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Two Items That Turned Out Much Funnier Than I Expected

1. The Will Arnett Sex Tape.

Why it should be funny: The days when people wondered whether Mr. Amy Poehler was actually funny, or it was just the brilliant writing of his GOB character, are long over. Will Arnett is awesome.

Why it shouldn't be funny: It's a promo for a sketch comedy show. On MTV. Carson Daly's channel.

Is it funny? Yes.

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2. Columbia Business School Dean singing about Ben Bernanke to tune of Every Breath You Take.

Why it should be funny:
No conceivable reason.

Why it shouldn't be funny: MBA nerds going "Weird" Al around the topics of yield curves and FOMC meeting notes.

Is it funny? Remarkably exceeds expectations.

Thanks to Metz for the Columbia vid. Have a lovely weekend.

Friday Praise

Praise to the Onion for finally putting my second-favorite picture caption on a t-shirt.

Owls

Somehow my favorite just won't fit...

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Praise to Barry at The Big Picture for his explanation of why Bernanke must lie his ass off to Congress.

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Praise to Senate Republicans for blocking the Democrats' misguided "foreclosure relief" bill. Look, no law is going to stop what will and must happen. Why don't they just push a law against gravity or Lohan getting crabs?

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Finally, praise to this guy:

Notabug
(Call me if you need an explanation.)

Friday Praise... Until You Remember the Feelings of a Real Live Emotional Teenager

Lcdsoundsystem_3Praise to LCD Soundsystem. Sound of Silver is like a Brooklyn cabdriver kicking you in the ass after you puke up an evening's worth of martinis and olives across his back seat.

Praise to Floodwatch Music. If you could only listen to 43 minutes of music for your entire life, I think you couldn't do much better than a mix of '92-'94 Pete Rock beats.

Praise to Hawking at Zero G.

Praise to AOL for its egregious, indescribable flattery of Yahoo!

Praise to Kikkoman. (Yeah, I know it's like five years old. But it's not as if I don't hear "Show me, show you! Kikkoman, Kikkoman" in my head every god damn time I pick up a bottle of soy sauce.)

Praise to Harry Pariser, the WhopperStomper. For more than a decade, Mr. Pariser carried on his 9th Avenue protest against the Stinky Burger King next door. And now, the Burger King is gone, and so is much of Harry's anger!

Before (Sept. '05):

Img_3304

Now:

Img_8170

What's replacing the evil purveyor of cheap meats? Apparently, it's the Bizarro Burger King.

Img_8169

Praise to Ced of Le Blog de SF for the heads up about the BK demise. Have it your way, baby!

Friday Praise

Praise to Helpy Chalk for guiding the health-conscious zombie towards a sensible nutritional decision:

When Zombie Ed first told his friends about his vision for a company that sold organically grown human brains, people doubted whether a zombie could really be committed to personal health and the welfare of the planet, or even conduct a simple financial transaction.

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Praise to the Hyena for the 10 Worst Rap Album Covers Ever Made.

Rap_bigbear 

You gonna finish those berries, Grizzly Magic Don Juan?

***

KylePraise to Northern Banshee for making South Park a real place, in an anime kinda way. Now where's Kyle's magic throwing star that turns him into a robot?

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Praise to the Miami-Dade College chess team for defeating Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Northwestern, and UVA... Wait a second, this is real? This is the former Miami-Dade Community College we're talking about? "Notre Dade"? My high school's 13th grade? Rock on, Dade!

Friday Praise: CNN Gets Baked

Praise to CNN. They were explaining how IKEA is gonna start charging five cents for each plastic bag, but they really ended up explaining why CNN gives me the munchies:

Img_0216

"Nickel Bag": It's the Cannabis News Network.

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Praise to Pacman Jones. The day the Titans drafted him, and ESPN refused to put a mic in front of his Lil' Jon-looking ass, you just knew he would be a national treasure.

Strippers showered with $81,000 in bills, fights, drugs, promoters, guns -- awesome! Oh wait, the dude's paralyzed for life?

Okay, screw Pacman Jones.

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Praise to The Post Show for brilliantly cramming an entire pop career into just 2:43.

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Praise to Peter Schrag for matter-of-factly explaining why the corporate GOP and the Christian GOP can't see eye-to-eye on immigration.

Question: Who are the five biggest California homebuyers these days?

Answer: Garcia, Hernandez, Rodriguez, Lopez and Martinez.

