It sounds like Brave Saint Saturn

It's possible that working in an office for a year has caused me to devolve to the point where funny pictures of cats with captions are now hilarious to me. If that is the case, I apologize.

But I don't think Myrtle in the next cube over would find Astro Cat on a Moog quite as funny as I do. And that makes me feel pretty okay about it.

I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER? - Making captioned pictures of adorable animals safe again. For all of us.

It's not delivery, it's cumbersome

So Tara, my roommate and bane of my existence, does this promotion for DiGiorno's last weekend. Apparently, she was paid in free samples. This is our freezer now.

Thanks for making me move a bunch of stuff around to get to my Hot Pockets, td. Geez.

P.S. Can I have one? Or are they all for Braders*?

*Our other roommate who makes an oven pizza pretty much every night. He probably wet himself when he opened the freezer door and saw that. Right, Braders? Come on.

Newbies no more

ComedySportz held auditions this week for new ensemble members. That means it's been almost a year since I was hired. Crazy times. It's weird thinking about my class not being "the newbies" anymore.

It's been a heck of a year for CSz. We moved out of one space, watched it get torn down and then watched absolutely nothing get built there. (The lot is still rubble. Thanks for making us move out, jerks.) Since then, we've kind of been nomads, and by nomads I mean that we've been in two different spaces.

We're still building our new space on Belmont. We've had some setbacks, but it'll be worth it in the end. Like a lot of things this year, I guess. Just hard to look at the bigger picture sometimes.

Whatever, it's been a pretty amazing year. I got to play at both IIT and a Jewish day school. I played for my parents a few (dozen) times and a lot of extended family as well. Plus, I got to know a lot of cool people, especially my fellow newbies.

Let's keep that e-mail chain going, Class of '06! We needs to plan our hazin'!

Wasn't there already a bad movie with the same title?

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: New Zealand cinema.

Zombie sheep. Brilliant. We can only hope it somehow makes its way to our shores.

Sidenote: Isn't this a strange production for Mel Gibson's Icon Productions studio? Although it's entirely possible that the zombie sheep are also anti-Semitic. The trailer left it open to interpretation.

P.S. Don't silly movie trailers tell you so much about me and what's going on in my life? Give me a break, at least I'm posting.

Is this dumb? It's probably dumb.

More on the Des Moines adventure in a minute. But first this.

Why do series finales of TV shows make me so sad? Is it, I don't know, the finality of it all? Saying goodbye forever to characters I've grown fond of? Or are the chemicals in my brain so easily manipulated that a well-constructed montage set to a great closing song can just make me feel things.

Well, whatever it is, it happened this week when I watched the series finale of The O.C. Yes, I watch The O.C. I got on board at the very beginning and never jumped off, even when parts of it got pretty stupid.

It's sad that it's ending and that it went out on a shortened season. But at least they got to have a proper sendoff and wrap everything up nicely. Look, everyone is happy! And the series is bookended! What could be better?

Gah. I feel so girly. Stupid, easily manipulated emotions.

Farewell, Seth Cohen. What network TV character will people compare me to now?

I guess it was kind of pretty. That was nice.

A lovely weekend in Des Moines. Thanks, winter. You're good times all around.

I had to push the Stallion out of this parking space, by the way. Yep, I'm pretty manly.

I always had a thing for Penny

Ventriloquist's Week indeed...

Holy God.

Someone has taken my most frightening childhood nightmares and put them onscreen.

As if they weren't terrifying enough in my head. As if it wasn't bad enough when R.L. Stine put out no less than three incarnations of this nightmare in print form. As if one psychotic ventriloquist's dummy attacking you wouldn't be scary enough.

This movie has literally one hundred such dummies - come to life, running around, cutting people's tongues out.

Plus, it stars Donnie Wahlberg.

Please people, do not force me to watch this movie. The trailer alone gave me nightmares. I questioned my motives the entire time. "Why are you watching this, Tim? This is a terrible idea. Please stop. You can close the tab at any time. JUST STOP OH GOD THERE'S A HUNDRED OF THEM!"

