godthedog

things like news programs and game shows really have no business being in HD. they just make everybody look 5 years older.

yeah, it was a joke.

czech's sweater post with illustration is one of the best things i've ever seen on this board. funny motherfucker. i went kicking and screaming out of grubby band t-shirts into polo shirts (short and long sleeve), about 3 years ago. i made a new year's resolution that i would wear something "nice" on the days that i teach class. so now, 2 days a week i shave and get snazzed out in a dress shirt (complete with collar stays) and khakis or brown dress pants. but not too nice: no tie, and i always roll up the sleeves. this is a big deal for me, as i used to just come in a polo shirt and khakis or jeans. it's done wonders for my self-confidence. i can look people in the eye now, and i get compliments on how i look. i hate sweaters. no pockets, and your only option if you get a little hot is to take it off. where do you put your ipod when you're walking down the street??? in your pants pocket??? i got my wallet and my phone in those bitches, i can't have no more weight and volume there. i just use a light fleece jacket (actually the inner layer of another heavier jacket that i took out), which either goes well on its own in fallish weather, or can go under something else.

'the great escape' has replaced 'parklife' as my favorite blur album, at least at the moment.

kinetic. he was a man on a mission this year. my only concern is, are the efforts going to drop if his mission is completed? will he not board as hard, believing that he has nothing left to accomplish?

that scene in the elevator where they want to kiss but don't but sort of do?

just started on VN's own 'pale fire' a couple nights ago. those 4 cantos are awesomely beautiful. not really a poem per se, it meshed a lot better when i thought of them as prose which happened to rhyme. i'll have to see how well it holds up through the endnotes. there's something about the way nabokov tries to write academics that seems just weird and false to me. i had the same problem with 'pnin', and it kept me from wanting to finish the book.

agent kinetic

this is why star ratings are stupid.

i watched this entire thing last night, which i believe makes me the biggest pussy in the world. i liked the 18-year-old kid who played the lead in 'slumdog millionaire' getting teary-eyed when they were all up on stage. i liked kate winslet crying uncontrollably and not being able to stand straight up. this means she takes dick ravenously and probably has orgasms intense enough to make her cry, then wants to do it again.

i saw the premiere last week, didn't catch this week's. but i did see the first episode of the glorious 'tool academy'. there's no way that shit can be entirely real.

slayer--because i realized that i don't really know anything about venkman except that he likes '30 rock'. edwin--can't lose with this one, and kinetic's gonna win it anyway, so i'll tip my hat to the nicest, most stand-up guy of all the secret jerks. agent--had the eliminator continued, i was prepared to give him cthulhu. this is the next-best thing i can do for him. VX--another rare combination of smartness and nice guyness. got some very tough decisions in the next round.

nspired in part by the recent exchange in LSD over giada de laurentiis, nigella lawson, & rachael ray. sandra lee scares the hell out of me.

i've listened to 'crooked rain' and 'slanted & enchanted' for a month now in an effort to get it, and i give up. it feels like they write parodies of songs instead of real songs and try as hard as they can to not be sincere about anything. i can understand the appeal of that in the early 90s when grunge &c were taking themselves so seriously, to have a band that just slyly laughs at the whole thing by avoiding hooks, keeping the noise from the hard-rock sound while taking away the headbanging power of it, and the rest, but...jesus, at least try instead of being too cool to try. it's like a doppelganger of ween, who play ridiculous shit like they mean it and make you like it while you laugh at it. the impression i get of pavement is to play like they don't mean it, to make everybody else look ridiculous. i want to be cool and like these guys, but i need to know why.

