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Jhoon Rhee: “Nobody Bothers Me! Nobody Bothers Me Either!”

December 23, 2009

One of the greatest commercials of all time was the Jhoon Rhee “Nobody Bothers Me” commercial of the late 70s and early 80s. Anybody who grew up in the Washington, DC area during this time probably still has the words memorized.  Nils Lofgren did the song (Nils, of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band fame, also did “Bullets Fever,” another local classic).  The commercial (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7PEMGuA6tw) was one of those commercials that was just played all the time.

Legend has it that the cameraman or producer suggested that Tae Kwan Do Grand Master Jhoon Rhee’s son and daughter do the ending to the commercial, they did, and the rest is history.  I got to meet Jimmy Rhee, Jhoon Rhee’s other son who was not in the commercial earlier this year.  We discussed strategies for kids with autism and ADHD.  Rhee’s website is http://www.smartcoach.us/.  He does coaching based programs for kids with ADD.

Back to the commercial – there was just something about it.  It was great but it was also cheesy.  It was definitely a part of the history of Washingon, D.C. 30 years ago.

When you take Jhoon Rhee self-defense, then you too can say

“Nobody bothers me.  Nobody bothers me.”

Call USA-1000.  Jhoon Rhee means might for right!

“Nobody bothers me.”

“Nobody bothers me either!”

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Books and Audiobooks on CD or Cassette

December 7, 2009

With Christmas approaching, the time is now to buy some books as gifts.  I have new and used books for sale at http://www.amazon.com/shops/mikeneedsakidneydotcom.  I have a great selection of books, books on tape (CD and cassette), and music CDs.  Order now from my Amazon site in time for Christmas.

I cut and pasted some of the listings below in random order.  Altogether, there are hundreds of items available.  My prices are great – from $4.50 on up.

I don’t want to jinx myself, but 100% of the 71 customers who have bought from me in the past year and given me a rating have given me positive ratings on customer service.

So if you go to http://www.amazon.com/shops/mikeneedsakidneydotcom, you can type a title, subject, or author’s name into the search box at the top.  Thanks.

New Books

Clean Hands Congress by Hubbard, L. Ron

London Clearing Congress (Congress Lectures) (Audio CD)

Crocodile Charlie and the Holy Grail: How to Find Your Own Answers at Work an… in Life

Dance in the Wind [Audio CD] Boone, Cooper

How to Talk So Kids Will Listen…And Listen So Kids Will Talk [Abridged]

Baseball Returns: Washington Nationals Inaugural Season [DVD]James Cagney: Blood on Sun & Time of Your Life [VHS] [VHS Tape] (1948)

Radio Heartbeat Volume 1:  People speaking from the heart about what really matters … 24 vignettes about love, family, freedom, dreams, prayers, places, animals and angels.”

The United States Air Force Search and Rescue in Southeast Asia [Paperback]

Virtuoso Piano Music [Audio CD] Cecile Chaminade and Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel

Used Books

2009 Harris Directory of Wahington DC Businesses by Harris InfoSource

A Blind Man Can See How Much I love You [Unabridged] [Audiobook] by Amy Bloom

A Christmas Carol [Audiobook] [Unabridged] [Audio CD] by Dickens, Charles

A Christmas Journey (The Christmas Stories) [Unabridged] [Audio CD]

Alice in Wonderland [Hardcover] by Lewis Carroll

Ball Pythons: The History, Natural History, Care, and Breeding; Barker, Tracy M.

Galapagos Islands (Odyssey Illustrated Guides) by Constant, Pierre

Hamlet [Audio Cassette]

Jewish History Atlas. 112 Maps from Biblical Times to the Present [Hardcover]

U.S. International Taxation [Hardcover] by Kuntz, Joel D.; Peroni, Robert J.

