I’ve blogged before about the rare Internet gift that is Hulu (here, here and here). It is a great time-killer, especially if you’re in one of those “I have a rare 30 minutes to watch TV, but everything on TV sucks” moods. My favorite Hulu spot is the Saturday Night Live section, especially because it has a good selection of archival clips from past shows. Read the rest of this entry »
Earlier today, I got behind a car in traffic, and I knew - without a doubt in my mind - that I would be driving behind a slooooooow moving vehicle. That got me to think about distinct visual cues that show you that you should just abandon hope, hit the brakes and get ready to poke around town. Read the rest of this entry »
(Editor’s note: Yeah, I know… I ended the title with a preposition. So what… you wanna fight about it?)
The annual hoopla about American Idol - and my friends’ near-universal ranting and raving about who won and who didn’t - has gotten me on my annual rant. That’s right! My regularly-scheduled grumpy column. I’ve taken a pretty wicked swipe at AI before. Got a lot of hate comments after that one (some I couldn’t post).
This might be the weirdest blog post ever. Even for me. But, I was having a conversation with a loyal SMP reader who argued with me that “This is How We Do It” by Montell Jordan can’t be on a list of worst songs ever. He then went on to say that my Proust questionnaire made him laugh. So… we’re talking about Montell Jordan… and the Proust questionnaire… which led to the obvious question. What if you answered the survey using just the lines from “This is How We Do It.” Read the rest of this entry »
The other day, I was looking at the latest copy of Vanity Fair. One of my favorite parts of this publication is the final page - the vaunted “Proust Questionnaire.” It’s like the pretentious questionnaire that James Lipton gives people at the end of Inside the Actor’s Studio. Just longer.
Just got finished watching the next DVD in the World at War documentary that The Wife gave me for Christmas. It was episode 20, “Genocide.” While many of the other episodes touch on the Holocaust, this is the only one that is completely centered on the topic. Read the rest of this entry »
The other day, I was talking to someone about the Atari. He said that it was a poor-man’s Intellivision, and so began one of the weirdest conversations I’ve ever had. It wasn’t an argument, per se, but it was an out-of-the-blue chat about what made one video game system better than the other.
As I’ve been watching the stock market spiral into mid-90s territory - and realizing that my dream of retiring before, oh, 90, is gone - it’s been tough to find any bright spots. I mean, it’s really been a tough few months. When Citi can announce that it’s finally profitable and it causes a 300-point jump in the Dow, that’s a testament to the state of the economy.
In fact, the recent economic downturn has even changed the way we talk to one another. At work, at home or just around friends, we’re continually couching things in terms of the economy.
Earlier this week, I got an email from a buddy from my hometown. He proposed that a few of us get together at the old golf course - Magnolia Country Club in lovely, bucolic Magnolia, NC - for a round of golf for old time’s sake. Sounded like a great way to spend a early spring Saturday. That is, until a friend who still lives in the area threw down the news I didn’t really expect. The old course had been shut down.
My buddy Tom got me to try the 25 random songs game a couple of weeks ago, and then trumped it with this challenge. “Write the 10 worst songs you know. These are songs that are so bad that you have a tangible (negative ) physical reaction when you hear them.” Read the rest of this entry »