It's Friday. All day.
- Crazed bible humper preaches to mad lions. Here's hoping it's a trend that catches on in America.
- A tie-tying machine. Also works as a decapitation machine.
- In addition to stripping the paint off cars, Coke makes a pretty good pesticide.
My friend, Sheldon Drake, in addition to spinning the fatty chill beats, has some great t-shirts for sale at Sugartrash. Interesting designs, these shirts are "delicious offbeat wearable nonsense" for dancing, trainspotting, beat matching, rolling, hipped up fools.
I'm wearing one of his shirts right now.
Man, I'm as down with DIY as I am with OPP, but home surgery should perhaps be avoided on certain parts of the body.
My girlfriend keeps threatening to get me these for Christmas. Yes, those really are mittens built for two. It's yet another reason to be happy I'm spending the winter in Puerto Rico.
We all know Burners have the same interests and fashion sense as 5-year-old girls (we're all whores for My Little Pony when we hit the playa). Now you can have the same toys too. Go ahead, make blinky art, just like the cool kids.
Via Say Uncle.
Via The Morning News, comes news of a Target promo. 5000 BTU air conditioners for $75, being sold in the street off the back of a truck in Herald Square. Tomorrow afternoon. Hella cool hella cheap.
The stunt will be repeated on Saturday at 2nd Ave and 23rd Street.
Although he hasn't actually come out and said so, it seems that Say Uncle is now a father.
Uncle didn't see fit to provide the usual data on name, sex, weight, and future occupation, so it appears that he is already shirking his fatherly duties. I've let him know we all expect pictures of wrinkly beans as soon as the shock wears off.
Why not head on over and congratulate him?
I think I'm in love.
Unless it's one of this guy's jokes, in which case I'm more disgusted than enamored.
For the gun lovers in the audience: a German website that has stills and slow-mo movies of various guns being fired. It's cool because you can see the flying bullets in some of them.
Via The Morning News.
Most people would say that Karim Garcia has it made, but I think he's jinxed. True, he's a Major League baseball player, former Yankee and now starts for the Mets in right field. Also true that he shares this position with his good friend, Shane Spencer. But Garcia can't seem to avoid trouble. Herewith, a recent ugly run of violence and bad luck plaguing this major leaguer:
During Game 3 of last year's American League series, Garcia got entangled in a fight with a Red Sox employee. He's facing possible criminal charges in Boston as well as a potential law suit. It should be noted here that this fight occurred in the bullpen during the game. It should be further noted that Garcia is not a pitcher.
Fast forward to last week, when Garcia and Spencer got into a shouting and shoving match with some Floridian pizzeria employees and patrons. The guy lives in New York. What the hell was he thinking getting pizza in Florida?! Again, he faces potential criminal charges and a likely lawsuit.
Even when Garcia is behaving, nobody's safe. Yesterday Garcia hit a homer that beaned a fan, who was removed in an ambulance.
Garcia's ugly run is not limited to interpersonal violence either. A few minutes after Garcia smashed a homer into a fan's head, fellow Met Jose Reyes hit a homer of his own. It smashed the rear window of Garcia's Hummer.
I'm not a huge Met fan (my loyalties belong in a different borough), but, please, somebody help this guy before he kills somebody or ends up in jail. Maybe there's a reason he's never played for a team for more than one season.
I never really saw the benefits of using an RSS aggregator to read the various news and blog sites I frequent. It always seemed like gadget freaky way to surf the web for people who think their browsers don't have enough buttons.
Then Slate ran this great piece that shows how to set up a simple RSS reader. I downloaded SharpReader and was reading the NYTimes in just a few minutes. It took just another 5 minutes to subscribe to my daily reads.
RSS devotees believe this is the way of the future, but I'm not quite so hooked. One thing that would improve the RSS experience is if sites syndicated entires articles instead of just summaries. Blogs, like Say Uncle for example, have no reason not to do so, and having summaries instead of entire articles makes their RSS feed largely unusable.
Go read the Slate article and then download SharpReader. It's easy enough to do that you should try it out.
*and then it went horribly, horribly wrong
Maybe you read the NYTimes article about Chris Hackett, the "performance artist" who dreamed up a homemade confetti cannon to kick off the idiotarod and proceeded to blow himself up while building it. His pyrotechnic perversion brought on the full anti-terrorist response until the SWAT team realized he was just a goof gone wrong.
