Randall Munroe Has Won the Internet

In a case of life imitating art, the Randall Munroe author of this famous and favorite
xkcd comic:

has built a ball pit in his house:



Further commentary is unnecessary.

Presidential Turkey Pardon

Every year, the President of the United States "pardons" a pair of turkeys on Thanksgiving Day. These turkeys live the rest of their days in peace and comfort. This peace lasts approximately one year, as commercially bred turkeys reach full size in about four months and after that quickly succumb to congestive heart failure. Here's the names of the turkeys that the current president has spared:

2007: May & Flower
2006: Flyer & Fryer
2005: Marshmallow & Yam
2004: Biscuits & Gravy
2003: Stars & Stripes
2002: Katie & Zack
2001: Liberty & Freedom

As a counterpoint, here's a list of the people whose death sentences have been commuted by Mr. Bush in his terms as President and as Governor of Texas:

1998: Henry Lee Lucas

Mr. Bush has pardoned 113 people during his term as president (although after each person had already served their entire sentence) and commuted the sentence of four people (mitigating their penalty without vacating the conviction), including I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

"It All Started About 40 Thanksgivings Ago": 15 Things You Might Not Know About Alice's Restaurant

The song is called Alice's Restaurant, and it's about Alice, and the
restaurant, but Alice's Restaurant is not the name of the restaurant,
that's just the name of the song. The name of the restaurant was Back Room Rest.

Alice Brock only owned the restaurant for a year before she and Ray divorced. The restaurant has remained in operation - it is now known as The Main Street Cafe.

The events Arlo Guthrie describes in the song are true -- at least the part with with Officer Obie and the shovels and rakes and implements of destruction. The story about the Group W bench are uncorroborated... although that doesn't make it any less true.

Officer Obie served the Stockbridge, MA police force for 34 years. It's said in 1985 he was "asked" to retire after hitting another officer after an argument.

William J. Obanhein played himself in the 1969 Alice's Restaurant movie. But despite twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy photographs (with circles
and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one), he's instantly recognizable for his modeling work. He posted frequently for Stockbridge's other famous resident: Norman Rockwell. That's Obie in The Runaway.

Mr. Obanhein passed away in 1994. When Newsweek asked about playing himself in the movie he said that making himself look like a fool was preferable to having somebody else make him look like a fool.

Another person who played himself in the movie was Judge James Hannon, the judge who really did preside over Guthrie's case and really is blind.

Alice and Ray do not play themselves in the film but do appear in cameo roles. Alice can be seen in a bright pink blouse in the Thanksgiving dinner scene.

Ray Brock is played by James Broderick (Matthew Broderick's father).

Whitehall Street (where you get injected, inspected, detected, infected,
neglected and selected) could have been better protected. On October 7th, 1969 Sam Melville bombed the induction center, shutting it down.

There are 2622 words in the eighteen and a half minute long song (counting the 47words37sentences58words as one, of course). Guthrie points out that 18 1/2 minutes is also the length of the famous gap in the Nixon tapes.

In 1969 Alice (remember Alice? It's a post about Alice...) published a cookbook. She's known for saying "Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good."

Arlo Guthrie raised the money to buy Alice's church and converted it into the Guthrie Center: a non-denominational meeting place. YouTube has a video of Arlo performing the song at the Guthrie Center in 2005.

In 2004, Alice illustrated a children's book about moose (Arlo wrote it). These days Alice owns an art studio and gallery in nearby Provincetown. She doesn't mind people stopping in and talking about "those days".

The Alice's Restaurant Massacree is probably the only Thanksgiving carol there is. Your local radio station is probably going to play it on Thanksgiving. If you're not anywhere local, where are you? Anyway, if you're not local then iTunes has four different versions and both satellite radio services are playing it throughout the day.

Wii Virtual Console: One Year Later

Last November I spent the better part of a week discussing games I hoped to see on the Wii Virtual Console. For those who missed the original posts, the Nintendo Wii has a service that connects the video game system to the internet to download older classic video games (for a fee). For folks like me, with boxes of old discs and cartridges, this service is a great development. Let's see how well my wishlist paid off.

Alien Crush, Sonic the Hedgehog, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Military Madness, Kid Icarus (as detailed in my last post on the subject), Super Metroid, Paper Mario, Splatterhouse, Devils Crush, and Galaga '90

So ten out of my wanted 50. But I'm not disappointed. The vagueries of the software publishing world probably knock out half my list. Nintendo did release a good crop of games this year, including titles never seen in the US before AND NeoGeo games. I got Super Metroid, so I'm not complaining anyway.

Of course, the Wii isn't the only source for downloadable retro content. The PS3 offers arcade and original PlayStation content (Like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and MediEvil). And the Xbox 360 has been offering arcade games for download since 2005, plus board games like Settlers of Catan and Carcassone. Microsoft recently announced a handful of downloadable original Xbox games, including Halo and Psychonauts. I'm more excited about Psychonauts than anything Nintendo could release to the Virtual Console next year. It's a gem.

Apple Sauce Brain Man 24 Hour Comic Volume 2

Apologies all around: the ASBM Twenty Four Hour Comic for 2007 has been completed, scanned and even uploaded to the internet for weeks now but I haven't actually linked it around. So here it is: http://asbm.pikamac.com/misc/asbm242.pdf
It's a four megabyte PDF file. It will undoubtedly make more sense having read last year's comic and even more sense to people who've been following the last ten months of daily webcomic history.