Friday Golf at SXSW Anyone?

After skipping last year’s SXSW because of panel and conference burnout, I’m heading back down to Austin for this year’s get-together. I look forward to throwing back beers with anyone who happens to also be going.

Before the conference gets started though, my MSNBC colleague Ben Tesch (B-Tizzle in the inner circles) and I are heading out for a round of golf at Falconhead. The tee time is at 11:12am this Friday and we have two extra spots. Anyone up for some hackery?

Fantasy Football Spot Up For Grabs

Once again, the blogosphere’s trashtalkingest and most reprehensible fantasy football league, the IKNFL, is increasing its roster. We’re expanding to two leagues of 14 teams each this year, and there is an extra spot up for grabs. Past champions include D. Keith Robinson (2004), Jeff Croft (2005), and Wilson Miner (2006).

Personal transformations have been known to occur in winners, as can be witnessed by Keith’s opening of the highly successful Blue Flavor design and development studio, Jeff’s relocation from a rural chicken farm in Kansas to the city of Seattle, and Wilson’s remarkable metamorphosis from early Swiffer mop prototype to ladykilling heartthrob (see below).

Before IKNFL Championship:

After IKNFL Championship:

The IKNFL is $80 to join but the payouts are equally rich. We include individual defensive players and use a normalized scoring system that ensures every position on the field can score big. There’s a lot of trash talk so make sure you can take the heat before applying.

SO… if you’d like to join, all you have to do is leave a comment below requesting membership. As a simple test of your football knowledge, name who should be the #2 pick of the draft and why.

Is It Okay To Eat 50 Year Old Cough Drops?

So after my post about the disappearance of Pine Bros. cough drops, Freckles discovered there was an eBay auction offering up one unopened box of the honey-flavored variety. The rub being that they were from a production run in the 1950s.

I placed a bid of $6, won the auction, and my 50-year-old box of cough drops is now en route. So the question is: what is the shelf life on an item like this and are they safe to eat? If yes, I will eat them. If no, I will just keep them as memorabilia.

Any scientists out there in the audience? What happens to honey and glycerin over the course of 50 years? I have actually heard that honey is the only food in the world that never spoils.

Vote Your Conscience on Facebook

Our superstar new intern, Rob “Double Tall Non-Fat” Goodlatte, just whipped out a Newsvine election widget for use on Facebook. If you have a Facebook account and want to express an endorsement for the 2008 Election, head over to the page below… it only takes a second:

Newsvine Election ’08 Widget for Facebook

This is the first in a series of excellent election-related Newsvine features coming very shortly. Stay tuned.

Desperately Seeking Pine Bros.

How are these brothers still around? Punks.

Everyone knows cough drops are wolves in sheeps’ clothing. Pretending to cure you of your esophageal ills, these sugary lozenges usually do nothing more than stimulate your salivary glands into wetting your throat down until the next dose. The better they taste, the more you eat, and the less frequently you think about how crappy you actually feel.

When I was little, the undisputed taste leader in cough drops were Pine Bros (also known as “Pine Brothers”) chewy throat lozenges. Actually, back then, I don’t even think they were called “throat lozenges”… just “cough drops”. Short and sweet. They came in Honey flavor and Cherry flavor and had no medicinal value whatsoever. Just soft, chewy, long-lasting, and fabulous on the tastebuds. We ate them like candy. Awesome candy.

I forgot all about Pine Bros. cough drops for about 15 years between the late 80s and around 2002 when I unexpectedly found a reference to them on the internet and had to have them again. Through medichest.com, I was able to order several cases at very reasonable prices. The recipes had changed slightly and the lozenges were now being sold as “glycerine based zinc supplements” by a different company — with nary an actual Pine brother to be found — but they were still great. I ended up buying several more cases until the product suddenly disappeared off the face of the earth a couple of years ago.

Since that time, subsequent product searches have come up empty. There are even posts on eBay offering top dollar for any existing supply.

… which leads to my two questions:

1. Does anyone know exactly what happened to these things and why?
2. What is currently the most widely accepted substitute for Pine Bros. cough drops in the world today? I’ve recently gotten hip to Airborne Gummy Throat Lozenges which are pretty damned close to the real deal. The upside is that they taste every bit as good as the original, but the downsize is that they are a whopping $3 a pack and you have to pick out the nasty licorice ones from the otherwise great flavors of honey, orange, cherry, grape, and lime. I have also heard that Grether’s Pastilles and even Weight Watchers, believe it or not, are making decent substitutes for the originals. Anyone tried these?

Introducing the Newsvine Question of the Day

One question per day. 150 words or less per answer. One answer per person.

Those are the only rules for the freshly announced Newsvine Question of the Day competition, and thanks to the nice people at Nike, each winner this week will receive an iPod Nano and Nike + iPod Sport Kit as a victory keepsake. Did you know Nike means victory in Greek?

We’re very excited about the launch of the Newsvine QOTD because it’s the first in a series of “lighter” activities we’re prepping for debut on the ‘Vine. Sometimes you’re just not in the mood to read and debate articles and essays and would rather spend a minute or two here and there doing less time-intensive things. The QOTD is designed to be read quickly and answered quickly. We’ll see how it evolves.

