A pop singer named Lauren Rose has released a version of the traditional Jewish folk dance, "Hava Nagila" in England. The song, apparently, had a shot at being the #1 song in the country on Christmas Day. No word (yet) on whether or not it actually got there, but still: Hava Nagila - a pop song?

Behold:

The (English) words she's singing, by the way, are not even close to a translation, with the exception of the "Baby, let's dance" which is somewhat close to Hava Nagila ("Let us rejoice").

Anyone who's ever attended a Bar/Bat Mitzvah will probably find this amazing...

Words cannot express how happy this story makes me. Let's follow the bouncing ball, shall we?

1944: Conrad Hilton, founder of the Hilton hotel chain, establishes the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, dedicated to "relieve the suffering, the distressed and the destitute."

1979: Conrad Hilton dies, and leaves virtually all of his fortune to the Foundation.

1988: His son, Barron Hilton, reaches an out of court settlement after a nearly ten year battle to challenge the will, and retains half of the ownership stake in Hilton Hotels for himself, rather than having it go to help the suffering, distressed and destitute. (Bad Barron...)

2003: Barron's granddaughter, Paris, becomes one of the most famous people in America (the world?) when a video of her and her boyfriend having sex makes its way around the Internet.

2006: Jerry Oppenheimer, author of House of Hilton, reports that Barron Hilton is embarrassed by the behavior of his socialite granddaughter and believes it has sullied the family name. Barron does not comment on these remarks.

2007: Paris is convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol, and sentenced to probation. She violates her probation and lands in jail for three dramatic, media-frenzied weeks, culminating in a "Get Out of Jail" party thrown for her by a large Las Vegas hotel and an exclusive television interview with Larry King that reportedly nets her millions of dollars.

Yesterday: Barron Hilton announces that he will leave 97% of his fortune (currently worth $2.3 billion) to the Conrad N. Hilton foundation, where it will be used to "provide clean water in Africa, education for blind children, and housing for the mentally ill." (Good Barron...)

So, not only does Barron Hilton join the ranks of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and others, who have made giving away gazillions of dollars trendy, but the African kids who need the money most finally get it.

Also, Paris Hilton finally gets something she's been lacking for years now - consequences. Up until now, the only thing she's ever done in her life that has cost her anything that was important to her was getting caught driving drunk a second time, which cost her three weeks of freedom. Now, it turns out that her sex video and all the associated celebrity parties, reality show stupidity, and other not-a-role-model nonsense that she's been filling her life with has cost her a significant share of $2.3 billion and (I suspect) a significant chunk of her grandfather's respect.

Seriously - this totally makes my day.

(SIDE NOTE: Hat-tip to Scalzi for pointing this out first. He criticizes MSNBC for writing a story about a large charitable donation and leading with Paris Hilton. I couldn't disagree more. I hope every teenage girl in the world who ever thought Paris was "cool" reads this article because her name is in the title and thinks, "Damn...she got screwed!")

A hearty hat-tip to Mike Starr, who informed me of this website by actually walking me by one of the stores on our way to lunch yesterday: i-SoldIt.com.

Here's how it works: You have an item you want to sell on eBay, but you either don't have the time to do so, or you have no freaking idea how to go about selling something on eBay. So what you do is bring your item to an iSoldIt store (they have 138 stores, located in 36 of the United States, as well as Canada and Australia). They will photograph it for you, write the text that appears on your eBay auction, wait for it to sell, then package it up in a box and send it to the seller. When the seller pays them, they send you a check.

So, to summarize: you drop off your stuff, and they send you a check.

The only downside appears to be the cost: they take 33-40%, plus eBay fees (1.5-5.25%) and payment processing fees (3%), so you could be taking home only about half of what your item sells for. That said, if your item doesn't sell, there is no fee. You can either pick it up within 10 days of the auction's close, or they'll donate it to charity.

What I find most interesting about this business is the fact that eBay has a trust component to it - sellers that successfully sell a lot of items get higher ratings, which makes buyers more likely to buy from them. And since ISoldIt aggregates sellers, they are (or at least, they claim to be) the #1 Seller on eBay, which can actually help your item get sold.

A real bricks & mortar implementation of an eCommerce idea. I'm surprised I hadn't heard of it before now...

Returned that tie you got for Christmas and don't know what to do with the resulting gift card? Know someone who's birthday is December 27th and frustrated by the lack of items on the shelves in the recently ransacked stores? Have no fear - Matthew Baldwin is here with his 2007 Holiday Christmas Survival Guide for Slackers Cultural Warriors. I encourage you to click through, and peruse the whole thing, but allow me to call out some of the highlights:

There's the Electronic Rock, Paper, Scissors Keychain (pictured) for when you just can't be bothered to make a decision and change the shape of your hand all at the same time.

Then there's a series of exercise bikes and treadmills connected to video game controllers, so your kids can get some actual exercise while playing video games, helping them to narrowly avoid the whole "go outside and play actual sports" thing.

Oh, and if you have a dollar but can't find a match to burn it with, you can always send someone a GIF image of a Christmas gift and Facebook will take the dollar off your hands for you.

Moving on, we have the Viag-Ring, which is a plastic ring that holds a single Viagra tablet underneath a piece of glass (I'm guessing plastic, but whatever...) that says, "In Case of Emergency, Break Glass" (also pictured).

And finally, since we are approaching an election year, there's the Hillary Nutcracker. I think this one pretty much speaks for itself.

So there you have it, my favorite items from Matthew Baldwin's list of his favorite items available for purchase this holiday season. Happy Exchanging, everyone...

This is awesome:

Don't send a lame Holiday eCard. Try JibJab Sendables!

 

According to Chris Kelly at the The Huffington Post, earlier this month, Mitt Romney said this:

I saw my father march with Martin Luther King

Chris then decides to fuel the Gaffe Machine as follows:

So, well, that's that. Except, according to a report in the Boston Phoenix, it turns out that depends on what your definition of "saw" is. And "march." And "with." And "Martin Luther King."