That must have been a fun pitch meeting.

"Okay, I grant that a living dummy is scary, but Chucky's been done. We need to up the ante."

"How about more dummies? How about 10?"

"Make it a hundred and you've got yourself a picture."


P.S. I'm pretty sure it was a hundred but I'm sure as hell not going to watch the trailer again to fact check it.

Improv babies

One of my teammates on The Senate recently had a baby. As any proud parent would, he brought the little thing to rehearsal last week.

This is little Evangeline. She's a whopping three weeks old now and less alien-looking than this picture would have you believe. Completely adorable. She barely made a peep the entire two-hour rehearsal and when she did, it was a brilliant initiation.

Seriously, she gave you a lot to work with. Great stage presence too.

Of course, we were all instantly reduced to cooing adorers, which I'm sure was interesting to the three new people sitting in with us. Irene held her for so long, we thought she was going to run off with her. It would be just like Irene to turn into a baby stealer.

Evangeline's head is still pretty soft. That's fun.

Import, I say!

Now that The O.C. is officially on its way out, the search is on for the show that will receive the honor of having the best soundtrack on television.

And...search over.

While I swore I would never get into a show about high-school football, of all things, Friday Night Lights just had to put all of its episodes online when everything else went into reruns, leaving me nothing to watch during my lunch hour. Thanks a lot, nbc.com.

It's actually fairly compelling and well-made, and wins the "Best Soundtrack" award by virtue of playing at least 30 seconds of Explosions in the Sky per episode. Even if this was the only bit of music they played each week, they would still win. It's that good.

Sometimes I listen to EITS as I'm walking down the street and suddenly my actions become charged with narrative import.

Try it, it's fun.

Brick by brick

Check it out, everybody! ComedySportz is building a new theater and they have a fancy-pants new "lookit whut we're buildin', y'all" website to go with it.

Yes, the personification of ComedySportz talks like that.

Anyway, you owe it to yourself (and to me, let's be honest) to go to this site, watch the hilarious video starring my roomie td, and consider seriously how much money you want to send our way.

Theaters don't build themselves, people. Let's all pitch in, like an old-fashioned barn-raising.

Only it probably won't get done in a day.

And the participants may never see each other.

And you're sending money in the form of little 1s and 0s through the ether instead of tangibly hammering something.

It's the same in spirit, is what I'm saying. Same in spirit.

Flames on a Chrysler

This was the scene outside my bedroom window around midnight last night. Apparently the taxi and the flame-kissed ride both believed that they possessed sole ownership of the lane, forcing the sweet-ass hot rod into two parked cars minding their own business on the side of the road.

What followed was a mix of heavily accented yelling and drunken disagreement. It was my pleasure to overhear it.

Sorry about your totally sweet paint job, dude.

Arranged for pep band

I rearranged my room recently.

If this does not seem like huge news to you, then:
a) you're right
BUT
b) you don't know me all that well.

Inherently contradictory? False choices? Faulty logic? Perhaps perhaps perhaps. Then again, I have a bit of a cold, so my brain is quite fuzzy.

Let it be known that I am very much a creature of habit. When I find something that works well, or at least okay, I'm not inclined to change that without a good reason. Room arrangements are the height of this particular foible. In college, I would often keep the same arrangement all year, while my notoriously rearrangement-happy roommate would often change his side just because he was bored.

If you have never had the experience of coming back to your room after a 50-minute class to find the entire paradigm of your living arrangement shifted, I highly recommend it. I recall I found it invigorating, if a bit unsettling.

So for me to voluntarily change things for myself takes a great deal of inspiration. Not surprisingly, this inspiration came from my roommate td. After seeing how positively adult her room became just from moving her bed out of the corner (and away from the chilling outside wall), I found myself struck with the intense desire to become an adult as well.

This effort was only partially thwarted by my extra-long twin*.

