Nashville

For those of you that were looking for me over the past few days, I apologize for not being around, but I had to go to Nashville. I was presenting my research there at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research. This was my first time in a "red state," so it was an adventure to be sure. So, for all interested - strap in because it's gonna be a hella long entry I reckon!

September 23 - The Opulence of Opryland

The conference was held at the Gaylord Opryland resort in Nashville. I know, try not to laugh, but that's what it's called. Apparently Gaylord was some wealthy guy. Steve T tried looking him up on the web, but details were hard to find. At any rate, the hotel is a resort to be sure. It's a fully enclosed mini-world with forests and waterfalls about (again, this is all indoors - think BioDome). This was all a bit much, but it was infinitely better than the country music singers awaiting me after getting off the plane and the shuttle bus driver that decided we should all listen to some sort of Bible-thumping fundamentalist...I don't even know what it was.

The highlight of the first day was getting to see the Vine Lady who strolled around the shopping area with a myriad of suggestive poses. I decided to take a picture of her and when I did, she mounted a nearby lamp post and proceeded to caress it, well, intimately. Apparently the lamp post wasn't doing it for her, so she approached me (email me if you want the 128 MB video file) and, well yeah, she wanted to lick me.

September 24 - Wild Ride

What's great about the ASBMR meeting is that it's backed by a lot of money. You've got exhibitors pushing all kinds of expensive drugs and equipment to counter osteoporosis. To entice you they give away free stuff like cookies, frozen yougurt, smoothies, ice cream, engraved pens, and plush osteoclasts. Gotta love big Pharma! But of course, when the day ends and the exhibit hall closes, reality sets in. Chris, Steve T. and I went to Wild Horse Saloon for dinner on Saturday and the atmosphere was pretty cool, but then the line dancing started and the country music got louder and I began to miss the north something fierce.

The next stop was a little bar around the corner were Chris, Steve T. and I had some drinks. Soon after our arrival the bar owner asked if we could condense ourselves to accomomdate a "party." The party soon arrived and it seemed to be headed by a brunette. She had a bulky guy who looked like Mr. Clean with her and he dimmed the lights around her. Chris and Steve T. suspected the brunette was famous. I was too sick from the country music to notice. Chris then suggested I take a picture of her so we could look her up on the web. Well, that attempt failed (see Mr. Clean's intervention behind Chris). Chris then decided to be direct with him and it turns out he's super nice (and one of her guitar players). He told us the brunette was Gretchen Wilson. Gretchen currently has the #2 country song in the nation. It turns out, though, that's Gretchen is, in addition to being a red-neck, a bitch. She refused to allow picture taking or to give autographs even to two guys heading out to Iraq the following day. Still, when she saw me trying to snap pictures of her, she gave me a long, deep smile and, well yeah, she wanted to lick me.

September 25 - The General Jackson

The highlight of Sunday night was a social event on the General Jackson showboat. Basically all the science geeks from the conference get on a big paddle boat and set sail for a couple of hours on the Mississippi. The key aspects of this event are the open bar and the god-awful dancing. Much to my dismay the open bar consisted of only beer. My attempts to swindle some vodka out of the bartenders failed and even Captain Morgan wouldn't give it up for me (rare indeed). So, I was forced to drink soda all night long.

Sadly, some of the most enjoyable experiences on the General must not be spoken of here as they may incriminate me and affect my career. Nevertheless, it was great to see Bob rockin' it on the dance floor and even the chair of my supervisory committee, Sandy Masur, was there. Towards the end of the night I was snapping some pictures and this girl (see right, the younger one) came over to me and said, "That's right. Now's the time to take those incriminating pictures of people you work with!" I turned to see her adjusting her camera phone to take a picture of me. Startled, I responded, "But you don't even know me!" She snapped the picture anyway, so, well yeah, she wanted to lick me.

September 26 - Poster Session

Monday was my "big day" as I present my research in the form of two posters. The downside to this was that I was standing in an exhibit hall for three hours. By this time I had also developed a cold. At first I thought I was just allergic to Nashville, or the south, or Big Pharma, but it got pretty rough and I'm still not fully better. The reason for my illness I'm sure is because of the wacked out climate control in the Opryland. Some rooms were down-right freezing and then you head outside and it's 80 degrees. Recipe for disaster my friends, recipe for disaster. At any rate, there was a lot of positive feedback on my posters, mainly from attractive females who...yup, wanted to lick me.

