Hit up "Flor De Sol" in Tribeca for Benny and Keryn's engagement party. So-so food (for the $50 price fix menu), but great atmosphere and very cool musical act towards the end.

I checked out NextFest at the Jacob Javits Center with zak, Jon and Chung. NextFest is a huge convention sponsored by wired magazine that puts on display all the cool and upcoming gadgets and technology that major companies and small ones are preparing to unveil.

When we got there in the late afternoon, we were greeted by a line that must've been a thousand people long and perhaps eight or nine rows deep. While we were waiting on line, zak decided he should go to the will call booth and try to get a ticket that he was promised from the web site. He had done a promotion where, if you give wired magazine 10 of your friend's e-mail addresses, they will reward you with a free ticket. Wired had not actually mailed him the ticket, so he wanted to see if he could get a free one by mentioning the promotion. Five minutes later he came back and said, "you guys have to do this." So, one by one we all approached the will call booth, said that "I did this promotion on the web site and I'm here for my free ticket," and without checking our names against any list, we all got free tickets. Additionally, there were people coming around with clipboards giving out free subscriptions to wired magazine, all you had to do was fill out your address. So an event that would have cost each of us $20 instead rewarded us with a one-year magazine subscription. We felt pretty good walking in.

My initial response to NextFest was not very good. For a convention that supposedly housed the most futuristic amazing products of the 21st century, how was it that there were a thousand people waiting on line to get to four ticket booths? In their vision of how the world will work in the next 10 to 15 years, could the creators of this convention simply have implemented an efficient way of selling tickets to a lot of people? so that wasn't very impressive.

But my main reaction is pretty simple -- half of the stuff we saw was basically stuff that was already unavailable. Maybe some of this was not available in stores, but it certainly wasn't stuff we hadn't seen before. One glaring example would be wind turbines. The other half of the products fell into the category of "crap that has absolutely no use in the real world." Actually there were a lot of pretty cool products, such as stuff from NASA or the Virgin Atlantic demonstration. Many of GE’s innovations were great, but not particularly interesting. Stuff that was dumb… there were many examples.

First, a game called brainball, where two people sit at either end of a table wearing hokey headbands and stare at a little ball in the middle of the table. Their headbands measure their brain wave activity and the calmer the player is, the more the ball rolls towards him. Wow, this sounds like a truly exciting game, certainly 21st-century. The caption says "stay mellow to stay in control, score and win." I think that's exactly what we need in gaming today.

Then there were a bunch of odd robots. One robot is the humanlike Actroid, a Japanese girl who moves around and says things. Then there was an odd plastic robot with Einstein for a head. That also kind of moved around and kind of did things, but not really. I wasn't very impressive and it didn't seem like it had all that much use other than having a robot walk around a cocktail party and have people say "wow that robot looks a lot like Einstein." Then there was the robotics competition which was basically soccer for a bunch of remote controlled boxes with wheels that sort of hit each other and threw little Nerf balls around. The game had a small Astroturf arena like a football field, and seemed like it was going to be really exciting. None of us could immediately figure out what the rules of the game was since these kids, stationed behind Plexiglas at either side of the field, just threw the Nerf balls at the other end over the Plexiglas. It was very bizarre and not immediately obvious what the goal of the game was, so we left. What was interesting is that they were all high school students and they had built the robots themselves. That was cool. But they were predictably the nerdiest group of people imaginable!

Probably the silliest thing I saw was a robot that looked like it belonged on an automobile assembly line. Spinning records. Yes, it was this huge machine that could swivel around and do things with pinpoint precision, and all it did was pick up one of the 10 records that surrounded it, bring it over to a record player needle, and spin it. There were two of these machines and they "duked it out," spinning crappy vinyl records and scratching discs. First of all, you definitely don't need a robot to make terrible music. Second of all, didn't jukeboxes pretty much do this in the 60s? And didn't they require a lot less space and could spin a lot more records? Not impressive.

The other funny robot was a pink, life-size partner for ballroom dancing, complete with a flowing dress. But the funniest thing about her was her little Mickey Mouse ears. WTF?

Some of the sillier products included the “sun trap handbag,” a women's handbag with a solar panel on the side that had lights that line the bottom of it so girls who apparently packed too much shit in their bags can actually find stuff in the dark. My problem with this, which I explained to Chung who is very fashionable and knows what women would buy, was that women's handbags serve absolutely no useful purpose except that they are an accessory, a piece of fashion that they wear just like anything else. My guess is that, judging from the way girls buy handbags, an ugly handbag with a gimmick on the side probably won't sell. Personally, I like the idea, but I don't buy handbags. I also don't pack so much shit that I can't find my keys inside my bag.

Then there was the “hug shirt.” Two lovers who are far away can still touch each other by wearing shirts that are connected to Bluetooth mobile phones and have heat and pressure sensors built in. When you hug yourself, it sends a signal to your mate and applies heat and pressure to wherever it is you're hugging. I'm sorry, but this just seems like the stupidest idea I've ever heard. What are you going to do, walk around wearing the shirt all the time? Why doesn’t your significant other just call you and say "okay I'm hugging you, go squeeze yourself.” And it seems the options are pretty limited with a hug shirt -- you can either hug, or I suppose if you are the more abusive boyfriend, you could squeeze your arm or pull on your shoulder or something like that. Actually, that would be pretty amusing, abusive dudes hitting themselves. Maybe next year.

