I never really know what to do when people recognize me but aren’t sure how, which happens increasingly often. A woman at the barbecue place where we were eating dinner on Tuesday was sure I had a twin when I told her that no, I’d never been to Colorado Springs. “You even talk like him!” she said. I told her I didn’t have a twin, but, actually, there is this mysterious half-a-locket I’ve worn ever since I was a child… “His twin is a smart-aleck too,” Mindy told the woman from Colorado Springs, leading me away.

But it’s a real problem: you don’t want to say “Well, you might remember from such shows as…” because you look like an ass. I was talking with the very sweet Susie Essman recently, and she brought up this dilemma. It’s especially embarrassing when you say, “Well, I’m on Curb Your Enthusiasm, and I was in Bolt…” and they say, “Nope. No, that’s not it.”

On the way home from Salt Lake City, I got a little unwanted help.

Guy sitting behind us: Where do I know you from?
Me (looking at his T-shirt): Green Day concert? I give up.
Guy: Well, you look totally familiar.
Dylan (helpfully): I’ll give you a hint. It starts with a ‘J’.
Me (doing Dave Seville “Alvin!” impression): Dy-LAN!!!

Ah, the opening bass part of “The Last Letter” by the Field Mice just came on. Like a time machine. I haven’t listened to this record forever.

Anyway. The last time I blogged about Superman being a big jerk, I was pretty sympathetic to Supergirl, who bore the brunt of her cousin’s super-sadism. But it looks like continued exposure to Superman’s bad mood has affected Supergirl a bit, sort of like when Richard Pryor made Superman bad and he straightened the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Check out Exhibit A here, from the backup story in Action Comics #302, July 1963. If you saw a juggling octopus at the aquarium, you’d be pretty stoked, right? I’d be all, “Holy sh**, that octopus is really juggling! This is the greatest day of my life!!!” Not Ms. Super-high-maintenance.

“Pssht, that’s the third ball he’s dropped!” Oh, I’m sure the traveling “sea-circuses” on planet Krypton are so awesome and they have fire-crystal eels or whatever, and the juggling octopus never drop a single beanbag! Go to hell, Supergirl.

We drove down to lovely Cedar City, Utah, for a couple days. Since this blog is already well known for its obsession with the minutiae of public restrooms, I have to mention the place we stopped for lunch: the toilet paper dispenser in its restroom was the “NeverOut 3000,” which I thought was the greatest name ever. First of all, it sounds like a fake product from a movie, which somebody should probably have caught. (Have there really been 2,999 previous iterations of “NeverOut” technology?) Also, I’m pretty sure the NeverOut part of the name constitutes false advertising, unless the NeverOut 3000 is actually some kind of magical numinous object that can produce TP indefinitely, like the Sampo or the flour jar of the widow of Zarephath.

I’m not sure why I never added this to the Appearances page, but I’m flying to the Twin Cities tonight. Tomorrow (Saturday) morning, I’ll be at the Mall of America, signing books at Barnes & Noble from 11 to 12, and then hosting the Extra Cravings Club Trivia Challenge from 12 to 2, at the Best Buy rotunda on the east side of the mall’s main level. Then a quick ride on the Snoopy rollercoaster and back to the airport in hopes of getting my picture taken with the Larry Craig stall.

Wait, Wikipedia tells me that “Camp Snoopy” has now been rebranded with Nickelodeon characters. Is nothing sacred?!? The commercial sellouts of my childhood are clearly morally superior to the commercial sellouts of my children’s childhood.

I have another “6° of Ken Jennings” piece in the new issue of mental_floss magazine, on sale soon. Hey, a friendly postman might be sliding the magazine into your soft yielding mailbox as you read these lines. For all I know.

To tempt you, presumably, into buying your own damn subscription to this fantastic trivia periodical, the fine folks at mental_floss let me post my column to this here blog. I don’t have the full text of the publication draft, so here’s what I originally turned in. Do not read if connecting the Blessed Virgin to a cell phone provider strikes you as blasphemous in any way.

Virgin Mobile and Virgin Mary

Virgin Mobile, the U.S.’s first cell-phone provider to offer only pre-paid service, is a joint venture between Sprint and the Virgin Group, the British multinational founded by eccentric billionaire Richard Branson. Today, Branson may be the world’s 236th richest person, but he wasn’t always so successful. His first two business ideas, at age fourteen, were both fiascos: rabbits ruined his Christmas-tree farm, and the budgerigars he was breeding were killed by his mum while he was away at boarding school.

Budgerigar is the correct scientific term for the common pet parakeet, which has lived wild in the Australian outback for millions of years. In fact—and don’t tell your bird-lover friends this, though it may come in handy in this tough economic climate—some etymologists believe the word “budgerigar” comes from the Aboriginal Australian word “betcherrygah,” meaning “good eating.” Parakeet: it’s what’s for dinner!

In 1935, a Chicago salesman was sick of having to put up with lousy food when he traveled, so he self-published a slim paperback listing his favorite roadside restaurants around the country. Adventures in Good Eating went on to sell a million copies, making a household name of author Duncan Hines. Hines licensed his name to a packaged-food company in 1953, and today the name “Duncan Hines” is mostly associated with its namesake line of mixes for cakes, cookies, and brownies.

