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The Best Stupid Questions (And The Internet Sites They Lead To.)
2009-05-05 17:09:00
Everyone always says there's no stupid questions, but I think that's lying to the public. Of course there are stupid questions. People ask stupid questions all the time.Take the guy who asked me, in New York City once, this question: "Are you from around here?" he asked me.Now, that doesn't seem like a stupid question on its surface... but you have to consider that when he asked me that, I was wearing an "I Heart NY" t-shirt, had a backpack on, had a video camera hanging around my neck, and was myself looking at an unfolded city map... you know, just like a native New Yorker would.So there are stupid questions, and that was one of them. There are even stupider questions than that, though, like the question Are The Olsen Twins Identical?That's a stupid question, because of course they are. I've said that for a long time now and I'll say it again here, heedless of the controversy I create each time I say:The Olsen Twins Are Obviously Identical Twins.That is a controversial ...
More About: Internet , Questions , Sites , Stupid , The Internet

Whodathunkit?! The 3 Best Things You Want To Know About The 135th (Really?
2009-05-01 16:30:00
Did you know there were three sporting events going on this weekend? In addition to the 135th (Really? Apparently so!) Kentucky Derby, there are, I'm told, hockey and basketball playoffs... but only one of those three will in any way capture anyone's interest. As I understand it, even the players are bored by the NBA Playoffs (a/k/a, The Neverending Story II), and I judge that by a snippet of an interview I overheard with Kobe Bryant, in which they asked him whether he watches the playoff games when he's not playing or practicing, and he said no, he usually watches something else.NBA, if you can't even get the players to pay attention to your games, you're doing something wrong.And the less said about hockey, the better.But the Kentucky Derby manages to capture America's attention every year, as news reporters and Matt Lauer mention the Kentucky Derby, and mention some horses that are running in it, and also mention hats and mint juleps. Horses, hats, and mint juleps, plus...
More About: Things

I could've had a career as a rapper, I bet, if I'd played my cards right.
2009-05-01 16:20:00
I share my iTunes with the whole family -- Sweetie, Middle, The Boy, even Oldest, who technically moved out 3 years ago but who, for reasons unknown to me, continues to come by to download music on our computer. Sharing a whole music library with the family means my iPod is loaded with stuff that I didn't put on there, meaning that while I'm driving to work happily listening to, say, a folk rendition of "Baby Got Back" (really!), my next song might be anything from a Rick Springfield oldie to Middle's latest craze, the "Sound of Music" soundtrack, to something from The Boy's love of 70s hard rock.Most of the time, I flip on past that stuff and get back to Rick Dees' "Disco Duck" (Really!) But every now and then, something comes on that I would have never listened to and yet, I kind of like it. And I'm never more surprised then when one of Oldest's songs come on and I give it a chance and end up enjoying it -- because Oldest is into hip hop and R&B and dance music, stuf...
More About: Career , Cards , Rapper

The ACTUAL Best Invention Since Sliced Bread.
2009-04-30 16:35:00
What, exactly, was so great about sliced bread as an invention?Nothing, that's what. There was nothing great about sliced bread as an invention. Sliced bread was a necessity, for one thing. Back in the 1700s, or whenever bread was invented, it would have (as bread does) come in a loaf. What were people supposed to do with it, just eat it that way? Put a couple of slices of bologna, and mayo (they had mayo in the 1700s, right?) and cheese on an entire loaf of bread, then put a whole 'nother loaf of bread on top of that, and eat it?Ridiculous. And while most of what happened in history was, in fact, ridiculous (why the powdered wigs? What's the deal with pyramids? Flappers and flagpole sitting? Come on), it's beyond comprehension to think that somebody, somewhere, didn't instantly look at a loaf of bread and say I'd better slice a piece of that off to make it manageable.So the idea of slicing bread was itself not that big of an innovation. And neither was pre-sliced br...
More About: Invention , Bread

