Monday, April 28, 2008

Oh Me Oh Miley

"Your bra? Is it over there? No? Uh... I don't know, then. I know I didn't take it. Even if I did, I wouldn't know where I could sell such a thing. Or should I just keep it in a locked drawer, and pull it out every now and then to smell it? Wait. Uh... Shit. Just sit here naked for a minute and Ms Leibovitz will be with you soon."



"Da. Da. Is funny you ask, I just say to my comrade yesterday, I say, 'Before Glasnost, I cut the hair of President. I cut the hair of great Party men of Moscow.' But it was lifetime ago. Now I make the pop star look like refugee child. Starved refugee child. Also, horny. Horny, starved refugee child. Who has none of the clothes. Da. Da, life is funny this way."






"Uh, sure! Listen, can you shut up for a minute? I'm trying to light your ribcage... Ah, fuck. Something's off. Yeah, no, you look awesome! It's something with the equipment. I'll Photoshop it, and we'll get it to look right. I'll make sure you can see your 15-year-old ribcage poking out of your naked back. Don't worry! You look so hot! This is going to be the best masturbation fodder for middle schoolers I've ever shot! Thanks, Miley! The issue will be out in a week!



Sunday, April 27, 2008

Muxtape

Want to listen to some cover songs?

http://tornadoslide.muxtape.com/

Muxtape sometimes hates Firefox, so you might need to use Internet Explorer.

"Christian Brothers" is an Elliott Smith cover - the website wouldn't let me change that in the title for some odd reason.

I was not a fan of "All My Friends" until this Franz Ferdinand version came along.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

It's A Title

Oh, hello! I didn't see you come in.

You might be wondering why I haven't continued my tales from South America. You might be thinking, "Hey, I posted a day-by-day account of my vacation to my blog, plus titled photos and video -- where's his? What gives?" Well, I'm working on it. So is Matt. He'll make another guest-blogging appearance soon.

I'm going to take this "break" as an opportunity to blog some other shit.

* * *

I forgot about Toothpaste For Dinner for a long while, but recently got back on the wagon. Obsessively so. I'm also reading his wife's comic, plus both of their blogs, and their jointly-produced comic, Married to the Sea. Until recently, they offered prints of MTTS. Below are the ones I considered buying, framing, and hanging on my home's walls:

Married To The Sea
marriedtothesea.com

Married To The Sea
marriedtothesea.com

Married To The Sea
marriedtothesea.com

Married To The Sea
marriedtothesea.com

Married To The Sea
marriedtothesea.com

The blogs are pretty good, too. I liked Drew's first Second Life experience:
Second Life is free to play, and I keep seeing people referring to it in the news, so I had to take one for the team and just dive on in. I knew it probably wasn't going to be intriguing when I got to the signup part and couldn't even make a one-word name. I had to use some fantasy-ass last name and I couldn't even use cusses. The best I could do was call myself Wenis.

Wenis Swindlehurst: How do I hit people
Foxbrand Leprechaun: You can't
Wenis Swindlehurst: I need that shit you drive.
* * *

You know when you get up about an hour before your alarm, go pee, then go back to bed? Why is it you have to pee again when you wake up an hour later? Not just a little pee -- a pretty good amount of pee. Despite not drinking anything, despite the passage of only one earth hour. Where is all this pee coming from?

* * *

I'm not obsessed with a perfect lawn. I think the amount of pesticide and fertilizer devoted to lawns is absurd, considering that most suburbians never picnic out there, they just work and work for a beautiful lawn to mow. So I focus on a few minor things: mowing the lawn before it gets absurdly tall, pulling out the dandelions in the spring and crabgrass in the fall, and filling in the dead patches with new seed. It doesn't work out well, because my adjacent neighbors don't give a shit about weeds, and the weed seeds fly from their lawns onto mine. And today I went to the hardware store for some seed and a rake, and they were sold out of rakes. Sold out! Of rakes! Can you believe you read this whole paragraph?

* * *

Sometimes I think it's strange to date a 24-year-old. Not REALLY strange, but just a little strange. Then David Cross does it, and I remember that David Cross is awesome, and I remember that dating 24-year-olds is awesome.

Speaking of celebrity news, Natalie Portman is dating this guy.



I saw a photo of him once, right before I realized I would never ever ever sample any of his music.

* * *

You may have noticed the new sidebar link, which shows links I read and enjoyed. Click away. Now I'm going to get my laundry out of the dryer. Sorry, Earth Day!

