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You probably won’t find this as funny as I did, but I thought I’d share this anyway.
DaveS and I go to a dollar store (The Dollaroo) frequently (yes, that’s kind of sad), to check out anything that’s new and creepy or weird or odd, etc. One of our “things” is to read the instructions on any number of toys that are made in China or foreign lands, hoping to stumble upon a wonky translation. Here’s one of those:

It’s called a Skip’N’Hop. It’s one of those cheap little skipping rope toys, the kind where you put the plastic circle over your ankle and swing the ball at the end of the string around so that you end up skipping over it with your other foot. One of those.

Here are the on-the-back instructions for the Made In China Skip’N’Hop:

USAGE:
1. Put one end of the rope into the small hole in the ring. The length of the rope can be adjusted to meet your request, then fix it in the ring, make sure it is tightly fastened.
2. Throw the ball and jump, you can speed up the tempi as you play it more and more skillfully. If you have played it masterfully enough, you can circle the ring in or against the clock order and jump after the first either with the right or the left one.
3. The method of operating by more persons: First, lengthen the rope, then one person starts to play in the way just introduced, when the tempi has been steady, the others can join from any direction. Thus, friends can enjoy the game together.
THERE ARE ALSO SOME CAUTIONS HERE:
1. You should coordinate your feet in case the rope would twist your ankle, which would stop the game.
2. Don’t play it with your hands, or you could hurt others.
3. Avoid your skin to be touched with the ring directly, or your skin can be scraped.
4. Don’t circle the rope around your neck, which would twist you easily.
5. Don’t play it on the traffic road, you know, it is dangerous.

How many times can you play it?

Play it running
Play it yourself
Play with a friend
Create new game
For aerobic class
For your health
For dance
—–
My favourite caution is number 5. I also like caution 1, which seems to be more concerned with the game ending than with the twisted ankle.

I didn’t last long with my American Idol recap schedule, did I?  One episode.  Maybe next week.
Anyway, about this week:
Singing and performance was better by practically everyone this week, compared to past weeks.  I was pretty impressed with the advice and inspiration that Lulu was providing (or at least, was shown providing).  Peter Noone, not so much.  His performance was pretty blah, too, whereas Lulu totally kicked ass with To Sir, With Love.

What the hell was with that retarded kid crying all night long in the audience?  She was crying like I used to when I got lost at the K-Mart.  Even though they primarily focused on her during Angina’s terrifically awful performance of You Really Got Me Now (were the lyrics “I don’t know what I’m doin'” ever more accurate?), apparently she cried the whole show.  Every time they showed her, I literally put my hand out in front of me to block the television from my sight, so off-setting was her appearance and state.
LaKisha and the Doolittle woman were great. So was that other girl who is 17 or whatever.  Of the guys, I keep waiting for FatChris to hit one out of the park.  Last night wasn’t a homer, more like a single.  A good performance. I didn’t enjoy Phil Nosferatu’s song “Tobacco Road”.  Not my style of music.  Blake did a good job, but his ego is getting bigger than his voice is.  Better watch that.
What else?  Angina was awful.  I had been hoping he’d break out of his shell and find confidence and finally nail a song.  He almost ruined that Kinks song.  Ouch.  Hope he stays to the very end.  After all, a circus needs its freaks, right?

I was surprised the girl who went got eliminated.  I had her picked for the top five or so.  But her performance this week was her weakest so far, but not near the worst of the night.  I ranked her safe in the middle of the pack.

Crazy season of AI this year.  With the bawling child, are we witnessing the jumping of the shark? 

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=1873681186241686073&hl=en-CA

From the limited work I’ve done on film and video, I’ve always thought that the movie “gets made” in the editing room. Here’s a BBC documentary on “The Magic of Movie Editing”. Here’s what the Google Video site says about it: The is a documentary about the unappreciated art of film editing. It shows how film editing came about, and explains all the groundbreaking ways it has changed the film watching experience. There are a bunch of interviews from big names in the film industry including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Steven Spielberg, Jodie Foster, and many more. This is really a must see for any big film buff.

So, I guess Bush Dumville will be running in the next provincial election against Wayne Collins. Dumville, the owner of the local Charlottetown Burger King store promises to give anyone who votes for him a free whopper. Collins countered by saying that his PC government has been feeding the PEI electorate whoppers for years now.

Don’t know about you, but it all smacks of pattytronage to me.