Because it never happened.

"A spokesperson for Mitt Romney now tells the Phoenix that George W. Romney and Martin Luther King Jr. marched together in June, 1963 -- although possibly not on the same day or in the same city." ... Romney spokesperson Eric Fehrnstrom suggests that these two were part of the same "series" of events, co-sponsored by King and the NAACP, and is thus consistent with Romney's claim that 'I saw my father march with Martin Luther King.'"

And so now we have an Al Gore "I invented the Internet" moment. Gore, of course, will go down in history as the person who handled situations like this as badly as any human possibly could. Let's see how Mitt Romney does:

"When we say, 'I saw the Patriots win the World Series, it doesn't necessarily mean you were there -- excuse me, the Super Bowl. I saw my dad become president of American Motors. Did that mean you were there for the ceremony? No, it's a figure of speech."

Ouch.

Good rule of thumb: when you're trying to clarify something you said that confused everyone, it's helpful not to have to make corrections during your correction. Not that anyone who is actually listening would have trouble deciphering what he said, but those (like Mr. Kelly) who are striving to turn the whole thing into a race-changing Gaffe will use it to reinforce the "he's hiding something" meme.

It seems clear that what Romney meant to say (should have said?) was this:

I [was inspired by] my father march[ing in solidarity with] Martin Luther King['s ideals].

Because even the so-called "evidence" cited by Chris Kelly supports that statement. Also, it has the added benefit of making the point that Romney was trying to make before a helpful writer like Chris Kelly did his best to distract us all.

After the final game of the 2007 World Series, catcher Jason Varitek gave the gamee-ending ball (a strikeout) to relief pitcher Jonathan Papelbon. Papelbon claims he doesn't have it anymore because his dog ate it.

Seriously.

Here's what he told the Associated Press:

"[My bulldog, Boss] plays with baseballs like they are his toys," Papelbon told the Hattiesburg (Miss.) American. "He jumped up one day on the counter and snatched it. He likes rawhide. He tore that thing to pieces. Nobody knows that. I'll keep what's left of it."

Red Sox spokesman John Blake says, "ball was in the hands of one of the players and we take his word at what happened to it."

OK, John, but I think you're going to be the only one...

Lots of little things today:

1) 2007 Top 10 Finalists - Best Visual Illusion of the Year Contest (Hat tip: Lisa Fiorenzo)

2) Soundboard.com - 78,000+ sound files, broken down into 6,000+ "Soundboards." Find "soundboards" from your favorite movies, tv shows, celebrities, etc. It's the YouTube of sound clips...

3) Just when you thought Britney Spears was as messed up as she was going to get:

• Her 16-year old younger sister, Jamie Lynn Spears, is three months pregnant.
• Jamie Lynn is the star of "Zoey 101," a show on Nickelodeon that's popular with preteens. Or at least she was. Nickelodeon says the show has already wrapped it's "fourth and final" season. I'm guessing the writers' strike wasn't the issue here.
• She says the baby's father is her "long-time" boyfriend, Casey Aldridge, who is 19 years old. Just how "long-time" could this possibly be?

But here's where it goes beyond messed up to just plain weird:

• Britney and Jamie Lynn's mother, Lynne Spears, was under contract with a Christian book publisher to publish a parenting book, tentatively titled, "Pop Culture Mom: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World." The publisher calls it "a parenting book that's going to have faith elements to it." It had been set for publication on Mother's Day in May 2008, but is now on hold indefinitely.
• Jamie Lynn gave an interview about her pregnancy to OK! magazine and, according to TMZ.com, OK! has offered her $1 million for an exclusive photo shoot after the baby is born

This is wrong on so many levels, just the thought of typing it all up makes my head hurt.

4) Time's Person of the Year for 2007 is . . . You again! No, just kidding. It's Vladmir Putin. The title of the article is "A Tsar is Born." Clever title, although I think he wins for being infamous as opposed to famous. Yet another contest Al Gore could have won but didn't, me thinks. At any rate, this site is kind of cool. It shows you the covers for all the Person of the Year issues, dating back to 1927, and lets you view them by category - US Political and Military Leaders (30), International Leaders (31), Business and Technology (5), Science and Medicine (5), Religion and Philanthropy (3), and Concepts (7).

5) Finally, a quick Instapundit roundup. Glenn was chock full of blogabble stuff today:

  - Did you know that 70 Senators, including 22 Democrats, voted to extend the Iraqi war funding by $70 million on Tuesday? Wasn't it just a few weeks ago that Democrats were vowing to end the war? The 2006 Congress marked the "end of the rubber stamp Congress," right? Maybe this had something to do with it.

  - Did you know that printer ink costs roughly $8,000 per gallon? And that ink monitoring software tells you the cartridge is out of ink when it is an average of 20% full? The worst offender, by the way, is Kodak's EasyShare 5300 which would have you waste an astounding 64% of the ink! I've never understood why people don't just turn off those ink monitors and print until the printouts start degrading (always keeping a spare cartridge handy, of course). That way, you know you haven't wasted any...

  - Did you know that the free market seems to be doing what the Kyoto treaty could not do? Some fascinating stats, comparing 1997 (the year before Kyoto was signed) to 2004 (latest available data):
    - Emissions worldwide increased 18.0%.
    - Emissions from countries that signed the treaty increased 21.1%.
    - Emissions from non-signers increased 10.0%.
    - Emissions from the U.S. increased 6.6%.
    - Emissions from the U.S. grew slower than those of over 75% of the countries that signed Kyoto.

That's all for now...

...his father, George Romney:

I'm not usually one for the whole "he looks just like his father thing," but my lord - this picture is eerie, no? When I first saw it in the paper, my reaction was, "why is that picture of Mitt Romney in black and white?" Looking more closely, I still have trouble believing it's not him...

