My Surprise 2012 Calendar

Back in the summer the wife and I finally found a Chinese takeout restaurant that made good-tasting food and delivered quickly. It's not something to take for granted in DC or any major metropolitan city for that matter. They offer a nice range of food with excellent prices, and the best part is that you can order online with ease, and they always have the food there within 30 minutes and the delivery guys are nice and friendly. You'd think I would do a testimonial for them.

After all this time, I'd have gladly been a strong supporter, but just before we left for the holidays things got a little harried.

We ordered dinner and they delivered what looked like a rolled-up 2012 calendar, which I thought was nice. Something for customers that had the menu attached and would engender customer loyalty and so forth.

Then I opened the calendar, and honestly was a little blown away.


So maybe I was just expecting something a tad more Chinese new year/traditional. So, OK, it's a girl in a bikini. Nothing to necessarily be alarmed about. But then I started to page through the following sets of months, and it got bleaker and bleaker.


Red light! Red light! Now it went from a girl having fun in the sun to straight message parlor territory. Now I had to start to worry about toeing the line between laughing my ass off because of how comically inappropriate this was getting, to really hoping there wasn't some happy family of five whose 12-year-old was the first to open up the calendar. This is why I fear having children: you can be the best parent you can, but you can't prepare for weird shit like this showing up.


Good grief. We've left massage parlor territory and veered directly into full-blown advertising for sexual favors. Not sure you can look at that photo and think anything else. Plus, it's no longer worrying about some kid seeing this; it's just straight creepy now. You're a delivery restaurant and you're handing out suggestive 2012 calendars to your customers? Hey, if I were back in college and 22 years old, I'd probably think this was hilarious and funny and I'd throw more money at them. But that's because I was young, probably drunk and a lot dumber than I am now. In 2011, it's just uncool, people. Damn them for having such good food, but there is a really strong chance we're going hunting for a new Chinese takeout restaurant.

What I've Read (sorta): The Affair

I didn't get a chance to read Lee Child's new Jack Reacher novel before the annual trek back to Kentucky, so I figured it'd make a great book on tape to bide the time through the mountains as we made our way home for the holidays. Typically we've ended up listening to books we don't know much about or just things to pass the time, but now we had the opportunity to catch up on one of our favorite fiction authors and kill the time of the long drive all at once.

How could this possibly go wrong?

Well, it yes ruined when you end up with the worst book narrator I've ever heard. This dude, Dick Hill, reads a book like a crusty old man who puts periods after every word he says, which makes comprehending the action nearly impossible. I. Mean. How. Could. You. Understand. What. Is. Happening. If. Every. Word. Such. As. I. Walked. Through. The. Door. And. Turned. And. Closed. It. Silently. In. Order. To. Go. Undetected. Be. A. Way. To. Listen. To. A. Novel. I thought this was something wrong with the audiobook quality or something, but apparently tons of other listeners had the same reaction, all bashing Dick for being a horrible reader. He then took it up a notch when the book got to the sex scenes, which he read in a way that had me convinced he drives a white panel van on weekends. It was creepy and I just had to fast-forward past them. Creepy, dude, creepy.

The book itself isn't bad, since it's a prequel or sorts to the Jack Reacher legend, but having it read by Creepy McCreeperston means I need another Reacher novel out soon so I can burn the sound of Dick Hill from my mind.

Friday Funnies

A bonus Friday Funnies for you. Because it's Christmas, and if Clark W. Griswold is who I can aspire to be as a grown-up, life will at least be full of adventure, and that ain't so bad.

Friday Funnies

Suddenly it seems that 30 Rock is on every channel at night, where you can flip from 6-11 p.m. and chances are strong you'll be able to find the show somewhere. I think it's replaced Law & Order as the show everyone can't avoid, and I couldn't be happier. It's a genius show. This episode showed up recently and I love it when Jack goes 'method' on Tracy and starts acting like his whole family. Good times.

Idiot of the Day

When I was back in Florida for my friend Molly's wedding, there were lots of good memories and reminders that I got about the things I liked about my time in the sunshine state. But naturally there were other reminders, once you looked past the warm weather and endless golf courses, of the bad things that state births. Like some annoying idiots.

At a golf tournament I attended with my pal Donna, I noticed this lady rolling herself around in one of those scooters that injured or extremely old people use. Except this lady was neither exceptionally old or remotely injured. She would roll her lazy ass up and down the fairways, then park the scooter wherever she damn well pleased. It was annoying to say the least, because she didn't give a shit for whose foot she ran over or shin she rammed into, as long as it meant she didn't have to walk to the garbage can or wait for people to get out of her fucking way.

The classiest move was parking her scooter in the pathway, walking up to watch someone tee off, then hauling ass in her scooter to the green to score the best seat possible. Oh, and she made it easy to hate on her, since she made it abundantly clear that she didn't exactly need the scooter for health reasons.


