You know, this whole blogging thing really amazes me sometimes. I’ve got no illusions about the size of my audience here; I’m an absolute small-timer writing only for friends and family, and I’m not entirely kidding when I talk about having only three Loyal Readers. Still, I’ve got a presence out there in the world because of this silly blog, and connections are being made because of it, tiny audience or no.

For example, a few weeks ago I was contacted by a total stranger named Anna Biller . She’s an LA filmmaker who had a movie that was going to be running here in The SLC as part of TromaDance, one of several renegade film festivals that run concurrently with Robert Redford’s big Sundance event. Anna was looking for information about Brewvies, the venue where her film would be playing, and Simple Tricks popped up in her googling because I’ve mentioned the place in a couple of entries. We ended up having quite a nice conversation via e-mail; regretfully, I wasn’t able to take her up on her invitation to meet her in person. But still, a connection was made that never would’ve happened only a few years ago, before this technology and this blogging phenemenon came along.

And then there’s the strange story of Chenopup and Brian Greenberg. You may recall that these two guys, regular commenters here on Simple Tricks, got into a debate over whether a local Salt Lake pizzeria could produce a pie that would be equal to what you find in New York. The Great Simple Tricks Pizza Challenge never did materialize, but Cheno was in New York on business recently, and, well… I’ll let Brian tell tell the rest.

Simple Tricks and Nonsense… it’s both a blog, and a social networking tool! Next up, I’ll be introducing floor-wax functionality, too…

Here’s a joke I just received from The Girlfriend’s dad that I thought was pretty funnny:

A C-130 was flying on a mission when a cocky F-16 pilot flew up next to him.

 

The fighter jock told the C-130 pilot, “Watch this!” and promptly went into a barrel roll followed by a steep climb! He finished up with a sonic boom as he broke the sound barrier.

 

The F-16 pilot asked the C-130 pilot what he thought of that.

 

The C-130 pilot said, “That was impressive, but watch this!”

 

The C-130 droned along for about five minutes, and then the C-130 pilot came back on and asked, “What did you think of that?”

 

Puzzled, the F-16 pilot asked, “What the hell did you do?”

 

The C-130 pilot chuckled. “I stood up, stretched my legs, went to the back, took a leak, then got a cup of coffee and a sweet roll.”

Ah, military pilot humor…

This is amusing: I’ve been doing some research for a proofreading assignment here at work and I’ve discovered quite by accident that the phrase “Where the bloody hell are you?” has been trademarked by the Tourism Australia Statutory Authority.

So, I was at The Girlfriend’s house the other night, idly flipping through the various cable-TV offerings after she’d gone to bed, when I stumbled upon Back to the Future II. And as I was watching Marty McFly running around trying to change history (again!), it occurred to me that the future depicted in this film — the year 2015 — is only eight years away. Eight… years. That’s nothing. That’s less than the lifespan of an overweight house cat.

There are times when I can’t believe I’ve gotten so damn old, or that it happened so damn fast. Somebody had better be working on inventing me a flying Delorean, dammit.

As you may have heard, the Oscar nominations for 2006 were announced this week. I have little to say about them because, to be honest, I’ve only seen one of the movies that turns up in any of the major categories, Martin Scorsese’s The Departed. (For the record, I thought it was a good movie, driven by strong performances from Leo DiCaprio and Matt Damon, but not an exceptional movie. It’s really starting to look like Goodfellas was Scorsese’s masterpiece and he’ll never again achieve quite that same level of perfection.)

However, I thought maybe I could contribute to award season with a couple honors of my own invention, gleaned from this week’s online activities. Here we go:

Best Subject Line on an Unsolicited “Spam” E-Mail: “Mean-spirited Gonad,” received 1/25/06.

I wouldn’t want to run into one of those in a dark alley, that’s for sure!

Best Title on a Blog Entry Written by Someone Else: Bush to Seek Gas Relief.

If you just rolled your eyes, follow that link, pay attention to the photo that accompanies the blog entry, and then tell me that the scatological reading of the title is a coincidence.

That is all. Actually, it’s probably too much. But hey it’s late and I’m feeling a little punchy…

Remember a few days ago when I was griping about how cold it’s been in Salt Lake? EnglishRussia.com has just reminded me that it could be worse.

Siberia looks beautiful, but count me out of anyplace where it’s cold enough to freeze vodka…

If I’d seen this in a movie, I would’ve said it was too far-fetched to believe: a 50-year-old man saved a 20-year-old stranger’s life after the other guy suffered some sort of seizure and fell from a New York subway platform onto the tracks. The older man — who was with his two young daughters, no less — dove onto the tracks himself and held the seizure victim down in the small space between the rails as a train roared past only inches above their heads. Neither man was badly injured, although Wesley Autrey, the hero of our story, emerged with a smear of grease on his stocking cap where the underside of the train grazed his head. The man he saved, Cameron Hollopeter, is in the hospital but I’d guess that’s as much to determine what happened to him before the train as from any damage the train did.

I’ve read the article I linked to above three times now, and I just keep shaking my head at the amazing-ness of it. How cool is it that there are people in the world who give enough of a damn (and who are fast-thinking enough) to do something like this for another human being? We all like to think that we’d be the hero ourselves if we found ourselves in a situation that required it, but how many of us would really rise to the occasion? I think I’d probably just stand there like an idiot. This story is both humbling and uplifting…

(Hat tip to Brian Greenberg for letting me know about this…)

We briefly digress from our regularly scheduled end-of-year rambling to offer up the following bits of potentially useful and/or entertaining information:

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It’s that time of year when people start taking stock of where they’ve come over the last 12 months. In these parts, crafty (meaning they’re into crafts, not that they’re treacherous) housewives have already sent out their annual holiday newsletters cataloging how many extra-curricular activities their kids excel at. Journalists are putting together their lists of the year’s top headlines. And bloggers are looking back at… whatever it is that they do.

What I mostly do, it often appears, is watch movies and vintage TV shows, and read books. Actually, I do quite a few more things than that, but these activities loom large in my daily life; they’re also the things I tend to talk most about here on this blog. In keeping with this emphasis, I’ll be posting my annual recap of all the media I consumed in 2006 within the next day or two (see the previous installments here and here, if you’re into sort of thing). However, for right now, I’d like to say a few words in general about the year that’s winding down and what I’ve managed to do with it.

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Friday was my last day of work for 2006. Not that much actual work got done, of course. The office closed at noon, and the staff was more eager to get to the company-sponsored Christmas luncheon than to finish up any last-minute projects. I do plenty of grumbling about my job — the hours, the stress, the clients, the sometimes ridiculously bad prose that I as a proofreader must try to make readable — but when it comes down to it, I think I work for a pretty cool company. I’ve had employers in the past who thought that bringing in a couple of five-dollar Hot ‘n’ Ready pizzas from Little Caesers was the height of holiday generosity; I’ve had other employers who didn’t do a damn thing for their employees around Christmas time. My current employer, however, rented out one of the hottest new clubs in Salt Lake City and provided a catered turkey-and-ham dinner, complete with an open bar and presents for everyone on the staff — genuine, useful presents, not just gag gifts or a coupon for a free slice of pie at some greasy spoon somewhere. Yes, I thought as I sat at a table with my fellow proofreaders, I have somehow managed to land myself a good job. After years of wandering in the wilderness, I found an oasis.

Or maybe I was just feeling good from all the Irish whiskey I drank. Did I mention there was an open bar?

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