Comic for Thursday, August 17th, 2006

Posted: 7:35 am, Thursday, August 17th

So, 2.0 returned from her long sojourn to the North Country, and since my computer was occupied trying to burn a DVD (and failing, because I’m a moran), we watched the tape I made of the Hell’s Kitchen finale the other night. I don’t watch much reality TV, but for some reason, I really liked that one. I guess I like food and watching stupid reality TV contestants get yelled at a lot by someone they’re not allowed to yell back at (who is not Donald Trump). Also, I like British people, so Gordon Ramsey’s OK by me. Anyway, the girl we were rooting for lost, which is another reason I don’t watch a lot of reality TV – the person I’m rooting for always loses. Out of the reality shows I can remember watching, only once have I backed the winner going into the last three or four episodes, and that was Zora on Joe Millionaire. But she was a social worker who was going to use the money to pay for her grandmother’s nursing home, and the other one was a horrid golddigger, so I really had no choice there. Anyway, the girl that won the cooking show the other night designed a truly heinous restaurant, with flat-screen TVs of herself cooking everywhere in the restaurant, and a huge projection of a film of herself cooking on one of the walls. I think the moral of this story is to steer clear of this chick’s restaurant if you find yourself in the Red Rock at Vegas.

Pretty cool bunch of links from this blog other day (nice title, too - Pop Tarts *do* suck toasted). There's a write-up on the last Sleater-Kinney show (and you thought I was done mentioning them), and 15 websites that changed the world. I was especially interested by the top 40 as listened to by a 40-year old. His theory was at 16, you know all the 40, and take a song off for every year. That should leave me with 28 songs. I tested this with the Billboard Top 100. I’ve seen the London Bridge video, and I heard that Gnarls Barkley song once. It’s on my iPod, but I was astoundingly underwhelmed by it. (Just listened to it again – it’s not bad, but it’s about 1/1,000,000th as catchy as anything the Go! Team’s ever done.) I don’t think I’ve heard that Promiscuous song, and I have no idea who Cassie is. I’ve heard of the Pussycat Dolls, and I think I may’ve heard a line of Buttons one time… I’ve heard the Beyonce song once, and I think she and Jay-Z are a cute couple. “Yung Joc”? I have absolutely no idea who that is. So I’ve heard three of the top 10 so far. Whoa, Too $hort? Really? He’s featured on the song at 19. My freshman year, there was this O-lineman named BJ Ryan in my hallway, he roomed with Pentzien, and he absolutely loved the song Blowjob Betty by Too $hort. That’s my Too $hort story. $tory. Whatever. Yep, don’t know any of the 11-20 songs. I’ve heard Hips Don’t Lie is a big hit, and I saw a snip of the Public Affair video – she’s rollerskating for some reason, right? – but that’s all. I’ve heard Dani California, but if you asked me to hum it for you, you’d probably get By the Way, instead. Hey, Yung Joc has a second song on the Top 40. Nice work, yung man. (Thank you, I'll be here all week!) Nickelback – God, what a terrible band. Alright, so of the top 40, I have actually heard four songs plus a line or two of a fifth. I don’t know what this proves – that I don’t listen to the radio, I guess. Oh, man, a few weeks back, RAW was driving me back to Brooklyn after my car died on Rte. 10, and we were listening to his XM unit, the 90s channels. Man, it was like high school all over again. I heard a Collective Soul song! I mean, shit, Collective Soul? When was the last time anyone thought about Collective Soul?

Rollins v. Danzig, the tale of the tape. Reggie Ho had the freakiest Henry Rollins poster in our room freshman year. I'd take Rollins against just about anyone.

Pitchfork does a one-off of a new Andrew W.K. song, one of the better ones off of Close Calls with Brick Walls. It is a very weird album, not at all like I Get Wet or the Wolf, and I'm glad that they address is as his weird album, since I hope he's got this out of his system now. There's some good songs on it - Not Going to Bed, something on down the highway or something - but it's so over-produced in a totally different way than his albums are usually over-produced. Anyway, in case you for some reason need one, here's an I Get Wet drinking game.

According to this, I'm Gilbert Arenas. No, I'm not.

Oh, man, the PS2 is still coming out with games I want to play. Rockstar has earned the right for me to consider getting just about anything they put out, but Bully looks outstanding, anyway, and this Okami game sounds fantastic. Sumbitch.