No, this isn't a joke or a fantasy. According to Dowell Myers, a demographer at the University of Southern California, those were the five most common names of California homebuyers in 2005...

Demography is destiny, and it's time to choose a vibrant 25% Latino future (the Bush plan) or a creaky 15% Latino future (the Minuteman plan). Viva Bush!

***

Praise to you. Happy weekend.

Friday Praise: Avenging Avenged

Avenged_2 Praise to the kids defending the honor of their most favoritest metal band Avenged Sevenfold against the poison keyboard of Dr. Thorpe.

Praise to Ricky Bobby, drenched in logos just for love, not money. The eight minutes of Applebee's advertising in the movie: so kind of them. (Good thing the movie's super-funny.)

Praise to Big Papi, 16-for-19 reaching base in game-winning at-bats at Fenway. (Some people would call these "walk-off" at-bats, the way that some people poop their pants and put mayonnaise on their steak.)

Praise to Kool G Rap. This video is straight outta Yo! MTV Raps. They don't make gritty shit like this anymore. Where's the yacht?

Praise to Toyota, not only because they're making arseloads of money by reducing petrol consumption. (Yeah, I said "petrol." Suck on it, America. It's retarded that we call liquid petroleum "gas," and natural gas "gas"?) Toyota's agency also came up with a hype ad that more makes me want to avoid spooky lakes more than buy a Vios, whateverthefuck that is.

Praise to Tyler Durden for this.

Praise to Augiestyle, for his Flickr collections of '60s movie soundtrack covers and 1991-era Starting Lineup NFL figurines. Hello, sailor!

Wildracers

Praise to Google Watch's Steve Bryant on the Google-Mozilla-Real menage.

So the deal, if you're Google, is kinda like getting to hook up with identical twin supermodels, except one was disfigured by acid-throwing clowns.

Get that in your head, baby.

Friday Praise: There Goes the Gayborhood

Germans

Ssshhhhh. Don't upset the Germans.

*** 

Praise to Jeremy Paul for providing the world with so much glee at his freaky expense. The story: Man moves his family to the Castro. Man goes into gay panic. Man agrees to tell his story to Ed Helms on The Daily Show. Man has obviously never seen The Daily Show. Bad move, Man.

See the report.

(And praise to SFist for spotting the video.)

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Praise to the indispensible Adam Riff for 24 leaks, and spotting a skin-crawly, two-minute kids' infomercial for McDonald's. (Good to see I'm not the only one watching Tick reruns on Nick Toons.)

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Praise to the 80% of Americans who didn't answer "pre-emptive military strike" to a Fox News Poll question about North Korea.

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Praise to The Party Party for capturing President Bush's brilliant interpretation of "Sunday Bloody Sunday." Shatner what?

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Praise to Yahoo! Tech. They almost make me feel good about living in a van down by the river.

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Praise to Steven Johnson for noting the fine print of this week's study on psychedelics: Four people in the control group had "complete mystical experiences" on Ritalin.

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Praise to IowaHawk. Who's the prettiest gal in the Des Moines pen? And Senator Ted Stevens explains the Innernets. Get out of my tubes!

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Old news, but... Praise to the woman courageous enough to dump her water on raging homophobe Yngwie Malmsteen. The recording of the aftermath is legendary: "You've unleashed the f***ing fury!" I'm going to start using that at Safeway when they run out of Fear Factor Push-Up Pops.

And praise to you.

Friday Praise: I Love You Too, Johnnycakes

Praise to Cedichou, who successfully predicted SF Weekly's "Best of San Francisco" editorial winners months in advance merely by noticing Meredith Brody's convenient restaurant choices:

If you are NOT a French-Cal-Italian restaurant AND you have been visited by Meredith, then you are THE best of the bay. She is holy that way.

And the key to being one of those: easy freeway access from the East Bay suburbs.

Praise to MattyMatt of SFist for digging deep into the hold-up of MUNI's long-promised NextBus system. You want to know if it's going to be three minutes or forty for that bus or rail line to show up? Tough shit! The equipment's installed to give you the information, but no one at MUNI is going to turn it on for you. Fug it, I'll drive.

Beercans Praise to the Beer Can Collector of Utah. 70,000 beers over eight years = 24 beers a day. You can't just throw those memories away.