No, she didn't need it. She was just being an idiot.

Game On: Week of Dec. 16

My recent column reviewing Aliens: Infestation and Tekken: Hybrid. Surprised how many papers published this one, since I thought the previous week was a better pairing of consumer-friendly games, but this column got picked up by a slew of papers, but I'll continue to give the tip of the hat to the Ventura County Star and Seattle Times for publishing.

This was also my last column for the year, so thanks to all the papers that published me in 2011 and I hope to gain some more outlets in 2012.

What I've Read: Inside of a Dog

As a big fan of dogs, my two in particular of course, it was about time that I read a book about dogs. Yes, I did read " The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time" but I thought it completely sucked, so I'm acting like that book never happened.

Instead, being the dork that I am, I decided to read this nonfiction book about dogs and how we perceive them and (perhaps, more importantly) how they may be perceiving us. The woman who wrote it is a cognitive scientist, and she approaches the subject of dogs more knowing that they rely on the five senses in a completely different way then humans do. She's a dog owner herself, which also benefits the reader because she doesn't come off as a lab coat-wearing stick-in-the-mud with no feelings whatsoever.

Inside of a Dog traces the lineage of dogs back to their days as wolves, but makes the big distinction that nothing about dogs in the 21st century should be compared to wolves, because the domestication of dogs has completely sapped most wolf-like tendencies from man's best friend. Once she breaks that down sufficiently enough, it's off to the senses, and why dogs act so differently than we think they should.

The main reason is because, obviously, we anthropomorphize dogs way, waaay too much. We expect human responses from dogs when we are nuts to think such things. On average they see the world from two feet in height (think about walking around on all fours not just in your house but in grocery stores, etc.), so their perspective is vastly different. While we humans place a priority on the sense of sight, for dogs smell is the most important. It is a myth that dogs are colorblind; they actually see with yellow-tinted view (imagine life as the drug dealer scenes from Steven Soderbergh's "Traffic", you know, without the violence). There are a ton of other great dog insights she gives, but revealing them all would be stupid when you should just read the book.

I'm not saying I know my dogs specifically better because of reading it, but Inside of a Dog did help explain a lot about why they are who they are, and how dogs interact and communicate with the world that we take for granted. Definitely a great book for anyone who wants to get to know a little bit more about our four-legged friends.

Friday Funnies

Not much to laugh about this week, but I'm dedicated to bringing you laughs even when my life lacks them. This week, it's a short clip from Park and Rec, where my worlds collided. Here was one of my favorite comedy shows doing a riff on the kind of law the wife does for the government. Great stuff. She couldn't have asked for a better send-up for why she exists, especially since it involved Ron Fucking Swanson.

Game On: Week of Dec. 9

My recent column reviewing Mario Kart 7 and Super Mario 3D Land. Thanks to North Jersey for publishing. I got emails from people in Colorado and Texas who read my column in their respective states, but I can't find links. Damn Interwebs.

Friday Funnies

A belated Friday Funnies for you ("being sick" can go to hell). Here's another good one from the movie fail department. The backstory here is that Bruce Lee died before they finished making this movie, so what the producers and director "thought" decided as a solution was to use B-roll, lookalikes and in this case, still photos printed and mounted onto cardboard, to fill in the gaps. They also thought it was a good idea to give shitty actors long speeches to help stretch the movie into it's full running time. All of this resulted in a tremendous movie fail, and this clip is just one scene highlighting all of the shortcomings. The cardboard cutout, of course, taking the cake.

My Childhood, Bastardized

I'm honestly not sure yet where I come down on this trailer. You see, my mom can vouch that I watched an unhealthy amount The Three Stooges when I was a kid. Not sure why I loved it so much, but I did and that's all that can be said. Didn't matter that it was in black-and-white, didn't matter that it was three grown men acting like the age of the kids watching them. It was three distinct personalities always getting themselves into hijinks without much hint on controversy. Great song, great physical comedy.



Well now in the continuation of Hollywood's creative malaise, someone decided to make a Stooges flick set in the present day. At first it was bad when they signed Sean Penn (Larry), Benicio Del Toro (Moe) and Jim Carrey (Curly) to play the parts, which I think would have been a nightmare. Once that failed, they downgraded to Sean Hayes, Chris Diamantopoulos and Will Sass. I really don't have a comment for this. My head won't stop shaking.



It looks both awful and decent at the same time. Awful because it honestly should never have been made in the first place. But decent in that, at least from the trailer, it eschews trying to reinvent the formula and instead delivers exactly what the Stooges did back in the day, only with modern-day actors and in color. These gags would look horrible if Eddie Murphy was trying to do them in a movie (oh, say, some horseshit like this), but if I don't focus on Larry being played by the guy who was the ultra-gay stereotype in Will & Grace, it looks and sounds like classic Stooges skits.

