This is neither here nor there, but I was working on a 50-50 round, and thought about using Bobby the Brain Heenan for it. Well, I decided I couldn’t really use The Brain because too many of his lines contained wrestlers names, but I was laughing my head off at some of his one-liners, so I thought I’d share. He and Gorilla Monsoon were the greatest 1-2 combo is announcing history for any sport, if you ask me. Keep in mind, he was the ultimate bad guy wrestling manager so he wasn’t particularly politically correct.

1. “Hulk Hogan’s entrance music is my second favorite song of all time. All the rest are tied for first.”
2. “Tito Santana is like a cue-ball. The more you strike him, the more English you get out of him.”
3. On Kerry von Erich: “He is the only man I know of who can hide his own Easter eggs.”
4. On Lou Ferigno’s speech impediment: “Hey, he speaks pretty well for a guy who just ate two pounds of crackers.”
5. “That was a legal move. It was a Greco-Roman hair pull.”
6. “Brass knuckles come in handy at the movies when that guy behind you can’t shut up his ugly kid.”
7. “His Dad’s Italian, his Mom’s a German Shepherd.”
8. “If women were meant to be wrestlers, why do we have kitchens?”
9. “She was voted Best-Looking at the Indiana School for the Blind.”
10. “You ever see Old Yeller, Monsoon? I love a good comedy.”
11. “The main difference between Boss Man and his Mother is the beard. His Mother’s is much thicker.”
12. “She should get arrested for impersonating a lampshade.”
13. “If they made brass knuckles legal, it wouldn’t be cheating!”
14. “Next week I’ll be on the Cartoon Network with pictures of your last date.”
15. “The biggest difference between kids and dogs is that you can’t put kids down. It’s illegal.”

Last week I posted a bunch of fun stuff about North Korea (Yeah, I’m obsessed). This week I interviewed an American who travels there annually for the Philly Post named Ray Cunningham. The interview is really interesting. However, due to space and time considerations, we had to leave out part of it. I thought I’d post below. Also thought I’d post a few more cool photos Ray took while he was there as well (You can check out all of his North Korea photos here). I really think North Korea is the most fascinating country on earth, and the more I read and learn about it, the more  intrigued I am. It’s really the last bastion of Stalinism (though there is a tremendous black market in North Korea apparently, just as there was in Soviet Russia). So for people my age who were in their teens when the Berlin Wall came down, and can never understand the fear that our parents had for communism, it serves as an example of what people feared of a repressive communist regime. That said, like anywhere else, the story doesn’t begin and end with political ideology. In fact, the real story here is how people have adapted to their lives in such a political system. I had a few more questions for Ray that were more about his personal experiences and less about general travel there. I think you’ll be interested in his answers.

Most Americans have a view of North Korea through the lens of the Cold War, the Korean War, the media, and the North Korean media projection of themselves. What they know of the inside of the country is nothing – save for a few photos of a strange leader, goose stepping soldiers, and a missile launch. Korea pulled up the draw bridge and went into isolation so everyone is to blame for this.

To understand North Korea is to first understand Korea. What you are seeing is not Communism but a form of Confucian extremism. We stopped the bus one day on a rural farm road to use the bathroom which turned out to be a corn field and on the road was a sign. The propaganda banner read “We do things the Korean way.” I questioned our Worker’s Party of Korea member on the bus about what this meant. After being enslaved by the Japanese and freed by the efforts of Kim Il-sung the Korean people won their freedom and they must make their way in the world under their own efforts and with their own means. They want a country that gives them the right “to be Korean.” This regime has more to do with the Koryo dynasty of the past than Karl Marx. Another thing to remember is that the Koreans are fiercely nationalistic – a response in part to being oppressed by the surrounding nations. Isolation, nationalism, an ideology of self-reliance (Juche), and a view of the past (right or wrong) of what a Korean state should be has led to a nation state very different from anything on the planet. Studying Korean culture is the first step in understanding why things are the way they are in North Korea.

This is not to condemn Korean culture. The Korean diaspora worldwide is one of hard work and success. The Republic of Korea rapidly moved into the world community and there is no reason to view a unified Korea as anything but a successful and prosperous country.

If North Korea was some mountain kingdom in the Himalayas where the founding deceased king was worshipped with eternal devotion and his son, the prince, was followed you might find it quaint. With red flags, parades, tanks, missiles and nuclear weapons it is much less desirable.

The one thing that has surprised me was how friendly people are. The Korean people we meet are genuine and friendly. One might think they would be angling for a gift or a favor as people often did in Eastern Europe during the Cold War. This is not the case. The contrast in their lives and ours is so startling that we cannot help but leave a flashlight, batteries, soap, food or something practical for them to have. One man was fascinated with a glow stick that I was using on a road at night and I gave it to him. The Koreans love to look at our technology items and it is not surprising that iPods are the item most left by tourists in North Korea.

What was the most interesting thing you did while in North Korea?

