Pour yourself a drink, then click on the picture to play.

June 2, 2010

With Memorial Day fresh on our minds, we got to thinking about how we could show our gratitude to the men and women of our armed forces in a way that was meaningful to them, while still being as uppity as possible. Seriously, we put our heads together for an Operation Brain Storm and came up with this semi-facetious Well-(Read) Uppityshirt. We'll use a percentage of the profits from the sales of this design to start a "Well-(Read) Army" initiative that will distribute One Up! to our soldiers in uniform overseas since it's such a smart and fun use of their tons of free time. What better way to keep the mind in fighting form?

Go Well-(Read) Army!

May 27, 2010

All the summer fun lists are out and they seem to be the same slightly soggy mush as last year. Throw them away. I'm going to give you 6 crazy/cool things to do with your kids and their friends that they'll actually get a kick out of, and motorbiking isn't one of them... I'll tell you why another time.

1.) Woof, woof. Take them to a dog race. I'm not kidding - it's fun as hell. Apache Greyhound Park in Bridgeport if you live around here; Raynham Park or Wonderland if you live in Massachusetts.

2.) Animal Night. Invite a bunch of friends over for an outdoor dinner (preferably something messy like lasagna) and forget about knives and forks. Eat with your hands. For dessert, we always have a cake-eating contest. Buy 2 cakes, cut one up into even slices, put on plates and then at the word GO! everyone eats without utensils AND without hands. First one finished wins the second cake.

3.) Clamming. Go down to your local seaside town hall (in our case Westport), and get a clamming license ($20 or so). Buy a clamming rake and basket (around $40). Check the tide charts. When low, go out on the flats and dig for clams. After your basket's full, sit on the beach (with a beer) and shuck everything right there. Spritz with fresh lemon. Wonder what the poor people are doing.

4.) Trapped. Pahquioque is a mouthful, but it's actually a very kid friendly and totally professional and safe environment for blasting clay pigeons out of the sky. They're located on Wooster Mountain in Danbury and are open to the public on Tuesdays. Show your kids how tame and lame video games really are.

5.) Trotters. The last time I went to Yonkers Raceway not so many years ago to see the harness racing, there was also a state fair parked right next door with everything I hate to love: bumper cars, tractor pull, greased pig contest, and fried dough. And that night Cheap Trick played a concert - talk about a trifecta! Yes, Yonkers is a total fun hoot for everyone. Go on a Friday or Saturday evening in the summer and you'll leave with a good bad taste in your mouth.

6.) Angling. I was at the Ridgefield Dunkin' Donuts on Route 7 last Wednesday at 2 in the afternoon picking up cupcakes for my daughter's class party and it was so packed I had to park around back. As I was getting back into the car with a million dollars worth of confection, I saw a guy standing in the woods holding a can of corn. I went over to see what he was up to and he was waist-deep in a small stream that ran behind the building (which I never knew even existed) putting the kernels on a fish hook. I thought it takes all kinds. But as I got closer I saw he had a bucketful of beautiful trout. I went right down and got a license, 4 cheap all-included rods/reels at Fisherman's World in Norwalk and stepped the kids inside another time.

May 26, 2010

Since we’re always looking for new ways to mess with words, and we assume you are too, we thought we'd share a little nugget we saw this morning in The Wall Street Journal: 'flarf' poetry. Some extremely experimental (mental?) poets have taken random searches from Google (i.e., kitty+pizza) and turned them into poetry. We know, we know, it sounds like a load of crap. But these poems are an offspring of the so-bad-it’s-good movement, so they're sometimes a nice load of crap. And a few of them even manage to be better than good, which we think the one below is. It’s our factotum Adam Bangser’s stab at the flarf phenomenon, created by searching “tire + roses” on Google:

SENTIMENTALITY
by Adam Bangser

We believe in doing business the old fashioned way.
Share your experience, and
The smell of the roses takes the cake.

I push the mower out of the barn
It’s a great time to knock down the ground
Accommodate the vegetable garden before it is burnt down.

How fast do roses grow?
Who needs a spare tire for a rose?
Good luck trying to find the perfect smell.

Even with advances in technology,
a rope tied to the saddle
can last for many more years.

My father tied an old rubber band
To an aluminum frame
And I played on it
Until I was young.

May 29, 2010

'CATCH SOME AIR' UPDATE: Most to-do lists are an even 10, so I thought I'd try and round my unfinished fun summer one up. (Don't confuse 'to-do' lists with 'honey-do' lists which can run into the hundreds of items.) Seriously, let's keep in mind while reading this that kids aren't really kids, they're just short grown-ups.

