The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century » In the News

Book of the Day / A Proposed Patron Saint for FailCamp

Joey deVilla — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:27:33 +0000

The reviews of the book How to Avoid Huge Ships on Amazon UK won’t tell you very much about the actual content within its 122 pages, but they are quite amusing. For example, here’s J. Courtney’s review:

Instead of falling into the same trap that other authors of this subject fall in to, such as "stay on land" or "move out of the way", John Trimmer offers thought provoking, deep insight into the complexities of Huge Ship avoidance.

If you or anyone you love plans on setting out to sea any time soon, and are worried about encountering a huge ship – then I cannot encourage you enough to read this book.

Here’s another review, this one by Gordon Hawk:

Trimmer’s book is deceptively simple, take his opening passage for example:

"when walking down a local thoroughfare, or perhaps on a day out to your local dock, and suddenly, seemingly from nowhere, a 40ft metallic compound hull emerges in your line of sight, it is most likely, if not definitely, going to be – a huge ship"

It’s theoretical groundwork like this which lacks from today’s ‘pick and choose’ postmodern discourse. Trimmer unleashes this devastating examination with relative ease; most interestingly with chapters such as "Avoiding the ship itself: Moving Left or Right?" which comes up with a flurried and meticulous deconstruction of ethics and theoretical obstacles, for instance "is there anything on either side of the huge ship? – if so, and there is, it is probably, if not definitely, going to be – difficult to move round to that side of the huge ship".

A must for those with an eye for Naval pragmatism and/or a small ship.

I was led to the book by a comment from a wag about the snag in Australian teenager Jessica Watson’s attempt to become the youngest person to sail around the world. Less than 24 hours into her journey, she collided with a bulk cargo ship, snapping the ship’s mast and damaging the deck. She is unharmed, the ship is getting repaired and she still intends to go through with the trip. That’s very good news, considering how many people I’ve seen give up on something after the most minor of inconveniences, snags and bumps in the road.

Jessica, I salute you with a filet mignon on a flaming sword, and nominate you for patron saint of FailCamp!

(And yes, plans are in the works to have another FailCamp. Watch this space!)

download youtube

Congratulations, America!

Joey deVilla — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 07:19:02 +0000

Here’s a greeting card for my American friends to commemorate the inauguration of President Obama:

Yes, you can!

I Couldn’t Resist

Joey deVilla — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 22:06:37 +0000

You can make your own Obama “Hope”-style poster in the style of Shepard Fairey’s work at the Obamicon.me site.

The Bush Years, as Told by The Onion

Joey deVilla — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 20:00:00 +0000

I remember snickering at the once-amusing, now eerily-prescient classic article in The Onion titled Bush: Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity is Finally Over:

What better day than on the last day of the Presidency that made a virtue of willful ignorance to present a catalogue of George W. Bush stories from The Onion during his term? Below, courtesy of Teresa Nielsen Hayden, is her list. Here’s what she had to say:

There will be histories written about the Bush administration. They’ll be privy to information we don’t have yet, because the future is like that. On the other hand, we have our own privileged knowledge: We know how the story looked like to people who didn’t know how it was going to come out.

Now, in this moment before a changing world overwrites our memories of the era, let us pause to salute our constant companion of those years: The Onion. Other histories of the Bush years will doubtless be more factual, but none will ever be truer.

And now, the list:

Some Bonus Onion Prescience

Years before “Joe the Plumber” – whose name isn’t really Joe and who’s not officially a plumber – The Onion published something that will give you deja vu:

The Frat Boy Ships Out

Joey deVilla — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 06:27:05 +0000

The smarty-pants English-Americanophile magazine The Economist has published their editorial summarizing the Bush presidency, The Frat Boy Ships Out. Here are a few snippets from the article:

Mr Bush is what the British call an inverted snob. A scion of one of America’s most powerful families, he is a devotee of sunbelt populism; a product of Yale and Harvard Business School, he is a scourge of eggheads. Mr Bush is a convert to an evangelical Christianity that emphasises emotion—particularly the intensely emotional experience of being born again—over ratiocination. He also styled himself, much like Reagan, as a decider rather than a details man; many people who met him were astonished by what they described as his “lack of inquisitiveness” and his general “passivity”.