Of course there were tons of nerds and everyone was drinking the super caffeinated Coca-Cola drink, BLAK. Also, one of the coolest products would have to be the Blackberry Pearl that is coming out soon. This thing can play video, audio, take video, record audio, oh yeah and its a fully functional Blackberry that is the size of a RAZR. Sweet!

After the run, I jogged home, took a shower, and headed out to meet up with my cousin, mother and my mom's sister for brunch at a wonderful place on the upper west side called Neptune. I had a very filling and very satisfying portion of French toast. Normally, the portions of French toast I get in any New York City diner or restaurant are far too small to be satisfying. So this was a real treat.

A 5:50 mile!

I totally kicked ass today at the Fifth Avenue mile. I ran it in 5 minutes 50 seconds with my friend Jon.

It was the first time I've tried to just run 1 mile since high school, when we had to run 1 mile for gym class in under 10 minutes in order to pass the mandatory evaluations. Back in high school, I think it took me a second attempt to break 10 minutes.

The reason a one-mile run is so difficult is because it's too short to really try to pace yourself, but too long to do an all-out sprint. When Jon and I passed the finish line, we were breathing so heavy our throats were burning like a smoker's. We decided it had less to do with New York City air and more to do with the fact that we simply never pushed ourselves that hard to breathe that heavily. It took a good hour and a half for my throat to stop burning.

Here are some awesome photos of me and Jon in action. You can see how much I'm beating Jon. That's because I'm awesome and awesome guys come in first. Yes, I'm an entire second better than Jon.

Doree came over earlier today. She is a good friend of mine and is coming out with a book in the next few months. It is a dating guidebook for older women. She spent a good deal of time bitching about how ugly the cover looked. So that she is going to come up with something new. I didn't think it look half bad, but she would have kicked me in the balls had I said anything other than "it's the ugliest thing I've ever seen."

I just got a whole bunch of awesome toys. Well, awesome for me. I got a 19 inch flat-panel monitor that is really wide and puts my old 15 inch monitor to shame. I also bought a new wireless trackball mouse. Exciting, I know. And finally, I bought a $12 FireWire card. All of this came from newegg.com, a great site. So, what am I going to do with my old monitor and old mouse? I put the monitor on craigslist for 75 bucks in the mouse on eBay with a starting bid of $20. I've already gotten an e-mail from craigslist, and it was faster and cost nothing to post my ad. EBay however charges for so many different options, plus you have to mail the item.

These are some before/after pics:

Yesterday I dropped about $600 on my trip to Florida next month where I'll be doing three environmental video stories for Yahoo news, Assignment Earth.

Flights -- $175 (fly into Tampa and out from Orlando)

Hotels -- $200 for three nights

Car -- $216 for an SUV for four days

Now I know what you're thinking: what on God's earthy crunchy earth was I thinking renting an SUV for my trip to shoot environmental stories. Well, I was planning on getting a regular midsize car but when I looked at Avis's site, the Chevy SUV was about $40 cheaper than the midsize Pontiac G6. So I did a quick calculation, figuring on about 450 miles of driving, $3 per gallon of gas, and 15 mpg and 22 mpg for the SUV and Pontiac respectively. It turned out even with the cost of gas being pretty high, the difference in mpg is just way too small. I would only save about $10 in gas by picking the Pontiac.

I wish there were an easier, cheaper, and more fuel efficient way for me to get around in Florida, but there isn't. So I'm stuck driving an SUV, which will be the first time I'll ever drive one, and likely the last at least for a while. I think I'm going to buy a carbon neutral tag for my trip. Basically, you calculate how many miles of air travel and car travel you will do on your trip. This translates directly into a certain number of pounds of carbon dioxide that is released. You can purchase a certificate to remain carbon neutral. The money basically goes to a variety of renewable energy funds and projects (like wind energy, yay!) that account for the equivalent amount of emissions you've used.

I was about five steps outside of my apartment building this morning when I was approached by a man who said something like, "excuse me kind sir, you seem like you have a kind heart," and a few other stupid introductory lines that I anticipated would lead to a punch line of "can I have some money." So I cut him off by saying, "are you asking for money. Are you asking me if I can give you some money? No I don't have any money to give you." I've lived in this city for 3 1/2 years now and at this point I really don't feel bad for a lot of the people who are asking for money and have sob stories. Virtually all of them are either lazy and simply do not want to work and expect people with money to simply hand it out to them.

I'd really like to play the following joke on somebody. You find someone that appears to be a beggar and is about to approach you to ask for money. And before they have a chance to ask you, you ask them if they can spare a quarter or $.10 to help you buy a Coca-Cola. I still don't have the balls to do this, but I will occasionally offer more than my curt "I don't have money sorry" and make a snide remark here and there.

one of the things that also really pisses me off about homeless people and particularly the panhandlers who simply ask for money as if they are entitled to your dollar bill or any change that is sitting in your pocket, is that everybody asks for money in one way or another, but almost nobody has approached me and asked for a job or work or offered their services in exchange for money.

