YouTube Tuesday: Medellin

In case you haven't heard, the trailer for director Billy Walsh's Medellin has been leaked to YouTube.

I'll just cut to the chase: The movie looks awesome. I'm planning on taking my entire entourage to see it. However, I won't be making the trip to New York, where the film will have it's premier at a theater on Queens Boulevard. There should be plenty of drama at the local premier.



tagged: Medellin, entourage, chase, drama, Billy Walsh, HBO, Queens Boulevard

Online Rorschach Test

I'm a little behind on posting, but I wanted to get this out there.

Just relax. This isn't going to hurt and there is no wrong answer.

I just need you to take a look at this picture and tell me what you see.
If you answered that you see a large SUV parked near a traffic barrier, then congratulations. That is the correct answer (I lied when I said there is no wrong answer).

If, on the other hand, you said you see a large SUV parked behind a big, concrete, anatomically out-of-proportion penis, then I have some bad news for you.

You belong in Oregon with the rest of the repressed freaks with phallic fixations.

According to news reports, the residents of Keizer, Oregon, just can't get passed how a series of new traffic posts look very vaguely like penises.

It has caused so much offense that town officials are considering removing the barriers at a cost of thousands of dollars to taxpayers.

But before they remove the concrete structures altogether, they will first dress them up in chains and metal collars (the sick bastards) to see if that reminds them more of penises.

tagged: Keizer, Oregon, phallic, penis, Rorschach , traffic, environmentalist

Great news for the ladies

St. Louis-based battery company Energizer plans to buy Playtex for $1.9 billion.

So all the ladies can look forward to feminine hygiene products that keep going and going...

tagged: news, business, Energizer, Playtex, headlines, women, humor

Friday Blogthing: I is smrat

Quick, someone tell my Supermodel Wife how smart I am.

You Are a Smart American

You know a lot about US history, and your opinions are probably well informed. Congratulations on bucking stereotypes. Now go show some foreigners how smart Americans can be.

Are You a Dumb American?

tagged: quiz, meme, American, smart, test, history

I really meme it

This one is inherited from a super-talented California Girl in Kansas.

Fun Facts About This Guy:

Four jobs I've had:
1. sous chef (okay, line cook)
2. janitor
3. retail sales associate (sporting goods at Alco)
4. newspaper editor

Four places I have lived:
1. Manhattan, KS
2. Liberal, KS
3. Olathe, KS
4. Roeland Park, KS

Four Places I've been on vacation:
1. Paris, France
2. Florence, Italy
3. Teluride, Colorado
4. Napa Valley, California

Four of my favorite foods:
1. sushi
2. edamame
3. smoked Boston butt
4. crème brûlée

Four places I would rather be:
1. Hangin' out with my wife and kid
2. Spending my $100 million in lottery winnings
3. Buying XO a small batch bourbon at the KC area blogger meetup
4. At a Kansas City Predators hockey game

tagged: meme, blog, vacation, food, Kansas, job, Paris

YouTube Tuesday: Until next time...

This is one Aussie who packs a powerful (and funny) rant. And I admit it, I'm too stupid to be an atheist.





tagged: movies, YouTube, video, comedy, Australia, culture, John Safran, religion

Headlines: We're on a mission from God

I'm not the superstitious type. When I see something coincidental, it usually attribute it to coincidence.

For example, when you put on your jacket during the first crisp fall morning and find a $20 bill that you'd left in it last spring, that's just a happy coincidence. Not a sign from the universe that you should go buy $20 in lottery tickets.

But there are some coincidences that seem to defy rationalization. Take for example this story about a religion student who was selling religious material in South Florida.

This cat was going door-to-door selling books, pamphlets, stone tablets, "I Luv Pope Ben" T-Shirts, you know, the typical proselytizing fare. Well according to my inside sources, he tripped on an exposed tree-root in someone's yard and exclaimed "God DAMMIT!!" without thinking.

Big mistake my friend.

Hailu Kidane Marian was working with members of his religious group, selling religious materials door-to-door in a Northwest Miami-Dade neighborhood, when the bolt from the blue struck him down.

"I heard a boom, and I looked and the guy jumped back, and he just laid there, stiff," said witness Maria Martinez.

