GeoffBrown.net

Every once in a while, I feel like I should try and write something worthwhile here, instead of using this as a dumping ground for whatever comes off the top of my head. After all, I allegedly have some skill in writing, analysis, and intelligent thought. But then I realize that there are probably hundreds of blogs where people write about the subjects that might inspire me to do more “serious” blog posts. So nobody is really going to care what I have to say about those topics.

And of course, I’m not so arrogant as to think that anyone really cares what I have to say about the things I do write about, either. But it makes me feel better to write those things, and isn’t that what really matters? (Okay, maybe just a little arrogant.) And my profession requires that I write hundreds and hundreds of pages of serious, analytical material as it is. So I need an outlet for the more inane things rattling around in my head. Perhaps it’s beneath someone of my supposed skill and education, but hey, this isn’t a law review, and it’s not an appellate court. I can’t be “on” all the time. It’s not like surgeons come home and perform surgery for fun.

And after the rather crappy week I had last week, I’ll be needing more of an outlet than usual for the inane ramblings rattling around in my head. It’s cheaper than therapy.

So somehow, the whole freaking month of August managed to blow right by me. And of course, I haven’t even remotely come close to keeping this thing as up-to-date as I’d like to. Not that I haven’t had lots to write about — I just, well, haven’t written it.

My dad was in town recently, and we went on testosterone-driven car overload at the Woodward Dream Cruise. Somehow Amy managed to survive my dad and I drooling at cars for hours on end without needing any apparent need for therapy. Then my dad, who was in town for a week after a whirlwind tour of the east coast, managed to pull into his driveway just as Hurricane Fay did. That’s the sort of “good timing” I’m usually known for.

I also have plenty of things and people to mock, and my long-promised “GeoffBrown.net Best of Detroit.” And if I really want to get my blood pressure up, I could write about politics. But those things will have to wait until later.

Until then, if you haven’t already, scroll down and watch “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.” You’ll be glad you did.

In my blog slacking, I never got a chance to blog about the Internet video that, well, broke the Internet, so to speak. Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is the brain-child of Joss Whedon, who is the creator of such popular sci-fi geeky TV shows as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly. I was never much of a Buffy or Angel fan, but I did dig Firefly (and the movie it spawned, Serenity), which died an altogether premature death.

Joss Whedon came up with the idea during the Hollywood writers’ strike. He wondered whether one could distribute viable video entertainment, essentially bypassing the Hollywood studio machine. Split into three acts, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog features Neil Patrick Harris as Dr. Horrible, a wannabe super villain who dreams of being accepted into the Evil League of Evil and eventually taking over the world, efforts he chronicles in his video blog. His nemesis is Captain Hammer, played by Nathan Fillion, whom Firefly fans will recognize as Captain Mal Reynolds. They also vie for the attention of Penny, played by Felicia Day, who will be a familiar face for Buffy fans.

The three acts add up to just under 45 minutes. It’s basically a musical/comic book superhero parody. And though I’m anything but a fan of musicals, I enjoyed this a great deal.

You can buy all three acts for $3.99 from iTunes. Or, for a limited time, you can see it for free at the Dr. Horrible web site. Or just watch it here:

It’s been a while since I posted here, hasn’t it? I promise I’ll post more soon.

As I mentioned in a previous post, since I became a homeowner, I have had occasion to learn quite a bit about home repair as things (a) broke and needed fixing, or (b) as I decided to add things. This weekend involved the intersection of (a) and (b) as the result of some bad luck.

Yesterday, near the end of my shower, one of my feet hit a slippery spot, and I started going down. I tried valiantly to right myself, to no avail. Trying desperately not to become one of those statistics insurance salesmen always talk about (“more accidents in the shower,” yadda yadda), I grabbed for the only thing I could get my hands on to break my fall — the shower curtain. Which was (operative word being “was”) hanging from the shower rod I described installing in the above-mentioned previous blog post. It did slow my fall a bit — I fell ass-backwards out of the shower, and I’m convinced that I’d have hit my head harder on the toilet than I did if not for that curtain. Sadly, I took the shower curtain rod with me. Which left some rather ugly-looking holes in the wall.