So, I saw a link on Digg to a webpage called The Ten Coolest Numbers.  I didn’t actually read much of it, but its existence spurred me on to a totally meaningless task:  ranking the first ten numbers in order in which I like them.  For the record (as I’m guessing someone might claim that zero should be the first number), I consider 1-10 to be the first ten numbers.  Here I go:

From Least Favourite to Most Favourite:

10) 9 –  The number 9 is just a nasty number for doing any mental numerical calculations.  That’s enough right there.  Plus, differentiating it from 6 on bingo balls, you have to put a line under it.  That’s a fatal design flaw.
9) 10 – I don’t like it, primarily because it’s the only one that’s a double digit.  Therefore, when doing numbered lists like this, because it’s a double digit, it screws up the line-spacing before the ) parenthesis.
8) 6 – Basically the same bingo ball problem from my dislike of the 9. Otherwise, it’s just the most boring of numbers.  Seriously, I think the whole world could do without the number six even existing.  What’s it good for, other than as a way to get from 5 to 7?  It’s a good for nothing number.
7) 2 – Way over-rated, in my opinion.  Way over-rated!!  Plus, because of its existence, we Canadians are stuck with the embarrassment of the word “Toonie”.
6) 5 – it’s an okay number for doing quick calculations.  All product totals should end in either zero or five, in my opinion.  If they did, the number 5 would soar up this list.  Scores points for the cool pentagon shape.  Loses points for looking like an S.
5) 8 – the eight suffers from the same problems that plague the six.  Mostly it’s a boring number, in terms of numeracy.  However, graphically, the 8 simply rocks!  And where would car racing or figure skating be without it?
4) 4 – I think the four is a cool number. Well deserves the number 4 spot on my list.  Admittedly, I don’t have much attachment to the 4, but it’s my wife’s favourite number, so it’s gotta represent on this list.
3) 3 – The three is a wonderful number.  It’s got a lot attached to it.  It’s historical (and hysterical, what with the comedy of threes), mythological, literaryical.  It’s a sweet, sweet number.  Plus, um, threesomes.
2) 1 – all the power and might of an army of one.  I think to like the number 1, one has to been secure in their own solitude.  If you don’t mind eating by yourself at a restaurant, chances are you’re gonna like the number one.

and my favourite first ten number:

1) 7 – First of all, it’s the only multi-syllabic number in the first ten.  It’s got that “seven days” importance vibe to it.  Honestly, I can’t qualify why I like the seven, it’s more of an intuitive thing.  The seven just rocks.

So, there you go.  My list of the top ten top ten.  How would you order the first ten numbers?

I’m stumped.
The challenge is to find an example of a TV show that is a spinoff of a spinoff of the original TV show.  I can’t think of one that exists to give as an example, but it’d be like if Niles spun off his own TV sitcom from Frasier, which itself was a spinoff of Cheers.

To be clear, it’s not a show (like Happy Days) that has numerous spinoffs from it.  There’s lots of examples of that.  But has there ever been a show that’s spun-off a show that itself was a spin-off of an original show.

I thought I might have found one:  The original was All In The Family… The Jeffersons was spun off that… Then I thought there was a short-lived sitcom spun off of the Marla Gibbs maid character ‘Florence Johnston’, but a trip through IMDB shows that to be a negative (although, Marla Gibbs’ Florence Henderson did, apparently, show up on one episode of Fresh Prince).

I cannot believe that there hasn’t been a show that’s a spinoff of a spinoff of an original show.  I’ll accept a tv character starring in three separate tv series, but preferably it’d be a separate character spinning off from the spinoff.  For instance, if Niles got his own show spun off from Frasier, which was a spinoff from Cheers.

Anyone?  Anyone?

March is Kidney Month.  Or Kidney Awareness Month.  Something like that.  The Kidney Foundation would know for sure.
Anyway, the upshot is that KRock and Ocean, as part of our awareness campaign to promote the fact that 25 cents from every bowl of chili sold in March at PEI Wendys, some of us radio station employees went to the five island restaurants and helped serve chili and stuff for three hours yesterday.

I went to the Montague location and, along with Kerri Wynne MacLeod and Zack Bell, dished out chili and pop and whatever else to customers.  It was an interesting experience.  My first fast (and last?) food service experience from the other side of the counter.
It’s impressive how much of a military operation it all is.  Everything is keyed to get the food to the customer under 90 seconds. Everyone works together to achieve that goal.
I was a little worried, going into the day, that our presence there would create chaos, getting in the way of people who were striving to perform their tasks.  In fact, though, we got along fine, mostly because we ended up being those people who were striving to perform their tasks.  I was on Dishing Chili detail.  KW poured the drinks and Zack made sure everything was a-ok on the customer’s tray (in other words, more of a supervisory role).
Montague has two noon-time rushes.  The first usually starts at 11:37 (it’s that precise.  And it did start on the minute).  The second, shortly after noon.
When everything goes well, as it did when we were there, the servers seem to have a very positive attitude.  Maybe part of that was because we were there, and our excited anxiety and joking attitudes made everyone smile.  I kind of got the impression, though, that positivism is a regular thing behind the counter at Montague. 
I served out quite a bit of chili (my biggest rush job was a 6 Large Chili order for the drive-thru), and the pop flowed continually.  I was surprised at how many people order drinks with no ice.
I had a pretty good time.  I was nervous that it would be awful. Honestly, though, I couldn’t wait to leave, as I was starting to feel the grease seeping in to me all over my body.  Even today, I still feel like I have a thin layer of food grease.
I’m glad I’ve had that brief glimpse at life on the other side of the fast food counter, but I’m glad it’s not a job I have to do.  Those people work way too hard for far too little money and leave their work-place feeling far too greasy.  Good on them for doing it in such a pleasant manner.

