Monday, August 16, 2010

1,000 or 500,0000?



This morning at breakfast in response to Nora noticing that Emma was eating from a chipped bowl, Lydia wondered aloud how many plates or glasses break every day. And this is what we discussed for the remainder of breakfast. Well, what's your population unit, Lydia? The United States. My wife immediately said, "probably around a thousand."

This received a glare from me.

A thousand? What are you, some sort of sorceress that you can conjure that number from the air?? Let's think this through for crying out loud. Surely it's more than a thousand.

A thousand! In barely controlled rage, I immediately countercharged that Atlanta alone surely breaks over a thousand glasses, bowls, plates and so on in a single day, especially if one considers all the restaurants in the city. (Upon further reflection I retracted this countercharge as coming perilously close to the ravings of a mad man.)

We had to determine whether we're just discussing glasses, or whether we're discussing all serving ware (though obviously not plastic or paper). Yes, we were being inclusive.

Here's how I went about reasoning through the question. I figured there are about three hundred million people in the U.S., and that roughly translates to about fifty million households. I think that's substantially too low, but good grief it's best to be conservative in dealing with such delicate matters. I then asked Juli how many bowls or glasses we break as a family in a year. She thought about one per month. I thought this seemed high, and I think it's certainly higher than the average non-coordination-challenged family, but we stuck to that number. I confess I did enter into a mini shame-spiral, wondering whether we're an especially klutzy family, but the demands of the moment called for me to pull myself together.

Okay, so twelve broken items per family unit per year. And let's say that our number is average, though I suspect it's high compared to your average household--the kind of household in which people basically master the movement of their own bodies and not constantly drop their plates. Still. So that's, what, six hundred million broken items per year. Divide that number by 365 days and you have over 1.64 million broken bowls, glasses, and so on per day.

1.64 million.

A thousand broken items, Juli? Such profound off-the-markness begs the question, frankly, of how Juli is able to make out a grocery list. "Ok Mike, be sure to get a few tons of beans. You're making chili on Saturday."

I mean no disrespect, understand.

Still, 1.64 mil strikes me as far too high. That translates into one in every 182 persons breaking something every day? Is that possible? Are we really that uncoordinated as a race? Raccoons never break their glasses, it seems. Does our kitchenware industry even sell 1.64 million items per day? I mean, there aren't that many weddings.

So that made me think of another way of looking at it. I figured we should somehow secure from the glassware trade magazine the number of bowls and so on sold per day and then substantially discount that number. Surely the net number of bowls and so on is increasing due to population increase and general decadence, right? So it's not the case that every newly purchased item is replacing a broken item. But lots of discarded items surely break in the trash. We didn't decide whether this counts. I don't think it captures the spirit of Lydia's question. So what percentage of newly purchased bowls and glasses replace broken ones? I'd say....maybe ten percent. I think the rest are purchased when folks decide to change patterns or styles. But if it's only ten percent, then that means that millions upon millions of bowls and glasses are sold every day in the U.S. Can this be so? And if so, why haven't I invested earlier in this industry?

So from all this I scaled back the number from 1.64 million to 500,000.

Five hundred thousand is surely the correct number.

Surely.

Your job: 1. Praise my reasoning; 2. Confirm my conclusion.

Go.

61 comments:

Elisheba said...

My suspicion, actually, is that your first number was probably closer.

I found this book
http://books.google.com/books?id=w1HT3EDrXWoC&pg=PA115&dq=25%25+of+restaurant+tableware+broken+every+year&hl=en&ei=s_5pTJlthoGUB9SIifsJ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=broken%20each%20year&f=false

which claims that 25% of a restaurant's tableware is broken each year, and restaurants have a lot of tableware. Also, you have to account for cultural customs in which tableware is ceremonially broken, like Jewish weddings. My suspicion, however, is that the majority of broken tableware in America is broken in commercial establishments, because a lot of households employ one time disposable units of tableware, and/or get food from restaurants, but I can't find any statistics to support this in a 5 minute google search. I do know from a friend who went to a waterford crystal factory that any flawed dishes are broken on the spot, are we counting those?

Elisheba said...

By the way, re your comment about how there aren't that many weddings, there are about 6000 weddings a day in the U.S.

http://www.soundvision.com/info/weddings/statistics.asp

Mike Bailey said...

