Michael Malice title

If you are bored and have too much spare time go over to Board Game Geek. You can run a search based on year and waste time on pointless nostalgia. Or perhaps you, like some other people who have some kind of pathology, are compelled to purchase old board games and waste space in your house even though I know damn well that I am never ever going to play Bargain Hunter.

It sounds like a punchline to say that we were so poor that I played Pac-Man the board game, but it's true.

Today's the day I find out if film agents really are going to look at my script just because I'm going to be fictionalized myself. Stay tuned.

Or don't.

UPDATE: And by "today", I mean sometime this week.

One of the dangers of reading antiquarian books is that often the author will throw out a casual reference that means nothing in today's context. Such as: "Who has not been frightened into obedience by tales of a bogie-man, a Chinaman, a black man, or a Santa Claus with his rattan,--stories which do triple injury by fostering cowardice, class-hatred, and lying?"

Apparently Santa was some villain 100+ years ago, and yet everything else I've read implies the opposite is true.

UPDATE: "Apparently, the Santa-analog (which sounds like an Alamo-related war journal) in Germany is or was Ruprecht, who rewarded good children and beat bad ones with a stick, accompanied by a mean-spirited troll. " (Thanks to Todd Factsandfears).

I read The Good Old Days--They Were Terrible!, a photographuc archive of the late 19th Century. Although I think the author takes a bit of the sensationalism of the past too seriously, it's still informative to see photographs of the Gilded Age. It's also eerie to see shots of classrooms, knowing that all the kids are dead.

Dork Alert

I saw someone had the UserID of Matter Reader Lad.

The Need for Correct Spelling
A Cautionary Tale

Ran into Caren Pilby on the street, the power of my Magic Glasses having transferred to me directly.

Then Comrade Stephie and I went to a sushi place. This place is known (by me) for their specials. One of my favorite things to do is try new kinds of sushi, perhaps because I know a bit about the biology of the animal that I am eating. They had shad and halfbeak, which I've wanted to try for a looong time (since the fish is one of those weird species I like).



Also on the menu was "Row Octopus Wasabi Infused". I figured this for a typo. "Is this octopus roe?" I asked the waitress.
"Yes."
So I ordered it. I got a bowlful of shredded octopus, not the mollusc eggs I had envisioned. It was a typo, but a typo for raw octopus. This was my chance to find out if I'd be able to step on Fear Factor and I choked down every last piece of the slimey mess. My stomach was displeased, and for a minute it felt like the octopuses (yes, that's correct) were reforming inside me.

After dinner we ran into Pal Janet and crew, as well as finding a couple of Cadbury's Creme Eggs at a deli. So there was, at least, a happy ending.

E-mail of the Day

"You should buy a Land Rover and reverse the 'L' and the 'R.'"

I should learn how to drive.

I went to see Kill Bill 2 (4). Nowhere near as good as the 1st; Tarantino had enough material for 1 1/2 films, and this was the half. His conversational style is amazing when he nailes it, but when he slips and the character are really just stand-ins for his wit it starts to grate really bad.

There was a black mamba in the film and they actually got it and its biology right; unfortunately they neglected to mention how the green snake gets its name: the inside of its mouth is black.

E-mail of the Day

"hey mike,

"are you still up for doing some UE at the amusement park? I think me and a couple others are up for it. we might even have a car. let me know..."

Sent to: asshole@

Mind you, this is someone I met once. It's one thing to make them bothered enough to think it; it's another to make them comfortable enough to say it. He's the boy you love to hate!

UPDATE: Or they could have asked a 'friend' for my email address and this is what they received.

Michael Malice:
Crusader for World Peace



I went to a party on Sunday. What was interesting is that at the party where two French girls, both here in NYC for the first time on vacation. This of course allowed me to practice my French, and I was pleased that after 10 years of not speaking it I was still--if not fluent--perfectly able to converse. This is not that impressive as French is my fourth language, though I have forgotten the Hebrew of my youth (and am trying to forget Russian).

I was a huge Anglophile (partially via St. Alexander) but absolutely despised London once I got there. Perhaps France, which I have a visceral antipathy for, might be the place for me. After all, Amelie is described as a quintessentially French film. Ergo.

But any questions I wanted to ask were gone from the mind, leaving me only with the knowledge of:

Amelie
Plastic Bertrand
Robespierre
La Marseillaise
Au Revoir Les Enfants

which is kind of like meeting someone from Iowa and discussing Field of Dreams, Mink Deville, Huey Long, America the Beautiful and Boys' Town.

They had some trouble following the film. I burst out laughing at one point, and no one else quite found it as funny that a French chick in NYC for the first time is spending two hours watching C.H.U.D.. Later she busted out her lighter, a patriotic one with the US flag and marines. This gave me an idea. I gave her a lighter that I had received from my college girlfriend in 1997, when we were President and VP of the Bucknell College Republicans and that I carried in my bag ever since. So was born a collection, and the ties between our nations grew a bit stronger. I do my part.

They also hadn't heard of French libertarian Sabine Herold, which was a shame.

I read A Reader's Manifesto, which is an attack on modern 'literature' and writers. The book only confirmed my hunch to stay away from so much of it. But I don't think things have gotten worse so much as they have gotten bad in a different way. Most so-called classics are pure torture, plodding, dreary and pointless.

But then again, I am a Futurist.

I went to buy a frame for a poster I've had sitting around for months.

"Look," the cashier said. "There's a scratch. But I'm almost positive it's in the film over the plexiglass and not the plexiglass itself." She pulls out a box-cutter. "Operation! Now I know why they made that game."
"I've got butterflies in my stomach," I told her.
"Oh, I'm sure it'll be fine." Very carefully she cut around and pulled off the film, showing that the plexiglass was unscathed.
"You know, 'butterflies in the stomach'? As in Operation?"
"I need more customers like you."

Shameless

Some guy defending compulsory dog insurance on Tv just claimed, "Odds are that sooner or later your dog is going to bite someone."

Number of dogs in America: 65 million
Number of people bitten by dogs: 4.7 million
Odds that a large percentage of those bites are by dogs are repeat offenders: 100%
Time taken to get these facts: 30 seconds