Return to Glory

So, I'm back online. This past week I've been out west, doing all the necessary legwork as Interweb Detritus prepares to open its shiny new Bay Area headquarters. Ann Arbor was good enough to sustain us in the early days, but now that we've blown up, E and I are taking this thing bicoastal. She'll continue to manage the New York City wing of the operation, of course.

Anyway, it's going to be a week or so more before I get back to full operational mode, but in the meantime enjoy the above clip, which hails from my homeland, or at least my birthplace: It's of Filipino prisoners reenacting "Thriller" as part of a dance rehabilitation program, and it's totally mesmerizing.

step to the wu

c4ts, now that you have some free time on your hands, how's about you enter this contest? oh wait, pc-only. too badz. but the rest of you, go for it. and please, diversify your bonds.

pants off dance off

i have somehow managed to refrain from blogging about this ridonculous lawsuit. i mean, where to begin? the plaintiff is a judge, for chrissake. have some dignity, please. not to dwell on the obvious, but do some people really have this much time on their hands or are they deranged enough to believe this type of a claim is meritorious? and the judge presiding over this case - how can she (he?) let this go on for two years?? i don't remember much from law school, but common sense tells me roy pearson should be disbarred or disciplined at the least.

anyway, some people in dc took a brief respite from their megalomania to attend a benefit to raise money for the chungs, whose legal fees are somewhere above $83,000. [Ed note: read the comments on that post. some real gems out there.] i went to their fundraising website and realized omg, daniel dae kim donated at least $250! um afterelton, it's time to move him up your list.

speaking of pants, i don't know if anyone's noticed this story, but this shit is just a disaster.

secret asian man

i've always harbored an extreme, borderline irrational hatred of the show "friends." okay fine, so it's kind of like hating racism or cloudy days, and i'm not exactly going out on a limb here by despising this sad excuse for entertainment (yes yes, how is rachel affording that huge-ass soho loft on her coffee shop waitress salary? how can joey afford anything? are there really no minorities in nyc aside from superhot women who date greg kinnear? and why does the fact that joey's favorite food is "sandwiches" make me simultaneously laugh and hate myself for finding it funny?). everyone knows i love television and would never sully it without due cause.

anyway, steve park is in a new movie. i'd totally forgotten about this guy. apparently he married the white woman from in living color (who i always confused with george stephanopolous's wife). i also had no idea about this vitriol he directed at that nadir of television, friends, which he describes as follows: "Working with the people involved with this show was an extremely painful experience for me. A disturbing lack in generosity of spirit and basic human courtesy, in addition to a racial incident on the set, has forced me to speak out."

but didn't grey's anatomy teach us that people of all races can get along so long as nobody is gay?

doin' it all for my baby

from stereogum: is it christmas in july? i think so.

i loved that huey lewis & the news behind the music. the dude went to like andover or something (is there something in the rarefied waters over there? bc apparently an andover degree also helps you play some mean hoops) and after graduating from high school his dad gave him a thousand bucks and told him to go to europe instead of going to college. what?! these parents surely were not korean.

anyway, huey and the news are wholesome, healthy and hip to be square. not to mention they are prominently featured in one of the greatest 80s movies of all time starring one of the greatest canadians of all time. oh, and they also made one of the best videos. ever.

fore!

[Ed note: c4ts and sugarpockets are, um, preoccupied for the next few days. please pray for them and this blog.]

you can doooo eeet

c4ts, collin, sugarpockets, booksie and all others who are facing the you-know-what, best of luck. bela and the rest of the former soviet bloc are rooting for you

We all gonna die...

So, who gets nuked first today? Iran's the odds-on favorite--no doubt--but I hear Cheney has it in for Luxembourg.

Also, cousin-defiling, abortionist, cross-dressing, terrorism-fetishizing, firefighter-hating, Iraq-Study-Group-avoiding, coke-dealer-hiring squeegee-eradicator/absentee-dad-in-chief is making it a little too easy on me: Now, he wants to carpet bomb my grandmama's house. Wait, scratch that; he thinks we already are.

what are these bears doing?

is this a bidet?

what about the one lying down? it's making me cross all kinds of davidson lines.

please, enlighten me.

also, did anyone else read david denby's commentary on the state of romantic comedies? i didn't realize knocked up was ripe for such exegesis.

mea culpa

i recently chastized my friend heidi for wanting to clerk for an "indie rock" judge (y'know, watches deadwood and stuff). but this makes me want to watch network news some more. what more can you ask for? the man is such a dreamboat. he's like 100 ft tall, has all of his original hair, is simultaneously self-possessed and self-effacing. well, so he mystic tans a little. what do you want? he's a news anchor, not a research lab assistant. all in all, swoon.

yeah, you can take chris botti and shove it up your low ratings, katie couric. you too, moon vest.

fat bitch

i was looking on imdb to find an apt headline for this post, but i think "batman or fatman" pretty much does it for me.

or how is "iceman eateth?"

what is going on with val kilmer? okay fine, i'll give him the benefit of the doubt. maybe he is gaining weight for a movie role. but then why does he look so sheepish?

but most importantly, what the hell is this? and why is val kilmer so obsessed with playing moses?

