merry christmas!

Hope you all had a lovely holiday and are gearing up to shop shop shop tomorrow morning (in which case, you should be asleep and not still up, like me). I do wish I were getting a prize for not visiting a prostitute, though. Would make the holiday season that much merrier. Maybe next year.

teaching them to inseminate and freeload, the Federline way?

ha! I didn't realize Weird Al had interviewed K-Fed...

hooray!

this TOTALLY makes me want to reread HBP over break...

JKR reveals title of final Harry Potter book

Also, I went ahead and did the cutesy little steps on her homepage to reveal the title... fun!

did I subject you guys to this last year?

these christmas lights are c-raaaaaazy. I must have watched it for like half an hour straight at a christmas party last year. it's *that* mesmerizing. enjoy!

Dead fish!

Look! Someone created an Internet game based on my life as a fish owner! Check out Insaniquarium!

P.S. The fish make a particular hysterical noise when they die!
d

l'chaim!

my goodness. there's fun stuff all over the internet.

happy hanukkah!

more holiday fun on the internets

okay, so it's a corporate attempt to take advantage of all the "blogging" and "electronic mailing" we kids do...but it's funny!

kid stuck to a pole talks, sings


edited to add: I hadn't realized that good old dubya was the source of "internets." thanks, wikipedia!

this is so infinitely cooler than 3rd-grade arts and crafts

make your own snowflake

I have no idea what this website is or where it came from, but you can design your own "paper" snowflake and watch it float by. for every 1000 snowflakes created, this website will donate $1 to the salvation army. you can also look at everyone else's snowflakes -- mine is the most awesomely awesome one...or I suppose you could also find it by searching for #3602508. off to make more!

I'm very busy right now...

... and I promise I will look at all the lovely 80s commercials after Friday... but for the moment, I just wanted to let you know something I recently learned: that the stock symbol for Southwest Airlines is "LUV."

In the words of Church Lady: Now, isn't that special?

just because...

...my first attempt at promulgating these ads was met with thunderous silence doesn't mean I won't try again:

50 MORE Great Commercials from the 80s

This one has I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up, Where's the Beef?, and a bunch of those gum ads whose jingles I still remember ("your fresh breath goes on and on--while you chew it!"). You've got nothing better to do for the next hour, do you?

oh, no.

well, there went any hope I had of getting work done for the rest of the semester.

sissyfight is still around, yo

the site's running kinda crappily -- only two schools are open, and it crashed my mozilla, and then it wouldn't let me sign back in until the game I'd initially entered was over, and *then* in the one game I've played so far the other two girls decided to gang up on me because they SUCK (and my lolly only helped so much). but we HAVE to meet up for a rumble -- not tonight, but sometime this weekend? let's email...

ericat13, recalling fond memories of playing (and pissing off fellow students) in CT hall senior year

sad news

jennifer aniston's back on the market

but think about it: married to brad pitt...doing it with *vince vaughn*?? that just screams "rebound relationship."

if only I knew the stuff I will be tested on tomorrow half as well as my celebrity dating histories...

I've only gotten through 10 of them, but...

...I knew this was too good not to share:

50 Greatest Commercials of the 80s

here we go!

enjoy:

boo.

I was going to try to post a clip of barenaked ladies on last night's leno (I didn't even try to stay awake for it -- I was in bed by 11pm), but it's either not on youtube yet or NBC's already cracked down. I'll keep an eye out for it, but in the meantime here's the first video from their new album:



happy friday!

MJ's uninterrupted blog trifecta is now complete

I thought you all might enjoy this collection of reviews for K-Fed's album:

http://www.metacritic.com/music/artists/federlinekevin/playingwithfire

Averaging across many different reviews, the overall score is 15 out of 100, which Metacritic equates to "Extreme dislike or disgust."

blerg. eat kitty litter.

I'd just like to announce that the cat litter cake is no more.

I can't believe I ate the whole thing. Or at least, what remained of the whole thing after Thanksgiving dinner, which was still a buttload of kitty litter cake.

I think this proves once and for all that I simply cannot be trusted with junk food of any sort in the house.

Off to moan quietly to myself....

Booyakasha

Eat my shorts, Stephen Meek! Nice to know you, David Hastings! There is a new top settler in Oregon now, bitches!

And no, in fact, I do not need to see how points are earned. I think we've established that I'm pretty clear on that already.

the bestest dessert ever

remember this? well, today we experienced its awesomeness in person:

preparing the poo:



























the presentation:




















...and it's a hit! seriously, kat, it's really yummy once you get past the it-looks-like-cat-poo thing. mmm.

I feel all warm and fuzzy (albeit bloated -- there's a LOT of cake in this thing) inside. let the holiday season commence!

to follow up on a previous post...

...this one's a little creepy. the caption?

IM IN UR SHOWER

WATCHIN' U SCRUB

cats are funny.

happy thanksgiving, all!

this is really, really disturbing.

Michael Richards's racially insensitive remarks at the "Laugh Factory" last weekend.

A disappointing corollary: I'll never see Stanley Spadowski in quite the same way again. Wow.

it's always nice to confirm...

... that there are folks in the world WAY nerdier than me:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/fun.games/11/19/nintendo.wii.ap/index.html

Sure, I may be nerdy in the extreme... I may be whiter than sour cream... I may have been in A/V club and Glee Club and, yes, even the chess team... but I feel confident that I am still way more functional in society than this guy:

"The first buyer, Isaiah Triforce Johnson, had been waiting outside the store for more than a week. He wore a Nintendo Power Glove, a wearable controller that came out in 1989, while shaking hands with Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime. Johnson said he had legally changed his name to include a reference to Nintendo's 'Zelda' series of games."

or this guy:

"The first to buy the system at midnight was Jonathan Mann, 24, who was dressed in red overalls and a cap like the Mario character from 'Super Mario Bros.'
'I'm a little delirious. I've been up for about 40 hours straight. But I've got it in my hands now and it feels good,' said Mann, adding that he has written more than 40 songs about the console for his gaming Web site, gamejew.com. His song titles include 'Wii Means You and Me' and 'The Wind Whispers Wii.'"

Yikes.

I [heart] my celebrity gossip column of choice

this is why:

"I'm no theologian, per se, but I heard after a wretched case of constipation, God bent over the edge of a cloud and took a giant dump on our planet and that was how Paris Hilton was born."

read the rest of the post here (hint: tina fey hates paris as much as -- heck, maybe even more than -- the blogger does!)

it's drivin' me balls!

Ben Folds's new video for "Learn to Live With What You Are":

you sure about dollywood?

Because we can always trek down to the world's first Creationist Museum instead, just minutes from lovely Cincinnati (but IN Kentucky, thank God).

oh, Jesus Christ.

OJ Simpson: "so...let's say I DID kill them. wanna know how I would've -- WOULD, people, this is totally hypothetical -- done it?"

good lord.

im in ur blog, cloggin ur RSS feed

So, in an effort to discover where the "im in ur x y-ing ur z" meme came about, I encountered this link. And though I still don't know where the phrase came from, I feel content to stop looking, because I doubt it could be any more awesomer.

I must admit...

...it took me the entire article to figure out that they weren't talking about, like, Savannah:

U.S. rejects referendum for rebel Georgia region

after a brief moment of clarity, britney reminds us that she's still not quite all there.

newly single spears went ice-skating after filing for divorce

well, no, that's not fair. were I in her position, I would probably go do something fun to celebrate having finally dumped 180 pounds of dead weight. then again, were I in her position, we would be in an alternate universe where I had failed to develop a normal human capacity for common sense, or else I wouldn't have the dumb schmuck to dump in the first place.



hey, there was an election, wasn't there?

som question for erica

Has SOM received any medium-sized accolades recently? Because if so, and I were writing a news article about it, I would give it the headline "SOM: Kind of Wonderful"

Don't blame me for this joke; I think my brain is forcing spontaneous bad punnage on me as revenge for trying to kill it with beer last night.

for those of you who missed the video...

I present a wiki article about the kid with the i-banking video resume. heh.

shoot! missed another deadline.

kat, you have six weeks:

businessweek's list of the best entrepreneurs under 25, or, young whippersnappers insist on making the rest of us feel old...now, get off my lawn!

awwwwwww.

another couple bites the dust...but after 7 seven years, which is about three lifetimes in hollywood years.

ryan phillippe is now single, and one of these days he will accept my calls

Mmmmm... cake....

... but with a twist:

https://www.dvo.com/newsletter/monthly/2004/october/jest.html

Perhaps this can be my contribution to Thanksgiving this year? I'm sure Greg will love/hate it.

Chocolate and porn, part deux

And a hearty two thumbs up I give to Weird Al's latest effort, Straight Outta Lynwood, which arrived in my mailbox today. Sure, we all knew about "White & Nerdy," but unexpected (to me) bonuses on the disc included "Pancreas," a brilliant style parody of Brian Wilson's already brilliant Smile album, and "Close But No Cigar," a style parody of Cake. Don't you just love it when your favorite artists create humorous imitations of your other favorite artists? I thought so.

yeah, I could be flawless too, with the help of makeup artists and liberal use of photoshop.

a-HA! this is PROOF that ads and magazine covers are not at all rooted in reality. it may be a shameless marketing ploy, but darn it, it's a *clever* shameless marketing ploy.

no WAY!

small freaking world:

<<6. The bass player in "Booze Cruise," Hal Cragin, played in a band in NYC with which Office actor?
a. Melora Hardin
b. Rashida Jones
c. Kate Flannery
d. Creed Bratton
e. Ed Helms

Answer: c. Hal and I were in the band Mono Puff with John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants fame. We were in his solo band (you can hear me sing on the song "Extra Krispy" on the album, It's Fun to Steal). >>

find out more trivia about The Office at this quiz on Kate's blog. Wow.

Country Music at its, uh, bes, uh, worstt????

Woah friends, check this out.

And please don't judge country music by it!
d

Like chocolate and porn...

... Weird Al on the Bob and Sheri radio show delectably combines two of my favorite things.

I'll host it here for your listening convenience.

weird al ROOLZ

slate agrees.

existential angst...again!

Oh friends, I am bored in class. And I am wondering why I am doing the things I am doing with my life.

HELP!
d

the horrible resume video may be down, but...

this birthday invite is even worse.

some of my favorite passages:

"A specially made birthday cake has also been ordered and the Ritz
waiters will kindly serve you each a generous slice with Ritz cutleries,
etc...also on me."

"STRICT DRESS CODE:
Gentlemen: Jacket, shirt, and please also bring a tie (no jeans,
trainers, flip-flops, polo-shirts)
Ladies: skirt/top, cocktail dress (no denim, min-skirts, flip-flips, bad
tastes) "

and finally,
"I will be accepting cards and small gifts between 9pm to 11pm...
wink> hehehe"

...okay, maybe the last one isn't so horrible. for my part, I will be accepting cards and gifts of any size between now and 11:59pm tomorrow evening...oh, heck, why impose a deadline? anytime you would like to give me a gift is fine with me.

...and I'm going to kick their asses.

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 14 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

d'oh!

the video below accompanied the **11-page** resume this yale senior sent to the investment bank UBS. since then it's been floating around *all* of the i-banks, and methinks he's going to have a few problems getting a job anywhere. thanks, dude, for making yale the temporary laughingstock of the investment banking world. I mean, I'm not planning to actually enter this world myself, but still...you eeeeediot.

aww. Poor Hormel.

So much for their trademark suit.

I am edgy and innovative!

I also have excellent search capacities. wait, no, not like that. ew.

get your own name google-fied (and yahoo'ed, too, if you're into that sort of thing) here.

Biff from Back to the Future is funny

And in other news, who knew that Rural Hall, NC, was worthy of a Wikipedia entry?

Don't even ask me how I found this

How Many Condoms Can You Wear at Once?

Science at its finest, I daresay.

Why My Hometown Rocks

So, cf my previous comment about the top 10 most singable songs, and I decided to google my hometown. I mean, I knew it was a cool place and all, that Howard Stern went to High School there, Doris Kearns Goodwin signed her name in the same Honor Society book that I did, but did you know that ATM machines originated there?

I disagree with this top-10 list.

also -- thanks, fark.com! -- I beg to differ that "who let the dogs out" is one of the "top 10 singalong pop hits of all time." where's "livin' on a prayer"? (or, for matt, "like a prayer"?) "I will survive"? "we will rock you"? there's *so* room for more than one queen song on this list. but instead they give us -- come ON, people -- "smooth" by rob thomas and carlos santana?? load. of. crap.

so that's how I feel about that. any other additions to the list?

*tap tap* is this thing on?

maybe this'll get us talking:

finally, a restaurateur who loves chocolate as much as I do

we're talking bagels with a chocolatey center, coffee cups with a special pocket to hold your chocolate, and a 10-page dessert menu. I...I mean...it's just so (*sniff*) beautiful...

some people have too much time on their hands.

but this guy takes it to a whole new level. someone find him a hobby that requires leaving the house!


but this *is* pretty cool.

have we all seen this?

because it's freaking awesome. Chamillionaire ain't got nothin' on Al, yo'.

hideous or awesome? you decide.

I was hoping this website linked to patterns so I could make my very own bacon 'n eggs scarf, but alas, she only sells the finished products. I may be able to figure out a couple of them, though, if one of you wants to add a SuperCrazyPizzaSupreme scarf to your winter wardrobe...

OMG POE YHHABOR!!!!!

In honor of our acronymious (but not acrimonious) summer and Talk Like a Pirate Day, I give ye:

http://www.karateparty.org/content/view/419/37/

Arrrr,
MJ

Scattered musings on life and roller coasters

Okay, true to form, I am once again having a crisis of mental well-being. So I'm eliciting your help. I am currently unnerved by the following issues:

1. My looming age and the fact that I really want a baby;
2. My sagging income and the fact that I really want a house;
3. My doomed good looks and the fact that I really want a husband.

Let's focus on the third for a moment. The issue isn't so much that I want a husband as that I really just want someone to follow me around all day and absorb all my memories. I'm convinced this would make me substantially less lonely. (Aside: this is not to say that I am a walking, talking pathetic lonely individual, but lonely as your average person goes). Is this totally insane? I just find it horrendously depressing that we go through life, move, change venues, meet new people, stop sharing our lives with the old ones, and the result is basically that no one really knows you over the longterm! Is anyone else troubled by this?

In lighter news: I just found out that Dollywood has an AWESOME policy whereby if you enter the park after 3pm, you get the whole next day free! Isn't that awesome? I also found out that there are discounts for military families, so that might be worth looking into also.

st

well, if we're linking to mcsweeney's today...

I present these charming updates to the obnoxious we're-better-than-you mac ads (even if the guy who plays the mac is borderline cute...and fine, here are the original ads for your perusal).

so there.

erica, whose pc may spontaneously forget how to start windows but can still be used as a lethal weapon

yes, another edit: if you haven't read the most recent YAM, let it be said that the guy playing the PC is a yalie, whereas the mac is currently starring in a movie in which he makes up his own college because he's rejected from all the real ones. who's smart now, huh? huh??

I'll stop with the hyperlinks now.

I'm blogging from NYC!

And I have for you The Complaints Choir of Helsinki.

Also, Refreshingly Honest Crate and Barrel Catalog Descriptions.

Also, if you make me be the french fries, I'm so not playing Monopoly with you. Ick.

part of me wants to cry at what this says about our society.

the rest of me calls dibs on the prius. maybe if I'm lucky, I'll get to buy LAX!

edited to add: when I grow up I want to be a media evangelist. I will exorcise the demons of stupid commercials!

smoke 'em if you got 'em, mozart fans...

...but hip-hop fans are more likely to have sex. Country music fans, not so much (sorry, Dani!).

hee.

I think I have a new webcomic obsession.


Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

unintentional comedy, part eighty-seven

discovered on my rounds 'cross the internet this afternoon:

since no one's posted in a while...

...I checked the news over at fark.com and here's what I found:

facebook's about to get real crowded

discussion question: is this a good idea or further evidence that the facebook is preparing to jump the shark?

tea partay

hollllllaaaaaaa trust fund kidz!



(I'm pretty sure it's a Smirnoff ad, but it's funny anyway)

oh, this is bad. this is very, very bad.

I did *not* need to find out this exists the night before starting a new school year. I might as well just tell my professors now that I will be failing their classes because this game will have taken over my life. it's very simple: you and an internet-based stranger are paired up and shown the same pictures at the same time, and you both type in as many potential keywords for the pictures as you can. you get points every time your words match, and google uses the results to determine the best keywords to use for these photos. each game is 90 seconds long, which is juuuuuuust long enough to make you automatically hit "start again" at the end of each game. arghh...

hey, Matt...

here's something you could do with your neuroscience skillz...

oh, crap.

you know how the big joke about the crocodile hunter was that one of these days he would get too close to a croc and that would be the final episode of the show?

uh, well, it happened. only it was a freak acccident with a stingray.

RIP, steve. we hardly knew ye.

dani looks like drew barrymore...and batman

this one took two tries -- first I tried a picture where you were wearing glasses, and the website couldn't find any matches. maybe celebrities are too cool for glasses? hm. but here you go...

OH MY GOD!

Can we rent Snakes on a Train and compare?
d

a time-wasting website about time! spooky.

I just stumbled across this website, and it seems to have a fair amount of procrastination potential. so far I've learned that I'm finishing up my 9091st day of existence, and I will turn 25 in approximately 41 days, 1 hour, 6 minutes and 29...28...27 seconds, so there's still plenty of time for you to buy me presents :-D

wait -- did we already know about this??

I just saw this on the shelves of blockbuster and nearly fell over. looks like the SoaP sequel will need to be slightly more original...

the Intarweb is strange indeed...

... and yet, it mesmerizes me:

http://macgyverpluto.ytmnd.com/

http://bradpittisended.ytmnd.com/

http://conneryhunt.ytmnd.com/

http://snakesoncosbysplane.ytmnd.com/

http://whatis88.ytmnd.com/

silly me and my very, very basic cable

I don't actually have MTV, but for those of us who do (*cough* *cough* kat), OK Go will recreate their "here it goes again" video LIVE at tonight's video music awards. so kat, let us know how it goes, 'kay?

okay, kids.

I still think it's a load of crap. I mean, david letterman?!? in what universe do we look ANYTHING alike?? also, who the heck is this fabio dude? and serena williams scares me. like, really scares me. like, if I woke up in the middle of the night to find her looming over me with her ginormous muscles and her awful self-designed fashion sense, I would scream, like, a lot.

Find your celebrity look-alike

The site is kind of slow and weird to navigate... and I have serious doubts about the quality of their face-matching algorithm (cf above, where I am mainly matched up to chicks and Clay Aiken, with nary a Tim Curry to be found in all the land), but still a fun idea.

comedians take on chemistry sets, rodeo clowns, and genocide

this quick essay is neither particularly relevant nor earth-shattering, but I just ran across it in the mcsweeney's archives and am quite amused.

OOOOOOOOOOOH.

who needs books on tape/CD when you can have snakes on a pl--I mean, FREE books on your ipod?

erica, wondering when the snake madness will stop

Question and comment

Man, that sucks about Pluto. Poor Pluto.

In the meantime, who wants to enlighten me: why does my mozilla browser not update our blog (as in, it hasn't showed a new post for about 5 days) but internet explorer does?
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Question and comment

Man, that sucks about Pluto. Poor Pluto.

In the meantime, who wants to enlighten me: why does my mozilla browser not update our blog (as in, it hasn't showed a new post for about 5 days) but internet explorer does?
st

*GASP!*

but... but... what about the children????!!!!!ONEDAMMIT

Everything's better with bacon! And... Tang?

I think for our next baking adventure we should make these:

http://www.kraftfoods.com/recipes/BreakfastBrunch/SandwichesBreakfastBars/BaconSnackBars.html

They sound kinda gross, but you never know... they could turn out to be fantastic.

relive the glory...

...with a minute-by-minute recap of Snakes on a Plane. Just like being there in the theater again. Only without, you know, live snakes.

dani's beloved in his awkward phase

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA


- ericat13, who plans to destroy each and every copy of her elementary and high school yearbooks should she one day become famous

PS--more bad celebrity photos are available here.

My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine....uhh....uhh....

Make sure to listen to this hilarious article! Makes you wonder why Karen every would have dropped out of her program!
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awe. some.

I'll be watching this over and over until I download the song to my ipod. my favorite part is where the snakes are in the luggage.

I'm Shylock, who are you?

Check out this neat Shakespeare character quiz! Did you know I'm more evil than 99% of people who took the quiz? Freaky!

Harry Potter continued

Okay, cf my second comment on the last post, I decided to do a bit of research and happened upon this. What do you think?

Matt--can you puhhllease read the books so you can get in on the conversation?
d

Harry Potter, dead or alive...

Okay friends, here's what the guy who wrote that song Matt hates, who reads the audio version of the HP books, has to say about Harry's fate,
st

...to say nothing about use of a knife and fork!

Eating at the wheel doubles crash chance. You crazy kids are lucky you made it to Sandusky alive.

Matt, your dream woman needs some biology lessons.

Spears says 2nd pregnancy "just happened."

(And Britney, melted chocolate qualifies as a liquid, so you'd better keep that off your plane. Love and kisses--the TSA.)

awwwwwwww.

coffee + cream = art (but can't be taken on planes)

if you think the first few are cool, wait until they break out the chocolate syrup. it's -- dare I say -- extreme, but closer to "moderately risky" extreme than extremely extreme.

Riding the Rapids

Day Three: Supplies still high. Textiles and dry goods plentiful--meringues abound. Cotton candy still 25 cents.

Amused ourselves with a new game, the celebrity chain game, in which we linked various celebrities to one another via their movies. Our biggest accomplishment to date: linking Gene Hackman to Dakota Fanning. Arachnaphobia was involved in the process. Matt was so thrilled he danced his way out of Cedar Point. Dani discovered that absolutely everyone could be connected via the film Broken Flowers, which wasn't even any good (though Kat disagrees). After that, the others put a moratorium on all ensemble films, which was unfortunate, as Ocean's 11/12, Magnolia, and Love Actually had also come in handy.

While Kat has now faced her denial concerning the deaths of Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, Dani took a turn for the worse in Botticelli (and provided much amusement to all) when she did not know that the Osmonds were Mormon and also managed to think that John Lennon was someone named Michael McCartney.

We experienced some bad karma on the Dragster (aforementioned roller coaster). Kat, Matt, and Dani waited on line for an hour and a half, Matt spent $4.50 on a bottle of Pepsi, we bonded with a friendly body builder, and then they closed the ride down. But our desire for eXtreme thrills was satisfied first with Ripcord, pictured below, and then with our final ride, Millenium Force, where we waited on line for 1.25 hours with a DJ playing awesome music. We danced the night away with all the other crazy folks willing to take a 310 foot drop on a roller coaster!

Re: Ripcord. Matt, Kat, and Dani decided it would be a good idea to take a 156 foot drop to earth (though we cannot confirm whether it was from the peak of the parabola to the stand or to the ground) via Dani pulling a ripcord, which we discovered she was rather inept at doing. Erica (cf previous post), who does not like vertical drops, served as photographer for the occasion. Observe our descent to earth:


Tomorrow we ride the rapids to reach our final destinations. We remain concerned about the looming airport crisis concerning liquids and gels. We are pleased to announce, however, that snakes must be in the clear for flight.



st

PS. To those of who might have checked this blog during our trip, feel free to continue to do so, and you are always welcome to send comments. However, please don't spread the word. We enjoy the irony of having our own private corner in the most public of human domains.

News Update

Further debate rages, spawned on by Kat, on the definition of gel and liquid for aircraft travel. Please ruminate upon the following items:

1. Dry ice
2. Snakes
3. Lactating mothers
4. Gummy bears
5. Someone who has to pee
6. Yogurt
7. Pico de gallo
8. The liquid crystal display on some laptops
9. Glass, which, yes, is a liquid (cf: any house older than 300 years old where the windows were never replaced and the glass has started to sink to the bottom)
10. Lychees

And while we're at it: C,F, or M--liquid, cream, or gel?

Day Two at Cedar Point

2 rounds of mini-golf (in which Dani lived up to her reputation and finished dead last the first time but proceeded to disappoint all involved parties by finishing second in the next),
countless battles of DDR,
2 tracks of Go-Karts (where the two pioneers with names rhyming with bat dueled it out for victory),
1 go at bumper boats (where Dani proved to be water fiend),
and perhaps 7 roller coaster rides (including 2 rounds on Magnum) later, we have this to report:

Erica's cholera worsens. She found herself unable to ride one giant roller coaster, but fear not!--she did ride all the others that were gianter.

Matt has laryngitis from screaming on many rides. He also caught 1038 pounds of meat, but turns out we could only fit 100 on the wagon. Pity.

Kat beat out everyone, including several middle-aged men, at Go-Karts. She served as our native guide to the Ohioan (a new word for Dani) terrain as we scoped the wilderness of Cedar Point. She has been christened Pattering Screaming Cat.

We rekindled our skill at Botticelli (Erica stumped all with Theodore Geisel and Dani got everyone on Gerhard Schroeder who may or may not be over 40, according to her; Matt does not seem to know whether Charlton Heston is still alive, and Kat had what must have been a momentary brain blip when she assumed that both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan had yet to kich the bucket). We also explored the realms of Chuck, Fuck, or Marry. We showed our expertise at the latter by entering into the world of the abstract: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Mary-Kate and Ashley/Jessica and Ashlee/Britney and Jamie Lynn, Betty T., Brodhead, and Levin particularly peaked our interest.

Tomorrow we take on the roller coaster that goes straight up in the air and then straight back down (see photo to your right). Ah, aren't we eXtreme!

Fondly,
Your friendly midwestern voyagers

Day One on the Oregon Trail in Ohio!

Supplies low.
Ritz crackers almost gone.
Erica has cholera.
Cannot decide whether to ford river or take ferry.
Matt went hunting yesterday but only came back with a squirrel.
Kat traded liquids and gels for an axle--unclear what kind (for Wheel or Rose).
Aside: Debate about whether Ez-cheez is a liquid or a gel. Suspect it is a cream. Unclear whether cream is a liquid or gel or fits into the platonic ideal of the cream. If cream, then allowed on airplanes. If liquid or gel, then not. If not, then unfortunate as this means that Boston cream donuts are also not allowed on planes, which makes Matt very sad. Also curious about whether Cool Whip qualifies as a liquid or solid as it begins as a frozen solid yet segues into a liquid. The same problem holds for ice, which is much more natural, much less fun, and certainly less delicious.
Danielle may have until we pull out disc A and insert disc B for something interesting to happen to her.

Over and out.

I haven't even *gotten* to the weird al version yet.

if you can stand hearing this insipid song twice in a row, here are a couple of chuckle-worthy parodies:



"beautiful"



"my cubicle"

(apologies if this post is all wonky. I'm trying to "embed" the "html" "code" and I don't really know what I'm doing.)

freakin' sweet.

once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, a theatre company attempted to condense thirteen hours of sci-fi awesomeness into a twenty-minute play.

they are my new heroes.

- erica, wondering how these performers can top themselves. _lord of the rings_, maybe?

some humor for you music nerds.

A "C", an E-flat, and a G go into a bar. The bartender says: "Sorry,
but we don't serve minors." So the E-flat leaves, and the C and the G
have an open fifth between them. After a few drinks,the fifth is
diminished and the G is out flat. An F comes in and tries to augment
the situation, but is not sharp enough.
A "D" comes into the bar and heads straight for the bathroom
saying, "Excuse me. I'll just be a second." Then an A comes into the
bar, but the bartender is not convinced that this relative of C is not
a minor.
Then the bartender notices a B-flat hiding at the end of the bar
and exclaims, "Get out now. You're the seventh minor I've found in this
bar tonight."
The E-flat, not easily deflated, comes back to the bar the next
night in a 3-piece suit with nicely shined shoes. The bartender (who
used to have a nice corporate job until his company downsized says,
"You're looking sharp tonight, come on in! This could be a major
development." This proves to be the case, as the E-flat takes off the
suit, and everything else, and stands there au natural.
Eventually, the C sobers up, and realizes in horror that he's
under a rest. The C is brought to trial, is found guilty of
contributing to the diminution of a minor, and is sentenced to 10
years of DS without Coda at an upscale correctional facility. On
appeal, however, the C is found innocent of any wrongdoing, even
accidental, and that all accusations to the contrary are bassless.
The bartender decides, however, that since he's only had tenor
so patrons, with the soprano out in the bathroom, and everything has
become alto much treble, he needs a rest, and closes the bar.

stop me if you've heard this one.

I had a brainstorm for an awesome website last night, and a glance at the first few google results doesn't reveal anything *quite* like it, so I'm not sure it's been done but let me know if it has:

let's say you're planning a road trip (CEDARPOINT!!!!11W00TBBQOWL), and you're not sure yet when you want to stop but you know that you want to visit a certain type of attraction (e.g., a waffle house, barnes & noble or megachurch) along the way. with this website, you would plug in the endpoints of your trip, select or type in the places you want to visit, and the website would either return a route which includes one of each place (say, the closest waffle house, piggly-wiggly, etc.) or show you a direct route and plot ALL of the places you picked. either way, you would then print out the results and bring them on the trip.

then, continuing the example, once you were in the middle of pennsylvania and craving an ice cream break, you would just look at your map and say, "hey! there's a dairy queen just 3 miles from the next exit" (i.e., just far enough from the highway to not be included in the road signs). think of it as a printable version of a car GPS system (and also one which does not require purchasing and/or installing an expensive piece of equipment in your car).

so...assuming this idea makes ANY sense, do we know if this has already been done? if not, this could be an excellent way to establish our brand before publishing our "Amusement Parks of the US" travel guide/memoir. what does everyone else think?

JK Rowling is a cruel mistress.

more Harry news.

Also, Icky Helena Bonham Carter got a Q&A in the back of my most recent little Time Magazine or whatever it's called. She sounds like a totally bizarre person. Probably why she's been Tim Burton's consort lo these many years.

edited to add: OK Go on the treadmills

Chocolate and Sex

Ew, ew, ew. Stupid Mel. How horrendous.

In less inflammatory news, has anyone listened to either the soundtrack to Basic Instinct or Chocolat lately? Because I have and they sound shockingly similar,
st

alcohol: liquid jacket AND truth serum

so remember when everyone was trying to figure out whether _the passion of the christ_ was anti-semitic? well, we don't know for sure about the movie, but mel gibson's actions during his drunk-driving arrest last weekend have made his personal feelings perfectly clear. yikes.

arrrrgh

Matt need to work. But Matt eat bucket of Thai food for lunch. Make Matt sleepy.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

whoa.

Dan Radcliffe naked?

(and methinks he's, um, wearing just a touch too much makeup on his face in the accompanying photo...)

well, *I* went to bed at a decent time last night...

...but I got up at 7:30, so it might all even out.

quick announcement: the new haven song is up in a more permanent location (the first website was taken down), so you can share it with all your friends! woo.

happy friday!

maybe this won't be as funny when I'm less tired

courtesy of wikipedia, by way of the woxy.com message boards:

An urban legend has frequently been circulated that Pia Zadora once starred in a stage production of The Diary of Anne Frank, in which her performance was so bad that an audience member yelled "She's in the attic!" when the Nazis showed up.

Zadora has, in fact, never acted in a production of The Diary of Anne Frank.

All the cool kids stay in lab until 2am...

... right? Right? Helloooooo...?

So, right about now is the point where A) I get a little punchy because 1) it is late and 2) I am tantalizingly close to done with my paper draft, yet still not quite done, and B) in my undergrad career I would have staved off hunger, sleepiness, and boredom with a trip to G-Heav yielding a bag of Cheez Doodles and a non-diet Coke. Alas, such blissful, calorie-guilt-free halcyon days of youth are behind me.

Sigh. Perhaps when I get home in another hour or so, I'll reward myself with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. That's ALMOST as good as Cheez Doodles. Sort of.

--MJ, signing off and hoping he can hold it together long enough to write a coherent cover email to his esteemed adviser and collaborators

a career in marketing is about to get REALLY easy.

(napoleon dynamite voice and arm-pump) YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

I saw this ridiculous ad the other day and honestly wasn't sure whether it was real, but apparently it is. all this time marketers have been wasting their time trying to appeal to the masses with flashy graphics and complicated 30-second plotlines, but it turns out all you have to do is say (1) the name of the product and (2) what you do with it. the creepy demonstration girl is most likely optional.

So, I might be going out on a limb here...

... but I have just listened to "My Humps" for the first time ever, and though I have actually only listened to about a minute and a half so far, I feel confident in asserting that it is a really stupid song.

Can I get a what-what here, people?

Guess what my new homepage is?

Our blog!
d

kids these days

I just want to say something that simultaneously makes me feel old and lame, and still kinda cool:

Kids nowadays just don't know how to crowd surf anymore.

To wit: At the Bowling for Soup concert tonight (I know... mock me if you will, but it was quite the good time), I counted numerous instances of droppage as well as many more of passing the surfer DIRECTLY into the hands of the onstage bouncer, and nary a single full-crowd, non-abortive surf of duration > 20 seconds or so.

This is not how we did it in my day. When I was a youngster, back in say, 1998-99 or so, let me tell you something, buster -- there was no such thing as crowd surfing droppage. Such would be a major party foul. Bouncer capture was significantly more frequent, but we usually gave OUR surfers a damn good ride before that happened. I remember two concerts in particular, an Athenaeum show and an Eve 6 show, that featured some truly world-class surfage of which I felt privileged to be a part.

Sigh. What is the world coming to, when a healthy young man or woman can no longer be hoisted in the air and groped prolongedly by his or her peers while simultaneously rocking out to the legends and/or one-hit wonders of tomorrow?

more funny responses to math questions

*snicker* here's my favorite:

Dance Around The World

this guy is truly awesome, not just because he has mad dancing skillz, but also because he somehow managed to get to all of these places in what seems to be a relatively short period of time. and there are other videos with other locations, which makes him even more well-traveled (better-traveled?). wow.

edited to add -- from the guy's website (www.wherethehellismatt.com):

"The response to the first video brought Matt to the attention of the nice people at Stride long-lasting gum. They asked Matt if he'd be interested in taking another trip around the world to make a new video. Matt asked if they'd be paying for it. They said yes. Matt thought this sounded like another very good idea.

At the start of 2006, Matt left on a 6 month trip through 39 countries on all 7 continents. In that time, he danced a great deal."

and my favorite line: "Matt dances very badly, but most people don't seem to mind."

oh, and this:

"When Matt was younger, he could hang seven spoons on his face at once. Sadly, puberty made Matt's face less conducive to spoon-hanging.

Matt has a little piece of extra cartilage sticking out on the rim of one ear and a little hole in the same place on the other ear. Matt has no idea why this is the case.

Matt is very good with figures and wishes people asked him to multiply things more often.

Matt has never lost a staring contest."

I swear I'm not obsessed...

...but this shiznit is not to be missed:

too bad the deadline's July 30...

...or we could bring a camera and attempt this over CEDARPOINT OMG weekend:

Just because I happened to think of it

You guys may have seen this before, but it amuses me, so here it is again:



Also, another thing I watched on YouTube today was the pilot (and only produced episode) of Heat Vision and Jack. For those not in the know, this was a show starring Jack Black as Jack Austin, an astronaut who flew too close to the sun and as a result of exposure to its rays is now the smartest man alive (as long as the sun is up). He is accompanied by his motorcycle, Heat Vision (voiced by Owen Wilson), which is able to talk because it is actually the fusion of a motorcycle and Jack's former roommate, Doug, due to an unfortunate ray gun accident. Ah yes, and did I mention that it was directed by Ben Stiller?

It is bizarre, but definitely worth watching if you have half an hour to kill. I recommend intoxication for maximum effect, but you can play it by ear. Here it is:

HELP!

Okay friends, I feel so lost and depressed. Please offer advice:

What should I do with the rest of my life?

There's part of me that almost wants to say, "Tell me what to do and I will commit to it for at least a year and if it's horrible, at least I'll probably be able to write a book about it."

But I'm feeling like everyone is on the path to massive success except me. Help!
st

not terribly interesting, but fairly informative and timely!

list of ways to save gas (and $$) -- most of this is common sense, and a big chunk of it is about rental cars and therefore unnecessary for our CEDARPOINT!!!11! purposes, but it's worth a quick read.

-- erica, happy to see that her preferred parking strategy is, in fact, efficient

all your snakes are belong to us

who doesn't love a montage?

also...

today I was introduced to what is quite possibly the most sickeningly sweet website in the universe. it may lack the variety of cuteoverload.com, but it wins for irresistability and awww-inducing fluffiness. here's a preview:










this is ted. he's adorable, but is he cute enough to take on tabba?










enjoy...

we're really bad at planning.

Every time the ball gets slightly rolling on the proposed cedar point trip, discussions fall off and nothing happens. It's a month away, people! If Ms. SocialTrinity doesn't want her Marriott points, I'll reserve the hotel! I just don't want this not to happen because we suck and can't plan for shit.

Oh, and so this isn't just a crabby rant...

further proof that Helen should have won...

a PUPPY? For serious?

what do you think, kids?

Should we set her up with Jeeebus?

edited to add: hahahahaha, oh, geez. "Hassle the Hoff"? I love it!

uh-oh.

veddy interesting.

feds are double-checking how yale deals with research $$

granted (heh), I know nothing of the research-grant world, being one of the poor suckers who actually pays for her education, but perhaps one of you going-to-school-for-free types can comment -- should yale researchers be worried?

either this guy has done this more than once or there are more of them out there...*shudder*

someone just sent me a link to a story about this guy who went on a date, insisted on paying for dinner, then got all pissy and even threatened to sue the girl for half the original bill when a second date didn't happen...and I *swear* I've heard this story before. ^k^, did I hear it through you? if so, is it the same guy? or is it -- yikes -- someone else entirely who is equally socially awkward?

also, quickie concert review (and I'll let matt fill in the gaps) -- TMBG on saturday was awesome! if I remember correctly, they played "new york city" and "birdhouse in your soul" right off the bat, played all of "fingertips," closed with "istanbul (not constantinople)," and brought out a slew of guest artists, including the "horns of babylon" (not their official name -- yet -- but a trumpet, trombone and saxa-ma-phone) and two women who sang "dinner bell." good, good times. the venue was surprisingly big, and even though it was essentially in the middle of the casino you could hardly hear the slot machines when the band was playing :-) oh, and on the way out I dropped a couple of quarters into a slot machine and won $5. woo.

ouch-a-chaka oucha oucha ouch-a-chaka

How, exactly, does one do this?

hang on...they found WHAT?

is this for real?

scientists may have found noah's ark

I found it through fark.com, but it seems to really be the good morning america website, but...for reals? whoa. huh.

also, hi mel! welcome to the world of rererererererere. congratulations on being our first non-us comment :-)

have you had your daily serving of cheese?

this should hold you for about a week. maybe two. and since I'll be working all the concerts and movies on the green this summer, I'll be hearing it at *least* twice every weekend. woo!

because we haven't had a random comic in awhile

omg don't let it be neville or ginny...

JKR is a cruel person. Don't taunt us like this! askdfghlkjsfl;prhjtbbth

actually

This is Britney from late last week. After all the backlash post-Matt Lauer, she decided to dye her hair f*ck-you black. It would be an improvement if she'd only a) chosen dark brown instead, and b) still remembered to wash/brush her hair on a regular basis.

In an attempt to put this blog back on track, though, I, too, am SUPERPSYCHED for CEDARPOINT OMG, so I think we need to start plannin' and reservin' and stuff. Wasn't there a Fairfield Inn by Marriott around the park someplace? I like staying at those because they have such nice complimentary breakfasts. Most important meal of the day, dontcha know.

For the prosecution....

I present this:







I rest my case.

And, Matt, in case you didn't notice, she doesn't like you. Or any of the rest of us for that matter. Check out the poem on her website if you haven't already.

By the way, where are we staying at CEDAR POINT!
ST

evidence for the defense

Exhibit A:



Exhibit B:



Exhibit C:

you know, I remember seeing this years ago when I didn't know who half these people were.

okay, springsteen on conan seems to be gone (siiiiigh), but this is what comes up if you search youtube for "bruce" and "conan," and it's ALMOST as good (and by "good" I mean "funny, but a little more 'funny painful' than 'funny ha ha'")...btw, can anyone identify the dude in the "I'm made for a better world" t-shirt? I have no clue who he is or why he was deemed worthy of sharing a set with paul reiser AND heavy D. I mean, HONestly...


**update -- the conan video DOES work! for some reason it kept skipping to the "share this video" screen and I couldn't skip backwards or forwards in the video, but let the whole thing load and it should play just fine. and yes, kat, I agree -- WOO. I have a new goal in life: to play in a 30-member band, including a full brass section and jimmy fallon on spoons. (rowr.)

WATCH THIS RIGHT NOW

...before NBC makes YouTube take it down:



AWESOME. Jimmy Fallon on spoons? Thomas Haden Church on random percussion? All of the Max Weinberg 7 + Conan in the mix? I can't get over it. SO MUCH FUN.

I don't care what you girls say

Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson (hello, AdSense) are both still hot.

Note that I did not say they dress well.

I did not say they were intelligent.

I did not say they can sing.

I did not say they have taste.

I did not say they have style.

I did not say their hair bears any resemblance to actual hair.

I did not deny that they are white trash.

I did not suggest in any way that they have any decision-making skills whatsoever.

But nevertheless, their hotness remains. And for this, I salute them.

n.b. to ^kat^: A few ill-chosen Kodak moments does not an unhot woman make. Or need I remind you of some pictures I have of a certain someone posing in furry boots? Or balancing a fake cockroach on her nose? If you like, I could post those photos on the blog -- or better yet, www.hotornot.com -- and we could let the masses decide....

PS to ST: Sorry, no birthday ideas coming to mind.

EMERGENCY HELP!

So guess who forgot to get her mother a birthday present.....Any suggestions for a kick-ass present I can get between 5pm today and 1pm tomorrow?

Also--this shizzle thing is lost on me. What's it supposed to do?

And why can Catherine McPhee read minds because was bulimic? I'm feeling behind the times....
st

lessee if this works.

so apparently the html shizzle which I'm about to paste into this post will let you translate our blog into...well, "izzle" seems to be as good a term for it as any. but for the record, it has been well-documented in this very blog that I am unversed in the ways of html, so I deny any responsibility for this post if it comes out all wonky.

fo' shizzle.

here we go...

Tranzliate this Shiznit to Jive! Click the Spinn'n Rim Beotch! www.myYearbook.com -- Created by 2 high school students to kick myspace's ass Add the Tranzizzle-ata' to Your Site!

did you guys see?

American Idol runner up Katharine McPhee can read minds!

Concert review

All in all, it was an excellent concert evening. I was a little lonely, having gotten the cold shoulder from all my supposed music-loving friends, but it was still totally worth the trip up to Hartford to see Carbon Leaf.

The show was in the Webster Underground, which (as Erica can attest) is kind of a sucky venue, both in terms of size and in terms of ability to attract a crowd. However, the sound system was pretty good, and whoever was choosing the interstitial music gets my thumbs up as well (Stephen Kellogg AND Jump, Little Children! Who'da thought?). Audience-wise, there were probably 100 or so of the hardcore faithful present, and the club was just small enough that that made it feel somewhat fullish even though there was still a fair amount of elbow room to go around.

At any rate, the boys did not take the small crowd as an excuse to put on a half-assed show... no, no, this show was definitely one of the full-assed variety. Good, solid mix of songs from the two latest albums (including "What About Everything?," which I believe was one of ^kat^'s picks from the last album), with a few older and a few brand-spankin'-new cuts from the upcoming album (September, methinks?) thrown in for good measure.

Overall rating: 8.5 out of 10. Definitely worth the $16 ticket-at-the-door price (and even also worth the additional $15 I spent at the bar and the $10 I spent buying the one studio album of theirs I didn't have yet).

SPECIAL BONUS REVIEW: JON MCLAUGHLIN

So, the opener for Carbon Leaf was a guy named Jon McLaughlin and his nameless backup band. At first, I thought they were just a high school band that the Underground had scrounged up somewhere, because the guitarist looked like he was approximately 9 years old. But no, they were a real band, as I soon found out.

JM follows in a long and fortunate tradition of "openers who actually turned out to be really, really good in their own right." This tradition includes Carbon Leaf themselves (whom I believe we saw open for... was it Great Big Sea?) as well as Stephen Kellogg (Kat -- was it Robbie Schaefer we saw him open for?). Jon himself is an (enormous) (throbbing) pianist, which gave the overall band a vaguely Ben Foldsish feel, but with a little more guitar rock sound mixed in than BF has.

As Erica and I discussed at the SK6ers show a week or two ago, I think that there is a certain quality that some bands just have and some never figure out. That is the ability to make a song "pop"... i.e. arrange it and perform it so the sounds play well together and have interesting dynamics and form cool counterpoints and so forth, rather than just forming kind of a mishmash. I think a lot of opening bands, cover bands, bar bands, etc., are of the mishmashy sort, but JM was definitely of the popping variety. They played for almost an hour and there wasn't a dud in the bunch. (This includes their one cover, "Message in a Bottle," which they played just a bit uptempo and which I actually liked better than the original.)

At any rate, they got my highest seal of approval for an opening band: The faith CD purchase. Unfortunately, this had to be online, as they had packed up and headed out by the time I got to the merch table after Carbon Leaf, so I can't offer you a review of that yet. However, I will be sure to do so in 10-14 days when it arrives. Note: It already gets a couple points in my book because the title is "Songs I Wrote and Later Recorded," which I think is a great album name. And almost certainly truthful!

FYI: I think they are based in the general Indiana-Illinois area, and I believe their website (jonmclaughlinmusic.com) listed them as playing in Chicago at various points. So, I highly recommend ^kat^ check them out if she ever has some spare time. The rest of you I will be dragging along to their next CT show, never you fear.

Overall rating: 8 out of 10 on the general scale, 10 out of 10 on the "holy crap, the opening band didn't suck and in fact was quite good" scale.

SUPER-SECRET MEGA BONUS THIRD AND FINAL REVIEW OF THE NIGHT

Unfortunately, this is more of a negative review. Jessica Simpson is on the latest cover of Maxim, which initially made me very happy. However, said happiness was short-lived, as the article/pictorial seems to be following Maxim's recent disturbing trend of putting all the good stuff on the cover, and not really offering much beyond that (in terms of added hotness) on the inside.

Overall rating: 6 out of 10 on the general scale, 2 out of 10 on the dashed-hopes scale, and 9 out of 10 on the "heck, it's still Jessica Simpson, and crappy pictorial or not, she can feel free to have my babies anytime, and hopefully our IQs will average out and said babies will be at least vaguely intelligent, as in maybe not Yale material but presumably able to differentiate chicken from tuna" scale.

I believe it is now time for bed. Away I go!

Notable News

Matt--that was pretty lame until the little green blurb came up and then it got my approval. Here's my attempt at amusing you all:

So in an effort to find my transgendered childhood friend, I found this news article, which, unfortunately, I was unable to open, but it certainly piqued my interest:

Dominatrix Ava Taurel drowns in Mexico

It's been a while...

... since I've posted anything on here. And yet, I have nothing to say. Unless you really like hearing about neural correlates of working memory, mental imagery, and/or the top-down modulation of posterior perceptual regions by signals originating in prefrontal cortex.

So, here's an Ocular Trauma for you:




Side note: Carbon Leaf concert tomorrow! w00t!

Can we say awesome!

Check this out folks! The first female presiding bishop in the Episcopal Church! That's hot,
d

http://www.episcopalchurch.org/75383_76165_ENG_HTM.htm

yo erica!

Did you see this? Vindication!

why is no one else worried?

am I the only person weirded out by this?

horrible, horrible fashion trend is back...and this time it's personal

I mean...it's just...WTF??? did we NOT spend the last 15 years destroying old photographs and laughing at middle-aged moms and otherwise trying to forget that we all once wore these and thought we looked stylin' when in fact we were wearing jeans that, for pete's sake, looked AWFUL on everyone???!1 I laughed when they said leg warmers were back, and I thought they were kidding when the old-school velcro reebok high-tops briefly came back into style, but...TAPERED JEANS?? with ZIPPERS AT THE BOTTOM???1?

I'm too old for this.

neat-o!

Ok, geniuses (geniii?)--if any of you can tell me how this works, I'd really appreciate it. It's pretty darn nifty, though.

edited to add: Check this out if you haven't seen it already. It's pretty amusing, despite all those mentions of the "h"-word. I feel bad that a famous guy like Seth MacFarlane couldn't book a sweeter commencement gig than this.

wow!

This is really freaking cool.

It's hard to look at it without moving your eyes, though, but try--it's SO worth it.

edited to add: This, too, is pretty awesome:

ugh.

we've probably all seen the website with the photo montage, but this one morphs them all together to create a scary, scary video. *shudder* watch this one with the lights on, kids...

Best. Show. Ever.

OK, maybe not literally, but it was definitely the best concert I have attended in the last year or so. Ericat13 and I just returned from an excellent live performance by Stephen Kellogg & The Sixers at the Acoustic Cafe in Bridgeport (and lived to tell about it!). It was touch-and-go for a while -- apparently people get these things called "reservations" when they want to go see a show -- but we managed to slip in at the last possible second and got, we think, the last 2 seats remaining.

Highlights of the show included (Erica will have to help me out if I forget any):

1) A random yet hilarious midshow bridge consisting of merely a background beat, Anchorman [and some other, but mostly Anchorman] quotes, and countoffs. So it sounded something like: "Milk was a bad choice... 2! 3! 4! [pause; new band member steps up to mike] I love scotch! Scotchy scotch scotch! ...2! 3! 4!"

2) An ass-kicking kazoo solo by SK himself.

3) A nice little a cappella rendering of "The Star-Spangled Banner," which SK6ers will apparently perform soon at Fenway Park.

4a) A reenactment of a middle-school dance, complete with the requisite arm-length sway dance, carried out with help from female front-row audience draftees.

4b) At the end of said middle-school dance, a chorus of "If you can't dance in your underpants, then you do not stand a chance" followed by one band member stripping to his boxers and doing something resembling a breakdance on the stage. WAIT! I just found video of a similar performance online! Let me see if this works:



5) A pleasant second encore played acoustically standing in the middle of the crowd.

6a) A FREAKING AMAZING THIRD ENCORE of "(I've Had) The Time of My Life" from Dirty Dancing...

6b) complete with "the lift" at the end of the song to finish off the show.

You know, every once in a while I doubt my taste... I think... "Gee, after I invited people to join me at a concert to see an artist they've never really heard before... what if it sucks?"

But it didn't. It was awesome. And thus, by proxy, I am also awesome.

Mine is pretty sad

create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

Sorry, Central Time Zone... you don't get much love from me. And Mountain Time Zone... to be honest, I don't really think you actually exist. I'm pretty sure that California is actually directly west of Texas, and when I fly cross-country, the plane just circles for a couple of hours in between the two in order to make me think you exist.

My country map is even simpler: U.S. and Canada. And I think my parents might have taken me to Bermuda or Jamaica or something when I was an infant... fat lot of good it did me.

Am I a bad Yalie for not really being that into travel?

my turn! my turn!

It would probably just be easier to list the countries I've visited: Canada, U.S. (duh), the Bahamas (are they a separate country? I don't even know), Belize, Ireland, England, France, Italy, Germany, Senegal, Morocco, Namibia, South Africa, Mauritius, South Korea, Japan.

And Erica--you drove through Kentucky! I think you're allowed to add it to your map. :D

edited to add: sorry about the wonky sizing. but if we talk enough, we'll have this thing shoved down far enough in no time that it won't interfere with the links to the right anymore.

you know, I've been meaning to do this for ages.

I've just never gotten around to checking off the states I've visited, but now I have it in visual form. fyi, "visited" for me means "left the airport," otherwise my list would include a plethora of midwestern states. (^k^, does the cincinnati airport count as kentucky?)

make your own map! you can also make a map of the countries you've visited, and mine is depressingly empty (sure, there are random splotches in africa and the south pacific thanks to YGC, but europe, asia and central and south america are pretty much bare) or else I would've posted it too.

more tshirts I want

from nataliedee.com:



and my favorite:

will someone call me in 2059 to make sure I'm alive?

morbid, but interesting...I get to live to be 78. thanks, 88-year-old grandpa!

how long will you live?

it was only a matter of time before someone thought of doing this.

I don't know if any of you have been following this -- I've only caught a couple of entries myself -- but slate.com is blogging along with the bible and I think it's an excellent idea.

in other news, I am happy that it's already thursday, but unhappy that the recent rain has triggered a bout of allergy-induced ickiness. yuck.

I think this merits a "wtf??"

uh, mayor (and gubernatorial candidate) destefano has a blog. I think.

http://www.myleftnutmeg.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1461

it's just...I mean, he SWEARS he's the mayor, and I found it via a new haven independent online newspaper, but...does he know what the blog's title means or why it's funny? I just...huh. I won't take a position either way on whether this really is the mayor, but it IS a fairly clever name. hm.

brilliant book swap idea!

So Kat suggested a book swap, and I concur. You know what would be even more fun though--we could choose who we wanted to send a book of ours to (like pulling names out of a hat or a secret santa or something) and then choose a book we think they'd like. What do you all think?

this is, like, probably the worst music video ever.

It at least gives David Hasselhoff a run for his money...
click me!

Summer Reading Recommendation

Dear friends,

I highly, highly, highly recommend Nick Hornby's new book, Long Way Down, and commend it to your summer reading list. It was so hysterical! I was laughing out loud on the beach. Get thee to the bookstore!
SocialTrinity

ARRRRRRRRRRRGH!!!

Alias, if you are out there somewhere, you'd better listen up and listen good. I am GLAD you just ended. There. I said it. I am tired of you jerking me around, playing with my heart. You have now eaten over 60 of my precious hours on this planet. Each time I acquire one of your seasons, I think, "This will be the last one. Finally, last season's enormous cliffhanger will be resolved. At long last, you will mercifully tie up some plotlines and answer my questions. After all this, I will have my life back so that I can establish myself as a cognitive neuroscientist of note while simultaneously pursuing my many interests in the artistic realm. I will be a whole man again."

But NOOOOO. That would be just too darn easy, wouldn't it? EVERY FREAKING TIME, I think it's over, and it's not. I think someone's dead, they're still alive. I finally figure out that someone is a bad guy... oh wait! Just kidding! They're a good guy! No... bad guy! But now they're good again but now their motivation to be good is gone so they've gone back to bad and oh no please let it stop....

At the end of Seasons 1 and 2, I kind of knew what was coming. That was fine. I knew I was in for three seasons, at least. But then at the end of Season 3, you just had to go and throw another damn monkey wrench in the works, didn't you?! But, again, fine. Whatever. No biggie. I could see the end in sight. Season 4 starts, kind of boring at first, and I'm like, "OK, that's cool. Clearly you're almost out of ideas for the big plotline, so you'll just be kind of dull for the first half of the season, and then you'll wrap pretty much everything up at the end of the season for May sweeps, and then Season 5 will be you just kind of limping along until the series ends and I won't have to watch it." And I was mostly right. Boring first half of season, then mid-season comes along, and all of a sudden... interesting again! Here's the plotline I was hoping to see wrapped up! Oh, look, everything's coming to a dramatic climax! For crying out loud, THE WORLD IS ABOUT TO END! I mean, come on! What else can you do with a series after you do THAT story? Nothing, right? Wrong! So you save the world (I expected that), all the prophecies came true, blah blah blah... and I'm like, doctor of philosophy degree, here I come!

BUT NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

AWWWW, COME ON!

WHY DID YOU HAVE TO GO AND DO THAT?

JKPPGLGK;L'ADSJ'FLKDASKJPBF'MKGSD;L'DGA;LKSKFD;SAFK DS;ALLJGKDS;AKF DSA;FKDSA;FKDSA;LFKDL;ASKG L;DSA'JGTA ;LMKLADSFJ KFD;LASKF;LDSKAq!q!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(sound of head hitting keyboard)

(silence)

(then, gentle sobbing)

(longer silence)

Fine.

One more season.

But just remember... you were cancelled. I saw it on the news. You're over. After Season 5, no more. You have aired your last episode. Alias is no more.

So I will watch your little Season 5 like the good little puppety monkey boy that I am. After all, what's another 15 hours of my life pissed away?

But let me tell you one thing: THAT HAD BETTER BE IT.

No spinoffs.

No opportunities for movie tie-ins.

No ambiguous endings.

I demand closure. YOU WILL NOT GIVE ME ANOTHER CLIFFHANGER, YOU HEAR ME?! NO MORE CLIFFHANGERS! CLOSURE!!!!!!!

OK? You got that? Just so we're clear.

All right. Now, I am going to go procure Season 5, and meanwhile I will try to get some work done.

That is all.

End transmission.

well, shucks.

I don't generally advocate links to Fox News websites, but...

An actual snake on an actual plane. Motherf*cker.

HELP!!!!!!!!

Okay friends--I am charging you with finding a mission for my life, becuase I hate it. Not in the I-hate-my-life-and-want-to-throw-in-the-towel kindof way, more in the I-request-a-newer-model kind of way. I am totally ready toconcede grad school is not going to get me anywhere and try something totallydifferent. But what? What on earth is a student with a master's degree in theology and an undergrad major in English to do when she wants to make a majorcareer turn? I am qualified for nothing!
Now, here are my requirements for a job:

1. New climate: I want to move. A lot. Preferably somewhere people would wantto visit me (i.e. Florida, California, New Orleans, etc.)

2. New job climate: Nothing in religion. At all. I am tired of being seriousall the time. Right now all I do is study dying people and people who will dieand what it means to die or experience some sort of massive trauma and it is tiring! It is time for something fun! Or at least different. Dream jobsinclude but are not limited to: an editing gig, barista at starbuck's (thoughnot totally preferable), something in journalism, any job in the world where Ican work for Disney, anything in television or film preferably leading to mysuccess as an A-list star. Don't like suits but would give them a shot! Am open to all suggestions! Kat: Talk to me about entertainment law! Part of the problem is that I feel like I can'treally think out of the box. I don't know what's out there! Any thoughts? Any suggestions? Any idea how to get an income? Preferably one that will make me the next president of the United States or a Nobel prize winner but incomes that allow me to pay off my studentloans are also preferable!

PS. I am making a motion for a trip to Disney World during Gay Day for one of our amusement park ramblings! Opinions on this?