Tuesday Morning Quarterback's back on ESPN. He had this great snippet from his column this week:

Big Plus: Parking Cannot Be Outsourced To India : Parking -- not the kind you did as a teenager -- is now a $500 billion industry worldwide. That sum is larger than the United States' defense budget, and represented about 2 percent of the global GDP in 2004. This means the world now spends on parking roughly what it spends on environmental protection, and considerably more than it spends on all books and libraries combined.

Man, that's a lot on parking.

They're making a documentary on John Hughes films. Tree is no doubt psyched.

God, Wal-Mart is detestable. Now they're distributing fliers to their employees in Iowa telling them to vote against their own best interests.

Nice article on conscientious objectors from Sojourners, a magazine on faith and politics that I'm assuming is a bit more conservative than most things I link to, but hey, conscientious objectors are good people.

The Daily Irish is two more Irish blogs to add to the readin' - the Rakes of Mallow and Drink that Drink, which seems to be in the tradition of Marco.

We're back to good ol' fashioned horrible web design for the Nightmare today. He subscribes to the school of thought that if you can find a drug-related .gif, you must post it. (There's some NSFW stuff in the comments - Boris Valejo-y nekkid ladies. Probably won't trip your firewall, but use your judgment, I don't want to get anyone fired.)

bullfrog

I don't know anything about Gilbert Arenas so I took the election test. This may shock you--I'm John Kerry. Personally I think I'm more of a Che Guevara, but I that didn't seem to be an option.

I'm very disappointed that you were rooting for Virginia to win on Hell's kitchen. The girl can't work in a kitchen to save her life. But all the contestants pretty much sucked. And have you noticed that your girl Zora from Joe Millionaire does Nutrisystem commercials? (I did root for her, even though I thought Joe Millionaire was a %#&*(&#(%U)

I didn't even notice the election test... I'll have to check that out.

Sec, c'mon - Heather was an emotionally unstable megalomaniac.

I was John Kerry, also. Switching Shitwit for the environment as the number one threat to America, I become David Cobb. Huh.

I'm actually surprised Ramsay didn't rip heather apart for the giant video screens of herself. Also, i thought it was funny how they managed to crank out the food on the finale since when the shmoes in the kitchen were doing the cooking in every other episode they couldn't get it together. i smell some creative editing.

Also, Ramsay's BBCA show is much better than hell's kitchen.

And I know a big fat zero of the billboard top 40.

http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2006/08/13/camptastic/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14325172/

I dont know if it has been posted yet but I stumbled upon this yesterday. Apparently Notre Dame made the new Ivy League list. My alma mater made it too, but a crowd pleaser never hurts

I declared that list baloney after seeing that Boston Collitch made it.

I bet the actual Ivy League schools are really pleased that there's now about 33 'Ivies' out there. Especially since most of them are way more memorable than Dartmouth or Cornell. (I can never remember Cornell's an Ivy for some reason.)

I'd like to make a serious point about the new ivy list...

it means absolutely nothing. Sure, you have a very fine institution that does a lot interesting things that the traditional Ivy League schools do. But really, where you go to school in the beginning means very little in the long run, particularly after that first job.

I really think it depends on your major that kind of highlights where you want to go, because what maybe good for you in general, isn't so good when you know where you want to go, or in the future when you realize you may have a pretty good general school, but a really crappy specific department.

I happen to be a meteorology student, and it's a fairly tightly knitted major, with something like fifty colleges & universities offering a degree in it max. 20 offer graduate degrees in the subject. A lot of them are the Penn States and MITs of the world, really good schools. But it depends on what you want to do. Chase tornados, you want to go to a Texas or Oklahoma school. (Especially Oklahoma. One city does not need seven radars, but that's what they have.) Hurricanes are the Florida schools specialities. I ended up going to college kind of like if you were selecting the Miss Universe pagent winner. Know that all of the schools are good, and you probably couldn't go wrong. But go with the one you feel most comfortable that you'd succeed in.

I'm just saying that don't be so impressed that Notre Dame is a new Ivy, or don't make a lot out of how Boston College is on there too, and shouldn't be. Alma mater pining is really overrated. I kind of feel the only place that college rankings should matter are in the sports arena.

Speaking of Wal-Mart...

http://www.tulsaworld.com/BusinessStory.asp?ID=060817_Bu_E3_Chine23816

China's Wal-Marts are unionized! Why, because Hu Jintao insisted upon it. Imagine a world in which the president of a nation decides to protect the nation's employees (Is it scary that I'm now looking up to China?).