In Scottish myth, a brownie is a helpful household sprite. Whenever a family churned milk, they’d sprinkle a few drops into every corner of the house in hope of appeasing their brownie. (Note: do not try this at home, unless you hope to appease that helpful American household sprite, the cockroach.) Brownie the elf was an early mascot for the NFL’s Cleveland Browns, who even flirted with adding the pixie to their classic orange helmets. But when Art Modell bought the club in 1961, Brownie didn’t stick around long. “My first official act as owner of the Browns will be to get rid of that little (expletive deleted),” he told friends.

The “Turnpike Rivalry” between the Cleveland Browns and Pittsburgh Steelers is one of the greatest rivalries in professional sports. The Browns dominated the division for two decades, leading 34-12 before 1972. But since that season, the Steelers have turned the tables, beating Cleveland in 51 of 68 contests. What happened in 1972 to turn things around for Pittsburgh? The team finally won a playoff game, a controversial last-second comeback over Oakland. The bizarre winning play in that game, the so-called “Immaculate Reception” from Terry Bradshaw to Franco Harris, has been voted the greatest play in NFL history.

Who was conceived in the Immaculate Conception? Non-Catholics often use the phrase to refer to the virgin conception of Jesus, but that’s not correct: according to Pope Pius IX, who made the Immaculate Conception official dogma in 1854, it was the Virgin Mary herself who was conceived “immaculately”—that is, utterly without sin. If you’ve been using the phrase wrong, don’t feel too bad. It’s a common, uh, misconception.

I had a few of these ready to go, and then completely forgot what they were. So here are some last-minute replacements.

1. Take a word meaning “annoying.” Move the last three letters to the start of the word, and you’ll spell a new technology to annoy people with.
2. The name of what opera is also a British expression meaning truck–er, lorry–drivers?

Edited to add: Answers here, before the conversation turned in an odder direction…

The TSA lady at the airport ransacked Mindy’s carry-on. It turned out the offending item was a mini-can of Play-Doh.

“This is a paste,” we were told. Not allowed.

Whatever, TSA. Play-Doh is so not a paste. It’s not even a dough. It’s a “doh.” The terrorists have officially won.

Maybe I should go easier on old people. I too am grouchy and easily confused by things.

For example: this idiotic news release last week about the so-called millionth word in the English language. Didn’t you hear? It happened last Wednesday at 10:22 a.m. I can’t believe you didn’t notice. The “word” was apparently “Web 2.0,” which pushed across the finish line of word-ness just ahead of word number 999,999, which was “n00b.” Sadly, I’m not kidding.

So I normally just roll my eyes at this kind of media manipulation barely disguised as SCIENCE!!!, but at least it’s usually for a good cause. If about one billion babies have been born into poverty, the reason for the press release isn’t to pinpoint the location of Malnourished Baby #1,000,000,000. It’s to raise awareness of how shockingly large that number is. Whereas the made-up knowledge that English now has one million words is designed to alert us to…what, exactly? Where do I donate?

And speaking of coinages: brand-spanking-new chemical element 112 doesn’t have a name yet (hopefully that’s coming later this summer) so we’re still being forced to call it “ununbium.” Ugh. So element 111 was apparently unununium, which is fairly transparent. (Hopefully the element will one day be renamed Sunununium, in honor of John Sununu.) But ununbium? I assume the ‘b’ in “ununbium” is for “bi-,” but that just looks terrible. Isn’t there some Latin root for “twelve” we could use? Or at least add an ‘i’ before the ‘b’, or a second one after it or something? I am solidly against ununbium, and refuse to have it–not a single atom of the 75 that have been created for a few nanoseconds in laboratories–in my home. We prefer to stick with elements with good Christian names, like copper. And zinc.

I really don’t know if I’m supposed to talk about the game show pilot I was helping out with in New York. But there are accounts out there on the Interwebs, so I guess I wouldn’t be the one spilling the beans. What if I just gave some subtle hints? Like, it’s a beloved game show property with a big, um, trapezoid-shaped board. And it used to be hosted by someone whose name rhymes with “Schmick Schmark.”

Oh, and if you liked the original format as much as I did, you will weep like a baby when you see this faithful, loving interpretation of the game. Put it on the air, CBS!

My wife hates bumper stickers and frequently fulminates about how they are always, always, always a terrible idea. But she loved these bad boys invented by a friend (and former Jeopardy! adversary!) of mine: Nuanced, Ambivalent or Guarded Bumper Stickers. Check them out.

I have to leave for the airport in a few minutes for New York and a game show thing I’m not sure if I’m allowed to mention. But before I go: here’s a Bewildering Conversation from last week that I didn’t want to forget.

Me (watering plants): Hey Mindy, all these verbena we planted are totally dying.
Mindy: Maybe we should have had sprinklers put in up there.
Me: I’ve been watering them by hand every day. Whatever it is, it isn’t water.
(Long pause, while Dylan stares, fascinated now, at my watering can. Finally:)
Dylan: Maybe it’s lemonade.