Hackett suffered broken bones, soft tissue injury, and burns to his face and hand. So he's facing a ton of medical bills in addition to his legal troubles. To help him out, his friends at the Madagascar Institute have been throwing fundraisers.
Hackett's a good guy, and I've used Mada's facilities a bunch of times. He's not a terrorist (at least not in the way the cops initially thought). So here's the details for the next fundraiser:
The Best Idea Ever!*
*until things went horribly, horribly wrong
Friday, March 5, 2004
10 PM to 5 AM
Volume
99 North 13th Street at Wythe
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, USA
A massive art party celebrating blind enthusiasm in the face of impending doom. A carnival of good intentions gone bad.
Dress up, leap in, and join a dozen Brooklyn collectives for all-new games, bone-crushing rides, shocking video, and grand installations. With Black Label Bike Club, Toyshop, Fakework, Flux Factory, Complacent, and Action/Direction.
It's a joyous jubilee -- and a disaster waiting to happen.
Featuring restless performances, bodyshaking DJs, and live music galore on three independent sound systems. Confirmed acts include the Hungry March Band, Roxy Pain, BonBomb, Aqui, Flaming Fire, Growler, the Blind Pharaohs, and DJs Satamile, Spinoza, $mall Change, Shakey, KleverVice, Pork Chop, Girl DJ, Ripley, Kid Kameleon, Half Heard, Cruzmissile, and Luv Luv. Save the date and stand by for a complete line-up next week.
Bring extra cash for custom merch, handmade goodies, and an art auction featuring work by Revs, Espo, Peak, Diva, Ezo, Swoon, and Spencer Tunick, Julia Solis, and collectible items from Zephyr, Sto, and Handcranked Films.
Strap on that flying machine! Relive Evel Knievel's Snake River calamity! Aim the confetti gun and fire!
I'm told the Tunick print is a framed one-off taken at Burning Man in 1999 or 2000 and signed by him. If you're a fan, it's a rare treat that could be described as priceless without much hyperbole.
Unlike other Mada events, this one is geared toward healing instead of hurting (and only Mada would feature a confetti gun at a party like this). I'll be helping with security for part of the night, which means I'll be relatively sober. You should come just for the novelty of it all. Bring friends and spread the good word.
Update: Costume Jim's pics from the party. And Caution Mike's photos too.
A few years ago, I discovered my girlfriend's old Rubik's Cube while visiting her parent's home. I had never quite solved it as a kid, and I spent several weeks figuring it out. I got pretty good at solving, and I was proud because none of my friends could do it.
Solving the cube got boring after a while-- you can only do the same puzzle so many times. So I put it away until I forgot how to do it. Then a few weeks ago I came across the cube while cleaning, and now I'm discovering its joys all over again. I'm also solving it differently than I used to, which is fun.
I mentioned my new cubing hobby to a friend, and he suggested I enter a speed tournament. Apparently they still have them. So I checked it out and discovered that some kid can solve the cube one-handed faster than I can do it with two. He holds the one-handed record of 44.98 seconds. My one-handed record is nothing to brag about.
There's also a woman who has a video of her solving a cube in 14.33 seconds. She boasts that she can maintain speeds of ten moves per seconds for three seconds. But she uses two hands. Cheater.
Now, I don't mind being beaten by a cheating woman, or even a one-handed kid. But I'm downright shamed by the guy who solves the cube blind.
As if that weren't enough, I even get beat by a cuber without a pulse. Ernesto Rubik's answer to Deep Blue is a computer that will take a picture of your cube and tell you how to solve it in an average of 19 moves.
Needless to say I'm a little less proud, and I'll be practicing. One-handed.
Via Dean Esmay, I read a scientifical article arguing that "the low fat/low cholesterol diet is ineffective".
The article says low fat and low cholesterol diets don't actually prevent heart disease. Numerous studies say a high fat/cholesterol diet positively correlates with heart disease, and everybody assumed that if this was the case reducing fat and cholesterol would lower the chances of heart disease. It's been a number of years since that assumption was made. In that time, it has been (more or less) tested, and it seems reducing fat doesn't quite do it.