Now, I realize I was damn lucky. And after I managed to convince myself that I was alive, and that it could have been much worse, I realized I had another new home repair project on my hands. Yesterday and today were spent patching and painting drywall, which I managed to handle reasonably well for an amateur. I’m hesitant to tell my dad about this, however, because I will have to admit that I put to work some things I learned observing his mad home improvement skills when I was a kid, and I’m not looking forward to the gloating and “told you so”s.

Anyway, a couple pieces of fiberglass, a couple of coats of patching compound and sanding, and a coat of paint later, and you almost can’t tell anything happened, except for the missing shower rod. Which goes back up tomorrow after the paint dries.

Now if only I could repair my sore neck and wounded pride …

Sadly, however, they are not. Seems that out-of-control parenting has gotten further out of control, as News.com.au reports that two-year-olds have started handing out business cards.

I’ll let that sink in for a minute.

This is not a joke. Apparently something has happened in Australia to make parents completely lose their minds. In what the article calls “a phenomenon that has taken the country by storm,” It seems that these Aussie whackjobs “are investing in business cards for their children.” Business cards. For kids. And they pay about $50 for 50 of them (yeah, it’s Australian dollars, but they’re pretty close to equal to US dollars).

“Ethan feels very important when he trots off to give someone his business card,” says one of the nutjobs who thinks this is a good idea.

I’m not too keen on violence, but this is one of those times when I think people maybe need to have some sense smacked into them. Thankfully, I’m not alone in recognizing that this is insane:

Parenting experts have dubbed the notion “preposterous”, believing it to be a classic example of obsessive parenting.

* * *

Parenting expert Prof Matt Sanders from the University of Queensland, said kids should be kids.

“Giving children business cards is totally unnecessary,” he said. “There is nothing they could possibly gain. It’s just a silly gimmick.”

Now, normally, I’d be skeptical of someone calling themselves a “parenting expert” for many reasons, but here, I think they’re 100 percent correct.

(Via Dave Barry’s blog.)

Well, the Detroit Red Wings have done it again — they won the Stanley Cup in six games against the Pittsburgh Penguins. This tops off an excellent season in which they also won the President’s Cup for having the best regular-season record.

Sadly, The Detroit Pistons didn’t fare as well in the NBA Eastern Conference finals. I think the fix is in, though. Everyone whined the last time the Pistons and the San Antonio Spurs faced off in the NBA Finals, and the ratings were very low. And, mysteriously, this year both the Spurs and the Pistons lost their respective conference finals and aren’t in it, setting up the allegedly more exciting Los Angeles Kobe Bryants versus the Boston Celtics. Of course, the fact that the Celtics got to somehow shoot 35 more free throws than the Pistons in one freaking game probably had nothing to do with it. And if it did, I’m sure there was absolutely nothing fishy going on with the officiating.

I’m guessing I’m going to be fined by the NBA now.

Wil Wheaton blog features an account of a bad concert-going experience that reminds me of why I stopped going to concerts. Seems he had gone to see The Police — at $60 per ticket — when he encountered some rude woman behind him who insisted on talking loudly on her cell phone for a good chunk of the concert, then had the unmitigated gall to get pissed off when he politely asked her to keep it down:

For the next twenty minutes, this woman loudly complained about me to her equally drunk, equally idiotic friends. She kicked my chair. She clapped her hands next to my head. She screamed like a teenage girl in a Beatles concert film.

In other words, this stupid asshole made about a third of her concert experience — seeing The Police! — all about trying as hard as she could to ruin it for me, because I’d asked — politely — for her to just be considerate of the people around her.

I used to go to a fair number of concerts, especially after I started seeing Amy, who enjoys music more than I do. But I noticed that concerts started getting more and more expensive, especially as “TicketBastard” tacks on more and more “service fees.” And more and more often, I would have to deal with a large number of assholes at these concerts. People like the woman who ruined Wil’s evening with The Police. The attitude among these cretins seems to be “I spent a bunch of money to be here, so I can act however I want.”