Now these posts are as good as they come. Wow. 1st, you affirm me. That's crucial. 2nd, it's quirky as all get out. (And that's very good.) 3rd, you mention ceremonially broken glasses of Jewish weddings. That alone makes me want to become Jewish. I don't know what it is supposed to "officially" symbolize, but all the seasoned married folks get the inside joke--it represents the hilariously naive notions of marriage that people hold when they're engaged. Crunch. The reality is quite different. Richer and more rewarding in many cases. But different.

Claudia said...

The Greek restaurant by my house throws plates on the floor in some sort of bizarre dancing ritual. This goes on every night. Sometimes 2 or 3 times a night. I don't get it, but thought I would offer it into the mix.

Oh, and good luck with your continued marriage.

Andy D. said...

1. Let me get this straight: with 300 million people in the country and an alleged 1.64 million glasses breaking a day, my (and every American's) chance of breaking a glass each day is just 1 in 182? Huh uh. No way. You people are once again way, way, way off.

2. The correct number is much closer to 1,000. Props to TK for recognizing this. Shame on MB and SS for viewing our culture as nothing more than a group of cloven-handed bulls with neither coordiation nor opposable thumbs.

2A. You, with all your "clarifications" about "do we include this breakage or that breakage" -- well what about the fact that many restaurants, families, and businesses now use plastic? Or -- gasp -- paper, styrofoam, or even recycled stuff, for their dinnerware? How many glass plates were broken at a McDonald's today? Oh that's right -- the U.S.'s largest eating place wraps their burgers in paper! Ok so let's take my 1 in 182 and knock ir right back down to 1 in -- 100? I have a 1% chance of smashing a plate off my or someone nearby's head today? (Artistic license to use "smashing off something" noted, and appreciated.) Nope.

3. Getting back to an earlier point of mine, the correct number of days it would take an average man to level a stadium with a sledgehammer is 7. Or nearly so. I now see the statistical reasoning that let my naysayers to their erringly high estimates...

I oould debate this one all day!! Well done Lydia! Bring it, people!

A.

PS - MB, which are there more of each day in America -- Big Macs eaten off a paper wrap? or glasses smashed at a Jewish wedding. Statistical sampling of the weddings -- finito! :)

Elisheba said...

Andy D

2) Most Americans are sleep deprived and work long hours, and after eating one's hands and table ware can become slippery or greasy. Thinking that people are likely to break dishes is realistic.

2A)Just because many, maybe most, people use paper or styrofoam tableware doesn't mean there aren't also lots of dishes being used. There's 300 million of us, approximately. There's room for variation in eating habits. Do people getting big macs never go to other restaurants? If they eat in, don't they get plates to put their paperwrapped burgers on? (I don't actually know, I never eat at McDonald's). And by the way, it would be 0.5%, not 1%, you shameless person who rounds to the nearest integer.

3) I demand you destroy a concrete slab with a sledgehammer, time it, and report back to us.

Andy D. said...

SS -- ok, I will take the bait...

I may be an integer rounder -- but I am not a Greek (nod to Claudia's post!) intentional plate smasher! Nor are any of my acquaintences. All round numbers of us only engage in accidental smashings. Wouldn't you agree that we can take this whole red herring argument that "there are a huge number of intentional plate smashings" and minimize it to a statistical zero?

As to the suggestion that there are many more greasy handed, sleep deprived zombies out there, unable to walk from kitchen to couch without dropping a plate at least once every 3 days -- I mean, really? That's the argument? -- I disagree. While plates may fall out of Bailey's hands each day at mealtime like confetti at the Super Bowl, most of us are pretty darned coordinated. (Note, I am pretty sure they use plastic place settings at most nursing homes, so let me head off that dispicable argument before you even formulate it...).

I think what this whole argument comes down to is, you (all of us) are either an optimist, believing mankind is capable of only busting a plate a few times in our lives, or we are pessimists, achingly brooding over how fallible, reckless, uncaring, and discoordinated our fellow humans are. Which pessimism is at logical odds with the necessary belief to your arguments here, that most of these downtrodden cripples with malfunctioning hand eye coordination, must be eating each meal in four star restaurants where they serve the meals on fragile china and juggle glass goblets six at a time, rather than the McDonalds and Taco Bells that I know they exist in.