The article is not a free pass to hoover potato chips. It says that while changing the quantity of fat doesn't seem to do much, changing the quality of fat can be effective in lowering the risks of heart disease. I don't really know much about good fat versus bad fat, but apparently substituting "corn, safflower, soyabean and cottonseed oils significantly reduced total cardiovascular events". The evidence is mixed, though. These diets seem to help sometimes and not others. In some studies, they reduce "cardiovascular events" (which I guess means heart attacks and the like) but don't decrease mortality, so I guess you have fewer heart attacks, but you're just as likely to die from a heart attack.
So what should we be eating? "The circumstantial evidence of benefit from oils, particularly olive oil, vegetables, fruit and fish is strong." The studies that seemed to reduce heart attacks and mortality all involved diets high in fiber and polyunsaturated fats like omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids. Cholesterol was deemed irrelevant, and now they are looking at "reduction of a thrombotic tendency". I have no idea what that means. Other things we should be consuming might include olive oil and oleic acid. The jury is still out on these monounsaturated oils.
In other words, eat more fruits and vegetables. Favor fish over meat. Favor olive oil over butter. Maybe take fish oil supplements.
Caveats: First, nutrition is hard to study. Diets are hard to change because people don't stick to them, and when you eat less of one thing, that usually means you'll eat more of another thing. Plus, they take place over long periods of time, and a lot of factors can come into play over many years. Second, nobody has done a real good low fat trial. People just assumed it was a good idea, and so the only good trials tested reduced fat diets in conjunction with reducing other risk factors like smoking, high blood pressure or lack of exercise. Interestingly, these studies found that reducing fat intake doesn't help, even when you also reduce other risk factors. Third, I'm no nutritionist. Read the article yourself and see what you can get from it. And realize that in a month another article will be published that renders all of this obsolete and moot.
One of our Brutal Huggers has made a present for his girlfriend. It's the old Mastermind game I used to play with my cousin John. With hearts. Aw....
For motorcyclists, winter is the time of year when we fix our bikes, buy gear and dream of spring. I'm in the market for new helmets, so I was happy to see that Motorcycle Cruiser has reviewed 7 different flip-front helmets. They all passed the Snell tests (although none of them are officially Snell certified).
I have the HJC, and a bud has the Nolan. We swear by them and I will never get another helmet that lacks a flip front.
I crash-tested a HJC a ways back. Smacked the chin bar good, which left a nasty mark on the chin bar but protected my winning smile. That proved its worth to me.
Incidentally, if you have a flip front, realize that the chin bar is much stronger if it is locked in place than if it is in the up position. I put my helmet on the back of my bike with the chin bar up. It fell off, impact was on the bar. While it locks down just fine, it doesn't stay up as well as it should anymore.
Also, you really shouldn't ride around with the chin bar up. Aside from the fact that almost 30% of head impacts are to the jaw, a good bump can cause the chin bar to fall partially, which renders you blind. I learned that one the scary way.
Flip fronts are great if you're smarter about them than I am.
We had about 35 people at the peak, which was nice because it never got too crowded to dance. Only one nice champagne glass broken, some minor spillage, and relatively minor drama. The bathroom and the office were the hookup spots, and I provided one couple with condoms, denied condoms to a second couple. People were fairly discrete with their less socially acceptable vices. Only one hat was microwaved. There was only one uncontrollable crying jag. Two men wore capes, although one of them removed his when he arrived. I got two massages. The gentleman who won Best Dressed last year won it again, although I'm not sure if that was for entire ensemble with the skirt or for when he lost the skirt and was prancing in his tightie whities. Last guest left at 5pm or so, but he napped for a bit with a pretty young lady in the office, so I'm not sure he counts. I went to bed at 7 and slept for a few hours before getting up to clean. Yech.
Among the party detritus, we found a pair of boots with a broken heel and figured somebody left barefoot until Em got a text message from a guest admitting she swiped a pair of shoes.
My Resolution: Don't throw dinner parties for 14 people the same night you invite 50 people to party through dawn.
Acidman posted about embarrassment while buying condoms, and I was reminded of some embarrassment of my own.
When I was in college, I always chucked the half-empty box of unused condoms when I stopped seeing a girl. There's just something unseemly about being done with a girl but still having that half-full box in your nightstand. And there's also something unseemly about bedding down with a new girl using condoms from your last fling. Call me old fashioned.
