Thanks to the Drums

Kevin and and his lovely wife Marian hosted a little SoCal blogger get-together, and I’d like to say thanks.  It was a cool chance to meet some of my favorite datastreams in the flesh.

Susie Madrak was in from Philadelphia, providing us with the excuse to hang out.  So I show up late (I got lost, actually) and there’s Mark Kleiman, and so-very-busy Elton Beard, and Marc Danziger, and Arianna pops in (because, let’s face it, Arianna is physically everywhere in the universe), and Rebecca Schoenkopf from the O.C. Weekly is there, and I also meet at least a half-dozen people who either I can’t link to because they don’t blog or whose names I didn’t quite get memorized, and to whom I humbly apologize.

Click the links and enjoy some good work.  I don’t agree with everybody about everything, obviously, but certainly most about most, and I like everybody quite a lot as people to sit around with on a Sunday and kvetch.  It was a real pleasure to be the quiet guy in the corner who knows less than everybody else and compensates with the occasional joke.

It may not have been YearlyKos, quite, but BiannualDrum is pretty darn great in its own way.  So thanks, guys.

UPDATE — adding to the Drum roll above, Stephen Anderson and his wife Pam were there, too.  And Stephen is cool enough to be amused and not take my brain fart personally.  As the post atop his site might currently categorize me, yes, I am a moran sometimes.

Curiously, the public is not yet willing to call them “opera monkeys”


How will Bush supporters discount the massive anti-Bush protests in Austria?

Who cares what the French think? Vienna is French, right…? What?


204

 

43.8%

 

What do Austrians know about authoritarian rulers, anyway?


157

 

33.7%

 

Viennese guys have tiny sausages, har, har, har


58

 

12.4%

 

They’re just a bunch of Sachertorte-eating, Lipizanner-stallion-loving opera monkeys… except for Arnold


47

 

10.1%

 

It’s starting to look like a GOP-sponsored reduction of troops in Iraq might happen before long, despite all the heavy rhetoric to the contrary.  But since they’ve just spent the last several years decrying any mention of such an idea as defeatist, Bush supporters will need to come up with some new terminology.  What kind?  Take the poll.

Soccer Plus: new sport of the millennium

Watching the World Cup game between Portugal and the Netherlands tonight with some friends, and we had an idea for a way to make soccer even more exciting.

Ten guys on each team have nothing to do with their hands all game long, right?  So let’s give every player two small balloons filled with either water or (possibly, depending on local preferences) beer.

No one can replace their balloons, but every player is allowed to throw either or both balloons anytime they want during a match.  So there’s some strategy involved.

Guy breaks in on goal, and you can’t quite get back to defend him?  Might be time for a balloon.  Or maybe you’re coming in on goal, and there’s just one man to beat.  SLOOOSH!  GOOOOOOOOOOAL!

Or, then again, maybe you’re just not that into the game.  In which case, hey, two beers.

Soccer Plus will clearly need some workshopping on the collegiate level.  If anybody tries this, let me know how it goes.

Why fantastic book blurbs can make you want to wear a protective cup

In the last week, Prisoner of Trebekistan
has picked up two incredibly kind new blurbs from people I’m sure you’ve
heard of, and we’re getting feedback from buyers from major retail
stores that is just amazingly positive.  And I’m not even scratching
the surface of the good news. 

I mention this for two reasons: (a) to brag like a howler monkey in
mating season, and (b) because, curiously, I find that