Two weeks ago, the Washington Post called good news about Iran's nuclear weapons program A Blow to Bush's Tehran Policy.

Today, Instapundit pointed us to this set of Iraqi war statistics. Some samples:

Category	This week	Peak Level	Peak Time
Weekly Attacks	<600	1600	June, 2007
Deaths per Month	600	3000	December, 2006
High-Profile Attacks per Month	50	130	March, 2007
IED Attacks per Day	20	60	May, 2007
Ethno-Sectarian Deaths per Month	250	2200	December, 2006

The site also points out that we've found (and cleared) almost 6,200 weapons caches so far this year, up from less than 2,700 in 2006 (and just over 1,700 in 2004).

So, two questions:

First, why isn't this front page news? It was certainly front page news when the numbers were going in the other direction, or when every politician and their mother was running to a podium to declare the "Surge" a failed strategy before it even began. Is the war only a story of national interest when it's going badly?

Second, and especially for the Bush-haters out there, isn't now the time to call out the President on the original purpose of the Surge? If I remember correctly, our goal was to control the violence so that the Iraqi government could take the political steps necessary to maintain their own security, so that our men and women could come home. Why isn't President Bush using this golden opportunity to publicly hammer the Iraqi government about showing demonstrable progress? For that matter, why isn't Nancy Pelosi doing the same? Or are we only interested in bringing our troops home when things are going badly as well? I'm sure as Christmas approaches, they and their families would disagree.

Former senator George J. Mitchell has released his Report to the Commissioner of Baseball of an Independent Investigation Into the Illegal Use of Steroids and Other Performance Enhancing Substances by Players in Major League Baseball.

Clearly, the title has been taking some steroids of it's own.

In all seriousness, I'm glad it's out there now, so we can stop speculating about what it would say. And what it said, of course, is of no surprise to anyone. Baseball's got a widespread problem with performance enhancing drugs, the owners buried their heads in the sand during the great home run races of the mid-90s until they were forced by publicity to do so no longer, and the union fought any effort to stop it in fear of one of their members possibly being punished for breaking the rules.

So today, no one's really talking about any of that. All they're talking about is "the list" - the 80 or so names of players who Senator Mitchell "outed" as part of the steroid problem. The biggest name on the list, by far, is Roger Clemens, who Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports calls baseball's white Barry Bonds.

For his part, Clemens vehemently denies everything the report has to say about him. This is an interesting tactic for Clemens to take, and quite a refreshing one too, especially when placed next to Mark McGwire's famous "I'm not here to talk about the past" speech in front of Congress a couple of years back. Instead of lawyering up, Clemens is adding the charge of "lying about steroids" to the one of "using steroids" that Mitchell delivered this morning. For all of his on-field accomplishments, he's counting on being proven (or believed) innocent at this point, because if he's ever actually proven guilty, his actions today will do just as much to keep him out of the Hall of Fame as any drug he ever took.

As a New York Yankee fan, I've watched Clemens closely for several years. I obviously don't know what drugs he's taken, but I can tell you that the guy has a genuine love of the game and of it's history and traditions. For him to be kept out of the Hall of Fame because of this will be a serious blow to him personally. I don't know if you could say the same about Mark McGwire.

And speaking of Big Mac, it's interesting to note that while the report mentions him by name, it is only to recount the "Andro" story that first prompted forced Major League Baseball to begin looking at a potential steroid problem. In fact, the report states that of the many people Senator Mitchell interviewed that knew Mark McGwire, only one (Jose Canseco) claims to have personally witnessed him taking steroids. As such, the report does not accuse him of anything he hasn't already admitted to doing (i.e., the Andro from 1998). But that won't keep the press from printing his name as someone "mentioned in the report." More trouble for Big Mac, I'm afraid...

Finally, I'm most surprised by some of the non-power hitters on this list. For instance - Chuck Knoblauch? Here's a guy who never hit more than 18 home runs in a season, and who's batting average only varied from his career .289 average by more than 40 points four times in his career. If he took steroids, he obviously didn't take the right ones. And, as one New York writer put it, "clearly, steroids don't help you throw to first base."

Ike Turner died this week. And since his death pre-dated Tina Turner's death, here's the headline the New York Post decided to run:

Ike "Beats" Tina to Death

It'd be an instant classic if it weren't just a little too mean...

A meme from Jason Bennion over at Simple Tricks and Nonsense:

Repost the first sentence of the first blog entry in each of the previous year's 12 months.

Uh...OK:

January: "'Tis the season for the unending streams of lists - The Top 10 Outrageous Moments of 2006, The 40 Most Offensive Celebrity Arrests of 2006 (categorized by offended ethnic/religious group), and of course the always reliable List of Dumb Holiday Gifts You Can Buy on the Internet."

February: "I realize this story is a couple of days old at this point, but I saw the headline the other day, and didn't bother to read the article until today."

March: "Mmmmmmm.......Computer........"

April: "Man, talk about solving a problem no one knew they had!"

May: "OK, so there's a nutcase out there writing threatening letters to the TV networks because they're only televising cheerleaders who are not dressed provocatively"

June: "I may be falling behind on my ISBS Tech Guide (I'll start again soon, I swear!), but Google Analytics has provided me the tools to create two monthly features."

July: "Well, I couldn't very well have a blog and not comment on the iPhone this weekend, could I?"

August: "So check it out: CNN's story on Danica McKellar's book links back to my post on the subject."

September: "Oof."

October: "Well, as promised, it was an exciting weekend."

November: "OK, I was prepared for this."

December: "From the Pittsburgh Business Times: Dick's Sporting Goods Inc. said late Monday it agreed to acquire privately held Chick's Sporting Goods for about $40 million in cash and assumption of about $31 million debt."

From which we learn.........nothing at all.

Such are the way of memes...

