Fun With Sports Headlines

Normally someone else points these things out to me. Not today, no, I got this one all on my own:

Ronaldinho promises to fill Milan's Kaka gap

Haha, that's funny.

Incredible Fireworks Crotch Fail

Oh man, this is great, just in time for the holiday!




via the consistently incredible Sportress of Blogitude [SoB]

2012 Redux

A little over a year ago I reviewed a book in these hallowed electronic pages called 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl. That review mainly consisted of an ad-hominem attack on its author, Daniel Pinchbeck, for which I am marginally regretful. Not because the book is good, or its ideas are worthwhile, but because I failed in my objective to shine light on a tremendous pile of stupidity and, instead, flinged mud at a messenger. At the time an opportunity arose in which I could (and should) have criticized convoluted new-age spiritual garbage, but I got lazy faced with the prospect of actually having to re-read the book to really pick it apart and expose its lack of merit.

Fortunately all I got was a weak type-lashing from the author in my comments scolding me for being a bad boy. Unfortunately, the beast has returned, new tome in hand culled from the vast storeroom of vacuity that is his website. Titled Toward 2012, it's clear Pinchbeck has a fetish and is determined to mine it for all it's worth, presumably until three years hence, when Y2K happens all over again. Dwight Garner just reviewed this for the NYTimes and, while much subtler than I in his criticisms, pretty much labels the book a steaming pile. But first he had to provide some context and so blurbed Pinchbeck's previous book thusly:

In a previous book, “2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl,” Mr. Pinchbeck seemed to want to have it both ways about earth’s fast-approaching deadline. He didn’t entirely dismiss the possibility of Armageddon, but he used his book as an occasion to urge humanity to come together to stop global warming and heal the planet in other ways. Maybe, you know, we can head this bad juju off at the pass. Mr. Pinchbeck also wrote about crop circles, alien abductees, experiences with poltergeists, ingesting psychedelic mushrooms and practicing “new ideals of erotic freedom,” but never mind.

I read that and laughed, reminded of exactly how far removed from any rational thought this material is. The mention of "new ideals of erotic freedom" nearly made me lose my coffee all over this keyboard, since it was belittling Pinchbeck's views on that topic in particular that got me in trouble in the first place.

Seeing this review on the screen as I set myself up here at work this morning got me thinking about people close to me who go in for this sort of thing (Garner does mention "woo-woo friends" in his review). It makes me a bit depressed to know people are desperately reaching for meaning in a universe devoid of any such enduring thing and, thus, cling to outrageous anti-scientific and pseudoscientifc claims in books such as Pinchbeck's.

Just yesterday Scientific American posted a story, "Finding Control In Chaos", whose subtitle read: Feeling helpless leads to see nonexistent patterns. The article is short, I recommend reading it, but the ultimate point is that test subjects imposed fictitious order on situations in which they lacked control. I've found among people who are into new-age or vaguely spiritual "philosophies" that acute lack of control over their place in the universe and an intense desire for meaning to show its face.

This isn't a rare phenomenon by any stretch. In fact, it's probably the default human setting as far as anyone has determined. Our imaginations are a wondrous tool, but to deny ourselves the use of our rational functions is as criminal as denying our imaginations for rigid logic and order. We have the capability for dialectical thinking, for synthesizing our logical functions with our imaginative capacities. It would be to humanity's benefit for us as individuals to take advantage of this. Wallowing in shallow pools of pseudoscientific drivel and spiritual horseblather is a waste and proponents of this kind of thinking should be seen as the hucksters and contemporary snake-oil salesman they are.

Let's Be Smarter About These Cuts

In all the hubbub over extra flim-flam in the economic stimulus packages (hey, I got a package they can stimulate! Heyo!...Try the Prime Rib!), a lot of folks have been discussing what, exactly, to cut from the proposed Senate bill. Step up, Ben Nelson (R-CO) and Susan Collins (R-ME). These two centrists (I can vouch for the latter, but not so sure about the former) have put the following cuts on the table:

Among the initiatives that could be cut are $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts, $14 million for cyber security research by the Homeland Security Department, $1 billion for the National Science Foundation, $400 million for research and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, $850 million for Amtrak and $400 million for climate change research. But so far, none of the suggestions come close to being enough to shrink the package on the scale proposed.