7.) Breezing Up. Went up to Saugerties a few months ago to buy a used 16-foot Day Sailer and the kids and I have been getting our sea legs wet so-to-speak since by sailing out to Cockenoe Island and having lunch once a week. We've even been to over Long Island a couple of times, and once we've got the boat and ourselves completely seaworthy (and school's out of course), we're going to take a trip all the way to NYC. We'll stay over with my brother-in-law, docking at the 79th Street Boat Basin for a night or 2, and then we'll head up the Hudson, leisurely, ending up at the locks in Troy. Should take about a week. We've got a porta-potty on board and a mooring/camping cover that fits over the boom, food, water and a sense that life can be a fun adventure if you've got the wind and the tide on your side.

8.) Dirt Biking. What more is there to say except: go to your local Craigslist, spend less than $500, helmet-up, and here's to mud in your eye?

9.) Tree'd. Two years ago I built the kids a relatively expensive treehouse, complete with sash windows and a retractable ladder, zip line and bunk beds and they used it maybe twice. This year I bought cheap plastic bb pistols (no danger to man nor beast) and they're up on the tree house roof all day shooting at squirrels and chipmunks. Save yourself the expense and just get them the bb guns. The only 2 rules: don't aim at anyone, and goggles at all times.

10.) Don't Chicken Out. When we first moved to Connetiquette I bought 2 chickens for the kids and every day was like Christmas for them - free eggs! In a weekend I built a small coop inside our garden shed with a small pen in the back and a trap door that we close at night. We've gone through about 40 run-of-the-mill chickens since then (and even a few blue-egg Aracuana's) and have had a Discovery Channel show going on right in our own backyard for years now. As far as predators are concerned: raccoons, skunks, snakes, neighbor's dog, foxes and even the red-tail hawk that lives on our property have had dinner on us, more than once, and sometimes it's been something to see. But there's nothing like fresh eggs, and we've learned so many cycle-of-life lessons.

May 25, 2010

It's probably not a good idea to be praising the competition, but we just got our 'Owner's Manual No. 78' from The J. Peterman Company yesterday, and wanted to share their gorgeous take on t-shirts with you:

It's just so well-done I don't know what else to say.

May 14, 2010

Out of the blue a young hotshot player from Harvard rang us up and said he wanted to produce our original feature-film script 'Absinthe Man', and we're jumping into pre-production as we speak. We're going to put it out as 'A Johnny Mustard Production', and are planning on blogging about it as we go along. We might even set up a Facebook page, but we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Have you ever thought about being part of a big Hollywood movie? So have we, and this isn't it. But if independent and intelligent film making is more of what you had in mind, you could become an Executive Producer, and bathe in your fair share of the glory/profits, if ever there are any.

Here's how: Just send us an email to Hollywood Calling and we'll send out THE PITCH to you, including a personalized copy of the shooting script. If you sign up, you'll get some great swag including the Uppityshirt of your dreams, or two, our limited-edition Johnny Mustard mustard dispenser so you can 'put some mustard on it' anytime, as well as a year's supply of 'Smart Pills - The Perfect Cure for Stupidity', even though you obviously don't need them.

Other Executive Producer Perks include an all-access pass to the set, as many peanut M&M's as you can eat, your name on the credit roll (as well as all promotional material associated with the film), 2 front-row seats to the world premiere, and the smug self-satisfied feeling that goes along with creating great art and gobs of envy at the same time.

May 5, 2010

Hollywood Called.

Took the kids to a real film set yesterday - an old friend of mine was producing a movie starring Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts - so we skipped school and went Hollywood. John Penotti is President of GreeneStreet Films and has helmed some pretty heavy-duty stuff: Prairie Home Companion, In the Bedroom, Uptown Girls and Swimfan to name a few. In the end, we had a lot of fun in the sun, met some really cool people, and learned a lot - isn't that what life's all about?

Speaking of endings, we were talking about our favorite final film scenes of all time with one of the gaffers and came up with this short list:

1. Planet of the Apes

2. The Verdict

3. Carrie

4. Iron Man

5. Easy Rider

Why don't you send in your pick for Best Ending Ever and we'll choose one at random to receive a game of One Up!

Apr 29, 2010

Bob Gillis sent in the correct answer last night: "96, 110, 116, 125, 135 based on the NYC 7th Avenue Express #2 Line. It seemed unlikely there was any math explanation." Kudos, Bob. And yes, we did think the question was fair and square because we gave the hint "express" in the headline, said "mathy" instead of "math", and because you've got to know by now we're uppity for good (reason) around here.

