For Neighbor John, Jon (CJW), Beal

Last night, Vic and I made a very important decision. It took much discussion and a lot of back and forth. Basically, we were stuck in the age-old dilemma: New episode of Law & Order: SVU or new episode of Rob and Big?

Very different choices, to be sure. On the one hand, there are 75 episodes of SVU on during the week, but only ONE of them is brand new (Tuesday nights, last night) And then MTV's scheduling geniuses will undoubtedly play the episode of Rob and Big about 800 times over the next week, probably culminating in a marathon on Sunday where they show it over and over again, interspersed with a True Life here and there.

Having said that, we chose SVU. As much as I love them, there is no real substitute for Chris Meloni when he's in Rage at All of Society mode. We did catch the last few minutes of Rob and Big, though, and discovered:

They went to turtle racing at Brennan's! Which, if you live in Los Angeles and have not been, is fantastic. Good luck getting in now. Actually, it IS Rob and Big so you might not have a problem (love ya).

I tried to find a clip for you, John, (CJW), and Beal, but this is the only one that's up from last night's episode. If one shows up with the crew at Brennan's, I will repost- promise.



And now a little treat for the rest of you. Our big night at Brennan's about a year ago, before NJ moved to Japan and Jon moved back to DC for law school, is most memorable not for the turtle racing but for the conversation that followed between myself, Vic and Beal. Beal was telling us a story about a time she went camping with her friends. I love Beal to pieces but for the majority of her stories I tend to think "this is going to end in either a cornfield or a meth lab".

So she's explaining about this disastrous camping trip- one of the points being that none of her friends brought any water, just beer, and how absurd it was to go without WATER for a camping trip and she says it was so bad that she and her friends had to brush their teeth using the cooler water. Except she mumbled, "Had to brush our teeth in the cooler water" and I was SURE, a few beers in myself, that she said "had to brush our teeth in cooter water" and I looked at Vic who also looked at her strangely so then I was CONVINCED she said cooter water but it's Beal so I tried to shrug it off except the mental image was so... you know. I had to ask. "Did you say, cooter water?"

She looked HORRIFIED. I insisted that Vic misheard her too. And instead of agreeing, Vic just cocks her head and said "Actually I thought she said 'cougar' water" and makes this kind of paw clawing the air motion (if you see her, please ask her to do it for you. It almost killed us) which makes even LESS sense- i mean at least cooter water sounds like a legit, gross, thing. But cougar water?

Anyway. Beal maintains that it isn't the fact that we misheard her so completely that was so funny/appalling but rather that I had just shrugged it off as a Beal thing.

AAAAANNND SCENE.

For Jon...

Whose love of the British royals is both well documented and hilarious.

Queen Elizabeth II Becomes Britain's Oldest-Ever Monarch

THURSDAY DECEMBER 20, 2007 12:30 PM EST

By Tim Nudd

Queen Elizabeth II Photo by: INF

At 81 years and 243 days old, Queen Elizabeth II becomes the Britain's oldest-ever monarch Thursday, passing Queen Victoria.

Buckingham Palace has calculated her age down to the hour and says Elizabeth will officially set the new record at around 5 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time, or noon EST, the Associated Press reports.

Elizabeth was born on April 21, 1926. She ascended to the throne in February 1952, when she was 25 years old.

She still has some way to go if she is to set another record held by Victoria – that of longest-reigning monarch. Victoria became queen at 18 and reigned for 63 years and seven months. Elizabeth would pass that mark on Sept. 9, 2015, when she would be 89 years old.

Elizabeth became a grandmother for the eighth time on Monday, when Prince Edward and his wife Sophie welcomed a baby boy.

For Jon

For generations, or at least since 1989, students everyone have been tormented by a specific brand of teacher.

This teacher has the best of intentions. To educate, to inspire. Honestly, teachers and professors- educators of all ilk are special creatures. They deserve our respect and full, undivided attention (not to mention a decent pay raise in the urban sectors). But they are only human. And even the best of intentions sometimes fall prey to...the movie moment.

One thing is to blame. Witness:





Poor Jon was the most recent victim, this time it was one of his law professors who in the span of one class, spouted poetry, let a few kids perform a five minute rap song, and then proceeded to make a 20 minute speech about the power of law and how they're all going to change the world. Jon said it was super poetic and philosophic. The room burst into applause and here is Jon's own take on the last few minutes:

"But the BEST PART is that as the class is exploding in applause he takes his speech, smartly puts in in his folio, brings the folio up to the breast pocket on his suit and marches out of the class...DURING THE APPLAUSE. I'm still pretty traumatized. It was honestly a movie moment, and I was really hoping to go through life without having one of those."