That's not true at all. They wasted so much of Season 2 on the Don Geis-Will Arnett-who is running GE storyline, even though no one cares. Ditto that Tina moving to Cleveland thing. I did think last nights show was pretty funny. that's more of an 'arrested development'-style lunatic situation giving rise to another lunatic situation. the whole point is that nobody cares, and it doesn't matter what sorts of situations the characters get placed in as long as you can get a rapid-fire stream of jokes out of it. it's not a waste of time, because the nature and the goals of the show haven't changed at all. what i mean by "soap opera epics" is jim/pam, dwight/angela/andy, and earl's love story with alyssa milano. continuing arcs where the audience is supposed to want the characters to get together, achieve something, etc. 'earl' ran into the problem of essentially wasting half a season by putting something at stake in earl & what's-her-character-name together, then by the end of the season have everybody back as if nothing had ever happened. 'the office' is now changing the dynamics of its characters every 3 or 4 episodes, because they want to keep making substantial changes. i certainly didn't care when alec baldwin got fired from his position, because i knew that eventually he'd come back and it wouldn't matter, and in the meantime he got to propose the manufacture of a weapon that made enemy soldiers totally gay for each other. it's like when jason bateman started dating charlize theron and i didn't care.

as of now i think '30 rock' is the most consistent of all the thursday night shows, because they haven't started caring about their characters and getting sucked into soap opera epics. they just want to be funny.

these votes were chosen by my wife, solely based on which user names she preferred: venkman ehme cheech ortonsault snuffbox canadian chris bored edwin macphisto KOAB smues pbone agent of oblivion sensei john kreese black lushus milky lord of the curry names she laughed at the most: edwin macphisto, lord of the curry, and KOAB (once i told her what it stood for).

songs by the boss: 1. atlantic city 2. highway patrolman 3. kitty's back 4. candy's room 5. i'm on fire

i am the sam cooke of the poster tournament. catering only to a niche market of posters who like good posting. i'm currently banking all my hopes on byron, because we're almost exactly the same person.

i don't expect to make it to the next round, but i submit for your consideration anyway what's probably my finest moment.

are you kidding? the writing reeks of half-worn phrases, cliches, fill-in-the-blank insults that could be applied to almost anybody, and obscenities in the places where she couldn't think of anything to say. that's not well-spent effort, that's just word vomit. by comparison, kinetic tried to tell an individual story with his picks and make each one interesting. and he makes it look effortless. leena somehow manages to give the impression of simultaneously being sloppy and trying too hard. she loses.

hey, why not: 1. the king of kong 2. there will be blood 3. no country for old men 4. persepolis 5. michael clayton 6. ratatouille 7. sweeney todd 8. grindhouse (when taken together as an evening's entertainment, in a theater) 9. eastern promises 10. the bourne ultimatum '07 was the only year that had enough top-shelf material that i felt the need to do a top 10 list. pretty stellar year, the best in my serious movie-watching days since 1999. speaking of triple-features, bob...did you ever do a houston street theater odyssey? i got to do it once sometime in 2004 (i think), where i started at the sunshine, then went to the angelika, and ended at the film forum. that was fun. god damn i miss that city for movies.

and then milky and pbone could start a band called Brooklyn Zoo Zoo's Petals.

i think only a top 5 list is really worth doing for this year, but not for all-bad reasons: 1. 'the strangers' - i can't not give this one top credit, just because it did what it did so purely and flawlessly. 2. 'slumdog millionaire' - joyous, great storytelling, healthy mix of fun and despair. 3. 'let the right one in' - probably the only movie of these that i enjoy more with time, the more i think about it. 4. 'milk' - slick, easy to watch, very moving. 5. 'wall-E' - if only the first half of this existed, it would be number 1 a thousand times over. those are really the only ones i feel that are worth remembering enough to be put in list form. the rest sort of all run together. this seemed like a banner year for the Solid/Pretty Good movie, the kind of movie that's worth your money but ends up being pretty forgettable. there were a lot of them this year: 'hellboy 2', 'quarantine', 'pineapple express', 'iron man', 'frost/nixon', 'tropic thunder', 'burn after reading', 'in bruges' (good call luke-o), etc. i'd also put 'the dark knight' in this categorgy. i don't agree at all that it had better movies than 2007, but i get the overall vibe of a good time had.

i think i need to make a disclaimer and say that the death of heath ledger may have caused me to think that the performances of some of the posters here this year were better than they really are.