What a horrible, atrocious idea these particular cuts are!!!! Now I need to know what they want to keep in this bill. These are all things we desperately need, am I fucking crazy? Increased science funding? Yes. Better rail system? Yes. Research on STDs? Yes. Arts? Who needs to spend money on the arts during a depression? If you're seriously asking that question, I don't want you near my tax dollars, because you're fucking scum. Fuck you.
I'd go on longer and with more obscenities, but my lunch break is almost over and I have to finish eating.

Hey, Nelson and Collins, go jump off a fucking bridge!

~~~~

update: I f'd up in my haste to post on this. Ben Nelson is a conservative "Blue Dog" Democrat from Nebraska. My mistake. However, this doesn't change his status as a complete douchebag.

Enjoy Your Friday

I have to admit Waffle House is pretty stellar, but this is the most redneck wedding I've ever seen.

I'm Going To Another Wedding, Kill Me

Ugh. Long Island. Wedding. Actually, as far as we're aware it's a shotgun wedding. So that's kinda humorous I guess. But this will make three weddings in less than a year for myself and my college friends. We're a bit tired of it, to be honest. To add some levity to the situation, I decided to take some liberties with the invite. Maybe my friends will be the only ones that find this amusing. Also, not sure who is actually taking account of these RSVPs, but good luck to them...



I'm rather proud of myself.

Typical Thursday

1) Great comedy set at The Wrong Hole (get a website or something, eh?), hosted by Meigs & Meg.
2) Best joke I've heard in a while:

"What's the difference between Sarah Palin's mouth and her vagina?

Not everything that comes out of her vagina is retarded."

3) Red Sox win in stunning comeback fashion. Well done lads.

4) Bedtime.

Tuesday's "I Don't Have to Work Tomorrow" Free-For-All

Last night while my bike was chained to the gate in front of my friends' building, as it is on so many nights, somebody came by—presumably on their bike—and took my bike seat. I add that they were "presumably on their bike" because as a little gift they left me their bike seat. Or just some bike seat they had. Turns out the bike seat they left for me is more comfortable than the one that was stolen. So...

Thanks? I guess thanks is in order. Really, I hate the idea that people steal bike seats, but if you're just gonna go around the 'hood trading out crappy bike seats for slightly less crappy ones that are a tad cushier, then go for it. You're the new Williamsburg Bike Seat Fairy. It's a title that has all sorts of wacky connotations, but fuck it, live it up with your off-kilter antics. They're certainly jarring for a moment, but that happy ending makes a sucker like me feel all cozy inside.

And speaking of cozy, Evan Williams bourbon is delicious even when you're not drinking "Sportsman" after "Sportsman" at the Levée. I highly recommend drinking it while spending the night at home writing. Also goes well with Nirvana, Vaz and High On Fire. From the EW bio:

Evan Williams, born a Welshman, settled in Virginia and moved to what would become Kentucky (but was then Fincastle County of Virginia) in about 1780. Like most frontiersmen, he grew crops, but getting them to market over narrow trails and steep mountains was a daunting task. Williams soon learned that converting his corn and other grains to whiskey made them easily transportable, prevented the excess grain from simply rotting, and gave them a little welcome diversion from the rough life of the frontier.

If you don't enjoy cheap bourbon with over two and a quarter centuries of history then I think you should really take some time out from your busy schedule and reassess what's really meaningful in your life. Priorities. Bourbon. Evan Williams.

Katie Couric v. Sarah Palin

I don't watch the evening news on television, nor did I ever watch the Today show when Ms. Couric was on that, so my ability to compare interview styles and/or toughness are lacking here. But let's face it, no matter how Couric stands up, the real focus here is on Sarah Palin.

She's had a couple weeks since that Charles Gibson interview to hunker down and cram on policy issues, though clearly whatever she studied for wasn't on this "test". Frankly, this is just embarrassing and she's gonna get her ass handed to her when she finally debates "Screamin' Joe" Biden. Four years of McCain/Palin is stacking up to be even worse than what we have going on now. Hear that? WORSE!

This interview is cringeworthy and anyone who seriously believes this woman is qualified to run anything needs their head examined. To paraphrase my man Dennis Kucinich: WAKE THE FUCK UP AMERICA!

Worcester, Pull Your Head Out Of Your Ass