Or something. :)

A.

Elisheba said...

AD is trying to turn this from an argument about numbers to an argument about my personal views on the coordination of Americans with an implication that i think senile old people who have been abandoned to live in sterile depressing environments break lots of dishes! MB, make him stop!

Mike Bailey said...

S-S: The sad news is when the AD steamroller gets going like that, ain't nothing gonna stop it. My strategy has always worked. Absorb the blows besy you can, let him wear himself out and pipe down, and then reason can once again reassert her sweet voice in the blessed silent aftermath.

Andy D. said...

Senile? I never said they were senile!! Don't put words in my mouth!

And another thing!!... wait, where was I...

Oh yeah -- I deny that I'm a raging arguer! Or that I eventually tire out...

Note -- the part where MB 'absorbs the blows' is usually my favorite. During the precious short 9 months we lived together, that part normally involved me physically removing him from the closet he felt he could hide in after teasing me into a frenzy with crazy arguments like these, coats falling around while he flailed and scrabbled for a grasp on the closet to prevent the extrication, only to then be twirled around the room while I was ranting my points at him!

No, that didn't really happen... ?

But against that type of arguing, I'm sure the "blessed aftermath" was peaceful indeed...

A.

Susan Hasbrouck said...

Why has no one mentioned Mad Men? Put your finger on the pop culture pulse, people. We're not only seeing a resurgence in 60's era fashions, but I predict a renewed interest in flinging highball glasses at our loved one's head as well. Now generally, loved one ducks, the glass hits the wall and there's one less glass for the cart, one more tally on our how much gets broken every day sheet. So the question is, how many spirited highball fastballs can we expect on an average day?

Out of 3 million viewers, might even half of one percent be inclined to give it a go sometime during the week? Generously divide it out evenly over the week and that's still 2,142 glasses a day. Just glasses. You're seriously underestimating this breakage thing.

Andy D. said...

Gosh JC, you're right!

And that doesn't even include the number of fishbowls that have to be smashed after getting stuck on Curly's stooge head!! There's one right there.

Or the number of spinning plates that fall when Syd Ceasar "accidentally" drops them for comedic effect! Four more.

Or, that bottle John Wayne broke over that one guy's head in that one Western that one time! Add another one.

People - it's 1,000! That we do know.

A.

Elisheba said...

JC-is it polite, when flinging highball glasses, to drain the contents quickly and then fling it rather than flinging it at the moment of furious passion? I mean, I realize high spirits are guiding the action, but I really like my spirits.

AD-in all fairness, you didn't say senile. But you're still wrong...

Note: I completely believe you had to physically extricate MB from the closet in order to further torment him until you were too tired to continue, and I will absolutely not think inappropriate and offensive double entendre thoughts about this.

Andy D. said...

Thanks S-S!! I think?.... err... what does double entendre mean again??

Look if you have to ask whether it's ok to drink the drink before flinging the vessel -- you're my kind of serious drinker!!

A.

Susan Hasbrouck said...

Speaking of all those excellent (if dated) shows reminds me, people move their t.v.'s (and the rest of their possessions) all the time. 40,000,000 people a year move, in fact. If we generously make that into only 10,000,000 households, I can guarantee at least one broken dish per household per move. That's at least 10,000,000 broken dishes a year, or 27,397 broken dishes a day. Uh-huh.

Susan Hasbrouck said...

S-S, for greatest effect, I'm afraid you need to spiritedly fling the spirits, but then by all means, pour yourself another to deal with the aftermath.

Andy D. said...

Ok JC, let me understand.

40 million "people" -- and I assume you mean "Americans" per the context of our debate -- move every year?

So 1 in 9 Americans moves, every single year? And not like, all the transcients that move from NYC to Miami twice a year, but people moving with possessions?

I'm sure the stagnant housing market will be glad to learn about this vigorous upswing in the need to buy housing!

Look sister -- I'm calling b.s. on your phony balony numbers! : ) There is no way!!

PS -- I won't tell the movers' union about your opinion that they break at least one "dish" per move! Having said that, I will once again lay into them for "losing" an entire box of hard liquor bottles during my most recent move!!

TK!! Where art thou??!! Once again it's "light fuse, get away, and watch as Andy runs right out in front of the argument you just lit"!!! With spectacular results, I might add, but still, how about a hand here!