Yikes. Yes, it very much is scary.

And Miyaa, I think you were misinterpreting my reaction to the Ivy list.. I think we all know that finding a school that best fits your major/interests/personality is more important than simply going to the school with the best U.S. News ranking that you can get into. Also, I mean, lists? What is this, Rolling Stone? Lists don't mean much.

That said, Boston College sucks so much ass.

And Wood, what the hell do any of these notations on Tech's schedule mean? "Orange Effect"?

That dude totally ripped off the Danzig-Rollins thing from blogcritics! What a piece of shit writer! The evidence:

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/08/15/231402.php

From 2005 even!

I originally meant to comment on the strip, but that Rollins-Danzig shit pissed me off so much I had to mention it.

Anyway, first off, much drama to ensue between Lissa and Jen (that's the skunk-haired one, right?)

Second, according to your drawings of her front, Lissa's ass would clearly be way more hourglass than it is in the panels of her from the back. I think you should add more junk in the trunk. What dude doesnt' like mo' booty in the butt?

Huh, you're right. I actually toned down on the backside hourglass when I was drawing this because I thought it looked too exaggerated. Maybe I should've gone with it as it was originally.

And, yep, I'm sure whenever Jen eventually finds out about things, there will be drama and witty-yet-distraught quips. Or supposedly-witty-yet-distraught quips, depending on how successful my writing happens to be that day.

By the way - in your rage, Pat, you didn't pick a winner.

Sorry for the slow response. The "orange effect" is a little known piece of Tech lore. The team historically will decide to lose if they arent wearing maroon or if they are playing a team who wears orange. (Tenn, Syracuse etc...)

http://www.tailgatefever.com/handler.cfm?action=ViewArticle&ArticleID=99

#2 Should Explain most of it. Go Hokies.

Miyaa - I do agree that lately alma maters mean less and less, except when getting a job immediatly out of school. I more thought it was interesting to see some form of shout out to some schools who have historically been very good at what they do. That and how often is RPI in the news. Go Engineers.

I guess I need to go get another degree in the PAC so I have another team to passivly cheer for that has no of chance playing a previous alma mater. Maybe USC...

Rollins, all the way. The Misfits are cool and all, and I love "Mother", but Danzig has video evidence against his fighting skills and he's short as hell.

Wow, that was in-depth. There's no one more crazy than a collitch football fan.

By the way, though, as any of my classmates know, taking a knee can in fact be a key play.

The scene: The final home game of my junior year, Notre Dame was 8-1 and leading LSU 39-34 with about thirty seconds left. We're backed up at our three, and Bob Davie sends Jarious Jackson out there to dance around as long as possible, and take the safety. (Davie was nothing if not brave.) Nevermind that we'd already given up a kick return for a score, we were going to free kick that sumbitch and let the D lock 'em down. So Bob sends Jarious out there to take a knee, except that LSU blitzes - shocking! - and Jarious gets his knee blown out. The next week out in LA, Eric Chappell gets his first career start to try and lock up a BCS bid for us. We might as well have sent Dave Chappelle out there (I am so *funny!*). Chappell's line before getting pulled? 0 for 3, two interceptions.

Taking that knee was an awful goddamn key play.

Does it ever annoy you when you're at the gym, and you can lift as much as the short, super-ripped dudes, but they look jacked and you just look normal? Rollins and Danzig both fit that short-dude description. Also Rollins is flat-out awesome. I think I have a non-sexual man-crush on him.

I'm glad you feel comfortable sharing this, man. Seriously, though, Rollins is a freaking truck. It's too bad Reggie Ho is still in Hawaii on his honeymoon or he could be regaling us with his unlimited knowledge of Henry Rollins. Since he's not here, though, I'll just post that video where he's e-mailing Ann Coulter again (he being Rollins, not Reggie Ho).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgSBhlw-o9E

I understand. I just find such psuedo-Ivy League lists really stupid. It's just as stupid as the 30 best traders under the age of 30 party noted yesterday. (And how come there's no 40 best traders over the age of 40? How we worship at the altar of youth.)

Speaking of RPI, shouldn't they be getting a royality check everytime the NCAA or the media metions/uses the RPI for determine who's in and out in college basketball?

I went to an event in Birmingham. The event was free and all. But the parking...$15 bucks for parking? Are you kidding me? If I want to go to an event that's free, that had better include parking.