That's Robin Roberts, by the way...

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Because I only watch sports (and lately some news channels) on television, I had totally missed the fact that Trojan has been advertising a fingertip "massager" for women called the Vibrating Touch. Check out the commercial on the website for how to market a sex product without actually using any sex terms.

To put this in historical context, here's Slate's slide show of the history of the vibrator (unfortunately it's probably NSFW even though, you know, it's like history and stuff).

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Almost all the signage in Abu Dhabi is in dual English/Arabic, at least in the downtown area. As with most things, you get what you pay for. So while some signs have very reasonable English translations, others seem more low budget. Either that or Arabic is less poetic than it's given credit for. Cases in point:

- Future Kitchen Equipment Company

And my personal favorite:

-Modern Popular Restaurant

Who wouldn't want to eat there?

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Earlier this month TKTS opened its new booth in Times Square and it has proven to be quite the hit. My favorite part of the article:

Even people unable to climb the steps seemed to adore them — like Norman Robbins, who is 86, recovering from an automobile accident and, for the time being, walking with a cane.

Mr. Robbins and his wife, B. J., who is 75, spent part of Sunday afternoon sitting on a granite bench at the foot of the new red stairs. They live on Long Island and were in town for a matinee performance of “Equus.” Usually, they pass the time before matinees in a hotel lobby, but on Sunday they were delighted by the city’s newest outdoor spot.

I like the thought of people in their 70s and 80s coming into town for a matinee of a play that's probably most famous for its nudity.

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When I heard this piece on NPR this morning, I thought of the Freedom Rock commercial for the first time in a long time:

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I ain't seein' many of 'em. Probably a good thing.

Of the few, this is the most effective I've seen. Love the payphone in the middle of Iraq, as well as the suggestion that Obama can control the weather.

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In response to creepy attack ads against Al Franken, the Democratic party has come out with the best ad of this election cycle:

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Since there isn't a major football program in the NYC area, I spend my Saturdays listening to football games from minor football schools in the area. Lately I've been listening to Army football games. Army hasn't been execrably bad this season and some of its games have been pretty darn exciting.

What I enjoy almost as much as the games, however, are the ads that are run during the game. Real Men of Genius? Not so much. Boeing Integrated Defense Systems, FLIR Thermal Imaging, ITT Defense Electronics & Services or Navistar Defense? You betcha.

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Are we back to being a basketball school?

Of course, that basketball team occasionally gets its ass handed to it too.

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Just curious, as I might be the most conservative poster on here and I (early) voted for Obama.

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Gowanus has a new music venue, The Bell House, located on 7th street between second and third avenues. It was opened by the guys who run Union Hall and is mercifully sans bocce ball courts. It is purely dedicated for those about to rock.

I bring this up because I mentioned cello metal in the comments for an earlier post and Rasputina is playing there on November 22:

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Obama is off the trail, but the two topics currenlty dominating political conversation right now are the made-up McCain hate crime and the fact that the highest paid McCain campaign staffer in their most recent disclosure was Sarah palin's makeup artist.

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I am continually amused by the fact that will.i.am, who did a popular Obama ad is featured on Flo Rida's In the Ayer:

Sure, it's a coincidence, but so what?

The opening credits of former Lawrence resident Neil LaBute's movie Your Friends and Neighbors introduced me to two things I now love: the art work of Alex Katz, whose studio I went to as a messenger, and Apocalyptica's covers. Apocalyptica just released a new cover of David Bowie's "Heroes":

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John McCain tries to turn Rep. John Murtha's comments about racism in his district into a campaign talking point and this happens:

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Mr. Guapo has said that dividing the Brooklyn Bridge devoting half of the bicycle/pedestrian to bicycles and half to pedestrians isn't exactly equitable since the density of traffic in the bicycle lane is much less than the density of traffic in the pedestrian lane. To this I say, "hooey."

Since the pedestrian path tends to be used primarily by tourists and the bicycle lane by residents, I would argue that the use of the two lanes by New York City taxpayers is relatively equal. It's even possible that more NYC residents use the bicycle lane than the pedestrian path. Since that route is essential for our commute to our jobs to make the money that pays the taxes to maintain the bridge, it is totally equitable that we be given priority over a bunch of tourists.

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I just bottled my first batch--a very easy all-liquid kit. Second batch is fermenting. It was from a kit that included the grains, so it was a much more hands-on brewing process. For the next batch I plan to buy all the ingredients individually and create my own unique beer. Any advice?

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How exactly does one establish residency in a state while overseas? I'm assuming that our Hong King residents aren't paying any state or local taxes of any sort after the move year. But do you still keep to keep voter registration in that state indefinitely?

