Vegan Thanksgiving

Whether you're thinking about going vegetarian/vegan or just want to kill some time in between refreshing your Myspace page, I invite you to check out two new articles on the compassionate way to celebrate Thanksgiving.

Start with Katie's (front page) article from this Sunday's Free Lance Star:

No bones about it

Then check out my newest entry on the Huffington Post:

I Beg Your Pardon: Give Animals Something to be Thankful for this Thanksgiving

As always, questions, comments, and rude remarks are welcome.

A Message from Woodstock

The amazing documentary Woodstock will be shown on vh1 classic today at 4:30 pm. Set your DVRs, folks. It's 3 1/2 hours of awesomeness. The following is an announcement that the man pictured below delivered to a crowd of 500,000 people at the original Woodstock in 1969. It is serious.

"Wheat Germ, Holly has your bag with your medicine. Please meet at the information booth as soon as you can, please. Helen Savage, please call your father at the Motel Glory in Woodridge. Helen Savage, please call your father at the Motel Glory in Woodridge. And the warning that I've recieved, you may take it with however many grains of salt you wish, that the brown acid that is circulating around us is not specifically too good. Uh, it's suggested that you do stay away from that. Plus it's your own trip, so be my guest. But please be advised that there is a warning on that one, okay?"

Somebody buy this car

I gotta hand it to Mike Phirman of Hard 'N Phirm for coming up with the most creative way to market a car on eBay. According to Mike, his 93 Honda Accord is "one of the most famous cars in America," having appeared in many movies and TV shows. Here are my favorite appearances from its unbelievable repertoire:

Spiderman 2

X-Men

King Kong

Fast and Furious 3: Tokyo Drift

Check out the eBay page for more hilarity.

I have Will Ferrell hair

Last Thursday Will Ferrell dropped by my workplace to plug his new movie, Stranger than Fiction. Whenever a big star like him is in the building, there are a few Bloomberg employees who somehow find out. Thursday was no exception. Hours before we taped the segment, another intern and I were bombarded by three such career sell outs. "Is Will Ferrell really coming today?" "Where do you guys tape?" "What time is he getting here?"

I wonder if Barack Obama donned an elf suit for a movie would there have been this much excitement for him?

Sadly, those three eager employees never saw Will. They found our green room and paced back and forth in front of it for awhile, pretending to take a tour of the floor ("And this is where Bloomberg radio is, you can see them doing a segment on air right now..."). But they missed his entrance and by the time they got into stalker position he was already in makeup. A couple of other people were able to ambush Will as soon as I brought him down our famous circular escalator. "Hey look, there's Will Ferrell!" a dopey sounding guy yelled as nonchalantly as possible (as if he wasn't waiting for him). He and his co-worker then ran up to Will with Talladega Nights pictures that they printed out from their desks. Will politely signed everything for them.

Talking to Will Ferrell was great because he puts everybody around him at ease. When I introduced myself he asked if we met before. I told him we met at an SNL after party a few weeks ago (the John C. Reilly show) and he remembered ("Oh yeah, upstairs, right?"). He then looked at my hair and asked if I was wearing a hat that night. I told him I wasn't, but that my hair was a lot shorter and he said, "Yeah, cuz I don't remember your hair being so curly." I guess he doesn't meet a lot of people with hair like his. I don't either. Unless I'm at Synagogue.

During our conversation, we talked about the opening of the movie and the impact that Borat would have on Stranger's box office numbers. He advocated that I buy a ticket to his movie and sneak into Borat. Saturday, I stupidly did the exact opposite, giving money to a movie that couldn't possibly need anymore and stealing from a movie that came in in a sad fourth. Shame on me, I know. But I promise the next time I run into Will Ferrell, I'll give him the 15 cents he would've earned had I paid to see his movie.

To make things even worse, Saturday was the first time I've ever been called out on buying senior citizen tickets. As usual, Katie and I went to the automated ticket machine and selected two senior tickets (total savings= $6). We confidently handed over our tickets to a portly, high-school aged Hispanic male. And he proceeded to inspect those fucking tickets like it was the most important job ever. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Nah ah. You got the wrong priced tickets." "What??? Where does it say that? There must be some mistake here!" "Right here (points to the $7.50 price). Right next to the word 'Senior.' You gotta take these back and get the right ones." Damnit! We've used senior tickets over 50 times and never had a problem. We always get a little scared when ticket takers look closely at the tickets and say, "Can I see some ID?" But as soon as we prove we're at least 17, that's the end of that. No more questions asked. And now this guy comes along like an elementary school hall monitor drunk with power. Well that's the last time you hear from us AMC Loews 34th St!

