This has to be the funniest thing I've seen all year, mostly because it was either this or get Jamie a new dress and a nice dinner.

Well, to be honest, I gave her this later. The waiter was like "And here's our dessert fondue menu," and I was like "No thank you my good sir, I have a special desert for my baby right here." She loved it.

Netflix Reviews, Vol. 1

Hello! As Jim Anchower would say, it's been a while since I rapped at ya, but life has been taking up a lot of space. I got a lot going on, you know, a lot of irons in the fire, if you will.

Here's the first in what I hope to be many installments of a movie review aspect to my blog. I figure I like to talk about movies until I'm blue in the face and I have a near-endless supply thanks to Netflix, so it's a match made in heaven. I'll only do movies that I haven't seen and that aren't completely mainstream movies that everyone's seen (like LOTR or Star Wars or King Kong).

Today I'm hittin' you with Howl's Moving Castle. A Japanese cartoon with a really cool fairy-tale kinda theme, Howl's Moving Castle is about a young girl who works in a hat shop and her adventures after being turned into an old woman by an evil witch. I'll be honest, I have no idea why the evil witch targeted this girl because I was pretty stoned when I started the movie. I got distracted and decided to watch it more sober, but I started from where I left off, not the beginning.

The best parts of this movie were the ones that carved it out as a fairy tale - the transformed old lady constantly talking to herself about, well, herself, the strange scarecrow with a turnip's head that hops around and follows her, the little kid apprentice, and of course the gigantic awesomeness of the castle. Like most anime, the art is great, with beautiful backgrounds and cool perspectives and camera angles. Also, like most anime, unfortunately, it gets a little too heady at parts.

Rating - 3 of 5. Howl's is at it's best when it sticks to it's fairy tale roots, staying away from analysis of people's relationships and the mysterious origins of their particular mental hang-ups and complexes.

Up next... Thumbsucker

I'm on the fence...

This could be either super creepy and gross or really really really exactly what every guy's been waiting for since they saw her. Jamie's in the "no" camp, what side do y'all take? Comment!

Britney Spears Is An American Avatar

Not too many people were on board with my A-Rod killed Cory Lidle theory, but hear me out on this one: Britney Spears is the modern allegory for the United States of America.

Remember back in the late nineties when everyone loved Britney? I do. People bought her albums even though she was pumping out the same teen pop that America has produced since the 50s. Every guy I knew wanted to at least just see her naked because, God, we gotta figure out what's up with those boobs. Not until she turned 18, though.

Remember back in the late nineties when everyone loved America? The only thing we had to worry about was if our President got a hummer or not from some college girl. That was great.

And now look what's happened - Britney/America fell off. Britney/America married some no-talent idiot who's done nothing but make her look terrible. The idiot has embarrassed her on a day-to-day basis, saying retarded shit on TV, hanging out with his punk friends and being an overall drain on her. Then, Britney/America had a life-changing experience. She got pregnant, we got attacked.

America pulled together. We wanted to fucking kill those guys, and dammit, Britney's gonna be the one to do it for us, we thought. And even though Britney's baby made her look like a mom now and nothing like the old Britney we wanted to see naked, we'd still be up for a little peep show in a pinch. We thought that with the baby around and the stakes high, the idiot she married would stop being such an idiot and own up to some responsibility.

Wrong. Wrongwrong wrong.

Instead of manning up and focusing on his kid, her husband got her pregnant again and now Britney/America had TWO kids on her hands and she was starting to look a little haggard. Like, gross. And he was still out there, partying with his punk friends like nothing was going on at home, like his wife hadn't lost her looks that made her rich and was now apparently doomed to a life of being non-stop barefoot and pregnant.

And then, to top it off, The President/K-Fed thought in the middle of all this that it would be a good idea to put out an album? Well, no one else thought that would be good, but Britney/America decided that she would pay for it. And the album dropped, and it sucked total balls, and Popozao/Stay the Course was not at all resembling anything that anyone ever wanted to hear.

Britney/America woke up recently, took a good long look around at her two kids/wars, at her idiot husband/President and his fuck-up friends and their extravagant lifestyle and decided that she'd had enough. She stopped eating Taco Bell, got off the couch and dropped like, 30 pounds in a month. She waited and waited, teasing K-Fed/the President with her new good looks, and I'm sure he thought "Oh, good, everything's looking great for me. I'm pretty good at this husband thing." The next thing he knows - BAM - divorce. One minute all of your friends are telling you how great of a job you're doing, the next minute you and you're friends are losing your asses on CNN. One minute you're shooting a day-in-the-life special for some Canadian MTV show, the next you're getting fuckin' stone cold dumped in a text message.

