If you don’t listen to This American Life, you should. You should if for no other reason than Act I of this past week’s show. Starlee Kine, a producer for the show, set out to write a torch song after experiencing a break-up. He broke up with her on New Year’s Eve. She quoted a line from their mutual admiration, Phil Collins, in retort: "How can you just let me walk away? I’m the only one who really knew you at all." She gets in contact with Phil Collins to get his advice on how to put the heartache of a break-up into words and not sound cheesy. How can she do that without it sounding cheesy? Not an easy task. She succeeded and did so beautifully. Maybe, just maybe, Anthony will hear the song and return to her.
You can try your hand at mixing your own version of the song. If you submit it, they’ll send you free swag. And really, who doesn’t like free stuff?
No matter how many times a tour guide says "don’t touch" someone will inevitably touch the forbidden object. My in-laws were in town this weekend and wanted to take a tour of one of the many caves we have around Austin. We decided on Innerspace Caverns. We were told about a hundred times to not touch the rocks in the cave as it stunts their formation and causes them to turn black and gross. As soon as we get into the first room of the cave some guy walks over to the wall and starts stroking it like it was a woman. The tour guide (who looked like an old-timey prospector) said to him "Hey! Don’t touch!" The man replied, "But it’s so soft." Soft rocks. Who knew?
Sixth Street can be fun. My brother-in-law was too young to get into bars three years ago when he came down for our wedding. This time we decided to give him a taste of Austin debauchery and took him and a large group of people to Sixth Street. After many bars, many shots, and one extremely large drink with disappearing straws the night was declared a success. I usually avoid Sixth like the plague but this trip was fun enough to make me want to go back. Two dollar shot specials don’t hurt either.
On Lyndon B. Johnson’s birthday, his presidential library has cake. I’ve never had presidential cake. They went with a lemon filling that wasn’t half bad. LBJ would’ve been 99 this year. I’ll have to go check out the 100th celebration to see what craziness goes down.
Donkey Kong is extremely hard and can turn people evil. We saw King of Kong. This was one of the best movies I’ve seen all year. It had everything a great movie needs: struggle, good vs evil, the triumph of the human spirit, set-backs, conspiracies, humor, a guy who looked like (and probably thinks he is) Jesus…it had it all. I really hope that the Oscars recognizes what a brilliant documentary this is and gives it a much deserved award. Apparently Steve Weibe may possibly live in Kristin’s aunt’s neighborhood. It would be cool to run into him at the park and shake his hand. Maybe he’d invite me over for a game of DK. I probably wouldn’t make it past the first screen or two. Now I definitely need to get a stand up Galaga machine and make my run at the record score of 15,999,990. My personal best of 163,420 would be good enough for 34th place.
Best TV show I saw: 30 Rock. It was a rerun but still better than most things that are on TV. I only wish Tracy Jordan’s Jefferson was actually coming out. I also enjoyed: The Office. Another rerun but another great episode. Jim’s version of Dwight was genius. Also Andy’s "Beer Me" was good times. I also caught Anchorwoman. However, it’s already been canceled. It was on Fox after all.
Best Movie I saw: Superbad. Funniest movie of the summer. Seth Rogan is a god. Michael Cera and Jonah Hill are awesome. I definitely want to own this movie. I also enjoyed: Showgirls. Hands down, the worst movie ever. Kristin had never seen it and it was on VH1 tonight. It’s even funnier with digital bras edited in over the topless scenes. Thank god I own the DVD (it was a gift).
Best Book I read: Not a book per se, but I’m reading Marvel comics Civil War story arc. I downloaded them last night and read them pretty much all day. Good stuff.
Best Music I heard: I didn’t really listen to anything again this week. I’m seriously slacking on my music listening. Go listen to Peter, Bjorn and John.
I’m a big fan of pens. I’ve wanted a Mont Blanc for a really long time, but they are so expensive. I don’t want to pay $200 for a pen. I decided to make my own. I found a how-to guide online somewhere but I can’t remember where it was so I’ll just show you myself.
Step 1: Go buy, steal, or "borrow" a Pilot G2 pen. I decided on a G2 Pro. You’ll also need to purchase Mont Blanc refills. I like the roller ball refills best.
Step 2: Disassemble the pen. You’ll notice that the G2’s guts and the Mont Blanc’s refill will be slightly different lengths.
Step 3: Get some sort of sharp instrument (scissors, knife, sharp rock) and cut off the difference. It should look something like this.
Step 4: Reassemble the pen. Now you own a $12 Mont Blanc. The pen doesn’t have the same weight that Mont Blancs have, but it writes just as well now.
Last night Kristin and I were lying in bed getting ready to go to sleep. We decided to flip through the channels on TV and see what was out there. It was about midnight so we knew there wouldn’t be anything good on. We hit channel 10, which is public access, and caught a glimpse of what I thought might have been a boob but it was gone very quickly. A movie was starting called Spider Baby, or The Maddest Story Ever Told. It sounded so horrible I knew we had to watch it. I also knew I’d probably fall asleep so I ran to the den and grabbed a video tape so I could see the end later.
