This is perhaps the most superfantastic sports video of all time. I defy you to watch this and NOT get all misty-eyed. The Good Twin to Anonymous’ Evil Twin, Improv Everywhere has struck again (with the help of NBC Sports). This time they struck two Little League teams that will never be the same.
Behold the mighty Lugnuts versus the fearsome Mudcats.
Okay, not preschool. This kid is six years old. And was, evidently, a robotic scorpion in a previous life.
Voice of GenX (sorry, Douglas Coupland) McSweeney’s genius and 826Valencia founder Dave Eggers talks (for nearly half an hour) about engaging with the public school system. Lengthy, but worthwhile.
Somehow, it just seemed topical. For some reason.
Okay, it’s only March, but the search for Mother of the Year is over. All you Alpha Moms and Alpha Mummies can just pack it in and turn into Roseanne for the rest of the year, because single mom Marjorie Jean-Baptiste of Montreal has thrashed all possible or conceivable challengers completely.
From the CBC:
A Montreal mother of seven saved the lives of her children by throwing them out the window of a burning building on Thursday night.
The 34-year-old woman and her children, who are all between the ages of two and 10, were inside their east-end apartment on Élie-Beauregard Street when a fire broke out on the building’s ground floor just before midnight.
Firefighters report that, while there were two fire alarms in the building, neither appeared to work. Time to take five minutes make sure yours are working properly, no? We’ll wait till you’re done.
As flames and smoke spread in the building, the mother gathered her children at a second-storey window.
By the time firefighters arrived, responding to a neighbour’s 911 call, she had thrown six of her children into a snowbank about five metres below, and then jumped with her youngest child in her arms.
“By doing what she did, she saved her family,” said paramedic Bart Paranello. “She saved her kids. She’s a hero.”
You can say that again. Seven times.
Geekdom is in mourning, ladies and gentlemen: Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons and Dragons, the granddaddy of all role-playing games, has failed his saving throw against death and not so much as a Resurrection spell will bring him back. The geek world is a little smaller and a lot less interesting today.
Ladies and gentlemen, there is genius and then there is Genius.
Einstein. Descartes. Plato. Albert Martin.
The great-grandfather from Benfleet in the UK has invented perhaps the greatest shopping-related accessory in the history of forever; shopping bag suspenders.
“When you carry plastic bags your fingers go numb, you keep moving the bags to different fingers but eventually you drop your bags and lose all your shopping.
“I decided I would make a harness with two hooks to hang your bags on instead. I find it comfortable to carry two bags on each side.
“There’s a strap over your shoulders with a hook on either end to carry your shopping and a strap across the back to stop you losing your bags if you lean forward…”
Mr Martin said: “We made it in the garage. My wife got her sewing machine out and away we went…
“You can carry your shopping and wipe your nose, eat fish and chips or talk on the phone at the same time.”It’s great for mums holding their children’s hands - you could even hold a baby at the same time as carrying your shopping.”
Mr Martin is so confident in his invention that he’s obtained a patent and conservatively estimates that he will make his first million before his 90th birthday. And we at TeenyManolo can only applaud and say: where do we place an order? In typical fashion, it looks like the celebrities have already got their orders in advance:
We can’t keep the whole blogosphere to ourselves, and we can’t put these topics any better than these guys did, so we are simply handing you a heaping helping of links from around the parentblogosphere and instructing you to enjoy them responsibly. Post in moderation. Wait one half-hour before swimming or operating heavy machinery.
Mini-Me fashion designers from Harper’s Bazaar (Sassybella) Mini Lagerfeld? The corruption of innocence was never so fabulous, darling.
Prepare for the Monday Melee! (Fracas) Your syllabic resonant consonants will never be the same.
Rosette Nebula (Maya’s Granny) My God! It’s full of stars!
Heart-Shaped Nebula (Smoke & Mirrors) What’s at the heart of the universe?
Notes to a Stressed Past Self (Work it, Mom!) Now who do we get to deliver it?
Tadpolecast (Petite Anglaise) The Tadpole sings in tongues.