Thanks to my severe poverty and marginal laziness, I don't spend too much time outside Brooklyn (other than for work in Manhattan). Generally, this is fine as I've really come to love living here and I consider it my home. Occasionally I travel back to my birth home in Massachusetts to visit my family for a weekend. Hometowns being hometowns, I spend the whole time within the confines of the 1/4 acre yard I grew up in, thus avoiding any sort of social interaction with people I may accidentally run into if I left said yard.

This weekend was different and confirmed for me nearly every reason why I moved to New York to begin with. Sometimes expats need such reminders of why they've chosen to settle in places that don't have beautiful fall foliage or funny names for everyday items (see: "bubbler, the" and "elastics") or that do happen to be full of Yankees fans. Yes, this weekend more college friends got married so that their degenerate single friends had a legitimate reason to duel with their livers. I won't get into the particulars of the wedding itself, but there was an open bar, so...that covers the important topics there.

Why, then, did I return to NYC with a renewed sense of appreciation? Here's a few reasons:

1) Things stay open. Worcester had one open diner Sunday morning (morning=12:30pm) and it had 4 booths that were all full. There were 4 closed diners that we found. 4. Four. If you choose to close your diner on a Sunday fucking morning, I hope it's because you love losing money that drunks want to spend on eggs. Die. Oh yeah, and to "blue laws" in general? Get rid of them, Puritanism should remain a part of history, we don't have to keep it around to annoy visitors and there's nothing "quaint" about holding on to pointless traditions that should have been scrapped ages ago. People don't go to church anymore, open your damn store.

2) Pizza. Massachusetts is probably third behind New York and New Jersey for a high population of Italians (I should know, I'm part one), so why did they never learn how to make pizza properly? An equally acceptable answer here is "Bagels".

3) Attractive women. I always cringe at jokes about the desert of beauty that is the Greater Boston Area, but in my heart I know it's terribly true. Any of the actually attractive females migrate to places like, oh, say, New York City. Which brings me to my next point...

4) Style. Here's where I really start to get depressed. I hate fashion. It's possibly the least important of any high art form. I'd rather see the dentist than go clothes shopping. That's not a stretch at all. But then I go to a city like Worcester, home to several colleges and roughly 160,000 people and nobody seems to know how to dress themselves. Guys, your white hats and weaved belts have made you the butt of jokes nationwide, maybe even worldwide. Give it up already. Oh, and put your collar back down. As for you, ladies, I can tell you're not a natural blond and a Brazilian transsexual would be embarrassed to don such horrid pancake makeup. Is the "HC" on your sweatshirt supposed to make me think you go to Holy Cross or for "Holy Crap, I've been drinking for 8 hours now and you still look like a Moldavian gangster's girlfriend". Get the hell out of the mall for pete's sake!

Why is that realization depressing? Because it forces me to acknowledge that I actually know something about style and self-presentation despite any of my multiple and constant utterances to the contrary. I may as well host Project Runway.

5) Is it worth a number 5, do I need to write more? Probably, but it's 2:30am and there are other reasons I can't sleep. I can't go on, I'll go on. That I even had to write this in the first place is worth a place on this list, so that's #5. Worcester (and by extension all of Metro-Boston and generally suburban New England—except Vermont because you're so quaint and adorable), I implore you to get your act together. Consider this your occasionally sentimental expats asking politely.

Look At All The Crazy White People!

Um, I'm sitting here watching the John McCain speech and wondering where the fuck all these rednecks got suits. Did all the billionaire splurge for formal attire and razors? I haven't been privvy to such jingoism since the Nuremburg rallies. For pete's sake, quit it with the "USA, USA, USA" chants you ignorant apes! And yes, you are apes, you are descended from a common ancestor along with chimps and bonobos.

To be fair, I didn't watch the DNC, and I'm sure it was chalk full of hope and more hope, but at least it wasn't this horseshit parade.

I'm still considering voting for a joint ticket of Jimmy Carter and Dennis Kucinich. You know, as soon as I remember to register to vote.
~~~~~