And generally, I think people are becoming less and less considerate of other people. For example, very few people I know show up when they tell me they will, which forces me to tell people to be somewhere much earlier than the “real” time because that’s the only hope in hell I have of people showing up somewhere when I need them to. People also seem to have taken a rather cavalier attitude to RSVPs, too. These days, if you ask for RSVPs for an event, you can count on a small but not insignificant number of people telling you they’re coming to your event and then, without warning, deciding not to show. I was reading one of those “advice columns” once, and a guy wrote in to say that he planned a big 40th birthday party for his wife (catered, DJ, everything), invited a bunch of her friends and co-workers, who all said they’d be there, and then none of them showed. Not one. In a later edition of the column, people expressed shock and disbelief, but, sadly, this doesn’t surprise me at all. People just seem to have lost their consideration for other people, and think nothing of deciding not to show up places after telling people they’ll be there. Shoppers block aisles in grocery stores without moving out of the way of others trying to get by, asshole neighbors will smoke or use their grill right outside your open window without a thought for you, and yes, people will talk through a concert or movie you’re trying very hard to enjoy. What’s more sad about Wil’s post is not that it happened, but that things like that happen so often.

(Yeah, that Wil Wheaton. Yeah, I’m still a Star Trek geek.)

(I know, I know. Ill post it soon.)

Today might possibly be one of the best days I’ve had in a while. It was gorgeous outside — about 70 degrees, not humid, sunny with no clouds. I had breakfast with Amy, and then went to Greenfield Village for their annual Memorial Day Civil War Remembrance activities (as a history geek, this is something I really like doing). The only downside is that Amy was busy with schoolwork and couldn’t go with me.

And now, the Detroit Red Wings are playing in the Stanley Cup finals against Pittsburgh, and the Detroit Pistons are about to start Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals against the Celtics here in Detroit. And thanks to picture-in-picture, I can watch them both.

Like I said, a damn good day.

(Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten my promise to post my Best of Michigan 2008. Soon.)

Today’s Detroit News proved that thousands of people can be wrong. The News released it list of what it alleges to be “Michigan’s Best” businesses of 2008, in a variety of categories. For the most part, it is what the kids these days would call an “EPIC FAIL.” It reads more like one of those “word-association” games, where someone says a word, and one spits out, without thinking, the first thing to come to mind. Because, for most of these, unless the majority of the Detroit News is a bunch of sheltered, ignorant slugs, they can’t have put much thought into some of these selections. Indeed, the News staff itself probably agrees — in some categories, apparently no longer to contain their annoyance at the poor choices, they chime in with their own choices. For several categories, they divided into “National” and “Michigan” subcategories, with the intent being that readers were to choose, say, the best national pizza chains and then the best locally based businesses. Apparently the people answering the survey couldn’t handle these simple instructions, choosing local-only chains for the “national” spot in some categories, forcing the News to begrudgingly cook up some preposterous explanation for why people would do something that stupid, much the same way adults tend to condescendingly praise children for childish activity that they find annoying, but don’t want to condemn for fear of stifling childlike wonder. Here are a few examples of the so-called “Best of Michigan 2008,” and why they’re completely misguided (in the very rare instance where the folk of the Detroit area actually chose wisely, I’ll point that out, too).

Best Seafood (National)

1. Red Lobster

Red. Lobster. Really. Red Lobster?! Jesus Christ, you might as well have chosen Long John Silver, too. If Long John Silver is the McDonald’s of Seafood, Red Lobster is the Denny’s. I know I’m a bit of a seafood snob given that my mom’s side of the family is from Baltimore, and my dad lives on the Atlantic coast in Florida, so I’m spoiled by real, fresh seafood, which you don’t get much around here. But really, of the many national seafood restaurant chains (McCormick & Schmick, Real Seafood Co), Red Lobster is the best you could come up with?

