I recently realized that this summer marks the 10th anniversary of my rope bracelet. Yes, for the past 10 years this thing has not left my wrist. It's probably infested with disease... but then again, it does go in the shower with me, so gets all soaped up. Either way I refuse to remove it... it'll only come off when it actually falls off (which, considering it's made out of rock-climbing rope, seems highly unlikely to happen).
Where did it come from? I got it during a 5-week backpacking trip in Alaska the summer after my junior year of high school. Me, 12 other teens (eventually knocked down to 10 when 2 were busted smoking pot), and 2 adult guides. We were all given these rope bracelets and asked to tie a knot in it to signify a goal we had for the summer. I have no recollection of what my goal for the summer was... probably something lame, along the lines of "make great friends and have fun." I'd be willing to bet dollars to donuts* that I'm the only one still wearing the bracelet... but, since I've lost touch with everyone else, I can't say for sure.
Why won't I take it off? I don't know, exactly. I somehow got it into my mind that I wouldn't, and I haven't. Part of my Peter-Pan Syndrome? It's gotten me into some arguments when people feel it's inappropriate to wear (at a black-tie wedding, in a high-school play), but I've persevered. Maybe when (if) I have a son, I'll cut it off and give it to him. He'll probably be like "what the fuck?" Or maybe he'll think it's cool. Time will tell.

* Note: I have no idea what that expression means. But it was used in an episode of The Simpsons, so it has become part of my vernacular.

2 Gross
Thanks to Gawker for pointing out this website, where a mere $33 can get you a shit (er, "fecal matter") sample from David Lee Roth. The only thing stranger than the concept is the roster. Never before have Norman Mailer, Gary Busey, and Def Leppard's one-armed drummer been in the same place at the same time. And props to them for at one point having DNA from the least-famous Goonie.

And thanks to co-worker J__ for sending me this link, with before and after photos of a face-transplant patient. He has an odd resemblance to the acid-attack victim who wanders the NYC subway system.

If there was any lingering doubts about my on-and-off Hilary Duff crush, this puts an end to it for all time.

I'm fairly certain that the Simpsons movie will be a trainwreck. These two rough scenes, shown at Comic-Con, don't do much to make me think otherwise.
- Clip 1
- Clip 2

The feud between Owen Wilson and Steely Dan might be the stupidest in the history of celebrity beef. But this letter is pretty damn funny.

I recently received an e-mail for a weekend retreat called Back To Camp, which asks alumni of various (and from what I can tell all Jewish) sleepaway camps. As a kid I attended 4 summer camps over 7 years (1 at Eagle Cove, then 2 each at Wekeela*, Akiba, and Canadensis), and was never thrilled about any of the experiences. And yet I kept getting sent back. I guess my parents really needed some alone-time during the summer. You'd think they would've gotten the hint when, one year at my goodbye dinner the night before I was shipped out, I computed how many seconds until I would next see them (yes, I was also sort of a math geek at the time).
I haven't kept in touch with friends I met at camp. I had no interest in becoming a counselor. So I don't see myself attending this event. But if you did go to any of these camps and want to reconnect, knock yourself out.

* One day when I was pretending to be sick so I could stay home from school, I was flipping through a Peterson's Guide to Summer camps. When I turned to the section on Wekeela, I found a picture of my 9-year-old self fishing off a pier, wearing a huge mesh baseball cap and Jams (the lame 80s version with big stupid plaid patterns all over them). I don't remember the camp ever asking my permission to use the photo… or giving my any money for it...

Out of this list of the 50 films to see before you die, I've watched 35 of 'em.

Of course it is a British list, which is why many of the choices seem ludicrous.

Update: Interestingly, out of AFI's list of the 100 greatest American films of all time, I've seen 99; the only one left is A Place in the Sun. This was accomplished through a combination of taking film classes in college, working at Blockbuster video for a summer, and being a hard-core couch potato. I could probably use some more friends.