So Britney/America is cool now. She's still got those two kids that she's got to take care of, but she's looking good and is taking control of her own life, God bless her.

UPDATE: As soon as Britney started hanging out with Paris Hilton this argument lost all merit. Dammit.



**Thanks to What Would Tyler Durden Do, The Superficial, and CNN for the links**

The Greatest Internet Day Ever

Two things that I've just had to change my pants about:

1) Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla just updated their web browser, which some people think is way better than Microsoft's. It's awesome for a few little reasons that go a long way with me. First, multiple windows don't pile up on the bottom of the screen - there are tabs at the top of the browser that help you navigate your different pages. This is incredibly convenient. Second, it is infinitely customizable with so many hundreds of plug-ins available on it's website that do all sorts of stuff I don't understand. It downloaded all of my bookmarks, passwords and history to it as soon as I launched it, saving me tons of time. The list goes on... you all have to get it.

2) Pandora Internet Radio

This is what made me poop and pee in my pants about an hour ago. In Time this last week there was a little article about YouTube's buyout and what the next YouTube will be. There were a few cool examples in a little summary box, but what caught my eye was Pandora. Basically, it's an internet radio station that plays songs catered to your individual taste.

I went to the site and immediately it asked me for one of my favorite songs or bands. I put in Motion City Soundtrack and it started up with one of my favorite MCS songs. A little tab popped up to tell me about the basics of my music style that will be on this station. When the next song started (some Dishwalla song) the tab popped up again explaining why Pandora chose this song. You rate songs over and over again until you don't care anymore. It gets pretty in depth: "Based on what you've told us so far, we're playing this track because it features hard rock roots, punk influences, a subtle use of vocal harmony, extensive vamping and mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation."

Wow. Everyone has to try this just for twenty minutes, it's so so so cool.

Klobuchar v. Kennedy on Meet the Press

Tim Russert manages to spend 6 minutes not doing his job and Minnesota's senate candidates square off on national TV.

I mean seriously "What would you ask your opponent," followed by "What yould you ask your opponent?" I thought the interviewer was supposed to ask the questions? Slacker.

There are somehow alot of people that don't know who they're voting for yet - I thought the last month or so would sort of cement that.

Got six minutes? Watch the video.

Yee-haw!

I am not at all a country fan. I would rather listen to lots and lots and lots of stuff out there. But Shooter Jennings is the shit. I cannot now consider him country or be sucked into a paradoxial wormhole where I will meet an alternate version of myself as a girl and then help save the universe with her. Or me. Or whatever.

Jamie and I caught his show at the Cabooze on Friday night and it was sweet. The guy can rock - truly one of the first bands in a long time to play some real southern rock. If you feel like checking him out, here's the site!

Steven Colbert is a Warrior

This was the winner from Colbert's Green Screen Contest. Someone actually made this! How cool is that?

Hahaha

A-Rod Kills Cory Lidle

The first thing that jumped out at me when I saw that Cory Lidle of the New York Yankees flew his plane into an apartment building today was "This is Alex Rodriguez's fault."

Anyone in New York, or even any Yankee fan, which I am neither, can see that this is plainly obvious. Consider this article on MLB.com. Everyone in the media seems to agree - it's not entirely his fault that the Yankees could only win one game against a team who the week before dropped three to the Royals and blew their division lead. But it seems like every time a journalist makes that point we read into it a little bit of a caveat. "Again, Rodriguez was not the reason that the Yankees lost this series... But there's no hiding the fact that Rodriguez is in a big time slump in the postseason." Even A-Rod admits it:

"Well, I think I certainly have to do well for this team to win. That's it,"

He didn't do well. They didn't win. His fault.

Using his logic, and most of NYC's logic, if A-Rod wouldn't have went 1-14, if he hadn't struck out four times, if he hadn't commited a throwing error, if he would have just played better, the Yanks would have won the series and be working on the A's right now.

And Cory Lidle wouldn't have had any reason to fly home today, which MLB.com reports that he was more than likely doing, because that would just be rediculous to do in the middle of the ALCS.

A-Rod - you've already ruined New York's chances at that elusive 27th World Championship, and now you have to go and do something like this. That's cold, dude. Really cold.

Politics! Politics! Politics!

Real quick, here are a few links that I think are interesting from the Chicago Tribune:

There's some bad, bad shit going on in the Sudan, in case George Clooney didn't tell you. A Tribune reporter was captured and recently released. Here's his article. Too bad we don't think the Sudanese have any WMDs. We might be able to help. I guess when you don't have any food you probably don't have any WMDs, huh?

