Nov 27 2013

New Essential James Taylor CD – Great Thanksgivukkah Gift

This new James Taylor double CD set is a great Chanukah / Thanksgivukkah gift. Or a gift for one of those other holidays. Christmas, I think they call it? It doesn’t get much attention from the media but I think it’s still sort of a big deal to a few people. You know. Like hockey.

Full disclosure: DaddyTips received a review copy of the new double CD, The Essential James Taylor. That said, receiving the press release announcing the new collection caused us to go on a bit of a JT shopping spree. Seriously. We took a picture. Look.

James Taylor CDs

What can we say? We like James Taylor.

As for the item in question, it happens to be a great collection of JT’s music.

Even if you already own copies of “Never Die Young”, et al, you could do worse than to pop in this well-selected collection of great songs. As for gift giving, get “The Essential James Taylor” is a perfect fit for anyone on your list. (We’re assuming your list consists of people who like great music.)

Some reviewers on Amazon take issue with the “Essential” title, saying that they would have preferred one song over another. This is one of those dopey arguments that occurs with any collection from any musical artist. I happen to have a soft spot for “New Moon Shine“. Was I bothered by the fact that “Essential” doesn’t include the song The Frozen Man?
Lord have mercy, of course not. (See what I did there? If not,  Frozen happens to be a tune that I particularly love; I have fond memories of seeing JT do it live when he was on tour after “New Moon Shine” came out.

But once you start down that road, the one marked “Why Didn’t They Put (Fill In Song Title Here) On This 2 CD Set?”, you’ve kind of gone off the rails.

Bottom line: After listening to both discs, all I can say is that there isn’t a single bad track. How often can you say that about any collection of music?

Buy The Essential James Taylor at Amazon.com


Nov 27 2013

Happy Chanukah And a Jewish NFL Player

DaddyTips wishes everyone a Happy Chanukah, and also offers these Tweets from and about a Jewish NFL player, the New England Patriots‘ Julian Edelman. Also some videos showing that the dude can play.

Edelman had a big week for the Pats this past week, accounting for two of the team’s touchdowns. We should have predicted this because we dropped him in our fantasy football league. (Sorry Mr. Edelman, it’s nothing personal. Or maybe we shouldn’t apologize. Any player we drop in fantasy football tends to be successful on the field immediately after said droppage. Not that we think we control the sports universe or anything. It’s just something we’ve noticed.)

Moving away from Edelman’s real football success (and our fantasy football failures), here is a tweet from the Patriots’ wide receiver, who spent some time being charitable recently.

And here are two tweets that Mr. Edelman re-tweeted, including one in which Happy Chanukah wishes are offered.

There aren’t a ton of Jewish NFL players, not because of a conspiracy or anything, there simply aren’t a lot of Jewish football players in general as far as we know.

Edelman, for what it’s worth, is a player that we’ve always liked. Plays well, plays hard, gets the job done. Here is a video of Edelman returning a punt 94 yards for a touchdown back in 2011.

And here is a video of Edelman blocking, delivering a rather serious hit to an opposing player.

Makes me want to watch some football. Oh! Tomorrow is Thanksgiving! Chanukah being so frickin’ early this year just became more OK.

Happy Chanukah from DaddyTips!

See also:

Julian Edelman on Twitter

DaddyDeals (Chanukah starts tonight but there are eight nights, so you’ve got shopping time if you need it)


Oct 23 2013

Mimobot USB Flash Drives On Sale (DaddyDeals)

DaddyDeal for you — big sale on MIMOBOT® flash drives, including Batman (DKR, as in Dark Knight Returns, or maybe Dark Knight Rises — if it matters to you, look before you buy, which you should be doing anyway).

Batman (DKR) X MIMOBOT ® - On Sale and Almost Gone

Look at that cute scowl. And his enormous cranium. Doesn’t it scream “buy me”?

Holiday gift giving season is coming up fast. Chanukah is on Thanksgiving. Seriously. If Chanukah is your holiday, you don’t have as much time to shop as you did last year; you might want to start shopping now.

Flash drives actually make good gifts for kids. Why? Lots of reasons.

– Older kids can use them for school.

– Younger kids can use them to move files from a computer to the flash drive and back.

– Younger siblings can stop being jealous of their older sibling’s flash drive.

All good reasons. And these particular flash drives are cute as well as useful.

Batman is listed as “almost gone”, which isn’t a big surprise considering the price is under 20 bucks as of this writing. (Pricing depends on memory size. And which character you buy. And other stuff. We just provide the link; details are at Mimobot.com.) If you don’t want Batman, Mimobot’s site has lots of other options, including Babo, Big Toe, Brickle, Emily the Strange (which we think looks a lot like Batwoman), Galacula, Galaxor2, Ice-Bat, and even Kilowog! Kilowog is “almost gone” as well. Why? Because Kilowog is AWESOME. (For those who don’t know, Kilowog is also a DC character, part of the Green Lantern Corps.)

Kilowog MIMOBOT

Sale ends 10/31/13, aka Halloween. Scary! (Not actually that scary.) Hit the link below to get your favorite Mimobot on sale before it goes bye bye.

On Sale! – Save Big on Mimobot USB Flash Drives | Mimoco.


Nov 26 2008

Tryptophan Doesn’t Make You Tired, It’s All Those Carbs

I stumbled onto this little tidbit from HowStuffWorks. Basically, it says that while tryptophan (an amino acid not naturally found in the human body) can act as a “calming agent” and is present in turkey, that’s not why you feel like taking a long winter’s nap after your third drumstick. “Most likely, it’s the whole traditional Thanksgiving meal that can produce that after-dinner lethargy.”
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