Update: This morning when I got to work I was discussing last night's speech with my manager. He informed me that even the Dems burst into impromptu "USA!" chants, which made him wretch. So fuck them as well. Cut the shit with the "USA!" bullshit, people. We're not that great and this isn't Nazi Germany. Wait, what's that you say?...

Let's Prevent A White House Shotgun Wedding

In case anybody hasn't heard, McCain VP Sarah Palin's daughter is pregnant. Bristol, a 17 year old, was knocked up by her boyfriend (no word on his age and possible statutory-rape status) who she now plans to marry. Good for them and hooray for government-funded abstinence-only sex-ed. Her mother supports that, by the way, and is also anti-abortion.

And in case you were wondering, yes, the McCain campaign said they knew about the pregnancy (which is now in its fifth month. "Fif, I plead the Fif...F-I-F...FIF!"). Palin has 5 children, the youngest of which, Trig, is only a few months old (and has Down's Syndrome). Apparently the talk of the town this weekend was that Trig was actually Bristol's kid, as she had disappeared with Mono for months and Mom Palin never looked pregnant. Whatever, we don't need more rednecks hanging around the White House.

Oh, also, on the whole family names thing...Bristol and Trig are joined by eldest brother, Track (on his way to Iraq) and sisters Willow and Piper. So...yeah, they all have stupid names.

I Spent Thursday In Summons Court

That's right loyal readers (all 7 of you), I was lucky enough to spend today, 21 August 2008, in NYC Summons Court. Why did I have to take time out of my afternoon at work to do this, you ask? Because on 18 June at approximately 12:35 am, a roving band of badged asshounds selected me for their early morning amusement. Since my day in court has come and gone (and they can't hold any of this self-incrimination against me now), I don't mind sharing parts of the story.
It started off innocuously enough when the Boston Celtics won their 17th NBA Championship trophy. Cigars were procured to celebrate with Red, so we moved to the stoop. Unbeknown to us the stoop is considered "open container" territory and when a van of NY's "finest" came around the corner, they just had to spoil the fun. They wanted to know what we were smoking and why we had beers outside, then they decided to charge me (and only me) with an open container violation. I said I would just go back inside, but they had other ideas. In my state of combined revelry and annoyance, I challenged one of the cops to the effect of: "If you're going to give me an open container summons, you may as well give me one for littering." And promptly threw the cigar in the gutter.
To make a long story short, three cops made sure I remained rooted to my square of concrete and two summonses were produced; one for littering and one for—no, not open container—disorderly conduct. Let's just say I was fucking shocked and so was everybody else. Then the next night on that same corner two different cops wrote me up for riding my bike on the sidewalk. Yes, five feet off the sidewalk. I won't even go into this.
Anyway, the judge today had the good sense to dismiss the bike offense and the disorderly conduct (though I've gotta pay $50 for the littering, which is ample punishment for being an ass, I figure). Below are my recorded thoughts as I made my first trip to NYC Summons Court, hopefully to never return:

1:15pm: Leave work and head to 346 B'way. Court is actually at 108 Leonard. Proper start for bureaucratic adventure.

1:20pm: Get checked in after moving through security and waiting in line for a courtroom ticket. Now I have to wait until 2:15.

1:30pm: Snag a spot on the hallway floor. There are no benches and a fat/pregnant? mom is in the only chair. More families than I expected and right now I'm the only white guy. There was a professional, prep-school looking white guy in line earlier, but I overheard him trying to change his court date as he was going to be out of town on business. Typical.

1:40pm: Obviously I'm curious as to how all these forced loiterers ended up here. Were they drunk and disorderly? Was their bike on the sidewalk? This wait is going to suck.

