Patience.org

A certain member of our household who’s just over three feet tall has been a huge fan of Jeopardy for more than a year now. In New York it comes on at 7pm, followed by Wheel of Fortune at 7.30pm, at which point the cry goes up – “what color is Vanna’s dress?!”

But anyway, back to Jeopardy. The winning streak of Ken Jennings – a “software engineer from Utah,” and boy does he looks like one – came to an end tonight. In 74 games in succession he had won $2,520,700, the highest amount ever won in a TV game show, not surpsingly.

But in doing so, he had become a fixture in one little boy’s life. Phrases such as “look at Ken’s hair!” and “what’s Ken wearing?” had been heard regularly at our place since he started his streak in June.

So from now on it’s back to wondering what color Vanna’s dress will be and whether or not Yolanda Vega will be bringing her own inimitable style to the NY Lottery draw in the break, or if it will be one of the other boring ones.

Ken, we salute you.

This time last year the top of the Premier League table looked like this:

1. Chelsea 15 36
2. Arsenal 15 35
3. Man Utd 15 34
4. Fulham 15 25

Now the top of the league looks like this…

1. Chelsea 15 36
2. Arsenal 15 31
3. Everton 15 30
4. Man Utd 15 27

…but further down it looks like this:

15. Fulham 15 14
16. Palace 15 13
17. Blackburn 15 13
18. South’ton 15 12
19. Norwich 15 12
20. West Brom 15 10

At this point last year we still had Louis Saha, who was banging them in for us, but is now warming the bench and the treatment table at Old Trafford. But we didn’t have Andy Cole, Claus Jensen, or Tomasz Radzinski, all of which you’d think would make us a better team, because other than those – almost all positive – changes, it’s the same bunch.

But after Saturday’s abysmal showing at home to then-bottom club Blackburn, things can’t get worse before they get better; they need to get better fast. Simply playing up to the level we know they’re capable of would get us there with room to spare.

We have put some more pictues of the kids up for November, including a bunch taken yesterday in Union Square on what was a balmy Thanksgiving Day.

Click on the picture below to see them if you’re already logged into the albums part of the site, or click on the picture and look for the teeny ‘login’ in the top right hand corner, which will give you access to all the kids’ albums. If you need a username & password, email us.

I’ve lived here a fair time now and one thing has been consistent since I’ve been here; the protrayal in commercials of the vast majority of men as dumb, pizza-chomping, pickup truck-driving, overweight, conservatively-dressed dolts. Now, I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not an accurate relfection of reality – how could it be?

Which got me thinking, why do advertisers do it? Admittedly this happens mainly on the major networks, which I rarely watch these days and when you’re in the proverbial 18-25 ‘demographic’ you probably don’t care much what advertisers think about you – I know I didn’t at the time.

But I’m not so naive to believe that they do it solely because it works; if every business only did what worked then there would not be so much need for competition that there apparently is. I think it comes down to the inherent conservatism of the US advertising industry (and presumably the people that hire them). It’s very much a business of bandwagon jumping, where one original idea is rapidly copied by all and sundry for fear of missing out on something, thus diluting everybody’s opportunity in the process. It’s certainly hard to understand how men could be motivated into buying a product after being protrayed as being too dumb to use it.

Still after so long, you’d think that one idea had run its course? Maybe the fact that I so rarely watch the things perhaps proves that it has? Too many questions, I know.

Anyway, a recent, but rare example of the press picking up on the same trend: Fatherhood activists protest TV ad mocking Internet-challenged dad

The notion of supporters sponsoring (i.e. paying for) football players kits is, a bit like testimonial seasons awared for loyal services, is a somewhat quaint (or nauseating, depending on your point of view) throw-back to the old days of football. That is, about 12 years ago. And in Fulham’s case about 8 years ago, when the players still allegedly had to wash their own kit.

But now many Premiership players get paid more in a week than many people do annually, it looks anachronistic to ask fans to sponsor their kits, which the club also plasters with a sponsor’s logo to help spread the cost, let alone sells replicas of it to further diversify their revenue-generating opportunity.

