TWIB Notes

A few things…

–I went to San Loco today where they had 20 cent tacos in honor of their 20th anniversary. YUMMMM!! I had three tacos and it was less than a dollar. That’s what I call a deal.

–In the process of writing that first sentence, I realized that the cents symbol is no longer on the keyboard. This is sad as it means it is no longer useful. Oh Inflation! I hate you.

–Watched a whole special on Houdini today and saw something amazing. No, it wasn’t something Houdini did(although he did a lot of amazing things.) No, it was the fact that one of the talking heads on the program was Teller from Penn & Teller. Yes, THAT Teller, the one who’s whole bit in that magic duo is that he never talks. So I heard Teller talk. As you might expect, it’s not that exciting. If you thought that he had some sort of screeching banshee wail of a voice? Well, he doesn’t. The funny thing though was that they blacked out his face. As if that saved the secret of him talking, and yet they still had the little byline underneath his blacked out form saying he was Teller. Weird, right?

–The most interesting thing learned about Houdini is that he always said that no one could ever hurt him by punching him. I guess he had really strong abdominal muscles or something. So when he’s over 50, he gives a speech at a college and later that day, some college students come by to visit him. And one of them wants to test his lifelong challenge and asks if he can punch him. Houdini agrees. And the dude punches him. Not once but three different times. And apparently Houdini wasn’t ready for one of the later punches, he hadn’t tensed his stomach muscles. And as a result of this he has appendicitis.

Well, Houdini has a show to do. And he refuses to go to the doctor, he decides to finish the show first. And he ends up dying as a result. Some people say he would have died anyway. But the punch story is interesting.

–In the topic of most annoying cheapie cable commercials, there is a new contender in the field. I was at an audition the other day with Anthony and he mentioned the Sir Charge(Surcharge) commercials for Time Warner. And yes, those are ridiculous. But there’s also commercials for Daisy Mae BBQ. Now, if you haven’t been to Daisy Mae, it’s some tasty ‘cue. Let me get that off my chest, before I trash their awful commercial. They must spend all their money on tastiness and none on ad budget. Because the commercial has this lame theme song that I suppose is supposed to sound like the Pogues or some sort of Irish band. But that’s not the worst part. No, the worst part is this girl who is playing I guess a waitress and she’s using this really weird lame faux put on Southern accent. It’s actually hard to tell what sort of accent she’s using. It’s the sort of Southern accent one might encounter in 7th grade while taking Speech & Dramatics or something like that.

Which makes me wonder about these commercials, and the actors in these commercials. Who are they? Are they really actors? I am hoping instead that they are friends of these places. I hope that Sir Charge and Daisy Mae girl are just good friends of Time Warner and Daisy Mae BBQ. Maybe they work there. I mean, we KNOW Nino is invested in Nino’s because he’s NINO. So that makes sense to me. But when it’s someone that isn’t easily identified as belonging to the company?

I also wonder about all of those testimonial commercials. Because after awhile you realize that a lot of times, commercials are just filled with actors, even when they say or seem to represent normal people. But I can’t believe that the person who was in those famous Broadway commercials(“we laughed, we cried, it was better than Cats”) are actors. If they are, they are awful. And if they are awful, why are these companies hiring them? But maybe they can’t tell? I don’t know. The whole thing just bothers me.