Wow, CNBC must be really big fans of Entourage to put this in one of their reports. Or they must be really idiots. I'm leaning towards the latter.

Complete Nonsense
There's an article in Sports Illustrated listing the 10 most unbreakable records in baseball. #1 on the list: Cal Ripken's consecutive games streak. I had originally pegged Cy Young's 511 wins as the most unbreakable, but now realize it's got to be Young's 749 complete games. How can anybody touch that? Last season the pitchers with the most complete games were Chris Carpenter and Dontrelle Willis, with 7 each. At that rate, they'd have to pitch for well over 100 years to reach the mark, and somehow I don't see that happening. The year before, Ben Sheets and Mark Mulder led the league with 5 apiece. Clemens and Maddox are the only 2 active pitchers with more than 100 complete games. Hell, most pitchers don't start 749 games in their career, let alone pitch all 9 innings. Let's look at some of the best, longest-lasting current pitchers. Clemens: 671 starts as of the end of last season. Maddox: 639. Randy Johnson: 513. Looking back, even Nolan Ryan, who pitched FOREVER, only started 773, ending with 222 complete games.
Other records are within the realm of possibility. Can someone stay healthy for 16 full seasons and never miss a game? It's unlikely, but possible. 3 consecutive no-hitters? Also not likely, but with the right amount of skill and luck, it could happen. Same with the 56-game hit streak or the .400 season (which have come close to being broken). No matter how much luck or skill is involved, nobody will ever come close to breaking the CG record.

TRL Moment of the Week - Freshly Buried in the TRL Graveyard
Uma Thurman and Luke Wilson dropped by yesterday to promote My Super Ex-Girlfriend. The following two stunt ideas were e-mailed to my boss, independent of each other, one by me and one by the other writer (I won't say which one is his and which one is mine... but you should be able to guess). Both were shot down.

My Super's Ex-Girlfriend
-We have kids who live in apartments bring in their super, along with his ex-girlfriend. (Or Luke and Uma track down their supers and ex-girlfriends.) Not sure where we go from there.

My Soup or Ex-Girlfriend?
-We give guys a choice: get back together with your ex-girlfriend, or we'll give you this bowl of soup. First, the girl pleads her case of why she's better than a bowl of soup. Then, Uma and Luke weigh in with their opinions. What will the guy choose? Stay tuned!!!

Silent Bob Has an Acid Tongue
I have a feeling that if Kevin Smith and Joel Siegel ever got into an actual fistfight, it would be pretty wussy. But Siegel takes a savage verbal beating by Smith on the Opie & Anthony show. So for all you people who go see Clerks 2 this weekend and decide to walk out, just make sure not to yell profanities as you leave.

Rick Moranis was gonna play the janitor in The Breakfast Club? Cameron Diaz was hired to play Sonia in Mortal Kombat? Kevin Costner would've been the lead in WarGames? All this and more according to this site...

Last night I went to see Sid N Susie (a.k.a. Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs) at Bowery Ballroom. They were performing songs from Under the Covers, Vol. 1. This is their first album together since their work as Ming Tea in the Austin Powers films. Sure enough, what happened? The Sid N Susie concert turned into a short-lived Ming Tea reunion, as Mike Myers came out to perform "BBC" during the encore. He's the one in the white shirt (don't worry… he's not as blurry in person). The much-less-than-capacity crowd went nuts.
The rest of the concert was underwhelming. I'm not sure what even made me go… covers generally bug me, but that Susanna (er, Susie) is just so gosh-darn cute. Anyway, they proved that the originals were much better than their versions. Plus Susanna (er, Susie) kept forgetting words, which she blamed on just having performed for a week with the Bangles and only having 1 night to rehearse for this show. I didn't mind when she screwed up… she's just so gosh-darn cute. Matthew Sweet (er, Sid), on the other hand, looks like he ate the other Bangles. But at least he proved to be a competent, and prepared, musician. In addition to covers from The Beatles, Neil Young, The Bee-Gees, the Zombies, and The Who ("The Kids Are Alright" was the best song of the night, even though Susanna… er, Susie… messed up the beginning and wanted to start over but got overruled by the others), we were treated to "Manic Monday" and "Girlfriend."
If you're interested at all, they're performing on Conan tonight. Although I doubt Myers will pop in.