Still, that didn’t stop me stumping up 17 quid recently to be one of a group of people who have frequented (and in the early days helped foot the bill for) a website called The Fulham Independent and sponsoring Europe’s greatest goalkeeper’s kit. Given he gets paid 40,000 pounds a week and is likely to be sold in the January transfer window, it wasn’t the best investment I’ve ever made (450 quid a season, or 1.13% of his weekly wages). But it got the website and its supporters some recognition.

I’m NYCk in the list below (yes, they spelled it wrong, not getting the NYC reference, but there you go):

If you’ve ever been here before today you will notice quite a change from this post onwards. I’ve shifted the site from using Movable Type as the front-end blogging tool to using WordPress. I did so partly because of the shift in MT’s business model and partly because I never got my head around all the proprietary tagging it uses. WordPress is more standards compliant and is easier to use, I’ve found.

The style sheet comes from Ian Main, who submitted it as part of the WordPress styles competition, and pretty good it is too.

What has not changed is the photo albums at the back end. They are still the same and there’s links to them grouped under ‘Albums’ on the right hand side. Or here.

One day I’ll learn about graphics and do a better banner for the top, but that’ll do for now.

I hope you like it.

So despite being laid low with one of the two-week colds that keep coming back for more, I went to see Muse last night at Webster Hall, a tacky nightclub that has been putting on gigs for the past few years, returning its former role to supplement their income from ‘Girls Nights Out’ and the like.

Muse aren’t like any other band that I like, in that they have what can only be called prog-prock tendencies. But they manage to keep their songs short (note to support band The Zutons: long Cream-esque jams for your last song have a tendency to make you forget the highlights earlier in the gig) and have more of a presence on stage than three blokes from Devon should be really able to muster. It struck me last night that they’re sort of a cross between Radiohead and Rage Against The Machine, though less political than either. The songs are more abstract, you know, apocalypse, death, that sort of thing.

Once you have played a guitar a few times yourself, you are forever saddled with the inability to never stop wondering, ‘hmm’ how did he do that?’ when seeing bands. This is heightened with Muse, who can all play a bit, to say the least. What sounded like sequencers on record turn out to be things they play on the guitar and bass, though in a couple of songs an arpeggiator of some sort was going in the background, but that’s OK.

One of the benefits of being a Brit in Manhattan is that you get to see these British bands that are huge in the UK and normally play arena shows playing in small venues like Webster Hall. Plus, it’s pretty sweet being able to walk back from the gig and be back inside my apartment in less than 10 minutes.

Thanks Steed and the lads for causing Graeme Sourpuss’ face to look like this.

The former Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock (the one before the one before Blair) was often lambasted for his verbosity and ultimately for his political judgment. But it was hard to deny his skills as an orator, often unscripted and unprompted.

On the eve of Labour’s crushing defeat in the 1983 general election – he became the party leader shortly after – he said the following: “If Margaret Thatcher wins on Thursday, I warn you not to be ordinary, I warn you not to be young, I warn you not to fall ill, and I warn you not to grow old.”

If you add to that, the attributes of being gay (and having the temerity to want to get married), being poor, requiring an abortion, being a non-believer and a few other fairly obvious characteristics, then that’s kind of how it feels right here, right now. We’ll be alright, but that’s not really the point – is it?

As a disenfranchised taxpayer I have to remain merely a very interested observer, and living In New York, we are not exposed to some of the unbelievable stuff going on in states like Florida and Ohio.

But with all the craziness going on, it’s perhaps not surprising that MoveOn has felt it necessary to develop an election protection card [PDF] to give people advice about what to do if you’re democratic rights are being ‘interfered with,’ as it were.

All of which makes me wonder, how did we get to this point in this country (rhetorical question)? Anyway, here’s hoping its a smooth ride and is decided by counting votes, rather than which side has the best legal team and the judges on their side.