Exactly how desperate ARE you for free ITunes downloads?

So you like those ITunes, do ya? Sure, who doesn't? The bad news is they're draining you dry. I hear ya.

So the idea of a dozen free ITunes sounds pretty good, doesn't it? You're salivating right now for them, aren't ya?

"GIMME!", I hear you say. "GIMME THOSE FREE ITUNES!"

Oh, you can have them, all right. If you're willing to sit through THIS!

(cue scary music and evil laughter)

Yes, in what could be the most evil bait and switch ever, Penn State Federal Bank will give you up to up to a dozen free Itunes if you will sit through a series of videos about how to be financially responsible!

If that weren't test enough of your mettle, these lectures are presented to you by a bunch of hip, happening twenty-somethings who show you how maintaining a responsible credit-to-debt ratio can be "cool" and "fun".

Oh yeah, laugh it up. You and I both know who's gonna click over there as soon as someone needs a music fix.

Nobody ever said addiction was pretty. Or banking either, for that matter.

What women want.........or else

You ever see those guys shopping from a present for the wife or their girlfriend, and they're really really nervous? Whether they're looking at perfume, jewelry or flowers, you see that there's this feeling of "Boy, I sure hope I get this right...." on the guy's face. You ever wonder what they're worried about?

Well, of course, part of the nervousness stems from the eternal mystery of women to men, and their trying to understand what women really want as a present. Men, generally speaking, desperately want to do right by women when giving a gift, but there truly is a learning curve to figuring out what that is.

So that definitely is foremost in men's minds as they're looking.

But the other thing that is running through their minds is something like this, as reported by the international birdcage liner of journalism, The London Sun.

In Dagenham, Essex, Gary Hall brought home flowers to his wife, Toni Young, for Valentine's Day, and because she was so dissatisfied with the flowers because they seemed "cheap", she stabbed him in the chest.

Prosecutor Stephen Winberg explained “She was angry with the victim for buying inferior flowers.”

However, Hall spoke on his wife's behalf at the trial, and admitted that the flowers were, in fact, cheap, and that he had forgiven her for stabbing him. Young ultimately pled guilty to unlawful wounding at Snaresbrook Crown Court, East London, and got a two-year community order. The judge in the case said that because her husband had forgiven her, she would not be sentenced to any jail time.

So, my advice to Hall (and all the men out there): I would start saving up for her birthday present now, if you know what's good for you.

My favorite new band of the moment.

So I'm working on this show at the moment which required me to find music that sounded Eastern European, based in a traditional folk style, but that also didn't sound too clichéd or pedestrian. Basically, something that sounded unlike anything else, but also created a very specific enviroment.

Enter the Warsaw Village Band.

The band, also known as Kapela ze wsi Warszawa in Poland, was started by a group of musicians in their twenties who were tired of the mass-marketing and homogenization of youth culture. So they turned to traditional Polish music, and began playing those songs, some of which were over 300 years old. But now before you start thinking "Hey, music boy, this sounds pretty square to me", take a listen to this.

Cool, huh? The first thing that you notice is the BIG FREAKIN DRUMS that makes you think "Whoa, this is not the best of Frankie Yankovich". Combine that with some beautifully dense string arrangements, hammered dulcimer and other exotic instruments, and some incredible vocals that are reminiscent of The Cocteau Twins (if they were Polish), and you've got the Warsaw Village Band.

The vocal style was adapted from the sheep-herding mountaineers of Poland, who used a style of singing called “bialy glos” or “white voice;” a type of powerful, melodic screaming used to communicate across long distances. Their lineup includes the suka’a Polish fiddle from the 16th century that is only known from historical drawings and whose strings are played with the player’s fingernails rather than the usual fingertips. The suka is joined by an hundred-year-old Polish dulcimer and the hurdy-gurdy - a unique instrument that sounds similar to the bagpipe, thanks to a drone that is played by a cranked wooden wheel rubbing against the strings of the instrument.

Folk music in Poland was extremely popular before the rise of Communism, which almost completely stomped it out of existence. Now it's back, and the Warsaw Village Band is the one group who seems to be having success outside of Poland.



My favorite album of the band is People's Spring, which is packed full of these blasts of exotic music. My two favorite tracks on this are:

Taniec Chasydzki (Hassidic Dance):



and U Mojej Matecki (At My Mother's):






This is their new album, Uprooting. This time, they got a DJ to play with the band, which must have sounded like a good idea at the time, but kinda just gets in the way, in my opinion. Still, it's a great record, with a mind-blowing sound.




Check out their supercool video! I would be impressed by this video, even if I had no idea who this band was.





So that's my favorite new band of the moment. They're doing a US tour in May, and I would highly recommend that you check them out if you can. If you want to download their albums, you can do it here.

Have fun! Do Widzenia!

This, right here, is why they invented the internet.

Some of the coolest videos I've ever found are:



First, a cautionary tale about why you should never do an early morning TV interview after a late night of drinking.





