment update

2008-12-10T15:15:00.000-08:00

I'm still employed. Unfortunately, many of my friends and teammates are not.

Missed opportunity

2008-11-07T14:10:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama should have opened his speech Tuesday night with "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky."

Oh, yes, it's on!

2008-11-01T12:44:00.000-07:00

John Hodgman's "autograph" on my copy of More Information Than You Require...

More information about original art than you require

2008-10-22T11:50:00.000-07:00

John Hodgman, speaking to The Onion A.V. Club, on "The Laugh-Out-Loud Cats": "One of the greatest single panel comics of all time."

And I have an original "Laugh-Out Loud Cats" panel:

Of course, I have a love/hate relationship with John Hodgman, since he wrote Jim Knows: The Book before I had the means and opportunity to do so -- and now he's written Jim Knows: The Book: The Sequel before I had the chance to do so.

I don't think it would fit in my apartment

2008-10-20T12:45:00.000-07:00

But, boy, would I love to have it: a Solari train departure board from Boston is for sale on eBay.

Awesome birthday card

2008-09-22T18:05:00.000-07:00

Drawn by my co-worker Jarad Coats.

Another proud accomplishment

2008-09-12T08:04:00.001-07:00

My team had an outing to the L.A. County Fair, where one of the attractions is thoroughbred racing. Some of us bet on one of the races -- first time I've ever bet on a race -- and I won. It was only a $10 bet at approximate 2-to-1 odds, so I only won $22, but still...

I picked the horse using the "which one do I think has the best name?" method. The name of the horse: Trainspotting.

Edited to add: Turns out the jockey is on a hot streak -- that race was the third of four in a row he won yesterday.

You say you want more glimpses into my life?

2008-07-28T08:22:00.001-07:00

I went to Comic-Con in San Diego on Saturday. A now-former co-worker at Yahoo!, comic artist Tim Hensley, gave me a guest admission, and I cashed in 2,000 Amtrak Guest Rewards points for the round-trip train ride, so I was able to make the trip economically.

The morning started off auspiciously when I missed a subway train because I was simultaneously attempting to help a woman with the ticket machine and trying to get the ticket machine I was using to accept a Sacajawea dollar (I eventually had to switch to a dollar bill, which it took immediately -- that's not the way the world is supposed to work!). But I made it down to Union Station in time to catch the first southbound train.

The guy sitting next to me after the Santa Ana station was reading a film script titled "Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates," presumably an adaptation of a Tom Robbins novel of the same name, although you never know.

At one point, a short, dark-haired woman already wearing a Comic-Con badge came walking down the aisle. The couple sitting in front of me excitedly asked if they could take a picture with her; she agreed, and they used the camera-at-arm's-length method. She looked very familiar, but I didn't see the name on her badge, and all I knew from overhearing the couple's conversation was that she played Ted's mother on "How I Met Your Mother," a show I don't watch. I'm so horrible on recognizing people out of context that it wasn't until I got home late Saturday night and did a Yahoo! search for "how i met your mother ted's mother" that I figured out the woman was Cristine Rose, who plays Angela Petrelli on "Heroes," a show I do watch.

The train got into San Diego a few minutes early, and I followed the crowd down to the convention center. I went upstairs to get my badge (which turned out to have "Professional" emblazoned on it -- I hoped nobody would ask me to draw something) and headed for the first panel I wanted to attend, "Quick Draw!"

This wasn't so much a panel as it was a demonstration. Cartoonists Sergio Aragones, Scott Shaw, and Mike Peters -- the paper in front of them projected on screens at the front of the room -- attempted to quickly draw things suggested to them by Mark Evanier, occasionally using suggestions shouted out by the audience.

After that, I stayed put for a panel featuring six voiceover actors, hosted by Mark Evanier and animation writer Earl Kress. The star of this panel was Chuck McCann, the original Sonny the Cocoa Puffs Bird (among many, many other things); the two others present with whom I was familiar were Wally Wingert (who does most of the "additional voices" on "Family Guy") and Phil LaMarr (Hermes Conrad on "Futurama" and Ollie the weatherman on "Family Guy" -- he admitted that they sometimes bring him in for 30-second-long sessions for the latter). This panel culminated in the six actors having to demonstrate their craft by reading an old "Adventures of Superman" radio script.