The most recent analysis of my site statistics (How People Found Me - November Edition) got me thinking: 237 unique Google queries about Billy Joel that found their way to my site. And while these people were able to read my 2006 Concert Review from Madison Square Garden, my preview article about that tour, and the lyrics to All My Life, I couldn't help thinking that plenty of questions went unanswered.

So, based on the Billy Joel-related queries used to access the site in November, 2007, I've decided to compile a Frequently Asked Questions file about Billy Joel. This is not intended to be canonical, nor is it thoroughly researched (I've added links where I could, and recounted from memory where I couldn't). I just figure, if people are coming here looking for Billy Joel information, I can at least provide them my best efforts at some answers.

So, as the man says, Come ou, Virginia, don't let me wait...

Q1: Where Can I Find a Billy Joel Concert Review? (82 queries)

Well, there's always mine, but if you want more, the best advice I have is to Google "Billy Joel Concert Reviews" and go from there. Joel's official site, billyjoel.com does not have concert reviews, nor do I see any sanctioned, dependable source in my own Google search. So, it seems you're at the mercy of folks like me who attend the concerts and tell you what they think.

Q2: Does Billy Joel Have an Opening Act? (48 queries)

No. Billy Joel concerts typically begin with the house lights going dark, followed by a stirring piece of classical music blaring from the arena speakers. While that's happening (and the crowd is screaming with anticipation), Joel and his band take the stage in darkness. The classical music either fades out or stops entirely, and then the band kicks into their opening number - usually Angry Young Man or something from the album he's promoting. (During The Bridge tour in 1986, he opened with Matter of Trust, and during the 1993 River of Dreams tour, he opened with No Man's Land.)

Q3: Where Can I Find a Setlist for a Billy Joel Concert? (35 queries)

The canonical list seems to be here. Click on a decade, and then a particular show for the setlist. Or you can search the database with keywords. A very handy site.

Q4: Where Can I Find Lyrics/Information about Billy Joel's new song, All My Life? (20 queries)

Here, Google is not so friendly. Because All My Life is named so similarly to the much more popular My Life, I found it very difficult to find the lyrics to this song online when it first came out. It's easier now, but if you made it to this page, you might as well just click on my blogpost on the subject.

Q5: Why Doesn't Liberty DeVitto Play with Billy Joel Anymore? (10 queries)

There are many stories floating around out there, and I'm sure most, if not all of them are laced with false rumors. I can tell you that the story I heard was that DeVitto was upset with some of the things Joel told Hank Bordowitz for his Billy Joel biography, Billy Joel: The Life & Times of an Angry Young Man (which, by the way, I thought was excellent), and that this led to a falling out between the two to such an extent that DeVitto didn't even attend Joel's most recent wedding to Katie Lee. Wikipedia, by the way, is strangely silent on the whole thing, both on the Billy Joel page and on the Liberty DeVitto page.

Q6: Where Can I Find Lyrics to Billy Joel Songs? (8 queries)

If you want the lyrics to a particular song, I'd once again recommend a Google search. Type in "Billy Joel <name of song> lyrics", and one of the first few links should get you exactly what you want. If you're looking for a discography, complete with lyrics to all of his songs, I'd suggest billyjoel.com, which is affiliated with Billy Joel himself, and has a complete and accurate lyrics list for all of his songs.

Q7: How Long is a Billy Joel Concert? (7 queries)

Obviously, that's up to Billy Joel, and any concert on any given night can vary in length. Typically, though, his shows tend to start around fifteen minutes after the time printed on the ticket, and then run for around two hours. Like most artists of his generation, he would occasionally do a three or four hour marathon show when he was younger, but I haven't seen or heard about a show like that in a very long time. If you've got after show plans, I'd recommend counting on two and a half hours, just to be safe.

Q8: What is the Stage Layout at a Billy Joel Concert? (5 queries)

The stage layout varies from tour to tour, but the basic configuration is always the same. The grand piano is either in the center of the stage, or at stage left (that's the left side from Joel's perspective, the right side from the audience's perspective). His guitar and sax players stand upstage (closer to the audience) on stage right, with auxiliary percussion behind them. The drummer is almost always center stage near the back of the stage (which is true of almost any rock and roll concert, I guess), and any other musicians (e.g., horn players) tend to be downstage on stage left, behind the piano. Joel's stage also typically has two wings, with an electric keyboard in the back corner of the stage on each wing.

As you would expect, Joel spends most of the show at the grand piano. In the more recent concerts, the piano is typically on a turntable, so it rotates around in a circle during the show, giving everyone in the arena a chance to see him from every angle. In older shows (or smaller arenas), the piano is stationary. At some point during the show, he runs to the wings of the stage and plays a few songs on the electric keyboards, which gives him a chance to face those fans sitting on the sides or behind the stage (see Question #13 below for a discussion about sitting behind or on the side of the stage). I've heard Joel say many times in interviews that a piano is not like a guitar - you can't strap it on and do rock and roll moves with it. He often apologizes to those he has his back to, and promises to turn around when he can.

Most shows also feature a block of songs that Joel sings from a microphone in the front-center of the stage. These typically include Glass Houses hits like You May be Right, Sometimes a Fantasy, and It's Still Rock and Roll To Me, as well as the title track to the Innocent Man album. When this happens, someone in the band usually moves in to play the grand piano, although the person is never prominently lit or acknowledged on the stage, lest the attention be drawn away from The Piano Man himself.