A.

Susan Hasbrouck said...

http://www.melissadata.com/enews/articles/0705b/1.htm

AD - don't make me call their support number.

Also, don't make me keep typing in the middle of dealing with raw chicken.

Elisheba said...

AD-oh, you have no idea how welcome you are.

JC-I might actually have to pour 2 more drinks to deal with the trauma of my alcohol being splattered far away from me.

So apparently, MB, not only do all your blog commenters need a cocktail party where they can smash concrete blocks with a sledgehammer, we need lots of glasses and a plentiful supply of adult beverages, and then we can throw them at each other.

Andy D. said...

Rebuttals:

1. According to the three-named man (who cannot be trusted for that reason, on any level, anyway), who authored the "interpretive" blog about the US Census which you directed me to, "I don't know what I'm doing with math, and I failed introductory statistics twice in college. I only wrote that paper denegrating the recent census (which is not even completed or published yet, since it is still 2010 as I write this??) because my employer forced me to, due to his ongoing dispute with the GAO about the number of illegal workers still in his employ (allegedly)." http://thethreenamerwasforcedtolieforhisemployer.net

2. According to http://www.carefulmovers1.com/faq.php, "Moving company packers use a dish pack - an exceptionally sturdy corrugated carton of double-wall construction — for china, glassware and other fragile items less than 18 inches in size." So, if they pack it, it ain't breakin. My own personal moving instructions then go on to say, "Only a total fool packs so lightly as to get his dishes broken during the move. These people often break their dishes intentionally before the move occurs, just to make sure they get the job done."

3. What you do with that chicken is between you and the Lord above, lady...

A.

Andy D. said...

S-S -- anytime! Can you even imagine? I suspect the party would start at 8pm, and by 9pm we'd be heaving all the drinks at the wall!! And wondering where everyone else went...

But they'd come back by 10pm for the concrete smashemup. And for JC's chicken dish.

Andy D. said...

We could have the party at Claudia's! And invite the Greek restaurant, who already got started with the smashing at 7pm! You ok with that, Redstr?

Where does Anonymous come down on all this?? Surely I'm not the only one that understands how relatively coordinated of a nation America is?

A.

Mike Bailey said...

Fact: I did hide in the closet.

Fact: Andy would come in after me and extricate me.

Fact: He would pick me up over his head and spin me around the room until I screamed like a little girl, begging him to stop.

Fact: Sometimes he'd stop then, sometimes he wouldnt'

Fact: Andy felt triumphant for hours after these episodes.

Fact: I just felt violated.

Fact: I confess we never broke a dish during these unfortunate episodes.

timekeeper said...

I hate to break in to this very enlightening and invigorating debate. First off, I am terrified that the conversation will stop after this entry out of your respect for: my estimating abilities, my mind-blowing rationale, and my still intact marriage to professormikey. I have thoroughly enjoyed all the arguments being made. AD--I apologize for leaving you in the lurch. You have made a valiant and hopefully not vain attempt at protecting my honor. And since I can't remember the last time anyone in my house broke a dish, 1000 is looking pretty good. Pretty, pretty pretty good. I feel sorry for ss and jc who must always wear shoes in their house so they won't step on all their glass shards, don't you? I am also amazed at the resources you all have referred to: religous ceremonies, moving statistics, restaurant data, census data, bitter employee blog data. All of which begs the question....don't you all have jobs or school or chicken or something? My goodness, why did you not put all this effort into cleaning up the Gulf spill? Could you not have come up with some solution powered by broken dishes? There are a lot of brains, a lot of time, and a lot of well-crafted arguments on these entries. I wish we could all just reach a consensus. If you want to admit defeat and need to reach AD or I to apologize, you can find us in our easily smashed stadium eating off our difficult to smash plates!

Mike Bailey said...

Yes, you've got to love tk's argument: y'all did way too much research and gave this too much thought to be trusted. Trust me; I came up with 1,000 because it was the first number that came to my mind.

Claudia: yeah maybe now, after that, you're right about me needing some good luck.

Elisheba said...

tk-I'm moving very soon, without a moving company I might add, because moving companies are employed by those who can afford them, and I graduated and no longer have a stipend and can't get a temp job until I move. This is all to say that I really truly do not have anything better to do than research the questions raised by this blog. You have just reminded me of this fact, so I think I will go cry about the meaningless nature of my life just now. And then I will have a good stiff drink, after the which I will break the glass.