I'll be flying -- and not in that fake Kate-Winslet-Titanic way, either.
2009-04-30 16:27:00
I'm going back to SeaWorld, and I'm going in style.We went to SeaWorld last year on vacation with the kids, and it was excellent -- between patting sting rays and seeing the shark tank and riding the Kraken and the shows, the day flew by too quickly, and I've wanted to go back.Now, thanks to the Manta, I have an excuse to do just that. I just found out abotu Manta -- a flying roller coaster that's one of a kind, a flying roller coaster that takes riders through underwater worlds of floor-to-ceiling aquariums filled with seldom-seen fish and rays, sea dragons, schools of fish, octopi, and over 300 Rays -- letting you walk through all that and then rid the Giant Manta Ray ride on steel rails that spin, fall, glide, soar, and race you through, all while lying face down so that you're flying.And SeaWorld's not just opening that ride, they're giving me a chance to skip to the front of the line, VIP style. They've got a Manta Quiz game that you can take on their site (that link a...
More About: Kate Winslet , Flying , Kate , Fake , Titanic

The Best Aliens In Books That I'm Hoping Are Real Because It Would Be Cool
2009-04-26 15:52:00
Apollo 14 Astronaut Edgar D. Mitchell last week restated something that's been obvious to anyone who, you know, reads. Speaking at a press conference called by the "Paradigm Research Group," Edgar D. Mitchell -- the sixth man to walk on the moon, and so someone who's in the know -- said this: "We are being visited... It is now time to put away this embargo of truth about the alien presence."A spokesman for the Paradigm Research Group (PRG) then didn't threaten the United States government. He made it very clear he was not threatening the government (he said "this is not a threat or anything, you don't threaten the United States government, they're heavily armed ...") but he did say that if the U.S. Government doesn't make public, by the end of May, what it knows about aliens, the PRG will make it "as difficult on them as possible."Well, I for one am not afraid of even the heavily armed U.S. government, and this is a crusade I've decided to join because I, too, want the gov...
More About: Books , Aliens , Cool , Real

Welcome another TBOE Reader!
2009-04-24 16:19:00
Guess who else -- besides you-- is reading The Best of Everything? Dan Patrick and his crew.Driving into work this morning, I was listening to Dan and his guys talk sports. They began discussing which NFL teams would be good, or bad, to play for, and one of the guys said "We're actually in a time when people are wishing they could get traded to the Atlanta Falcons."To which another guy said, and I quote: Whodathunkit?We all know who coined and popularized the term Whodathunkit?! Right?Me. I did. Keep up with me here.So welcome, Dan Patrick and his crew of guys on the radio, to the ranks of my readers. Who else is reading TBOE? (besides you?)Among others: Mark Harris, Stephen Colbert and dolphins.
More About: Reader

Butter must be charming; margarine more so. (It's The TBOE Roundup!)
2009-04-19 16:33:00
It's Sunday morning, and I'm spending it, I imagine, doing what almost everybody does with their Sunday mornings: Musing about poetry, writing about sociopathic guys being hunted by other sociopathic guys, and provoking violent physical reactions in people simply by mentioning breakfast food.Let me hasten to add that I'm not using "sociopathic" in that paragraph in any sort of clinical sense. I mean it in the same sense that everyone uses words like that: the "I'm going to use a big word and hope my readers think I'm intellectual and junk" sense.In other "intellectual and junk" updates, it's time for some more of my favorite comments, including another one that was left on my old "Best of" Blog, the one I no longer post to. Reading "The Best Book I Think Of When I Think Of The Words 'The Best Book,' " Dorie LaRue writes:I connected with everything you wrote, except I've always loathed The Great Gatsby, and me, an English teacher. Personally I would not want to hang out ...
More About: Roundup , Butter