I probably still won't see it, because chances are the trailer is selling the only true Stooge-like parts of the movie (and the fact that there was a reason the original Stooges show was only 30 minutes long and not 90 minutes). So it still rings true as another piece of my childhood bastardized, but maybe only partially so.

Game On: Week of Dec. 2

My recent column reviewing Saints Row: The Third and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Thanks to the Seattle Times, Ventura County Star and Northern New Jersey Papers (among others) for publishing.

Shit that Should Not Be

Just click on this link and let it roll for about five minutes. Let's just say, this guy (pictured) is heavily involved. And he hopefully got punched a lot by the cameraman and anyone else in the studio where this was filmed.

Man Card Member, No. 404431

The wife and I went apeshit over the Thanksgiving because of the leaves that fell into our yard. During the summer, our trees are a glorious thing. They keep the yard and deck 15 degrees cooler and make gatherings a lot better during those paltry DC summers. But damn, when the fall weather arrives, the trees attack our yard like Kilgore.

You look at the yard and the leaves and you think it doesn't seem that bad, just a few hours of labor and all will be well. It's when it's been four hours and you've only cleared the front yard and the driveway that you realize that is why all your neighbors are hiring migrant workers to do this shit instead. But I will not be defeated. A little back ache and sore legs and hands won't deter me from being a good homeowner.

Plus, when you look out over our back yard, it looks like we've buried about 19 zombies in the ground, with one of our dogs providing security.

Game On: Week of November 25

My recent column reviewing Assassin's Creed: Revelations and The Lord of the Rings: War in the North. Thanks to the Honolulu Star Advertiser for publishing, which I have not seen them pub my column in a while, so it's nice to have them back in the fold.

Friday Funnies

Because it's Thanksgiving, we have to celebrate the holiday the proper way: with a clip from my wife and I's favorite show that is just for us, Mad About You. The show is dated, goofy, couple-y and all that gushy stuff, but we love it and the wife watches it on DVD anytime there is nothing but crap on and she never fails to still laugh at them.

The Thanksgiving episode Giblets for Murray is one of the show's best and it's from early in the show's run. Chucking turkeys out a window, dangling them from a string, and the revolving door of store-bought turkeys makes for great fun.

My Design

My friend Molly and I had a different beginning to our friendship than anyone I've ever known. We met in Richmond, VA for a two-week copy editing seminar that was part of my summer internship back during my junior year of college. Molly lived in St. Petersburg, FL, and knew that someone (out of the 16 of us) in the seminar was going to St. Pete for their internship. When she learned it was me, she glommed onto me in hopes that I would drive her back to Florida when I left. Concerned that her intentions were just about getting a free ride home and possibly killing me and leaving me for dead on a roadside in Georgia or some shit, it was a weird start to a friendship that has happily been going on for almost 13 years.

When she came to DC in October for some work training, we got to have dinner and catch up after not seeing each other in several years. During all the chatter I asked her what date her wedding was because I couldn't remember her telling me previously. "Funny you should ask," she said. "We just decided last week to not wait and it's going to be in about 7 weeks." That was OK by me, until she started mildly panicking because with the nuptials about two months away, very little had been done to plan the grand affair.

Being the (foolish) nice guy that I am, I offered to help with with the wedding invitations since I could tell she hadn't given it any thought and she was going to end up paying out the wazzoo because of the tight deadlines she was under. We talked briefly and then over the course of about a week got design comps for her to choose among and started printing. It was pretty crazy to work with her in such a short time frame, but I have to give her and John (the lucky guy) kudos for focusing in and knowing exactly what they wanted and how they wanted things to look, which made the process move smoothly. They wanted to emphasize Florida, orange groves and didn't want straight photos. They wanted the artwork to be more of a painted look, so that was a nice challenge to find the proper photography that leant itself to some creative photoshopping.


In the end I was really pleased with how everything turned out considering how we had to get it all done and printed and mailed in 11 days. And considering how we hadn't spent a lot of time talking to each other over the years and had a lot of catching up to do, it was very brave of Molly and John to put their trust in me to do right by them, and I don't underestimate that at all. So I thank them for believing in me and after the compliments I got from her family and friends at the wedding, I couldn't be happier with the end products. Congrats, Molly and John.

Game On: Week of Nov. 18

My recent column, reviewing The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Thanks to Seattle Times for publishing.

Idiot of the Day

I was in Florida this past weekend for a great friend's wedding, but of course during my travels I encountered a few idiots, as they do have a tendency to produce many of them in the sunshine state.

This one I saw on a highway billboard. Vasectomies are no laughing matter, but I couldn't help but chuckle when I saw this dude's ad. No scalpel and no needles involved? Fantastic, except I can't help but think it means what he's not telling you is that his 17,000 vasectomies involve three guys holding you down while he just repeatedly kicks you in the crotch.