At some point during my second year, I took up with a young lady. We were on a date, and we both knew where it was headed. We had the forethought to have the contraception discussion before getting home, and I realized I had no condoms left. So we stopped at a drug store.
We considered our options and settled on a brand (Lifestyles), type (spermicide lube), and size (huge). I reached for the jumbo box of 15 condoms. In mid-reach, I took another look at her and realized we were already on the down slope to being mildly annoyed at running into each other in bars while on dates with other people. I hastily redirected for the 3-pack.
And I was totally busted. She did this female mind-reading thing and knew exactly what thoughts had passed through my head. To her credit, she was only mildly insulted. She taunted me mercilessly, though, which I guess I deserved. It wasn't exactly the smoothest first date move around.
Still, we bought the condoms, and we used them that night. We made it through one more 3-pack before calling it quits, which, knowing her, proved some sort of point. To this day, I'm not sure what the point was or who won it. All I know is when I buy condoms, I shop alone.
The Morning News is starting up a regularly monthly gathering dedicated to chatter and drinking -- each month, 7 p.m., the third Thursday -- and the first installment is this week, Thursday, at Hi-Fi in the East Village. All Morning Newsies welcome.
Why is it that in a town known for its bagels, pizza and falafel, there are so few places that actually make a good bagel, pizza or falafel? Too many people take round bread, punch a hole in the middle and call it a bagel. I'd like to punch holes in their middles. Mark Kleiman mourns the passing of good bagels and belly lox. He also tells you where in LA to get cold-smoked steelhead, which subs for belly lox in a pinch.
In New York, of course, there are few places you can get a decent bagel, and edible lox is even harder to find. One-stop shopping does not exist, and the closest you can get to it is 80th and Broadway, where you can get hot H&H on the south corner and soulful gravlax and dill sauce on the north at Zabar's. When I lived uptown, my mother would stop at Columbia Hot Bagels for a dozen fresh every time she visited. But it's downhill pretty fast from there.
I have fond childhood memories of eating H&H and Zabar's down in Battery Park on a weekend morning. I didn't know how lucky I had it. I do, however, know where I'll be brunching this Sunday. Maybe I can find some of this cold-smoked steelhead at Barney Greengrass the Sturgeon King.
Via Boing Boing, we hear that Japanese 100-Yen stores are coming to the Americas. We would probably call them dollar-stores, and in Canada, things will go for $2 Cdn. What took them so long, and when do they get to New York?
Make your list. Check it twice. Then throw up all over it. Today is Santacon.
A good friend of mine is concerned that due to Santacon I will be too besotted to find my way to Guernica to celebrate his birthday tonight.
My plan is to pin an envelope to my Santa suit with a $10 bill and instructions to pour me into a cab aimed at Guernica. My only problem is I don't know whether to pin it to the front or the back. What do you think, am I more likely to end up face up or face down in the gutter?
Want to join the Santarchy? SANTACON 2003 will be meeting in the Food Court at Grand Central Terminal Directly across from the Oyster Bar. See "thestick" Santa for your 10 percent discount coupon to any drink and drink (food toooooo) in the food court area. Santas will start amassing at 11am, We will be there long enough for 2 beers (official Santa time should always be clocked in amount of beers possible to be consumed). This year's Santacon Hotline will be the same number as last year's. What? You don't remember it? 212.544.9664.
Update: FTrain caught up with us.
A cure for Parked Motorcycle Syndrome! (not work safe)
Here's how you know this was sent to me by actual motorcycle enthusiasts. The comment that accompanied that link said:
Is it just me, or does the Duc in the December 7th picture have a dented front rim?
People have been emailing and asking where I been. I've been skulking down low since the great blizzard last weekend. It's only now that the snow is melting and my fingers have thawed that I can bear to think and type about the misery of getting caught on Long Island during a blizzard. Caution, dear reader. This tale is not for the timid or those offended by the decisive violence habitual to criminals.
I had a meeting in early afternoon on Long Island, was supposed to be home by 3:00. I couldn't take the motorcycle because of the snow, so I took the train, which adds an hour to the trip, but that's ok because it's going to be a great day. I can feel it.
The snow made the LI roads impassable, so my cab never showed at the station. But I'm in a good mood because I was able to postpone the meeting. Still a pretty god day.
I called another cab. It didn't show. I walked the few miles to and from my meeting in ankle-high snow. I'm highly optimistic about this meeting, so I'm still having an ok day. I laugh at the cars spinning their wheels on icy hills.