Poor guy.

Ew! for Jon (CJW) and Tyra Banks

Dolphins save surfer from becoming shark’s bait

A pod of bottlenose dolphins helped protect the severely injured boarder

By Mike Celizic

TODAYShow.com contributor

updated 6:57 a.m. PT, Thurs., Nov. 8, 2007

Surfer Todd Endris needed a miracle. The shark — a monster great white that came out of nowhere — had hit him three times, peeling the skin off his back and mauling his right leg to the bone.

That’s when a pod of bottlenose dolphins intervened, forming a protective ring around Endris, allowing him to get to shore, where quick first aid provided by a friend saved his life.

“Truly a miracle,” Endris told TODAY’s Natalie Morales on Thursday.

The attack occurred on Tuesday, Aug. 28, just before 11 a.m. at Marina State Park off Monterey, Calif., where the 24-year-old owner of Monterey Aquarium Services had gone with friends for a day of the sport they love. Nearly four months later, Endris, who is still undergoing physical therapy to repair muscle damage suffered during the attack, is back in the water and on his board in the same spot where he almost lost his life.

“[It] came out of nowhere. There’s no warning at all.

Maybe I saw him a quarter second before it hit me. But no warning. It was just a giant shark,” Endris said. “It just shows you what a perfect predator they really are.”

The shark, estimated at 12 to 15 feet long, hit him first as Endris was sitting on his surfboard, but couldn’t get its monster jaws around both surfer and surfboard. “The second time, he came down and clamped on my torso — sandwiched my board and my torso in his mouth,” Endris said.

That attack shredded his back, literally peeling the skin back, he said, “like a banana peel.” But because Endris’ stomach was pressed to the surfboard, his intestines and internal organs were protected.

The third time, the shark tried to swallow Endris’ right leg, and he said that was actually a good thing, because the shark’s grip anchored him while he kicked the beast in the head and snout with his left leg until it let go.

The dolphins, which had been cavorting in the surf all along, showed up then. They circled him, keeping the shark at bay, and enabled Endris to get back on his board and catch a wave to the shore.

Our finned friends
No one knows why dolphins protect humans, but stories of the marine mammals rescuing humans go back to ancient Greece, according to the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society.

A year ago in New Zealand, the group reports, four lifeguards were saved from sharks in the same way Endris was — by dolphins forming a protective ring.

Though horribly wounded, Endris said he didn’t think he was going to die. “Actually, it never crossed my mind,” he told Morales.

It did, though, cross the minds of others on the beach, including some lifeguards who told his friend, Brian Simpson, that Endris wasn’t going to make it.

Simpson is an X-ray technician in a hospital trauma center, and he’d seen badly injured people before. He had seen Endris coming in and knew he was hurt.

“I was expecting him to have leg injuries,” he told Morales. “It was a lot worse than I was expecting.”

Blood was pumping out of the leg, which had been bitten to the bone, and Endris, who lost half his blood, was ashen white. To stop the blood loss, Simpson used his surf leash as a tourniquet, which probably saved his life.

“Thanks to this guy,” Endris said, referring to Simpson, who sat next to him in the TODAY studio, “once I got to the beach, he was calming me down and keeping me from losing more blood by telling me to slow my breathing and really just be calm. They wouldn’t let me look at my wounds at all, which really helped.

A medivac helicopter took him to a hospital, where a surgeon had to first figure out what went where before putting him back together.

“It was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle,” Endris said.

Six weeks later, he was well enough to go surfing again, and the place he went was back to Marina State Park. It wasn’t easy to go back in the water.

“You really have to face your fears,” he told Morales. “I’m a surfer at heart, and that’s not something I can give up real easily. It was hard. But it was something you have to do.”

The shark went on its way, protected inside the waters of the park, which is a marine wildlife refuge. Endris wouldn’t want it any other way.

“I wouldn’t want to go after the shark anyway,” he said. “We’re in his realm, not the other way around.”

International Shark Attack Research Foundation: Learn more about the organization and their work to prevent shark attacks by visiting this site.