The Rants of Mister P

Inspected by #12

Somebody actually said this to me at work: "You SOOO wear underwear!" Believe it or not, there is a context where that statement makes perfect logical sense. What concerns me is that he seemed to have such strong convictions about the subject.

How far does Trolley on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood travel in a single year?
I LOVE questions like this. It brings out the geek in me. Stop for a moment and come up with your own guess before you continue reading.

I said, DO NOT continue reading until you make your own guess.

So here was my thought process: Behind the couch is about 10 feet of track, so a round trip is 20 feet. In the Land Of Make Believe, there is about a 30 foot arc surrounding the castle, so a round trip is 60 feet. Add that to the couch track and a little fudge factor, and I estimate 100 feet per episode. I assume 5 episodes a week, so therefore 500 feet per week. I guess that Mister Rogers had a lot of free time, so maybe he worked half the year, or 26 weeks. 26 weeks times 500 feet per week equals 13,000 feet, or around 2.5 miles per year. That is my best guess.

According to the OFFICIAL Mister Rogers webpage, the answer is 5000 miles per year. No freaking way.

That same webpage says there are "only" about 900 episodes of Mister Rogers. Using round numbers, let's say he did 900 episodes over 30 years; that comes to just 30 episodes a year. To cover 5000 mile in 30 episodes, Trolley would have to travel 167 miles every episode. No freaking way. Maybe they are make-believe miles? Or scale miles? If we assume Trolley is about 1/15th scale, he would still have to go over 10 real miles every episode to meet that number.

Mister Rogers would never lie. So the only possible conclusion is that The Land of Make Believe was a very real place 80 miles away.

http://www.misterrogers.org/mister_rogers_neighborhood/faq.asp

When I was very young, apparently my father asked me who would win in a fight: him or Mister Rogers. (I lived in Jersey, these things come up.) In what must have been an hysterical blow to his ego, my money was on Mister Rogers.

Top 5 things that rocked about Mister Rogers:

5. He interviewed Lou "Incredible Hulk" Ferrigno to talk about what it means to be angry.
4. The huge model of his neighborhood shown during the credits. I remember reaching the age where I started to try to figure out if that was a real town, or a model.
3. He had a traffic light in his living room.
2. He fed his fish. I LOVED when he fed his fish.
1. Trolley.

The new World Trade Center



I have to admit I'm a little disappointed with the final selection for the World Trade Center rebuild. I am glad that it will bring the title of World's Tallest Building back to New York (1,776 feet) and I'm sure it will look very nice, but there just isn't anything "iconic" about it. Aside from the history behind the site, I don't think there is anything architecturally special about the design.

The far more intriguing design was the twin scaffolding concept. Even if you knew nothing about September 11th, you can't help but know that there is something significant about these structures. It's a shame we'll never get to see them.

Do the Dew, Dude. D'oh!



Coming soon: Mountain Dew LiveWire, a new orange-flavored Mountain Dew! Coke has flavors like Lemon. Cherry. Vanilla. Mountain Dew has Code Red and LiveWire. PepsiCo rocks.

I am still trying to build up my tolerance for Mountain Dew Code Red, which is like making Kool Aid, but instead of using water you start off with already sweetened Mountain Dew. It tastes really good, but you just need to be careful with it. The 24-pack of Code Red comes with a built-in heart monitor.

LiveWire will only be available through the summer, so I'm very nervous that I may have to stockpile it while I can.

Fast planes are cool



We make fun of the British because of their funny accents, their silly royalty, and their bad food. But how freaking cool is it to have the Concorde do a fly-over in formation with the Red Arrows? This is Mister P's clip of the week.

England is a cool ally. Instead of bombing Saddam, they should fly the Concorde over Iraq at Mach 2 at an altitude of about 1000 feet and let the 500-mile-long sonic boom scare the crap out of them.

Shave & a Haircut, two bits (without the shave)

I got a long-overdue haircut Sunday. I put on the special hair-smock, sat down, and the lady started cutting away. Normally I don't think twice about sanitary conditions in a barber shop, but I noticed something really disgusting: they were throwing other people's hair in my lap. I never actually caught them in the act, but every now and then I would look down and there would be a growing pile of grey hair on the smock. I am young; I have long, lustrious dark hair; so clearly that grey hair could NOT be mine.

This place must be owned by the same people that used to do my dry cleaning. I noticed after a while of getting my slacks done, they were getting tighter and tighter until they didn't fit anymore. Obviously, the dry cleaners were shrinking my clothes.

I'm a Train Wreck, Get Me Out of Here!

I like the new Reality TV craze. It may not be truly "real", but at least you don't know what will happen. If you're watching CSI Fresno, you know that they're going to solve the crime at the end. Justice prevails. But in reality TV, the bad guys can win, and sometimes do.

But even I have my limits as to how far I will stoop when it comes to watching trashy TV. And I drew the line at "I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!". Basically Celebrity Survivor. It looked bad from the start, but a friend of mine (I'll call her "Karri" to protect her identity) said it was good so I decided to give it a try.

This show is so bad, that it inspired me to come up with my own set of awards to dishonor the worst in reality TV. I call these "The Joshuas", named after the painfully annoying guest on Big Brother 3 last summer.



