Actors Studio Questions

If you've ever watched “Inside the Actors Studio,” you've seen James Lipton ask the same 10 questions to each actor at the end of the show. This was tossed at me by a friend, so I responded. If you want to try, then copy the questions and replace my answers with yours. Enjoy!

1. What is your favorite word?
   Verbivore.
2. What is your least favorite word?
   Smarmy.
3. What turns you on (creatively, spiritually or emotionally)?
   The scent and feel of a woman.
4. What turns you off (creatively, spiritually or emotionally)?
   Stupidity.
5. What sound do you love?
   Gentle springtime rain.
6. What sound do you hate?
   Drunken voices.
7. What is your favorite curse word?
   Effing... and it's variants.
8. What profession other than yours would you like to attempt?
   Travel photographer for National Geographic magazine.
9. What profession would you not like to do?
   Proctologist.
10. If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?
    Here are the keys to your fully-restored Ferrari 275 GTB/4 in just the color that you like. There's unlimited fuel here, and you can never crash it. Here are your keys... enjoy the ride!

1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4...
perhaps one of the most beautiful versions of this marque.

Your turn...

The 50 Greatest Lies of the New Millennium

"I promise that I wont..."

There have been many lists of lies that have been circulated around for years. People used to receive shorter versions on their fax machines, then with the advent of computers in the late 1900s, the lists began to grow. But now were in the new millennium, so perhaps it's time once again to update that list. Here is our humble offering of the 50 Greatest Lies of the New Millennium...

1. The check's in the mail.
2. Trust me.
3. I didn't mean any harm.
4. I'll only take a minute of your time.
5. I'll call you right back.
6. If you elect me, I promise...
7. This isn't partisan politics; it's for the good of the country.
8. A representative of the government says...
9. These measures will ensure the safety of the American people while preserving essential liberties.
10. I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
11. I've never felt like this before.
12. This time it's different.
13. I'm planning to get a divorce so I can marry you.
14. I'll never let you down.
15. My wife (husband) is okay with me seeing other people; she (he) just doesn't want to know about it.
16. I'm not leaving you for her (him); I just need some space to think things through.
17. You don't need to use a condom; I'm on the pill.
18. I don't need to use a condom; I've had a vasectomy and tested negative for STD's.
19. Don't worry, I'll pull out in time.
20. I promise, I won't come in your mouth.
21. That was special.
22. I'll call you.
23. I promise I'll pay you back next Friday.
24. I'll never get this drunk (stoned, wrecked, etc.) again.
25. I'm not addicted; I can quit smoking (drinking, name the habit) any time I want.
26. You look like you haven't aged a single day!
27. No, I don't think that outfit makes you look fat.
28. You're going to love working here.
29. I have no clue what you're talking about!
30. It's 100% compatible with all of your existing equipment.
31. I've gone and checked this email out on Google, and it's really not a hoax.
32. We found and fixed the very last bug!
33. You can get rich on the Internet!
34. No obligation!
35. You may already be a winner!
36. Lose all the weight you want!
37. I'm being totally unbiased.
38. This will only hurt a little.
39. This will hurt me more than it does you.
40. I'm doing this for your own good.
41. It's only for a little while...
42. It was an accident.
43. Please hold, and a customer service representative will be with you shortly.
44. We are experiencing a peak level of call volume...
45. Our cell phones will give you much more freedom...
46. This product was made in an environmentally friendly manner.
47. I know it's none of my business...
48. I'm not trying to tell you what to do, but...
49. We'll have all the repairs finished by noon.
50. It will only take four more hours...

Some of your favorites may have been overlooked. If that's so just leave a comment and share your thoughts here.

Technorati Tags: lies, government, politics, sex, New Millennium, Lexidiem, JargonTalk, Google, cell phone, four hours, trust me

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Makes Sense

Review:

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt with Stephen J. Dubner

First things first: this reviewer is not an economist, and I usually find such books can often be boring. Must admit that Freakonomics kept me up far too late over one weekend reading it through to the end. It was hard to put down.

Another reader/reviewer emailed me, noting that Malcolm Gladwell had said that Steven Levitt "has the most interesting mind in America," and since I had found Gladwell’s Blink! hard to put down, I might find Freakonomics interesting. This was an understatement.

Then another friend loaned me a copy of the book, so I felt obligated to read it, so I had to get my own copy, for it’s worth a second read.

As noted above, the cover says it all. Freakonomics is not only humorous in places, it’s fascinating, an out of the ordinary way of looking at economics for those who normally don’t venture into what is often perceived as a boring subject. Like Gladwell’s writing, this reviewer found this book to be a springboard to other ideas.

