Mark Hayward Is My Hero

Yup. You read it correctly. Tonight I was on the NBC Nightly News.

Screenshot from MSNBC.com

They were doing a story on the writer’s strike and how it affects shows that are run every day like The Tonight Show, and Late Night with David Letterman, and one of the clips they used when talking about Letterman was of me doing my Stupid Human Trick. Now both my Dad and I have been on the NBC News without having to commit a crime, or fall into a well.

For a short time you can see the video here on the NBC website.

For a longer time you can see the story on YouTube here.

If you recorded the show by chance, I REALLY want a high-quality copy of this broadcast, and I’d be very grateful if you could help me out.

WOO HOO!  We got a new Prius!  Traded in the old one, which was great, and got this one  which is even more fancy.  The voice-controlled navigation and bluetooth cell phone action is amazingly cool.  I can’t wait to navigate in convoluted Pittsburgh now.

It was awesome. Unfortunately, since I had recorded them off pay channels, I was forced to watch the vastly inferior cropped non-widescreen versions. You wouldn’t think it would matter that much, but when two characters are having a deep moment, and you can only see half of one of their faces on one side of the screen, and just an ear on the other side of the screen, you really notice the difference.

I watched Episode 1-3 on Saturday, and 4-6 on Sunday, and since I have never watched them all so close together, I had never noticed that C3-PO gets blown apart in almost every movie.  And it’s always hilarious!  What a great thing to have a character who makes you laugh every time they get an arm torn off.

My Star Wars binge reminded me that I want to own all the movies on DVD.  After some searching on the internet, it seems as though there is no such thing as six-movie box set.  Weird.  There was one 11 disk set that I found, but it was foreign I think, and it seemed risky.  Like maybe it was bootleg, and you’d have a copy of a film that was made by some dude sitting in the theater with a video camera, chewing on popcorn right next to the microphone.  I guess I’ll have to wait.

Tonight we finally get a chance to see the first-ever footage of a living Giant Squid.  It’s been almost a year since this one was caught by Japanese researchers off the Ogasawara islands, south of Tokyo.

AP Photo/Tsunemi Kubodera of the National Science Museum of Japan

The show airs twice tonight, at 8pm Eastern, and 12am.  See the listings for yourself.

I have been on an Ebay bender this week, and listed 12 things in the last few days.  Of course my pal Dazzling Dave was all like,

“Bender?!?  With 12 items?  That’s nothing.  I’ve got 586 listings this month.”

Thanks for the morale boost Dave.  Ya jerk.

If you want to see the crazy assortment of stuff I’m selling, check it out here.

If you’re on Dave’s side, check out his stuff here.

photo: Kidjurel  from BloodyDecks.com

In doing a Google Image search for oarfish, I found a really great forum entry with some incredible oarfish photos.  Check it out here.

I just made a new cookie recipe, and the horrible monstrosities that came out of the experience have taught me some valuable lessons about baking… that I already knew.

1. Don’t start a baking project at 11pm. Especially when you just said aloud, “I don’t know why I’m doing this now. I’m tired. I should go to bed.” I guess the temptation of nice, room-temperature butter was too much to bear.
2. Flour is what gives cookies substance.
3. When you already know your oven runs hot, turn it down. Cookies burn when they get too hot.

I have a tendency to start baking a little too late at night. I think it’s because that’s when I most wish I had a cookie. I guess I get so fed up with the lack of cookies in my house, that I just have to do something about it. Normally 11:00 at night isn’t too late for me since I tend to be a night owl, but this time it was.

I found what looks like a great Double Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe on the internet, but I suspect that it is really a much better recipe when you use all the ingredients, and use them in the right amounts. Here is what the cookies are supposed to look like:

The problem is that I only used half the flour (see lesson #2 above), and forgot the vanilla entirely. When you don’t use all the flour, you get something that is more appropriately described as a caramelized Demon Cookie.

Behold:

Not only is it super flat (like it’s trying to seep in to steal your soul), but it’s made up of a basically empty shell, with chocolate and peanut-butter chips hanging out inside their own cookie-sized opium-love-den-of-sin… or something. Despite all the short-comings though, I have to say that they were delicious.

I will try again with this recipe in a few days, and with luck I will actually follow the directions too.