on one occasion that I can remember, my friend and I were moving my couch from my old apartment up my new one, and we were struggling through the front door of the apartment building. A man was walking by and offered his services. He didn't strike me as someone who needed a buck, but instead just a friendly neighbor offering a helping hand. Well, by the time we got up to the fifth floor, his helping hand was outreached and he asked for money. This startled us as we wouldn’t have had him help if we knew he would ask for cash. I gave him two dollars for his 2 1/2 minutes of work. He scoffed and said "this can't even buy me a big Mac." so I ended up having to give him a few extra dollars, I'm guessing less for the big Mac and more for his malt beverage.

picky beggars are particularly funny -- the ones who ironically pay no heed to the adage "beggars can't be choosers". when I was in Chicago with Maddy, we of course went to get some deep dish pizza. I only ate three quarters of my personal pan pizza, and had the final slice put in a doggie bag. after seeing a few movies, Maddy and I decided to walk around Chicago and see the nightlife. as we descended some stairs, a man that looked perfectly happy and healthy pardoned us and asked if we had any money to spare. I said no, but I looked down at the pizza box and thought, I'm really not hungry and I'm probably just going to end up throwing this out. "here, you can have this pizza, I'm not going to eat it." He furrowed his brow and eyed the box, and asked "what kind is it?" As I open the box to show him the pizza. He looked at it and scrunched his face and said "oh I don't want that," as if it wasn't good enough for him. He left, and I turned to Maddy and said "that is exactly why I do not give money to anybody." What hungry person asking for money is going to turn down a slice of uneaten pizza? Well, someone who is not hungry, who is merely looking for some money so he can go and buy a drink or a lotto ticket or put the money into his savings account and 401(k).

a lot of people, good-natured people, believe that anybody that asks you for money or looks down on their luck, is hungry and can't find food. I do not believe it is possible to go hungry in New York City. On any given night, just after the big chains close up, you can easily find huge bags of uneaten bagels, doughnuts and that sort of food. I've passed this many times outside Dunkin' Donuts or Krispy Kreme's. And this of course is assuming you don't even have a dime to pay for a bite of food.

But I've never had someone ask for work. perhaps that is unreasonable. Why would anybody ask for a job on the street? Then again, when the hell did it become okay for random people to ask other random people for money to simply buy them things. I am certainly not knocking people who can't work, people who are particularly old, veterans, crazies, disabled people or otherwise handicapped people. But the vast majority of people who are asking me for money are able-bodied, under 40, and don't strike me as people who could not possibly hold a job. They strike me as people who are lazy.

What I'd like to do is put these people to work and see if any of them will actually work. I want to offer them jobs, low risk jobs at first, but jobs nonetheless just to test them and see if any of them are actually willing to do simple work, simple tasks in exchange for money. Unfortunately, I don't really have too many simple tasks that are low risk (i.e. I don't have to give them money to do them, like pick up my groceries or something like that). But I could certainly foresee a team who could be organized into laborers of some kind -- maybe movers, or painters.

Personally, one of the tasks that I'd like accomplished would be someone sitting on an MTA bus and jotting down "real" timetables of the bus. In other words, jot down the time and bus stop as the bus goes through its route. This could apply to subways as well. The whole point of this is to figure out more accurate timetables during certain times of the day and to analyze and interpolate this data to project more realistic schedules for buses and subways, rather than rely on the MTA's totally inaccurate timetables. I think this would be a pretty cool project, to recruit anybody that is asking for money and turn them into real workers.

But without ever even starting this task, I already know the outcome. The fact is, these people make more money in 20 minutes doing their song and dance on the subway than they would working a legitimate job for two hours. There is a ton of money in panhandling, and you don't have to pay taxes either.

for arguments sake, let's do a simple back of the envelope calculation of how much a typical panhandler makes a day. They walk onto the subway car and begin their introduction and entertainment routine -- a simple song, a simple poem, or just a cheesy, clichéd sob story about how they feel so bad for asking for money. This probably takes them between 30 seconds and one minute to complete, but let's say it takes them two minutes. then they walk around the subway car with a cup or a hat or an envelope or some other receptacle, expecting people to pay for the two minutes of bad entertainment. Based on my observations, the payout is obviously directly proportional to the value of the entertainment. A really good song or a really powerful performance, whatever it is, will get a lot more change and bills. Also, blacks seem to give more often, but this could just be because there are many more black panhandlers and races like to help each other out. I don’t know. (This is an OBSERVATION, not a judgment.)

So let's assume for a moment that this is a really bad entertainer and he or she only gets one or two handfuls of change -- maybe a dollar if they are lucky, but more like $.50. okay, so they get $.50 for about two or three minutes of work. That is on a low-end. On the high-end they probably get more like one or two dollars. $.50 for three minutes of work translates to roughly $10 an hour, and $80 per workday. For the medium-range panhandlers, that number can easily get up to about 200 to maybe even $300 a day, taking into account rush-hour traffic and tourists if they are hustling in the right places at the right times.

I don't know about you, but that sounds more like a salary than a handful of loose change. And this is why it bothers me when people give money to these people -- they're simply saying "yes, this is a great place to panhandle, since there are so many ready and willing people to pay you for your nonsense and feel bad for you and feel like they are making a difference in your life." In reality, panhandlers do have a job, and a pretty high paying job at that. They panhandle. They sell Bullshit and nonsense, and try to entertain by playing up to this unfounded notion that they are less fortunate than you simply because they are trying to make money on a subway and you make money in an office.