Lack of curiosity also led Mr Bush to suspect intellectuals in general and academic experts in particular. David Frum, who wrote speeches for Mr Bush during his first term, noted that “conspicuous intelligence seemed actively unwelcome in the Bush White House”. The Bush cabinet was “solid and reliable”, but contained no “really high-powered brains”. Karen Hughes, one of his closest advisers, “rarely read books and distrusted people who did”. Ron Suskind, a journalist, has argued that Mr Bush created a “faith-based presidency” in which decisions, precisely because they were based on faith, could not be revised subsequently.

Relentless partisanship led to the politicisation of almost everything Mr Bush did. He used his first televised address to justify putting strict limits on federal funding for stem-cell research, and used the first veto of his presidency to prevent the expansion of that funding. He appointed two “strict constructionist” judges to the Supreme Court, John Roberts and Samuel Alito, turned his back on the Kyoto protocol, dismissed several international treaties, particularly the anti-ballistic-missile treaty, loosened regulations on firearms and campaigned against gay marriage. His energy policy was written by Mr Cheney with the help of a handful of cronies from the energy industry. His lacklustre attorney-general Alberto Gonzales, who was forced to resign in disgrace, was only the most visible of an army of over-promoted, ideologically vetted homunculi.

Mr Bush’s presidency is not without its merits. He supported sensible immigration reform. He proposed tighter regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the now-nationalised mortagage agencies. Congress stymied him on both points. He promoted more members of minorities than any previous president; and he also stood up to the Dixiecrat wing of his party, edging Trent Lott, a Mississippi senator, out of his job as majority leader for segregation-favouring remarks. He maintained good relations with India, Japan and, particularly, Africa, where he launched a $15 billion anti-AIDS programme.

The neoconservatives who had such influence over Mr Bush argued that unintended consequences were usually more important than the intended ones. The Bush presidency has proved them right in this, if in little else.

…

It is not all his fault. But for the most part, good policy repeatedly took a back seat to Mr Bush’s overweening political ambition. Both the country and, ultimately, the Republican Party are left the worse for it.

Memo to George Lagogianes: It’s the ISRAELI Consulate, Not the JEWISH Consulate

Joey deVilla — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 16:57:50 +0000

CP24 reporter George Lagogianes is reporting from the protests outside the Israeli Consulate near Bloor and Avenue Road. He keeps alternating between calling it “the Israeli Consulate” and “the Jewish Consulate”. For his benefit, I now present a quick primer:

An Israeli is a citizen of the country of Israel.
A Jew is a member of the Jewish ethnoreligious group.

While Israel is a Jewish nation-state and three-quarters of Israel is Jewish, not all Jews are Israelis. According to Wikipedia, there are about as many Jews in the United States as there are in Israel.

Here’s a Venn diagram that should simplify matters:

Calling it “the Jewish Consulate” is like referring to the American Consulate as “the Christian Consulate” or the Indian Consulate as “the Hindu Consulate”. People at the homegrown TV news station of one of the world’s most multicultural cities should know better.

Mr. Miyagi to Obama: “Big Ups, Playa!”

Joey deVilla — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 21:47:44 +0000

For some reason, this photo-comic in which “Mr. Miyagi” (played by Pat Morita in the Karate Kid movies) gives mad props to Barack Obama amuses me to no end. I decided to enhance it by adding a caption to the bottom":

Found thanks to Giles Bowkett.

What’s on these Presidents’ Minds

Joey deVilla — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 05:40:26 +0000

Click the photo to see it at full size.

Police Shoot Accordion-Playing Student in German WWII Uniform

Joey deVilla — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 18:01:19 +0000

John Bowman just sent me a message linked to a Seattle Times story about the police shooting of a University of Washington student.

Seattle police shot and killed a University of Washington senior who was dressed in a World War II-era German uniform and who officers say was brandishing a long rifle with a bayonet early Thursday in his University District apartment.

The student, identified by friends as Miles Allen Murphy, was well-known on campus as a smart, eccentric history buff who loved to participate in WWII re-enactments and would even show up to class, at times, dressed in a historic uniform.