I'm way way ahead of the curve. Always.
2009-04-19 16:28:00
Let's play some Footvolley! You're up on this, right? "Footvolley" is the new Pepsi Football online game that lets you play this combination of football (soccer) and beach volleyball -- and play as your favorite footballers, players like Torres, Messi, Fabregas, and more. It can be played at www.pepsifootball.com/game, and it's a blast -- you get to be an international football star, computer animated, of course, and use your special moves to win the game, and then do your personalized victory celebrations. And it's the first game ever based on Footvolley, a sport that's drawing bigger and bigger crowds worlwide. Go to the site and sign up now -- get on the leaderboard and show the world what you can do as a Virtual Footvolley player. You'll never beat me, of course -- but maybe you'll finish second and bask in my glow.
More About: Curve , Ahead

The Best Books Written By Felons (Guest Post!)
2009-04-17 15:59:00
The Best of Everything is pleased to welcome a guest Nominator, Randall Radic.Randall Radic is a former Old Catholic priest and a convicted felon; the author of A Priest in Hell: Gangs, Murderers and Snitching in a California Jail, and the forthcoming Gone To Hell. He says about himself on his Facebook page, that he is "A convicted felon. Now, however, instead of being one of the bad guys, I write about bad guys."I friended Randall on Facebook and learned that he's got the one book out and another coming, and so I asked him if he'd like to write a guest post here, on any topic he'd like. Randall took me up on it, and he nominated The Best Books Written By Felons ... so it's a SemiDaily list and a Guest Post , and, as we'll see, Randall makes some other nominations along the way:Here's what Randall had to say:The best books written by felons are:1. You Got Nothing Coming by Jimmy Lerner.and2. A Priest in Hell: Gangs, Murderers and Snitching in a California Jail by Randall R...

The 10 Best Movie Villains, According To The Boy (And Some "Man Walks Into
2009-04-16 18:07:00
The Boy and Middle were stuck babysitting the twins last night while I helped Sweetie grocery shop ("help" in this case = "ask her if she thinks I can keep the paper towels balanced on top of the cart all the way through the store.")(Answer: no.) And The Boy used his time wisely -- not watching the Twins (who threw a can of Lysol into the toilet) and not doing his homework, but instead, creating a list of the The 10 Best Movie Villains , which he then said I should post on my blog.But he didn't give me reasons why they were the 10 Best, and when I said he should, he said he didn't have time to. (That ESPN isn't going to watch itself, I know.) So, sans reasons, I've decided to fill in the gaps by posting, with each, one of my favorite "Man Walks Into A Bar Joke."In order, from 10-1, here they are:10. The Terminator (movie: The Terminator).A drunk goes into a bar. The bartender tosses him out as he is too drunk. The drunk walks back into the bar. Again, the bartender throws hi...

How can a kid who mostly wears pajamas be so picky about his clothes, anywa
2009-04-16 17:59:00
This morning, getting Mr F and Mr Bunches ready for their day, I pulled out some pants from Mr Bunches' drawer."Doesn't he have some jeans?" Sweetie asked me.To which Mr Bunches immediately interjected: "No. No."Now, true, Mr Bunches mostly says no, but in this case, I think he was objecting to wearing jeans, and I was on his side, because the jeans he's got are just... not cool. I get so bored and frustrated with kids' clothing these days. I'm always on the lookout for something that's tough and worth the cost and, yeah, cool. Just because they're 2 and 1/2, and just because they spend their day rolling wooden trucks around while wearing their older sister's sunglasses doesn't mean that they can't be cool, right?Cool like joe's jeans kids wear on sale at R&S Avenue. The Joe's Jeans they've got there are the ones that Middle originally showed me (Joe's Jeans are for girls) and they're both cool and worth the very-low cost. Violet, chestnut, fade-washed, white...
More About: Clothes , Pajamas

The 3 Best Cartoons To Forecast The Future (And How They Did)
2009-04-14 16:08:00
It's a SemiDaily List!I'm still celebrating the Month of New, and what could be newer than... The Future ?Unless, of course, the future that is being set up is "the future" in Star Trek: Over And Over Again, that new movie that's coming out that promises to tell, or re-tell, or something, the origins of the Enterprise crew.Did anyone actually wonder about that? Is there anyone that watched all those Star Trek episodes and movies and thought "I wonder how Kirk and Spock ever met up?" Because I've never wondered that. I just assumed they happened to be assigned to the same military unit, as happens over and over and over again in the military. It happens nowadays, it probably happened in Spartan times, and I'm sure, in the future, guys will enlist in Starfleet and will be assigned to a unit and will then be partnered up with the guys in that unit and... that's it. That's their "origin" story.So Star Trek: Redux Reduxed is exactly the opposite of what I'm trying to do her...
More About: Cartoons , The Future , Forecast