Which brings me back to the guy who approached me for money this morning. that evening, I was downstairs at the convenience store and who did I bump into, but the same guy. He didn't recognize me so we didn't really look at each other, but I did notice he was buying a lotto ticket. A fucking lotto ticket. That's what these people end up spending all their money on, lotto tickets, booze, and cigarettes. It sounds stereotypical, but there's a reason it’s a stereotype. Because virtually all of them drop all their ‘hard earned’ cash on crap that I wouldn’t spend a dime on (cigarettes or lotto, not alcohol, I don’t blame them for the alcohol). But cigarettes are expensive as hell!! My roommate pays maybe $30-$40/month for his addiction at $7/pack. Everyday I see the same people in my neighborhood buying the same crap at the convenience store and I've long stopped feeling sorry for them.

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of homeless people who are down on their luck in less fortunate than myself. (oh yeah, and most of those panhandlers probably are not homeless either… that’s BS). And those people deserve help in one way or another. But I truly believe those legitimately asking for money for some food or whatever else make up a mere 1% of the usual suspects who are really ripping you off. And it is all those other people, the assholes who ask for you to buy their Chinese food because they don't feel like making that dollar and buying it themselves, who make it really hard to distinguish the people who actually deserve the money. So I never give money to anybody. Period. and I never feel bad about it.

I bought a great new battery for my phone off of eBay. But the funny thing is its blue, which makes my phone look like a jalopy with multicolored paneling. I think it would've been a little that more stylish if I got it in wood color instead of blue. But for $10 off of eBay, I now have a cell phone battery that lasts more than 30 minutes.

today on the subway I saw a few weird things.

First, this morning I saw an older man who was reading Don Quixote, which is a book I am still working on and carry around in my backpack. But later this evening I saw a woman reading the same edition of donkey of day. This is somewhat odd because usually the only books I see people reading are trashy novels, religious books, self-help books, and anything by the idiot that wrote the da Vinci code.

second, I walked into the uptown A train, sat down, and immediately a young girl in the forwardmost part of the car broke into song and started doing her thing, kind of Beyoncé. Almost immediately, in the back of the car, an older man broke into song which he introduced as an old slave song from the 1800s. it looked like the man made a lot more money because I watched him walk the length of the car and a lot of people seem to give him some change while the girl didn't make it very far.

finally, one of the more depressing things I saw was a 250 pound mother of three smacking her kids around and yelling at them about how the one kid was a follower and did everything his brother did, and why was he being such a sheet. He needs to be a leader. The father was with the family as well, except he was doing Word search puzzles and not paying much attention. It made me think this woman was really not fit to be a mother. While it is obviously too extreme to suggest anything like eugenics, I really think parents should be ticketed by police when they either verbally or physically abuse their kids in public like that. It's a very touchy issue obviously, because who's to say how she should raise her children. But these kids were probably four or five years old, and can't possibly stand up for themselves. It's sad to think this is how a lot of kids are brought up. The other terrible thing I see more often than I'd like is when really young children are riding on the subway with their mother when it is really late at night, like three or 4 a.m.

Jess invited Felissa and me to a tasting at the food network, of all places. It was an event hosted by Applebee's starring a celebrity chef, Tyler something or other who is on the food network a lot, who was the brains behind a series of new dishes Applebee's is offering. So he demonstrated how to cook a few of them and then we got to eat. I liked the eating part of it. interestingly, the event was held in the main kitchen that is right across the hall from kitchen Stadium, where they film iron Chef America -- and next week I will be playing Bobby Flay. So it was amusing to mention this to several people that Jess works with. the food was actually pretty good-- some pasta, a salad, little burger bytes, and some spicy salty french fries. It was pretty typical Applebee's flavor. The kind of stuff that chain restaurants serve that will give you a heart attack and raise your blood pressure.

Yahoo! News, Assignment Earth - this is the section that my videos will go on.

Joe Cutbirth, my friend, mentor and old (not by age) adjunct professor from J-school, teaches a journalism class at NYU called "fake news." He is also getting a PhD from Columbia and his thesis is, surprise, on fake news.

Read

Today, I filmed a video for the web site turnhere.com, a site that specializes in short, Internet videos hosted by regular people who take the viewer on a tour of their neighborhood. I decided it would be pretty cool to do a tour of Central Park from the perspective of a runner, myself, while I am actually jogging around the loop. So I got into my running gear, slung my camera over my shoulder and headed down to Columbus Circle to meet my friend Dave who would be filming, where we found a rickshaw driver. The first guy I approached was really cool. Peter is an avid bicyclist and also does film and writes on the side, so he was really digging our video. Normally a regular tour is about 45 minutes and costs $40 for two people. We figured it would take us about an hour, so he quoted $50.

One of my main concerns was if he could peddle fast enough to keep up with me. I'm not that fast, but every time I'm running around Central Park I seem to fly past the rickshaw drivers and the worse in carriages. This wasn't a problem at all for Peter.

So I basically went for a 4 mile jog around the park, talking on camera about various landmarks and sites around the park that you can see while jogging on the loop. I also spent a fair amount of time talking about my interest in running, how I got started, and some of my more interesting observations. Peter was extremely helpful and filled in a lot of the gaps that I missed, such as the history of certain landmarks and other details that he, as a real tour guide, knew quite well. Other than that, we stopped every now and then so that Dave could get some footage of whatever it was I was talking about. By the end, I think we got some really great footage and I gave Peter 60 bucks for helping us out so much.