When I originally moved here, I broke a coffee mug. I'll keep everyone posted on the dish situation through the next move.

During the time I have been living here, I accidentally broke two martini glasses and a French press. My excuse is that I live on caffeine and sugar, and the world sometimes moves more slowly around me than I am expecting it to.

I never wear shoes if I can avoid it, and I have had to cut abscesses out of my feet before, due to stepping on the broken glass that I thought I had entirely cleaned up and then shards of glass get trapped between the sole of the foot and all the callouses I've built up from a lifetime of walking barefoot in a world of broken glass.

You probably didn't want to hear about the abscess part.

Technoprairie said...

Has anyone thought of the "children" factor? I'm guessing the my dh and I only broke 1 glass a year until we had children learning how to drink, clear the table, or load the dishwasher. So somewhere in all these calculations, we have to have the child factor. The more children, the more chance of breaking something.

I liked the moving data argument. And yes, every time I have moved, something got broke. Once it was a glass panel from my china cabinet that broke right before my eyes as they moved my cabinet into place.

My vote is with JustCurious, more than 1K but less that 500K.

My captcha is "tremedu" which I guess could be slang for tremendous.

Andy D. said...

TP -- I admire the admission that your kids have upped the ante in the household's broken glass count. Is it honestly "dishwasher practice"? Or is it more likely "snapping off the glassware to stage a scene from 'West Side Story' while we're supposed to be loading the dishwasher?"

MB -- candid, candid, candid admissions. Very candid. "When I first met you, you was cryin' like a [baby]."

S-S -- Nothing wrong with callusi or abscesses. If I had endured a lifetime of glasswalking, I might likewise have a subjective tendency to skew the statistics about which we are arguing, in my favor...

And T-K -- praise the Lord! You came through, BIG TIME. Very well done. Pret-ty, pret-ty, pret-ty, pret-ty.... pretty good.

A.

PS - thanks to each of you and to our host, MB, for making the diversionariest blog posting of the Summer of 2010!! In the words of my illiterate captcha, today was "steleur"!!

Susan Hasbrouck said...

Thanks, TP, and my thoughts exactly on the kids. In fact, thinking back through my family's illustrious dish history, I was thinking that everyone else on this site must have more coordinated kids, fewer 40th birthday parties, better packed moves, less help from their mother, and finally, next to no gravity in their house.

Susan Hasbrouck said...

As though I need to keep heaping definitive proof on your doubting heads, I have it on good authority from my potter friend that the two part firing process results in broken dishes occasionally for professional/full time potters, constantly for students. 312 colleges call themselves ceramics schools, easily another 200 at least offer pottery courses. 500ish colleges, 100 students a year, (please acknowledge how conservative I'm being), pots galore per students, two firings per pot, it starts being mind boggling. Easily add ANOTHER 1,000 dishes a day.

Andy D. said...

JC - I love the passion. But, really? This is what we're doing now? Dragging in the "well what about all the potters' rejects" argument? And until now, I had thought potters were just under "ballerina" on the "most coordinated profession" scale. Apparently not!

What about all the misformed Christmas ornaments (in the doubtless few American factories that produce them here, rather than China....)?? Oooooh! And what about all that second-line cr#ppy glassware they sell at the factory reject stores!!!??? Let's count it!

I mean, c'mon!!!

: )

A.

Susan Hasbrouck said...

1. Let me get this straight... are you saying that there are dish shaped Christmas ornaments? (Just wait until I find out your china pattern.)

2. Hey, if it ain't broke, don't list it.

Mike Bailey said...

Okay, the quality of a blog's readership can be expressed as the following formula: IQ times quirkiness times loyalty times humorousness. And according to that very precise and accurate measurement, I have the best blog readership.

Ever.

Technoprairie said...

Andy - yes, dishwasher practice for the girl, but SPEED dishwasher practice for the boys. For boys everything is a contest where there is a winner so it is imperative to run with dishes in your hands to try and beat your brother to the dishwasher.

Don't tell me that you and Brad didn't do that!

Andy D. said...

Thank you MB!

TP, Brad and I did have contests, but sadly not on dishwasher loading. And I, being the bigger and the stronger (until he was 18 and surpassed me for good...), would have likely won.