So head on over to the QOTD landing page (http://questions.newsvine.com) and answer the first question. It’s about the public figure below:

24 Is Back — Please Kill The President

So the best show on TV — 24 — is back for a sixth season. If you missed last night’s two hour premiere, try and download it somewhere and then tune in tonight for hours three and four. This season, like all others before it, starts out with the sort of high drama that draws you in almost from the opening minute. I won’t give anything away for those who may have missed it, but I do have some concerns about season six so far:

1. First and foremost, who the hell decided to cast D.B. Woodside (“Wayne Palmer”) as the President of the United States? Especially after last season’s great performance by Gregory Itzin. Woodside has been by far and away the worst actor in six seasons of the show and his portrayal of the president is laughable. Chloe O’Brien would be more believable. The actor’s previous career highlight was a largely inconsequential role in Buffy The Vampire Slayer. The only rationale I can think of is that 24’s writers sometimes try to mirror things to real life and since we now have a less-able relative of a former president in the White House, maybe they thought it would be cool to do the same thing on the show. Bottom line: I hope Wayne Palmer is dead before the end of tonight.
2. Early in the premiere I grew a bit worried about how Muslims would be portrayed throughout the season. In the past, 24 has not shied away from casting religious and ethnic minorities in questionable light and this season started out no different with Islamic radicals and suicide bombings dominating the plot. You can already see, however, that there will be efforts to separate these sorts of people from the U.S. Muslim population as a whole… and that’s good. For instance, one of the past terror leaders has already “turned peaceful”. Hopefully, by the end of the season, the public will come away with a higher opinion of U.S. Muslims and not a lower one. I think it is the show’s responsibility to keep the portrayal honest and socially constructive.
3. I love seeing Kal Penn of “Harold & Kumar” fame in the cast! Although he plays a serious role as a complicit instrument of terrorism, I can’t stop picturing him with a joint in his mouth. Go Kumar!

Between the start of 24 and the restarting of the third season of Lost in a few weeks, 2007’s TV season is off to a great start.

What’s In Al Gore’s Bookmarks Bar?

I have this really peculiar habit of always examining what is in the Bookmarks Bar of people’s browsers. I do it when I’m looking at someone’s computer screen, when someone sends me a screenshot which includes their browser, and even on TV when I see a browser somewhere in the frame. You can tell a lot about someone by what they’ve decided to drag in there.

So tonight, I was watching Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” on DVD and about halfway through the movie, they cut to a scene of Gore typing on his Powerbook. For a split second they showed his web browser and I hit pause and snapped this picture:

I’m not sure exactly what URL that is, but it appears to be one of the results from this Google Images search.

I don’t know why I think this is worth posting about, but it just seemed weird to me. You can tell by the rest of his Bookmarks Bar (not shown) that he hasn’t customized much else, but he apparently felt the need to have photos of him on the web one click away at all times.

So what’s in your Bookmarks Bar? Post screenshots in the comments using a standard IMG tag…

The Best Two Blocks You’ll Ever See

Chances are you’ve heard about or seen 5′ 7″ Nate Robinson’s block of 7′ 6″ Yao Ming from this Monday night. Nate’s a fellow Washington Husky so everyone in Seattle has seen him perform some crazy aerial stunts on both the basketball court and the football field but for a guy a full TWO FEET SHORTER than the tallest man in the NBA to issue a rejection like the one below is pretty amazing. Here’s the Chinese version, just for kicks:

Now that’s a great block, BUT, last week I think I saw probably the best football block I’ve ever seen in the West Virginia/Pittsburgh game. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be on YouTube, but ESPN has it inline with the recap of the game. 100 times more impressive at full TV resolution, but man… those two punt coverage guys go down like dominoes. And not a bad runback either!

Condo Kismet

I generally don’t write much about real estate, but those who have visited Mike Industries over the last couple of months may have noticed a few posts about the housing market; the cause of which being, I’ve been looking for a new place.

Well happy, happy day. I just bought a place! I wouldn’t call the back story miraculous or anything, but I do find it extremely satisfying that after months of going through the standard channels of condo shopping (an agent, e-mail alerts, RSS, etc etc etc), it was a simple post on this very blog that set into motion the chain of events that led to a happy purchase.

Here’s what happened:

A week after writing this entry, I got a call from a friend of mine, Jason Grove (Thanks Jason!), who had read the post and said he knew a friend who was about to put her place on the market. I was skeptical because without seeing pictures first, chances are I wouldn’t be into it. I arranged to head over there the following evening not expecting much. Turns out the place was really great and the sellers were very nice people as well.

The place was scheduled to go on the market in three days so I made one more visit the next day to check it out under brighter conditions. I ended up making an informal offer that day, and long story short, we were able to come to an agreement about a week later which cut out the 6% realtor fees and let us both quit worrying about the Seattle real estate market for the foreseeable future. Everybody’s happy.

A few details on the place: 2 bedrooms. 2 baths. 1188 square feet. Lower Queen Anne neighborhood. Four blocks from Newsvine. Walls of windows to the north and the west overlooking Puget Sound and Magnolia… so yes, the Mike Industries Live Cam will return to its functional state in a couple of weeks. The only downside to the place that needs immediate remedying is the popcorn ceiling. Any advice on how best to remove this stuff (cost, time, safety, contractor recs, etc)?

It’s weird that a simple 15-minute blog post can have such a dramatic impact on your life sometimes. It’s even weirder that I’m going in for the inspection tomorrow and the seller sent — in her absence — a friend to let me in. That friend’s name? Mike Davidson.