Happiness=O + (N x S) + Cpm/T + He

They figured out the that the happiest day of the year was yesterday. I missed the memo, and cried myself to sleep (as always).

The variables in the above equation are: O stands for being outdoors and outdoor activity, N for nature, S for social interaction, Cpm for childhood summers and positive memories, T for temperature and He for holidays and looking forward to time off.

Harold Hosein: R.I.P.

No no, he's not dead, but according to the Star, Harold Hosein has been let go by City-TV. He was perhaps the most unlikely weather guy ever: a West Indian accent, older and awful fashion sense. With that being said, it worked in a hokey kind of way. He was more though, he was perhaps one of the only West Indian personalities on TV growing up, and he had this striking resemblance to my dad. With him being really old, it will be hard to get another gig on TV. Let's hope he's got his umbrella to weather this storm out. Zing.

Come Back Pierluigi

It seems that the officiating at the World Cup has taken to the front-seat over the actual matches. Sports Illustrated has a really nice piece on how the refs are having too much effect on the games this year.

What I Hate

You know when you're at the gym, you're taking a shower, you're just about to turn off the water and grab a towel.... then the unthinkable happens:

You hear a toilet flush. I'm not talking about the water getting extremely hot or cold, just the sound of the flush. The toilet is probably in another part of the locker room completely out of sight. *VAWOOOOOSH* is enough for me to lather up again.

Maybe that's just me and my issues.

Greatest Day of The Summer (thus far)

Last Thursday will go down in personal history as one of the best. Started the day off at 9am...at the bar. My roommate and I decided to watch every single World Cup game drunk that day. We were the only ones drinking at the time (people and their jobs...psh!), but there's a certain freedom that goes with it. Anyhoo, we saw Ecuador trounce Costa Rica. Then we hopped on the train and went up to a bar that all the Trinidad Supporters were at. It was amazing. The place was rammed, and everyone was up for a good time. Keeping up with the Trini tradition, the drinks were strong. Trinidad lost, but they played much better and put up a good fight. Damn England! The crowd didn't seem to care, as we left when the fete was just getting hot.

Hopped on the train and headed to Manhattan and watched Sweden and Paraguay's first half. Continued to put back the pints. Got bored at that bar, so we moved to another bar took advantage of Happy Hour specials, and watched Sweden score their winning goal. Hung out in a drunken haze in Washington Square Park, ate a crepe and I think we saw Henry Winkler.

Went off to the NYU screening of Kevin Bacon's "Loverboy" (review below). It was cool because Kevin Bacon was there and answered questions afterwards. Much to my surprise, he was actually a pretty cool guy. So if you get stuck playing the Kevin Bacon game, always reference me from now on.

After that we roamed around the East Village and found a really cool small bar, called Big Bar. Nice place, and we were there catching the tail end of Happy Hour along with a really cool bartender and a revolving door of regulars. One of the guys turned out to be a former D.O.E. grant guy (aka, god to high energy physicists). The fun didn't end there....then we went to Trader Joe's!

How much craziness can we take? Well we got a slice of pizza and chilled in Union Square and that's what did us in.

All in all, a great day.

The Beautiful Game

I won't bore you with my take on the World Cup except to say that I've been trying to watch as many games as possible. Just to keep us sharp during the games, let's not forget about all the awesome physics involved . YAY!

This one's for the Ladies

Pity us dudes.

She's Juiced Up!

There's trouble brewing up at Columbia University, where another science fraud story is brewing. A prof is retracting four published research papers (a very big deal in the sciences), where he was listed as the primary author, but his now graduated student did the work. The results can't be reproduced. The researcher, now studying in Germany, claims that the independent research teams have not been using the right catalyst. Presumably, the catalyst is called 'cooking the data'.

How did the original papers get published?

Ill Communication

Nothing gets a teacher more angry than the sound of phones ringing in class. It totally ruins the momentum of teaching, and distracts all around. A lot of schools across the nation are starting to ban phones at schools (much to the anger of parents.... all of whom need to get over themselves).

Enter a new program that adjusts the frequency of ringing just above the range of most adult humans, but still audible to the younger crew. I applaud this, and I hope there was a way such that the kids using them had a way to talk at a frequency that I couldn't hear.

What makes it even better is that the original idea of exploiting different audible ranges in different ages, was meant to keep kids from loitering.

My Doppelganger

I was checking out the latest edition of the Onion, and lo and behold there's a dude that looks kinda like me . Weird. I did some more digging around, and he's Aziz Ansari , who is a pretty bad-ass comedian (or so it seems). I should check him out if only for the brown unification.

XXX Nature

A quick perusal through the pages of Nature sounds like science has gone all perv:
money shot #1 , money shot #2 and me love you long time .

All joking aside, very interesting stuff, especially the first link. My clock is ticking.