It was a very cool idea and I don't think too many people have tried this. I haven't actually seen much of the footage yet, since I handed it all to Dave as he is editing the piece. But I have a feeling it's pretty funny, since I am hilarious. And what's more interesting than watching me run for an hour and talk about random shit.

When the piece is finished and online, I will include a link. But until then you'll just have to wait and imagine the awesomeness of this video.

this is one of my favorite photos, and I actually took it myself with a 35mm SLR camera back in 2002 in Oklahoma. I had gone to Muskogee for a film festival that my movie was in. After a series of very odd experiences during the two days I was visiting, I was waiting for an airport shuttle to pick me up in front of the house I had been staying in. While I was sitting next to the driveway I heard a loud buzzing sound and much to my surprise it was actually two flies getting it on. What's interesting is that many of the experiences I had during my stay in Oklahoma felt just about as bizarre as sitting in a driveway watching two flies doing it. so I thought this was a fitting conclusion to my trip.

Today I tutored for 6 1/2 hours. That is a pretty substantial amount of time. But today was particularly fun because I got to meet to new students, one for the SAT and the other for physics. The former had two absolutely gorgeous golden retrievers running around her apartment -- they were so cute and looked a lot like Tillie, my old dog who died a few years ago.

The other student of particular interest was the last one of the day. I hadn't seen him in over a year since he and his parents decided to give the tutoring break and see if he could do all the work himself. While this isn't great for business, I do feel that this is probably the best idea for many students who are highly motivated. Nevertheless, he called me back, and it was really great to see him. I busted his chops a little bit about what he was up to for the last year that I was away. When we started working, I noticed the math we were doing was quite similar to the stuff we were working on over a year ago. It was basically a pre-Calc review for his calculus class, but of course I had to bust his chops about that as well -- that I hadn't seen him in a year, but that we were right where we left off. He made quite a lot of progress since I left. I don't think he appreciated that!

I really need to mention how awesome my roommates are. For the last three nights I've come home to a home cooked meal prepared by either Paula, zak (my two roommates), or Zak’s girlfriend Chung. Last night Paula made some very tasty chili. Tonight, Chung made eggplant Parmesan and when I came home at around midnight, there was a big pot with a note that said "for Jeff". Also, Chung has been cleaning dishes faster than we can make them dirty. She rocks.

Nelly Furtado's new album is absolutely amazing. I've just been listening to it over and over again, and so many of the songs are really incredible. She is quite talented.

check it out at www.allofmp3.com

Okay, this is something I've wanted to comment about for a while. First of all, the MTA has some of the worst advertising banners I have ever seen. It makes you wonder if they recruit their graphics department and designers from a fourth-grade painting class. Secondly, their slogans are absolutely retarded. I pretty much hate the MTA except for the fact that I rely on them to get around the city. But everything else they do pisses me off, as it should you.

This banner is the most classic example of their idiocy. I really have no idea if this is a joke or not, but let's try to go through this and see what, if anything, was going through their puny little minds when they came up with this nonsense.

The sign reads, "lose something on the subway or bus?" It then shows a bunch of stuff that people might lose on the subway. The first thing you might notice is a fucking cobra. First of all, who the fuck is bringing a poisonous snake on the subway? next we see one crutch -- as if the guy with a broken leg is going to forget his crutch on the subway and wander out. If he doesn't have a crutch, it means he can't fucking walk. Then you have some weird stuff, like a ball of string. Do cats ride the subway? And then my personal favorite, a set of dentures. Yes, there are old people on the subway who have dentures. But first off, how senile do you have to be to drop them on the ground or forget them on the seat as you leave? And secondly, for whoever does lose their fucking dentures, who the hell is going to put them back in their mouth after they've been left on the subway?

Then there's a peanut shell. While it is true that a lot of people eat peanuts on the subway and drop them on the floor, which is very rude and inconsiderate, I'm not sure how many of them are going to come to the lost and found to get those peanut shells they "forgot" on the subway.

I think tied for first place in the category of "shit nobody will ever forget on a god damn subway" is the cane and, I can't believe they’re serious, the prosthetic leg. You have to assume that whoever created this has a sense of humor and that this was probably a joke. But a lot of the things in the picture are reasonable, and there isn’t a hint of humor in the ad. Also, the MTA wouldn't even know how to budget in a sense of humor for fiscal year 2008 if they put together a committee to study the impact of said sense of humor on the union. So I can only assume this is a serious ad. But Jesus Christ, a prosthetic leg?

If I were on family feud, that crappy game show from the 80s, and they asked "what is something that people forget on the subway," I would probably guess an umbrella. There's no umbrella in this picture. Way to go MTA monkeys.

I think second place would have to go to the single boot. I can just picture that middle-aged, hard-working guy who just got off his shift and is now on the rush-hour train home. He sits down, puts his feet up, takes his shoes off, and cracks a cold one. Uh-oh, 79th St, that's my stop. And in his rush to get off the train he forgets a single boot.

And then, the huge stack of money. I didn't realize you could actually reclaim money at the lost and found. "Yes, excuse me, I left about $300 in singles and five dollar bills and a handful of change on the C. train at around W. 4th St. Who do I see about getting it back?” maybe that's why the MTA is losing so much money -- too many people are reclaiming cash at their lost and found.