Q9: Where Can I Find Information About Billy Joel's Band Members? (5 queries)

For this, I would recommend Wikipedia's Billy Joel page. They have a complete list of Joel's current and former band members, including links to their respective Wikipedia pages. Here's the list, reproduced as of this writing, for easy access:

Members	Former members
Billy Joel	Richie Cannata
Tommy Byrnes	Liberty DeVitto
Chuck Burgi	Doug Stegmeyer (Deceased)
David Rosenthal	David LeBolt
Mark Rivera	David Brown (Deceased)
Crystal Taliefero	Russell Javors
Carl Fischer	Jeff Bova
	Jeff Jacobs
	Larry Russell
	Rhys Clark
	Ron Tutt

Q10: What's the Story with Billy Joel, the OCC, and a motorcycle? (5 queries)

On March 25, 2006, Billy Joel played The Carrier Dome in Syracuse, New York for 39,000 people (breaking the record for the largest crowd in the Carrier Dome, previously held by The Rolling Stones). During the show, the hosts of the Discovery Channel show, "Orange County Choppers," came on stage and presented Joel with "The Billy Bike," a motorcycle they had built specifically for him. The event was covered on the show (Episode #82).

Q11: Why Doesn't Billy Joel Play Just the Way You Are in Concert Anymore? (3 queries)

Just the Way You Are was a love song that Billy Joel wrote for his first wife, Elizabeth Weber-Small. He has said in recent interviews that when he told her the song was for her, she asked him if that meant she would get the royalties for it, but that might be the divorce talking. At any rate, Joel claims that he took the song out of regular rotation because of Liberty DeVitto's habit of singing along with songs during concerts in order to keep his place in the song. In the chorus of this particular song, DeVitto would often replace the actual lyric, "I love you Just the Way You Are," with his own creation - "She Got the House, She Got the Car." Once that began happening, Joel claims, it was time to put the song away.

For what it's worth, my take on it is that Joel simply got bored with the song, and didn't feel it was getting the kind of energy it deserved when performed live. Not to say his story isn't true, but distractions like that are more effective when an artist is "going through the motions" on a song he's played thousands of times than on songs that are fresh and new.

Q12: What is Billy Joel's Concert Schedule? (2 queries)

Once again, I'd recommend billyjoel.com, which has an On The Road menu item, currently listing the remaining shows scheduled for 2007 (no word on any 2008 shows just yet). I don't know how quickly the official dates get posted, so if you're more interested rumored tour dates, I'd suggest a search in Technorati, since a quick pass through the blogosphere may be more informative than the standard entertainment/news websites.

The one rumor I can pass along today is that Billy Joel has agreed to be the last event at Shea Stadium before they tear it down at the end of the 2008 baseball season (October, 2008. Late October if Met fans have anything to say about it UPDATE: Turns out, the "Last Play at Shea" is happening in July, just after the All Star Game. For more on that, including the story of how I got tickets to the show (!), click here).

Q13: Where are the best seats at a Billy Joel concert? (1 query)

This, obviously, is a matter of taste. Some people like to be on the floor, right in front of the stage. If that's your cup of tea, I will warn you that Joel typically leaves the first couple of rows unsold, and then has people walk through the crowd (typically in the upper levels) and choose young, enthusiastic (and, while I can't prove it, it would seem attractive and female) fans to come down to the front row. His rationale is that the show has more energy when there are screaming kids right up by the stage, rather than old, rich men who can afford the most expensive tickets. So if you're looking for close to the stage, and you can get seats that aren't exactly front row, grab them - they might be the best ones available.

Another option at Billy Joel concerts is to sit directly behind the stage. As I mentioned above, the piano is often on a giant turntable, so you get a good view of him while he's performing, and he also has the keyboards on the wings of the stage that he uses to play to the back of the house. It obviously depends on the arena, but these seats tend to be almost as close to the stage as the floor seats, plus they're a little elevated, which provides a better and more comfortable view (at least in my opinion. Your mileage may vary).

As for me, I prefer a seat just next to stage left, where I can get as good a look as possible at Joel's hands while he plays the piano. As an amateur piano player myself (and an avid player of Joel's music in particular), his concerts are almost as educational for me as they are enjoyable, as I get a real kick out of watching what he's actually playing while the familiar arrangements are performed by the full band. On a good night, I'll improve the way several of his songs sound when I play them, just by watching how he plays them in concert. But that's just me...

Q14: Where can I find a Billy Joel concert poster? (1 query)

I honestly have no clue. I did a Google search, and this site came back as the "Billy Joel Official Store." I've never heard of fanfire.com, so I don't know how legitimate it is, although they do seem to have an impressive collection of T-shirts, concert programs, teddy bears, hats, and yes - posters, available for sale. I can't vouch for them at all, but at least you have a starting point.

Q15: Where can I download Billy Joel Music? (1 query)

Well, you can buy his music at the iTunes Music Store, or on CD at various retailers. Also, sites like amazon.com and billyjoel.com offer samples of many songs. If you're looking for free downloads of Joel's (copyrighted) material, then I'm afraid you're on your own. I'm sure it's out there somewhere, but I don't care to look for it or help anyone else find it. Sorry...

Q16: Is Billy Joel sober now? (1 query)

It's none of my business (and, IMHO, none of your's either). But, given the realities of celebrity, the question does get asked often. Everything I've heard/read about Billy Joel suggests that he went into rehab to fight an alcohol addiction at least twice (Wikipedia says 2002 and 2005), and that he's been clean and sober ever since. Of course, anyone who doesn't know him personally is just guessing about this, so I don't tend to put a lot of stock in what I read on this topic and hence, don't care to read too much about it in general.

If I've answered your question here, I'm glad. If not, I'd suggest heading back to Google and seeing what you can dig up.

A little alliteration goes along a-way.

Anyway, this comes from James Lileks at buzz.mn: 3,589 TV Themes in MP3 format.

The mind boggles...

Now this is how Christmas Carols should be done:

(Hat tip: deMaurie Mackie)

This post dedicated to Michael Weinmayr, loyal ISBS reader and a heckuva caroler in his own right...

They may not admit it publicly, but every guy in the world who looks at this picture and winces a little:

Caught in the act...

From Jeff Porten via e-mail:

Tweety, Donald Duck Summoned to Court
An Italian court ordered [Tweety Bird], along with Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and his girlfriend Daisy, to testify in a counterfeiting case.