Most all of the activities that we do as tourists are arranged and choreographed. As much as the North Koreans try sometimes things do not quite go as planned. It was a busy summer season in Pyongyang and the number of foreigners in town was quite high and the available hotel rooms were full. Our group was taken to a hotel in a smaller town that was obviously not used for westerners. This town was what I would call “the real North Korea.” Tourists do not often get to see how people live in the smaller towns and this was a valuable lesson. Music and propaganda blared from loudspeakers until 11pm. At 5am the speaker began with the national anthem and propaganda. “Be sure to keep the Dear Leader in your thoughts today” was one part of the message. It is fascinating to see glimpses of the society that others do not see. At other locations we had to haul our water or live in the dark. To see the society as the people live it is a rare opportunity.

Last week, we had our Kim Jong-il and Kim Kardashian Round. Well, there is nothing interesting about Kim Kardashian, but there is plenty that’s interesting about Jong-il and his country. Here are a few of my favorites.

• Kim Jong-il looking at things. A blog that is exactly what it claims to be…pictures of the Supreme Leader looking at everything from circular saws to toilet paper.

• As for that question about Hennessee last week? Here’s a quick piece about how they aren’t all that upset to lose Kim Jong’s business.

• The Vice Guide to North Korea is a pretty fascinating look at just how weird traveling to North Korea is. Interesting documentary.

• Those of you who have followed this blog for a few years know that I have a special place in my heart for the Hotel Ryugyong, which was supposed to show off North Korea’s pride. But after the shell was built North Korea ran out of money, so they just had this building taller than the Comcast Center standing empty. This led to the strange looking building lurking over the city of Pyongyang like a vulture, what Esquire called the “Hotel of Doom”. But a few years ago, an Egyptian company bought it and started improvements and now it is supposed to be opening April.

• James Dresnock was an American soldier who defected to North Korea in 1962. Here he tells his story to 60 Minutes. Fascinating.

• Here is an article about Kim Jong-il’s golfing accomplishments. It also makes note of the fact that his favorite film was Caddyshack…undoubtedly a great film. You see, our similarities are so much more powerful than our differences.

• Here are some cool photos of North Korea from TIME Magazine.

• And a story in National Geographic about how hard it is to defect from North Korea.

We had a question at quizzo this week about a device that was invented in 2001 and had sold 300 million copies, but which looked eerily similar to a device that was invented in 1979 by Kane Kramer. The answer is of course the iPod. Here’s a bit of the backstory to that question.

You fans of The Wire surely remember the scene where DeAngelo explains that the guy who invented the Chicken Nugget isn’t rich, but working in a basement for Mr. McDonald for minimum wage. Well, his tale of Mr. Nugget is similar to that of Kane Kramer. Kramer was the 23 year old inventor who, in 1979, came up with the concept of the mp3 player. In fact, he built a working model at that time. But like the computer and Charles Babbage, there was very little technology at the time to support his invention. He could have stored 3.5 minutes of music on the device. He was unable to get the money keep his patent, which Apple later scooped up and used to help create their iPod. Kramer is none the richer, despite the fact that he’s the father of one of the most popular devices of the past decade. Here’s some more info from Wired.com:

Kramer came up with the idea for a pocket-sized, portable solid state music player with a friend, James Campbell. Kramer was 23, Campbell 21. The IXI System had a display screen and buttons for four-way navigation. In a report presented to investors in 1979, the IXI was described as being the size of a cigarette packet. Is this sounding familiar yet?

Back in 1979, a memory chip would store a paltry three and a half minutes of music. Kramer fully expected this to improve, and confidently foresaw a market for reliable, high quality digital music players which would be popular with both consumers and the record labels. It could actually be argued that he was still ahead of Apple after the firat iPod went on sale — that had a hard drive and Kramer had moved onto flash memory years earlier.

Much has been made of Apple somehow “stealing” the technology. But the patent did what all patents do, whether used or not. It lapsed, and whether Apple took the idea from there or from somewhere else, it was all perfectly legitimate. In fact, when Apple was suing (and counter-sued by) Burst.com in 2006 it cited the invention as “prior art” to dispute Burst’s patents. Apple even called Kramer in to give evidence.

But anyone can dream up a magic futuristic gadget. That’s where James Campbell came in. Campbell was an electronics whizz and between them the men came up with four prototypes. According to Kramer’s website, a fifth, pre-production unit actually went on sale at the APRS exhibition at Earls Court, London.

Here’s some more cool stuff from Kramer’s pitch to potential investors. This was written in 1979:

Record albums and/or singles issued by recording companies are fed in digital form into a computerised Central Data Bank. This data bank is connected by telephone lines to all retailers. The computer holds this digital information and upon receipt of coded instructions from retailers terminal, will transmit the requested music instantaneously to the terminal, where it is then programmed onto a blank IXI CHIP. It calculates and bills the retailers account, splits the relative apportionments of PRS, Artists Royalties, writers and record companies share, all in a matter of seconds.