…

Murphy was killed about 2 a.m. Thursday when police responded to neighbors’ complaints that several men were shooting vintage, military-style rifles and shotguns into a dark alley near the 5200 block of 17th Avenue Northeast, police spokesman Jeff Kappel said.

When police were called, Kappel said, neighbors pointed out an apartment in a large white house. When police knocked on the door, one of the suspects opened the door brandishing a long rifle with a large bayonet attached.

Uniformed police officers warned the man several times to drop his weapon. He didn’t, Kappel said, and he pointed it at one of the officers. Two officers shot him several times. He died at a hospital Thursday morning, Kappel said.

Yow. The moral of the story is that if you’re dressed in a Nazi uniform and carrying a rifle, people will assume that you’re up to no good.

The story includes quotes from friends who describe him as a history buff and not a neo-Nazi. Also of note is the third paragraph of the story – people who know me will experience a sense of deja vu:

Friends said Murphy, 22, would entertain at parties by playing everything from old German folk songs to Britney Spears tunes on his accordion.

Each According to His Abilities

Joey deVilla — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 05:01:00 +0000

President Bush is really putting the “lame” in “lame duck”:

Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

A Free Lunch for the People Who Need it Least

Joey deVilla — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 16:22:53 +0000

While I believe that airline seats should be widened a little – even people of “average” build find them a bit narrow – I think that the Canadian Supreme Court’s recent ruling that the obese have the right to two airline seats for the price of one on flights within Canada is wrong. Just as airline cargo space has a value and you have to pay accordingly if you bring on more than the standard weight allotment, airline seats have value and you should have to pay for the seats you use.

They Always Hear It

Joey deVilla — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:52:16 +0000

Comic courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

A Dump with a Future (or: My Review of the Cecil Hotel, Los Angeles)

Joey deVilla — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 04:00:12 +0000

Note: This post’s a long one, so grab your favourite beverage before reading it!

Where Everyone Else Stayed: The Westin Bonaventure

Everyone else on the Canadian Developer and Platform Evangelism team at Microsoft had made their L.A. hotel arrangements for last week’s Professional Developer Conference well in advance. They all stayed at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, a well-appointed, if tacky and too-eighties-for-its-own-good local landmark located in the financial district, an area now considered to be the “downtown” part of Los Angeles:

While they were there, they were treated to a little bit of Hollywood in action. The hotel bar Suede — where we all had some nice mojitos on Wednesday night — was being used as a location for the nerd-unwittingly-turned-spy TV series Chuck:

(Suede “felt” a bit new. A little Googling revealed that it opened in July.)

Where I Stayed: The Cecil Hotel

If you were to turn the clock back sixty or so years, the area considered to be “downtown” would be about a mile east of the Bonaventure. It’s not as shiny as the financial district, nor are the buildings as new, but it more than makes up for it with character. It’s full of the old buildings that Jane Jacobs praised as the birthplaces of new ideas and it had a vibe that reminded me of Accordion City’s Queen and Spadina area (especially since it also has a garment district nearby).

Through this area runs historic Main Street, and at the corner of Main Street and Seventh is the Cecil Hotel (if you pay attention to its newer, gold and white marquee sign) or Hotel Cecil (if you pay attention to its older, red and white vertical signs).

I didn’t pick the Cecil. American Express, who does the travel arrangements for Microsoft Canada, did. All the conference hotels — one of which was the Westin Bonaventure — were booked solid, so I asked the agent booking my flight and hotel to try and find something with a reasonable distance of the hotel.

The Cecil fit the bill: not too far away from the Convention Center, and judging from its website, on par with a place like New York’s Chelsea, of which I’m rather fond.

Here’s a shot I took of the Cecil at night. I love old hotel neon signs:

And here’s the entrance, which looks the way grand hotels do in old black-and-white films. It’s flanked by a couple of establishments attached to the hotel: Stay, Marty and Tuck, which feature more modern signage and which I’ll talk about later.

The Lobby

As with the front entrance, the lobby is done up very nicely in brass, gold-tone and marble (yes, it’s probably “particle marble”, but in a city that boasts fake everything, it’s real enough).

You could set a film noir scene in this lobby, perhaps with a 1940s starlet or “Daddy Warbucks”-style tycoon.