Election Results or Hockey Scores?

You decide!

p.s.- since when was Clarissa/Sabrina a conservative?

The world famous public radio program, The Sound of Young America, is rolling into NYC this Friday, November 10th for its first-ever live tapings! I'm excited that the guests include David Wain and Heather Lawless. There will be two shows, both at The Pit, and they promise to be great, so get your tickets now! Here's an important message from the host, Jesse Thorn.



In other news, thanks in part to my wonderful homestate of Virginia, it looks like the democrats will be taking control of the Senate! And the House is definitely ours! We'll worry about the White House in a few years. But for now, as a wise old man once said, "Two out of three ain't bad."

World Vegan Day

Today is World Vegan Day.

10 years ago you may have gotten away with using "it's just too hard" as your excuse for not going vegetarian or vegan. But with all the fake meats and vegan restaurants springing up all the time, you no longer have that excuse (especially if you're in NYC). If you are a compassionate person who is thinking about going vegetarian or vegan, there are many great resources all over the web. Cool Vegan is one. PeTA's website has recipes and a list of "accidentally vegan" items. And Happy Cow has the most extensive list of vegetarian and vegan restaurants that I've seen anywhere. And of course, you can always drop me a line if you want to hear living proof that going vegan is not hard.

If you plan on going vegan, you will get an onslaught of questions/stories from family, friends, and strangers. Some of the questions are good ones, most are not. Here are the most common ones I get, along with my responses.

-"What does that mean exactly?"
-It means I don't eat any animal products. I also don't wear any animal products, but some vegans have differing opinions on this issue.
-"So what can you eat?"
-A lot of things. If you have a healthy diet then my diet is probably pretty similar to yours, only I substitute meat and dairy with soy products (fake meats, tofu, soy milk, etc.).
-"So why did you go vegan? Why not just be a vegetarian?"
-Going vegetarian is a great first step, but it's only cutting out part of the problem. It's like if you were fed up with evil corporations so you boycotted Walmart but still smoked cigarettes. The truth is, the dairy industry is worse than the meat industry. Cows in the meat industry are put out of their misery much faster than dairy cows, who are raped and tortured for years before they are killed. Plus, veal is a byproduct of the dairy industry, so if you support dairy, you support veal. Maybe this will explain it better.
-"I get the dairy and meat issue, but why honey?"
-Honey is an animal product. The idea of veganism is that we don't support the exploitation of animals. It's pretty simple, but here's further explanation of the honey issue.
-"Well, I'm not a vegetarian, but I don't eat any red meat" or "I don't eat very much meat."
-That's great. Anything you can do to help is good. If you're concerned about health, reducing your meat and dairy intake is a great idea. But if you're concerned about the well being of animals, STOP EATING THEM. It's not hard.
-"I'm thinking about going vegan. I think I'm going to cut out milk first. Then cheese. Then products with milk in them, then..."
-The best way to do it is to make a firm decision and stick with it. Cutting out certain products one at a time will be much harder than just quitting cold turkey (nope, not intended).
-"But I've eaten meat for so long. It will be too hard at this point to quit."
-My dad recently became a vegetarian after eating meat for over 50 years. If he can do it, anybody can do it.
-"Don't you miss steak though?"
-No. I haven't eaten meat in 9 years. And I've been vegan for almost 2 years. Once you make the change (if you're serious about it) you know no other way. It becomes habit. From my own personal experience, the thought of eating meat never crosses my mind, so I can't miss it. If I were to think of meat, I wouldn't be able to get past how grotesque it is. Besides, vegan foods are so much more exciting.
-"I would like to go vegetarian, but my parents would get upset."
-Hmmm. Yeah... then you shouldn't go vegetarian. Stick to tradition.
-"My friend was a vegan/vegetarian for a week and then she got sick and had to go to the hospital and..."
-Your friend is an idiot. She probably had a horrible diet. The truth is a vegan diet (done the right way, of course) is the healthiest diet you can have. If you don't believe me, check out The China Study, the most comprehensive health study ever, that concluded, "People who ate the most animal-based foods got the most chronic disease" and "people who ate the most plant-based foods were the healthiest and tended to avoid chronic disease."


Still unconvinced? Then you're probably hopeless. Good luck with that heart attack.