Speaking Truth to Power

Jared's enjoyed his free ride for way too long. [Via Consumerist.]

The Old Dominion

When I was in high school I got two reckless driving tickets for driving in excess of 20 miles per hour over the speed limit. I got these tickets within a couple of months of each other--in the same speed trap on Route 123 in Virginia. Just over Chain Bridge, the 45 mph limit turns to 35, and then for a brief stretch it's 25. Totally bullshit. Anyway, I got some fine and was sent to traffic school, where the instructor went around the room asking random "students" why they were there. One girl ran a red, and caused a multi-car collision; another and her friends piled into her VW like it was a clown car and caused a multi-car collision. When the guy called on me, I was surly and said I didn't have a goddamn clue, and couldn't understand why I was surrounded by such an outrageous collection of incompetents. I probably called him Gestapo and quoted Joy Division lyrics, while painting my nails black. I'm murky on the details when it comes to this time in my life.

Anyway, there aren't enough dumbasses like me (and the rest of the kids in that class) to generate enough revenue to make up for erstwhile delusional Presidential candidate Jim Gilmore's sense-defying elimination of the car tax, which to this day apparently continues to plague the Commonwealth (like its concealed handgun laws, but that's a separate rant about some Californian-Frenchman former governor who denies his Jewish heritage, thinks he's a cowboy--even though we don't have cowboys in Virginia--and uses esoteric racial slurs.)

The point is this: Virginia--now the home of the $1050 reckless driving ticket.

Great Lakes, Great Times

Does this sweater make me look like John McCain?

l. paul, you gotta lotta splainin to do

la latina and i, misguidedly, find l. paul bremer rather handsome, despite his complete shadiness. what the hell is wrong with us?

anyway, has he been back in iraq? where did all the money go??

Lowering the Standards of the Blog...Yet Again

GMOSLF...The O is for "Osama's."

These Days, Even Rhodes Scholars Have to Pay for It

The only thing even remotely surprising about this story is that Vitter didn't use the occasion to announce his candidacy for the Republican nomination because, you know, being a fake-family-values, adulterous and/or divorced jackass is kind of like a prerequisite this primary season. I guess he's still got a lot more to learn--but, thankfully, he's taking lessons from a pro.

tale as old as time...

growing up as a kid, i actually never watched this show because "beast" sort of scared the bejeezus out of me and i think it was on at an awkward time in canada. they sure softened him up in the disney version. nonetheless, for those of you who just might care, this press release sure is tempting:

Revisit one of the most romantic TV shows of the 80s with "Beauty and the Beast": Season 2, available tomorrow on DVD. This cult favorite centers around Vincent (Golden Globe winner Ron Perlman), a man-beast living underneath the streets of New York City, and Catherine (Linda Hamilton), the beautiful assistant district attorney drawn to the benevolent Vincent. Together, the two share an emotional bond that allows Vincent to sense whenever Catherine is in danger. This new DVD set features video introductions on select episodes by the two stars, both of whom received Emmy nominations for this season.

i had no idea linda hamilton's character was an attorney. an ADA at that. but wait, wikipedia says she was a "wealthy socialite and corporate attorney." so which is it?

Live Earth

So, I watched about 12 minutes of Bravo's 18 hour broadcast of Live Earth, and am obviously going to issue the final word on the event. Yeah, yeah, I heard the Arctic Monkeys and some bitter guy from the 80's have decried the concert's complete lack of, umm, goals, direction, internal logic, etc., but I'm for it: for me things are important only when Kanye West tells me they are. Diamonds from Sierra Leone, Mike Myers' sense of comfort, global warming--all totally not cool. But I digress. But since I'm digressing can I just say, what's with human parental advisory sticker Tipper Gore being the woman behind the man behind the concert featuring Akon, Ludacris, and Madonna? So, sexual suggestiveness in lyrics is only a problem if you're Prince, or because her kids are all growed up and self-medicating, Tipper's got bigger tofu to fry?

Anyway, here's what I wanted to say about the concert: Andy Summers from the Police is rock and roll's answer to Oscar the Grouch on barbituates; Duran Duran blew the Police out of the water with their "Girls on Film" extendo-jam, totally reordering my 4th grade view of the world; and Chris Rock had the quotes of the night ("Who doesn't love James Blunt?" and "I pray this event ends global warming, like Live Aid ended hunger.")