Also, Garrison Keillor manages to write a really scathing commentary on the United States' latest interrogation practices. I thought he could only write funny little folksy jokes about Republicans. I haven't said this since high school debate, but... slippery slope indeed.

Holy F*king Shit, Twins Get Killed!

I'm not angry, just sad that their amazing run is over. I'll just have to hope that they eat a dick during April and May next year and turn it around again.

I am a little angry that Brad Radke's final game was this piece of junk. I'm pretty sure that after they pulled him he went to the dugout, sat down, and just stared ahead a little, saying nothing. Then Torii Hunter came up and moved to pat him on the shoulder.

"Don't touch me," Brad said, and Torii just backed away quietly.

Then someone who's always positive and spunky like Nicky Punto or Mike Redmond sat down and before Brad knew it gave him a little love pat on the right shoulder.

And then Brad's arm flipping fell the hell off.

Brad continued to stare into center field absently while the rest of the team went apeshit at the sight of Brad's arm on the goddamned ground. That's when the wheels fell off and we decided to commit two more errors and Crain couldn't pull himself together after seeing that arm just lying there and decided to walk a run in because we needed to feel his pain and then while he's at it let's just give up another damned double to Marco "Vespa" Scutaro and clear the bases. Christ!

Here's the man who single-handedly beat the Twins, give it up for Marco "Vespa" Scutaro.

I should go back to school...

...and learn Potuguese. Then move there.

I hit that "Next Blog" button in my upper right corner earlier and went to this site.

Jesus.

My Tickets Came!

My tickets came in the mail yesterday for the All-American Rejects show at Roy Wilkins Auditorium on December 16th! Before you call me a raging homo, let me explain. I'm really going so I can see the lineup of openers: Gym Class Heroes, The Format, and best of all, Motion City Soundtrack. And, OK, I like the All-American Rejects, too. I have both their CDs.

MCS is my favorite band right now, with two great CDs out. Best of all, they're local. I caught them at the Warped Tour in July and was so completely blown away - I haven't been that pumped since I was front row at the Bloodhound Gang set in '96 at Edgefest.

Here's a video for you - song's called LG Fuad. Don't know why. All that you see in the backgound? It's Minneapolis in winter. Brr.

Holy F*king Shit, Twins Win!

Earlier this week, as the Twins dropped the first game of the series to the White Sox, I thought it was fairly improbable that the Tigers would lose as well, and to the Kansas City Royals. But they did. OK, crazy stuff happens, we still have a shot at this. But when we lost yesterday's game and Detroit lost too I said, "That's it. Detroit won't lose again tomorrow. I'm happy with a wild card spot."

But this is re-god-damned-diculous.

The Royals swept the Tigers, and we pulled one game up over Detroit to take the lead. So awesome... Plus, Joe Mauer won the AL Batting title (Eat it, Jeter), Johan Santana is the probable Cy Young winner, and Justin Morneau is getting better and better press every day and could very well win the MVP. Check out the really sweet article by ESPN's Jayson Stark here documenting the year in review and making the MVP case for Justin.


Playoffs start Tuesday, when we will whip the asses off the Oakland A's.

Borat vs. Kazakhstan

Did you know the President of Kazakhstan visited D.C. and President Bush yesterday? He did, and on the agenda was asking for aid in stopping Borat, from Da Ali G Show on HBO. He's concerned that Borat is giving the world a bad impression of Kazakhstan, which I say is better than no impression, but whetever.

Borat (Sacha Baron Cohen) held a press conference in front of the Kazakhstani embassy that must have made the Kazakhstani President poop his pants with rage. Check out a portion of his statement here, where he speaks out against the lies of tolerance the Uzbekis are spreading, and where he invites American dignitaries to an after-party at Hooters. An excerpt:

"If there is one more item of Uzbek propaganda claiming that we do not drink fermented horse urine, give death penalty for baking bagels, or export over 300 tons of human pubis per year, then we will be left with no alternative but to commence bombardment of their cities with our catapults."

The Press Secretary of Kazakhstan actually responded! "He is not a Kazakh," he said. "What he represents is a country of Boratastan, a country of one." Oooo, BURN!!

Mmm...

That warming sensation your experiencing is a complete bliss that you're only now feeling because I'm starting a blog. You are also probably peeing your pants.

Why not start a blog? I figure if anything it'll give my parents a way to see what I'm up to when I don't call for a week and something to show their coworkers and brag about how awesome I am.

I will also be bragging about how awesome I am.

Get ready for either a whirlwind journey to enlightenment or a horrible abortion that I take off the web in a week. There will be no middle ground.