For the Ice Connoisseur

Like a chump, I thought the only way to make ice was to put it at a temperature below 0 C.
Enlighten yourself here.

Free The Pirates

Earlier today, the Swedish government raided the Pirate Bay . For those not in the know, The Pirate Bay is like a torrent search engine, where you can find anything and everything you ever wanted, but were too afraid/poor to buy.


I feel that the record companies and studios have been ripping off the consumer for decades now, and finally the consumer won't have it. With all the hubbub, the execs will have you believe that they are being robbed blind. The truth is that their profits are staying the same if not increasing.



Anyways, the Pirate Bay guys were great. They thumbed their nose at any form of authority, and openly mocked all of the 'cease and desist' orders that they got. In fact, in an age when people claim to be keepin' it real, the Pirate Bay folks were the platonic form of realness.

I'm taking all of my money out of that Kyjawmneuczcstskaia Fund

Nature's pointing towards a really interesting article concerning psychology, finance and statistics. A group has shown that stocks with simple names consistently out perform stocks with more complicated names. It's kind of a chicken and the egg problem, but still interesting results.

Ponderosa Kicked My Ass

This weekend, my awesome roommate was nice enough to drive up to Toronto to pick up some of my outstanding effects (books, CD's etc...) that never made the trip on my initial move to NYC. A nice long weekend was had which was way too short. Ended up doing a lot of shopping (IKEA, bigups) eating of local delicasies (poutine) and hanging with the folks. Also had time to fit in a baseball game, where the local squadron hosted the White Sox. My loyalties were tested, but I cheered for the pale-hose. If the situation were reversed, I'd be cheering for the Jays. Sox won the game!


On the drive back, we stopped for lunch at Ponderosa, a joint we both remembered fondly from childhood, but a place we both haven't went to recently. We went, we ate, we almost hurled. Needless to say, I started feeling really woozy and light headed by my 3rd plate. For real. Sometimes it's best to keep childhood memories as they are. Untouched.

High Drama in Ottawa

Prime Minister Harper is making questionable choices as of late. Most recently his shunning of the parliamentary press gallery (made up of national media correspondents). Harper wanted a system whereby his staff would decide who would be allowed to ask questions during question period. Naturally, the press balked at this idea and they all walked out of a press conference earlier this week leaving the PM twiddling his thumbs. Harper is now saying that he won't talk at all to the parliamentary press folks, and he'll deal exclusively with regional services. He says that the national reporters are out to get him and his government. Either way, I feel that it's a bad idea to not talk with reporters. It would be like Bush refusing to talk with CBS, NBC, ABC and CNN. Bonehead.

Best Awkward Catch Phrase That Somehow Caught On:

SOUL PATROL...SOUL PATROL....SOUL PATROL

Where's Iran when you need them?

President Bush: "For the sake of economic security and national security," [Bush] said, "the United States of America must aggressively move forward with the construction of nuclear power plants."

I think Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should send an envoy to Washington and try to affect American domestic policy.

We's Gonna Dodge That Draft

I grew up in Toronto having a few really cool teachers. Coincidentally, some of them just happened to be old draft-dodgers from back in the day. Good people they were, with their wacky old-hippie ways. A lot of them came up to Canada, and changed it forever. Vancouver is the city it is today because of them, and so are other Canadian towns.

The sculpture in the picture shows a Canadian welcoming two Americans with open arms. It's going to be part of the Our Way Home Reunion later this summer in British Columbia. Although it seems like too much flakey hippie stuff for me, I think it's great that people are finally recognizing the contribution made by these people.

Hobo

I've been helping shoot a Public Service Announcement this weekend working as a 2nd AD. I've met some pretty cool people that I never knew before. It's all about connections.


The bad thing has been the ridiculously long hours. Yesterday, we worked 16 hours, and today 12. All for free.

Anyways, last night I was sitting behind the school we were shooting in with a bunch of lighting equipment waiting for others to bring the grip truck around to haul the lights away. So I was sitting on this ladder, and it was around 9:30pm. I was so exhausted so I took off my hat just to unwind. A group of frat boys walked by and they were well on their way to getting seriously soused, and one of them comes up to me and is like "here ya go buddy, you have a good night" and he flicks a dollar bill at me. I was a bit confused at first, then it dawned on me: OH MY GOD, HE THINKS I'M A BUM! I was going to call him back and tell him the error of his ways, but I decided to avoid a scene and pocket the cash. I also thought I was dressed pretty hipster for a film shoot. Maybe it really is the shoes.


We shot this afternoon in a really cool home in the West Village (why anyone would loan out their house to a film crew is beyond me - I would never do such a thing). At any rate, Isaac Mizrahi walked by which got me all giddy. Last week we saw Philip Seymour Hoffman at NYU yapping on his cell phone. Nothing will ever beat the evening I saw Max Weinberg outside of a local burger joint.