Just curious given the GOP attempts at voter disenfranchisement based on home foreclosures in Michigan.

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Yup, I bought an iPod yesterday. After resisting the siren call lo these many years, I finally gave up when faced with another 24 hours of plane travel followed by almost a month alone in a hotel room in Abu Dhabi. I'm pretty happy with it. Welcome to the 21st century.

If you're interested, I'm working on something like this. I was there in August for a week. I like to think there aren't a lot of us that have been in ND in January and the Arabian peninsula in August. My personal lifetime temperature swing is now up to 155 deg. F. Surprisingly, it's really humid there in the summer. A couple days ago the low temp was 81, with 100% humidity and fog. I didn't even know that was possible.

Having some familiar music will be a good thing. Arab music TV gets a little tiresome, although the videos of crooning young men in dishdashas, backed by live orchestra, dancing girls, and dudes doing spin tricks with rifles is fun to watch for a surprisingly long time.

Also, the Abu Dhabi airport is way cool and very trippy as a point of entry. Kind of reminded me of something...but it was probably just the jet lag.

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Everybody who spends too much time on the intarwebs knows about fail. Someone screws up? Post of photo of someone screwing up really, really badly, and put stark white letters over it. My personal favorite.

I saw the photo above online a few days back and thought: "awesome." Lolcat Internet talk comes to the real world!

Slate looks at fail.

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I present to you The Women of Field and Stream.

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I won't be able to watch much basketball this year, but I'm hyped. We'll have a young erratic team that will lose to people we shouldn't lose to, then win in unbelievable games. Someone on Phog.net put up for download the Kansas-Oklahoma 2006 game, where freshman Mario Chalmers hit the game-winner, and it's a lesson in how all the fun is getting there.

Also, Sherron Collins is an unbelievably sexy man.

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Katy Perry, Hot N Cold:

Hot N Cold

Katy also has a song called I Kissed A Girl, but I don't like it as much as Jill Sobol's:

For nearly 20 years, the urban look has been defined by baggy clothing. Kanye West has changed that. Now it's not uncommon to see black kids wearing hipster tight jeans and bright, 80s influences colors. Here's Estelle with kanye West, American Boy:

And then there's always the Retro Kidz:

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One of my favorite sites of this election cycle is memeorandum and for the last two news cycles Joe the Plumber has dominated the top of the page. Yesterday was background on Joe, aka Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, and today's themes focus on the character assassination of Joe the Plumber.

Michelle Malkin et al. acuse the Obama-loving mainstream media of targeting Joe the Plumber for destruction because he dared to ask Obama a critical question about his tax policies. I'm sympathetic towards Joe the Plumber, but the reason that the mainstream media is looking into Joe Wurzelbacker isn't because he asked a critical question of Obama's tax policies. It's because John McCain made him into a debate topic. It was John McCain, not Barack Obama or the media, who made the question of whether Joe the Plumber would benefit or not under Barack's tax plan a legitimate issue and led the media to investigate his life.

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I missed the debate last night because of a rehearsal for Like You Like It, but this photo is bad news for McCain:

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See below...

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It's usually not a good idea to listen to a word Jebus says. But his comment about not knowing how to post photos reminded me of my original idea for the photos to the left: Why do I have to be the one to post? Can't y'all post without me?

It's now possible for flickr users. There are two ways to do it.

1) Log in to flickr under the username "norlos." I will email y'all the password tonight. Once you're there, click on the "You" menu at the top, go to "Upload photos or videos" and follow the directions. Once you're done, click on your freshly uploaded photo and you will see a button above it that says "Blog This!" You blog that bad boy, and it will appear on the photo bar to the left. Don't forget to give it a title!

2) This is the better way. Start a flickr account or go to your existing one. Under the "You" menu go to "Your Account." Once there, there's a tab to the upper right that says "Extending Flickr." Now look for the link that says "Configure your Flickr-to-blog settings." The promised land awaits.

Click "Set up your blog."

On the next pulldown menu, select "Movable Type."

Now it asks for something called the MT cgi-bin. It is this: http://www.norlos.com/weblog/mt-xmlrpc.cgi. Catchy, no?

It also wants your username and password. They are the username and password you usually use to post to Norlos. Put those in.

It will ask you which weblog you want to post to. Important: Do NOT pick Norlos.com! You want to pick "Glimpse." Glimpse is the name of the photo bar to the left, though I no longer advertise it because I find it pretentious.

Click through and you're done!

Now, just because we're connected doesn't mean photos on your Flickr account will simply pop up on Norlos. The choice is yours. When you're on the page with your photo, look for a button that says "Blog This!"

Keep 'em coming.

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Mr. Guapo's post stays at the top of the page even though it's 10 hours old...