In what lawyers believe was a clerical error worthy of a Looney Tunes cartoon, a court in Naples sent a summons to the characters ordering them to appear Friday in a trial in the southern Italian city, officials said.

Instead of naming only the companies and their legal representatives, clerks also wrote in the witness list the names of the cartoons that decorated the toys and gadgets the man had reproduced, said Fiorenza Sorotto, vice president of Disney Company Italia.

The Naples court will have to rewrite the summons, although this will probably delay the trial, said Disney lawyer Cristina Ravelli.

Ya know, first the baseball players are all on steroids, then the pop singers are going to jail for DUI, and now Mickey & Donald are found counterfeiting. What's a kid to do for heroes these days?

Personally, I think I'm going to steer my kids away from Italian Court Clerks...

Here's a story that starts out strange, and then only gets stranger:

Back in October, the drummer for The Police, Stewart Copeland, gave an interview with Mercurio, a Chilean newspaper, in which he said, "Look, the future President of Argentina would be good for one beer; yours (would be good) for four."

Here's how Reuters described the incident:

While it was not clear what Copeland meant with the comments, many Chileans took them to mean he found their first woman president, Bachelet, less attractive than Argentine president-elect Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who will be her country's first elected female leader.

Apparently, someone asked the Chilean President, Michelle Bachelet, what she thought of the remark, and she declined comment. Copeland sent her a letter which said:

I was mortified to learn this remark reached you and you were asked to comment on such a trivial matter. . . If by chance you are able, Sting, Andy (Summers) and I would welcome the opportunity to personally express our admiration for you and your wonderful country by extending an invitation to you and your guests to attend our performance.

So, let's review:

A rock and roll drummer says something incomprehensible about two female, South American world leaders. The press in one of the countries says, "we're not sure what he means, but we think he just called our President ugly. Let's ask her what she thinks about that." The President says, "Leave me alone." Then the drummer sends a letter to the President saying, "Sorry about that, Madame President. Won't happen again. Hey - would you like free tickets to our concert?"

And why wouldn't he - after all, she's good for four beers!

Power Line points us to this Washington Post article about the recent NIE finding that Iran halted it's nuclear weapons program in 2003.

The title of the article is A Blow To Bush's Tehran Policy.

Here's a sample:

The new intelligence report released yesterday not only undercut the administration's alarming rhetoric over Iran's nuclear ambitions but could also throttle Bush's effort to ratchet up international sanctions and take off the table the possibility of preemptive military action before the end of his presidency.

Iran had been shaping up as perhaps the dominant foreign policy issue of Bush's remaining year in office and of the presidential campaign to succeed him. Now leaders at home and abroad will have to rethink what they thought they knew about Tehran's intentions and capabilities.

This could possibly be the most twisted logic I've ever seen in a mainstream news article. Basically, they're saying that Bush and Co. were gearing up for war in order to stop Iran's nuclear program, and now that we've learned the nuclear program has stopped, the whole "gearing up for war" plan is a miserable failure.

By "failure" here, they could just as easily have meant "success." The point is not (nor is ever) to go to war. I realize that those seeking to paint the President as an indiscriminate war hawk say that over and over again, but in the real world, the point is to promote the best interests of the United States. If our actions (both our military actions in Afghanistan/Iraq and our diplomatic saber-rattling regarding Iran) helped convince Iran to stop pursuing nuclear weapons, then the policy worked, and we're happy to achieve our goals without military conflict. To declare something a failure because the contingency plan you had in case of failure had to be scrapped is twisted logic indeed.

National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley tried to say as much:

The White House said the report vindicated its concerns because it concluded that Iran did have a nuclear weapons program until halting it in 2003 and it showed that U.S.-led diplomatic pressure had succeeded in forcing Tehran's hand. "On balance, the estimate is good news," said national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley. "On the one hand, it confirms that we were right to be worried about Iran seeking to develop nuclear weapons. On the other hand, it tells us that we have made some progress in trying to ensure that that does not happen."

Hadley disagreed that the report showed that past administration statements have been wrong, noting that collecting intelligence on a "hard target" such as Iran is notoriously difficult. "Welcome to the real world," he said.

Indeed. In fact, the big risk now, as I see it, is what happens if this intelligence estimate is found to be wrong. After all, we were pretty convinced that North Korea had given up their program after signing a treaty during the Clinton administration, only to find out later that they'd been continuing in secret. If we find out two years from now (or heaven forbid, just before the 2008 election) that Iran still has a nuclear weapons program, will statements made today be held up as evidence for "Bush lied, people died?"

Our leaders certainly deserve a great deal of criticism of late, mostly for not modifying their approach in the face of new information. When they do acknowledge a new direction, dragging them through the public square for it seems rather hypocritical.

Computer services consultancy BearingPoint has replaced their CEO, Harry You, with their COO, Ed Harbach. The article's headline?

BearingPoint Replaces You as Chief, Promotes Harbach

Who, me?

Now that this seems to have played itself out, let's review Don Imus' last year, shall we?

April, 2007 - Imus makes an insensitive remark about the surging Rutgers Women's Basketball Team.

April, 2007 - Civil rights activists, chiefly Rev. Al Sharpton, feed the Gaffe Machine, and get Imus kicked off CBS Radio and MSNBC Television.

Soon after April, 2007 - CBS Radio gives Don Imus $20 million to refrain from publicly commenting on the incident.

April - November, 2007 - Don Imus enjoys an 7+ month vacation, complete with $20 million in pay.

December, 2007 - Don Imus resumes his daily radio show, this time at WABC radio in New York, the most listened to talk radio station in the country, and where he originally earned his "shock jock" moniker. (Hat tip to Mike Starr: Imus got his big break at WNBC, not WABC).

December, 2007 - Rev. Al Sharpton has no comment, except to say he's "waiting to see."