The authors define economics as “the study of incentives” early in the first chapter, which is not exactly as I remember the conventional definition from college courses. But maybe analyzing how to motivate people to do or not do a particular things is a better way or looking at the reality of economics.

Freakonomics was co-written by the noted journalist Stephen Dubner (Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper, Choosing My Religion), and seems to have drawn as much criticism as it has received praise from reviewers and other commentators. The authors repeatedly state that there’s no consistent theme. Others have noted that it appears to be an assembly of magazine articles and columns, edited and put together in an appealing but not particularly interrelated manner.

But this reader found that it indeed does have a theme, and that theme is that established conventional wisdom is not always right. Things that we perceive to be related just might not be. Maybe there’s no connection at all, and maybe some are simply coincidence.

Liberals and conservatives in our society will find some of Levitt’s thoughts to be controversial. This reader found much of the book to fly in the face of “conventional wisdom,” and found that this is what made it so fascinating. For example, don’t miss Levitt’s discussion regarding abortion, for whether or not you agree with his viewpoint, it is thought provoking.

There are many other thought-provoking concepts that this reader found fascinating, such as the authors’ thoughts on how education and actual knowledge in our public school systems has been replaced by standardized testing preparation. This then leads to the encouragement of cheating just to get the statistics where those in charge of the systems need them to be. To comment further on this would be akin to plot spoiling. But don’t miss Levitt’s comments on the bizarre trends of naming babies, which this reviewer found to be hilarious in their absurdity.

“Morality describes the way that any of us would like the world to work. Economics describes the way the world actually does work. You can’t change the world you live in until you understand it.”
~ from Freakonomics

Some have disagreed with the authors. Others, including many academics, agreed with the authors' concepts. Orson Scott Card stated in WorldWatch (9/11/2005), "This book should be required reading before anybody is allowed to vote."

Some have commented that this book is more of a basic text on sociology more than economics, but this reader found that it’s all connected, and makes one want to look further. Levitt is a writer to watch, and he does let the numbers talk for him in an interesting if often offbeat fashion.

Criticisms? Initially had been happy to find this book to be comfortable 256 pages, but after finishing it, wished there had been more. It’s definitely not boring, and that can’t be said about many works related to economics. Might even be a good gift for someone, as almost anyone can read it and frequently have a good laugh.

I thoroughly enjoyed Freakonomics and heartily recommend it: a 5-star offering, without a doubt. Also recommended is the Freakonomics column that the authors have been writing for the The New York Times Magazine since June 2005, covering subjects from car seats to dog poop to tax cheating.

Update: This book has been out since April of 2005, so it's not new, and I had previously reviewed it on Amazon.com and other sites. So why review it again? It seems that Freakonomics has been adopted into many college and high-school curricula since it was published. It's now a recognized textbook for courses at Berkeley, Georgetown, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, American University, Purdue, NYU and others. And now there are free study guides available here.

Further, if you already have the book and missed out on any book signings, the authors are now offering a free signed bookplate. It's a nicely designed sticker that can be placed inside your book, like one of those classic "ex libris" stickers. So if you would like your signed bookplate, just click to fill out the form on their site, and they'll even pay the postage.

Technorati Tags: Freakonomics, Steven Levitt, Stephen Dubner, Malcolm Gladwell, Blink, Orson Scott Card, New York Times, best seller, book review, lexidiem, jargontalk, Amazon.com, rogue economist, book, author, review,

Our lexidiem is freakonomics.

Sex on Lake Balaton? Just rock my boat!

Sexy Summer on Lake Balaton?

The tourism authority in Balaton, Hungary is trying a new approach to attracting young visitors. Maybe they're trying to follow the well-known saying that "Virginia is for Lovers," a slogan that has endured for over thirty years. If that's the direction they're taking, than maybe their campaign on behalf of Lake Balaton should be called "Balaton is for Sex." We could also call it "Trolling for Tourism."

They have released a brief cartoon video [NSFW] depicting a young blonde woman having sex with an apparently married male tourist in a rowboat on the lake. The film, set to a popular local '80s song, shows the woman taking off her bra to the obvious pleasure of the man. They do what comes naturally (with two little cartoon bees accompanying them throughout their tryst) and as they lay in the boat afterwards in post-coital ecstasy, the tourist is shown hiding his wedding ring as the blonde gazes loving at him. If you can read Hungarian (I can't), then maybe Tékozló Homár can explain it better.

