I was driving home from Bandito’s last night when I heard a loud BANG! I was caught utterly by surprise. My window had been open, and my arm was hanging out. I felt a pain in my arm and immediately pulled it in. Everything happened incredibely fast, I couldn’t register what was going on. There was a pungent odor all of a sudden, like the smell from shooting a cap gun.
My left ear was ringing and I glanced to the left and saw what had happened. My left-side air bags had spontaneously deployed! I was driving on 64 heading west and immediately began to signal to the right, so that I could get over on the shoulder of the road. It was at that point that I noticed the engine had cut out and I was coasting. I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw a wave of cars barrelling down my way, so I hastily coasted over to the shoulder and put my hazards on.
Long story short, I took the car to the dealer the next morning, they gave me a loaner, and I’ll pick my car back up on Tuesday. A horrifying experience, to say the least.
That’s a “slur” that I’m sure you’ve never heard. Not in person, not on television, not in film, and not in print in the modern era. Of course, odds are that you are not a Native American. But I’d be willing to bet that even if you are, the term Redskin, used as a racial slur, is as extinct at the Dodo.
The Washington Post reports that a judge is getting ready to rule in a case between the Redskins and a group of Native Americans over the right to trademark the term Redskins. I, for one, hope the Redskins prevail. I think the lawsuit is frivolous, and would damage more people than it would “help”.
A perfect description of doing something in an utterly half-assed way, where you would have been better off not doing it, or doing it all the way. Courtesy of the Sports Guy:
Here’s an analogy, which we’ll call the “Four-beer analogy”: Let’s say you’re hitting a sports bar with your buddies for Monday Night Football. You could have two or three beers, throw down some chicken wings, play some Golden Tee, wager on the home team, bond with your boys, then head home when the outcome has been decided. Or you could do everything from above, but keep throwing down beers until you’re bombed and someone has to drive you home. Either way, it’s going to be a good time.
Well, unless you have four beers.
That kills you. You’re not sober enough to drive home. You’re not quite drunk enough that you feel like you really let loose; if anything, you’re more groggy than anything. And you drank just enough that you’ll have trouble getting up for work/class the following morning. The next day, you always end up wishing you had more beers or less beers. Just not four.
So, for instance, I four-beered my tenure as El Presidente of the Indy division. Either shouldn’t have done it, or should have gone insane.
The Smoking Gun kicks ass. I was poking around today and found treasure troves of information about the “stars” of my favorite MTV reality series. For instance, apparently Donnell (Road Rules: South Pacific) is a woman-batterer.
That actually comes as a shock to me, I pegged Donnell as being in the closet. Although, maybe he is, who knows. From the Real World: Paris, apparently Adam is more of a joke than you thought. This stuff is funny on so many levels, Who knew Ace’s name was Clyde? Who could have imagined he owned a bar? Finally, remember Steven from Real World: Seattle? Here’s a quote that still makes me laugh hysterically:
The 6’ 2” Williams was filmed smacking diminutive Irene McGee in the head after she told him, “A marriage between you and I would never work out. You know that. You’re a homosexual.” Williams responded, “You think I’m a homo?”
Anyway, apparently Steven is also a prostitute. I’m not the least bit surprised.
That’s the name of an Elliot Smith song. I tend to listen to Elliot when I’m feeling depressed/lovelorn/etc. Not sure why, sometimes the songs make me feel better, other times much, much worse. It occurred to me that I could be talking to someone about how I feel instead of holeing myself up in my room listening to CD’s like some sort of manic teenager.
But fuck, if I was a normal person, I’d do a lot of things differently. I’d stop collecting aquaintances, and actually make some real friends. I’d tell people I care about how I feel. I’d stop trying to be right and perfect all the time. Latest evidence of dysfunctionality: I’m posting this pathetic plea for help on a fucking website.
Anyway, maybe I’m just not built that way anyway. I’m 25, going on 26. Not much room for radical personality swings left. So, Chris (or whoever else reads this thing), do me a favor and take a pass on leaving some cliched-sounding comment. I think I probably just need to get away from things for a little bit. Immerse myself in work, or something else mindless.
TMQ (aka Tuesday Morning Quarterback) has a new column up on Page 2. Don’t forget, boys and girls, Gregg Easterbrook is a senior editor of New Republic, a contributing editor of The Atlantic Monthly and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is believed to be the first Brookings scholar ever to write a pro football column.. A nice counter-weight to The Sports Guy, IMHO.
My friend Becky recently wrote an article about the dubious nature of the marketing slogan “The #1 Movie in America!”. Every week (especially during the summer) a different movie blazes commercials across our television screens, newspapers, and radios proclaiming itself the #1 movie in America.
Lee Zion wrote a thoughtful response to Becky’s article, elaborating on how absurd some of the numbers the studios come up with are. It absolutely blows my mind that box office grosses completely fail to indicate the total number of tickets sold. Given the absurd uptick in ticket prices over the past decade, it’s not surprising that the vast majority of the highest grossing films of all time have come in the past 10 years.
Which bring me to (in my mind) and even more interesting question. Which films gave us the most bang for the buck? Specifically, which films reaped the biggest gross in proportion to how much they cost to make? Could it have been the Blair Witch Project? According to IMDB, the film was shot on a $35K budget and raked in a domestic gross of $140,530,114. That represents a 401,400% return on their investment. Pretty sweet, huh?
How about Titanic, the highest grossing film of all time? Well, IMDB says it’s budget was $200 million and it’s domestic gross was $600,779,824. That equates to a relatively paltry 200% return on their investment.
So, what does this mean? Shit if I know, but the lucky movie exec who can wrap his brain around it will be sitting pretty.
