Random Thoughts

You know you’ve got a serious addiction to Internet porn when you think of it during sex in order to climax, but you can’t, because there’s too much buffering.

It’s funny how excited commuters get when they spot and then spring for the empty seats in a packed subway car. It’s even funnier how quickly their expressions turns to horror when they realize just how bad the area reeks of homeless person.

I took the GMAT yesterday. Halfway through the math section I came across a very challenging question. Not knowing how to tackle it, I thought, What would The Brah do? And then I imagined him approaching the question from an unusual angle, doing a few quick calculations in that notorious chicken-scratch handwriting of his, and miraculously arriving at the right answer. To celebrate, he plays some pong in the basement. He isn’t very good, but man, he sure has a lot of fun drinking and singing with the old gang. Also, I guessed “C”.

Not only is walking an old lady across the street a good deed, but it’s also a good way to protect yourself from oncoming traffic when the Don't Walk sign stops flashing.

The other morning I woke up early for a big interview and while I was shaving in the bathroom, I cut myself pretty bad. The gash was so embarrassing that I even considered canceling the interview. But then I thought to myself, You know what? It’s just an interview. No one’s gonna see your balls.

Pulp Wave Fiction



For those of you who have heard about Google Wave (its totally awesome and makes me remember how much I wanted gmail when gmail was invite-only) I think this video best explains what it is. To sum it up, its the "allow me to retort" scene from Pulp Fiction.

Did I mention I really want Google Wave?

Liveblog black and orange: check out the stratification!

Mad Men Alert!



Be more like your hero, Don Draper, with this Mad Men-inspired Brooks Brothers suit. Personally, I don't watch the show but I know that Don Draper to most of you all is like chocolate to Miss Piggy. Yeah, deal with that bizarre reference.

UFO?! 6-Year Old!? Wife-Swap?!


So as of 4:15pm, the world knows that the 6-year old wunderkind known as Falcon Heene was NOT in the hot air balloon/UFO that floated around Colorado for 2 hours.

What most of the world does NOT know is that...

THE FAMILY WAS ON ABC's WIFE SWAP.

!!!!!!!!!

To learn more about legend-in-the-making Falcon and the rest of the Heene family, click here.

WIFE SWAP!

(Not) Smoke-Worthy Moments in Mad Men: Episode 309


Don Draper is always late and doesn't care about that or anything else. He's a bad influence on me.

Rant: If Matt Weiner thinks he can toy with the viewers' emotions the way he did on this episode, I'm actively not going to care about writing this post. That's why I'm so late. I tried to sack up and just write like normal because even though it was the most frustrating episode of the season (ever?), it was still 10x better than anything else on TV right now. But the fact remains, nothing satisfying is happening and it's driving me nuts.

Because this episode is making me tell you how I really feel, I'm going to focus on the future, and therefore predict what the top three moments of next episode will be.


Top Moments of Episode 310: The Color Blue

1) Creator Matt Weiner uses his time-traveling tricks and skips to 1964, where all the problems of last episode have been skipped, smoothed over and forgotten. Joan has returned, inexplicably, to run the office once more. Roger is back to being a fun-loving, highly functioning alcoholic after Don and Roger 'hug it out' over two dozen oysters and mutual vomiting (let the martinis do the work!). Ken Cosgrove has decided to have more than 2 lines all season and has stepped up into the . Peggy, Sal and Pete have gone off to work for Duck, where the four of them have begun a TV spin off called Three Mad Men, A Woman And A Baby. The show is cancelled in 2010 / 1965.

2) In a rare anachronism, equal rights legislation is enacted that persecutes employers who discriminate "you people." Don is put on double secret probation (one step worse than "on notice") and is forced to have a male secretary. Realizing their time-warped mistake, Congress then retracts the legislation, allowing good ole' boy office antics while grandfathering Sal in his swanky new office. Don sulks.