1:45pm: I don't know if it was silly of me to bother wearing my nice shirt, but most of these folks just have t-shirts on. I was wrong, there is a thuggy white guy in here with a beater and blue bandana on. He and his two black cohorts keep talking about how their shit is just gonna be dismissed (ed. note: they weren't) I hope my shit just gets dismissed. I wanna go watch The Wire now. Half hour to go.

1:55pm: Whitey's talking loud about his time in the hole for slashing someone or other. Claims these are "new times" and jail's a young man's game. He's balding with a van dyke. Bics his head. Semi-retarded Mets fan traverses the hallway. I get a kick out of the clear delineations between the upper and lower levels of Mets fandom. Yankees fans aren't so clear cut.

2:00pm: Two white girls show up, well dressed but look like undercover troublemakers. I'm intrigued, though on second look they aren't really that attractive.

2:10pm: Court Room 3 opens up and everyone sits on benches. Hats and cellphones off says the McNulty.

2:20pm: To speed things up some of us are sent across the hall to courtroom 2. It smells like stale sweat in this room. This whole building reeks of "institution smell" and is remarkably plain, even for a government building. If I worked in here I'd splatter paint the walls with my own blood just to not look at off-white under fluorescent lights every goddamn minute.

2:30pm: My name is called and the judge and public defender do their thing which consists of the judge looking at the tickets, mumbling to himself and dismissing two out of the three. I'm relieved and rather than spend any more time in this hole, I agree to pay the $50 and leave.

2:45pm: Walk out the door of 108 Leonard and head back to work for another hour or so...

Nobody Remembers the Trivia Runners-up

Tuesday night is Trivia Night at The Charleston and last night I made my first appearance. Call it beginner's luck if you must, but my team Lazy Nick Salek put in a rather spectacular showing. Consisting of myself, John and Noga (and Noga's Israeli friend, Tom, who, frankly, didn't speak much English but was a nice bloke) busted out a 2nd Place prize of a $15 bar tab. Really, it should have been us holding the ultimate trophy of a $30 bar tab, but the winning team had, like, 15 people on it. I hope you all enjoyed your half-beers losers!

Anyway, next week I plan on cruising into pole position (or something) and picking up that grand $30 prize. Presumably there won't be a joke category, as there was last night, based solely on questions relating to Michael Rapaport's career (that guy sucks). I'm really hoping for fewer questions that are based on pop-culture—though that shit is trivial—and instead more based on things like geography (Sinhalese live in Sri Lanka, Steve, not Madagascar. Simpleton.) I'm good at that shit.

/////

Oh, and clearly this means that I didn't read the Unabomber Manifesto last night like I planned. However, this being Wednesday and my day off, I'll get to it as soon as my headache wanes.

You'll Never Get Anything Done Ever Again

While today is my day off, Noga certainly can't claim the same for herself, so she's been busy entertaining myself and herself with this handy little online gadget. I was planning on doing day-off things like selling old books, reading new books and laughing at the comments on Deadspin. However, all that has been hijacked and now I can't stop text-to-voicing. This experience has convinced me that no matter the positive changes I make or the goals I try to set for even just a day, my juvenile brain is far too easily distracted to ever do good for itself.

Thanks, Noga. Thanks a million.


(Oh, and I prefer Charles' voice for my text)

—————

Also, what the hell is happening here? Is this photo staged? Today must be officially Stupid Wednesday. I need to eat some peanut butter now.

Hey, Guido! (And In Other News)

...or whoever you are out there on Long Island that keeps calling me. If your number is 516-224-6026 either stop calling me or leave a fucking voicemail. Actually, don't leave me a voicemail, your accents are nut-shrivelling (and that's saying something comin' from a Masshole)

And in other news, I want to give a big, American "What's up!" to my steadily increasing Malaysian readership. For a tribute I was going to post a video of rubber harvesting from a children's educational show I watched from way back when I was a children. Unfortunately my memory is failing me and I can't remember what PBS show had a segment on tapping rubber latex in Malaysia. (Yes, I primarily watched shows like 3-2-1 Contact and Square 1 TV when I was young, which is why my life is so awesome today.) So if anyone out there knows what the hell I'm talking about, please lead me toward the promised land of sweet, sweet rubber-tapping video clips. I mean, children need to learn about hard labor at a young age...

