SPELLING BEE WRAP-UP
Loading...Thanks to everyone who donated to my Team Sweaty Ham at the first annual 826LA Spelling Bee for Cheaters. We did extremely well for jumping into the fray with only one week of fund-raising left. Thanks to you, we had $1700 worth of cheats, and we used them quite effectively (though not effective enough to win).
The bee was run by the judges of the Putnam County Spelling Bee, a Tony Award winning play I saw a few years back that was hilarious. I think it was actually a few of the same actors I saw back in San Francisco. They introduced each speller with some strange, hilarious fact (“Spike Jonze looks white, but he is actually the love-child of Spike Lee and Quincy Jones”) and the way they used spelling bee words in a sentence were consistently funny all through the show.
The event, which featured Jimmy Kimmel, Spike Jonze, Dianna Agron (from Glee), Dave Eggers and SNL’s Laraine Newman spelling onstage, raised nearly $70,000 to help kids in the LA area with their creative writing skills. Bravo!!
I was also happy to compliment Mr. Kimmel on the show he did on a Santa Monica bus. Seriously!! It picked up people as he was doing the show! He said the ratings weren’t so good.. and guest Paula Abdul was in tears before and after she got on the bus… but it made for great television!! Check it out below:
http://videosift.com/video/Feist-I-Feel-It-All-live-on-Jimmy-Kimmels-Bus-Show
What hilarious fact were you introduced with?
What’s the Worst Home Price Haircut You’ve Found?“Here’s a fun property: 42905 SE 177th St in North BendSold in August 2003 for $570,000, then sold for the insnae price of $725,000 in April 2007, only to get taken back by the bank in July 2010. Now listed for $410,000.”1. What’s up with the sudden popularity of phrases regarding debt and suffering that include the word “haircut.” 2. A “FUN”property? What exactly is “fun” about this situation. How is an inflated “boom-era” price anything other than merely predictable why is it “insnae?” Please explain. Surely this kind of price history won’t surprise anyone who reads this blog.Did you contact the owner(s) of this property to get their story /stories? If you did, I missed it. Here’s my experience with this kind of “fun.” During the process to sell our home for $95,000 less than we had paid for it about a year previously, no one in my family ever thought they were having “fun.”No one in my family was snickering or wanting to start a contest to see who could come up with the most misery and sadness and grief. There was only a quiet sense of purpose, to pay down the mortgage before the home was sold, and a sense of sadness and loss, then a sense of moving on. No one thought it was “fun” to have their home advertised on the internet and their privacy compromised.OK, go for it fellas. Talk about how stupid you just know people like myself are. Throw in a few statistics and charts and hyperlinks. Talk all about how people like my family have caused all kinds of problems in the housing market even if it isn’t really true.C’mon, give it your best shot. I want to hear some really mean stuff, some wonderful, snarky, repeatable witticisms. Maybe put me in an indefensible position, then laugh at me for exposing my soft stupid underbelly. Bonus points for finding spelling/grammatical posting errors you can pick on.Ho-ho-ho you are so darn erudite and cool!