No, our contests were more like, who can play the sax better (Brad played trombone...)? Who can anger Dad the most without any factual basis about the other having done something at school that didn't really happen (always me; that was such a good game...)? Who can destroy something of Dad's in the garage and blame Brad? Who can somehow convince Brad to tell Mom and Dad the full, unexpurgated version about the visiting kid at church who used the f-word?...

You get the point. Ours were not contests to learn pioneering skills, but rather survival street skills. Survival as my younger brother, that is.

He turned out ok, thanks to these many hard lessons.

A.

Andy D. said...

MB - let me define "humorousness" -- (1) humoriness; (2) humorosity.

Andy D. said...

Come on everyone, I have never seen a post go above 40 comments on MB's blog! Let's hit it!

A.

Susan Hasbrouck said...

I will say this, of the two choices, 1,000 might be correct... if this were The Price is Right and you were trying to be closest to the correct answer without going over. I will admit that 500,000 is too much, but 1,000? Perhaps if MB had pondered the number of items broken per day... in Colonial times.... then maybe.

By the way, captcha, isn't every year a taxemyr?

Elisheba said...

I think what I find most amazing is that we all care so very much about the issue.

And what about glass doors and glass windows in doors that suddenly break when the door is closed too hard?

Technoprairie said...

Or barrister bookcase glasses that shatter when a 10 year old heel gets shoved into them while wrestling?

And no one has mentioned balls through windows yet!

Elisheba said...

Zounds! I was reading a book and a character was hallucinating and threw a wine glass at his hallucination because it was making stupid arguments for god, but then he came to his senses and realized he hadn't actually thrown the wine after all!

Does this count?

Andy D. said...

S-S,

I thought I was being generous letting you include the "thrown glass" group! Now you're getting greedy, also wanting hallucinatory throwings, that apparently didn't really happen, that you read about in a book!! GREE-DY!!!

JC -- pick a side, sister! You can't split the baby on this one, unfortunately. Love the captcha though!

TP -- no the bookcase doesn't count. Unless your kids were eating off them while fighting... PS, what kind of Ultimate Fighting training camp experience are you running up there? Stemware broken off at dishwashing time, glass shards used in wrestling matches -- I'm thinking there are some deeper seated issues up there, beyond just "why is that dish chipped"??

: )

AD.

Susan Hasbrouck said...

Hey squali (?), that's me on the 500,000 side of the poll up there. I'm just sayin'.

Elisheba said...

AD-I once had a Calvinist explain to me that all things material were necessarily only worthwhile if used for the pursuit and glory of the metaphysical. Based on this logic, the literary idea of a metaphysical glass must count for more than an actual material glass

Mike Bailey said...

JC--a thousand?

I swear....just when I thought I could count on your loyalty.

Dishwashers break crap all the time.

BTW, Nora broke a glass yesterday.

Dang, JC, a thousand?

Heart: Broken.

Susan Hasbrouck said...

Where did I say 1,000?!? I said it was right if this were a game show and you couldn't go OVER, but otherwise the thousanders are nutty.

Where is my loyalty indeed!

Anonymous said...

I'm not smart enough to debate either side of this argument. Nor do I know how to register my name with Google. But I do know this. We registered for some glasses for our wedding at some department store and after about a year they all started cracking around the rim and all broke within a month. Does this happen with all glasses? If so, I'd go with a really high number.

- Brad

Andy D. said...

Now listen up, "anonymous.". Don't you come in here, read that I perhaps gave my younger brother Brad a harder life than necessary as a kid, and then pose as him just for purposes of shamelessly contradicting me. You'll only get MB all stirred up thinking the real Brad has been on his blog.

Besides, I know the real Brad didn't even have a wedding registry, let alone that he would have put glasses on it.

.....or maybe I've mentally revised that history to rationalize why I never gave Brad a wedding gift?....

Anyway, don't rile up Mike. He's easily riled, I tell ya. Look how he turned on JC.

A.

Mike Bailey said...

JC--I admit I assumed the worst in reading your note, but with TK and AD already against me, I couldn't afford to lose another ally. And your note was just ambiguous enough to allow my ever-pessimistic tendendcies to gain traction. So...plese accept accept this apology, the kind of heartfelt apology that AD will never receive from me.