If you want more hilarity, you should check out the stunning website design he employs on his site. Compelling, and rich. Oh, and nice high school mugshot for the billboard.

Friday Funnies

I have a whole list of nominees for this week's Friday Funnies, and believe me I'll get to them all, but I will also most likely throw a bunch of them into Idiot of the Day posts, because they could easily overlap. This one is good not just for the sheer funniness of the missed goal (bad enough as it is) but to listen to two Canadian-sounding guys mock him for it.

Game On: Week of Nov. 11

My recent column reviewing Batman: Arkham City and Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. Thanks to the Seattle Times for publishing.

Friday Funnies

It's 11.11.11, so of course we must pay tribute to the man who brought us the true meaning of the number 11, Nigel Tufnel. Sadly the fools on the inter webs have all disabled the embedding on the videos so you'll have to follow this link to watch, but trust me it's worth it. Sustain.

Update: Thankfully someone was a cool dude. Embedding available.

What I've Read: Last Call

It tooks weeks longer than I had hoped, but I finally conquered this mammoth, deep dive into the rise and fall of Prohibition. Being an avid drinker, this book is right up my alley and the 14 years of Prohibition (and the years before and after it) are filled with more interesting stories than I had thought, and almost none of it had to do with gangsters.

I admit that my interest in this book was mainly because I thought it would be about Capone, bootlegging, moonshining and all sorts of fun, nefariousness. But instead, this book surprised me by being filled with names, dates, legislation and lots more names, dates and legislation.

The thrust of Last Call is more about the political, business, religious and social aspects of Prohibition. It's about the sexism and racism (there was A LOT of both, believe me, and it was overt and unapologetic) that were used to make particular arguments and sell a nation on outlawing drinking. It's about the political machinery that was sweeping that took a Democratic idea like national Prohibition and in many ways forever shaped the Republican and Democratic parties when their values and political positions were almost contrary to what they are now. It's about the Canadian and foreign businessmen (and those few surviving megabrewers like Miller, Busch and Pabst) that made a fortune off illegal liquor and beer.

There is a lot to digest in Last Call. It's crazy that less than 100 years ago this nation, in an overwhelming way, voted to tell people what they couldn't do in their own homes, and then watched as everyone – rich, poor, black, white, whatever – flouted those laws in every conceivable way. It's perhaps the greatest failure in American legislative history. Anyone with a passing interest in drinking should read this just to see where we've come as a nation of alcohol consumers. Just know this: For all the hubbub about drinking today, we don't even come close to consuming as much alcohol as we did before Prohibition. Back before 1920, Americans were (on average) drinking 2.6 gallons of alcohol per person. That equates to roughly 520 bottles of beer per year, per person. Damn. The current statistics are about 2.2 gallons per year, so there's some progress. Check out this book, you'll be surprised how much you learn, even if it takes you seemingly eight months to read it.

Game On: Week of Nov. 4

My recent column, reviewing Battlefield 3 and Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One. Thanks to the Seattle Times and the Nashua Telegraph for publishing.

Friday Funnies

Eddie Murphy has been getting a lot of press this week, for what reason I have no idea. I guess there is a movie (that probably looks like crap) or an interview where he says something questionably stupid. Shame, because the Eddie Murphy of my childhood was a comedic genius, even when it wasn't intended.

Case in point: the Party All the Time video. He really wants you to think he's as smooth as silk in this video, and if it weren't for the internet and the ability to savor this stuff 20+ years later, we can look back and witness the pure insanity of this video.

For one, Eddie can't sing. I'm not claiming to be Frank Sinatra, but I'm pretty sure I could make that exact same song, and I'm not famous. So he's got a slightly higher bar to achieve, I'd like to think. Then there's Rick James. He does many great things here from introducing Eddie to some new friends to making sure the sound is mixed just right (the 0:53 mark). Two things really stand out here: 1) His belief that this song is going to get him a lifetime supply of 8-balls (1:06 and really at 1:36 and 2:48) and 2) that he is actually contributing to the song by picking up that guitar at the end when even a housecat can tell the music hasn't changed a lick.

I've suddenly become addicted to this video, and I've watched it too many times recently because the scene is too damn funny. There's a Whitesnake reject rocking out with his chest out and a guy who's wearing Eddie's "Raw" leather outfit (both killin it at 2:12). And no video is truly complete without some guys getting a little too excited about the chorus, including one of them taking it to 11 on the excitement scale where he can't help but start fondling himself. Pretty sure Rick James paid for his coke that night.

Game On: Week of Oct. 28

My recent column reviewing Dark Souls and Dead Rising 2: Off the Record. Thanks to the Seattle Times for publishing.

My Snowtober

Not very often you see snow in October. Pretty crazy.

