Diphthong Dipping In Philadelphia

I’ve been watching this clip over and over and over again and trying to dip my diphthongs more and more, so if I ever see Batman he’ll know I’m from Philadelphia.

Also, apparently “New York City” equals “Gotham City” but “Philadelphia” equals “Philadelphia.”

Big News In New Jersey!

We here in America don’t really want to kill people. Even a recent poll in New Jersey showed the state’s voters wanted the option for people to die for their crimes, yet would rather have them sentenced to life in prison without parole. But we really seem to like to be able to put people to death in theory, in case somebody comes along we really would rather see dead.

Against this backdrop comes New Jersey’s decision to abolish the death penalty. Gov. Jon Corzine is expected to sign a bill next week making the Dirty Jerz the first state to get rid of the death penalty since it was re-instated by the Supreme Court in 1976.

Ahh, yes, but there is even bigger news in Jersey. Dick Clark memorabilia is being auctioned off in Audubon!

“There are proclamations from every mayor from Rizzo to Rendell,” said Brian Murphy of Haddonfield, a memorabilia broker. “They look like the Declaration of Independence. They’re on parchment.”

Actually, didn’t Dick Clark sign the Declaration of Independence?

Where Have You Gone, Dick Clark?

The Daily News‘ Kitty Caparella has an nice piece today about the conflicting reports on the death of Bryan Jones, the man who was shot and killed by police just after midnight on Jan. 1.

The story’s definitely interesting all around, but what I found most interesting (and depressing) was this little part here:

The armed celebrants had been inside the party house drinking when they heard the sounds of gunshots outside. They thought it was midnight. So the gun-toting revelers headed to the driveway and spent all their ammo firing in the air, a second reveler said.

When they realized it wasn’t midnight yet, he added, they went back inside to reload their weapons.

Clearly, Dick Clark’s health problems and the subsequent loss of New Year’s Rockin’ Eve — at least the real one, hosted by Dick — has forced our city’s residents to rely on gunfire to know what time the new year is, instead of the usual trusted method of, y’know, a countdown.

Then again, why someone needs to fire his gun into the air to celebrate a pointless milestone is beyond me. Oh, wait; people are stupid. That was easy.

Cops: Danger, controversy [Daily News]

New Year’s Rockin’ Eve

Back in 2003/2004, the first interview after the New Year on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve was with two M&M’s, who had just lost their coloring for a promotion. (Sadly, it was probably the best interview of the entire night.)

Everyone’s been watching Dick Clark on New Year’s for pretty much their entire lives. By my estimation, he’s been doing the show since about the French & Indian War. Last year, though, he couldn’t do it because of a stroke, and so we TV viewers had to suffer through Regis Philbin instead.

I only caught a very little bit of this year’s New Year’s Eve special on ABC — it was on at the place I was at — but I did see Dick Clark’s intro. It was, erhm, hard to watch. I’m not quite sure what I was expecting. Maybe it was just shocking because Dick Clark had turned from the world’s oldest teenager into the world’s oldest man in just a year or so. He looked okay, but he sounded bad and the whole thing (at first) just seemed like a shameless ratings ploy.

As you may have guessed by some of the jokes on this site, I don’t really get all that offended. It takes a lot, at least. But I was ready to write a letter to ABC all offended about Dick Clark. (Perhaps the alcohol contributed to this.) But I did read that the head of the National Stroke Association found it “courageous,” and who better to have an opinion on the situation than him.

I don’t know what the point of all this was, except to do that one-liner about Dick Clark becoming the world’s oldest man. I just hope that if he’s on the show next year, he’s a little more, well, Dick Clark-like.

Reaction Mixed To Dick Clark’s TV Return [NBC 10]