Is it me, or does it seem like the only people that were hurt by this whole affair was the Rutgers Women's Basketball team? And, as I said before, they by Rev. Sharpton much more than by Don Imus?

Way back in August of 2006, I posted on how to make HTML tables appear properly in Blogger posts. Since then, whenever I needed one, I'd write out the code in a text editor, get it just like I wanted it, and remove all the line breaks and paste the resulting (cryptic) code in my post.

It occurred to me recently that Excel should be able to do this for me. I tried the "Save As HTML" feature, but the HTML code it generates is exceedingly difficult to read. It's not that it's incorrect, mind you, it's just that it includes individual style elements for each cell, so the resulting HTML is very flexible, but also very difficult to read.

To address this problem, I've written a quick Visual Basic macro that creates simple HTML code, like most people use for quick and dirty tables in blogposts.

Here's what you need to do:

	1)	Open Excel
	2)	Press Alt-F11 (or use menus: Tools...Macro...Visual Basic Editor)
	3)	Right Click on the current workbook (probably entitled "Book1") and choose Insert...Module
	4)	Cut and paste the text in the above file EXACTLY AS IS
	5)	Choose File...Save Book1, and then save it as a Microsoft Office Excel Add-In (with a .XLA extension)
	6)	Close the visual basic editor
	7)	Back in Excel, choose Tools...>Add Ins, and browse to the file you just saved. Make sure the check box next to it is checked.

Then, create your table in excel, highlight the entire thing, and run the macro (either using Tools...Macro...Macros, or by assigning it to a button or menuitem). The macro will recognize bold and italics in each cell, and will also ask you if you want to specify column widths. If you say yes, you'll be prompted for a column width for each column in the table.

You'll then get a Messagebox informing you that your HTML table code has been placed in the clipboard. Go to Blogger, and paste it in your post (the code has no linebreaks, so it will display properly in blogger).

If you want to edit the table, you can either fix it in Excel and re-run the Macro, or just edit the code directly. In the table above, for instance, I manually set the table border to zero, as opposed to the default value of one. I also added VALIGN=top to each cell so the list would look right.

Enjoy. If you have any questions, feel free to send me an e-mail at brian@familygreenberg.com.

The Categories

Category	November Count	October Count
Billy Joel	237	183
Technology	191	196
Adult/Porn-Related	149	23
Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree	97	0
Celebrity Look Alikes	49	54
DSL	29	46
Cal/Stanford	25	23
Overrated Films	18	12
TicTacs	14	0
Concerts	12	14
Baton	11	12
Politics	8	15
Penn	6	13
Bruce Springsteen	4	27
Baseball	3	11
ISBS Song	1	18

Queries were up dramatically again this month (943 vs. 736), thanks to an explosion of Billy Joel queries, an even bigger explosion (you should pardon the expression) of Adult/Porn-related queries, my Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree photoblog, and a couple of posts I did on TicTacs. And you thought these How People Found Me posts were self-indulgent and boring...

After months of lagging slightly behind Technology, Billy Joel has surged past it with 237 unique queries in the month of November (up almost 30% from October). Back in October, I was shocked to see I had 23 unique Adult/Porn-Related queries that brought people to my site. Well, in November, it was 149. That's me - the Larry Flynt of the microblogosphere. Hah! Meanwhile, keep reading and check out some of the things people Google for (and then click through to my site for!) Words fail. In other news, fourteen separate TicTac related queries brought people to my site. Read about those below as well - it's hard not to laugh at just about any Google query about TicTacs, but these are especially rich.

Also interesting this month are the types of queries that dropped in popularity. Politics is down 47%, which probably has more to do with me not blogging about it than people not caring about it. Baseball is down 73%, which also makes sense given that October contained the post-season and November contains contract negotiations. Also, that country song with "I Should Be Sleeping" in the title seems to have run it's course - queries are down a whopping 95%. And in news that is sure to bother the Jersey crowd, queries about Bruce Springsteen dropped off a whopping 85%. Like baseball, though, Bruce wrapped up his big season in October.

The Referring Sites

This month's referring site of the month award goes to buzz.mn, James Lileks, proprietor. James posted something about Christmas lights this month, and I replied in the comments with a link to my Rockefeller Center exploits (hey - a little self-promotion never hurt anyone). My comment generated 130 pageviews from 36 unique visitors. Those Minnesotans are so nice, aren't they?

I also tried my hand at self-promotion on a New York Times blog called Dot Earth, which had talked about New York's efforts to make the tree more enviro-friendly. Again, my efforts yielded results - 61 pageviews from 17 unique visitors.

The Keywords

All told, a whopping 943 queries resulted in hits to Familygreenberg.com in November (207 more than were used in October). Here are some of the more entertaining samples:

We start with Billy Joel, in honor of his recent Google surge. There were bound to be some winners in a field of 237:

Query	Rank / # of Results	Comments
billy hoel 2007 concert song list	1 / 13,500	Once again, I prove to be the poor speller's best friend.
billy joel life homo	1 / 211,000	You'd think once a guy married (and had a child with) Christie Brinkley, questions about his sexuality would stop. But, noooooo....
billy joel sober now?	11 / 123,000	Man, I hope this was a fan and not his mother. Or his doctor...

Next, we move on to the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. Again, with that many queries, there are bound to be one or two gems:

Query	Rank / # of Results	Comments
taco bell near Rockefeller Center	7 / 50,300	I list this as a query about the Christmas Tree, but it's really about baseball. In fact, the query's author could very well be me. When Taco Bell announced it was giving everyone in America a free taco because someone stole a base in the World Series, I went Googling around for a Taco Bell near my office (there isn't one).
2007 Rockefeller Christmas tree falls off truck	>500 / 9,210	Let me save you some time: No, it didn't.

