I've just wrapped up my second stint at Cash Cab. Current question tally: 1,826. That's still 2nd place on their all-time list, but there's no way I'm catching the champ (he's at just under 4,000 and still going). But nobody is close to catching me at the moment either.
We were writing for Cash Cab: After Dark this time around, which meant they were looking for edgier questions. But apparently the following questions I wrote were deemed too edgy and rejected:
Given its resemblance to a crustacean, pubic lice is more commonly referred to as what?

- Crabs

What personal lubricant is commonly used to represent slime in films, including Alien and Ghostbusters?

- K-Y Jelly (also accept Panitsa Jelly)

Currently used purely for pleasure, what device was originally invented to help doctors cure female hysteria?

- Vibrator

What synonym for runway is used to describe the hair left on a female after a Brazilian Wax?

- Landing strip

Cash Cab is a good job, but it's nice to get a break from writing questions to rechange my batteries. Hopefully it'll also allow me to put some more effort into this site... the effort has been sorely lacking of late.

Are You Ready for Some Football?!?
The NFL season is slowly approaching, which also means it's almost time for fantasy football. So I'm in the hunt for the perfect team name. I usually go for the play-on-words-using-a-real-player's-name. Which is odd, as I hate puns and I DESPISE movies with names-as-puns in their title (such as Raising Helen... ugh).
Anyway, here are the three I've come up with so far:
- Rice Maroney
- Boldin the Beautiful
- Romo Arigato
At the moment I'm leaning towards Romo, but any suggestions would be appreciated.

An Open Letter to Bill Maher
Dear Mr. Maher,
Not too long ago I wrote a letter to one of your guests, Dana Carvey, for his embarrassingly poor appearance on your show. Now I have a bone to pick with you regarding your recent HBO stand-up special.
I'll cut right to the chase: you need to stop laughing at your own jokes.
As a regular viewer of Real Time, I long ago learned to fast-forward through your monologue, as it's impossible to sit through 7 minutes of you chuckling at all your own punchlines. Why I thought I could make it through an hour of that, I'm not quite sure. But I only made it through 10 minutes before giving up.
Look, I know some of your material is funny. If it wasn't, I wouldn't watch. But it's my job, and the job of your audience, to laugh. Not yours. Sure, it's okay to do it every once in a while; take notes on people like Dave Chappelle and Jon Stewart. But you... after every punchline, you take a beat, then laugh as if you've never heard the material before, let alone wrote it yourself. It's almost as if you need to signal that the joke is supposed to be funny. If that's the case, then you need to work on your material. If it's not the case, then you're just stroking your ego. Do musicians clap at themselves after each song? No they do not. You should follow suit.
I hope you'll take my suggestion to heart, as I would enjoy being able to continue watching you perform.
Cheers,
Brian

Longest... Day... Ever!
The stupid internet was down at the Cash Cab office today. All day. It brought writing game show questions back to the dawn of man. How did people research stuff before the internet? And how did I get through a day without being able to check e-mail / fantasy baseball / random websites? It's sad I'm so worked up about this.

This is a couple days late, but Saturday was the 20th anniversary of the release of Appetite for Destruction. Holy crap, I'm getting old fast. I've already documented the story about how I was unable to buy the cassette as a child (now I'm unable to buy Chinese Democracy, but for entirely different reasons... Axl, I'm looking in your direction...). I may not have known what Mr. Brownstone meant, but I think I spent every morning of my 5th-grade year listening to side 1 of the album. And damn if it doesn't sound as good today as it did back then. In fact, I'm listening to it right now, as I type this post. And smiling.
I'm glad that the original members (except for Steven Adler) all seem to be happy with their current places in life. And now we're a mere 5 years away from their inevitable induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which I'm hoping will lead to a reunion. Don't tell me I'm the only one thinking about this already...
Anyway, in honor of the anniversary, here are a bunch of videos from a concert they played at the Ritz in February 1988. Those were the good old days.

This video of blindfolded sculptors recreating Lionel Richie's clay head is amazing!

(In case you need a refresher, here's the classically awful original)

They say you can't put a price on a human life. But according to this site, my cadaver is worth $4,475. Sounds like a bargain to me.
What's yours worth?

I Think I'm Blind!!!
This morning I was waiting for the elevator in my apartment building. Just as it arrived, I heard my next-door neighbor (a woman in her 80s) start to open her door. I held the elevator for her, expecting her to ask me to wait while she locked up. To my horror, she opened the door to reveal herself, completely nude, in all her saggy, wrinkled glory. She spotted me, let out a surprised gasp, and quickly shut the door. I let the elevator door close and headed downstairs, traumatized for life.
What was she doing leaving her apartment naked? There was nothing outside her door that needed to be retrieved... she obviously wasn't planning on going anywhere without any clothes on, as I spooked her back inside... why oh why did this happen? And how will she (or I) react the next time we encounter each other?