The Four Best Best New Artists Who Weren't.
2009-04-13 17:09:00
Maybe one of the reasons why people in the entertainment industry are so afraid of the New is because so often, they're wrong about something new being something good.Take the Grammys, for instance. Every year, there's a Grammy award for "Best New Artist." I'm not sure who votes on these things, but all the evidence is that the people who vote for Best New Artist have the worst taste in music, and that's a shame, because it not only reinforces society's love of the old, but it also bypassed some very very good acts that should have been Best New Artist, but weren't.To rectify that wrong, I've selected The Four Best Best New Artists Who Weren't -- six "New Artists" who were up for the not-so-coveted Best New Artist Grammy, but who then lost out to...some people you never heard from again.1. The J's With Jamie.Year Nominated: 1964.Representative Song: "Your Dog."Why They Should've Been The Best: That song's catchy, isn't it? It should be, because "The Js With Jamie"...

Be one of the 175,000 families that have a brighter future.
2009-04-13 17:01:00
In every dark cloud, there's a silver lining, right?That's certainly what C?elle thinks. "C'elle" is the company that helps women collect stem cells found in menstrual blood for use in future therapies. C'elle allows women to collect those stem cells in a non-invasive, non-threatening, way, right at home, using their own system. Once collected, the stem cells are cryo-preserved for use in future therapies that can help fight heart disease, diabetes, and stroke -- and even be used in sports medicine and anti-aging regimes.The C'ell process is done right in the home and is simple to do, and has been around since 1992, helping 175,000 families. You can learn a lot more about C'elle on their "About Page," but the basics are that C'ell is trying to turn that dark cloud of monthly menstruation into a silver lining of cures for debilitating diseases -- so there'll be fewer dark clouds in the future. So maybe skip right to the Order Now Page, and give the gift of curing and he...
More About: Future , Families

The Best New Food
2009-04-10 13:45:00
It's a MiniBest!You'd think at this point that it would be impossible for humanity to invent a new food, wouldn't you? After all, we've (apparently) already used up all our stories and all our themes, so that we're reduced to constantly retelling the story of how Kirk & Spock met at Starfleet Academy (and then how they drag-raced to see who would get to date Uhura... although I may be mixing up my rehashed-movie-plotlines here...)(And I'll come back to Star Trek: Again? later on in this Month of New)But you'd be wrong, because human ingenuity knows no bounds, at least not when it comes to repackaging things that include "Cheese Sauce." If you are unfamiliar with what I am about to unveil, you should sit down. (If you are familiar with it, then you're probably already sitting down, because too much cheese sauce for breakfast tends to cause chest pains during movement.)Readers, I give you, The Toaster Scramble:The big problem with eggs was, as we all know, they cannot e...
More About: Food

Someone get Dane Cook's agent on the line.
2009-04-10 13:31:00
Every Sunday, in the paper, I see the ads and there's always a flier for ordering "personalized" checks. And every Sunday, I think "That is a blatant case of false advertising and they should be sued."(Bored, tired lawyers = bad for society.)The checks aren't personalized at all. They're just generic checks that everybody has, or could have, if they didn't linger too long over the Shopko ads. Puppies? A farm scene? That sort-of-half-scene rainbow? As I like to say: pleh.I'll say it again: pleh.How are those personal? If they're not personal to me, they're not personalized, are they? (Do you suppose two people ever realize they've got the same checks and then fall in love? Wouldn't that make a great Dane Cook/ Jessica Alba movie? "Check Me Out: Dane thought he was doomed to spend life alone consoled only by his checks with pictures of puppies hugging kittens while riding motorcycles... until one day he wrote a check at a gas station while Jessica wrote her check...
More About: Agent , Line