Here’s a picture of the stairway leading to the mezzanine overlooking the lobby and the concierge.

Looking up from the lobby, you can see this backlit stained-glass ceiling.

A Minor Glitch

I got to the front desk and gave the attendant my name. He typed on the computer and said “Room with bath, two twin beds?”

“No,” I replied, and pulled out my printed reservation. “King bed.”

“Haven’t got one available,” he said, and started typing. “Will a queen do?”

“Yes it will.”

Some people I know tend to get worked up over minor glitches like this. I don’t, and especially when I’m travelling alone. (If I’m travelling with the Ginger Ninja, I do my best to make her comfy).

I signed in and was handed an old-school key on a diamond-shaped fob. An actual, mechanical key, as opposed to a magnetic or punched card.

How charmingly retro, I thought. Let the other guys on the team stay at the bland Bonaventure. This place has character.

Of course, that was before I went upstairs to my room.

A Sign of Trouble

My first warning was this sign, which was mounted over the elevators:

“NO VISITORS ALLOWED UPSTAIRS,” the sign read in large letters. In smaller letters beneath it, it read “For your protection all guests please show key upon request — Management.”

This is to be expected in a hotel in a “recovering neighbourhood”. Usually these hotels have elevators that require you to use the keycard for your room to activate them. This sort of measure keeps the riff-raff out and discourages hooker booty calls. It’s not a sure indicator that the hotel is a hole; it just says that the hotel has a history of being a flophouse, just like Toronto’s flophouses-turned-see-and-be-seen destinations, the Gladstone and Drake hotels.

Undecked Halls

Here’s what I saw as soon as I got out of the elevator:

There were still traces of the lobby in the faux-marble floor tiles, but the rest of the architecture had gone seriously downmarket. It may be true that a fresh coat of paint will cover a multitude of sins, but not when the paint is cheap and sloppily applied. And not when the walls have been repeatedly patched.

By the way, those signs on the doors in the photo above? They’re not room numbers; they’re signs indicating that they’re either common showers or bathrooms:

It dawned on me: the guy at the front desk didn’t just say “one room”, but “one room with bath.” I wasn’t going to have to use these shared toilets and showers, but it wasn’t time to breathe a sigh of relief just yet.

At least the hallway bathrooms and showers were clean. I’ve seen worse at hostels, but at least they had the decency to set some expectations and admit that they were hostels. I’ve seen worse at one hotel, but it was in the Tenderloin in San Francisco, and I was in my twenties and trying to stretch my meager, then very-wimpy-next-to-the-U.S.-dollar money.

I continued down the hallway, which had changed colours from badly-applied cheap blue paint to sloppily-rolled discount tan paint…

There were still signs of the hotel’s former glory in the floor mosaics that appeared every now and again along the hallway:

Near the end of the hall right by my room was combination bathroom/toilet. This was as far as I could open the door — the toilet blocks its way and prevents it from swinging open any further.

The Room

Finally, I reached my room, number 1107. Queen-size bed my ass:

Maybe they meant “Queen-sized bed with a twenty percent margin of error”. I gave the mattress a poke; not much “give”, but I’ve slept on worse. I wonder what I would’ve seen if I’d hit it with one of those special “CSI” flashlights.

Here’s the room’s air conditioning system.

Luckily it was late October; at that time of year, a fan and open window are just fine in L.A.. Had it been August, the room would’ve been a sauna.

Here’s the heating unit for winter months: some kind of wall-mounted plate with a switch. I decided not to give it a test.

The closet had an ironing board but lacked an iron; instead it had a weird chemical smell. Certain that the smell would lovingly attach itself to my clothes, I opted to live out of my suitcase instead.

And Now, the Bathroom

It was time to check out the bathroom. Although the wife would never have approved, it was serviceable:

Make note of the shower curtain rod. The rod and curtain are what demarcate the shower area from the rest of the bathroom:

And yup, that’s the shower drain in the floor opposite the toilet:

That’s right, at the Cecil Hotel, you no longer have to choose between showering and pooping!

Actually, that’s not true. The shower nozzle is angled away from the toilet and towards the back wall. Even if it weren’t, the water pressure isn’t sufficient to reach the toilet. You still have to choose.