My friend just sent me a link to the hottest new dating site, PotPartner.com. Yup, where you can "meet your smokin match!" This idea is so good, it's amazing stoners were able to come up with it.

I've been playing this paper airplane simulator for the past 5 minutes, and will probably spend another, oh, 16,243 doing it. Lots of fun for the office. So far my best distance is 59.663m. Can you beat me? Probably...

For fun at home, especially if you're not getting any "fun" at home, try this: Vulva, the artificial vaginal scent. Can this really be real?

Update: New high score: 71.259. Why can't I stop?

Update 2: A monster throw just put me at 101.514. I'm sure I'll never duplicate that, so I think I'm gonna retire. However it's still just 80,270 on the global rank. How do people get so much farther than I do?

No Laughing Matter
Last night I went to see a former co-worker perform stand-up at the Comedy Cellar. She’s new to the comedy world, and the show was a competition. Luckily, my co-worker gave a surprisingly solid set (meaning I wouldn’t have to feign laughter or lie during our post-show conversation), and she won the audience vote. She moves onto the finals on August 2nd. Congrats and good luck!
Unfortunately, I also had to sit through some of the worst stand-ups I’ve ever seen. The biggest offender was the first performer, who was a semi-professional not involved in the contest. He started off his set with two minutes on Brokeback Mountain. Brokeback Mountain! What year does he think this is? Then he had the gall to steal one of the oldest jokes in the book: “A lot of people think I’m gay, but I’m not. My boyfriend’s gay…” Heh, good one. And to top it all off, he finished his set by complaining about the audience, saying that we were “good, not great.” Well maybe if your material had been “good, not crap,” we would’ve laughed.

If you want something that’s really funny, check out this photo of the world’s tallest man meeting the world’s smallest man.

And on the subject of stand-ups, here’s professional comic Sandra Bernhart taking a Rorschach test.

Barry Manilow's new 70's covers album features a duet with Rosie O'Donnell on Elton John's "Don't Go Breaking My Heart." Every single part of that sentence is terrible.

And while we're in the news, Apple will allegedly be releasing an iPhone Nano, which will be smaller and less expensive. Is the next step an iPhone shuffle, which will dial people at random?

Cash Cab Tidbits of the Week
1) Do you know what happens when you type =rand() into a Microsoft Word document? Try it out.
2) British scientists have apparently worked out a formula to calculate Beer Goggle vision, taking into account alcohol consumption, lighting, and distance. Interesting stuff. And I guess that means they have nothing better to do, such as cure cancer or fight the climate change...
Update
3) The guy who sings in the Bud Light Real Men of Genius (and previously in the Real American Heroes) radio commercials is Dave Bickler, former lead singer of Survivor. Yup, he's the guy who sang "Eye of the Tiger."

Aw Yeah! Aw Fuck!
The other day the Best Drama and Best Comedy top-ten Emmy finalists were leaked. The good news is, Friday Night Lights has made the cut... so far. The bad news is, where the hell is The Wire? How can it have been pushed out of the way by the worst... season... ever of 24? To be fair the producers of 24 only submitted the first hour, which was pretty incredible; if voters didn't watch the whole season, I'm sure they'd be impressed. By the same token, a viewer who doesn't watch The Wire regularly and only sees one random episode would probably be quite lost. But anyone who watched the full seasons of both shows can't deny that The Wire wins hands-down. I would say it's better than any of the 10 on that list. It gets no respect, I tell ya... no respect.

Also, Two and a Half Men but no South Park?

Proof My Mom Has Transformed into a Jewish Grandmother
Mom: The woman on the machine next to me at the gym yesterday was watching TRL. Damien was interviewing some guy with pants below his pupik.
Me: His what?
Mom: (pause) His pupik.
Me: (laughing) What is that?
Mom: You've never heard pupik before?
Me: No.
Mom: It means bellybutton.
Me: Don't most people wear their pants below their bellybutton?
Mom: Well these pants were looooooow. Even below his crack-in-the-back.

Also, thanks to Lindsay (and also Defamer) for this hilarious / creepy Chris Farley-looking baby.

The Thrilling Conclusion of my DVR Adventures
I called Time Warner when I got home from work on Friday, again explained what the problem was, and was told that there is no problem with their system and that it must be my DVR that's at fault. Somehow I was able to schedule an appointment for Saturday, and the technician came exactly between the scheduled hours. Unfortunately, he informed me that my DVR was “fried” and he had to swap it out. There’s no way to transfer saved data from one box to another, because Time Warner is scared that people will share shows with other users (Would anyone really carry around a DVR box to someone else's place to transfer a show? That seems highly unlikely to me...). He also told me that if I’m taping lots of long programs, I’d be better off using a VCR or recordable-DVD. Which seems to go against the entire point of having a DVR in the first place, but whatever.
The new one seems to be working just fine. For now.