I did end up falling asleep but at some point I woke up. I saw this guy with weird makeup on with strange blue lighting. He said "If you are offended by nudity, change the channel now." This, of course, immediately made me perk up. I am absolutely not offended! Cut to a girl, same strange blue lighting, crazy mud-like smears all over her body, stark naked. All of her body was on display for the world (or at least Austinites watching channel 10 at around 3am) to see. When I say everything, I mean everything. I can’t emphasis that enough. So this chick is doing this undulating stripper-esque dance and turns around. She bent over. The camera proceeds to zoom directly into her birth canal. I had to rub my eyes. Did I just see that? Surely not. They don’t even show that much on HBO and here it was on public (or should I say pubic?) access.
This morning when I woke up I had to see if this was real. The searched through the tape for the scene and indeed it was as I had remembered. This was not a fevered dream. I had documented proof that such a thing existed. I told Kristin and Jana about it and they found it strange that I kept talking about it. They didn’t understand why I kept going on and on about this naked woman on TV. I showed Kristin what I was talking about a few minutes ago. Now I think she gets it. Next Friday night I have to tune in again to see what goes on. Was this just a random occurrence or is this the norm? I must find out.
I’m totally stealing this from Pop Candy. So here goes.
Best TV show I saw: I would have to go with The Pick Up Artist. The show is absolutely ridiculous. This guy "Mystery" teaches nerds how to pick up chicks. He uses crazy technical terms like "a two-set" to describe two girls hanging out together and "avatar" to describe your persona. It’s in Austin so I like to watch to see if I recognize anything. I also enjoyed: Rock of Love and Big Love. Oh and of course Weeds and Californication.
Best Movie I saw: Dreamland. The cinematography was beautiful. It really made me want to take off for the desert. Up tomorrow: Superbad. I am super excited about seeing this. I also want to catch The King of Kong.
Best Book I read: Love is a Mixtape by Rob Sheffield. I waited about 3 months to get this from the library. I think it was worth it. It is extremely sad but it is a beautiful true love story.
Best Music I heard: I didn’t listen to anything new this week so I’ll go with something old. Last night at Abbe’s we listened to Grace by Jeff Buckley. It’s hard to believe it’s been 10 years since that night he slipped away under the waters of the Mississippi River. I still love that album.
Now it looks like she finally did. Crack fien…I mean Amy Winehouse admitted to an overdose when she was hospitalized for "exhaustion" the other day. She supposedly went on a three day drug binge. Her "friends" had this to say:
She was downing coke, pills and ketamine, vodka and Jack Daniel’s. Even Amy says she will be dead within one year.
Good one Amy. That’s something to aspire to. I guess she’s going to have to change the words to her hit song. Do yourself a favor and eat a fucking sandwich while you’re in rehab.
Work conversations are strange.
S: So I guess Gary is in Copenhagen.
Me: Actually he’s in Australia.
S: I think I’d like to go to Copenhagen.
Me: Mmmhmm.
S: Do you want to go to Copenhagen? (this is the part that scared me. Was he asking if I wanted to go with him?)
Me: Uh. I wouldn’t be opposed to it.
S: yeahyeahyeahyeahyeah (that’s his laugh).
I’m still trying to figure out why he was asking me this. I swear I am going to buy that tape recorder soon.
I wrote in a previous incarnation of this blog about Rick Ankiel, the disgraced pitcher from the St Louis Cardinals who threw five wild pitches in one inning of the 2000 Division playoffs against the Braves. He has made it back to the majors now, only this time he is an outfielder.
And what a comeback it was. After starting the game 0 for 3, Ankiel blasted a three run homer 384 feet to right in the seventh inning. It shouldn’t really be a surprise. He’s been doing it all year for the Memphis Redbirds. In 102 games he blasted 32 home runs and drove in 89 runs. Not bad for a broken down pitcher.
I’ve always liked Ankiel. In 2000 or 2001, I bought a pack of baseball cards and pulled a signed Rick Ankiel card. It was the first card of the sort I ever got. Since then I followed his career in a round-about way. I’m glad to see him back in the majors. I hope he has a good year.
The external hard drive I keep all my music on has stopped reading when I connect it to my PowerBook. My desktop (a Windows machine) has also decided to stop working on me so I can’t test it on that. I brought the drive to work with me thinking "I’ll just connect it to the computer here to see if I can at least access it and steal corporate secrets in the meantime." That would’ve been great if I actually brought the USB cord with me instead of the FireWire.
If this hard drive is toast, that’s about 70 gigs of music out the window. Luckily I had updated my iPod recently and have all the music on that. I can use a program I have called Senuti to transfer all of it to a new hard drive.
This time I’m going to go with one of those portable jobs (like the Western Digital Passport or something similar). It’s much more practical for what I use it for (storing music, videos, etc.). At least I don’t need it immediately.