Apr 23, 2010

Impromptu mathy test - send us the next number in this series: 14, 34, 42, 72... asap via email to Number Serious and win the Uppityshirt of your choice.

Apr 22, 2010

I went crabbing with the kids last Sunday and it was a snapshot day to be alive. Even though I forgot the bait (you're supposed to tie a chicken leg onto a string) we tried to make do with the bread from our sandwiches, which floated, so we added weights, and then it just dissolved slowly and fell off. The only other foodstuff we had on hand was Fruit by the Foot, which I'll let you draw your own conclusions about. We also had the wrong tide, and were trying to use fishing nets instead of clamming nets which have a tighter weave (smaller holes?) and longer handles. Anyway, I got frustrated and angry, as the kids got discouraged and bored, and we finally left empty-handed it goes without saying.

Speaking of sayings, one came immediately to mind: Harm watch, harm catch. (I've also heard it as: Harm set, harm get.) I Googled it when I came home and found: "This Proverb intimates, that Malice, Spite and Envy, are generally Self-murderers upon the Upshot; that to intend, study or contrive any Harm to our Neighbours, is Bird-lime all over, and will catch ourselves at last. This... is a trite adage.. sibi parat malum, qui alteri parat, say the Latins."

In re-reading this entry and trying to come up with a pithy wrap-up, it seems to me that crabbing with the wrong equipment and attitude is not necessarily the best illustration of this proverb. But I'd have to say that the truth and wisdom of an old cliche is probably worth thinking about, even on a sunny day at the beach.

Apr 14, 2010

I've had Nantucket on my mind a lot lately, for various reasons, and decided to throw out a bunch of stuff for your consideration. First, the below is an Uppityshirt I designed on a whim after spending a week there last summer, and when I showed it to a very clever friend of mine who has hobnobbed with the quality for a long time she laughed out: "It should read 'JUST OVERDO IT.'" Perfect.

I'll explain the reason I went there in a minute, but I've just finished re-reading "Moby Dick' which is without question the great American novel, and forgot how slyly funny Melville can be. Check out this randomly-chosen passage from the chapter 'The Cabin-Table':

"In strange contrast to the hardly tolerable constraint and nameless invisible domineerings of the captain's table, was the entire care-free license and ease, the almost frantic democracy of those inferior fellows the harpooneers. While their masters, the mates, seemed afraid of the sound of the hinges of their own jaws, the harpooneers chewed their food with such relish there was a report to it. They dined like lords; they filled their bellies like Indian ships all day loading with spices."

Most people don't know that the Quakers (sorry, Friends) were whalers, and the 4 or 5 families that settled Nantucket and essentially populated the place ran the whole industry. And since they were pacifists, and practical, and had their own commercial interests at heart sided with the British during the Revolutionary War. One of my distant relatives came to America in 1646 and was from one of those families (her husband Randall Rice actually fought under George Washington at Saratoga). I kind of went hoping to discover my past, at least the branch down through my grandmother Miriam Russell Fleck, above, seated with sweater, and I found out that no matter how far you come up in the world, you are where you're from. Which in my case is the peasantry.

Apr 11, 2010

Finally heard from someone who gives a damn: George Romero sent in the correct answers to our quick movie quote quiz - 1.) Star Wars; 2.) Charade; 3.) The Searchers; 4.) Casablanca; 5.) Manhattan

Congratulations and an i,000,000 Uppityshirt to you sir.

Apr 9, 2010

Went to a wedding last weekend and stopped in at Brooks Brothers to get a formal shirt and bow tie since I was the best man (irony intended) and bought one you had to tie. Clip-ons? Wrong.

So for all of you who may want to dip a toe into the art of self-reliance, and not have your wife standing behind and over you like your mother, I'm including this handy illustration to practice in your free time:

Had to wear a regular tie to the rehearsal dinner and got to talking to the sales guy about ties and shirts and collars etc. and it proved to be educational and inspiring. For example, I've been tying my ties the same way for over forty years and didn't know the technique I use is called 'Four-in-Hand'.

Here's the official word from the Brooks Brothers website: "Also known as a simple knot, the four-in-hand is believed to be the most popular method of tying ties due to its simplicity. The knot dates back to England in the days of the coach-and-four where the men driving the coach knotted their ties in this manner to help prevent them from flapping in the wind. The knot produced by this method is on the narrow side, slightly asymmetric, and appropriate for all occasions. It works best with wide ties made from heavy fabrics and should be worn with a tab, button-down or regular spread collar. It's a classic knot for any occasion and is most widely used."