Next, we move on to TicTacs. I remind you, these aren't all the TicTac related queries from which I received hits, these are just the funniest five:

Query	Rank / # of Results	Comments
Christmas color tic-tacs	>500 / 16,800	Someone's getting a pretty lousy Christmas gift this year, huh?
french tic tacs	29 / 26,800	For that special someone on your list who doesn't like the TicTacs with Christmas colors...
the truth about tic-tacs	1 / 19,000	Glad to be #1 on the list of people who help put all those nasty TicTac rumors to rest...
tictac.com sex	1 / 32	I'm one part disgusted and one part intrigued. What exactly does this mean? I mean how do you...? Where do you...? Why would you...? Nevermind all that, why am I the #1 search result?
what are in tictacs	>500 / 219,000	For the discerning halitosis sufferer. The FDA is always saying, you don't want to clean your breath with something until you know what's in it. Sensible.

Now it's time for our two monthly features. First, the generally wild and wacky:

Query	Rank / # of Results	Comments
emmy rossum's nose	16 / 64,900	I Should Be Sleeping - Blogging celebrity body parts since 2005.
how long a concert should be	9 / 11,100,000	It rather depends on who's performing, doesn't it?
mark pershes	1 / 465	This is actually quite touching. My wife's grandfather passed away this month at the age of 92. On the day of his funeral, two people Googled his name and cruised around my site, looking at old pictures of him with our family.
clonk scenarios	1 / 1	Back in July, a Google search for this phrase led someone to my site, despite the word "Clonk" not appearing anywhere on it. Today, the only result of the search "clonk scenarios" is my July "How People Found Me" report marvelling at how it happened the first time. Seems we have a self-fulfilling trend developing here...
no man is an island statue of liberty	>500 / 1,100,000	It's the second half of the cliche that you don't hear too often: "No man is an island, but one woman is - the Statue of Liberty."
my yahoo emails have gone to outlook	8 / 1,2340,000	Heh... makes it sound like they went there on their own accord. So when will they be back? Did you get a postcard? I hear Outlook is lovely in winter...

And finally, the Adult/Porn-Related queries. I'm starting to think that maybe posting the strangest ones in these monthly updates is what's driving the traffic. I can only hope that some of these folks stick around and find something more, er....wholesome to read than what they were looking for:

Query	Rank / # of Results	Comments
500 guys sleeping nude	>500 / 116,000	When 499 guys just isn't enough...
daddie son sex pics	>500 / 2,040,000	Ick. Ick, ick, ick. This guy's a child molester and a poor speller. Ick, ick, ick, ick....
Disney cartoon nude pictures	>500 / 227,000	With all the porn available on the Internet, you'd think this wouldn't be necessary. And yet, 227,000 people seem to disagree...
how to photograph your naked wife	>500 / 117,000	Well, I'd think the first step would be to ask her. Step #2 probably involves staying off the Internet for a while...
my naked wife on facebook	>500 / 929,000	Now, you see? This is what ignoring the rules above leads to...
rate my naked sleeping wife pics	>500 / 1,090,000	...and now we're asking for opinion polls. Stop the madness, people!
nude pic brian is 14	>500 / 234, 000	Oh, ick, ick, ick. A thousand times ick. Who are these people? Ya know what, on second thought, I really don't wanna know...
pictures of gross nude people	>500 / 1,900,000	But if you think they're gross, then why...? Oh, I give up...
pitchers of sex	>500 / 330,000	OK, this is classic. Because you know, if someone ever figured out how to bottle it, bars would be selling it in pitchers by the first weekend...
sleeping breasts	>500 / 775,000	Funny - I never thought of them as sleeping. I'm guessing they'd be quite uncomfortable for the woman when they woke up and tried to stumble to the kitchen for breakfast...
sleeping porn family	258 / 1,930,000	Ah yes, we know the Sleeping Porn family. Husband, Wife, two adorable kids. They sure do spend a lot of time in the house, though...
pictures of how to sleep naked	>500 / 268,000	Whoever came to my site looking for pictures was disappointed, but I think I can provide the proper steps in text: 1) Take off clothes, 2) fall asleep. Any questions?

Metric	October	November	% Change
Visits	1,524	1,942	+27.43%
Pageviews	2,386	3,226	+35.21%
Pages/Visit	1.57	1.66	+6.10%
Avg Time on Site	0:43	0:50	+15.96%
Bounce Rate	79.46%	78.42%	-1.31%
% New Visitors	86.15%	87.33%	+1.37%

Well, any way you look at it, November was a good month for FamilyGreenberg.com. As best as I can surmise, it stems from two reasons. First, Billy Joel is preparing to tour again, and the number of people looking for him on Google has skyrocketed. And since my site is such a Billy Joel Google magnet (still not complaining, but still don't understand why/how), I reap the benefits.

Second, I decided to Photoblog the arrival, setup, decoration and lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree in November, since I was walking by it every morning anyway. This little experiment turned out to be a huge success, and not only drove traffic to the site, but also increased traffic to non-tree related pages.

In December, we'll see if people stick around...

This cool, interactive chart from the New York Times shows the 5,000 most common surnames in the United States, according to the Census Bureau, who has compiled this list exactly twice in history (once in 1990, and once in 2007).

I'm proud to report that Greenberg stands proudly at #1,574, just behind Redmond and just ahead of Cote.

Most of my friends' and fellow bloggers' names don't make the list, with the exception of Starr, who comes in at an impressive 1,135 (between Joyner and Morin) and Walsh, who blows us all away with a whopping #265 (between Fields and Little).

Up next: some even more useless information. Finding it may take a while, though... ;-)

From the Pittsburgh Business Times:

Dick's Sporting Goods Inc. said late Monday it agreed to acquire privately held Chick's Sporting Goods for about $40 million in cash and assumption of about $31 million debt.

Careful research has been done on this topic, and extensive studies have proven that there exists no way in the modern world to comment on this story without making a sexually suggestive reference.

That is all.

(hat tip: Mel Kramer)