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Childrens' Garden

As of today, a certain special someone has been hired as a kindergarten teacher. Looks like a certain special someone is going to exponentially increase her consumption of Mr. Graham's crackers.

The first time I stepped into my kindergarten classroom, I was handed a pencil and asked to draw a circle (or maybe the letter "O" or a zero). When I finished, I was told that I did it correctly -- I started my circle at the 12:00 position, drew clockwise, and ended where I began. Twenty-whatever years later, I still don't know why it's essential to draw a circle in that fashion, or why it was necessary to begin my education with that particular "skill".

Here's everything else I remember about that year:
*Our teacher was Mrs. Murphy.

*Each student planted some grass in Styrofoam cups filled with dirt.

*Milk and graham crackers.

*No one really slept during nap time.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Leaves Of Grass My Ass

I've mentioned American Experience before; the program always seems to deliver. Tonight the subject is Walt Whitman, and the show was preceded by a disclaimer:
"Due to mature subject content, viewer discretion is advised."
Huh? I guess I'll get settled in for some graphic discussions of gay Walt love.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Product Update

Tonight I saw a commercial for Quizno's new Maine lobster sandwich. You can also get it as a salad. Or you can just kill yourself and get it over with.
UPDATE 4/11
I've searched Google, and can't find much evidence of the Quizno's Maine lobster salad/sandwich. The only article I see is one that mentions the company is testing it; I can only assume that Kansas City is one of the markets that this monstrosity is being tested, because Kim and I saw the commercial for it again tonight. I was 10 feet away from the TV screen, but I'm confident there was a disclaimer that read "51% lobster". Needless to say, it is another harrowing night for my stomach.
Moving on to more valuable, less disgusting products, I'm sure you recall my summer 2005 post about my laptop's defunct hard drive. Electing to save money, I patched it together and made the best of things. Last week, counting down the full 60 seconds it required for my machine to detect and open a USB flash drive's folder, I cracked. A new laptop is on its way. Let's compare the hardware specifications.

2001 MODEL INSPIRON (purchased for $2200)

14.1" screen
Removable floppy drive
24x read-only CD drive
2 USB 1.1 ports
10 GB hard drive
32 MB video card
128 MB memory
850 MHz Pentium 3 processor

2008 MODEL INSPIRON (purchased for $1300)

17" widescreen
absolutely no floppy drive
DVD/CD drive that can actually burn discs
5 USB 2.0 ports
320 GB hard drive
128 MB video card
3 GB memory
2.0GHz, 667Mhz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
built-in wireless so I don't have to use a PC card like a chump

Finally finally finally.

Sunday, April 06, 2008

Masses on Mass Street

It was crowded.


It was loud.



But incredibly, we were able to outnavigate the masses to order a round of beer. Twice!

Saturday, April 05, 2008

Mr. Pibb Doesn't Have The Balls For Something Like This

I sent two links to Paul and Jeff last Friday, which touched of a series of emails. The first link was the strange-but-true article about Dr. Pepper's newest campaign:
Dr Pepper Sweetens Pot For 'Chinese Democracy'

Many have tried, but so far nobody has been able to pry the decade-in-the-works Guns N' Roses album "Chinese Democracy" from the hands of lone remaining original member Axl Rose.

Now, Dr Pepper thinks it's up to the challenge. The soft drink company says it will give a free can of Dr Pepper to "everyone in America" (excluding ex-GNR members Slash and Buckethead) if "Chinese Democracy" arrives anytime during the calendar year 2008.

"It took a little patience to perfect Dr Pepper's special mix of 23 ingredients, which our fans have come to know and love," Dr Pepper director of marketing Jaxie Alt says. "So we completely understand and empathize with Axl's quest for perfection -- for something more than the average album. We know once it's released, people will refer to it as 'Dr Pepper for the ears' because it will be such a refreshing blend of rich, bold sounds - an instant classic."
The second link was to Axl Rose's corresponding press release:
We are surprised and very happy to have the support of Dr Pepper with our album "Chinese Democracy," as for us, this came totally out of the blue. If there is any involvement with this promotion by our record company or others, we are unaware of such at this time. And as some of Buckethead's performances are on our album, I'll share my Dr Pepper with him.

i was truly speechless when i first heard about this. is there really so little going on at dr. pepper that this idea got green-lighted? how would this ever even be brought up at a promotions meeting? do you think there is just like one psychotic gnr fan that works there that has been pushing for this for years? i would really love to interview the president of dr. pepper to see how this came about.