3) Suddenly aware she does't want to revert back to being an idiot, Betty Draper gets her wits about her, realizes Don is off philandering somewhere, and hires a Private Investigator. The PI quickly finds out Don is having a(nother) affair (he's really not very sneaky) and tells Betty. Betty pulls a Kate Gosselin and kicks JDon out of the house (again). Don, still sulking, moves in with Miss Farrell, who apparently is a heaver drinker and philanderer than Don and ends up leaving him for a handsome advisor to Governer Rockefeller (Irony). Divorced and self-pitying, Don begins crashing weddings in a desperate attempt to pick up married women by womb-touching (Double irony!).

Cut. Print. Weiner & Co, I'm a free agent Nov 1. Call me.

On a slightly more upbeat note, here are some exciting Mad Men-related links below
- January Jones in lingerie for GQ (and me!). Pic below and more here.
- Sal's Bryan Batt on his character and if we'll ever see him again (here)
- Pete Campbell's Vincent Kartheiser talking about Mad Men and the Charleston here.


Things I Wish I Thought of First



While doing some research for a recent project, my coworker and I came across this little gem of a website. The four most amazingly random things about this blog are:

1) The part where Obama is photoshopped into a fresco on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. I'm not even going to try to delve into what they're getting at with that one. It just looks funny.
2) The fact that it's called "Kabobfest." Who doesn't love a good kabob?
3) The article about remaking classic movies with leaders of the Arab World in the main roles. Two words: Sheer genius.
4) That this article ends with a "Tarboush Tip." A quick Googling shows me that a Tarboush is a type of Fez, which means we're looking at the Middle Eastern version of a hat tip! Are these bloggers our Arab brethren??! I sure hope so.

Things like this always make me question my creativity and wonder if I'm even cut out for this whole writing thing. I mean, if I couldn't think of comedy gold like a remake of the Lifetime Channel Original Movie "Not Without My Daughter" starring Ahmadinejad in the role of Oscar winning actress Sally Field, then do I even deserve to blog?

P.S. That photo is a real screen grab of King Abdullah of Jordan in StarTrek.

P.P.S. Here is a gratuitous photo of his wife, Queen Rania, for all you gentlemen out there. It's been a slow news day...




The Expendables: Yeah, It's Real



[Ed note: TrailerAddict.com was forced to remove this video. Luckily for us, Russia hates copyright law. So, here is the video again, presented by rutube.ru. And yes, "ru" stands for "Russia" so that's like "RussiaTube.Russia"]

Sylvester Stallone. Jason Statham. Jet Li. Mickey Rourke. "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. Randy "The Natural" Couture. Dolph "Ivan Drago" Lundgren. Terry "President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho" Crews. Eric "I'm Julia Roberts' Brother" Roberts. Cameos by Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Calling all tough guys (and Eric Roberts)! We need you to make what appears to be a really, really bad movie!

By now, the upcoming movie, The Expendables, is probably something of which you are already well aware. It's that movie that stars everyone who has ever been in an action movie in the past twenty years. The notable exceptions are Steven Seagal, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Wesley Snipes, who all turned down roles in this movie showing surprisingly astute judgment for a group of guys whose filmographies include The Glimmer Man, Street Fighter: The Movie and The Art of War II: Betrayal.

MLR and I saw this trailer and immediately got excited. This movie looks historically bad. If you aren't convinced--if you think that it actually looks good--consider this: The Expendables has a budget of $70 million. That's down over $30M from an original budget of over $100M. Normally, a really great movie doesn't get its budget slashed by a third during production. And guess where that money is coming out of. I'll give you a hint, it's not coming out of Jason Statham's paycheck.

That's right, it's coming out of special effects, editing, running time and production value. Not only is this movie going to be full of dudes chewing up the scenery but we won't even get the explosions, action sequences and stunts that we've all come to expect from all of the previous movies that these guys have been in. That's leaves lots and lots of room for phenomenally bad dialogue. Just to give you an idea, Mystery Men was shot for about $70M. Expect worse than that because in 1999, $70M went a heck of a lot further than it does today.

I'm stoked about the potential of The Expendables, not just for how bad it's probably going to be but also for the ridiculous promotional campaign still to come. Think about it: Letterman will probably have one of the stars on every night for two weeks! Some of them, who still have careers ahead of them, will lie their asses off and talk through fake smiles about how awesome the movie is going to be and fake their excitement while they sweat through their shirts about the upcoming backlash. Others, who no longer give a f***, will just sit there like hollow, plastic dolls while Dave tries to get them to say anything remotely good about the film. "Let's just roll the clip, Dave," is something I anticipate hearing more than once.