Since there wasn't much to explain the video, I did a little digging and found that the music is a remix of KFT's "Balatoni nyár" ("Balaton Summer"), originally released on the band's 1986 album Siker, pénz, nők, csillogás ("Success, money, women, glitter"). The video seems to closely follow the story laid out in the song, and this is supposed to be the loose English translation:

We were sitting on the pier watching the light dance on the water;
We enjoyed how good that conventional (or cheesy) situation was;
I remember how I waited for that blue-eyed girl at the ferry;
And of course she didn't come;
because that's what blue-eyed girls are like;

I was sitting in a boat with a girl and all moral chains fell from us;
Nobody could see us, because the reeds are thick;
I was in love and the truth would've hurt that girl;
I looked into her eye and said I wasn't married

Not meaning to sound picky, but the video showed the tourist wearing his wedding ring on his right hand. So do Hungarians wear their wedding bands on their right hands?

The region around Lake Balaton was a popular tourist spot for Hungarians, Germans and east Europeans at one time, but its popularity has dropped a bit in the past few years, and this season's start is "sluggish" according to The Budapest Times. Some visitors think that Lake Balaton is a great place to spend some time, but others don't. The tourism authorities said in a statement, "The marketing campaign is aimed at selling Balaton as a travel destination primarily for the young generation."

That statement seems strange when the video rejoices in the fact that the male half of the twosome is married to someone else. The cartoon ends with him droving home with photos of his vacation flashing in his memory... as that bee accompanies him on the trip.

The "The Official Touristic Homepage" offers plenty of "Linkajánló" (links) to activities for the "young generation" that they seem to be marketing towards. There is an annual Miss Balaton beauty contest, with a number of beautiful entrants. Who know, maybe there will be a Miss Universe contender there. There are discos, such as Flört and Dexion. There is the Coca-Cola Beach House, the Aquapark and a bobsled ride on rails called Balaton Bob. There are young ladies cavorting on the beaches in bikinis. There are churches, restaurants and places to stay, but when one searches for sex in a boat in Balaton, there are no references. If one googles this, one ends up with... stories or links to the aforementioned cartoon video. Even Hungary's great portal site, caboodle.hu, offers no results.

So if you had your heart set on having sex (or fscking) in a rowboat in Lake Balaton this summer, you'll have to start from scratch, just like the guy in the cartoon. Then again, you could always complain to the Hungarian state tourism bureau, Magyar Turizmus Rt, and see if they can help you out.

Here's a link to the full-screen version of the NSFW video.

Another view, probably pretty realistic, of Lake Balaton:

Tourist authorities would love for you to visit this summer, though this video doesn't make the place appear very inviting if you love the water. But never mind, just stay out of rowboats if you visit and are planning on enjoying sex there.

Additional Hungarian photos (some NSFW) from the tabloid Színes Bulvár Lap. Cultural background, useful if one is planning a visit

And so, our lexidiem is trolling.

Tags: adultery, balaton, balaton is for sex, balaton sex, balatoni szex, fscking, humor, hungary, lake balaton, miss balaton, nc-17, nsfw, sex, sex in a boat, szex, tourism, trolling, virginia is for lovers, wedding band

Updated: 7/27/2006

Mickey Spillane, You'll Be Remembered

Legendary author Mickey Spillane, the creator of the best-selling, "hard-boiled" Mike Hammer detective novels, died Monday in his hometown of Murrells Inlet, SC. He was 88.

Born Frank Morrison Spillane in Brooklyn, NY, began his writing career during high school. After a brief time at Kansas State Teachers College, he returned to New York City to work in retail, but that bored him.

Spillane's true avocation was writing, so he found a job with a firm known as Funnies, Inc., a firm which later became Marvel Comics. There he wrote wrote text fillers and scripts for comics such as "The Human Torch" and "Edison Bell, Boy Inventor," and was one of the originators of the
"Captain Marvel" comics.

His first book, "I, the Jury" was written in only nine days. It became such success that he quickly produced five more Mike Hammer detective novels 1950 and 1952. "The Long Wait" (1951) sold 3 million copies in a single week in 1952. There were many young men from that era of the '50s and '60s who were quite "moved" for lack of a better term) by prose like this:

"No, Charlotte, I'm the jury now, and the judge, and I have a promise to keep. Beautiful as you are, as much as I almost loved you, I sentence you to death."

(Her thumbs hooked in the fragile silk of the panties and pulled them down. She stepped out of them as delicately as one coming from a bathtub. She was completely naked now. A sun-tanned goddess giving herself to her lover. With arms outstetched she walked toward me.

Lightly, her tongue ran over her lips, making them glisten with pssion. The smell of her was like an exhilarating perfume. Slowly, a sigh escaped her, making the hemispheres of her breasts quiver. She leaned forward to kiss me, her arms going out to encircle my neck.)

The roar of the .45 shook the room.