Second, I would like to state that THIS IS NOT A TRAILER REMIX, but something even more awesome than that. It's a TRAILER MASH-UP - a supercool mix of Requiem For A Dream and Toy Story 2!





Finally, Michael Jackson admits everything, including things that we have no idea what he's actually talking about. Now what?

You heard me! Go look!

Hey hey! Guess who's back in town!

All right. Guess who this is?


No, it's not Sam Elliot!



No, it's not Rollie Fingers!


No, it's not even the cowboy from the Village People!



No! It turns out it's your old pal...

William Shakespeare!

Yes, he's as surprised as you are.



A 17TH-CENTURY death mask claimed to be that of British playwright William Shakespeare could be genuine, according to new research.
The mask, discovered in a ragpicker's shop in 1842 and now owned by the German city of Darmstadt, has long been a subject of controversy.

It bears the high forehead and prominent nose and beard associated with the Bard and bears the inscription "+ Ao Dm 1616", apparently meaning "Died Anno Domini 1616", the year Shakespeare passed away at the age of 52.

But leading scholars have questioned the provenance of the mask and also said it is not a close enough match to the tiny handful of portraits that can be attributed to Shakespeare.

The pendulum may now swing back in the mask's favor, lab detectives have reported in next Saturday's New Scientist magazine.

The force behind it is University of Mainz academic Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel, who is a champion of the mask. She asked a specialist at the German Federal Bureau of Criminal Investigation to compare two portraits widely believed to be of Shakespeare with that of a bust housed in London's Garrick Club. Using a computer technique employed by the police to test whether separate facial images belong to the same person, scientist Reinhardt Altmann found close matches around the eyes, nose and lips of the paintings and bust, leading him to conclude the faces were all those of the same individual.

Ms Hammerschmidt-Hummel's next step was to compare the bust with the Darmstadt death mask. Engineers from imaging company Konica Minolta Europe scanned the bust and death mask with lasers to build up 3D computer models.

"Superimposing the models revealed perfect matches between the forehead, eyes and nose," New Scientist said.

The difference is the lips on the death mask are thinner than those on the bust, but Ms Hammerschmidt-Himmel contends this is normal, for the lips would have shrunk with the loss of blood pressure after death. But British experts are yet to be convinced, said New Scientist.

Representations of Elizabethan men were typically enhanced by the artist to make the subject look intelligent and rich rather than be true likenesses, which is why busts and portraits from the same era often look similar, art scholars said. Images of Shakespeare have always been bones of contention. Many so-called contemporary likenesses of Shakespeare have been dismissed as having been made after his death, some of them in the 18th century, when he became internationally renowned.

Doubts swirl around the authenticity of the Garrick Club bust itself. Art historians suspect it was made more than 140 years after the playwright died by the French sculptor Louis-Francois Roubiliac.

Yeah, well. Tell that to Rollie Fingers.

It was only a matter of time before...

Click on the above picture to see it at full size.

We interrupt this Lego movie to bring you a special Lego news flash! We're just getting in the very first Lego footage of Dick Cheney after he shot Harry Whittington. We now go live to the scene:



OH, THE LEGO HUMANITY OF IT ALL!

And now, the most fucked up thing that I have ever seen.

OK, remember the other day when I was telling you about how the US was blocking gay rights groups from being able to monitor human rights abuses in countries around the world for the UN?

As bad as that was, NOTHING could have prepared me for this story that I read in, of all places, The Army Times.

Does everybody recall who the Reverend Fred Phelps is? If you think back to the murder of Matthew Shepard (the Wyoming college student who was killed by two young men because he was gay), Rev. Phelps and his followers (made up mostly of his family) from the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas protested at his funeral and trial. Turns out that they have a big problem with homosexuals.



Starting to ring a bell now, isn't he? He's the kind of guy that makes Pat Robertson seem like Walter Cronkite by comparison.

As despicable as that group's demonstration at Shepard's funeral was, it was at least clear why they were there. High profile gay person's death, group hates gay people, ergo they protest gay person's funeral. Disgusting, but at least it's a cause and effect that follows some (albeit horrible) logic.

So what's old Fred up to these days? According to The Army Times, they are now protesting at virtually every funeral of dead soldiers that have died in Iraq.

Wait a minute. Dead soldiers in Iraq? You mean, like after they're shipped home?

That's right.

I don't understand. You mean, gay soldiers who died in Iraq? They only hate gay people, right? So they must be protesting gay soldiers' funerals.

Well, you would think so. But, in fact, no. Due to the army's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, there's no way to know if any of these soldiers were gay, and regardless, the group has said that the soldier's sexuality does not matter. They plan to protest every single soldier's funeral that comes home from Iraq.

And this is not "Send our boys home now" kind of protesting. This is where they chant things like “Thank God for IEDs,” the improvised explosive devices, or homemade bombs, that kill many U.S. soldiers.

What the hell? Why are they protesting at the funerals of dead soldiers, and thanking God for their deaths?