Praise to P.O.D., dear sweet P.O.D.. In 2002, these Christian mooks struck gold with two of the decade's lamest rock songs. First, they made heavy airplay with "Alive," a trackt that sounded suspiciously like Pearl Jam if they replaced Eddie Vedder with Vanilla Ice and then huffed a whole can of Easy Off. But they were just gettin' wauuurmed up: P.O.D hit it even bigger with their next single: "We are, we are, the youth of the nation," the 30-year-old man sang, with a chorus of misunderstood teenagers chanting along. The message was the same as it was among all the Hot Topic nu-metal bands: Pay attention to me, Dad!

Well, P.O.D. could have stopped there. At their final tour show of 2002, they could have gazed at the audience of teenagers, folded their arms, and thought, We just stunted the emotional development of millions of high school students by validating for them that their generation is uniquely misunderstood by their parents. Cool.

But P.O.D. has something their fans don't: ambition. And P.O.D. is determined to stupidify the next generation of mildly literate, megachurch-attending children before they can even learn to think.

Hot New Girls' Name: Neveah

In 1999, there were only eight newborn American girls named Nevaeh. Last year, it was the 70th-most-popular name for baby girls, ahead of Sara, Vanessa and Amanda.

Nevaeh is not in the Bible or any religious text. It is not from a foreign language. It is not the name of a celebrity, real or fictional... 

The surge of Nevaeh can be traced to a single event: the appearance of a Christian rock star, Sonny Sandoval of P.O.D., on MTV in 2000 with his baby daughter, Nevaeh. "Heaven spelled backwards," he said.

While Neveah isn't the worst name ever, Sandoval deserves some positive credit for the name's development. You see, he's really done us a favor; over the past five years, he has branded 11,000 kids for life with a tag that says "Don't waste your time with me. I was raised to watch Fox News and believe in Intelligent Design."

And finally, praise to you. Praise you to Hell. Oops... Praise you to Lleh.

Friday Praise

Praise to Norm Simons, special agent for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, for permitting Berkeley boaters to defend themselves from blood-thirsty sea lions.

Smith said the [1,500-pound bull] sea lion jumped onto the harbor dock, bit his crew member Twani Houston on the ankle and tried to drag her into the water. A second crew member grabbed Houston by the arm.

Someone tell the Colbert Nation that bears are no longer America's #1 threat. Wait a second... The NOAA has "special agents"?

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Nesfootball Praise to Dave Fymbo of Free Meat for his goal-to-goal sprint down Console Football Memory Lane. The man has some justified love for NES Tecmo Super Bowl and the Sega NFL 2K series (the best). Nobody but me seems to remember football for the Vectrex, an unchallenging but strangely fun vector-graphics game.

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Praise to Dave Lozo of Why Don't We Get Drunk and Blog for articulating all that is retarded and unholy about David Blaine.

When the fuck did sitting in a water orb for a week, just to try to hold your breath for 9 minutes fall under the magic umbrella? What is the trick here? Yes, I said trick. I talked to GOB, and he said holding your breath isn't a fucking illusion. It's something 12-year-olds at the local pool do on a dare.

I'm embarassed that I actually used to recommend his stooooopid-crazy "street magic" shows to friends and family. Now he's damaging his liver without actually enjoying the fine bourbon the rest of us do.

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Praise to whoever wins the auction for a private dinner with Bill O'Reilly. May you drink enough to find yourself in your own private "spin zone." But stay alert! If there's shampoo on the falafel, you don't want to touch it.

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Praise to Steven Johnson, author of the fascinating Everything Bad is Good for You, for pointing us to an awesome time-lapse movie of ants foraging FedEx planes avoiding Memphis thunderstorms.

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Praise to you. Happy weekend.

Friday Praise

Reminder that today is the last day for vote Rangelife "Best Blog" in SF Weekly's Best of SF 2006 poll.

Praise to Best Week Ever Blog for spotlighting why white people -- especially loony Scientologist ones -- should never go on BET. Tom, didn't you learn anything from Trent Lott? If Oprah was Tom Cruise's "Checkers" speech, doin' the Harley on BET is his "I'm not a crook."

Praise to America's Overvalued Real Estate, every house worth its weight in unintentional comedy gold.

Praise to Yahoo! Tech. Hubba hubba.

Praise to HumanityCritic for his honest assessment of assholish bar behavior, and also for being a black man willing to neg Mary J. Blige consistently. Wil O'Neal, however, has nothing but love for Mary J. Go figure.

Praise to SFist for raising reader money for a half-dozen educational projects for kids. I gave.

And praise to you and your well-deserved weekend.