I Like Science. A Lot.

noga: personally i like the phrase - knee deep in pussy

but thats also kinda gross

and usually impossible

Sent at 2:17 PM on Thursday

me: yeah, that's kinda gross

noga: hahah

me: i wouldn't mind a nice dry hump on my leg, though

noga: eeeeew

me: it'd be like high school, or a second date

noga: yeah

young love!

i remember those..

me: ah, how romantic

having no idea what the fuck you're doing

kissing sloppily and poorly

noga: yeeeeahhh

me: bra clasps from hell

those were certainly awkward days

Sent at 2:23 PM on Thursday

noga: thankfully girls in williamsburg dont wear bras anymore

Sent at 2:25 PM on Thursday

me: well, i'm willing to do the research personally and make sure that is a factual statement

Sent at 2:26 PM on Thursday

noga: you're so kind and selfless

a saint, really

me: it's all in the name of science

noga: i'm willing to match your research

me: to find guys who don't wear bras?

noga: by looking into whether guys with super tight pants actually have penises in there

me: zing

noga: (current theory: no)

me: yeah, i'm also intruigued, but not interested in touching

noga: don't worry, i'll do the touching

you just sttand there with a clipboard and take notes

me: how can i possibly hold a clipboard with my hands (hopefully) full of boob

(just so you know, this segment of our conversation is clearly going to my blog)

Sent at 2:30 PM on Thursday

noga: dude we're not going to conduct our experiments AT THE SAME TIME

we're going to monitor each other's experiments

cuz your analytical skills will be that of a retarded child when you're busy grabbing boobs

you need an object indifferent partner

objective even

man this whole typing words thing is harder than it used to be

me: sorry, i was distracted by boob thoughts

noga: i rest my case

(gross)

(note to any future female suitors: I still may have trouble with your bra clasps. Consider yourself warned)

The Icky Shuffle

Remember Icky Woods and his celebration dance? Unless you're from Cincinnati or happened to be a Bengals fan (I was when I was 7 or 8), I don't expect you to. This post isn't about that, either. This is my version of The Onion AV Club's "Random Rules" when they get some famous person to put their iPod on random and see what comes up. Since I'm not famous, I don't get to do that, but I was curious to see what kind of embarrassing stuff would come up if I was famous and featured in that segment.

The Acacia Strain, "Sarin: The End"
I recently got turned on to these Western Mass fellas who, by their name, I would have thought were some mediocre metalcore band. Nope. This album, 2006's The Dead Walk, is pretty damn tight, so I was pleasantly surprised. It's not something I'd listen to all the time, and I get the impression that their fans are of the more breakdown-friendly metalcore variety, but I can definitely dig it when it pops up. Some of their tones and phrasings are rather original for what I would otherwise consider a "genre band" (because I'm a dick and I label things).

Pig Destroyer, "Downpour Girl"
This little ditty, from 2004's Terrifyer, isn't one of my favorites on this record, but this whole album is so f'ing amazing that it doesn't matter. I've seen these guys a few times and they make an ungodly amount of noise for a band with only one guitarist (though, to be fair, he is Scott Hull). Some people hate this album and I can't for the life of me figure out why. I didn't find any videos of this song, but I found one of "Gravedancer" in which JR is wearing a Triac t-shirt, which is awesome, cos those dudes kill as well.

Autechre, "Stud"
I don't have any extensive knowledge of electronic music, but there is some I find quite appealing. The Manc duo are fairly prolific and have released a ton of albums and eps since '91. This track is from one of the few albums of theirs I have, 1995's, Tri Repetae. When I'm not listening to retardedly heavy music, I tend to put on either classical music of stuff like Autechre or any of Aphex Twin's ambient works. In my completely unqualified opinion, quality electronic music should capture our modern mechanized and schizophrenic period, yet remain oddly blissful.