I just received an e-mail from an unknown sender. Usually I just delete stuff like that, but the subject line, "woigy," intruiged me. So I opened it. Here are the contents of the e-mail, in its entirety:
It seemed that Bilbo was not going to be eaten after all. The wizard and the eagle-lord appeared to know one another slightly, and even to be on friendly terms. As a matter of fact Gandalf, who had often been in
Now I'm not really a Lord of the Rings fan, but my curiousity has been piqued. What happens next, mysterious author?

Please keep this guy the hell away from me...

TRL Moment of the Week
On Monday, day 1 of Backstage Pass Week, we had a phone interview with Teddy Geiger. Damien asked him if has any pre-show rituals, and Teddy said that he gathers his band together and chants a word or phrase. Damien asks him what the word is, and Teddy says that it changes every time, that it's the first thing that pops into his head. Obviously Damien follows up by asking what the word would be right now, and was rewarded with this exchange.
Teddy: I don't know. Now?
Damien: Yeah, right now.
Teddy: I'm not sure. Um…um-um-um-um...
Damien: Come on Teddy, you're killing me.
Teddy: Well, it could be… lampshade.
Damien: Lampshade?
Teddy: It could be… um… forearm.
Damien: Yeah, could be.
Teddy: It could be necktie.
Damien: Sure, it could be.
Way to think on your toes, Teddy boy. You are the epitome of rock & roll.

HollaBach Girl
Why am I just now hearing about Sebastian Bach covering Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl" on Gilmour Girls? And is there anything he won't stoop to these days?

All-Tard Move
The more I think about it, the more annoyed I am that Bud Selig wants to institute a policy in which pitchers selected to the All-Star Game must be available to pitch for that game, meaning they cannot pitch for their team the game before the All-Star break (it's in this article, about halfway down. Why should the All-Star Game be given more importance than games that could determine whether a team makes the playoffs? It's a fucking exhibition! Watch the players during the game… they're not playing their hardest, they're having fun, joking around, enjoying the spotlight. Yes, they'd like to win, but this is more of a celebration than a hardcore sporting event. Hell, there were 24 pitchers on the roster available to pitch, and only 15 actually played. Was there a single fan actually upset that Glavine and Contreras wouldn't be able to play? Anyone who was tuning in or buying tickets specifically to see them? And can you imagine the uproar from fans if a team misses the playoffs by 1/2 a game because they were forced to bench their ace for one game? It's bad enough that this game determines home-field advantage for the World Series, as opposed to performance during the season. Selig needs to realize that even though he's commissioner, he is not the most important part of the game. Leave things alone.

Good luck getting any actual work done once you've started playing this game. Since their aren't really any instructions, basically you have to catch the wad of paper the other guy throws by moving your arm and clicking your mouse, then throw the wad into the garbage pail by whipping your arm and clicking your mouse.
It takes a very long time to get the hang of it.

Happy Jack (er, Brian)

After reading an article about happiness in this week's New York magazine, I decided to take the online Authentic Happiness Inventory test this morning. Above is how I scored. Apparently I am almost exactly as happy as the rest of the world, or at least of people exactly like me. I expected to score higher than a 3.0. I seem happier than that. Is it possible that I don't know what true happiness is? Myabe I'm missing out on moments of extreme bliss. Maybe I should buy more lotto tickets.

Note: I'm sure that my happiness score plummeted to about a 2.4 an hour after I took the test, when I watched footage of Paris Hilton in the recording studio, laying down vocals for a song called "Fight Over Me" with the following lyrics:
Everytime I turn around, the boys fighting over me
Everytime I step out the house, they wanna fi-ight over me
Maybe cause I'm hot to death and I'm so so so sexy
All the boys, all the silly boys, they wanna fi-ight over me

Sad news about Syd Barrett. He did leave behind a legacy of great music. And this video of him documenting an acid trip.