2010 is already shaping up to be a great year! What do you guys think?

Jam of the Week: Ninjasonik - "Hold The Line (Darth Baño Remix)"


Covering Major Lazer's "Hold The Line," these hipsters from Brooklyn have put out a pretty fun track with an interesting video. The pace is upbeat and things generally seem to be happening here. I don't really know what that means either but sometimes I miss seeing people in flannel when it's ironic and not necessary (Hanover townies don't count).

Runners up after the break...

Runners up:

Beyoncé - "Sweet Dreams"

As always, Beyonce groin-shaking is automatically in contention and would otherwise be a JOTW if it weren't a bit old. I have a remixed version of this song on a mix I have and it's really catchy. Remix here.

J. Cole - "Simba"

J. Cole's video is decent and his flow is good. And if you've followed AMDAL / JOTW's for a little while now, you know I have a soft spot for one-shots and no hook (chorus lines). That said, I'm using this video to rant about Jay Z's latest album Blueprint 3.

BP3 is good. Really good. But Jay Z is getting old and with it, he's becoming self-conscious. You can't tell in his rhymes, which are both bravado-filled and technically excellent, as expected. Still, I can tell he's scared of the next-big-thing. BP3 is largely a collaborative album, filled with hit makers like Pharrell, Rihanna and Kanye West and Kanye West. No, I didn't stutter, Kanye's on there twice. I don't know why either. Sure he's guaranteed to entertain, but his rapping's decent at best and I think sub-par compared to his usual work. Drake is on here and as Vulture said a while ago, he didn't even get a verse! Drake is the most skilled and clever wordsmith out there right now. If you don't believe me, go back to Sep 30's JOTW and listen to the first 2 minutes of Money to Blow on repeat. Same story with AMDAL's golden child, Kid Cudi. And where was Lil Wayne? WTF? If he's not going to do a real collabo, that's fine, he can do what he did on the awesome Reasonable Doubt and it'll be fine. But this is a little ridiculous.

I call this the Renegade effect - Eminem crushed him on his own track (ask Nas). To avoid this, Jay Z either brings on inferior rappers like Kanye West, or Young Jeezy, hushes up-and-comers like Drake and Cudi, or keeps guys like Em and Weezy off the record entirely.

To his credit, Jay tries to bring people up. Enter J. Cole. J. Cole's verse on A Star is Born kind of sucks, but clearly Jay sees something in him. His lyricism is pretty decent above, so maybe he'll be a new breakout artist. As long as he doesn't become the next Memphis Bleek. We'll keep our eyes on him.

Har Mar Superstar - "Tall Boy"

A funny video with a good beat, cool visuals, more hipsters and Eva Mendes. Enjoy. Clearly AMDAL-worthy.

Bone Thugs-N-Harmony - "Tha Crossroads"

Up here for no other reason that it's a classic. Enjoy this and their very good song with Mariah "Mrs. Nick Carter" Carey here.

Gmail Finally Catching Up With Blitzmail


Dartmouth's BlitzMail wasn't good at a lot of things (viewing HTML, viewing attachments, that cute girl in Psych 1 mysteriously not receiving any of my emails), but it was really good at a few things. One of those things (things things things) was the ability to easily create groups. It was simple: someone emailed you and a bunch of other people, you copy and pasted the names of the contacts into a group (see above), title it something, and from then on, you'd be able to email all those people simply by typing in just the assigned title.

Well now Gmail has something pretty similar.

While perusing Google Labs this morning I found this:

Contact groups
One of our most-requested features is finally here! Now you can send messages to a group instead of having to pick out the individual addresses every time. Learn more

My only gripe is that I can't copy and paste entire list of emails into a new group. This could be fixed with a simple option within emails to "save recipients as group" or something. I'll leave that to Skynet Google to figure that out.

Now if Psych 1 Girl could just get my emails...