Dumbest Show: I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!
Even after all the celebrities were introduced, I still didn't know who half of them were. They really stretched the definition of celebrity to the limit. Nikki Schieler Ziering?! For one the "challenges", one of the bimbos had to lay down in a closed box for 10 minutes to win 10 meals for her camp. If this was Survivor, she would have had to stay in there for 3 hours. If this was Fear Factor, the box would have been filled with rattlesnakes. But no, it was just an empty box. She lasted 4 minutes. Dumb.

Biggest Fall From Glory: The Osbournes
The brilliance of this show was watching an extraordinary family do ordinary things. But this season they have been focusing on the music careers of the bratty kids. Watching Ozzy Osbourne, The Prince Of Darkness, clean up dog poop in the kitchen is great TV. Watching Kelly cry about not having anything to wear to the MTV Music Awards is not.

Most Annoying Character, Male: Justin, American Idol
Justin is the guy who looks like what would happen if Sideshow Bob joined the Backstreet Boys. He was the runner-up on LAST year's American Idol, so how can he win an award in 2003? Because he's not going away. He LOST, and we still have to deal with him. He's starring in the new "American Idol Movie". We were discussing how this will be the fastest tanking movie in history, but another friend (I'll call her "Ally") rightly argues that nothing can beat "Glitter".

Most Annoying Character, Female: Kathy Griffin, Celebrity Mole Hawaii
If you are funny, you can get away with being offensive (see: Richard Pryor). But you can't just be offensive and hope that it will make you funny. Kathy Griffin is loud, annoying, bigoted and worst of all, not funny. My outer circle of hell would be going to an all-you-can-eat Sushi Bar; my inner circle would be going to an all-you-can-eat Sushi Bar with Kathy Griffin.

Shake Rattle & Roll

Did you feel it? A 5.2 earthquake in Big Bear about 10 minutes ago.That's pretty significant, although because of the distance (and subliminal apathy) I'm sure most L.A. people slept through it. One "feature" of living in a tall building is that quake motion gets exaggerated a bit as the building sways to absorb the energy, so things like this wake me up. Cool.

Ka-ching, Ka-ching, Ka-Blooie

Some of you may say that going to war with Iraq is "all about the oil". To you, I say YOU BET YOUR BIPPY! I just paid $2.16 a gallon for gas.

I am a simple man. I don't know much about global politics or economics. But as I understand it, there is a Very Bad Man someplace and if we drop bombs on him I can pay $1.34 a gallon. That works for me.

Joe Millionaire, part II

So the producers gave Evan (Joe) & Zora a million dollars, making them genuine millionaires (less taxes, natch). This isn't shocking. Two months ago, people were discussing that possibilty but dismissing it as being too obvious. If anything, the producers would have looked cheap if they DIDN'T give out a million dollars. A better way to do it: They should have given Zora one million dollars, and then given her the chance to stick with Evan, or stick it TO Evan.

I don't resent the show for trying the "double twist" by surprising Evan with the million dollars. (Of course, you can surprise Evan by throwing a switch and having the lights go on.) But they overplayed their hand by promoting the life out of the SHOCKING SECRET.

It was not the ending I predicted, but anyone who was genuinely shocked and didn't see this coming is an idiot, even amongst Joe Millionaire viewers. And that's saying a lot.

Love the One You're With

You know what the best thing about Valentine's Day is? Starting February 15th, you can get clearance chocolate dirt cheap. Is it sad and pathetic that I buy myself Valentine candy? Perhaps, but I can drown my sorrow in chocolate up to 75% off.

American Idol

One of these things is not like the other.

Joe Millionaire

They're promising a surprise ending. Prediction: We will find out that although Joe has no money, all of the women who were on the show ARE millionaires, but each one was told by producers not to let anyone else know. You heard it here first.

We're up to an Orange Terror Alert. (High)

Chief Panicmaster John Ashcroft warns: "Recent intelligence reports suggests that al Qaeda leaders have emphasized planning for attacks on... soft or lightly secured targets in the United States." Soft targets include apartment buildings, hotels, and amusement parks.

I live in a 20 story apartment building. Check.
Tomorrow I'm doing a downtown L.A. tour with a stop at the towering St. Bonaventure Hotel. Check.
Sunday I'm going to the Universal Studios amusement park. Check.

I can't believe I ate the whole thing

There is a limit to how much frosting the human body can absorb. I believe that limit is 1/4 cup less than what I ate last night.

Killer Klipboards

If a shuttle crash was caused by a clipboard falling off a hook and short-circuiting the control system, there is no doubt in my mind that someone would uncover a 10-year-old memo showing that engineers warned NASA about the dangers of Space Shuttle Clipboard Hooks. EVERYTHING about the shuttle is dangerous. It is a one-hundred ton, seventeen-thousand mile per hour flying Achilles Heel. So stop trying to make it look like NASA was ignoring warnings about the tiles.

2000 trip to Kennedy Space Center

Since September 11th, one of the very first things I do every single morning is check cnn.com, waiting for the next terrorist attack. Typically, The Cat wakes me up between 6:00-7:00 to be fed. I leave my computer on overnight, and on the way back from the kitchen I click the bookmark in the browser to find out if it's safe to go back to sleep. This morning, I stayed up.