According to their spokesperson, they believe that God killed the soldiers because they fought for a country that embraces homosexuals. They don't have to be gay themselves. The fact that they are fighting for the rights of a nation that has gay people in it is enough for God to punish them with death on the battlefield.

“The scriptures are crystal clear that when God sets out to punish a nation, it is with the sword. An IED is just a broken-up sword,” their spokesperson said. “Since that is his weapon of choice, our forum of choice has got to be a dead soldier’s funeral.”

Hey, you morons! Did it ever occur to you that those soldiers are fighting for your right to be bigoted, intolerant assholes too? How does that fit into your theory?

Thankfully, there is a happy ending to this story. A group of veterans who are also motorcycle enthusiasts had heard a number of these protest stories and vowed to take action. They formed a group called The Patriot Guard Riders who travel with their motorcycles to each funeral site and position themselves next to Phelps's group. When the ceremony begins and the Phelps's begins protesting, the veterans begin revving the motorcycles so loudly that it drowns out the hateful chanting so it cannot be heard by the mourners.

The word of The Patriot Guard Riders has spread quickly and now numbers more than 5,000 members across the country. They only show up when asked by the family, who usually only ask after they learn of the protestors intention to come.

“This is just the right thing to do. This is something America didn’t do in the ’70s,” said Kurt Mayer, the Patriot Guard’s national spokesman, referring to the era when protests against the Vietnam war were common. “Whether we agree with why we’re over there, these soldiers are dying to protect our freedoms.”

“We were glad that the Patriot Guard Riders were there,” said Jackie Pfender, a soldier’s stepmother at a recent funeral. “This group of protesters wanted to put something negative on Jonathan’s funeral. In actuality, it became a positive thing because of the support we had.”

Best case scenario, our soldiers come home soon and this unnecessary insanity ends. Until then, thank god for the Patriot Guard Riders.

Dude! Your robe looks like a bat! It's totally freaking me out!

OK. Seriously. I dare anybody, anybody to tell me that they knew that the Supreme Court was gonna be this much fun.

According to Associated Press, The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Tuesday that a small congregation in New Mexico may use hallucinogenic tea as part of a four-hour ritual intended to connect with God.

Justices, in their first religious freedom decision under Chief Justice John Roberts, moved decisively to keep the government out of a church's religious practice. Federal drug agents should have been barred from confiscating the hoasca tea of the Brazil-based church, Roberts wrote in the decision.

The tea, which contains an illegal drug known as DMT, is considered sacred to members of O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal, which has a blend of Christian beliefs and South American traditions. Members believe they can understand God only by drinking the tea, which is consumed twice a month at four-hour ceremonies.

OK, let's count the jokes that we can pull out of this:

- Upon announcing their verdict, the justices immediately began making out with each other and then eventually fell asleep.

- Every other drug user in the United States immediately filed suit claiming that their drug made them see God too.

- Who knew that this court would rule in the favor of anything associated with freedom? Never mind freedom of religion that's not fundamentalist Christianity? Hello? Bueller? George Bush on line 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9?

- Everyone who watched today's court proceedings from the gallery left the courthouse feeling "very thirsty", and numerous people said that they would be going straight home, possibly only stopping to buy 5 or 6 bags of Doritos.


I know that there must be more, but I can't think of them. Do you have a joke that could go here? Post them in the comment section and I'll add em and give you credit! Let's all have a laugh at this brief lapse in our government's efforts to outlaw everything ever. I'm sure that this mistake will be corrected soon.

Colin Farrell porn video - Is that all there is?

All right, you didn't hear it from me, but this is the supposed Colin Farrell porn video.

(Warning! This is actual people having actual sex! If you have an actual problem with that, do not actually click that link!)

OK, now here's what I don't get. Colin Farrell sued and sued to keep this thing from coming out. Now it's finally out and guess what?

He's nowhere to be seen in the video!

Well, ok, there's one very small part of him in the video, but it's not exactly his most identifiable feature, if you know what I mean. Well, not yet anyway.

Instead, there's some person holding the camera while things are being performed on him and he's like calling out "ARRRRRRRGH! ME FARRRGING ARGYBARGY! RAARRRRRGH!"

Why didn't he just say "That's not me." and let it go? It coulda easily worked, you really cannot tell if it's him or not.

But because he sued, now everybody knows it's him.

Word of advice: If you're ever caught in a porn tape scandal, and your face is not seen in the video, REMEMBER all your have to say is "ARRRRGH! EET'S NOT FARRRRGHING ME! RAAARRRRRRRGH!"

Sumo Kitty!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you:




The World's Largest Kitty!




A 33-pound cat in Qingdao, China, is being described as a "feline monster" because of its 31-inch waist and large size, according to a report.



The 9-year-old cat from the Shandong Province is so heavy it needs the help of its owner to get onto a bed. However, the cat is in surprisingly good health despite its weight.