--paul


i would just like to take this opportunity to point out that neither of you can prove that i've been working with the good people at Dr. Pepper.

actually, i was pushing for them to blow the dust off the VH classic "Somebody Get Me A Doctor" for the new ad campaign...

tangent: favorite song by, about, or including the word 'doctor'?

think i might choose the new wave infectiousness & repetition of the Thompson Twins' "Doctor Doctor"... (can't you see I'm burning burning?)

~jeff.


If someone had told me that a soft drink brand was publicly encouraging the release of Chinese Democracy, I would have guessed Mountain Dew. Then, Mountain Dew: Code Red. Then I would have asked if Red Bull counts as a soft drink brand. Then I would have guessed a brand looking to energize its stale image, like RC Cola. Dr. Pepper, headquartered in Waco, Texas, would have been low on my list. Maybe a few notches above Coke and a dozen notches above Fresca.

There was probably some long-haired advertising peon at Dr. Pepper headquarters that locked the executive board in a room until they promised to lobby G n' R. Then he ran out of the building, skipping and laughing all the way to his '85 Firebird, and drove into the sunset.

Jackson Browne's "Doctor My Eyes" is my choice for favorite song until I can research more fully.

--dn


Favorite song that contains 'Doctor' is a great question. Off the top of my head, my favorite two would have to be "Calling Dr. Love" by KISS or the obvious choice, "Dr. Feelgood" by the Crue. By the way, am I the only one who enjoys "Dr. Feelgood" 100 times more when the T.N.T (Terror 'N Tinseltown) intro is played before it? Much like how they've combined "We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions" and "Heartbreaker/Livin Lovin Maid (She's Just a Woman)", I think we should draft a piece of legislation that
would require TNT and Dr. Feelgood to be combined.

--paul


I was just thinking about combined songs today, when "We Will Rock You" came up on the shuffle. I was judging if it's a good thing or a bad thing that media players are too dumb to automatically subsequently bring up "We Are the Champions".

I am behind your legislation, and will write my congressman if we include:
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness / Tonight Tonight
Foreplay / Long Time
the really long music intro before the radio edit of Tesla's "Love Song"
the Star Spangled Banner intro before Bullet the Blue Sky on U2's "Rattle and Hum"
side B of Abbey Road

--dn


All great additions, Dan. I think combined songs are a good thing. For some reason, I like the 1 second pause in between the 2 parts where you're thinking "Are they going to play the 2nd part or cut it off?" Then, that's always followed by a sense of gratification when the 2nd part kicks in. This seems to especially happen with the Zeppelin duo already mentioned.

Since we're drafting legislation, we might as well do all of these with one shot. And on that note, lets add "Eruption" and "You Really Got Me" by VH to the list. There's nothing worse than hearing the beginning of "You Really Got Me" kick in and realizing that you were ripped off by them not playing "Eruption".

--paul


there must already be legislation in place for the zep twosome, as i think that is the only combo mentioned that i've never heard played (other than on a personal shuffle) as separate entities.

getting back to the abbey road thing, where do you place the line where the whole sequence starts? i'm not sure how they divided it when there was sides 1/2 (pre-CD), but i personally think the album shifts into medley mode at "Because"...

pauly, you really took me back on the Dr. Feelgood intro -- so far i don't even remember TNT, even though i was obsessed with that album in 8th grade. i will have to dig this up and revisit.

Calling Dr. Love and Doctor My Eyes are excellent choices that i hadn't thought of when i posed the question. props.

it's really fun for me when i hear Kiss these days & i realize how ridiculous their songs are/were. especially when you couple it with how seriously they take themselves as artists and CEOs of the Kiss Army. i saw the video for God Gave Rock & Roll To You the other day on VH1 classic, and after a couple of jumping air windmills, i actually listened for a minute:

I know life sometimes can get tough!
And I know life sometimes can be a drag!
But people, we have been given a gift, we have been given a road
And that road's name is... Rock and Roll!

awesome.

~jeff.


The only part of Abbey Road I'm especially concerned with is Golden Slumbers / Carry That Weight / End.

I get a few VH1 Classic specials for free on demand. Last month, I watched a little bit of a Queen retrospective: live performances, interviews with members, etc. After about the fifth time I laughed at an elaborate Freddie Mercury jumpsuit, I noticed my girlfriend wasn't as entranced by Brian May's commentary as I was. So I've learned to watch those things alone.

I can't remember TNT, either, but I'm sure I would remember it if I heard it. I do remember TMNT, though. Those turtles loved pizza.

I was just thinking about the video for "Estranged" where Axl jumps into the ocean. They need to use CGI to change the water to Dr. Pepper.

--dn