The Weak Minded Exploiting The Weak Minded (American Idol is Back)

The irresistibly, rubber-neck inducing, travesty we call American Idol has started again. Beyond Ryan Seacrest, being more annoying than a dentist performing a job interview with you while he polishes your teeth, I can't figure out if the Paula Abdul (check break.com) mess was just too generate publicity. So, after the show struck gold with its reject editions of the auditions, they now drag it out into two weeks of rejects with a smattering of decent karaoke. Watching misguided and oversheltered people from all corners of the earth...and the Midwest cry is just depressing. Yet, I keep on watching.

Meanwhile, I have my third cold of this year and it's driving me nuts, even though I refer to it as a sever case of allergies at work and then cough all over the people that come into my office to ask me questions. Worst joke ever was overheard at work today and I think it was even said for my benefit. Here it is: " Wow! Paper jam? How about some paper peanut butter to go with that?" It was awful.

Next, I found this pad of paper from when I was off of work for the holidays and it has a bullet pointed list on it.
-Body Double. - I watched this on Comcast On Demand and must say it was awesome. Meleanie Griffith was actually hot at one time and the stalker was the good guy. A murder takes place with a drill and there is a really cool house in the Los Angeles Hills in the movie. It was almost like David Lynch at some points.

-The Odyssey. - I tried reading Ulysses for the second time and got hung up again, so decided to read The Odyssey again to help me understand James Joyce more thoroughly. On top of that, I will probably have to read Gravity's Rainbow again, as both are based on the Odyssey. Gravity's Rainbow is the bomb, yo. It's a desert island book for sure. The reason The Odyssey is on the list, though, is that the mini-series was on the Sci-Fi channel while I was off and I DVRd it and watched the whole horrible mess starring Armand Assante from Fatal Instinct.

-Future World. - Futureworld was awesome. it was what people in the 70s thought the future would be like. The people of the 60s were thinking folding cars, pill meals and Jetsons. The Disco era was thinking about nothing, but clones and theme parks. Look for a young cola-bottled Peter Fonda, Gwyneth Paltrow's mom and Yul Brenner dressed up as a cowboy. We'll also see if it doesn't really happen like The Lorax is going to. This is one of those movies that you have seen in the video store since they were owned by mom and pop's and there were three sections: one for Betamax, one for VHS and one for porn behind some beads. There also might have been a laser disc section.

-Rocky Balboa. - This movie was fucking awesome. Worth ten dollars if you go see it in the movies or happen to know an awards screener and can watch his copy. I felt like a kid watching Rocky IV all over again at the end. While Jason Schwartzman's mom wasn't in this last installment, they added the guy from Heroes, which was pretty cool.

-The Counter. - If you are not eating at this restaurant, you may suck. Burgers, beers, indie rock, sweet potato fries, and shakes with some Bailey's in 'em is delicious. I also talked the bartender into breading me up some pineapple rings and frying them. Different, but genius when paired with an apricot dipping sauce.

-Lightnote Coffee. - While I don't like to reward the elimination of the local coffee house, I do like to reward consistency in a cup of coffee. The temperature has come way down since litigous idiots started pouring coffee in their laps, but some freshly ground Lightnote coffee from Starbuck's is my favorite. As a consolation, I make it at home most of the time, so I get it hotter and for less than $1.35 a cup. Also, their breakfast sandwiches are great for a hangover.

-Rolos. - Santa brought me some and eating one brought back memories of that old Rolo's commercial with Rolos rolling all over the place. Don't forget about the Rolo, lest ye be forgotten. By the way, the commercial link isn't the commercial memory, but you gotta love youtube. Pray with me that youtube does not end up like Napster going from awesome to n'awesome.

I still didn't talk about my new electric toothbrush, my moustache that I grew, or the Aggrolites, but trust me, all were awesome.

Let Me Be The First To Say...

Armed And Famous is awesome. There is only one way that it could be better besides full frontal nudity and that is having Steve Guttenberg as part of the show. Who droppped the ball on that one? They have Erik "Ponch" Estrada on the show so it makes sense. Actually, a step further would be to put together a show just like this called X-Cops and have it be all guys who played cops on TV. I'm kind of an idea guy.

Highlights of the debut episode are as follows:
Jack Osbourne and guns. He's a really good shot.
Latoya calling Jackie and name dropping her bothers including Michael as if he take her call.
Latoya Jackson name dropping Mr. Chou's in the same sentence as Spago.
The super hot cop from Muncie, Indiana that got paired up with Erik Estrada.
The starstruck, crack dealing grandma who keeps calling Erik Estrada Ponch.
Trish Stratus getting tazed. A blind person would get way more out of that scene than I did.

All in all, nobody has pulled a jackass move yet, but we'll see if Tawny Kitaen shows up.

Aluminum Foil Hat Theory #1

First, everyone is talking to themselves at work today. It's a little unsettling and weird.

Second, I have not slept through the night in a while now and wake up super sweaty every night and cold. I'm calling out a Whitley Strieber played by Walkenesque abduction by aliens a la Communion. Super weird dreams, too. This is the part where I wake up tomorrow and refuse to leave my room as I metamorphasize into a giant silverfish.

Third, conspiracy theory #1: The reason that there is always a line in the In N Out Burger drive-thru is because they pay people to sit in line all day to make it look like they are always busy. It's a pretty basic concept that can be seen all over metropolitan areas in the form of the velvet rope. In order to get busy you need to be busy. Nobody wants to go somewhere where nobody else goes anymore. Look what happened to Arby's. So, to the haters who don't believe this to be true, go ahead and sit out there one day and mark down license plate numbers, but I'll let you know ahead of time, that sometimes the drive-thru line new cars are brought in by corporate.

Finally, for the single man's fortress of solitude, a tv that can be tuned in to someone's prescription makes a ton of sense. Yes, when other people came over to visit, it may be polite to dial it in to their prescription, but a prescription tv would be awesome for the individual when watching the shows that he watches when no one else is around.

Vast Indifference

Last week, I found out that I was still "legally" married. It was a little unsettling, but the ex is being very cooperative and we are getting along through it at this point. There are small under the breath verbal jabs at each other, but that's to be expected. It's due to a feeling of indifference. That's the part that lets you know that you are getting over it. At the same time, it stings a little bit because you realize all of the stuff that was between you two is pretty much dead. Beyond that, the marriage officially went over two years, so I don't feel so bad about it any more, however I feel bad about all of the "technical" cheating that I partook in.

The next thing is that fucking Bud Light commercial that my friends and I invented three years ago at the first domestic macro-brewed beer festival. It's the beernata - A pinata filled with pills, airplane bottles of booze and can beer. First of all, I realize, someone must have come up with this before we did. Nothing is truly original, but still.

Finally, I think I'm going to go to the Palo Alto Library tonight and here are the requirements for a library card. It looks like a pretty weak library considering Palo Alto Poverty is $90K a year, but whatevs, it's a library with free books to read that have been in multitudes of bathrooms and are covered with fecally tainted airborne pathogens. Note that the limit of books is "all that you carry" with a 100 book limit. Wait...What about an Internet service called Bookflix that let's you put books in your queue and then send you books that you read and send back. Negatives- shipping would be a little more and turnaround would be slower depending on the reader. Positives - no piracy. In fact, my ex-sister-in-law or supposed-to-be-ex-sister-in-law kind of did this anyway with Barnes & Noble by reading and returning books with a week or two. Shady.