Al Franken is a American humorist, comedian, author, screenwriter, clown, commentator, and radio host, noted for his liberal politics. Franken was with Tom Davis part of the comedy duo “Franken & Davis,” which wrote for and performed for NBC’s Saturday Night Live. He is currently the host of Air America Radio’s flagship program, The Al Franken Show.Al is a frequent speaker at USO Tours to help support the troops. He often gets asked questions regarding the safety of himself and other actors when they visit war torn countries especially after a mortar was fired and nearly exploded in a Baghdad hotel he was staying at recently. Al likes to tell the story of running into Sylvester Stallone, who asked Franken about the safety of U.S.O tours. He says he met Stallone in a library shortly after he tried to steer away from the party to get some fresh air. Stallone remembered him as a frequent guest on USO tours and asked him a similar question as Stallone had apparently had second thoughts about attending any future USO events. Franken thought about the question for a second, then took a long pause and replied with this funny quote

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Hockey has finally returned and I thought I’d wait a while before I gave my comments on any post-lockout hockey stuff. The lockout was a terrible situation for everybody involved but did wasting a year’s worth of hockey really help the game in any way? Well to answer this question, you’d have to take a look at the so-called “New NHL” and figure out if taking off 1 full year’s worth of hockey really helped the state of hockey in North America. I am but only 1 of millions with their own opinions on the matter, but in my opinion it ‘HAS’ helped hockey.Let’s take a look at the first week in the ‘New NHL: Scoring is up, Penalties are up, fighting is down. I would say that that the biggest change to happen so far is the deletion of the red line in hockey. I’m seeing a lot more counter-attacks and 2-on-1 and 3-on-2 breakouts as well as an increase in break aways to start off the season. Some would say that this “New NHL” is a more woosy/European version of hockey due to the fact that fighting is down and also for the fact that defensemen are hitting less because of their fear of getting a penalty.

While to some degree defensemen may be hesitating a bit more before going up against forwards; I would also add that I’ve seen an increase in body checks and open ice hits. The reason for this simply being that defensemen are learning quickly that they can’t use their sticks to hook or grab players anymore and must rely more on their physical strength and use their bodies more to their advantage.

If you watched a nightly broadcast of Sportscenter, you’d find a few nice highlights every night of a defenseman laying out a forward with a body check. In regards to fighting, it has gone down but mostly for the fact that 4th line players are seeing less ice time because of the increase in penalties and also because of their lack of speed in the “New NHL”. Speed is definitely an issue so far and you can see it by watching teams like the Montreal Canadians and Minnesota Wild in games in the opening week.The red line being taken out and the increase in penalties has allowed the faster teams to excel whereas the slower teams are having a harder time reacting to the change in style. Goal scoring has also gone up and it’s nice to see games ending with scores of 6-5 or 5-4. Does this mean that we’ll be seeing this every night? No, of course we won’t as goaltenders are still getting shutouts and I don’t think the reduction in the size of their equipment has made such a drastic change to their playing habits either. What has changed is the angles of their nets related to the movement of the blue lines which is causing problems for goalies trying to cover their angles.

The biggest this season was the addition of shootouts to end ties. While purists hate the idea still, the fans seem to be enjoying it very much. The only problem I have with the shootout is that it’s over way too fast with only 3 players going head to head with the goalie. They should increase it to 5 players which is the same amount of players that normally play on the ice anyways. The “New NHL” is here to stay. The only question remains is whether the fans in The United States (Not Canada) come back to the game and help to make it more successful than it was before. While some are calling hockey ‘Olympic Hockey’ ; I don’t think we need to get to that point just yet as I think there will always be a difference between the NHL and Olympic Hockey for a variety of reasons that will separate each game from one another. But one thing is for certain, The NHL is faster,more skilled and will hopefully regain the casual sports fan back to watch the game in the not too distant future.

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Halloween is at the end of October so it seems fitting that this month’s quote comes directly from one of the greatest horror movie franchises alive. Army of Darkness is the third film in the Evil Dead Trilogy and the story’s hero, Ash, decides to introduce the undead to his favorite weapon once again.

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Dave Attell is a stand up comedian from New York City and has done many comedy specials for such networks as HBO and Comedy Central. Dave Attell’s biggest job right now is “Insomniac with Dave Attell” on Comedy Central. Dave is the writer and host of the show, which has aired four seasons, and now tapes special episodes. Here is a quote from Dave talking about the downsides of being drunk.

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In Part #1 we looked at Mexican,Italian and Greek foods. Today,in part #2, I thought I’d discuss the Chinese fast food market. I looked at various different restaurants and fast food joints and couldn’t separate one from the other as far as unique foods and cultures were concerned. So I tried my best and here’s what you can get at a usual fast food Chinese place.While doing some research on the subject, I realized that Chinese food is the most flexible and the most unique when it came to cooking food. Asians typically eat food in portions so each meal is diced,sliced or cut up into smaller sized portions as opposed to it being large and greasy like American food. Their flexibility comes in their variety of foods as most of the other cultures in the last article focused on one particular food or dish, where as Chinese food can come from many different sources. These sources each have their own different names and identities as well with such names as Szechuan or Cantonese being the favorites in North America.These names come from different regional areas of China and each offer something unique to Asian cuisine. Here’s a full listing of the regional cooking styles of China.

* Anhui
* Cantonese
* Fujian
* Hunan
* Jiangsu
* Shandong
* Sichuan
* Zhejiang

Asians seem to favor many different meat products like pork, chicken or beef mixed in with a variety of different spicy or sweet sauces as well as different varieties of rice, steamed vegetables or noodle dishes. Szechuan typically features spicier food where as Cantonese is more traditional and incorporates more seafood into their menu with different kinds of fish being offered to eat. Also, due to its many varieties; Chinese food incorporates itself very well with buffets which Americans love to eat at.

There are simply way too many dishes to discuss in one article so I will begin by focusing mainly on a few dishes that are more popular with Asian-American fast food restaurants:

1. Kung Pao Chicken: A spicy Szechuan dish made with diced chicken, peanuts and chili peppers. It is named after a Kung Pao or court official.

2. Wonton Soup: is a full meal in itself consisting of thin egg noodles and a few wontons in a pork soup broth. (more…)

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