Painters of the Italian Renaissance [Hardcover] by Edith Healy; T. de Mare

Sense and Sensibility [Audiobook] [Unabridged] by Jane Austen; Donada Peters

SHERLOCK HOLMES, CONSULTING DETECTIVE MS DOS CD ROM GAME [CD-ROM]

Sports Illustrated 17th Annual Swimsuit Issue Magazine Christie Brinkley Febr…

Sports Illustrated Magazine February 1980 – Christie Brinkley Bikini Cover

Superman on Radio: Library Edition (Old Time Radio) by Smithsonian Institution

The Two Dragons of Dim Mak: Pressure Point Techniques for Healing & Martial Arts

National Parks and Protected Areas in Croatia [Hardcover] by Petar Vidakovic

Hallmarks of Felinity: A 9 Chickweed Lane Book by McEldowney, Brooke

The Dancing Wu Li Masters : An Overview of the New Physics [Audiobook]

Major Legal Systems in the World Today by Brierley, David

Qaryat-al-Fau. A Portrait of Pre-Islamic Civilisation in Saudi Arabia

Antietam: Library Edition (Civil War Battle) [Unabridged] [Audio CD]

On the Road [Unabridged] [Audio CD] by Kerouac, Jack; Parker, Tom

The Bounty – The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty [Unabridged] [Audio CD]

The Botox Diaries by Janice Kaplan and Lynn Schnurnberger (audiobook on CD)

In Nixon’s Web by L. Patrick Gray III (audiobook on CD)

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (audiobook on CD)

Dune:  The Machine Crusade by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson (audiobook on CD)

Kim (Audio Editions) [Unabridged] [Audio Cassette] by Kipling, Rudyard

Bob Dylan Chronicles: Volume 1 [Audiobook] [Unabridged] by Dylan, Bob

Worse than Watergate:  The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush by John W. Dean (audio cassette)

The Miracle at St. Bruno’s by Philippa Carr (audio cassette)

Sherlock Holmes:  A Study in Scarlet by Conan Doyle (audio cassette)

Mastering Spanish:  Level Two (audio cassette)

See http://www.amazon.com/shops/mikeneedsakidneydotcom.

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Try Hard. Do Your Best. Put Your Heart Into It. Be Intense. Care.

December 5, 2009

Don’t ever let anyone take your passion away.  Don’t ever let anyone tell you you’re trying too hard or that you care too much.  Always put your heart into everything.  Don’t apologize for doing a great job.

As the saying goes, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

But mediocre people are afraid of the opportunity for greatness.  They are afraid of change.  They like the status quo.

Of course, a weak person would say, “Nothing ventured, nothing lost.”  That means that they perceive any risk by looking at what could go wrong.

These people like the status quo.  They may say they want their lives to be improved, but they really just want to sit around and do nothing.  They’re more comfortable around people who are like themselves:  people who don’t try too hard, who like things to always be the same.  All they want is for things to be easy, safe, predictable.

They run from any and all problems, not realizing that by figuring out solutions, you can turn problems into opportunities.  They are afraid of progress because progress can be scary.  It involves change.  Progress comes in leaps and bounds along with a few regressions rather than in a straight line.

They are allergic to even the slightest bit of pressure, not understanding that a little bit of pressure can be beneficial.

They look for the easy way out.

I call these people the donut eaters.  Imagine government employees who have become complacent.  They just want things to be easy.

Then they wake up and wonder where the time went by.  They ask themselves if it was worth it to sacrifice the chance for greatness by putting comfort and familiarity first.

They vote on personality, not on the issues.

Weak people are also susceptible to the sales-type personality.  You can see the stars in their eyes when they listen to an authority figure speak.  They don’t remember what was said, but boy are they impressed by a good speech.  They don’t like honesty, bluntness, frankness.

Weak people aren’t loyal.  They aren’t there for you when you need them or when things are down.  They are there, though, for you when things are up.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you you’re trying too hard, that you care too much, that you have too much passion, that you’re too intense.

Try hard, care, have passion, and be intense.

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Bring the old Washington Post look back

October 21, 2009

I don’t like the changes in format that the Washington Post has made.  It looks like a combination of the New York Times and the Gaithersburg Gazette.  The font looks strange – not as weirdly pretentious as those New York Times headlines that look like they’re from the 1940s and seem like a parody of a newspaper, but it still looks a little too retro.

Maybe they’re trying to save money.  I don’t mind that they’re taking the color out, but now they have those pictures of columnists, only they’re not pictures – they are like pictures that have been computerized somehow like they do in the Wall Street Journal.  Just what we need, the newspaper to look more cheap and unlike the Washington Post.

It looks bad.  It just looks wrong.  The old look was good.  Bring it back.