The meeting was ok, but the walking slowed me so I just barely missed my return train home. I waited an hour for another train. It didn't come. This is where my day goes downhill.
The station house was unstaffed, consisting of a tiny waiting room and not much else. At 5:00, a recording sounded to inform the impatient mob that the station was closed and everybody had to leave the waiting room. Nobody wanted to wait in the snow, so we stayed. 5 minutes later a piercing alarm went off which chased people outside. A recording told us the police were on their way.
At this point I was starting to lose it. I waited outside for a while, smoking cigarettes and chatting up pretty girls to stay warm. I ran out of smokes and the girls were looking less pretty as they huddled deeper into their coats and scarves. People were taking turns waiting inside with their hands over their ears. A snow-shoveling crew kept coming by to tell us the police were on their way. They refused to do anything about the alarm.
I couldn't decide which risk to brave, the loss of hearing or the loss of toes. I took a broom handle from a broom leaning against the wall. I walked into that little waiting room. My hands were not over my ears. They were on the handle. I stood directly below the siren. It took three hits, but I battered the speaker off the ceiling. It broke loose in a shower of splintering plastic, flew across the room and slammed into the wall beneath a bench.
People cheered as they shuffled inside to warm up. The maintenance guys came back to ask what happened to the alarm. We all just shrugged, and they left confused. The police never showed.
An hour passed before the train came. People cheered. I thought I'd be home in no time. It took another hour and a half because I missed my connecting train, and I have never been happier to walk through my door than I was that day.
So that's where I was on during the great blizzard of '03. I once read about a guy who attached a little ski beneath his front wheel and rode his motorcycle around all winter. I need to examine such options because I've sworn off public transit for the foreseeable future.
Update: I'm not the only one doing crazy things in the snow.
Gurdian article re soccer peace in WW1 A new German book reveals fresh details about the day peace broke out Luke Harding in Berlin Tuesday November 11, 2003 The Guardian A new book by a German historian last night cast fresh light on one of the most extraordinary episodes of the first world war and revealed that the celebrated 1914 Christmas truce took place only because many of the Germans stationed on the front had worked in England. The book, Der Kleine Frieden im Grossen Krieg, or The Small Peace in the Big War, shows that the German and British soldiers who famously played football with each other in no man's land on Christmas Day 1914 didn't always have a ball. Instead, they improvised. On certain sections of the front, soldiers kicked around a lump of straw tied together with string, or even an empty jam box. According to previously unseen letters and diaries sent home by Germans from the trenches, many of the passes went wildly astray and shot off the icy pitch. The soldiers used sticks of wood, their caps and steel helmets as goalposts. The games lasted about an hour. The sleep-deprived players then collapsed, exhausted. The book, by the German author Michael Jürgs, is the first to be written from a German perspective about the impromptu Christmas ceasefire that spread across the western front - in defiance of official orders and to the horror of the British high command - some five months after the outbreak of war. It includes extracts from an extraordinary diary by a German lieutenant, Kurt Zehmisch, discovered four years ago in an attic near Leipzig. Zehmisch was a schoolteacher who spoke English and French. He describes how, on Christmas Eve, the shooting suddenly stopped. His Saxon regiment then blew a whistle on two fingers. The English immediately whistled back. "Soldier Möckel from my company, who had lived in England for many years, called to the British in English, and soon a lively conversation developed between us." A couple of soldiers from each side then climbed out of their trenches, shook hands in no man's land, and wished each other a merry Christmas. They agreed not to shoot the following day. "Afterwards, we placed even more candles than before on our kilometre-long trench, as well as Christmas trees," Zehmisch wrote. "It was the purest illumination - the British expressed their joy through whistles and clapping. Like most people, I spent the whole night awake. It was a wonderful, if somewhat cold, night." According to Jürgs, the fraternisation involving mostly Catholic Saxon and Bavarian regiments was only possible because many of the German soldiers spoke good English as they had previously been employed in Britain. "They had worked as cab drivers and barbers in places like Brighton, Blackpool and London," he said. "When war broke out in August 1914 they were forced to go home. Some even left families behind in England." One German soldier had worked in the Savoy; when the war started British soldiers would apparently shout "Waiter!" across