I can't help but feel partially responsible for this, as I recently mentioned that I would love to see Pink Floyd reunite with him. Let's hope Slash and Duff look both ways before crossing the street.

Thom Yorke appears and performs on this week's Henry Rollins Show on IFC. You can watch one of the two songs here.

Also, I think this may be my favorite music video of 2006 so far (note I said video, not song). Such a simple concept, but it's brilliant.

Why is it that everytime I say I will never watch another episode of the U.S. version of The Office, they do something to make me watch just one more? The latest is that some cast members of the brilliant British version will guest-star on an episode next season. I don't know why the U.S. version would agree to this... it'll just show everyone how inferior it is to the original.

Jimmy Dean... Rock On!
Congrats to my friend and co-worker S____, who is starring as The Cloud in a new series of Jimmy Dean Sausage ads. The commercials are not airing yet, but you can see some additional promos here.
(Note: you may also recognize him from this Microsoft commercial)

Worst... Duet... Ever!
So I recently noticed that the reunited Box Tops are playing a free show in New York next month. Which led me to do some research into the band. Which led me to notice that they do a Blondie cover on an album called When Pigs Fly: Songs You Never Thought You'd Hear. Which led me to find this, a cover of "Unforgettable"... by Ani DiFranco and Jackie Chan.
Ugh.

Again I am lazy today, so all I can offer is this trailer for The Science of Sleep, which I am now obsessed with.

Stop... Hammertime
The other night, Conan O'Brien asked his viewers for help: download MC Hammer's new song from iTunes so that he won't be poor anymore and Conan won't feel guilty about cracking jokes at his expense. The new song is called "I Got It From the Town." You can hear it for free on Hammer's MySpace page (yes, he doesn't have a house but he has a MySpace page).
The lyrics of the chorus go "Where'd you get it from? I got it from the town." Having no idea what that means, I asked a co-worker, who explained that the town = Oakland. Glad he cleared that up for me.

I don't really have much motivation to write anything after the long 4th of July weekend, so here are some more random facts about me.
- I believe the worst song of all time is LFO, "Summer Girls"...
- The first time I ever got dumped was in 4th grade. I was dating Martha A_____, and she passed me a note that said "Do you like me: yes/no. Do you love me: yes/no." For "like" I checked the "yes" box, but for "love" I drew an "I don't know" box in the middle and checked it. That was the end of that...
- I still own 2 pair of Skidz and wore one of them as recently as this past weekend...
- My handwriting is the equivalent of a 5-year-old's…
- In my lifetime, the movie I have seen more than any other is Beetlejuice...
- I never drink coffee… can't stand the taste...
- I currently have 6403 songs on my iPod. Artist with the most: The Beach Boys. 2nd most: The Kinks...
- Growing up I wanted to be a veterinarian, but changed my mind when I went to an orientation meeting to volunteer at the Humane Society and saw a video of animals being put to sleep…
- I have never broken a bone. I have never had surgery (except for wisdom teeth removal). The worst injury of my life was when my left rotator cuff atrophied away for some unknown reason, causing my left arm to continually slip out of its shoulder and forcing me to do 4 months of physical therapy...
- My current favorite album of all time is The Zombies, "Odyssey & Oracle." If you don't own it or haven't heard it, go get it right now. You'll understand why during the chorus of track 1 when the singers kick in after the piano...
- My first celebrity crushes (to my recollection) were Kim Basinger and Winona Ryder. I still fancy both of them...
- When I climb (or descend) stairs, I always try to take the last step with my right foot. Don't know why...
- I can currently benchpress 215 pounds. It could probably be more, but for some reason I refuse to use spotters…
- If I could have any job in the entertainment industry, it would be to write for South Park…
- I have been to two continents (North America and Europe), and will hit a third (South America) in August when I travel to Buenos Aires…