Needless to say, I didn’t bother to even ask if there was wifi in the room.

That’s It, I’m Outta Here

“I’m with Microsoft,” I told the concierge at the Westin Bonaventure, “but I wasn’t able to book until the last minute and I’m, er, less than satisfied with my current hotel.”

“Where are you staying?”

“The Cecil.”

“On Main Street?”

“That’s the one.”

“Holy sh–” said the attendant, catching himself in mid-curse. “I mean, wow.”

“Don’t worry about the swearing, I’m pretty casual. Can you hook me up with a room? Some last-minute cancellation?”

“Let me see,” he said as he typed on a keyboard. “I’m afraid we don’t have anything available until Friday night.”

Unfortunately, I was flying out Friday at noon.

He even tried calling a couple of other hotels in the area, but they were booked solid.

“Never mind,” I said. “I’ve stayed in hostels and worse places than the Cecil. Only once or twice, and when I was young and not bankrolled by a Fortune 500 company. I’ll live.”

“You know, there is one half-decent room in the Cecil, but I don’t think it’s what you’re looking for. Besides, it’s booked for the next couple of weeks.”

“What room is that?”

Stay

Two doors to the left of the Cecil’s main entrance, but still contained within the building was an entrance labelled “Stay”. Inside was what looked like a waiting room decked in orange and white with large statues of labrador retrievers.

Upon closer inspection of a printout taped to the window, I discovered that it was some kind of “Stay” was a hotel-themed art installation:

Stay has arrived in downtown Los Angeles, offering travelers an exciting, youthful lodging alternative. Stay is a boutique hotel/youth hostel hybrid created for the savvy, modern traveler by designers Catherine Coan and Amy Price in conjunction with Lanting Hotel Group, Inc. (“LHG”). In celebration of its arrival, Stay will display live hotel guests living 24 hours per day in two model hotel rooms that we have created in street-level storefront windows, fully visible from Main Street. Initially, these guests – Ashley, Alicia, Toby, Zac and Casey – will be on display until November 15, 2008, although the promotion may be extended for an indefinite period of time.

The best room in the hotel, it would seem, is an art installation.

Stay’s rooms were just left of its entrance, and as advertised, they were hotel rooms with a big storefront window as one of its walls:

Here’s a closer look at that room:

Here’s an even closer look:

Here’s the other room, with one of the occupants getting made up for Hallowe’en. And look! Bunk beds!

If you’re curious and want to find out more about Stay, they (as one might suspect) have a blog.

More Lobby Enhancements

While wandering about the lobby, I noticed a couple of places that were perpetually closed and under construction. On one side of the lobby was a place called Marty:

According to the L.A. downtown blog Angelenic, Marty was supposed to be open on October 15th. However, as is the way with most restaurants, they’d already missed the deadline for the announced grand opening.

It’s a crying shame that it wasn’t open; it might have been a better place to hang out than my room.

On the other side of the lobby was a still-under-construction restaurant called “Tuck”, which promoted itself as a place to get good comfort food:

There was also an art gallery called “Arty” and a large empty alcove in the lobby that was going to be transformed into a bar called “Nip” (presumably to match “Tuck”).

My Check-Out Experience

The Cecil provides a phone that is a direct line to L.A. Yellow Cab. Having gotten familiar with the lag between the time you call for a cab and the time it arrived at the Cecil from back-and-forth trips to the Convention Center, I decided to call for a cab first and then check out.

As I waited on the line, I got to listen in on a conversation between a hotel manager and a security guard on one side and a one-legged guy in a wheelchair on the other side.

“Until we get that mess in your room cleaned up,” said the manager, “I can’t let you back into your room.”

“Hey, asshole, it was like that when I got there!” spat One-Legged Wheelchair Guy.

I made my way to the front desk and handed back my key.

“I’d like to check out, please,” I said.

“Sure,” said the woman at the counter. She typed at her keyboard and moments later, she said “All done! Thank you for staying at the Cecil Hotel.”

I waited for a moment before asking for a receipt.

“I’m afraid we can’t give you a receipt. Your price is confidential because you booked through a third party.”