The Best New Word
2009-04-08 16:22:00
Here is today's thought problem: Why is a word like a pizza?The answer is because both mean whatever society wants them to mean.A while back, I waxed philosophical on when a pizza stops being a pizza and starts being something else, the point being that no matter what definition you apply to a pizza, there's something else that fits that definition, something that we'd all agree isn't a pizza. Then I came down on the side of a pizza being anything you'd want it to be.I have had that same discussion with Some Guy At Work, off and on, here and there, about words, and what words mean, and whether they mean what people think they mean. A chief offender, in our opinion, is ironic, which used to mean -- or is supposed to mean -- an outcome that is the exact opposite of what was intended, an outcome that in some way thwarts the designs of the person whose intentions are at stake. Like what happens in this comic from Subnormality, a comic I only recently discovered and began to love on...
More About: Word

You'll note that I never answer the question in here: You'll have to go lo
2009-04-08 16:15:00
The other night, I had to help Middle with her astronomy, a subject I love, but also a subject I took 14 years ago. So I'm a little rusty on it; the only thing I remember offhand about astronomy these days is "My Very Exciting Magic Carpet Just Sailed Over Nine Palace Elephants," -- and I can sing that song by memory-- but I can't even tell you what the "E" in Elephants is supposed to stand for.Middle's question that night was How do we measure stars using atmospheric motions. And that is not the kind of info that I just retain -- not when I've got all these song lyrics to keep in my head. But with most search engines, if you try to find the answers to that question, you'll either get links to celebrities ('cause, stars) or you'll get links to academic papers full of gobbledygook. With AAfter.com, though, the results are much better. AAfter.com Answer s Homework and does it quickly and easily. I typed in the question "How do you measure stars using atmospheric motions" and...
More About: Question , Note

Three of The Best New Bands I Just Heard Of Today For The First Time.
2009-04-07 22:37:00
It's a SemiDaily List!I'm still saving the world for new things and fighting off The Death of New.It's not just Hollywood that's afraid of new stuff; the music industry is also afraid of new sounds and new music and new artists... and they're afraid of them because we are afraid of them. (As usual, by "we" I mean you. I have tons of songs on my iPod from bands I've never heard of.)The music industry is afraid of new music and new artists because music listeners don't want new artists and they don't want new songs. A list of the top 25 concert tours in 2008 shows that only four of the top 25 were anything even remotely new -- if "Jay-Z and Mary J. Blige" can be considered "remotely new." And two of those four are Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers.So people won't go see new bands in concert. Why? Because they don't hear them on the radio. And why don't they hear them on the radio? Because radio stations won't play new songs for fear that you'll turn off the radi...
More About: Time , Today , Bands , First Time

Welcome a new TBOE Reader.
2009-04-07 22:18:00
Guess who's reading The Best of Everything now? Only Entertainment Weekly columnist Mark Harris (and unknown Hollywood insiders.)Just before April began, I wrote about my theory about "The Death of New" and decried Hollywood for not innovating and continuing to give us things like "Fast & Furious" instead of "Hamlet 2 The Real Musical."Hot on the heels of me, Mark Harris in this past week's Entertainment Weekly wrote a column about... you guessed it: Hollywood not innovating. In his column "Stop The Inanity," Mark wrote about "a long-standing Hollywood agenda ? a desire to shun challenging material in favor of easily replicable formula product," and noted that Hollywood studios "recently announced the development of new movies based on Monopoly (yes, the board game), Clue (yes, the board game), and Candy Land (yes)."Which I also thought of first.I'm glad that Mark Harris has taken up my crusade to make the entertainment industry give us something new. Thanks, Mark, for...
More About: Reader