He taught me another method called the 'Prince Albert' (no snickers please) and I thought I'd try to tie my tie this way for a while just to shake things up a bit and see if anyone notices. Here's how:

Apr 5, 2010

Jerry Murrell and his 4 sons started a hamburger joint in 1986 with a secret recipe: keep it simple. The business plan was to sell a juicy burger on a fresh bun with a side order of perfect fries. And it worked - Five Guys now has 570 stores across the U.S. and Canada. We go to the one that just opened in Westport pretty often because it's our kind of place: clean, friendly, good. Or so we thought - here's Jerry in this month's Inc. magazine talking about his childhood inspiration:

"There was this little hamburger place where I grew up in northern Michigan. Almost everyone in our town, except the uppity uppities ate the burgers. Even though the owner had a cat, which he'd pet while cooking. People called them fur burgers, but they still ate them because they were good."

Damn - slammed again! Why can't we go low and cheap every once in a while without getting impugned for it, and in print no less?

Apr 3, 2010

Just finished reading Stephen Covey's '7 Habits of Highly-Effective People' even though it came out about 15 years ago and I've probably owned a copy since about '98. I thought I'd summarize the book, and save you the trouble of actually plowing through it youselves:

1. Be proactive.

2. Begin with the end in mind.

3. First things first.

4. Think win/win.

5. Listen.

6. Synergize.

7. Sharpen the saw (before you cut).

Apr 1, 2010

My wife and I were watching a romantic movie last night alone on the couch - Notting Hill, great script - and I asked her after a particularly snappy scene "Remember when we were in love like that?" She looked at me and said "No."

Mar 25, 2010

Came across this almost-facetious Start-up Science diagram from Y Combinator founder Paul Graham and thought I would share it with you. Beware the wiggles of false hope...

Mar 18, 2010

The winning email for the "Call me" contest that ended on the Ides comes from Katherine Schwinghammer, who receives One Up! for this classic eponym:

Schwinghammer - noun: A very effective criminal defense attorney; any smart lawyer who doggedly fights to free his/her clients from their trouble with the law.

"My friend sure seems to be in a lot of trouble; those are serious charges! I hope he hires himself a Schwinghammer."

Thanks to everyone who wrote in - stay tuned for the next gray matter challenge.

Feb 28, 2010

My father and I launched the "Lady Anne" one fine day and were rowing the wineglass-sterned dory up the Sheepscot in Maine when all of a sudden this black varnished blade comes flying down river like a bat out of hell, flags snapping in the wind and knife-edge cleaving the waves. All I caught, besides the name 'Liberty' on the barrelback stern and a mouthful of spray was a glimpse of the most beautiful boat I had ever seen. And she was.

My thoughts returned to Liberty the other day because John Malone, the owner, was in the news making another billion-dollar bid for one of the few media companies he doesn't already own or control. I wish him all the happiness and freedom a gorgeous expensive yacht can bring. For my money, I'd be much happier with something more along these lines - since I've found that small and simple can be just as pretty as big, and is sometimes way more fun. Yeah, I'll take liberty with a small "l" any day.

Feb 24, 2010

Been in the weeds these last few weeks - One Up! is a big hit, and we've already had to restock up, twice. While we're at it, we thought we'd run a quick and easy giveaway:

"If your name became an eponym (for example an Einstein is someone who is smart; Darwinian means survival of the fittest) what would it represent?"

Example: Chenswold - n. Any situation, esp. sartorial, where aesthetics > ethics. "He's got himself into a bit of a chenswold with those white shoes, hasn't he?"

The person with the cleverest response, sent by the Ides of March to "Call me" will receive 'One Up! - Are you game?', as well as some (unnecessary) Smart Pills.

Feb 2, 2010

We just launched our newest product yesterday, a kind of mental soup in a can, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Thank you smark alecks! Check it out, and One Up! all your friends and enemies now.

Jan 26, 2010

I was at a party the other night where I met a couple of ex-pat Russian money-men, and even though we couldn't agree on much, like the obvious - (I contend America's ideal of liberty and the might behind it won WW II, their argument is the sheer number of Soviets lost; 20 million men, women and children vs. our 380,000 soldiers or so turned the tide) - we did all agree on one thing: this is without a doubt the greatest document in the history of the universe:

If you haven't read it lately, I'd recommend it. I mean, never mind the audacity of the idea, just feast your eyes on this prose:

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world."