The cat's owner said it has no interest in eating fish but prefers to eat six pounds of chicken and pork each day.



This fat cat is not alone in his weight problem, according to the report. Obesity has become a serious problem for the modern cat, primarily due to a lack of exercise and a richer diet. Cats are susceptible to a range of illnesses including kidney trouble and diabetes, if they are allowed to remain overweight.



When reached for comment, Garfield the cat said "For the love of god! Where is your self-respect?!?!"

We have met the enemy and he is us.........again

Iran.

Part of the axis of evil. They hate our freedoms. Repressive of their people. Amassing nuclear weapons to attack the free world. Should be treated with extreme suspicion and caution. Right?

That's the message we get virtually every day from the leaders of our government.

So, recently, when Iran put forth a proposal to the United Nations to deny United Nations consultative status to organizations working to protect the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, who was their chief ally in backing this proposal?

That's right. The United States of America.

In a new report by Human Rights Watch, it details how 40 organizations have banded to gather together to demand an explanation from Condoleeza Rice, as to why she made the decision to back the Iranian proposal to exclude any groups concerned with human rights of gay people from being allowed to operate in UN regulated countries.

“This vote is an aggressive assault by the U.S. government on the right of sexual minorities to be heard,” said Scott Long, director of the LGBT rights program at Human Rights Watch. “It is astonishing that the Bush administration would align itself with Sudan, China, Iran and Zimbabwe in a coalition of the homophobic.”

In May 2005, the International Lesbian and Gay Association, which is based in Brussels, and the Danish gay rights group Landsforeningen for Bøsser og Lesbiske (LBL) applied for consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council. Consultative status is the only official means by which non-governmental organizations (NGOs) around the world can influence and participate in discussions among member states at the United Nations. Nearly 3,000 groups enjoy this status.

States opposed to the two groups’ applications moved to have them summarily dismissed, an almost unprecedented move at the UN, where organizations are ordinarily allowed to state their cases. The U.S. abstained on a vote which would have allowed the debate to continue and the groups to be heard. It then voted to reject the applications.

“The United States recklessly ignored its own reporting proving the need for international support for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. “The State Department’s ‘Country Reports on Human Rights Practices’ show severe human rights violations based on gender identity and sexual orientation occur around the world.”

As the U.S. government acknowledged in its 2004 country report on Iran, Iranian law punishes homosexual conduct between men with the death penalty. Human Rights Watch has documented four cases of arrests, flogging, or execution of gay men in Iran since 2003. In its 2004 country report on Zimbabwe, the U.S. government noted President Robert Mugabe’s public denouncement of homosexuals, blaming them for “Africa's ills.” In the past, Mugabe has called gays and lesbians “people without rights” and “worse than dogs and pigs.”

The U.S. has reversed position since 2002, when it voted to support the International Lesbian and Gay Association’s request to have its status reviewed. Officials gave no explanation for the change.

“It is deeply disturbing that, at the UN, the United States has shifted gears toward an aggressive stance against human rights for LGBT people,” said Paula Ettelbrick, executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. “Unfortunately, denying LGBT groups a voice and a presence within the United Nations – the world's most important human rights institution – is fully in keeping with the U.S.’s assault on basic human rights principles worldwide.”

In voting against the applications to the NGO committee, the U.S. was joined by Cameroon, China, Cuba, Iran, Pakistan, the Russian Federation, Senegal, Sudan, and Zimbabwe. Votes in favor of consultative status came from Chile, France, Germany, Peru, and Romania. Colombia, India, and Turkey abstained, while Côte d'Ivoire was absent.

“It is an absolute outrage that the United States has chosen to align itself with oppressive governments – all in an effort to smother the voices of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people around the world,” said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. “It is deeply disturbing that the self-proclaimed ‘leader of the free world’ will ally with bigots at the drop of a hat to advance the right wing’s anti-gay agenda.”

It's not illegal to be gay in the United States.....yet.

Job listing of the week!

From the San Diego edition of Craigslist:

Need tiny clowns

Reply to: job-13475043@craigslist.org
(forwards to an @yahoo.com address)
Date: Sat Jul 12 12:34:04 2003


Now hiring 6-10 smaller carny types to drive/ride in modified "tiny" volkswagen beetle for grand finale of traveling road show.

Experience necessary:

Ability to manipulate small handles under duress.
Resistance to fire is a plus. Similar roadshows are now igniting finale performers.
Ability to dodge potentially dangerous projectiles.
Must get along with others and pack animals.
Excellent communication skills.

Benefits:

Travel and experience the West Valley!



Gee, with benefits like that, what are we waiting for? Let's all 15 of us pile in the Volkswagen and drive down there pronto!

Henry Rollins: terrorist threat?

An interesting article today in News.com about punk rock bon vivant Henry Rollins and his recent run-in with the Australian government.