Not even because of the arrangement options, but because I don't know many adults who still sleep in a twin. I think one of the things that makes an out-of-corner bed "adult" is the newfound accessibility from both sides, as if two people were going to enter it. But I'll tell you right now, if someone else was planning on entering my bed at the same time as me, they better be prepared for a balancing act not seen since the Flying Codonas**.

Anyway, it's fun, I like it, I can play video games from my bed now***.


*What if I wasn't referring to my bed here, but in fact to my twin sibling, who was in fact even more extra-long than I? Can you even imagine?

**Yes, a trapeze act. Perhaps not the best reference for a balancing act, but come on. Fuzzy brain.

***Which is helpful in the last level of Katamari Damacy. I mean, you have only 25 minutes in which to roll up the moon, people!

There should be a graveyard. I bet there's a lot of them.

It was absolutely the saddest thing I saw all day.

Do you know your neighbor?

Coworker: There's a great tapas place up around Clark and School, I think.
Me: That's in my neighborhood. I should probably know where that is, but I don't.

Some quick research revealed that "in my neighborhood" is an understatement.

It's pretty much next door.

Look, in my defense, walking right by it all the time doesn't exactly give me a lot of opportunity to look at the sign. I can look inside though. So while I couldn't tell you the name of the place right off the bat, I can tell you that due to the nature of the restaurant, it cannot seat incomplete parties.

Oh, like you know your neighbors so much better! Don't judge me.

I think I'll name him Clango

This little guy now resides on my desk, thanks to my awesome girlfriend and her awesome Christmas presents. He is easily now the coolest thing in my cubicle, although to be honest, it only had to topple the White-Out to earn that crown. (White-Out uses foam tips now instead of brushes! Can you believe it? Honestly, I think I preferred the brush.)

Anyway, he not only holds pencils, he sharpens them. Although again, to be honest, I haven't figured out how to make him do that. I can however, wind him up and make him walk around my desk. And that's way cooler than a sharpened pencil.

Really?

Really, Jewel? Are you really sure that your generic-brand animal crackers are that amazing?


Really? Premium animal crackers? As in the best kind that you can buy, like premium gasoline? If you claim they're premium animal crackers, the griffin cracker (and there had better be a griffin cracker) should come to life and fly around the room.

Sure, they're passable. Decent, even. But premium? Really?

Substantially more flopping

This year is going to be completely different.

My roommates and I have always enjoyed great banter sessions, but for some reason they would always happen in hallways. We just started talking wherever we ran into each other and stayed that way. This led to a lot of great conversations with one or more participants leaning against a door frame.

Well, no more.

Tonight, Tara waltzed right into my room and flopped onto my beanbag, declaring that 2007 will be different.

Tara: This year will involve substantially more flopping.

Jon entered a few minutes later and followed suit. We proceeded to enjoy each other's company for some time, talking about things ranging from Dreamgirls to the death of Farley, the dog on For Better or Worse. (Tara got choked up at this point and begged me not to call up the series of strips chronicling his demise.) All of this despite the fact that both of their heads were in extremely uncomfortable positions. I offered both of them pillows, but they refused.

I guess 2007 will also involve substantially more neck pain.

Happy New Year, everyone. I hope 2007 involves substantially more of whatever you're hoping for.

"May God bless us, every one!" said the soon-to-die cripple.

Merry Christmas, everyone! From me and my new socks. I love them so very much!

Seriously though, my best wishes to you and yours this holiday season. Much love and Godspeed.

P.S. I haven't taken to only posting on major holidays. That would be boring. Maybe I'll make it a New Year's resolution to get back in the swing of things and start posting more. Because, you know, people always keep their resolutions.

P.P.S. "Carry Me Home" by The Living End is still way too difficult.

Eat that turkey

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

This year, I'm thankful for Guitar Hero 2, especially the song "Jessica" by The Allman Brothers.

I am not thankful at all for "Carry Me Home" by The Living End. That song is way too difficult.

I'm thankful for other things too, of course. But being serious on the Internet is hard.