Also, I heart Al Gore. For someone who says he's "fallen out of love with politics," he sure has a funny way of showing it. His original plan was to do the North America concert on the Mall in DC, but James Inhofe (R-Assholeville) realized scientific consensus is a Democratic conspriuscy and put an end to that partisan chicanery. Instead of going quietly into the good night/panrty lined with Krispy Kreme, Al pretended to capitulate, setting up a concert at Giants Stadium. But then--boo yah! (boo-yah looks only slightly lamer in print than when emitted from my mouth)--secret concert on the Mall. Next to the National Museum of the American Indian, and with non-Dixie Chick country stars Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood. Read: "Fuck you, Inhofe. I bring it with the people who were displaced when your forebears raped and pillaged their way though Oklahoma. I bring it with musicians working in a genre that for years peddled your bullshit. I'm going to kill your Republican majority and eat your children." That's how you play politics, and that's why Gore isn't yet outta the game. He's running. For real he is.

Rescue Dawn

I heart Christian Bale. I heart Werner Herzog. And above all, I heart Elton Brand. He spent his recruiting weekend at Duke eating Subway with me and my friend Bhavik, watching MTV, and spitting some of the most incompetent game I have ever born witness to. Spike Lee's vision of recruiting trips it was not. After having been ditched by my dormmates Chris Carrawell and Mike Chappell, Elton should have turned his back on Duke, but I like to think the kindness of spirit that Bhavik and I showed him that night inspired him to sign on, dominate his sophomore year, and become an all-star with the L.A. Clippers. And I like to think that somewhere along the way he found his mojo--though I can't take credit for that.

And why am I talking about Elton along with Herzog and Bale, you ask? CHECK IT. And check out the trailer for Rescue Dawn above.

sounds of silence

if a dimunitive ethnomusical folk-singer campaigned for a fourth-tier candidate and nobody showed, does it fill the campaign coffers?

"There she is wit some boy shorts on."

I called on my boy Kells to smooth things out up in this here blog. I didn't realize he'd roll out a collabo with Usher and rock the video all M. Night Shyamalan-like.

So as far as main thoroughfares go, Packard Street in Ann Arbor is no Champs Elysees, but in our humble little burg it's quite something--cutting crosstown diagonally, like Broadway, terminating into precious little Main Street. My apartment overlooks Packard, and this evening I was indoors as the sound of amateur fireworks exploded into the night sky. Invariably, each incident was followed by a fire-truck or ambulance speeding down the street: cause, meet effect. Dunderheaded self-injury, I suppose, is as good a way as any to celebrate the replacement--231 years later--of British tyranny with a Texas-by-way-of-Connecticut one. I find this particular yoke of oppression chafes less.

In It to Win It

Great athletes do unthinkable things in order to compete. Curt Schilling pitched the World Series through a bloody sock. Lance Armstrong defeated cancer to win seven consecutive Tour de France titles. Rocky battled senescence and a steroid-ravaged brain to make one last stab at box office glory. But today those towering figures of American sport were eclipsed by one man: Kobayashi. Yes, I realize he lost, but as I have said in other fora his heart is as big as his duodenum. With time running out in today's hot dog battle and with the unofficial tally showing him tied with Joey "Jaws" Chestnut, Kobayashi had (what is known in the biz as) a "Reversal of Fortune." But in the absence of Alan Dershowitz (or even Ron Silver) to guide him, Kobayashi did what only a great athlete would do. He stuffed hands to face, pushed vomit back into his own mouth, and kept eating. You see, as the announcer points out, in competitive eating you're credited for what's in your mouth when time is called, and a reversal can lead to a disqualification. Unthinkable. Unspeakable. Peerless. He's a champion for the ages--despite what this humorless, self-important prick thinks.

Music Video of the Day: T-Shirts for Hipsters

When I was in college I wrote a story for one of my creative writing classes called "T-Shirts for Hipsters." I think it was about two DJ's living in Cape Town; the thing about the collegiate artistic spirit is that it's not daunted by a lack of talent or potential charges of inauthenticity (I am no DJ, and a semester spent in Cape Town does not make me its grand laureate). Alas, on a day that Scooter Libby has avoided the hippest of all t-shirts--the old black and white, horizontally striped one--I give you what W refuses to: Justice, but in this case I mean the blogosphere's newest Bright Young Things, and their video for "D.A.N.C.E.," an answer to my short story, which somehow they must have read along the way--presumably between bong hits 4 Daft Punk. (E, make sure to click on the "Daft Punk" link.)