Strapping on My Jetpack

This has been a rough couple of weeks at work, and naturally it's culminating in one of the worst weeks I've had in quite some time. So I need something good to happen. Really, anything. Someone to say something even remotely positive or reassuring. Maybe see a double rainbow or some basic human kindness. Ahh, fuck it, probably not going to happen.

My hope is to get a well-deserved release tonight as I go see We Were Promised Jetpacks, a fantastic band from my fatherland of Scotland. Want them to play loud, fast and hard. Strap on the jetpack and fly me away for a couple hours. This concert also has great potential because this is the first time that I can remember finding a band before Kelly and so it makes me feel about 4% cooler than normal to have him like a band that I recommended, since it's almost always the other way around.

Game On: Week of Oct. 21

My recent column reviewing Forza Motorsport 4 and Ace Combat: Assault Horizon. Thanks to the Seattle Times for publishing.

Friday Funnies

This weekend the wife is getting back in the saddle again. No, really, she is. For the next four weekends she is taking horseback riding lessons. She loves horses, and after we recently watched the excellent documentary "Buck," she decided it was time to get back up on a horse and ride around. So in honor of her brave pursuit (I prefer to wager on the ponies, and leave the riding cowboys, mounted police and 18th century train robbers), I give her my favorite thoughts on the horse riding experience, which she hates because she never wants to think of a horse as glue.

Hanging with Murdoch (not the A-Team member)

It's been a while since I've been to a live show, and so luckily in the next few weeks I'll be hitting up a few new ones. First up is tonight's concert featuring Alexi Murdoch. I first heard him when he dominated the Away We Go movie soundtrack. The music was perfect for that movie and I ended up getting hooked on his stuff. It's good acoustic music to have on in the background when working or when people are hanging out.

Game On: Week of Oct. 14

My recent column reviewing NBA 2K12 and X-Men: Destiny. Thanks to the Ventura County Star for publishing.

Blog Action Day 2011: Three Things You Can Do

Continuing the theme for Blog Action Day, here are five easy things you can do (believe me, it's not even 10 a.m. and I've already done them, so no excuses) to take part.

1. Sign and share this petition: Take immediate action against the famine by signing this petition and asking world leaders to ensure people do not go hungry. Then, share the petition with people you know. If are connected to the Twitter, use the hashtag #BAD11.



2. Watch and Share “The F Word” Video: As is typical, celebrities have been solicited to take up the fight as well. If there were no crises, I'm not sure what Bono would spend his time doing, but hey, at least he cares. Besides, this is an excuse for me to drop a different kind of F-bomb.



3. Check out this graphic: This “Fight the Famine” interactive chart illustrates the countries that are leading relief efforts in Africa and those that are lagging behind. Canada, Germany and the UK have fulfilled their aid commitments, while France and Italy still have work to do.

Blog Action Day 2011: Save the Children

First post of Blog Action day 2011 (Food) is a video from Save the Children. It’s got some surprising facts about hunger and the end of the quiz asks you to take action to keep Congress from slashing the aid budget while famine ravages East Africa.

Blog Action Day 2011

This year's Blog Action Day snuck up on me. Normally they send out a series of emails to promote the day months and weeks in advance so that bloggers like myself can prep some content. This year, I got one Friday telling me it was today. Not sure if I maybe missed some emails earlier, but I was bummed to not get the chance to fuller prepare you for the information onslaught.

In any case, I will attempt my best here to give you a few posts and pass along some info because I have always enjoyed being part of Blog Action Day, the one day a year when bloggers try to organize around a singular topic to educate the masses. In previous years the topics have been near and dear to my heart (poverty, climate change, water), and now this year the topic is food.

I thought it was more specific like the lack of available food or starvation and such, but the organizers are running the gamut from farmed foods to fast food to hunger to whatever you can think of (even just blogging about your favorite food). Kinda weird, but I'm going to take the more serious route because while I like to write about idiots and Friday funnies and comedy and video games, I also like to throw out some serious stuff now and then. So prepare yourself for some food-related posts and I encourage you to repost or share as you wish, or ignore it at your own peril. Just remember that it's good to think deep every now and then.

Friday Funnies

I know you've put up with my goofy obsession with movie bloopers, and while you may not enjoy them all, you have to take a moment and check this one out. And if you can't see the amazing movie screwup here, then you are blind and have no sense of humor. Because how this happened and no one was fired is stunning.

What I've Read: Born Standing Up

This was the third book that I read on my Hawaiian vacation, and it was a pleasant and quick read. I've always enjoyed Martin's early work and think he's been unfortunately forgotten in the discussion of great American comics. It's certainly because the roles he's taken in the last decade or so have not resulted in anything of grand notoriety, but it's wrong to just instantly dismiss him.