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Howard Stern: Get rid of the Phony Outrage

October 21, 2009

Howard Stern has been pretending to be mad at Stuttering John of Jay Leno’s Tonight show lately because John supposedly stole his bit of having a chicken pick NFL games.  But long before Howard did that bit, Washington, DC sportscaster Glenn Brenner was having an elephant pick games.  This happened in the 1980s, and Howard was in Washington from 1981 to 1982 at DC-101.  I’m pretty sure Glenn had not started the elephant bit when Howard was still there.  Anyway, I have a lot of those old Channel sportscasts on tape.  So I’m not saying Stern stole it from Brenner, but at a minimum, Brenner was clearly doing this bit 15 years before Stern did.  I also include a couple of blog entries:

From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2008/04/25/DI2008042503005.html: Easton, Md.: Your “monkey” stunt brings to mind the elephant prognosticator used by the late, great Glenn Brenner to pick NFL games. Each week Glenn would ask a celebrity guest to pick each week’s winning teams, with the winner receiving a donation to his or her favorite charity. One year the winner was a 90 year old cloistered nun! But far and away the best was his use of a trained elephant. He put the helmets of the 2 teams side by side, and the elephant would indicate his choice with his trunk.

http://dc.metblogs.com/2006/01/14/remembering-glenn-brenner/:  Also popular was the guest prognosticators segment featuring celebrities, local and national, as well as an elephant.

Brenner was one of the funniest people I’ve ever seen — possibly the funniest person I’ve ever seen in my life besides myself when I’m on (kidding).  I put him right up there with David Letterman from the 1980s.  (In the 1990s and beyond, Letterman seemed to jump the shark for me as he just wasn’t cutting edge anymore, and started being too nice to his guests – sounds a lot like the road Howard has taken).  Brenner made sports interesting and funny.  He was way ahead of his time.  His humor was a lot more genuine and spontaneous than the smug one-liners that ESPN anchors are known for.  He was in another universe than someone like Tony Kornheiser, who thinks that he is the funniest guy out there.  (Though, back in the day, when Kornheiser wrote columns, he was actually very funny – about 25 years ago).  The rapport Brenner had with his news anchors Gordon Peterson and Maureen Bunyan was unbelievable.

Check out some of the youtube clips (unfortunately there are only a few and they only begin to show Glenn’s humor): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxFBvGI_iW8&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo_Zu_uiSQc&feature=related

I have tons of Channel 9 sportscasts from the 1980s on betamax somewhere.

In interned at Channel 9 sports during the summer of 1988, though Glenn was actually off about half of that summer on vacation.  On January 12, 1992, the Redskins beat the Lions 41-10 in the NFC Championship game.  After the game, I was standing about 10 feet away from Joe Gibbs in the locker room when he said the game ball was for Glenn Brenner, who was in the hospital because of an inoperable brain tumor.  Glenn died a couple of days later at 44.  He had collapsed two months earlier while running in the Marine Corps Marathon.

The 1980s was a golden era for Washington TV sportscasters.  Glenn Brenner at Channel 9, George Michael at Channel 4, Frank Herzog at Channel 7, and Bernie Smilovitz at Channel 5 were all stars and great at what they did.  Nobody knows or cares who the current anchors are.

Stern is right that he changed radio and spawned many imitators.  But remember that Glenn did the animals picking NFL games bit first.

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Used Books for sale on Amazon.com

October 20, 2009

I have some books for sale on my amazon.com site at http://www.amazon.com/shops/mikeneedsakidneydotcom.  Most people are familiar with buying used books on amazon.  For any particular book, you can find a certain number of used copies for sale listed by price.  So for example when you search on “A Farewell to Arms” by Ernest Hemingway, the audiocassette version, this comes up:  “2 new from $100.39, 15 used from $5.45.”  So the cheapest one is $5.45.  I always list mine as the cheapest, with the exception that I won’t go below $4.50.  Sellers constantly lower prices by a penny at a time so at any one time there may be a book that is slightly cheaper than mine, but for the most part I make sure that my books are the cheapest ones you can buy.  I have a lot of books on art, history, and fiction, and they include hardbacks, paperbacks, and books on tape (cd or cassette).