Charlotte staggered back a step. Her eyes were a symphony of incredulity, an unbelieving witness to truth. Slowly, she looked down at the ugly swelling in her naked belly where the bullet went in. A thin trickle of blood welled out.

I stood up in front of her and shoved the gun into my pocket. I turned, and looked at the rubber plant behind me. There on the table was the gun, with the safety catch off and the silencer still attached. Those loving arms would have reached it nicely. A face that was waiting to be kissed was really waiting to be splattered with blood when she blew my head off. My blood. When I heard her fall I turned around. Her eyes had pain in them now, the pain preceding death. Pain and unbelief.

"How c-could you?" she gasped.

I only had a moment before talking to a corpse, but I got it in.

"It was easy," I said.

Like so many others, I read "I, the Jury" at a rather young age, and felt that I had gotten away with reading something really erotic, but not really pornographic. Actually there were other books that had their "really dirty" sections, such as Grace Metalious' "Peyton Place" (1956), and later any number of novels by Harold Robbins, but there were many Mickey Spillane books to choose from, and they all seemed to have a certain comfortable familiarity to them.

Many of Spillane's Mike Hammer novels were made into movies, including the film classic "Kiss Me Deadly" (1955). Spillane himself starred in "The Girl Hunters" (1963), in which he played his creation, Mike Hammer. This was one of the rare occasions in film history where an author of a popular character later depicted his own character.

He married his second wife, Sherri Malinou, in 1965. She was a model who later posed in the nude for the cover of his book "The Erection Set" 1972. He dedicated the book to her.

Spillane appeared as a writer who is murdered in the TV series Columbo. He also appeared in a series of commercials for Miller Lite beer, which parodied his tough-guy image. Often criticized for his writing style and characterizations, with book sales of over 200 million, he remains one of the most successful writers of this era.

Mickey Spillane was apparently a victim of cancer. He wowed millions with Mike Hammer's shoot-'em-up sex and violence will be remembered by many of us.

Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it to get to the end. If it's a letdown, they won't buy anymore. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book.
~ Mickey Spillane

It should also be noted that another South Carolina resident, Robert Brooks, died of natural causes on Sunday at his home in Myrtle Beach. He was 69.

Brooks was the chairman of the Hooters restaurant chain famous for its scantily clad waitresses, and he made his fortune from the firm which uses the slogan "Delightfully tacky, yet unrefined" for its style of cuisine and service.

Hooters opened its first restaurant in 1983 and Mr. Brooks, with a group of other investors, bought franchise rights a year later. "Good food, cold beer and pretty girls never go out of style," he told Fortune magazine in 2003.

This coincidence makes one wonder if Mickey Spillane and Robert Brooks knew each other.

Lexidiem: "hard-boiled"

Technorati tags
Mickey Spillane
Mike Hammer
Robert Brooks
Hooters
lexidiem

You can google, but don't Google!

It's official, you can now google someone. Just don't say that you're going to Google them.

According to Merriam-Webster Online, google is now recognized as a verb. To some of us this isn't new, because using google as a verb has been going on for years.

goo·gle. transitive verb. 'gü-g&l 1. to use the Google search engine to obtain information about (as a person) on the World Wide Web. Inflected Form(s): goo·gled; goo·gling. Usage: often capitalized. Etymology: Google, trademark for a search engine.

Example 1: "I need to google for a map of Florida."
Example 2: "Wanda was googling for a new boyfriend yesterday."

Incorrect usage: "You can Google, but you can't Yahoo! to find that!"

Just remember, Google™ is a proper name, a trademark identifying Google Inc.’s search technology and services, while google is proper if it's used as a verb.

By the way, there's a sample online of the nearly 100 new words and senses from the 2006 copyright version of the best-selling Merriam-Webster's Collegiate^® Dictionary, Eleventh Edition which should be available in most bookstores this fall.

Sometimes we google to do a little lexpionage, as we search out new words and phrases. And then there's the massage that warns you of what will happen if you google yourself. If you take your googling experience serious enough to want to know what's hot, then you can always visit the Google Zeitgeist site, where you can "search patterns, trends, and surprises." And if you want to get the story behind some of the top queries in a video fashion, visit Google Current.

You can have fun while googling:

What does "Google" mean - officially?

The name "Google" is a play on the word "googol," which was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner. A googol refers to the number represented by a 1 followed by 100 zeros. A googol is a very large number. There isn't a googol of anything in the universe -- not stars, not dust particles, not atoms. Google's use of the term reflects our mission to organize the world's immense (and seemingly infinite) amount of information and make it universally accessible and useful.

More interesting information about Google, Inc. can be found here, or you could just google it.

Tags: google googling googled merriam-webster lexidiem