Rollins, on a recent flight to Australia to play The Big Day Out festival, was apparently turned in to the government as a possible terrorist suspect, because of the book he was reading on the plane, Jihad: The Rise Of Militant Islam In Central Asia. The author, Ahmed Rashid, is a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and the book is published by Yale University Press. Nevertheless, the book's title coupled with Rollins' completely tatooed body and tough-guy demeanor no doubt scared his seat-mate silly, and he fingered Rollins as a terrorist suspect.

The irony about this incident, of course, is that of all entertainers currently working today, Henry Rollins has spent more time in Iraq and Afghanistan directly supporting our troops, through the USO, than virtually anybody else. Yes, he's vehemently anti-Bush, but he's a total hero to the troops for performing over there.

Here he is playing in Afghanistan. Good thing he's surrounded by soldiers, what with him being such a threat and all.

Now, as we all know, there are two sides of Rollins, and it's always a crapshoot as to which one you're gonna get on any given day. There's the super-snarky and sarcastically funny Rollins (my personal favorite), and then there's the meathead "Pain is good, life is pain" Rollins who's a lot less fun and kinda reminds you of that guy who hangs out in the gym all day, even after he's done working out.

So, as he describes in his web diary, Hank gets this letter from the Australian government, and, looking at it objectively, it's actually a fairly nice letter.

“I hope this finds you before you leave Australia as I think its something that won’t surprise you but might give you a smile when you are sitting in a hotel room. I work in one of those Government areas that deals with anti terrorism matters. A fine service is provided but unfortunately we get to read a lot of things submitted by lunatics. The Australian Government set up the National Security Hotline to report terrorists.

The person who sat next to you on the flight from New Zealand does not agree with your politics or choice of reading and so nominated you as a possible threat. As they were too cowardly or stupid to leave their details I can’t call them to discuss their idiocy with them.”

Not so bad, right? I mean, can you imagine the US government writing a letter like that? Hell no, you can't. There would not even be a letter, you would just wake up in Gitmo wondering what the hell is being shoved into the back of you.

So guess which Rollins wrote back?

"Please tell your government and everyone in your office to go fuck themselves. Tell them twice. If your boss is looking for something to do, you can tell him I suggest he go fuck himself. Baghdad's safer than my hometown and your PM is a sissy. You have a nice night.”

Then, on the diary, added:

I really don’t take kindly to that kind of shit. I like it though. Love it. Confrontation. Tension. Adversarial relationships. More please. It’s the only time it gets real.

Sigh. Well, maybe next time, right? I'm sure that the kids are impressed.

The number one rule in advertising? Monkeys are funny.

Stolen directly off of The Tripwire:

Anyone who watched the Super Bowl this year was sure to see the CareerBuilder.com ads with the guy working in an office with a bunch of monkeys. Know which one I mean? Good. Well, in a hilarious viral marketing scheme, CareerBuilder.com has built a website specifically for the purpose of sending "Monk-e-Mail." Basically, you visit this website, choose a chimp, customize your chimp with clothes, headgear, glasses, etc. and then add audio via a variety of options. I was sent one of these yesterday and literally laughed out loud at my computer (which no matter what, makes one look silly). So I spent about an hour last night sending these to a bunch of friends before realizing that I would never, ever get that hour of my life back again, sadly.

I think CareerBuilder.com is pretty smart here, because not only are they spreading their name like wildfire, but tons of people are bound to get fired when their bosses find out they've wasted four hours sending "Monk-e-Mail" to all their friends on company time.

Go here to check it out for yourself.

Some tips:

1. use the "text to speak" function. It's the funniest.
2. the worlds "Holler!" and "Shamalama-ding-dong" sound hilarious.
3. the monkey doesn't really pronounce the word "bitch" correctly, so sadly, "I'm Rick James, bitch" doesn't sound as funny as it should.

That's all. If you get fired, it's not my fault.

Car for sale. Runs good. Serviced by Cooter.

So you're a rebel, are ya?

Sure ya are. You just ain't got the cash to back it up, right?

This is your lucky day.

Behold! The General Lee-Roy! It's the car from the Dukes Of Hazzard, but on a Geo Metro.


From the car's description:

1997 General Lee-Roy Metro Geo. One of a kind. Runs Great. Thousands invested! 35 MPG! WOW!!! This baby will get MORE attention than a 69 Charger. Has a working Dixie horn with 118 db. (Thats loud). Tires are in new condition. Headlights faded, I hear you can get them polished for about 30 bucks. If you are the winning bidder I will throw in a GIT-R-DONE hat for free. Also comes with a Good Ole Boy CD. I own a 2002 Plymouth prowler and it don"t turn heads like this baby. You will have to beat the redneck girls off you if you win the General Lee-Roy. If you are married, Have a dog named Blue, Live in a new double wide, and don't want to lose your wife.....THIS CHICK GITTER AIN'T FUR YOU!!!!!!!!!!




As of right now, the car's price is a bargain at $2550.00. Where else but on Ebay?

Ten ways Dick Cheney can kill you.