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"McLovin McCain" shirts are 20% off!

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In my days as a messenger, delivering to Vibe wasn't a bad assignment. They're located in 215 Lexington Avenue. There was generally cool music playing, their staff would share gossip about celebrities and if you were lucky you might come away with some schwag.

One day I was headed down to the street in an elevator full of messengers and folks from Vibe. I was the only white person in the elevator and was wearing my messenger garb. The elevator stopped and there were these four white, clean cut young guys wearing khakis and nicely pressed shirts who tried to squeeze into the elevator without actually touching anybody already in it. As they stepped in, I saw on the wall behind them, in gigantic lettering, National Review. I was like, "geez...talk about your steroetypical young republican..."

Anyway, I thought about that today when I saw that Christopher Buckley had resigned from NR.

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Part of me thinks it's cool that the Obama campaign is advertising in video games, but part of me also thinks the ads look kind of creepy...

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Seaver was born to Mary Lyddane and Clay Lyddane 10/7/08 at 15:35 weighing 7lbs 8oz and measuring 20.5 inches.
Named after Tom Seaver otherwise known as "The Franchise", Seaver had 311 wins, 3,640 strikeouts and a 2.86 ERA during his 20-year career. We hope this will bring karma to the Mets and they have a better season in their new stadium.
We are excited about the new addition to our family, and I doubt if our daughter Caroline has any idea what is about to go down.
One of these days I will have to figure out how to upload pics.
Also: call to all Catholics, we are accepting nominations for Godparents, are you holy enough?

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I was serious earlier when I asked whether anybody wants to go to the UT game. We have extra tickets and if not taken by Jayhawks, they might go to some of our friends who are Longhorns.

I was at the opening of the Aaron Douglas exhibition from KU at the Schomburg Center last weekend and the word on the street was that my parents got some pretty sweet tickets...

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When I went to bed, the Jayhawks were down 20-zip to the Cyclones. This morning? I learn they won 35-33, with Todd Reesing throwing for 320 yards and Kerry Meier catching seven of his 18 passes.

So Hellx, two questions:

1) Do either of these guys have a shot at the NFL?

2) When you see Meier, are you also reminded of 2OSoul's Nordic godhood?

Edit: Also woke up to yet another typhoon.

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The Huffington Post uses the above photograph to illustrate independent focus groups in Colorado. When I saw it, I was like, "how independent can these women be if they're playing Palin bingo?" Turns out that this was a a photo of debate watchers in San Francisco.

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This response by Biden to the McCain health care "plan" really impressed me last night. Post debate, it was all I could talk about. Looking and the camera and addressing the viewer directly was a very powerful moment but the meat of the response was policy-based.

I thought that the closing statements were interesting as well. Sarah Palin quoted Reagan saying we "are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in America when men were free." What she didn't say is that this quote comes from a Reagan speech against Medicare (update -- NYT has the full story):

Listen to this, when Kennedy fought for Medicare back in 1962, a movie actor in California who later became the Governor of his State and the leader of our country—listen to this—urged listeners to oppose Medicare. He said, "If you don't do this, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in America when men were free."

Yeah, I've heard the "Champ" quote before from Biden, but I thought it was a very strong end to his closing statement.

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Good times:

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Goodbye Delices de Paris, hello Atomic Wings!

For those outside of Park Slope, Delices de Paris was a patisserie best known for health code violations and the divorce of the owners.

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It took McCain using him in a campaign ad, but Bill Clinton has finally brought his A-game to the stump for Obama:

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Yank!, a production that I worked on last year, has won the NYIT award for best production of a musical. It's the second production that I've worked on to win this award. Last year was the first year that Brooklyn theaters were eligible for the award, so since we've been eligible the Gallery Players has had a stranglehold on the musical award.

Without a doubt, Yank! was the most technically challenging show that I've done. The lighting design was very minimal, with very few specials (instruments within the lighting rig which are required for a specific moment or effect within the performance). As a result, I was constantly refining my cues, lighting intensity and size of the spot. Yank! was my Citizen Kane of follow-spotting.

I must say, though, that I don't really care for the photo that TheatreMania chose since Bobby is kind of dark. I must been too tight on Maxime during the photo shoot. See photographs here and listen to the songs here.

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I'm watching a 20-minute fireworks show over the city's harbor from my second office, otherwise known as "home." Pretty awesome stuff. Check out last year's show.

National Day commemorates the founding of modern China, of which we're technically a part here. Mao Zedong declared the existence of the People's Republic of China Oct. 1, shortly after Chiang Kai-Shek booked a one-way ticket to Taiwan.

Oct. 1 is also the day Germany annexed the Sudetenland. I'm trying not to draw parallels.

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