That way, the cat has to share in the copay.
2009-04-07 22:06:00
As you might guess, my writings here on The Best of Everything generate a lot of questions from readers, psychiatrists, people I meet on the street -- and sometimes one person is all three of those things -- questions that I periodically answer.Far and away, the number one question I am asked after people read a little of this is "Did you take ALL the medications you were supposed to today?" The answer to that is "I gave some of them to the cat."The second most-asked question is "Where do you come up with all the cool music that you're always talking about and/or listening to here and on your other blogs?"The answer to that question, surprisingly, is also "I gave some of them to the cat." No, wait, it's not. The answer to the question of where I get my music from is: I get it from Kerchoonz.Kerchoonz is the music-and-video site that lets artists get paid when you, and me, the listeners, listen to and download their music -- legally. They're putting the power in the hands of...
More About: Share

The Best New Sport
2009-04-07 15:32:00
Baseball season is, apparently, here again, if the boring headlines in the sports section of our local, too-small paper are any indication. I'm not sure if it was Opening Day or not, recently, because as soon as I saw the headlines, I started to go numb from the brain down with boredom.I feel kind of sorry for people who like baseball, who watch the games and root for teams. They seem anachronistic, wearing their caps and watching pitchers stretch and talking about "RBIs" and "At-bats" and "other baseball terms that I can't think of right now because I don't really care." It's such a boring game, and nobody really cares about anything that happens in the world of baseball anymore, do they? Nobody who counts, at least.I've tried to like baseball, too. I played it as a kid, and watched all the games that I could, sitting next to my dad and having him tell me what was going on, because as a kid you do lots of stupid and boring things that your parents make you do because they...
More About: Sport

I will put this on my resume, right above "Once blew a bubble INSIDE ANOTHE
2009-04-07 15:25:00
Here's a creative thought for people who are looking for job, or looking for a better job: Why not become a member of a Board of Directors of a company you believe in?"Sure," you say, "And I bet those kinds of positions are just laying around waiting for me to fill them." Well, I can hear your sarcasm, and it's unwarranted. Not only are there seats on Boards of Directors open and waiting for you, but it's a great opportunity to do a couple of things you need and want to do. Things like:-- Bulk up your resume with some impressive credentials,-- Increase your income potential by building greater contacts and business skills, and-- Allow you to play an active role in guiding a corporation.So if you want greener corporations, or corporations that are friendlier to consumers, or just corporations that have better customer service departments, being on the Board of Directors gives you a chance to help steer the corporation that way.And the part about the positions out there just ...
More About: Resume , Inside , Bubble

The Best New Species
2009-04-06 17:35:00
It's a MiniBest!April Is The New Month, fighting The Death of New by pointing out what The Best New Things Are.I sometimes think "scientists" are just messing with us, and I think that they bring it on themselves that I suspect that. If they weren't just messing with us, for example, why won't they admit that there was never such a thing as a "velociraptor?" Or that it's amazingly, phenomenally unlikely that dinosaurs were fossilized while fighting each other? How could that ever happen? My skepticism of "scientists" doesn't just come as a result of my own concrete, utterly logical, scientific reasoning and proof; it comes from the fact that "scientists" bring it on themselves through their own actions. How am I supposed to take "science" seriously when the "scientists" name stingrays after vacuum cleaners and claim that they've found a rare form of rhinoceros beetle whose horn is identical to that of Dim, the Pixar-animated Rhinoceros beetle in A Bug's Life? When "scientists...

If computers get any smarter, they'll be gunning for my job.
2009-04-06 17:26:00
I'm constantly amazed by how much computers do for us these days, and how easy it is to use them. I grew up in the era when personal computers used "Basic" programming language -- I used to know how to program in that, 'cause I was cool -- and everything was "DOS" based and you had to know things like "C-prompts" and stuff.Windows and the mouse were a giant leap forward after that, and things just got better and better. About four years ago, I bought a book on creating websites and programming in HTML language because I wanted to look into Internet publishing and the like, do something creative with my writing (other than mail it out to people who would write me uncreative rejection letters.)I never used the book, because it turns out I don't need to know how to program -- I can just get on the Internet and use things like Blogger to create simple blogs. From "Basic" programming (tedious, stupid) to the ability to post a story and create a video about it, all in one lifetime? Phe...
More About: Computers