I paused out of sheer incredulity before replying “You realize that the amount won’t be a secret once it appears on my credit card bill, right?”

“I’m sorry sir, that’s hotel policy.”

At that point, I saw my cab pull up at the front door.

“Forget it. I’ll get the receipt from the travel agency. You might want to work on the service and the rooms here,” I said, and made my way to the cab, making mental notes for this blog entry along the way.

The Short-Term Verdict

If you’re inspired by the works of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett or Mickey Spillane and want to have a weekend of kinky gumshoe role-playing, the Cecil’s gorgeous lobby and oldie-von-moldie rooms will make the perfect (and inexpensive) backdrop for your activities. You can even get a nice suit and matching hat in the garment district a few blocks south.

(Strangely enough, I did some Googling while writing this post and found an article that suggests that Raymond Chandler modelled the shabby hotel in his short story Nevada Gas after the Cecil.)

If you’re on a budget and are willing to stay in a place whose room standards are closer to a hostel than a hotel, the Cecil might suit your needs. You can save even more money if you take a room without its own bathroom. It’s also a reasonable walk from places like the Convention Center, Staples Center and the financial district, and there’s a Metro station close by.

If you’re a business traveller or are looking for something that’s at least on par with a Ramada Inn, look elsewhere. There’s no air conditioning, the rooms are lacking in amenities, my college dorm bed had a better mattress and the in-room bathroom (if it has one) would fail the Wife Test — the rooms are about as clean as you can get them without some much-needed renovating.

The clientele at the Cecil were a mixed bag. Some were obviously students who were pribably travelling on a budget. These students weren’t that short on funds; they had laptops and iPhones. Others appeared to be businesspeople; I had brief conversations with a few and they were all along the lines of “You got suckered too, huh?” Finally, there was the hard-luck crowd who ran the gamut from the “Will Smith in The Pursuit of Happyness” type to the “Looks like I picked the wrong day to stop doing crystal meth” sort.

What do other people who’ve stayed at the Cecil have to say?

On TripAdvisor, 20 out of the 38 user-submitted reviews rated the Cecil Hotel at 2 out of 5 or lower.
User reviewers at Expedia gave the Cecil a 2.2 out of 5 rating.
The average rating for the Cecil on Yelp was 1.5 out of 5. One reviewer said “Cecil Hotel is where dreams go to die.”
People involved with grisly murders have given the Cecil a thumbs-up: Richard Ramirez, Jack Unterweger and Elizabeth “Black Dahlia” Short have all stayed there.

I plan to have some words with American Express’ travel booking service this week.

The Longer-Term Verdict

You’re probably wondering what I’m implying with the title of this article, A Dump with a Future.

As craptacular as the non-lobby areas of the hotel are, it’s got considerable potential. For starters, there’s that gorgeous lobby.

It’s got a prime location in a neighbourhood that looks like it’s undergoing some gentrification; the stores popping up in the area along with the area’s designation as the “Gallery District” suggest an area similar to Toronto’s West Queen West area. It was a sad crack zone in the previous decade, and today it’s the hippest part of town. The two hotels in the area, the Drake and the Gladstone were once notorious flophouses to some of the smelliest humans alive; now they’re in-demand boutique hotels popular with both locals and tourists alike.

If the Cecil can get its cafe, bar and restaurant open and filled with area hipsters (who currently go to the nearby Golden Gopher, a hip dive bar not far from the hotel) it’ll become a place that locals will want to frequent. If they can get it together and give the rooms a proper reno, it could become a boutique hotel along the lines of the Drake and the Gladstone.

But for now, my recommendation is to steer clear of the Cecil. A dump with a future is still a dump.

If You’re Throwing a Hallowe’en Party…

Joey deVilla — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 15:15:05 +0000

…you might want to include this with your invitations. The U.S. election campaign is giving hallowe’en-ers a lazy costume option; use this notice to head them off at the pass:

Image courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

What’s Up with “Senator McTongue”?

Joey deVilla — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 19:08:22 +0000

Take a look at these photos taken after last night’s presidential debate. What’s up with McCain and his tongue? Dry cough? Hairballs? The next step in his public metamorphosis into Grampa Simpson?