Hope you all enjoyed my summary. The next stop is Boston, MA with Triple G. this Friday.

Family Guy

Some time ago I took a quiz to see whch family guy character I was. Well, I just recovered the result:

Google Knows Failure

I'm sure we all can agree that Google is the best search engine on the web. It's known for getting you the most relevant pages in the quickest amount of time. Well, here's an exercise for all you Google fans. Go to Google and type in "failure" as your search term and see what the #1 web hit is. It's funny because it's true. :)

Tilt!

So, I organized a friendly poker night at my place after having great fun with an impromptu game when my college friends visited. This time I had a bunch of friends from my lab over and we played Hold'em for a few hours. The night was tons of fun and lots of unexpectedness. Some of the more inexperienced players won quite a lot of chips while some of the more experienced players struggled with some awful hands and bizzare betting. The most bizzare aspect of the game was the ridiculous board cards. Case in point - the flop pictured above. This sort of thing happened all night. At any rate, I'm going to try and hold poker night at least once a month, maybe twice. Game On!

This is for those of you sadists out there that wanted to see just what a "pinning" for a fractured bone looks like. Basically they insert two or more pieces of metal into your finger to position the broken piece to heal. In this picture, the top pin has been removed, but you can see the longer one protruding from the tip of my middle finger. In three weeks the doctor will take a pair of pliers and pull it out (without painkillers). Huzzah!

Whose City Is It Anyway?

Most people know by now that the nifty songs they play during movie trailers very often turn out to not be on the soundtrack, let alone in the movie. We all remember the cool piece in the Two Towers trailer right? (it was the Requiem for a Dream music). As much as I hate this, I hate it even more when a special piece is created for a trailer and not obtainable anywhere. Case in point, the trailer song from Sin City. You'll find it nowhere in the movie and not in the soundtrack at all. And yet, if you know anything about Sin City, you know that that music is a strong identifier of the movie. They even play it on the menu screen of the DVD. Of course, the song was recorded independently of Sin City. It's a song called "Cells" and perfomed by a group called The Servant. Problem is, the song is not as it appeared in the trailer...there are lyrics...lyrics that have nothing to do with Sin City. Apparently, somebody commissioned an instrumental-only version for the Sin City theme song and decided to not make it available publically. As if this wasn't bad enough, it gets worse. Take a visit to the theater and see Transporter 2. Towards the end of the movie, out of nowhere, they start playing the song. My heart nearly arrested - here was the instrumental Sin City theme song in another movie! This is unacceptable. There should be a law against re-using unique songs in other movies (i.e., Van Wilder also fades to credits with "Orange County" which was originally the fade out song from the movie, yes, Orange County). Still, I thought there'd be an upside and that this would mean you could get the song from the Transporter 2 soundtrack. Well, you can't. Like some kind of sick joke, the soundtrack has the song, but in its original form (with lyrics) even though this form is NEVER played in ANY movie. Somebody needs to pay for this. Anonymous tips welcomed. In the meantime, if you want the song, the version with lyrics is still pretty good. You'll have to fish on the web for it though - the Transporter 2 soundtrack doesn't exist in the US (try looking up "Le Transporteur 2" in iTunes). Don't even get me started on this though. If I keep digging I may just have to be institutionalized.

17 Million "Dollar" Moment

When most American's think of million dollar contracts in the professional sports industry (can I call it an industry? what exactly are they building?) they naturally think of baseball players and football players (A-Rod makes $25 million+ a year). Of course, this is an Ameri-centric view as other sports do exist and are even more popular (taking the world as a whole) than baseball and football combined. Soccer is a prime example of this and the English Premiership is fiscally no slouch. Thus, highly talented soccer players like Michael Owen (a personal favorite) are of substantial worth. Recently Owen was bought by Newcastle for a club record of around £17 million. To wrap your mind around that, it converts to more than $31 million USD. The 2nd most expensive purchase was £15 million for Shearer (also by Newcastle) in 1996. Money spent on these kinds of purchases have a bit of a different meaning than the reported sums for baseball players, but think of it this way, if A-Rod were a free agent right now, would any team pay $31 million+ for him?