So No One Told You Life Was Gonna Be This Way (Clap-Clap-Clap)...

So let me get this straight. Per various Scott McLellan comments recently, "friends" of President Bush include:

- the royal Saud family
- Rafael Palmeiro
- Tom DeLay

Stand-up group right there.

Nice Porch

A college friend of mine would always tell us about this movie he saw where a guy is working on building a house. Except he builds a secret little room in the attic, unbeknownst to anybody else, and then when the house is finished he sneaks in and lives in the room, terrorizing the couple who live in the house proper. My friend could never remember the name of the movie, and we were all convinced he was making this movie-viewing experience up.

On a totally unrelated note, I was thinking how great it would be to sign up for Habitat for Humanity and be assigned to rebuild Bill Frist's house.

EDIT: Wait, this was supposed to be a Trent Lott joke. I think. Dammit. I need to wake up.

Karl and Jesus, Sittin' In a Tree....

You know how people always say socialism is a good idea but not practical because of human nature? That doesn't stop people from promoting religious values.

Heh, heh.... oops.

So my recent quick ones post was full of errors. It was pointed out to me that the quote I included in the Pretty in Pink bit was actually from Sixteen Candles, and I realized I left out the "Gone" in the Uncle Tupelo album title (it is, therefore, really titled Still Feel Gone).

Also, Jordin Tootoo is not 22 because veteran Greg Johnson wears 22 -- and veterans get first dibs. Though if I'm Greg Johnson and I see Jordin Tootoo, I say to him, "uh, wait a second. Your name is Tootoo? Really? Tootoo? Here, have this number." I like how Steve Heinze wore #57. There's a sense of humor.

Can You Please Speak Into The Microphone?

You know that horribly offensive joke that goes, "what do you call a woman with two black eyes?" I feel like Hurricane Rita is God's way of saying, "what did I just tell you?"

On a related note, I'm bracing for two giant earthquakes to nail LA back-to-back, though I wonder who will work the benefit concert for us if all the actors and musicians fall in the holes in the ground.

Quick Ones

1) Ian McShane was robbed of the Emmy.
2) Kurt Vonnegut was recently on The Daily Show. He is looking very old.
3) How is it possible that hockey player Jordin Tootoo does not wear #22?
4) Krispy Kreme Pumpkin Spice donuts are almost here. Greatest food ever (even though Krispy Kreme is generally the most overrated donut ever. Let me open a Dunkin Donuts or Tim Horton's out here in LA. Man, I miss the Horton.)
5) Randy Moss -- addition through subtraction for the Vikings, huh? Really?
6) The new Syracuse and retro Bills football uniforms are sa-weet.
7) Due to it being erased, I am in the middle of the Great iPod Re-Load of late '05. I'm listening to a lot CDs I haven't heard in awhile. Uncle Tupelo's Still Gone, R.E.M.'s Murmur, and the song "Pablo Picasso" by the Modern Lovers are full of incredibly amazing awesomeness.
8) On a related note, how can some of Blondie's stuff be so great, and some be so dreadfully terrible?
9) Pretty in Pink was on this weekend. "How's it going, hot stuff?"

Mary-Cole and Dylan

Everyone's favorite twins, Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen, are now setting up Cole and Dylan Sprouse (you know, those kids who played Adam Sandler's kid in Big Daddy? No? Never saw it? Oh. Anyways...) as the male versions of themselves. No, not tiny little monkey-people, but as rulers of a 'tween (their word) empire with DVDs, clothing line, accessories, etc. Though I think they will have to wear gigantic sunglasses. Anyways, a quote from the Sprouse's manager:

"They love to Rollerblade, they like to surf, skate and are into videogames. ... They love animals," said the Sprouses' manager, Josh Werkman. "They're boy boys in every sense of the term."

"Every sense of the term." I assume he means they have penises.

Adventures in iPodding

I'm sitting in my room, just sort of staring at the wall when it dawns on me that I have some new CDs that have yet to be loaded onto my iPod. I pop them in the laptop and one after the other and load the songs into iTunes. I don't keep all my music on my computer so I have the iPod set up so I need to manually import the songs into it. So I do. But then I start playing around with the options.

My interior monologue:

Hmm... what does this button do.... ah, I see, the iPod options. Well, I can automatically update the most recent played, top-25 played, and top-ranked songs... nice.... let me choose that option.... man, I really hope what will really happen is, instead of automatically updating those 3 specific playlists, it will delete all but 2 of the 4,035 songs I have on the iPod.... awesome! It did exactly that! This is great. Now I can listen to this Dead Kennedys song and this Bob Dylan song alternately all day! This is working out well!