Once those panels were over, I headed down to the exhibit hall and wandered around for a while, although it was so crowded around some booths that the wandering was a very slow process. I did find the "Peanuts" booth, where I bought an exclusive Charlie Brown bobblehead (modeled after a Charlie Brown figurine from 1958), which is now on my desk at work. The biggest obstacle to moving around was the Warner Bros. booth, where an autograph signing by the cast of the TV show "Chuck" was in progress. Yes, the name Comic-Con grows more and more inaccurate every year.

At one point, I walked by as a woman was looking desperately for a pen. I pulled one out of my backpack and handed it to her. It turned out she needed it to get an autograph from a large, bearded man whose badge read "Steve Agee," and whose voice sounded very familiar. Yes, this was another case of me being completely unable to recognize someone out of context -- he's an actor on another TV show I watch, "The Sarah Silverman Program." I got my pen back, but I should have told him (or even the woman involved) to keep it -- I got it from work anyway.

Speaking of which, I went back upstairs, thinking about attending a panel previewing Season 2 of "Pushing Daisies" (which I'm looking forward to being able to watch in HD). The line to get into that panel looked way too long, though, so instead I ducked into a room where Mark Evanier -- yes, him again -- was hosting a panel on MAD Magazine in the '60s, with Al Feldstein, Al Jaffee, Arnie Kogen, and, of course, Sergio Aragones. I never got into comic books when I was growing up, but I read MAD and the Archie digests. I'm always happy to hear MAD stories, especially the one about Bill Gaines and a couple dozen staffers and freelancers showing up at the door of the magazine's one subscriber in Haiti, who had just let his subscription lapse, to try to get him to renew.

After the MAD panel, I stayed put for a panel that was supposed to be Mark Evanier interviewing Mike Peters, but turned out to be Mike Peters telling hilarious stories, tangentially related to his cartooning career, pretty much nonstop.

By this time, it was 5:30. I hadn't managed to meet up with any of my friends who were also at Comic-Con, and they all had dinner plans already anyway, so I walked back to the train station to catch the 6:20 train back to L.A. (the next train wouldn't be until 8:20).

The train was filled with tired Comic-Con attendees until the Solana Beach stop, when the crowd that had been attending horse races at Del Mar got on and raised the noise level considerably -- especially since most of them didn't have seats, and therefore had nothing to do but purchase libations in the snack car.

And the answer to the vital question: yes, there was a fair amount of attractive women in costume. However, I didn't see anyone dressed in the two female costumes I really wanted to see: Liz from "Hellboy II" (I can't find a good photo, but it involves a leather jacket, a choker with a dangling cross pendant, and short dark hair) and Dr. Mrs. The Monarch from "The Venture Brothers" (which I also can't find a good photo of, but it involves lots and lots of cleavage). Actually, I'm told there were a few Dr. Mrs. The Monarchs hanging about on Friday, when there was a "Venture Brothers" panel, so I was off by one day.

Because I'm too shy to actually ask strangers if I can take their picture, I only took one photo on the trip, and this is it:

It's a barbecue restaurant that met the fate of all good barbecue restaurants: it burned down.

Juxtaposition

2008-07-08T08:56:00.000-07:00

Both of these articles appeared on page C1 of the L.A. Times today.