Best Sunday brunch (National)

1. Big Boy

I guess it’s hard to criticize this choice too much — There aren’t many “national” chains that do “Sunday brunch” around here. But while Big Boy’s breakfast buffet is a lot of food, cheap, I can put together a better breakfast myself.

2. Ram’s Horn

I don’t even like having to dignify this with a response. Ram’s Horn?! (1) It’s NOT A NATIONAL CHAIN; and (2) worse, still, THEY DON’T HAVE BRUNCH! And for the trifecta of idiocy, Ram’s Horn sucks. A lot. It’s a local knock-off of Denny’s that somehow manages to fall short of the “quality” one would expect from Denny’s.

The absolute horridness of these choices is perhaps more indicative of how weak this particular category is. There are plenty of decent brunch places, but they’re all local places.

Best Burger (National)

1. Big Boy

Big Boy has decent burgers, but they aren’t the best of the “nationals” — Ruby Tuesday’s “Triple Prime” or Chili’s “Big Mouth” burgers are probably more deserving.

2. Red Robin

Okay, they do have decent burgers here, so I have little to criticize here. But the local choices…. Oh, boy:

Best Burger (Michigan)

1. Yeck Family Drive-in Restaurant, Cheboygan

2. Strawberry Fields Restaurant, New Baltimore

Okay, GQ rated the best 20 hamburgers in the whole freakin’ country, and there were TWO from Michigan that made the list: The “Famous Burger” from the Sidetrack Grill in Ypsilanti, and the burger at the nigh-legendary Miller’s Bar in Dearborn. Neither managed to make it onto the Detroit News readers’ radars. Good job, Detroit. Instead, we get two restaurants from Cheboygan and New Baltimore. Not sure how the readers of a Detroit newspaper all manage to pick these two decidedly non-Detroit-area restaurant for this category (and a couple others), other than to say that methinks the “fix is in.”

Best Pizza (Michigan)

1. Papa Romano’s

2. Shields

As far as pizza goes, both of these are good, but not nearly close to the best, which is Buddy’s Pizza. Perhaps more insulting to Buddy’s than not being included on the list is the inclusion of Shields, which tries very hard to duplicate Buddy’s recipe (I think, actually, that Shields was opened by someone who used to be with Buddy’s) but falls short.

Place for a Coney (National)

1. National Coney Island

2. A&W

An exasperated Detroit News was forced to explain that, yes, it knows that National Coney Island is a local Detroit-area chain, but the mouth-breathers who answered the survey apparently thought that having the word “National” in the name was close enough. “Coneys” for those not in the know, are something of a Detroit-area thing — hot dogs with chili on them. In Pennsylvania, they actually call them “hot dogs with Michigan sauce.” A&W probably wins by default for being the only national chain one can think of that sells coneys.

Best Deli (Michigan)

1. Deli Basket

2. Zingerman’s Deli

Ah, yes — once more people buy into the Zingerman’s hype, probably without much thought. The Detroit area is just chock full of excellent delis, and while Zingerman’s is pretty good, I daresay there are many better ones. Plus Zingerman’s has let success get a bit to its head, and now charges a rather ridiculously high price for its food.

For some reason, the so-called “national” delis are also, as far as I can tell, local businesses. Another example of the failure of the Detroit News’s category system.

Best Grocery Store

1. Kroger

This is just plain wrong. The best grocery store around here is Hiller’s, followed perhaps by Holiday Market in Royal Oak.

Best Fried Chicken (Michigan)

1. Chicken Shack

Now here, I think I agree with this one. Chicken Shack does some damn good chicken.

I think the Detroit News dropped the ball on this year’s “Best of.” And many of the categories had the same out-of-town restaurant nobody here has ever heard of, which suggests to me that perhaps some of these results were rigged by some out-staters looking for free publicity. Most of the choices, though, were pretty bland, and it doesn’t seem like most of the voter’s put much thought into their choices. In my next post, I’ll give you the REAL “Best of Michigan.”