Paramedics say Marian was not breathing and his heart was not beating when they arrived, but they were able to revive him and rushed him to Jackson Memorial hospital, where he was in critical condition Sunday night.

It seems that The Almighty has taken a special interest in Florida. I suspect it's because there are so many people there who are so close to shuffling off their mortal coil extremely mature. Anyway, I think The Lord Our God is giving them a bit of a helping hand since

This is the second incident in as many months of someone being struck down by lightning from a clear sky in South Florida.

Last month David Canales, a gardener who worked in the Pinecrest area, was killed when lightning apparently struck him from a rainless sky.

tagged: lightning, God, Florida, Hailu Kidane Marian, news, headlines, weather

Book Report: The Subterraneans

I've been meaning to get this one out for a several weeks now.

Title: The Subterraneans

Author: Jack Kerouac

Synopsis:
Boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love. Boy screws it up due to his self-destructive tendencies. Set against a backdrop of a 1950s bohemian beat San Francisco artistic underground.

My thoughts:
Can you believe that I've been reading for 30 years and I've never read a novel by Kerouac? Well, up until about a month ago, that was the case.

It was a dirty little secret that I'd kept hidden away from my hipster friends. But now I can come clean.

I picked up The Subterraneans because I didn't know exactly what I'd be getting into with a Kerouac novel. I mean, I had some ideas. He is kind of legendary after all. But I didn't want to bite off more than I could chew, so I picked this novel because it's only 111 pages.

The plot is pretty simple. Leo Percepied falls in love with the beautiful Mardou Fox. He woo's her, wins her and then proceeds to undermine their budding relationship with a string of self-destructive abuses. He realizes his love for her too late, after he has already driven her away and into the arms of another member of the San Francisco underground.

Of course in a Kerouac novel like this, the plot isn't the main thing. Kerouac is known for his revolutionary style of writing and this book has it in spades.

Coming to Kerouac from McCarthy's The Road was a bit shocking. The Road is written in short declarative sentences. Anything extraneous is left out.

The Subterraneans on the other hand showcases Kerouac's jazzy, improvisational slang-laden stream-of-consciousness prose. It took a few pages to adjust my internal dialog to the 1950s sub-cultural vernacular and adapt to the pacing and rhythm of Kerouac's writing.

But once made, that adjustment allowed me to appreciate Kerouac's knack for writing. He definitely has a well-deserved reputation of having a way with words.

...the little white woolly particles from the pillow stuffing in her black almost wiry hair, and her puffed cheeks and little puffed lips, the gloom and dank of Heavenly Lane, and once more "I gotta go home, straighten out"- as tho never I was straight with her but crooked..."

The story is told in the tone of a literary genius who knows he's a literary genius but also knows that being a literary genius still doesn't make him any less of a sonuvabitch.

The interesting rhythm and word choices, the pacing and imagery all made this a quick and enjoyable read. I feel better now about taking a bigger bite of Kerouac and plan to in the near future.

Favorite quote:

"... the great tumescent turbulent turmoil alliterative as a hammer on the brain bone bag and balls, bang I'm sorry I was ever born..."

Rating: Recommended.

tagged: books, literature, Jack Kerouac, The Subterraneans, beat, San Francisco, 1950s

Friday Blogthing: My doom

This is your first and final warning. Don't mess with me.


Take the Hecatomb™ TCG What Is Your Doom? quiz.

tagged: Friday, blog, quiz, doom, corruption

We'll always have Paris

Liberal bloggers are all a twitter with affected outrage over the commutation of Scooter Libby's two-year prison sentence for working for a-holes.
But all the rants against Bush and Cheney and Republicans and Christians and drunkards and Paris Hiltonses ignore the true victim in this whole sordid affair: L. Scooter Libby himself.

Put yourself in Scooter's shoes for a moment. He has been robbed of his street cred. He was all set to get that teardrop tattoo near his eye to prove to his peeps that he did hard time. Now Bush selfishly commutes his sentence, stealing away Libby glory.

I mean, how would you like to go through the rest of your life knowing that you're not even as tough as Paris Hilton?

tagged: Scooter Libby, commuted, jail, Paris Hilton, politics, Bush, pop culture