In 1882 at age 26

In 1904 at age 48

In 1942 at age 87

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...and I'm going to try to eat a cobra. Wish me luck.

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"Ball" in the putonghua is 球, or qiu(2). Remember your tones? That means it sounds like "cho?" ("Q" sounding like "ch," and "iu" sounds like a long "o." Pay attention.) Talking about a sport with a ball in it? You're gonna need your 球.

For starters, there's tennis. In Chinese it's "net ball," or "wang(3)qiu(2)" -- 网球.

Ping pong? Deceptively easy: "ping(4)pong(no tone)qiu(2)" -- 乒乓球.

Basketball, sport of Jayhawks? Lan(2) qiu(2) -- Lan(2) being part of the word for "basket." Basketball is 篮球 -- and there's that 球 again!

Soccer is, like in the rest of the world, "foot ball," or "zu(2) qiu(2)" -- 足球.

But wait! What about American football, the other sport of Jayhawks? What's the word for that tender thing Todd Reesing and Dezmon Briscoe do?

Tricky. "Foot ball" is already claimed, so we need something else. "American football" is sometimes used, I'm told, but too confusing, especially since the root of "American" is mei(2), or "beautiful," and soccer is "the beautiful game."

So the Chinese go for the shape of the ball. "Gan(3) lan(3)" means "peace," but it also means "olive," I guess like olive branch, eh? So American football is "Gan(3) lan(3) qiu(2)." "GAaaaaAAN LAAaaaaAAAN cho?" Or something like that.

Han yu xue de bu rong yi. ("Chinese is not easy to study")

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Yelle on the Lily Allen and Friends show, at the Knitting Factory, and with Fatal Bazooka. Watch less attractive women complain about electropop and play rock and roll in in Brooklyn.

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I thought garmr might be appalled by a hip hop dance crew putting an "urban" spin on the title of a Lewis Carroll poem.

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The Neckface arm is no more.

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At Lincoln Center we currently get bottled water, but we could save $2,000 a year by cancelling the contract. However, I've been told that we need this water because the water in the building is "bad" and that the pipes are "dirty." The building is about 45 years old and underwent a comprehensive 3 year long renovation from 1998 to 2001. We have working water fountains, or maybe bubblers to you, that the public and I use (since nobody ever told me that the pipes were "dirty.")

This sounds like BS to me. What do you think--how likely is it that the water in our building is unsafe or how often should the water quality in a building be checked? Would eight years be too long? I'm assuming that we tested the water at some point during the renovation. Don't worry about liability here, your input will have no bearing on whether we pay up for a comprehensive test of the building's water.

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Dick Cully Big Band:

In Japan...
In Germany...
A community college band...
A middle school band...

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Believe it's that building between the crotch of the China Central Television headquarters building.

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Through the wonders of AM radio, I'm travelling back in time. It started one day a couple of weeks ago when I was home sick. The NFL playoff games had ended and I was trying to find something to listen to. That's when I came across WMTR's All Night Jersey Diner.

It's pretty good if you're content listening to the best music of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, but pretty soon I started looking for the harder stuff. That's when I discovered Danny Stiles' Music Museum. Playing the best records of the twentieth century, it's simply amazing and Stiles' radio personality is so classic. Stylistically, he' similar to Jonathan Schwartz, but instead of filling his broadcast with bullshit philosophical ruminations, he's selling Seppi's and John's Pizzeria hard. Oddly, I don't find listening to Danny Stiles selling these restaurants for five minutes as annoying as bullshit philosophical ruminations.

As soon as Thoroughly Modern Millie is over, I'm going to Seppi's on a Friday night to meet him. Oh, the video is from Radio Radio. I don't know whether they're supposed to be funny or whether they're just French.

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(warning: hipster mustache)

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In a world of sheeple and domesticated humankind, The Children's Society would very much appreciate it were we all to start raising vealdren.


Veald (vēld), n. [pl. vealdren (vēl´-dren)] a son or daughter, very young person, or descendant, fed on milk or pablum to retain its delicate taste, isolated and sheltered so as not to stress or strengthen its flesh.

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