I Miss My MTV
This website has discovered a 3-hour stream of MTV from 1983 posted on Google video (commercials included). It could very well be the best thing I've seen in the past 25 years. Man, do I miss the no-frills, low-budget, anything goes attitude from the old days. And the crazy contests. Not to mention the awesome videos (there's a Michael Bolton hair-metal video around the 53 minute mark).
Prepare to give up the next 3 hours of your life.

She's a Brainiac
Yesterday TMZ reported that scream queen Debbie Rochon, who has been diagnosed with a brain tumor (and who I know from my time working at Troma), will auction off pieces of said brain tumor to her fans once it has been removed. It's quite possible this story is bogus (the only other news source I've seen this story on is Contact Music, which is the complete opposite of credible). But if it is true, it marks the second time in two months that one of my friends / acquaintances has auctioned off a part of her anatomy. So please, to everyone else I know who's reading this site... knock it off!

A Query About Crazy Homeless People
Which comes first: the craziness or the homelessness? Are crazy people just unable to keep their jobs and pay their bills and therefore end up homeless, or does being homeless cause people to go crazy? I wonder...

On Friday night I gathered up a bunch of guys to hit an opening night screening of Rambo. As expected, it was AWESOME. But to the surprise of everyone in the group, the highlight of the night might have been this coming attraction. Actually the preview itself is awful. But watch the whole thing anyway, because it's worth it when you find out the name of the movie. Unquestionably the worst non-satirical, non-porn title of all time.
(You can of course just skip to the end to find out the title, but I recommend watching the trailer in its entirety to build anticipation, and because you will never see it coming)

Canuck Yucks
A year ago I posted a link to one of my favorite online videos ever, an insurance PSA showing people getting to crazy accidents. Now, thanks to UCB's new video site, I've discovered that Canadians have gotten in on the fun too (and in a much gorier, but still hilarious, way).

Can somebody please explain to me why NBC continues to bury Friday Night Lights in TV's worst timeslot (Friday at 9pm)? Given the fact that the show had fortuitously shot more episodes than most other series, the WGA strike provided NBC with the perfect opportunity to move the show to a more prominent slot, where it would most likely face reruns on other networks. With the proper ad campaign that focused on the critical praise and devoted fan base, this could have done wonders in finally attracting an audience. But no, it's almost as if they're just burning off these remaining episodes (which, since the start of 2008, have been significantly better than the episodes at the start of this season).
It just makes me so mad...

Update: Sunday's NY Times Magazine has an interesting theory as to why FNL is floundering.

Pick Your Poison
Well, it's the Patriots vs. the Giants. Unbelievable. As if having my beloved Dolphins go 1-15 wasn't bad enough, now I have to endure this. The playoff team from each conference that I least wanted to make it to the Super Bowl are playing for the championship. I honestly do not know who I will root for. I can't support the Patriots, those arrogant bastards, and I refuse to back Eli, having never forgiven him for his baby-like tantrum in refusing to play for the Chargers when they drafted him in 2004. So now I'm in a lose-lose situation: either the Patriots win and the Dolphins will no longer be the only undefeated team in NFL history, or the Giants win and Eli will have more Super Bowl rings than Marino. I'm seriously considering boycotting the game and pretending like this season never happened. The whole thing makes me sick.

At least this video of a cheesy Portuguese lip-syncing band getting what they deserve cheered me up. A bit.

Ab Fab
This morning, as I was exiting the subway (southbound Houston St. exit on the 1 line), I saw a homeless man sleeping in the station. He was wrapped up in a sleeping bag, with two garbage bags filled with his possessions at his head. Also, he had an Ab Swing. Now I'm not sure that anyone who consumes such little amount of food as a typical homeless needs to worry about an expanding waistline, it is quite an endorsement of the product. Despite having nowhere to live, he doesn't go anywhere without his Ab Swing.

(The only six-packs he should be worrying about are the ones he can get the deposit on. Ba dum dum!)

Today is a Conan-centric day. First, check out his strike diary from the new issue of EW. Quite humorous, as is most of what he does.

Then, check out this old clip of him on MTV's The Jon Stewart Show:




(I love how hip both of them tried to make their wardrobe. I also wish the clip had extended to include the Urge Overkill performance.)

Finally, a non-Conan clip, but one that's still funny.