And while food would be bad enough to leave on the train and then go to the lost and found to pick it up again, a completely exposed cupcake is probably the last thing anyone would ever want returned. I'd like to meet the poor, starving person who's going to go to the lost and found of the MTA to get that pink rainbow sprinkled cupcake they left on a stinky subway train three days ago.

The other stuff is just weird, but not completely out of the realm of believable shit people might lose. Although I have never seen a person use a boomerang in New York City, nor have I seen one of those old-school tops either. I feel like this was designed for people from the 1930s.

So keep up the good work MTA. Keep on putting out those horribly designed subway billboards and stupid slogans nobody reads. With this kind of incompetence on such a public level, it makes you wonder what's going on upstairs.

This morning I called Brandon, a good friend of mine from high school who lives in his hometown of Sydney, Australia and is working as a doctor. We were catching up, and he insisted on my visiting him in Australia. So I think my new tentative plans will be to fly to Australia made January, visit Brandon, and work on several environmental pieces for Yahoo news, and then a week and a half later fly out to Hong Kong in early February. Not only will this help break up the travel time a little bit and ease me into the new time zones, but also I can actually be productive during the trip and shoot a whole bunch of pieces. I am getting very excited about the whole travel thing and obviously the prospect of finally seeing Maddy again.

September 22 marked the six-month anniversary for Maddy and I. Yes, that's right, it's been a whole six months since Maddy and I met speed dating at the Penn club. Unfortunately, she's in China for the next year, but I will be joining her in February and staying for six months, so it's not so bad. Maddy has been the best thing to happen to me and I feel like the luckiest guy in the world since we've been together.

I have a WTF moment I have wanted to share for quite some time. I bought this box of raisin bran a few months ago and could not get over the egregious math error plastered across the top in big red letters.

Let's go through the steps...

It says:
"40% more ... than our 20 oz package"

Calculator (or half a brain) says that should be 28 oz, since 40% of 20 is 8, add that to 20, voila, 28.

Read the bottom closely:
"30 oz"

What numbskull screws up math and gets in wrong NOT in their favor?? If the box is, in fact, 30 oz, that would be 50% more than their 20 oz box. Why the F would they exagerate in the wrong direction? Anyway, it annoys me that a) they lied about the contents, b) were too dumb to know they lied, c) no one paid attention to the obvious mistake (i guess b and c are the same thing.)

Ah, do we remember this gem? I'm going through some of my photos to try to organize everything and I found this.

Me: right after getting two (TWO, not one) completely impacted wisdom teeth pulled out of my jaw on the bottom left hand side of my mouth. It was such a rare occurance (double impacted molars) that the 60 year old oral surgeon couldn't fill up one hand with the number of extractions he'd done like this one.

Zak: just after he got into a motorcycle accident and broke both of his wrists. he couldnt shave for a while.

So we were "the completely useless duo" or "handicapped heroes" or something like that when this photo was taken around May 2005.

Yep, this is HOME-MADE sushi. I made the rice (w rice vinegar, sugar and salt), bought a pound of tuna and salmon, cut it all up along with avacado and rolled these puppies myself. A sprinkle of sesame seeds and voile (as the silly french would say it), sushi!

Alas, no saki bombs, but I think I did invent a roll: Salmon and Tuna w avacado roll. I do not believe I've seen this at the AYCE places I frequent. Bobby Flay would be proud.

I also went for a 16 mile run today. Yes, that is a pretty far run, but I'm still in pretty serious training mode for the New York City marathon that's coming up November 5. I only have about six weeks left to train, and that means only a few really long runs left to do.

To prepare for this 2 1/2 hour ordeal, I downloaded a whole bunch of interesting new music to test out on my run.

• Nellie Fertado: pretty cool, not the greatest running music, but a few pretty catchy songs.
• The Scissor Sisters: I do like the scissor sisters ever since Maddy introduced me to them shortly after we met. It sounds very similar to that last album, a few cool songs, but not so impressive.
• Audio slave: very very cool band, and I've been a fan of all their albums so far. I think this one is my second favorite, second to their first album. As with all their albums, though, it starts to deteriorate after the first handful of songs. Although, I really don't get bored of Chris Cornell's voice.
• Some Robbie Williams: I have very mixed feelings about him. Some stuff is really incredible, but other shit just blows. I had to skip over a lot of the songs, since nothing really sat well with me on my run.
• Evanescence: besides being one of the most popular SAT words that I teach, this band is pretty catchy and I really dig their sound. I think the first few songs and a handful throughout were pretty good for my run, and just what I needed at times, but every now and then they get pretty slow and I had to skip over those.
• Some smashing pumpkins -- Gish: I don't think this is their new album, but I really haven't followed the smashing pumpkins for about 10 years, so I have no idea what they're doing these days. I love their sound, and I wanna get back into some of the albums that I haven't heard and rediscover the albums I have heard.

Also on my run, I bumped into an old friend of mine who used to work with me at Citigroup in my past life. He was running the other way around 75th St on the west side along the bridle path. So I joined up with him and started going back the way I came, and together we did about 8:20 pace around the reservoir and back around the bottom of the park on the loop. Matt was telling me that he's been meaning to come to an all-you-can-eat sushi event for a while, and regretted that he hasn't come once. But now that he lives only 20 blocks from the Upper East Side sushi place, and no longer in Stamford, he has no choice but to come and party.