Autechre, "The Pic"
Okay, so it looks like I get a double dose today. This track is off their latest release, Quaristice, and is much less low-key than the above. It is this sort of track, full of bleeps and sound squiggles, that sends my brain into "the world of the future" that is right now. My head conjures images of a lot of modernist and postmodernist European and Japanese landscapes when I listen to this stuff. But that's just me.

Sole, "Respect, Pt. 3"
Lastly we have one of the few hip-hop artists I really appreciate. I don't give a shit that he's white and from Maine and blah blah blah. He's a poet, he actually says something with his art and lives what he says. I think that's important for any artist. This track is from 2003's Selling Live Water, an album that defined, on some level anyway, that year of my life. I used to sit on the Chinatown bus between Boston and New York with this record on repeat and just write. Sole's lyrics are dark, introspective, often stream-of-consciousness and harshly critical of modern society, so as far as hip-hop goes, I can relate to what he's talking about. Also, Jel's production on this album is killer.


PS- I was gonna link to a video of Icky doing his famous dance, but I couldn't find one!!!! I found the next best thing, though: a women's fitness class doing it on FoxNews in da 'Nati. (You're so so so welcome it hurts.)

Dear Liam Flanagan,

Hi Liam. I know you're a huge fan of my site here (and a huge fan of me, in general) so I decided that, against my better judgment, I'd take your advice and start writing dating columns. See, after that mediocre date I had last week, I was all, "dating is stupid, i'm just gonna hang out with Nick and we can be boyfriends together (cos Nancy thinks we are anyway)." However, sometimes you meet somebody who is actually rad and sometimes you meet that person on the subway 'cos you keep running into them on the subway and you have to say something or else it becomes more awkward than this run-on sentence. Meeting folks on the subway is terrible and 97% of the time I highly recommend not doing it. Then again, most statistics are made up anyway. I guess my advice amounts to something like this: If you're not a sketchy guy or possible date-rapist, and you see an adorable girl (or handsome guy, or cute tranny, or whatever) on the subway, for pete's sake, say something. I'm hoping that this time was the 3% that I highly recommended to myself.

Now that that's done, I'm never ever ever ever writing about dating ever again. Liam, you're welcome. Oh, and who is Alex Bradshaw?

PS-The restaurant Moto in Williamsburg is really good.

I am some sort of Futuristic-Alloy-Man!

I was out on what would probably be considered a 'first date' last night (oh, must I qualify every phrase I use?) and ended going to see the new film IronMan. My dating skills are only slightly less honed than my writing skills, so it went, for all I know, pretty well. Anyway, thanks to whatever was going on with the 4 & 6 trains yesterday, my date, Rebecca, and I and two of her friends completely missed the first 20 minutes of the movie (some of her other friends had gotten advance tickets for all of us). Now, generally, seeing the first 20 minutes of a movie is fairly important. It could very well have been the case in this film as well, but I may never find out. For whatever reasons, despite missing the beginning the rest of the movie made complete sense, though it was pretty terrible. I won't lie and say I wasn't entertained, because I actually was very entertained. Not by Robert Downey, Jr. (who is just a creepy guy these days and walks around the entire film with his chest puffed out. It's ridiculous.), no, no, the real star of the show was The Dude...er...Jeff Bridges.

Okay, I'll confess that I've only seen Mr. Bridges in a few roles outside of his masterpiece, The Big Lebowski, but I know he's a versatile actor. That's why I was kinda shocked that he played the entire role of Obadiah Stane as if he were 'The Dude in the role of Obadiah Stane'. I thought it was fucking hilarious. Maybe we'll all look back on this performance in the way we can now see Gina Gershon's role in Showgirls. As is mentioned in the commentary of the box-set edition of that film, Ms. Gershon is the only person in the entire cast who knows what movie she is making. Same goes here for Jeff Bridges in IronMan. What a travesty of a film and what a superb job as The Dude playing an evil weapons manufacturing tycoon. In the words of the big Lebowski, 'You're joking, but maybe you're right.'