Photos courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

Titanic’s Last Living Survivor Selling Mementoes to Pay Her Nursing Home Fees

Joey deVilla — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 15:36:16 +0000

Millvina Dean, last living survivor of the Titanic.

Millvina Dean, age 96, hopes to raise 3,000 pounds to help cover the costs of living in a nursing home. She’s doing this by selling her mementoes from the aftermath of the Titanic, which include a hundred-year-old suitcase full of clothes given to her family after they arrived in New York. Her family took the Titanic to emigrate from the U.K. to Kansas; her mother and brother also survived, but her father did not.

Tina Fey as Sarah Palin in “Saturday Night Live’s” Skit on the Vice Presidential Debate

Joey deVilla — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 03:37:25 +0000

The folks who said that Sarah Palin’s performance at last Thursday’s vice presidential debate didn’t leave Tina Fey any material were wrong — she killed in the opening skit, turning Palin’s perky but content-free non-answers into pure comedy gold. If you missed Saturday Night Live this weekend, you can enjoy the skit by clicking on the image below:

Click the picture to see the video.

What Newspapers and Magazine Does Sarah Palin Read?

Joey deVilla — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 13:23:34 +0000

If I were to ask you which newspapers and magazines you read — and yes, their online versions count — would you be able to name at least one? Katie Couric asked Sarah Palin that question and hilarity ensued — she hemmed and hawed like the kid presenting a book report on the book she hadn’t yet read: “Treasure Island is a book about an island. With treasure on it.”

Here’s the transcript:

Katie Couric: And when it comes to establishing your world view, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read, before you were tapped for this, to stay informed and to understand the world?

Sarah Palin: I’ve read most of them again with a great appreciation for the press for the media, I mean…

Couric: Like what ones specifically? I’m curious that you…

Palin: Um, all of ‘em, any of ‘em that um have been in front of me over all these years, um…

Couric: Can you name any of them?

Palin: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news too. Alaska isn’t a foreign country where it’s kind of suggested it seems like, wow how could you keep in touch with what the rest of Washington, DC may be thinking and doing, when you live up there in Alaska. Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America.

She didn’t even have the presence of mind to throw out the name of any newspaper or magazine she’s heard of: the New York Times or Washington Post? Nope. Time or Newsweek? Uh-uh. Not even Alaskan newspapers such as the Anchorage Daily News, the Juneau Empire. She didn’t even come up with the name of her hometown paper, Wasilla’s Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, where she once worked!

If that weren’t bad enough, you have to remember that in university, she majored in journalism.

In case you were wondering, here are the newspapers and magazines I regularly read, either in dead-tree or online form. For the sake of sticking to the spirit of Katie Couric’s question, I’m not including online-only magazines.

Daily:

At least once a week:

What are your favourites?

R.I.P. Paul Newman

Joey deVilla — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 14:53:42 +0000

Actor, director, car racing enthusiast, humanitarian, creator of a pretty good salad dressing, beer aficionado and master of the steely blue-eyed stare Paul Newman died yesterday at the age of 83 after a long battle with lung cancer.

What you may not know is that when artist Gil Kane was re-designing the superhero character Green Lantern in the late 1950s, he used Paul Newman as his template:

Requiescat in pace, Mr. Newman.

This Gun’s for Hire

Joey deVilla — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:15:03 +0000

Life in a startup is full of adventures with its fair share of ups and downs. Budgets shrink and grow, teams shrink and grow and strategies constantly evolve. During these challenging economic times, it’s the companies who maintain their focus while controlling their spending discipline that will survive.

b5media lives and dies by these same rules, and those of us in the ad-driven internet business expect no less. In this current market environment, it is the mandate of a responsible business to look at ways to stretch their dollar and cut their costs.

My role at b5media as Nerd Wrangler, a.k.a. Technical Project Manager, overlaps too closely with the Director of Technology, and there just isn’t enough work to go between the two of us. The Powers That Be at b5 had to make a tough call, but they made the right one for the company: they had to let me go. My final day at the company will be Friday, October 3rd.

I’d like to thank Jeremy Wright and the rest of b5media for taking me on and for the experience at b5 over the past seven months.

And to the rest of you: this gun’s for hire!

(Here’s .)