I had a surprisingly productive day today. Let's run through my super duper productive day, shall we?

1. I woke up before 10 a.m.. This is impressive in and of itself, as I have been going to sleep quite late each night because I turn into a thinking machine after 11 p.m., and I become very productive in the wee hours.
2. I did an hour of tutoring.
3. I bought soap at Duane Reade, since I have been dealing with a lack of soap for the past few weeks, satisfying my need to be clean with my roommate’s soap.
4. I bought some fish at the fresh fish market down the street from my apartment, and bought some sushi rolling paper (aka seaweed) at the local Japanese store. More on this later.
5. I came home and had a very fulfilling conversation with Paula, my roommate

This is when my already pretty productive day turned into a super Duper productive day.

1. I spoke with one of the main interview subjects for one of my environmental stories that I will be doing in Florida next month. Let me back up here. I am going to be freelance producing environmental stories for Yahoo! News. The pay is pretty low but I do have the ability to shoot several stories in one trip, assuming of course I can find a few good stories that are all different and all near each other in a different city. This is something I have been working on for the past few weeks, and it looks like I'm going to be doing three pretty cool stories in Florida in late October. One about a dwindling bird population, the red knots, that will be preparing for their over ocean journey down south by stopping over for a bite to eat in northeast Florida near Gainesville. The second story is going to be about Lake Okeechobee, a huge freshwater lake just south of Orlando, which has had some major pollution problems over the past 80 years or so. The third, which is still up in the air, will be about a bird rehabilitation and release program near Orlando where they have just released their 300th eagle. Anyway, the woman that I spoke to today is helping with the first story about the red knots, and she was extremely helpful in organizing in scheduling the first two days of my trip to Florida where I will be interviewing several subjects and checking out the areas that the birds will be hanging out in.
2. Yes, it's that time of the season. Season 4 that is, of Iron Chef America, where I get to play Bobby Flay. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, basically it's one of the weirdest jobs you'll ever hear about -- I literally stand with my arms crossed for about five minutes at the beginning of the taping of each episode of iron Chef America where Bobby Flay, one of the iron chefs, is not actually cooking that day. I stand on a pedestal in smoke and shadows and pretend to be him for a very specific part of the show where they introduce the challenging Chef and require the three iron chefs, or rather ONE iron chef and two of the doppelgängers, to stand on the stage in the background. It needs to look like any of the chefs are ready for battle. Of course they already know beforehand which one of them is going to battle, so the other two don't show up that day, and instead they bring their stand-ins. That's where I come in. Anyway, I just found out my schedule for when I will be needed on set during shooting. So this is very exciting. And yes, I do get paid, and no I don't get too eat the food they prepare, but yes, they do feed us catered food. The other cool thing is that I have access to VIP tickets, so if anybody wants to attend a taping of iron Chef America, be sure to let me know, and I'll see what I can do. So far I have two requests from two of my students who think I have the coolest job ever. I tell them that yes, I do.
3. I also spoke with a person at wired magazine to find out about the status of an article I submitted two weeks ago. The article, I think, is quite funny and discusses my use of Skype on my handheld PDA while Maddy and I traveled around Europe during the summer.

Damn, I am one productive mother fucker mother!

oh I'm sorry, did you wanna see a superduper awesomely cute picture of me and Felissa's dog Wrigley? Well, here it is.

apologies to all if the following story is a little bit too long, and the punchline is not punchy enough for the length of the story. I will try to keep it short.

I went to Columbia journalism school and graduated in 2004. Since then I've been on the J. school list serve, a mass e-mail list that anyone can send e-mail to and rant about what ever it is that's on their mind. The listserv is usually pretty quiet and is punctuated every few months with a flurry of e-mails when someone decides to post a controversial topic. When this happens, the same 15 or 20 core group of a loudmouth J. schoolers go nuts and start writing tons of nonsense to the group, spouting their opinions and trying to one up each other with more and more garbage that simply clogs 250 e-mail inboxes. The most recent flurry was about Columbia University's president Bollinger decision to invite the Iranian Prime Minister to speak on campus. Somebody decided to post an article that had a quote by Bullinger discussing his opinion on why he invited the prime minister, or something like that. I have no idea, I didn't read the e-mail since I really don't give a shit. But, judging from the 25 e-mails that I got this morning, a couple of J. schoolers seem to give a shit.

here are a few excerpts:

i was waiting for someone to say something about this proposed visit to SIPA. In general, although I do not support pres. Ahmadinejad's policies or in particular the suppression of women in Iran, I was definitely very eager to see him speak at SIPA, more particularly to see how he would handle all the tough questions, and accusations he was bound to hear from the liberal student body at SIPA and the other schools at Columbia. The statement below by Prez Bo was released today, in response to a SIPA invitation extended to Pres. Ahmadinejad to address the School tomorrow. I am indeed disappinted to know that the visit is not happening now for "logistical reasons."

As president of the Columbia, it's not Bollinger's place to give us his opinion of Ahmadinejad, or any other speaker, regardless of what we think of them. Bollinger has made his opinions known when it comes to matters of the "middle east" (like when divestment from Israel was discussed). This makes people who disagree with Bollinger's opinions (and there are many) feel uneasy about their university having a "position" on things it shouldn't have a position on. If Bollinger wants to make his political opinions known he should run for office and come and live here in Washington.