The autobiography traces his early life more than his post-70s success. A lot of time is spent on his childhood (not surprising, it wasn't always the best especially concerning his father), and then on his strides in making magic and comedy his obsession. I've been curious to see what his early magic/comedy/music shows must have been like, but there are not a lot of video or audio of it out there.

He's also got a recurring theme of failed relationships with females, both of his own doing (hey, it was the '60s and '70s) and also a matter of his travel schedule being absurd by modern standards. I'm still amazed at how performers can ride on a bus for 300+ days out of the year and do shows night after night at varying cities and audiences where you never know what you're going to get from the crowd. There is definitely an amount of bravery it takes to put yourself out there for an hour or 90 minutes, and Martin does a wonderful job giving describing that sense of utter fear and excitement.

He doesn't discuss his wild success with much detail at all, and it's a decision I wish he hadn't made. As someone who only got to see King Tut and The Jerk and other Martin classics long after they were released, I wanted to hear more about that time period and how that all happened, but you can tell from reading that he's too humble or embarrassed or whatever to discuss his fame. I've even appreciated his short stories that have been turned into movies, like Shop Girl which is surprisingly rewatchable. So there's a lot of material from the past 20+ years that he never touches upon and that is disappointing, but the overall book is great and it's a super-fast read that I think appreciators of comedy will enjoy.

Game On: Week of Oct. 7

My recent column, reviewing FIFA Soccer 12 and Rage. Thanks to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, ABC Action News and North Jersery Papers for publishing.

Friday Funnies

Kelly already showed this off, but after making the wife and others cry with laughter I just have to make sure the other six of you reading this blog share in the goodness. These fine folks have done some other videos as well, featuring Obama and some music videos. Most of them aren't as good, but the one they released this week with Michelle Bachmann is pretty darn good as well.

Friday Funnies

Here's another instance of movies gone wrong, but this time it's not by accident like previous editions where a slip-up or something found it's way into a film by accident.

In the case of The Lion King, it appears the animators knew exactly what they were doing. Watch and you'll see what I mean.


Cheeky little bastards, aren't they? This isn't the first time this has happened with Disney, as those animated movies have a long history of putting not-so-subtle sexual references into their movies.

Trailer Love

I'm showing off two trailers today that are geared toward the wife but for two wholly different reasons.

First up is the trailer for One for the Money. The wife reads these Janet Evananonconcnnovovnivich books like I read UK recruiting news, which is scary since it means I probably have a problem that needs professional help. I've never read any of these novels, but apparently it's all about this woman who has trouble deciding between two d-bags and caring for her alcoholic mother while fighting crime and getting her car blown up more often than our dogs take a crap. I just roll my eyes at the thought of these things, but she got hooked on them from my mother (damn you woman!) and now the wife is converting every female she knows into Stephanie Plum fan.

When the wife gives me the crazy eyes every time I see a trailer for a new comic book movie, I just relax and remember the love she has for this Plum character and how every woman in this nation has craved these novels to be made into moves. Well it's happened and the result is delicious gawd-awfulness.



This movie looks like a steaming pile of grade-A shit. And I know this not only because I know a thing or two about movies, but also because the wife and my mother have screamed bloody murder about Heigl being a insulting choice for this role (she spent about 11 minutes learning that Jersey accent) and complained bitterly about nearly every scene shown in that trailer. Not sure I'll see the wife angrier than if Michelle Bachmann became her adoptive mother or chocolate cake suddenly became a banned substance. Either way, it's pretty hilarious how much she hates what this movie has become.

On the complete flip side is the trailer for War Horse. Some no-name director named Spielberg put this one together, and not only do I have the feeling that I'll be seeing this movie with the wife more than once, but that this movie could single-handedly crush the wife's all-time crying record set by the movie Up. The trailer alone may set her back a few dollars in Kleenex. The woman loves a horse (and who doesn't?), so what can I say? Be brave, my dear wife, be brave.

Game On: Week of Sept. 30

My recent column reviewing Resistance 3 and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine. Thanks to the Seattle Times and ABC Action News for publishing.

Idiot of the Day

Yes, I think the lottery is stupid and wasteful thing. The odds are so stacked against you in the hopes of winning that I'd rather have people save that money or do something, anything more useful than just handing it over at the counter of some shitty corner store. But instead I walk past the door of the bodega outside my office building and there are always 20 people wrapped around the aisles waiting to hopelessly believe that their two dollars is going to make them a millionaire.

Take this idiot, for instance. It's one thing to play the lottery. It's another thing to be buying scratch-off lottery tickets from a vending machine at 5 in the morning at BWI. I snapped this guy while waiting for my flight to Hawaii a couple weeks ago. He bought one, scratched it off, lost (shocker), walked over to the nearby trash can and tossed it, walked back and started all over again. After the fourth or fifth instance of this I just wanted to shake him into higher consciousness or walk over to the bar and buy myself a drink.