It’s driving me crazy!!

Somewhere, sometime, somebody uttered the line “He… Hit… Me!”  Each word is afforded its own equal punch of  emphasis.  I first suspected it may have been a Sketch22 line from some character (either a Dennis character or a character of mine), but I’m thinking now it’s not.

Anybody know the origin of that quote?  I’ve been saying it since lunch, and it’s driving me crazy!!

I get the feeling that there’s lots of buzz about the upcoming special draw where someone could win a million dollars a year for 25 years.  I don’t have a ticket, likely won’t buy one, but if I did, and I won, I’d definitely take the 17 million dollar lump sum up front, rather than the million a year.

But lottery mania made me think of this question:  If you regularly buy lotto tickets, like I do, hopefully you realise you’re likely to never win “the big one”.  So, the question is:  if that Magical Entity came up to you and said “I’ll give you X amount of dollars right now, but in so doing, you will be unable to ever win any more money or prizes in any contesting game again”, what’s the least amount of money you’d accept?

Would a guaranteed one thousand dollars in your pocket today be enough to keep you from, in the future, hoping that impossible hope that you’ll win big money in the next lottery?  Chances are you’ll never win a thousand dollar prize.  So, wouldn’t that be better than nothing?  Me, I don’t think a thousand would be enough.  I’d have to barter it up to ten thousand, I think.  However, if the offer was actually out there, rather than just a fancy in my mind, I’d no doubt give the thousand dollar offer serious thought.

By the way, wasn’t Fancy In My Mind a top 30 country hit for Fatsy Charlene and Big Dick McPhealey?

The accounting firm of Wyse-Porterhouse has finished tabulating The Annekenstein Monster Oscar Pool results.

Before I get to them, though, a few random thoughts on last night’s Oscar telecast:
– I wasn’t too impressed with Ellen. Her opening monologue was pretty weak, I thought. And when she got that tambourine and the choir came out, and she paraded with them around for a bit, then it was over… well, I didn’t think much of that. Pretty lame. A few of her things were okay – I enjoyed giving the script to Scorsese, and getting Spielberg to take her picture with Eastwood. And the vacuum thing was okay. But overall, a somewhat weak hosting job, I thought.
-I enjoyed that opening bit where many of the hopefuls, known and unknown, very casually remarked to to the camera on various topics. I thought it did a wonderful job of humanizing all the names of the nominees, and reminding us that the people we don’t “know” (the sound editors, costume designers, etc) are just as human as the ones we do “know” (actors, directors,etc). Very nice.
-I wanted to enjoy the Will Farrell/Jack Black/John C Reilly thing more than I did. It started off pretty good, but fell apart.
-The dance troupe that formed silhouettes behind the bedsheet was interesting at first. Then as the evening wore on, became merely a time-nuisance.
-I laughed a lot at the Gore joke where he was just about to announce his candidacy for POTUS when he got interrupted by the “speech time is up” orchestra. It surprised me how much I laughed at that.
-I’m tired of seeing Jack Nicholson at the Oscars.
-I wasn’t too disappointed with any of the winners. I was surprised that The Lives of Others beat Pan’s Labyrinth for Foreign Language film. Not that it wasn’t deserving, I just thought Pan’s Labyrinth was a shoe-in. I was also surprised that Melissa Etheridge won Original Song. I didn’t like the song. While I wasn’t crazy about Dreamgirls as a movie, or the songs nominated for it, I thought one would have (should have) won. Guess they cancelled each other out?
-While I think he totally deserves an Oscar, I was kind of hoping Scorsese wouldn’t win, so that we all would have that outrage to join us all in camaraderie.
– I thought the various film clip presentations were pretty meh. I did like the foreign film montage.
-I enjoyed it that Ennio Morricone spoke in Italian, and Eastwood had to sort of interpret. It seemed rather surreal. I hate whomever is responsible for putting words to that Morricone score, and getting Celine Dion to sing it.
-I thought Forest Whitaker made the best speech of the night. Even though I missed a bit of it because I was busy tabulating Pool scores.

Speaking of which:
There were 28 people who had entries qualified to win this year’s pool.
The person who had the most correct guesses (15) was (just like every year, it seems) Matt Rainnie. However, both he and Dave Moses (who had 10 correct) submitted their entries too late. I had a Friday noon deadline, and received them on Saturday. So, both are disqualified. (let the controversy begin!!)
I ended up with 12 correct. I was 2 behind the winner (3 behind the eliminated not-winner) and the only one who had 12 correct. Many people had 10 correct. One person had 4 correct. That was the lowest score.
Four people had 13 correct.
One person had 14 correct. That person is the official winner of this year’s The Annekenstein Monster Oscar Pool. That person’s name (or nickname) is watsonly.

Watsonly wins!! Congratulations! You win two tickets to a Sketch22 performance of your choice this summer. We’ll have to figure out a way to get you the tickets.