Now. Let me also that this is a day for celebrating cuz:

BRAD BE IN THE HOUSE!!!!

Andy D. said...

Sorry, nothing substantive to post, I just had to be #50.

Question: If you make a posting without anything substantive to say, does it count?

Debate.

Andy

PS -- my captcha is "terdst". N.C. -- no comment.

Susan Hasbrouck said...

Further, if an argument with no logic falls on the internet, can it be heard?

Anonymous said...

Mike, I just saw a post of yours from 2009 where you said you didn't like musicals and to illustrate, posted a picture of the hoedown from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, which is not only one of my favorite musicals, it's one of my favorite movies, and on top of that, my absolute favorite scene in that movie. The seven backwoods brothers went to the hoedown to woo the seven brides, but the boys from town had other plans, and a mind-blowing hoedown dance/fight ensued. You can act like you don't care who wins that dance/fight, but I know you really do.

- Brad

Andy D. said...

Yeah Mike.

A.

Elisheba said...

Brad-I like musicals too.

Mike Bailey said...

S-S:

Sorry to disappoint you, but that's not the real Brad. This is an imposter Brad, a pod Brad or, more likely, an AD-Created personae.

No way it's Brad.

Brad don't like musicals, except *maybe* ironically. BUt i didn't read no irony there.

Fake.

Susan Hasbrouck said...

Hey Brad! Welcome! Tell us some young Andy and Mikey stories!

Anonymous said...

Whatever you took twenty to thirty minutes before writing this--I want. No--I need.

Freaking ridiculous writing.

I. Love. It.

Mike Bailey said...

JC: You're not gonna get anything here, friend. It ain't Brad. It's....well, I don't know who it is, but it ain't Brad.

DO NOT BELIEVE ANY STORIES HE (NOT BRAD) WILL TELL!!!

Anonymous (not the imposter Brad Anonymous but the other, real Anonymous): I'm not sure to whom you are referring, but I will gladly steal all the credit before anyone else does. Thanks.

Susan Hasbrouck said...

Dear I.Brad A., he's usually very welcoming. You go ahead and say what you got, bro.

Andy D. said...

Oh it's Brad all right.

MB. How quickly you turn. Over what - the suggestion that musicals can be worthy? Listened to? Loved?

Not by me. I don't have a dog in the fight... but by... YOU. By you, of all people.

You, MB, love musicals, period. So to write last year as Brad has uncovered, that they should not be loved is, well... reader you be the judge.

The time? 1986. The place? Mike and Andy's dorm room at Texas. The scene? A tiny, tiny dorm room on the 10th floor of a large sky rise... The musical selection? Well, it was MB's stereo, so as these things go it was usually MB's selection...

And the selection on the day of our scene was what it would play out to be each and every day after classes -- one of MB's musicals. On hard vinyl and/or cassette tape. But in full broadway review, either way.

What musicals you ask? Oh I can name them. Name them one and all. And let the naming prove the truth of my words.

I start with JC Superstar. I turn next to Hair. I roll on through Jesus of Nazareth (somehow, he had a musical version!)... And I end with YOU NAME IT, ALEX I'LL TAKE 'ALL BROADWAY MUSICALS' FOR 10,000 PLEASE!!!

Every day, I got back from studying my tail off, and came into the dorm room -- darkened, mind you, via means of artificial darkening of curtains, black paper, and/or clothing draipsed over my window -- to the low sounds of, the Big Time Broadway Musicals. Usually about Christ, good Lord I never knew there were so many musicals about Christ, but anyway musicals they were. And the sound was "low" because sometime mid-September I saw exactly how this was going to go for the year, and therefore insisted that the headphones (which were ENORMOUS, even by 1980s standards, and had the longest curliest thickest cord you can imagine) be plugged in and functioning by the time my key hit the lock.

This, my fellow readers, was Musical Mike in his heyday. And this, my dear brother Brad, is why your comments attributable to Mike ring so dichordant in my ears...

A.

Anonymous said...

Real Anonymous recently developed a taste for peace and harmony that has broken my give a damn about this debate. Broken it like the 500,000 items an extremely uncoordinated American populace breaks in a day.

Exact number.

Accurate, all-inclusive generalization.

And yes, Professor Mikey, I was talking to you.