Cobblings from My Memories

I'm reluctant to give up comfortable T-shirts. It's rare to find a shirt that fits you just right and is super comfortable at the same time. It's even better when, as you retire shirts from the public, the truly good ones live a long afterlife as shirts to do yard work in, generally be lazy in or just sleep in.

So it's with sadness that I have to send this shirt to the cotton grave. It's been a good one, but holes are starting to form and it's just time to say goodbye, which is a concept I wish Steven Tyler could grasp, but alas he must continue to make music that barely appeals to deaf dogs, let alone music consumers.

This shirt does hold a special place for me, which is why it's hard to give it up. This was one of my going-away gifts when I interned at the St. Pete Times back in 1999. The reporters and copy desk folks pretty much hung out at two bars on regular basis, either The Garden (my personal favorite, where the bartender Bill always had two screwdrivers waiting for me at 1 a.m. after my shift was over) or The Press Box over in Tampa where all the media types hung out.

So getting a T-shirt from The Press Box was a nice gesture considering I was just an intern (and one of 15 at that), yet somehow they took to me and I made friendships that still last to this day with the likes of Donna, Ecton, Todd, Gerry, Liz and many more. I was lucky enough to have done so well at the internship that they left me a standing offer to come back full-time once I graduated, which I quickly accepted. So this shirt has history behind it and reminds me of many great times, making it a bummer to give up.

Thankfully I still have my other keepsake the staff gave me, a priceless Mugato doll. One Saturday morning Todd, Ecton and I spent three hours editing stories and talking about Star Trek and debating who the greatest comedic alien they ever threw into an episode (we settled on Mugato and the Gorn as the best ones). This is what happens when you work the night shift on Friday night (until 1 a.m.) and then have be back into the office for the Saturday morning shift (7:30 a.m.) and everyone's feeling a little punchy.

So in the end I must part with this shirt. But I do know it will live on, since I found a company that will accept unwanted or tattered shirts and recycle them. So somewhere that Press Box shirt will be still out there, which is cool.

My Anniversary

Today is the wife and I's fourth anniversary. This may not be the most inspirational clip, but it makes the both of us laugh and she's convinced deep down that this is what I am like with all my friends. I'm not saying I disagree.



Fruit is the four-year gift apparently. What a bunch of crap. When do we get to bourbon as the gift? What year is that? It should be every year. Or how about sporting event tickets? I'd like the World Cup travel package anniversary, when is that coming around? Fruit ... what a joke.

Oh, love you dear.

King of Corn

The good fellas who make up Campbler's Tooth won the 2011 Summer Cornhole League last week. We went 11-1 in the regular season and pretty much dominated the competition. It helped that half the teams featured people who had a hard time even getting the bag close to the board itself (let alone the hole), but we just stepped on necks each week. The core team was myself, Kelly, Dan, Dboy, Paxton and Mike. They "assigned" us three girls to play on our team, but those fools never bothered ever showing up, so they don't get to bask in the glory of the title.

Our main competition came from two teams, the DSLs and Cornholio. DSLs were a bunch of frat brothers from WVU who all had jobs in the DC area. They were decent against other teams but sucked mightily when facing the mighty Tooth. Cornholio was a monster team of guys who knew how to throw some corn, but their problem was that almost every week they never showed up. When they did, they crushed teams. We split the season 1-1 with them and expected to face them in the championship game, but they lost to DSLs in the semis when only two players showed up half-drunk and threw the corn like they had a Julia Roberts movie to rush off to see.

Our most stressful match was the semis as well. We faced a team we'd never played in the regular season and featured a coworker of mine who I randomly gave some playing tips to before their opening tournament match. She soaked up that knowledge faster than Neo and suddenly she was whipping my ass. Thankfully the rest of the team stepped up (Dboy especially, winning us the match in OT 13-11) and carried us into the finals, where we had another tense matchup with the DSLs but eventually wore them out and were victorious, 17-13. Dboy got a pitcher for being team captain, the rest of us got beer glasses, and we celebrated as any team should ... at a bar. No champagne or beer was poured on anyone's head, though. Kelly might have liked that, though.

What I've Read: Mayflower

The subhead for this book is: A Story of Courage, Community and War. This could not be more true when it comes to the story of those first 100 pilgrims who took a three-month boat ride from England to Plymouth.

Philbrick uses the courage, community and war as a way to divide this book into three distinct parts, but it's not a gimmick. Instead, it's literally the three phases the original Plymouth colony went through in the first 50 years of its existence. The courage it took for them to make the voyage in the first place (when things like no water, they had to subsist primarily on beer and wine alone), and then those first few months when the genius captain thought arriving just before the start of winter was a good idea (it wasn't; nearly half the population of the boat died in the first year they were on land).