their newly dug positions. Another German infantryman described how on Christmas Day, when both sides climbed out of their trenches and over the barbed wire, a British Tommy had set up a makeshift barber's shop in no man's land. The barber was "completely indifferent" to whether his customers were German or British, and charged a couple of cigarettes per haircut, Bavarian Josef Sebald observed. "This was war... but there was no trace of enmity between us," he added. The informal ceasefire stretched all across the 500-mile western front where more than a million men were encamped, from the Belgian coast as far as the Swiss border. The truce was especially warm along a 30-mile line around the Belgian town of Ypres, Jürgs notes. Not everybody, though, approved. One Austrian soldier billeted near Ypres complained that in wartime such an understanding "should not be allowed". His name was Adolf Hitler. Last night Zehmisch's son Rudolf, who discovered the diaries in 1999 while clearing out the family loft, told the Guardian he was proud that his father had helped initiate the unprecedented ceasefire. "My father had studied in France. He also visited England. He went on a day trip to Folkestone in 1913," Mr Zehmisch, 76, said. At first he was unable to read his father's 15 diaries sent back from the front in envelopes because they were written in an archaic form of German shorthand. He managed to track down an elderly professor who could decipher the text - who then died. Mr Zehmisch then taught himself Gabelsberger shorthand and began the translation. "My father was in charge of three or four companies. At one point he wrote: 'We will not shoot against the British today'." Miraculously, Kurt Zehmisch survived the first world war and returned to his old teaching job. He did not survive the second, however. After Hitler's rise to power he rejoined the army, became a major, and was sent to fight on the eastern front. The Russians captured him and took him to a prison camp. In November 1946 he disappeared. Last night Jürgs, a biographer of the German novelist Günter Grass and a former magazine editor, said he had found numerous unseen letters in German newspapers and regimental archives. He said his book was the first about the 1914 truce "to be written from the German point of view", adding: "It's important for British people too because it tells what happened from the other side." In some parts of the front, meanwhile, the ceasefire lasted for several weeks after Christmas Day 1914. Inevitably, though, the slaughter resumed. "The English are extraordinarily grateful for the ceasefire, so they can play football again," Gustav Riebensahm, of the 2nd Westphalian regiment, wrote in his diary. "But the whole thing has become slowly ridiculous and must be stopped. I will tell the men that from this evening it's all over."
Rep. Bill Janklow was convicted of second degree manslaughter. It's nice to see that his diabetic twinkie defense didn't cut it. He habitually did something incredibly stupid and dangerous, and it's gratifying to see his political power didn't prevent justice.
He'll be sentenced on 20 January 2004, the same day his resignation from the House of Representatives takes effect. CNN says his seat will be filled by special election.
I'm no coffee snob, but I do love my cuppa in the morning. WaPo has an article about coffee's yesterday's next best thing that never was: cold brew coffee. Apprently waiting 12 hours for caffeine doesn't work for most people. Imagine that.
South Dakota Representative Bill Janklow killed a motorcyclist while speeding and running a stop sign. He's currently on trial for manslaughter, and many people believe he'll get off, despite his history of speeding tickets and what many say is reckless driving.
Janklow has a history of using his power and influence to avoid the usual sanctions for such driving. Most people believe if he wasn't a Congressman he wouldn't have had a license at all. They point to the lies he told the police immediately after the accident and the lies he's told since.
Janklow's current version of the facts is that he admits to speeding and running the stop sign but blames his diabetic low blood sugar for confusing him into breaking the law. I ain't buying it, but he only needs one member of the jury to believe it in order to walk away from this a free man.
Another person who doesn't buy it has started a blog to raise awareness of Janklow's fecklessness: Stop Reckless Bill.
All this talk of marriage led to some googling and I chanced upon Nolo's page of useful legal info for people doing anything like marriage or living together.
Alleged radical eco-terorrist organization, Earth First, is alleged to have a manual on anti-motorcycle booby traps. It is further alleged that this manual was written by the Unabomber under the nom de guerre, "El Ranchero".
Cue the Footloose because New York just got one degree closer to Kevin Bacon!
The NYC Department of Consumer Affairs is ditching the existing cabaret licensing scheme, which means no more dance police telling you it's illegal to feel the funk. Now you can get on the freak whenever you get the nerve to swerve.
Jee-ay-sus Kee-runk!
Update: NYTimes has the story.