A (Ridiculous) Quickie

Went and saw the King Tut exhibit this past weekend. As we were waiting in line, they played "Walk Like an Egyptian" by the Bangles. I swear to God.

Choke on Pearls, Please

Can we please stop with the 9/11 comparisons? Please? Take, like, a five-minute break on that. "We need a Guiliani character. Someone strong."

When the World Trade center building went down, it was horrible. A lot of people died. But it was a building. New Orleans -- hell, large chunks of Louisiana and Mississippi -- lost everything. The economy is destroyed. New York lost a building. New Orleans lost a lot of them. The farms are flooded. Crops are gone. I read that Mardi Gras brings in $1 billion to New Orleans. I assume tourism garners tons of money on non-Fat Tuesdays as well. Who's gonna go there now?

A bunch of bombs going off in the middle of the Mardi Gras parade would have provided a more apt comparison. Or, if al-Qaeda had, you know, wiped New York off the map. Because New Orleans isn't really even there anymore.

And when the Trade Center buildings went down, Guiliani was there to be strong because his house was still standing up there on 92nd. George W. Bush, after finally putting the goddamned book down, made a cameo on a pile of rubble promising to capture bin Laden. New Yorkers banded together and bravely forged ahead with their altered skyline. New Orlean-ers don't even have a skyline anymore. George W. Bush, well, there was no standing in two-foot-deep muck of water telling the people America would be there for them, but he flew over in a helicopter. Wouldn't want to get dirty now.

I don't subscribe to the "racist" arguments that are made in the sense that the government isn't saying, "forget them they're just black." It's not as diabolical as that. If there were all white people down there, they'd still be saying "forget them." Because they're poor. I always view things through the eyes of class difference. Race is the visible manifestation of this because of the unbalanced socio-economic scale of America. So maybe what's happening is a form of institutional racism. And maybe this is just a semantics argument, because the results are the same. Those people down there -- white and black -- are poor and, therefore, fucked. The government may not be saying "forget them, they're black" but for the past few years the government has been saying "forget them, they're poor." Why spend money to take preventive measures of such an event? Who cares? They're poor. In San Fransisco they sure take measures to try and prevent earthquakes. Can you imagine if the government operartions after 9/11 was such a clusterfuck? New Yorkers would be insane with anger and indignation. America would be up in arms. But a white-collar building in a white-collar section of town was wrecked. Shit got done. And rightly so.

But I suppose shit is finally getting done down in Louisiana and Mississippi. To quote Barbara Bush:

"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality... And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."

Oh, good. It's all working out so well.

More Fun With Nicknames

Because someone posted a comment with better nicknames than my original post. I need this for my ego. I skipped obvious ones like Shawn Bates "Motel" and Vernon Fiddler "On the Roof."

Ramzi Abid "You Adieu"
Tommy "Maybe She's Born With it, Maybe It's" Albelin
Tony "3-card" Amonte (or, Tony "Count" Amonte "Christo")
Jason "Ripley's Believe it" Arnott
Jonathan Cheechoo "Chong"
Carlo "Caffiene Free Diet" Colaiacovo (With Lime)
Rob "Turkey on Rye, Hold" DiMaio
Roman "Arm and" Hamrlik
Milan Hejduk "Duck, Goose"
Dan "Haute" LaCouture "Fashion"
Todd Marchant "of Venice"
Andrei "Jesus of" Nazarov
Maxime Ouellet "the Dogs Out"
Keith Primeau "Donna" (works with Wayne Primeau as well)
Vaclav "Live Well and" Prospal
Martin Skoula "'s Out For Summer"
David Vyborny "On the Fourth of July"
Shane "What'choo Talkin' 'Bout" Willis

Interior Monologue While Stretching To Ease Shin Splints

Burns!
Ahhh....
I'm stretchin my shin so much
Ouch
Keep it goin'
Ahhh
Forever
Harder
Ouch
Still hurts
But its a little btteer
Other foot now...

Nicknames Chris Berman Would Give Hockey Players If He Covered Hockey

1) Michael "Pick A" Peca "Pickled Peppers"
2) Jani Rita "Meter Maid"
3) Sidney Crosby "Stills, Nash, and Young"
4) Martin "Van" Biron
5) Scott "My Balogna Has a First Name, it's N-I-E-D-E-R, My Balogna Has a Second Name, It's M-A-Y-E-R." (Also works for Rob Niedermayer)
6) Patrick "I Will Not Drink" Marleau
7) Marco Sturm "und Drang"
8) Marty Turco "Bell"
9) Brad Boyes, Brad Boyes "What'cha gonna do? What'cha gonna do when they come for you"
10) Tom "F. Scott" Fitzgerald
11) Jochen "What the" Hecht
12) Derek "Sigfried and" Roy