The community part sums up the following 30-plus years. Meeting, interacting, trading and building relationships with the local Native Americans was not rose-colored paintings of everyone around the Thanksgiving table by any means. There were fights, peace accords and eventually a mutual understanding that two completely different races of people were going to live in close proximity to each other without knowing a damn thing about the future. They decided they were all in this together and for almost a quarter of a century the pilgrims and puritans slowly expanded but made deals with the tribes to make sure no one was overly offended.

The third act of the book is really about how this all went to shit with the passing of the original pilgrim voyagers and how it was, for all simplicity, the kids' damn fault. All the original settlers' kids grew up and decided they wanted everything to themselves, and started expanding at a freakish pace and taking whatever the hell they wanted, peace accords be damned. Eventually small decisions by tribal leaders turned out to have horrible consequences that they probably didn't realize at the time (because it was 1640 and we're talking about a time when furs and herbs were still a big deal on the trading market). What resulted was several ugly wars and the near complete decimation of native tribes in the area. Some stunning numbers are thrown at you, such as how (as a percentage of population), King Philip's War was more costly in lives for Native Americans than all of World War I and II combined for the U.S. population.

This is a really good read if you want to learn some real truths about what taking a risk and landing in a completely unknown place with unknown people must have been like 400 years ago when you were lucky to have one change of clothes. It's dense and takes a bit to get through everything, but there is never anything wrong about seeing where the roots of our current nation began. Philbrick's a great writer so I highly recommend his stuff.

Game On: Week of Sept. 23

My recent column reviewing Gears of War 3. Thanks to the Seattle Times for publishing.

What I've Read: Isaac's Storm

Prepare yourselves for some book review overload. One of the pleasures of vacations is disconnecting from the computer and reading a book. In my case, three of them.

First up, Isaac's Storm. This could not have come at a more opportune moment for me to read. About halfway through the reading this book, Washington was hit by an earthquake and a hurricane in the span of four days. It was a pretty crazy week, and when they called it HurriQuake 2011, I was quite pleased.

But reading this book about the Galveston hurricane of 1900 took the pleasure right out of that, though, since this was a massively devastating storm that killed 6,000 men, women and children. It's primarily two stories woven together: the story of how, at the turn of the century, man thought it had conquered weather and could predict/avoid/defeat anything that came its way; and the story of one man's hubris and whose decisions may have saved or lost countless number of lives depending on your viewpoint.


The look into weather predicting and bravado that the world (not just the U.S.) had toward predicting severe weather and being wholly proven wrong is a recurring theme around the turn of the century (see here (sorry, I can't find my review) and here). The Galveston storm was no different, and it's stunning to see how little has changed in predictions and how a lot comes down to luck and good fortune. I loved the way Larson closed the book, telling how today people line up at the local Walmart to buy provisions to ride out an upcoming hurricane. And on the spot where this Walmart exists, in the book the physical location once house a children's hospital where 90 kids huddled together with nuns to ride out the storm because they were located on the highest point of ground in Galveston. Yep, they all died.

It's a great book and Larson is a writer whose work I have devoured. He has a new book out about the first U.S. Ambassador to Nazi Germany, and you can be guaranteed that I will be reading that one.

Friday Funnies

A bonus edition of Friday Funnies for you, where I'm showing more movie bloopers that I find funny. This time, it's from Star Wars, where George Lucas apparently didn't digitally redo everything in the movies because he forgot about his too-tall storm trooper. If you don't think it's funny on first view, just hit replay about 10 times and it starts getting funnier the more you rewatch him bang his head. Good stuff.

Friday Funnies

This is nothing new, but I'm a big Apple fan. And when someone shared with me this video talking about how Microsoft would have completely screwed up the iPod marketing, I had to share. This is just a microcosm of what it's also like to be a graphic designer. We often make beauty and the end product sometimes rarely resembles what we had initially envisioned.

My Disconnection

Will quickly apologize to all my (few but proud) readers for being away from the blog for a couple weeks. I was uber-stressed at work with a lot of projects bearing down on me right before my vacation. I had hoped to spend some time while on Maui doing some blogging and catching up on old posts that I needed to write, but the day after I arrived I came to a decision to disconnect. I wanted to get away from Twitter, Facebook, ESPN, UK, NY Times, Wash Post, movie news and all the other things that keep my attention from being in the here and now and just relaxing and enjoying the things in front of me and around me. Sure, I checked my email once a day to make sure the office didn't need for me for something urgent (which they actually did a couple times, so at least I was able to help), but beyond that I kept the iPhone and the laptop closed. Felt really good. I missed some things (news, my fantasy football teams going into early season free fall, etc.) but in the long term the time was needed to just chill and get my mind thinking about different stuff and remind myself to keep things fresh and new. Hopefully I'll carry that stuff on now that I am back and make a few changes to the lifestyle so I don't return to creature comforts of the past. They weren't bad comforts, but it's always good to try some new things and approaches.