UPDATE: After listening to the President's eloquent State of the Union address, I realize the beauty of the writing on this single piece of paper is in the profound ideal it incarnates, not the words themselves. And the sincere commitment to this principle, from politicians no less, makes it magnificent and nothing short of astounding.

"And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."

UPDATE X 2: Just found out yesterday from the friend who threw the party that 1 of the Russians mentioned above and his wife became American citizens this week. Congratulations, and welcome to the obvious.

Jan 21, 2010

The 'Ten Commandments' is a classic movie. Period. We just watched it the other day(s) - it's long - and one of the kids asked me what the Ten Commandments are. I could only name 8 off the top of my head. On a kind of related note, I heard a joke at a party last night: "Do you know 3 French words? Yeah, 'bonjour', 'merci' and... 'surrender'." Kidding aside, I started thinking about numbered (lists of) things, which should be part of our general knowledge, but that don't seem to be taught anymore. So just for the fun of it, here's a test I came up with to see if you're smart enough for an Uppityshirt:

Hippocrates said "First, Do..." what?

What's the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution?

Name the 3 Stooges.

What do the 4 Horseman of the Apocalypse represent?

What's the 4th Estate? Bonus: what are the first 3?

Who are the 7 Dwarfs?

The 7 Deadly Sins? Bonus: 7 Virtues?

What are the 7 Wonders of the World?

What's the 8th Wonder of the World?

What are the 10 Commandments?

What are the 13 original (American) colonies?

How'd you do?

Jan 11, 2010

Some of the blog entries we come up with resonate with our readers, and some don't. And some really don't. So we decided to re-run an episode from last spring that we had written about then and subsequently took off the website because of all the 'How could you?' feedback we received, to see if on reconsideration anyone else still thinks it's our sophomoric, unfunny low:

Took the kids to visit their cousins down in North Carolina over spring break, and on my way back home pulled into "Fast Stop Number 2" (which is literally on the other side of the tracks) to pick up some "Thunderbird," which you can't get around here. Picture this: it's 7 a.m., I've got 5 home-made Easter Bonnets in the front seat with me (we had stopped at the parade in New York on the way down), 60 pounds of wild-boar sausages (my brother has a catering company), luggage, 3 kids and 2 Great Pyrenees "puppies" that I had just bought the night before from a breeder in E. Treestump, Tennessee. (I felt kinda sorry for the state trooper who stopped us in West Virginia.)

So I go into FS#2 (which is also the Greyhound bus station) and there are 6 bottles of Thunderbird left in the cooler, along with a pint of Night Train, and I'm standing in line with both arms full (there was also a 3-cigars-for-a-dollar special at the counter) when the guy behind me in line says "That's what I'm talking about."

Fast forward to the other night - we're having dinner with some friends and the wife, let's call her "Kick", tells me "Preston is going out tonight and I've got a great movie I want to watch." I said "I've got some company for you" and gave her the bottle of Night Train since I had just given the last bottle of Thunderbird to the dishwasher repair guy. She said thanks, I'll just curl up on the couch and get all cozy when I get home.

I happened to talk to Kick yesterday - she wanted me to pick up her daughter from tap dance - and I asked her "Did you get on the train the other night?" She said "What train?" "The Night Train." Long pause. Long. "Oh." "My." "God."

I'm going to conclude this unfortunate digression with a quote from bumwine.com - "Don't let the 0.5% less alcohol by volume fool you, the Night Train is all business when it pulls into the station. Some suspect that Night Train is really just Thunderbird with some Kool-Aid-like substance added to try to mask the Clorox flavor. But the night train runs only one route: sober to stupid with no roundtrip tickets available, and a strong likelihood of a train wreck along the way. All aboard to nowhere - woo woo!"

Jan 6, 2010

How about a quick no-brainer contest: first person to tell us which films these classic lines come from wins an i,000,000 Uppityshirt.

Here goes:

"Into the garbage chute, flyboy!"

"You know what's wrong with you? Nothing!"

"That'll be the day."

"Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine. "

"You look so beautiful I can hardly keep my eyes on the meter."

Jan 5, 2010

“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers,” Dorothy Parker once quipped, “the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of ‘The Elements of Style.’ The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”

In April of 2009 Pearson/Longman published a 50th anniversary edition of this timeless classic, which I just found out about recently. So, I got my 1979 copy down off the shelf and re-read it. Good, sound fundamentals and advice, still. Or as the writer Roger Rosenblatt put it, "you really ought to know the rules before you break them."

From the Principles of Composition Chapter, #17:

"Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell."