As long as I'm making emo links

"How to be: Emo"

If you have ever wondered, "Hey, what's this emo thing I keep hearing about?", this is the film for you. Because a film about a contemporary topic done in the style of a 1950's instructional video is hilarious.

Beware, this film has a running time of 21 minutes. Emo is not a simple subject.

From the geniuses that brought you Emo-Game...

THE ANTI-BUSH VIDEO GAME

Finally, someone has combined partisan politics with crappy videogame action. It's about time someone fulfilled the wishes of the millions of people in this country who desired an amazingly obscene videogame that lets you use Hulk Hogan, Michael Moore, and Jesus to fight the gigantic creepy robotic forms of the current administration.

It's true art, let me tell you. And very educational.

WARNING: I'm not kidding, it's really obscene. Not for the easily offended blah blah blah.

How narcissistic can one guy be?

This honestly happened this evening. I was playing with my cell phone because it was flipping out this afternoon and refused to work. Well, it apparently had a change of heart (removing the battery and then putting it back is the equivalent of threatening a cell phone with a shiv) and was working. So I decided to test my cell phone the only way I knew how - I called myself. I seriously called my college extension. But when the voicemail picked up, the real fun began.

Some people would accept that the phone was working and call it quits at that point. Not I. I left myself a message for myself. This is a paraphrased transcript:

"Wow, what a great voicemail message. You sound like a really cool guy. We should probably hang out sometime, because you sound really cool. Oh man, what a great message. So funny! So cool..."

If that's not hilarious, then you're not me.

It's a Cold War joke

Am I the only one who finds the Olympic volleyball commentator using the phrase "He couldn't get past the Russian block" is hilarious? Anyone?

My new love

I think I'm in love with the history girl from the Old Navy commercials. You know, the one who is so excited about using stuff that is awesome. So excited about having clothes from Old Navy that she stands up in history class and starts yelling about how cool it is. When she yells, "Let's study!" my heart melts. I'm going to call Old Navy and see if I can get her number.

Saw Hero last night. It was very reminiscent of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon only with more color changes and plot twists. Very cool.

Finally, I love randomly turning on public access television at 2 in the morning and catching a drum corps show. So incredibly random. Life is funny.

P.S. If you were confused by the odd structure of the first paragraph, go here. (http://timmytapeworm.blogspot.com/2004/08/idiosyncrasy-is-cool-word.html) And in the future, try to keep up.

Two thoughts

1) I bet the person who works the phones at the hearing aid store has to yell a lot.

2) Not many parents name their child Bathsheba anymore.

Requisitions

I love things that are seemingly required in certain situations. You know, requisite stuff. I love the requisite crotchety old man that every town has. That guy who has nothing better to do than get involved in local politics and come to every town meeting and hate on stuff. Those guys are great.

I love the requisite victory celebrations at the Olympics. Tonight's celebration by U.S. beach volleyball gold medalists Kerri Walsh and Misti May was especially good. It's obvious that Kerri Walsh has a great deal of affection for her partner. I watched both the medal ceremony and the in-studio interview very closely and it's obvious that she likes her. I actually think she likes her likes her. I kept waiting for them to start making out during the playing of the national anthem, but no luck. They probably thought that would be disrespectful and waited until they got back to the Olympic Village. Good for them. And very good for me...

Finally, I love the requisite "hallway drama" of dormitories. There's always one girl who sits out in the hallway and talks to her boyfriend back home on the cell phone. And it inevitably deteriorates into drama, and the tears begin to flow, and I have to gingerly walk by on my way to the bathroom. Man, I love the requisite hallway drama.

Wait, no I don't. I hate that crap.

Still near death, even as I type.

Today, I was eating some Skittles and some of the Skittle juice came out just as I performed a seemingly routine inhale. I do those pretty frequently without even thinking about it, so I had no reason to believe this one would be any different. But a fairly sizable portion of the Skittle juice went down the trachea with the air, causing me to cough for at least a couple minutes.

I almost died.

Oh, classes started today too. That also happened.

Guess who's back?

Well, I'm back at Drake, all moved in to my swinging pad. I have a single this year, which is pretty nice, but a big responsibility. Suddenly, all the decisions about the room rest on my shoulders. This room is totally me. That's big pressure, but I think it's coming along. The walls are still bare, but we'll fix that soon enough. So now that I'm here, expect the witty observations to continue. Here's one now:

Boy, those U.S. Women's gymnasts sure are glittery.

Notable absence

Sorry to those three of you who regularly check this thing. I've been moving and packing and all that fun stuff that comes with being uprooted. So blogging hasn't been a top priority the last few days. I'll try and get back in the groove when I get back to school, which happens this weekend.

In the meantime, I suggest you use the cool new Blogger Navbar at the top of the screen to check out some other blogs. They won't be as cool as mine, but if you're lucky, they might be in different languages. Then you can just make up what you think they say.

The coolest brothers this side of...well...me and mine.

Strong Bad E-mail 110: For kids

Not a whole lot to say. Just that if you haven't watched this week's Strong Bad e-mail, you're doing yourself a disservice.

Strong Bad blowing up and yelling is hilarious. A caffeinated Strong Sad might be the only thing that beats it.

Although nothing beats when Kermit the Frog gets flustered and starts flailing his arms. Nothing.

Adventures in hipsterdom

Okay, so you get two posts today. I didn't want to make one huge post, so I broke it down. That way you can take a break in between if you need to. Use the bathroom, get something to drink, find more rewarding ways to spend your time, whatever. Anyway, here we go.

I felt pretty hip this weekend. Or at least indie. I did indie things. Like see a cool film. Here's my rock-solid hipster recommendation for this week: Go see Garden State. I realize not everyone has the resources or the free time to see all the movies I recommend, but I'm serious about this one.

Garden State was a beautiful film and I don't toss that term around lightly. It also moved me and I can't say that about too many films. It was a very "generational" film, in that it seems to capture the mood and feel of a certain segment of people, much like The Graduate or Reality Bites did. So if you're reading this and you're not my parents or grandma, that probably means you. The comment about it being "existential angst for the Saved by the Bell generation" was actually right on the money.

Also, one of the greatest things about Garden State was the ultra-cool indie soundtrack. It was so cool, it didn't even use the same Postal Service song as the trailer. It used a cover of the Postal Service song! That's how cool it is! But seriously, I'm buying it when it comes out. Check out the song "Let Go" by Frou Frou at this website: http://www.froufrou.net. It plays over the end credits and has been stuck in my head since Saturday.

On Sunday I took a walking tour of Old Town, the neighborhood where Second City is located, which was fun. It was given by a member of the Second City Touring Company, so it was fun. At least until the end, when classes prevented us from going in either theater as promised. Stupid classes. I also saw the Second City mainstage show that same night, which was great. So that was Second City day. Hooray for that.

Finally, today I cheered on the ComedySportz softball team as they played in the playoffs of the Theatre league. They played a couple great games - they beat Blue Man Group but lost a heartbreaker to Candlelight. Then I dashed over to the Metro to catch an amazing concert by Mutual Appreciation Society: a collaboration between - get this - Nickel Creek, the lead singer of Toad the Wet Sprocket, and the former bassist of Led Zeppelin. It was some amazing stuff.

Unfortunately, the bassist attracted those stupid fans who live in the 70's and follow everything the former members of bands do. So there was one dude who kept shouting "JOHN PAUL" throughout the show, which was stupid. His name was John Paul Jones, so that wasn't stupid, but the act was. Everyone hated him. Including, I'm sure, John Paul. I briefly considered yelling "George Ringo" and pretending like we were playing Marco Polo, but I don't think that would have helped.

And that was my weekend. Okay, so this post turned out mega-long anyway. Sorry. Now it's off to my last week at work. Sigh...

Just for you, Chicago

Sorry for falling off the face of the internet planet, as Allyn so eloquently put it, but I've had kind of a busy weekend. Don't be jealous that I've been chatting online with babes all day. Besides, we both know that I'm training to be a cage fighter.

That's a quote from Napoleon Dynamite. If you took my advice, you've seen it already. If you haven't, then you're a freaking idiot! Gosh! (More quotes.)

Anyway, I'll recap my weekend in another post, but at Allyn's request, here's another random Chicago experience. (Because my blog's main purpose is to entertain my brother's girlfriend.)

I was walking down the street to the El and a guy approached me walking the other way. He looked kind of disheveled and a little disoriented like he was drunk or high or both. When he was a few feet away, he said, "How you doing, brother?" I knew I shouldn't respond, because that question, if responded to, is usually followed by "Got any change?" or "Can you help a homeless person?" or "Want to trade this baby for crack?"

But I went against my better judgement and said, "I'm good, man." To my surprise, the guy just kept walking and said, "Have a good one," thus completing a perfectly normal social interaction with a complete stranger.

I laughed all the way down the block.

I love Chicago.

This can't be coincidence.

