Two things that absolutely, positively must be shared:

First off, is there no better phrase to break out than “C’mon baby, Ike loves ya baby.”? In context, its a beauty. But who knew that Ike Turner held the key to peace in the Middle East?

Also, I think this needs to be an Olympic event. Really, the possibilites speak for themselves.

Early crowd favorite? Juarez Griffin.

In a strange series of events that has me feeling like one of those sci-fi geeks that waits outside movie theaters, I finished Nick Hornby’s newest book, “A Long Way Down”, yesterday. It went on sale in the States today. While I can tell from Amazon reviews, and from the girlfriend who lent it to me when she was done reading it that I’m probably not even in the top 100 “first non-Brits” to read the book, I still feel like I’m holding some kind of secret. It really was a good book. I think this is the fifth book of his I’ve read, carefully picking out the ones others have told me didn’t suck, and I think its fourth on my list of favorites of his, though “About A Boy” and “High Fidelity” are certainly helped by having damn fine movies made out of them. (“Fever Pitch” doesn’t really count in the movie category, seeing how the original, British version took a whole bunch of liberties, from what I remember, and the Americanized version makes me want to scrape my corneas out with a dull paring knife. Really, as if they don’t take the Red Sox beejer-fest far enough, they have to throw out Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore as stars. In fact, forget the paring knife and get me some varnish and a little steel wool.) But as I was saying, this book is definitely up there. In fact, I’m almost looking forward to there being a movie based on it, judging by the “2 for 3” in the success department (and technically, the British “Fever Pitch” probably bumps that up to a “2.75 out of 4”, even).