Are You Kidding Me? (WhiteTrash Mom) St. Mary’s Academy of Stupidity
Back in My Day, a Man Was a Man and a Stroller Was a Stroller (dadsmacker) and we had to tame them ourselves, uphill in the snow
Which Celebrities are Packing a Passenger? (Celebrity Baby Scoop) And Colin Farrell has alibis for all of them
Wheel Chairs for Iraqi Kids (lilSugar) Donations accepted
Lessons from a High School Dropout (Fluttering Butterflies) Some lessons you learn too late
Bra-vo! (Kvetch Blog) Somebody’s girl has a head start on the superfantastic life
This is How New Parents Spend Friday Night (dooce) The human brain goes missing when it comes in close proximity to a chubby baby
It’s easy enough to live it up, given infinite amounts of cash; there are even expensive consultants to ensure you have a good time. As the lovely and perspicacious Glinda noted yesterday, it’s much more challenging to get out and enjoy entertainment, outings, fine foods, vacations, elegant clothing and other indulgences when you’re acutely non-prosperous (”poor”).
If these things are to your taste, you will have to apply your cunning brain and the grease of your very elbow, and you will surprisingly often find that these are enough. The following manifesto perfectly articulates this. It’s been delicately lifted from the book Frugal Indulgents: How to Cultivate Decadence When Your Age and Salary are Under Thirty, by Kera Bolonik and Jennifer Griffin, which we highly recommend to all. Naturally, we here at TeenyManolo are not ageist (and we may even be over thirty!) so we suggest these are applicable for frugals of all ages.
THE FRUGAL INDULGENT MANIFESTO
Frugal Indulgents celebrates liberation from capital:
True bouviessence (glamour at all times for all occasions) is,
believe it or not, independent of money.
There are certain basic principles that apply to every aspect
of life as a Frugal Indulgent.
These concern behaviour and attitude.
Before we begin, we feel it is important that you know where we’re coming from,
so we’ve penned the Frugal Indulgent Manifesto for your reading pleasure.
Follow these rules, and relish your imminently grand lifestyle.
* This post has been stolen wholesale from one of my other sites, where it lay pining like a neglected Cambodian orphan until being plucked from obscurity and adopted into the dazzlingly glamorous family of the Manolosphere.
Continuing our theme of “Grownups at Play” from the Friday Caption Contest, I couldn’t resist passing this along from Gawker; it’s art! It’s a protest! It’s comedy! It’s tragedy! It’s a Flashfrozen-mob!
It’s ImprovEverywhere.com’s 200-person strong motionless event at Grand Central Station, and it’s bizarre, beautiful, and hilarious. More grownups should have the courage to do something just because it’s fun, and maybe a little because it’s weird, too. Would you do this?
There’s nothing quite like your first time. The awkward baby steps, the nervous hesitations, the tender care and attention. The hockey rink staff watching with tears in their eyes.
Or is that just Canadians?
From the Kingston Whig-Standard:
Expecting a Saturday morning departure, [Captain Dave] Perry had booked the ice at the Gananoque Recreation Centre for yesterday afternoon so he and his four-year-old son, Mitchell, could spend an hour playing hockey [before he left for Afghanistan with the Canadian Armed Forces]. Told that he was leaving yesterday morning instead, he called the rink to cancel and explained why.
Sue Smith, who books ice time at the arena, told him not to worry. She moved existing bookings around on Thursday afternoon so father and son could have 90 minutes to themselves, shooting pucks at a couple of real nets. Smith only charged Perry a few dollars for the time.
“[The arena staff] were great,” Perry said yesterday as he and the other soldiers waited to board the bus that was taking them to Trenton.
“He’s never played hockey before but it was something that I really wanted to do with him before I left.”
Smith said she never gave a second’s thought to clearing the schedule when she heard that Perry was shipping out early for his nine-month tour.
“I thought it was important that he have that memory, and seeing the two of them out there was so cute,” she said.
“It was a special moment for them, and I’m glad we were able to help him out.”
Something for the care package? How about hockey puck gumballs?
