Dispatches, thoughts, and miscellanea from writer Jon Konrath

Stupid Facts

  1. I like the new Coke can design. It’s cool.
  2. I’m trying to figure out how the impending Broadway musicians’ strike will actually affect me, since I’ve never been to a Broadway show and never really intend to.
  3. I almost bid on a 1976 Gremlin in Staten Island that was up to $300. I wanted to paint flames on it, with a roller and housepaint, and paint OFF THE PIGS on the back of it. And if I got pulled over by the cops, I would say I was a pork farmer.
  4. There seems to be some kind of national shortage of Levoxyl, a synthetic thyroid replacement. So I’ve been out of the shit for a few days now.
  5. Emil Goldfus (aka “Abel”), the NY-based Russian spy who was exchanged for Gary Powers, lived in the same apartment building as Norman Mailer when he was writing the spy novel Barbary Coast. They didn’t know each other, though.
  6. I have a chance to go to Hawaii for four days for $700. I am debating checking it out in April or May.
  7. It’s raining like a motherfucker out.
  8. I thought those Catherine Zeta Jones/T-Mobile ads were annoying, but now for some reason I find her incredibly hot. Maybe it’s because I keep going to their site every three minutes to see what is up with my Sidekick.
  9. The Cigar Corner, on the corner of 30th Ave and Steinway, sells Barely Legal magazine. No I did not buy it.
  10. There is a cheat in Grand Theft Auto – Vice City that changes all of the pedestrians into the cast of the Michael Jackson Thriller video: zombies, and an occasional red-leather MJ wannabe.
  11. After someone is killed in the gas chamber, their body has to be completely scrubbed with bleach before it can be handled.
  12. Only three US Presidents have cried in public while in office: William McKinley, William Taft, and George W. Bush.
  13. You can use vinyl dye (sold at car parts store for refinishing car interiors) to paint plastic parts like bezels of computer drives, keyboards, cases, etc.
  14. Diesel engines get better city mileage than highway, because heat makes diesel combustion more efficient.
  15. I have a beard again. I’ll try to take some pictures of it this time. [I’m glad I didn’t.]
  16. The acronym TWAIN (a scanner interface) stands for Technology Without An Interesting Name.
  17. The bible is the most shoplifted book in the USA. (Strange, considering how easy it is to get a free copy from the Gideons…)
  18. The first flushing toilet in a movie was in Psycho.
  19. I’m sick of writing these facts.