Advice for you:



Advice for the vice-president:




If, by some chance, you have not seen the Daily Show's coverage of this, stop what you are doing and go here right now. Amazingly funny.

Wake up! It's time to go to sleep!

Are you like me?


I'm sorry.


All right, let's start again. Are you like me in that you never seem to get enough sleep? OK, now we're getting somewhere.

Well! You're in luck! Modern science has come up with an incredible new way to help revive you when you're feeling sluggish during the day!

Here's the hot new process:

1. Drink a full cup of coffee or soda quickly.

2. Immediately take a nap for no longer than 15 minutes.


That's it! You'll completely feel refreshed. As reported by the slightly over-earnest Achieve-It blog, this new thing is referred to as "The Caffeine Nap", and it's actually backed up by medical research.

Sleep researchers at the Loughborough University in Britain did several tests on fatigued drivers to compare the effects of different methods for a driver can use to stay awake. They put the volunteers in driving simulators while they were sleepy and let them drive. Some of the tests included rolling down windows for cold exposure, blasting the radio and slapping oneself in the face to try to stay awake. But what researchers found worked the best was "The Caffeine Nap"!

Researchers found coffee helps clear your system of adenosine, a chemical which makes you sleepy. So in testing, the combination of a cup of coffee with an immediate nap chaser provided the most alertness for the longest period of time. The recommendation was to nap only 15 minutes, no more or less and you must sleep immediately after the coffee.

See? All this time, we were using caffeine to try to stay awake, and we forgot the most important part: sleep!

Who knew?

Trailer Remixes 4: A New Beginning!

I tell ya, man, I cannot believe how popular these trailer remixes have become.

It's crazy! People can't stop coming for them! I can't believe I'm still finding more of them! It's insanity!

All right, once again, for those who are joining late, a trailer remix is a trailer for a movie that, with some drastic re-editing and completely different music, becomes a trailer for a completely different movie. Before you watch the latest ones, you must watch that have been posted before which are here, here and here.

Tonight's contestants are: Fight Club, D.O.A. (that's right, the one from 1949), Office Space, and a special trailer remix tribute to Star Wars!

This now bring the count to 18 trailer remixes on this blog. I can't keep doing this, but I'm powerless to stop. Help me, someone, I beg of you.

Hey! I've got an idea! Let's update some of the stories we've been talking about lately! Yay!

As always, if you missed the story the first time, just click on the picture next to the update, and read the original story first. Then come back and read the update. Here we go!

- PR Newswire is reporting that Chuck Lamb, also known as Dead Body Guy, has landed a part in this season's final episode of What I Like About You on the WB network. He's also been offered his first starring role in the low budget horror movie "Horrorween", which is about a murderer stalking a theatre showing "The Rocky Horror Picture Show". Gee, a guy who specializes in playing dead bodies starring in a horror movie. I wonder what happens to him?



- It turns out that I was completely wrong about Ron Michaelson being the "saddest son of a bitch in show business". He's done quite well for himself, with appearances on numerous sitcoms, including Will & Grace, Entourage, and Joan Of Arcadia, as well as a memorable performance on Arrested Development. The title of "saddest son of a bitch in show business" now reverts to its original holder: namely, me.



- Well, the good news is that Sly Stone showed up at the Grammys and he is still alive. The bad news is virtually everything else that surrounded his appearance. As predicted here, he was preceeded a wide variety of today's artists completely destroying his hits in every style imaginable. You could tell from the mega-ironic introduction by Dave Chappelle, who basically said that Sly was driven out of the business by the same forces that drove Dave out of the business (i.e. the people who pay you an extraordinary amount of money for you to show up some place on time). It was clear that this was going to be a bad journey through weirdsville. Backed by a band that strangely included everyone from Nile Rodgers of Chic on guitar to Randy Jackson of American Idol on bass, this horrific medley of Sly's songs including an extremely weak version of "Everyday People" by Maroon 5 (also known as this year's Verve Pipe), Joss Stone shoobedooing her way through "Family Affair", and I do not know what song Will.I.Am. from the Black Eyed Peas thought he was doing, but whatever it was, he should not do it again. Then, the big moment everybody has been waiting for, Sly Stone comes out on stage and................

What the hell? He looks like Jean Beauvoir from the Plasmatics!



Sly Stone................................Jean Beauvoir


Sly wears a huge silver coat to cover up his hunchback, and I mean, there he is, in person. It's a miracle. He gets up behind the keyboard and sings half of the chorus of "I Want To Take You Higher". He looks sorta lost, the band is going and he just seems like this kitten that was thrown in the middle of them to see what he would do. Now looking very confused, Sly walks to the front of the stage, waves to the crowd and leaves. The band barely seems to notice his exit.

That's it? We waited all this time for this?

Immediately, the web is alive with rumors: Sly was mad because the band wasn't following him, Sly was drugged up and barely knew where he was, Sly was never all there in the first place, you name it.