Here’s a list of some of them:

  • Call of the Wild by Jack London (audio book)
  • A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (audio cassette)
  • Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
  • Antietam (Audio CD) by James Reasoner
  • As I Am: Abba Before & Beyond by Agnetha Faltskog
  • AWESOMISM!: A New Way to Understand the Diagnosis of Autism by Suzy Miller
  • Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend by Joshua Blu Buhs
  • Freedom Congress (Audio CD) by L. Ron Hubbard
  • FRENCH ART OF THE 18TH CENTURY by Abert Gilou
  • Mark Twain: A Life (audio CD) by Ron Powers
  • Mix with love: Cookbook for dogs by Maddelena Herbig
  • Modern Jewish history: A source reader by Robert Chazan
  • NEW ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES #25 (Audio Cassette) by Anthony Boucher
  • Pt 109: John F. Kennedy in World War II
  • The Great Gatsby CD (Audio CD) by F Scott Fitzgerald
  • The Hidden Power of Social Networks: Understanding How Work Really Gets Done in Organizations, by Robert L. Cross
  • The Manchurian Candidate (Audio CD) by Richard Condon
  • The Perfect Storm (Audio CD)
  • The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How it Corrupts Democracy (Audio Cassette) by David Brock
  • The Ten Commandments: The Significance of God’s Laws in Everyday Life (Audio CD) by Dr. Laura Schlessinger and Rabbi Stewart Vogel
  • The Two Dragons of Dim Mak: Pressure Point Techniques for Healing & Martial Arts (Paperback) by Dr. Pier Tsui-Po
  • Writer’s Guide to Book Editors, Publishers, and Literary Agents: Who They Are! What They Want! and How to Win Them Over! (13th Edition) by Jeff Herman
  • Wolverine Vol. 3: Return of the Native by Greg Rucka
  • Your Sixth Sense: Activating Your Psychic Potential (Audio Cassette) by Belleruth Naparstek
  • X-Men: The Complete Age of Apocalypse Epic, Book 3 (Bk. 3) by Warren Ellis

Once again, the site is http://www.amazon.com/shops/mikeneedsakidneydotcom.  Thanks.

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Miscellaneous Product Reviews

October 20, 2009

Product Review:  All printers I have ever owned in my life.

Rating:  Terrible.

If it’s not a paper jam, it’s an error message.  It takes forever for the printer to get reset, and most recently, ever since I’ve gotten wireless access, I periodically have to call the printer manufacturer to reset the settings.  Either that, or call the computer manufacturer.  One time I got an error message that basically said, “This is an error message.  See the manual for how to fix it.” Then the manual said something like, “Your printer has an error.”  It’s one of the reasons why one of my favorite all-time scenes in movies is during “Office Space,” when they take the printer out to the field and smash it with a baseball bat.

Product Review:  Every VCR or DVD player I’ve ever had.

Rating:  Terrible

They are so hard to set up.  Then if they don’t work it’s hard to figure out why.  Sorry, I’m admitting I’m not good at setting up DVD players.

Product Review:  Remote Controls

Rating:  Terrible

Every house I’ve ever been to has two or three remote controls — sometimes four or five.  They are impossibly complicated to figure out.

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Mike or Michael?

October 5, 2009

Today I made an appointment and the lady on the line asked me if Mike was short for Michael.  Isn’t it safe to assume that?  There have also been a lot of times when someone says to me, “Mike…no, that name is not in our system.”  Then after a while they figure out that it’s under Michael.  They always seem very surprised.  “Oh, it’s under Michael.  That’s why I didn’t see it.”  If your job was to make appointments, wouldn’t you try Michael if it’s not under Mike?

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My Favorite Websites

October 5, 2009

My favorite websites:

www.coachmike.net

www.mikeneedsakidney.com

www.mikefrandsen.org

www.myredskinsblog.com

www.mikefrandsen.net

www.soccerideas.net

http://www.amazon.com/shops/mikeneedsakidneydotcom

www.espn.com

www.fantasyguru.com

www.onion.com

www.matchingdonors.com

www.wikipedia.org

www.amazon.com

Domain Names for Sale

www.networkscans.com

www.excellentprivacy.com

www.outstandingprivacy.com

www.incidentresponseteam.com

www.unixaudits.com

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Books on Tape and CD

October 5, 2009

You have to love books on tape.  These days, people often don’t have the time or attention span to sit through reading an entire book, but they do sometimes have long commutes to work.  The same old radio stations get boring because they play the same songs over and over.  News stations are no better because they’re often too slanted politically.  Books on tape can be a great solution.  I have tons of them on CD and cassette for sale, plus a lot of regular books.  You can see them at www.amazon.com/shops/mikeneedsakidney.com.  My prices are among the lowest on amazon.  Some of the books are as low as $4.50.

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