Archives for the month of: February, 2007

The Saga of the Rice Prophet

February 20, 07 //
1

Chinese Food At first it seemed some­what unreal, that the per­son I was speak­ing to on the phone was pos­si­bly a robot or one of those “Madame Mer­coni” fortune-telling car­ni­val machines come to life. You know the ones with spooky glow­ing eyes, a rigid Char­lie McCarthy puppet-like jaw and palm fac­ing up eager for your quar­ter and an open-mind.

The voice on the other end of the line quickly went from semi-unintelligible to socks-in-the-mouth syn­drome and then silence. Silence? Did I say some­thing? Offend some­one pos­si­bly? No, prob­a­bly not. It wasn’t one of those kind of con­ver­sa­tions, where two peo­ple man­age to agi­tate one another in 15 words or less. Fol­low­ing the silence, the per­son, a woman, maybe in her mid-30s, I wasn’t sure, chimed back in. She finally spoke, “Yes? Hmm? What you want?”.

I slid the menu across my desk, quickly scanned some food choices and then responded that I wanted a combo. “What combo? Yes? What? Hmm?”, she said once again in a rushed, there-isn’t-enough-time left today atti­tude. Right then I had an impul­sive desire to ask her some of the ques­tions I had on my mind through­out the week.

Ques­tions like if there really is a mean­ing to life (and I’m sure that answer could be quite lengthy) I’ve often won­dered if there’s a con­densed answer in the form of a tabbed, color-coded Cliff Notes guide? Or, would I ever be able to sched­ule a meet­ing with the Dalai Lama in my life­time and had if were blessed with such an oppor­tu­nity, what would be the first thing I’d say?

Even­tu­ally I snapped out of that men­tal state and told her that I’d have the orange chicken today, with an extra for­tune cookie because if any­thing I was con­vinced that lit­tle slip of paper might be able to answer at least one of my questions.

A Random Poll on Full House

February 4, 07 //
7

Full House Cast If you grew up in the mid-80s like I did, you prob­a­bly remem­ber Full House, a whole­some fam­ily sit­com that first aired Sep­tem­ber 22nd, 1987 and had a run of almost ten years, end­ing in May 1995.

The premise of the show was rather sim­ple and mostly sugar-coated and the issues were, for the most part, con­tem­po­rary. Basi­cally, it cen­tered on a wid­owed father named Danny Tan­ner (per­formed by Bob “America’s Fun­ni­est Videos” Saget) who is respon­si­ble for rais­ing his three chil­dren; D.J. (Can­dace Cameron), Stephanie (Jodie Sweetin) and Michelle (famously per­formed by both of the Olsen Twins; Mary-Kate and Ash­ley) after his wife is trag­i­cally killed in a car accident.

To help raise his chil­dren and soothe the heal­ing process over los­ing his wife Danny enlists sup­port from Joey Glad­stone (Dave Coulier), his best friend from his old high school days, and his wife’s younger brother Jesse Kat­sopo­lis (John Sta­mos). Through­out the course of the show, every char­ac­ter – espe­cially the chil­dren – deals with typ­i­cal sit­com issues like drug use, safe sex, moral­ity, dat­ing, you name it, it was most likely cov­ered and then dis­cussed with sin­cer­ity and emotion.

It seems like every­one can asso­ciate them­selves with a par­tic­u­lar char­ac­ter or rather dis­as­so­ci­ate them­selves for some rea­son or another. What­ever your rea­son­ing might be for lik­ing or dis­lik­ing a char­ac­ter, it’s an inter­est­ing study nonetheless.

Con­sider for a moment that you hap­pen to like a char­ac­ter purely because they seem socia­ble and agree­able in most cases and like­wise you con­sider these virtues a part of your own personality.

On the other hand, you might enjoy a char­ac­ter because they aren’t like you at all. They may be dis­hon­est, heart­less or shal­low and you enjoy this because it’s an alter­nate ver­sion of your­self or it’s just enter­tain­ing, that or the actor per­forms the part in a dys­func­tional and yet appeal­ing man­ner, maybe comed­ically or straight­for­ward, what­ever the case you enjoy that character.

Which is why I’m con­duct­ing a ran­dom poll (by ran­dom I mean, hey you had no idea I’d do this) on who your favorite char­ac­ter is from Full House is. There is no sci­en­tific rea­son­ing behind this other than just for curios­ity and fun. Please, feel free to par­tic­i­pate in the poll and leave any com­ments as to why you chose a par­tic­u­lar char­ac­ter over another.

I’m using PollPub, a shiny Web 2.0 polling ser­vice to see how this turns out.

The Poll

Accord­ing to cur­rent poll results (as of Feb­ru­ary 12th) Jesse Kat­sopo­lis is win­ning by a land­slide with 67% of the vote. Does this mean I should have some “Uncle Jesse for Pres­i­dent” t-shirts printed up?

Please use the direct link (served by PollPub on their servers) for the poll: Who is your favorite char­ac­ter on Full House?.

SEO Company, Directory Submission, Phone Cards, Calling Cards, International Calling Cards