We interrupt this blog for an important announcement.
2009-04-05 19:33:00
Claudius wanted to be the first man to reach the stars... and maybe he was. Alone, drifting through space with nothing to keep him company but the dot... speck... rock that is drifting there, too, Claudius reflects on what brought him to this point: A spaceship, a dream of reaching the stars he always saw when he closed his eyes... and murder.Eclipse is a Mobius-strip of a psychological horror thriller that takes the reader on a twisting, turning trip through Claudius' troubled childhood, his time at NASA, and a grimy hospital or prison, peeling back layer upon layer of the personality of a boy who could close his eyes and see the stars, a boy who dreamed of reaching those stars... and maybe he did.Eclipse is available for purchase through Lulu.com for as little as $1.25 per download, or $11.50 by paperback. Coming soon to a bookstore near you, but why wait? Click here to buy it now. And, for a limited time, if you are one of the first 50 to purchase the book and send me a picture ...
More About: Announcement , Blog , Interrupt

The Best Fake Musical (Reader Nomination)
2009-04-03 19:38:00
Reader and Blogger Extraordinaire Scott, writer of Husbands Anonymous and Kevin-quizzer does not limit himself to writing parts of books about parenting. He also has a great ability to recall a musical that was only seen after the credits of a kids' movie.Scott, in response to my nomination of Hamlet 2 as The Best Fake Musical In A Real Movie, said this:I once heard a novelist say that there are only three plot lines to ANY story- but I'm damned if I can remember them. Love? Death and something?And in advertising, it has to be sex, children or animals.I liked the brief fake musical in Monsters Inc, when Mike is pretending to practice for it, so that he doesn't get caught out for something else.Sorry. My memory isn't good.But I did love your post, it provoked me.Scott, you probably heard me say that about the plotlines: I reviewed the idea of the 7 Basic Plotlines of literature and storytelling here.But I had completely forgotten about the Monsters, Inc., musical, which seems imp...
More About: Nomination , Reader

I will only let attractive people wear them. (Which rules me out.)
2009-04-03 19:29:00
The other day, I was walking through the grocery store minding my own business, and trying to carry Mr Bunches, when a guy across the frozen meat counter said to me:"Hey, how'd you become a Florida fan living up here in Wisconsin?"It confused me because (a) I'm not a Florida fan, (b) Mr Bunches was at the time inserting his index finger into my ear as far as he could, and (c) I didn't know what the heck he was talking about and (d) who talks to strangers in the frozen meat department?I figured out a couple of things, though, those things being that this guy talks to strangers near flash-frozen burritos, he was talking about the shirt I was wearing, and Mr Bunches' finger is amazingly long. I still can't hear right out of that ear.I was wearing, as I realized, a "Florida Gators" t-shirt, and the guy thought I was a Florida fan. I explained to him that I didn't care about the Florida Gators at all -- I'd won it in an NCAA tournament bet from The Boy. Then I explained to Mr Bunc...
More About: People , Rules , Wear , Attractive

The Best Fake Musical In A Real Movie.
2009-04-02 16:48:00
What is new?That's the question I'll be exploring, off and on, in the month of April, having come to the depressing conclusion that art -- books, movies, sports, more -- has given up on new things and is simply repackaging old things for us, over and over and over, because we (and by we I mean you) simply won't buy/watch/eat/listen to anything that doesn't have the patina of the familiar on it.This isn't (ironically?) a new complaint on my part. I noted a long time ago that there were, in terms of human existence, really only four new things in the 20th century. I've mentioned before that some television shows seem to be simply repackaged versions of earlier television shows and also get by simply by "parodying" other television shows and movies (and "parodying" is in quotes because to be a parody, don't you have to be making a point about the original, a point of some kind, instead of simply plugging your own characters into it?)And while I'm not against some artistic comfo...
More About: Movie , Musical , Fake , Real