Leave it to Page Six of the New York Post to give us the actual scoop. (Yes, I know what I said about them the other day, but Page Six and the theatre columnist Michael Riedel are the only reasons to read that rag, trust me). It turns out that Sly was actually suffering from a massive case of stage fright! He hasn't seen 5 people in a room in 13 years, much less 5 million people who were watching that night. When Sly left the stage, it wasn't because he was mad. It was because he had to throw up! He went backstage and vomited all over everything, and then literally walked out of the building by himself.

Said a backstage witness: "He was overcome with stage fright. He left the building on his own. No one saw him out. No one knows where he went."

Typical Sly. The more questions that are answered, the more questions appear.

Who's the new dumbass?

All right, I'll admit it. It's been a while since we did a story here about a dumbass.

Fortunately, people never disappoint. In today's Chicago Tribune, they have a story about a burgular who broke into three separate homes in rural Wisconsin. Now, this guy, he coulda stolen whatever he wanted, but, let's face it, small homes in rural Wisconsin aren't exactly goldmines of wealth.

So what does he do? Makes himself at home, of course! In each of the homes, the burgular allegedly took the time to make coffee, cook and eat meals, take showers, pick out a change of clothes and watch television.

``He took clothes and meals,'' Sheriff Brian Rahn said. ``Whatever he was finding in those refrigerators, he was filling up on it.''

So, with that much activity at the crime scenes, all we have to do is gather some evidence, and we should be able to find this guy fast, right? Well, that may be a little advanced for this part of the country. Not a lot of DNA labs out here.

BUT! This is where the dumbass part comes in. Turns out our burgular checked his email in one of these homes, and, yes, you guessed it, forgot to log out when he was finished. Lori Menzel of the town of Kewaskum said the burglar left his Yahoo account open after checking his personal e-mail on the computer at her home.

``He never logged out,'' she said, adding: ``He made himself at home here. He spent some time in our bedroom trying on my husband's clothes. I could tell he went through some of my clothes.''

Something tells me that it's just a matter of time before this guy gets caught. What he will look like WHEN he is caught (or better still, when it is explained to him HOW he was caught) remains a mystery, however.

Looney Tunes Anatomy Class 101

There's a fine line between "Wow, that's really cool" and "Wow, that's really creepy". I can't decide which this is, so you tell me.

Graphic artist Michael Paulus takes some of the world's most enduring cartoon characters and shows us what their insides look like, literally.

He explains: "Animation was the format of choice for children's television in the 1960s, a decade in which children's programming became almost entirely animated. Growing up in that period, I tended to take for granted the distortions and strange bodies of these entities. These icons are usually grotesquely distorted from the human form from which they derive. Being that they are so commonplace and accepted as existing, I thought I would dissect them like science does to all living objects - trying to come to an understanding as to their origins and true physiological make up. Possibly to better understand them and see them in a new light for what they are in the most basic of terms. I decided to take a select few of these popular characters and render their skeletal systems as I imagine they might resemble if one truly had eye sockets half the size of its head, or fingerless-hands, or feet comprising 60% of its body mass."

Ready? Here we go:



Tweety



Charlie Brown



Fred Flintstone



Baby Huey



and Shmoo
(and who even knew that Shmoo had a skeleton?)

Many more to be found at Michael’s wesbite.

The luckiest/saddest son of a bitch in show business.

My friend Jason is an actor, and does a lot of work in commercials. Several years ago, we began casually compiling a list of people that we could consider "the luckiest son of bitch in show business". The criteria was actually very simple: they had to be people who had little to no acting talent, but somehow made a bazillion dollars by being in the right place at the right time, and ended up being cast in a role that is literally too easy to screw up.

Consider the following:



The Verizon guy.




Richard Karn from Home Improvement




John Ratzenberger from Cheers




and of course, the all-time winner was anybody ever hired to literally just say "Zoom zoom" for a Nissan commercial.



All right, so there was another that one could have easily added to this list:



Ron Michaelson, also known as the Ditech.com guy.

Now I say could have been added because I read this interview with Ron today that appeared on CNN, and I have to say that, unfortunately, not only is he not on this list, but he now appears at the top of the "saddest son of a bitch in show business" list.

Why? According to his interview, Michaelson does not receive residuals from his appearances on those commercials. That's right! Turns out they bought him out at a low rate, so now he just watches himself all god damn day on TV with no residual cash to show for it, despite the fact that he basically established their brand name.

For those who do not know, commercial actors basically live on the residuals that they make. When an actor lands a national spot like this, usually it means that they are set for life and their years of hard struggle are over. For Michaelson, however, he got one buyout rate for a bunch of ads that they filmed all at once, and now they play on an endless loop with no additional compensation for him! You think those ads are painful for you, imagine what they do to him!

Wait! It gets worse! When asked by CNN if he, in fact, refinanced his house with Ditech.com, he explained that he does not actually own a house. In fact, he actually still lives with his mom! Worse still, his mom refinanced with Ditech! Twist the knife a little deeper, mom!