1. Yahoo! is about to implode, but don't worry, Carl Icahn and Microsoft have a plan.

2. Google is totally awesome, and even has wacky conference room and printer names.

Note to self: camera handling rules

2008-07-07T19:44:00.000-07:00

1. Do not take the camera to the beach.
2. If you do take the camera to the beach, leave it in the car.
3. If you do take the camera out of the car, leave it in your bag the entire time.
4. If you do take the camera out of the bag, don't put it in the pocket of your shorts.
5. If you do put the camera in the pocket of your shorts, don't decide to walk down toward the water.
6. If you do decide to walk down toward the water, don't wear your $9.99 flip-flops.
7. If you do wear your $9.99 flip-flops, don't get close enough to the water that a wave might knock the flip-flops off your feet.
8. If a wave does knock the flip-flops off your feet, don't attempt to retrieve them as they float away in the turbulent water.
9. If you do attempt to retrieve them as they float away in the turbulent water, don't attempt to lunge at one of them in a way that knocks you off-balance enough to find yourself up to your neck in the Pacific Ocean.
10. If you do lunge at one of them in a way that knocks you off-balance enough to find yourself up to your neck in the Pacific Ocean -- well, your 2-month-old $200 camera is probably toast at that point, so do whatever you want.

But at least I got the flip-flops back.

No wonder they haven't called me to be on "Jeopardy!" yet. I guess they can tell.

The now-broken new camera and the box for the new new camera...

I've got silver balls

2008-06-24T17:07:00.000-07:00

Now I know where all the pinball machines in L.A. have gone. I went bowling with a couple friends from work Friday night, and discovered that Pinz in Studio City may have a stupid name, may be expensive, and may be too full of hipsters and wannabe hipsters, but they make up for all that by having seven recent-vintage pinball machines.

(This is a posed shot. I wouldn't be looking up and smiling if I actually had a ball in play.)

No longer seven

2008-06-23T10:01:00.000-07:00

From a George Carlin obituary:

Carlin constantly breached the accepted boundaries of comedy and language, particularly with his routine on the "Seven Words,? all of which are taboo on broadcast TV to this day.

Two of those words are "piss" and "tits," both of which have been heard on broadcast TV. (The former is fairly common as part of the term "pissed off," but you'll probably only hear it used as a synonym for "urination" in the late-night hours. Similarly, the censors will let the latter go through on the late-night shows. I've heard it used by guests on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," unbleeped, more than a handful of times -- and, coincidentally, "more than a handful" happens to be the general amount of tits I like.)

At any rate, I can't wait to see if any newspapers that ran the obituary with the line above run a correction in the next few days.

Oh, Conan!

2008-05-15T18:58:00.001-07:00

I suspect the NBC graphics department was too busy coming up with "LAST COMIC STANDING NEXT THURS 9:30/8:30c" to do the necessary proofreading.

The comics

2008-04-30T21:44:00.000-07:00

Yes, this is why the Internet was created: an entire newspaper comics section (in a bizarre "comic book" format the likes of which I have never seen before) from July 12, 1981. The highlights are "Star Trek," "Star Wars," and, of course, "Dallas."

I've been, uh, reading lately

2008-04-24T10:31:00.000-07:00

Levi has "tagged" me with the following task...

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

I'm at work right now, and the closest book to me is on my boss's desk: Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 Step by Step, written by The Staff of Online Training Solutions, Inc.

After drawing an AutoShape, you can change it by selecting it, clicking the Draw button on the Drawing toolbar, clicking Change AutoShape, and then choosing a new shape. In addition to changing the actual shape, you can change the look of a shape by changing its attributes. A shape might have graphic attributes -- such as fill, line, and shadow -- or text attributes -- such as style, font, color, embossment, and shadow.

Fascinating, I know, and probably not quite what Levi was hoping for. (I don't even have a good story about asking my boss to borrow her book, because she's out sick today.) I'm not even going to tag five people, because I don't know five people who read this blog and weren't already named by Levi. But if anyone wants to play along, feel free.

Attention, shoppers

2008-04-20T15:43:00.001-07:00

Heard on the P.A. system at the supermarket today: "Thank you for continuing to shop with us during our remodeling. What an adventure!"

I assume it's more of an adventure for the employees than for the customers, because I'm not really sure that trying to find where they moved the cereal this week counts as an "adventure."

Apparently, my cousin Patrick died of an exploded liver

2008-03-18T20:06:00.000-07:00

...and so did someone else with the same name.

(From a bit on Monday's "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" introduced as "remembering those we lost on St. Patrick's Day," a.k.a. "some Irish-sounding names the writers came up with.")