Journalists and people in academia should be more discriminating than politicians. It is not our position to "judge" it is our position to ask questions and understand why a phenomenon like Ahmedinajad exists, not just in Iran, but all over the third world. Let's leave the name calling to the politicians.

Bollinger was completely in bounds when he gave his position. Correct me if I’m wrong, but he was under no obligation, legal or otherwise, to stifle his opinions. I think it’s reasonably clear that he was stating opinions completelty his own with regard to the decision to allow Ahmadinejad to speak. According to your logic, one isn’t able to proffer personal political positions unless they’re running for office. I’m sorry, but to say that it makes people “uneasy about their university having a ‘position’ on things it shouldn’t have a position on” is just absurd. According to your logic, one isn’t able to proffer personal political positions unless they’re running for office or somehow engaged in politics.

And other crap.

Until one person wrote: "I want to hear from our democratically elected president on the issue."
To which I replied, writing my FIRST EVER email to the group:

"What? What about your elected Movie Coordinators? Have we no say? I think Dr. Epstein and I will schedule a movie night of something controversial to help lubricate the gears for the debate that will follow. Suggestions? Perhaps something with Arnold Schwarzenegger. None of you will show up anyway."

My email is funny for several reasons:

1. I am just a funny writer.
2. the student Council of the journalism school was elected, and consisted of the typical positions of president, secretary, treasurer, etc.. But there was an additional two positions of "movie coordinators" whose jobs were to organize movie nights for the school. My good friend Dave Epstein and myself were nominated and were elected to these positions and took our jobs very seriously.
3. I refer to my friend Dave as "Dr. Epstein" because the guy who wrote the previous e-mail is actually a doctor and was taking a break from medical school when he attended journalism school.
4. the reference to Arnold Schwarzenegger was because one of the gay students of our school suggested the movie "Pumping Iron" for one of our movie nights. If you have not seen this film, it's basically Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 70s running around in Speedo's and flexing for about an hour and a half.the night we showed that movie, the only people who showed up were a few gay men as well as Dave and myself.
5. almost nobody ever showed up for any of the other movie nights anyway.

oh, how I miss journalism school.

I hung out with Felissa last night. She got me an insane amount of Chinese food. Isn't she the best? Of course I had to travel about 48 hours to get down to the Murray Hill area where she lives, but it was worth. coming back home was kind of exciting. I took the crosstown bus on 34th St over to 8th Ave, and then decided to be adventurous and take a bus all the way uptown 70 blocks, rather than take the C train. sure enough, a bus actually did come. No joke, this was the fastest bus driver I have ever ridden with. The bus was an even empty, but I guess most people were looking to get very far uptown so there wasn't any need to stop at every stop. That's fine, except as bus driver was literally cutting off cars and doing around 180 miles an hour up 8th Ave. I didn't feel particularly unsafe, but I did feel pretty bad for a few people waiting at the bus stops that the bus driver in his rush to get Uptown completely messed because he was going 50 miles an hour and didn't feel like slowing down. I thought this odd, since the bus driver is really supposed to stop at the bus stops when people are waiting at the bus stops. In any event, I managed to get home in about 10 minutes, much faster than the time it would've taken me had I taken the subway. Go buses go!

so I just one day after spending a shit load of money on my shiny new video camera, I got to use it on a real job that I got paid real money for. A friend of one of my professors from journalism school, and author, was speaking in a panel discussion about immigrants in the workforce at a conference at the Marriott in Times Square and wanted me to film her so that she could use it as a demo tape for future speaking engagements. so I brought my camera and tripod over to the hotel, set up inside a fairly small room, about a hundred person capacity, and got ready to film. Of course the main concern I had was to make sure I had an audio feed from the microphones that were on the table for the discussion so that I could plug into my camera and get good sound. But being that it was my first job in a while I had to forget my headphones at home. It was pretty stupid. But no matter, because my camera is so awesome I was able to see the audio levels and know that there was audio coming through.

The discussion to itself was kind of interesting, but not really my cup of tea. Most of the people there were there because they deal with immigrants in the workforce, hence the name. But to me they all seemed pretty nerdy. I don't know, I think most conferences are usually filled with nerds. But at least I got to use the Marriott's awesome elevator system -- you simply press the number of the floor that you want to go to and it assigns an elevator for you to go to, rather than pressing up or down. Very efficient, and you know how I like efficiency.

They also have one of the nicest bathrooms in Times Square. And you don't have to use a hotel key card to get in. Just walk into the Marriott, go to any of the floors, and use their bathroom. Shiny, bathroom, goodness.

I'm back. I decided to restart my crappy blog about my awesome life because lots of new shit keeps happening and i have no way of keeping an archive of it and letting everyone know about some great stories and photos.

This is my new camera! its a panasonic DVC30 and it rocks. I also bought a wireless mic set, wide angle lens, and XLR adapter. if you dont know what this stuff is, dont worry, it just looks cool. and when its all screwed onto the camera, it makes it look huge and awesome. Yes, i know it looks kinda ridiculous with a wireless mic, xlr adapter, and shotgun mic, but this stuff can be stripped down and put on with whatever the shoot requires, so its pretty sweet. its also surprisingly lightweight.

Good bye $3,000, hello lots of new video projects!