I'm practically loading the gun myself for this guy and then I read this from the transcript:

CNN: The next role for you perhaps? Anything you haven't tackled, beyond Ditech? And I do realize that that's the role of a lifetime, but beyond that?

MICHAELSON: Well, I'm willing to go to be a 2-minute to 8-minute actor in films, et cetera. I've done some of that, but would like to do even more.

CNN: So put the word out, you're available.

MICHAELSON:Yes.

This is what this guy is looking to do? Increase his screen time up to 2 minutes? This is his goal?

Congratulations, my friend. You are officially the saddest son of a bitch in show business.

What's wrong with Broadway theatre is all the dead people.

(This post is dedicated to a certain friend of mine, who would kill me if I mentioned their name in connection with this story, but I just have one word to say here: fruity!)

There's journalism.

And then there's the New York Post.

A bizarre but perversely interesting article today in the Post about why the Cort Theater on 48th St. in NYC cannot seem to host a show that does not bomb infamously within a very short period of time.

It's a valid point: good shows such as Mario Cantone's Laugh Whore and the super-fun children's musical A Year With Frog And Toad as well as bad shows like Hollywood Arms and, god help us all, Bobbi Boland, the show starring Farrah Fawcett, (which was so bad that it closed before it even got to opening night), all of them died a fast and horrible death at the Cort.

So, with the upcoming revival of Barefoot In The Park just days away from its opening at the Cort, does the Post do an in-depth story on why audiences are not connecting with the shows that being offered in today's climate of commercial theatre?

Nope.



Instead, they hire these two, psychic Stephen Robinson and feng shui consultant Judith Wendell, to go into the Cort and see if they can "sense" what's wrong with the theater.

Well, surprise surprise, the feng shui expert's complaints are: the theatre's lobby is too small, everything inside the theater is too crowded together, and the bathrooms are very bleak and unwelcoming.

Now, this would be a valid assessment of the state of things of the Cort, except that it also happens to be an accurate statement about virtually every theatre on Broadway. Has this person never been inside a theatre in New York before? There wasn't a whole lotta feng shui back when they were making these places, cookie. They're supposed to look good, and get the maximum number of people possible into it without it being (too) unsafe. Feng shui was the name of a guy working on the railroad when the Cort was built in 1912.

The feng shui detective goes one step further however when, according to the Post, she checked her pendulum for signs of "unhappy spirits." No ghosts there, she says, but she did feel "negative thought forms of previous tenants . . . unhappy actors, illness, hardship, sadness."

Really? Unhappy actors in a theater? Wow. That is just impossible to believe. The pendulum told you that, did it? My goodness.

Unfortunately, the psychic does not fare much better. He seemed to feel that an actress, long ago, had suffered something unpleasant in the theatre, and that the entire place had the feeling of negativity of a business deal gone bad.

Really? A business deal gone bad in a Broadway theater? Wow. That is just impossible to believe. The theatre told you that, did it? My goodness.

But what about the fact that Barefoot In The Park appears to be doing well, and that audiences seem to be responding positively to the show? The psychic admits that he saw "the bond" between the cast members as they took their bows, and the happy faces in the audience. But all that conflicted energy, he says, is working against them.

"If this show lasts, it will drain the actors," he says. "It will be an uphill battle."

Really? Actors being drained from the run of a Broadway show? Wow. That is just impossible to believe. The paper hired you to tell us that, did it? My goodness.


Hey, before I forget! Let's update some of the stories we've been talking about lately! Yay!

Now, you know the rules. If you missed the story the first time, just click on the picture next to the update, and read the original story first. Then come back and read the update. Here we go!

- Hooked, the swell short movie by Richie Keen and Heath Corson, has its website up in anticipation of their appearance at the US Comedy Arts Festival next month. Check out the trailer here. It's fun.



- Dave Chappelle finally resurfaced this week on Oprah, and, as we first reported way back when, he did in fact go crazy from smoking too much dope and having too much pressure. The interview, by all accounts, was really weird, and Chappelle is starting to psychologically resemble the people he used to make fun of, such as Rick James, Prince and Michael Jackson. However, Chappelle did say that he would not be adverse to coming back to his show to finish the third season, as long as proceeds from the show would go to some charities. Chappelle said "I ain't mad at nobody", but I think that the jury is still out on that.


- From the Los Angeles Times, Paris Hilton, still awaiting word on her other court case, has been slapped with a restraining order by a Los Angeles party planner, who said that Paris was hounding him day and night with phone calls and harrassment (video available here), because he apparently suggested to Paris's boyfriend, Greek shipping heir Stavros Niarchos, that he would be happier with his former girlfriend Mary-Kate Olsen. OK, look, I find Paris as annoying as anybody else does, but seriously, a restraining order? I mean, all you have to do to stop Paris Hilton is like give her a math problem or something. If you need to have 85 pound Paris Hilton restrained, it's time for you to start taking some self-esteem classes.