Steev!

Check out parts 5 and 6 of James Randi’s appearance on this super old talk show.  This is one of the coolest psychic debunkings I’ve seen.  This lady just falls apart.  I’m surprised she ever agreed to appear on television.

Also… HAH!  Look at what people used to look like!

Happy New Year!  Another year, another blog post.  Becky and I deviated from our usual New Year’s plans and coupled up with Paul and Emily.  We hit Trattoria Trullo in Lincoln Square, then headed over to the Lincoln Square Lanes for some bowling and Don’t Spit the Water.  It was a little difficult to perform in a small space for a bar full of noisy folks, and two power outages didn’t do much to help, but overall I think the show was received very well.  We had some nice messy spits, and I think that’s all people were really there to see.  Perhaps it would have been better off being hosted by a morning radio DJ, as some of Sasha and The Noob’s subtleties were lost in the noise and confusion.  But it made for a very inexpensive New Year’s Eve celebration, being paid to perform, and whatnot.  And the people game out in great numbers!  The event sold out very early in the day.

I spent much of Thursday sleeping.  I didn’t wake up until around noon.  Then at 3pm, I went back to bed until around 5.  It was awesome.  Sleeping.  Wow.  I don’t think I’ll get to sleep like that again until next New Year’s day.

Izzie has learned “two.”  She will no longer ask for a cookie.  Now she will demand two cookies.  “Two cookies?  Two cookies?  Two cookies!”  She’ll eventually settle for one, and then everybody wins.  Right?

So another year has been laid ahead of me.  What to do with it?  There are currently no shows on the calendar, but I expect that to change shortly.  The new Blewt.com is coming along swell, and I’m becoming quite adept at modifying and deploying custom Wordpress blogs.  My coding skills have entered a whole ‘nuther realm of nerdery, as my front-end skillz are finally up to par with your average 14-year old.

This will be the year Don’t Spit the Water sells to the Dutch, propelling me into lifetime financial freedom.  This will be the year I slim back down to my pre-marriage fighting weight.  This will be the year the Cubs win the World Series, and Sasha and The Noob sing the seventh-inning stretch.  This will be the year, baby!

Happy 2009!

The DSTW gang headed over to the WGN studios this morning for a quick appearance to plug our upcoming New Year’s show.

Just one week after being mentioned as a benchmark in a Second City review, Impress These Apes gets this nod from the Chicago Tribune:

“Hands down the best comedy show in Chicago…“

Whoopy!

http://www.macrumors.com/2008/12/23/iphone-app-store-sales-for-1-spot-revealed/

I want to give a big thumbs up to the Land of Nod.

They’re an overpriced children’s boutique, a way overpriced children’s boutique.  They sell toys and furniture that are too cool for school.  They prey on new parents by hawking overly precious essentials for spoiled middle-class babies  Like snow brickers.

Needless to say, Becky and I have fallen sucker to their call quite a few times.  Recently Becky picked up a little 3-cubby bench for our entryway.  When she had it put together, she realized there was a deep gash in the top piece.

So here’s the nice part.  LandOfNod.Com has a phone number on their home page.  When you dial the number, an actual human picks up the phone.  There was no recording, no waiting on hold, no enunciating to a robot… the phone rings, and a woman answered the phone.  When it turned out she couldn’t help me, she gave me the phone number to the actual store where we made the purchase.  I called that number, and another human being answered the phone.  Someone in the actual store.  She listened to my problem, offered me up a solution, and now everybody’s happy.

They’re going to replace the top piece for us, which will definitely be a loss for them.  They’ll have to disassemble another complete set just to give us that top piece, but we’ll be spared having to lug the whole thing back to the store.  It’s a solution that’s great for us, not-so-great for the store.  And that’s customer service, friends.

So kudos, Land of Nod, for doing customer service right, the way it used to be done.  Nowadays customer service is all about protecting the mother ship and convincing the customer that everything is their fault.  It’s about shirking responsibility for hawking crappy merchandise.  Yes, Land of Nod charges quite a premium for their dolled up accessories for baby, child, and home, but when you call them up they answer the phone and ask what they can do to make you happy.

Izzie went to her cousin Logan’s birthday party last weekend.  A great time was had by all.

Last night Paul and I met up at Sluggers to hit the batting cages.  I don’t think I’ve swung at a pitched baseball since little league.  I’ve played a few games of softball, but that’s about it.  And I had never been to a batting cage before.  Of course, since little league, I’ve actually become a fan of baseball… so I was pretty excited to don a helmet and swing at a few.

Back in little league I wasn’t really that great.  I think I had one decent season, but as I grew older, hitting the ball became more difficult.  I was always good at fielding.  I never dropped a pop-up, and made decent plays in the infield.  But in little league, if you can’t hit, none of that really matters.  I think I blocked out a lot of facts about my years in little league.  Toward the end, though, I remember that me coming up to bat was pretty much a guaranteed out, unless I could draw the walk.

Anyway.  I started off with the slow pitch, 60-65.  Once I figured out where the ball was coming from, this was pretty easy.  See the ball, hit the ball, no problem.  Once I had my groove going, I could pretty regularly launch them into what I’ll call home run territory.  Of course on a regular field, that probably corresponds to the area between the mound and second base.  After a few rounds of the slow, I stepped it up to medium, which was marked as 70-75 mph.  What a difference.  I couldn’t see a thing.  I was instantly transformed into little league Steve, flailing my bat and waving my arms at anything that moved.  I connected on one or two, entirely by accident, and tapped them into foul territory.  I didn’t have the heart to try the fast pitch, mostly because I didn’t want to embarrass myself swinging after the pitch hit the backstop.

This was fun.  I will hopefully do this again.  I have a newfound respect for Henry Blanco.

You know what I want?  I want a full scale replica of Clocky, the talking clock that hung on the wall at Pee Wee’s Playhouse.  I want to hang it in my office at work.  Nothing like this exists.  If you Google “clocky” you will find pictures and links of this:

This is some crazy alarm clock that rolls around the room, forcing you to get out of bed to shut it off.  I’m talking about the big yellow clock shaped like the USA that announced when it was time for a Penny Cartoon.  On my wall.  At work.  Help me get it there.

Izzie, Becky and I have dance parties before bed every night, and they’re my favorite thing in the world.  Izzie can dance.  Boy oh boy she can dance.  She’s just like her mother!  Watching her dance fills me with joy, and seeing her so happy puts me through the roof.  I’d try to tape one of these dance parties, but once she sees the camera it’s all about watching herself on the monitor.  Just take my word for it - the girl has got moves that will make your head explode from cute overload.

The one at the bottom is extra cute, because she’s wearing pigtails!

I subscribe to about 80 blogs using Google Reader.  Today and yesterday, it’s felt like I subscribe to one blog, the Let’s Talk about Rod Blagojevich blog.  In the event that you read blogs using Google Reader or some other aggregator and have been going through the same thing, here is a post that is not about Rod Blagojevich!

So.

Let’s see…

Nope, I’ve got nothing.