Observe the following comment made on The New York Times' movie site about the film Garden State:

hoyabriguy said: "Zach Braff and Natalie Portman offer strong and convincing performances as quirky 20-somethings trying to find their way in that anxious time between graduating from college and settling down. Call it existential angst for the 'Saved by the Bell' generation."

You may recall a few posts ago I mentioned Garden State. I also recently brought up Saved by the Bell. This combination of recent posts by a random movie commenter is no coincidence. It is a cosmic alignment with ramifications that could potentially affect the space/time continuum and drastically alter the very fabric of the universe. Here's my conclusion:

I am the solution to The DaVinci Code.

Thank you and good night.

Idiosyncrasy is a cool word. Idiosyncratic is cooler.

I have a really weird habit when I type things. I've noticed it recently because I've been writing press releases for ComedySportz. Sometimes, I'll start a sentence and then pause in the middle, not knowing what to write. So I go with my stream of consciousness and it always ends up being really excited. Take, for example:

"This Saturday, August 28th at ComedySportz...will be AWESOME!!"

When I really meant to give exciting and specific details about an upcoming show. Sometimes it ends up being self-congratulatory and then it's not even gramatically correct:

"This Saturday, August 28th at ComedySportz I am the coolest."

Seriously, this happens when I'm writing. I don't know why. I guess my brain is embarrassed that it couldn't think faster than my fingers can type. So it gets all ashamed and has to pump itself up to keep going.

"ComedySportz will have a limited run you're doing fine, keep it up."

So in future blog entries, I'm thinking about not editing those types of sentences. I'll just leave them and keep going. I think it could be a good running gag.

Where have you gone, Zach Morris?

I love generational touchstones.

You know, those things that everyone in our generation just gets, regardless of how well it's been documented or even how much we talk about it. They're just things that we grew up with, so we all know them and can reference them at will and then laugh knowingly.

Take, for example, the concept of the Zach Morris cell phone. Mentioning of that phrase around almost anyone of our generation will immediately conjure up images of a giant, almost comically oversized cellular phone.

I bring this up because I happened to catch an episode of Saved By the Bell a while ago, and it just happened to be an episode where Zach answered his cell phone.

This touchstone didn't come out of nowhere, people. That thing was ginormous. Freaking huge.

Can you guys think of any other good ones?

P.S. Peasant's Quest (http://www.homestarrunner.com/disk4of12.html) is officially one of the greatest things the Brothers Chaps have ever produced. Anyone who grew up with Sierra games will laugh hysterically at some of the adventure game stereotypes they utilize. Plus, there's a great Swingers reference. When you walk out of a peasant woman's hut, it says "This place is dead anyway." So good.

P.P.S. I hope I'm not wrong about this generational touchstone thing. I bet I get a bunch of comments about how I'm crazy and it's just my group of friends who knows about this stuff. I look forward to that.

A case study, if you will

Consider the following:

On an MTV promo for the season finale of The Ashlee Simpson Show, an intro from a song by The Postal Service is used. Ashlee Simpson is nowhere near cool enough to deserve the use of The Postal Service.

On the other hand, that same intro is used in a trailer for the independent movie Garden State, which stars Natalie Portman and Zach Braff of Scrubs fame, who also wrote and directed it. This movie is definitely cool enough to deserve the use of The Postal Service.

Learn this lesson well, world.

Long live the Swedish chef

I came to a revelation this weekend. And it had nothing to do with The DaVinci Code, although I am quickly getting sucked into that book, only a year or so after the rest of the English-speaking world. No, the revelation I came to was this:

The Muppets are funny.

Not only that, but the Muppets have been funny for a long time. In fact, I feel quite confident in saying that the Muppets will always be funny. The reason I say this is because I watched "Muppet Treasure Island" this weekend and even though it's supposed to be just a silly kid's movie, I still laughed quite a bit. I just loved to see the random ways they worked in some of my favorite characters, like the Swedish chef and Waldorf and Statler (the old guys in the balcony, or in this movie, on the front of the ship). It was so great.

And the thing is, the old Muppet movies still hold up. I remember going on a road trip a couple years ago with some college friends and watching a tape of The Great Muppet Caper. Now, that movie was made in 1981 and this copy was taped off TV a few years later (the mid-80's era ads were great). And it still made me laugh more than most of the stuff that comes out today. I can't tell you how tempted I am to purchase that Time-Life collection of "The Muppet Show". So go watch some Muppet stuff today. If you don't enjoy it, you're much too jaded for this world.

Oh, and who doesn't love "The Rainbow Connection"? Are you kidding me? Best. Song. Ever.