Random Storytime
Saturday night. An NYU bar in the East Village. I'm watching the Pats / Jags game with some friends (who will remain nameless). Shortly after halftime, a group of four, shall we say, undesirable females enters and congregates near us. One of the girls attempts to strike up a conversation with one of my friends, who wants none of that. Another of my friends, who is more than a little drunk (and involved with a long-term girlfriend), steps in and starts chatting her up. Which is fine with the rest of us, as he deflects all of their attention.
A little more than an hour later, my friends and I are ready to head to another bar. As we're organizing ourselves outside, our talkative friend emerges... with the undesirables. They walk right past us and head to the curb in search of a cab. They're practically pulling him along. My friends and I call out to him, but he waves us off and says he's going with them. We're slightly concerned, but we let him go and head off on our separate way. I think that the chance of him actually cheating on his girlfriend is fairly slim, but then again he is pretty wasted, and when he gets that way, his behavior is anyone's guess.
Later that night, I send my friend a text: "What the fuck u doing?" No response. It's not until the next day that I find out what happened.
He hopped in a cab with the undesirables and headed to a party at one of their friend's apartments. Two blocks into the ride, one of them turned to my friend and said "So... do you mind if we talk to you about Jesus?" He waited until the cab reached a red light and then, without a word, jumped out of the cab and went home.

The end.

Warning: the content on this site is extremely cute. Unless you hate dogs.

Galifantastic!
Ah, good ol' reliable Funny or Die.

Yesterday, this site was mentioned on the Fuse show "The Sauce" (along with Stereogum and Patton Oswalt's MySpace blog - good company to be in). After such exposure, I feel a lot of added pressure to write a good post, at least for the next few days. So today, I am starting a new segment on LSTT:

Things That (Probably) Only Amuse Me
When I'm riding on the subway (generally an express train) and I see somebody stand up long before we reach the next stop and confidently stand in front of the door to assure himself/herself of being the first passenger off the train... only I know that the opposite doors will be the ones that open. Then it takes the person much longer than it should to realize that there is a giant wall behind the doors where the platform should be, and he/she has to turn around, only to discover that a group has already congregated in front of the correct door.
That gets me every time.

I'll also bring back a segment that hasn't been done in a while:

Strangest Keyword Searches That Led People To My Site
- kate beckinsale colonics: I don't have any info on where she gets them, or if she gets them, or what she looks like getting them. But now I'm intrigued.
- cliff notes on the movie Coach Carter: Do they make Cliffs Notes for movies now? I would think it'd take longer to read than to actually watch the movie.
- "phil collins" "against all odds" "down syndrome": Is there a connection between the first two phrases and the third? Maybe that would explain a lot about Collins...
- mazeltops mama: What the hell does that mean?

And finally, just a run-of-the-mill link: Patton Oswalt's essay after the Onion dared him to eat a KFC Famous Bowl. My favorite line is about Kentucky shepherds being "full of rage and slathered in confusion." So far in my life I've never been slathered in anything... maybe that will be my resolution for '08.

The question: How Many Five Year Olds Could You Take in a Fight?

The answer (for me):
25

Speaking of fights, the new American Gladiators is pretty disappointing. The problem is that it's been MTV-ized. Too much editing, too much voice-over, and an insistence on asking contestants before every event if they're ready so that they can respond in a "spontaneous" scripted pun-filled answer. At least reruns still air on ESPN Classic.

Finally, the WGA strike is responsible for two good things: Real Time with Bill Maher eliminating his laugh-at-his-own-jokes-filled monologue and Why We Write, with essays from Damon Lindeloff, Bill Lawrence, Greg Garcia, and more.

Your Studio and You
While researching a Cash Cab question on Seagram, I happened upon this 1996 short by Trey Parker & Matt Stone that Seagram commissioned after acquiring Universal. Keep an eye out for Demi Moore, Sylvester Stallone, Michael J Fox, Angela Lansbury, Steven Spielberg, Brian Grazer, James Cameron, Heavy D, Jeff Katzenberg, Traci Lords, the Zucker brothers, John Singleton, and others.

Unfortunately it’s broken up into 2 parts...

I’m starting off 2008 with some sad news: my friend Liz’s dog Loretta has passed away. I lived with Liz and Loretta during the summer of 2000. Loretta was a big, beautiful black Labrador, and to say that she was the sweetest dog would be a giant understatement. I’d been warned that Loretta generally disliked men (maybe because she lived in an apartment shared by 4 women), but she and I got along great. Maybe it’s because I would secretly feed her teriyaki-flavored beef jerky. I hadn’t really seen Loretta since I moved out of that apartment, but ran into her while Liz was taking her for a walk one day over the summer. Loretta was basically blind by then, and whether she recognized me or not, she seemed happy to see me. Liz said that doctors discovered Loretta had lung cancer last weekend, and she was put to sleep immediately to spare her further suffering. She would have turned 14 years old this month; Liz owned her for 13 of those years. My dad is allergic to dogs, as is my roommate, so those 2 months with Loretta are the closest I’ve ever been to owning a dog. I’ll miss her a lot.