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.

Yesterday as I was leaving the Barnes & Noble on 66th & Broadway, I walked past Al Sharpton (and the trailing pack of paparazzi) as he entered the Starbucks next door. Then today I see video of that exciting event on TMZ. I'm the guy in the orange shirt and black leather jacket who strolls by 5 seconds in.
You can knock off another 2 seconds from my 15 minutes of fame.

There's nothing like a good feud between comics. Even better than a feud is a Royal Rumble, which is what's happening over at ASpecialThing.com. Fans voted for their favorite comic currently working, and this is how the list turned out:

1. Paul F. Tompkins

2. Patton Oswalt

3. Louis CK

4. Zach Galifianakis

5. Scharpling & Wurster

6. Maria Bamford

7. Jimmy Pardo

8. Doug Benson

9. Eugene Mirman

10. Tim & Eric

11. Todd Glass

12. Andy Kindler

13. Jen Kirkman

14. Flight of the Conchords

15. Todd Barry

16. Brody Stevens

17. The Sklar Brothers

18. John Mulaney

19. Demetri Martin

t20. Andy Daly

t20. David Cross

Others of note: Jim Gaffigan, Sarah Silverman, Human Giant, Brent Weinbach, Doug Stanhope, Bob Odenkirk, Mike Birbigli, Hard n Phirm, Brendon Small, Craig Anton and Ron Lynch of the Tomorrow Show, Neil Hamburger 29.

That didn't sit well with Tim & Eric, who posted this video:



Eugene Mirman got wind of it, and posted this response:



Some random guy posted another response:



Followed by Zack Galifianakis getting in the game:



Then Todd Barry:



And last but not least (so far), Patton Oswalt:



Will we eventually get videos from all 20? Let's hope so.

I just finished watching all five hours of VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of the 90s. Disastrous list. The main problem, I think, is that it counts down not of the greatest songs, but the most famous. Any list that has "Rico Suave" or "I'm Too Sexy" in it cannot use the word "great" to describe it. I won't create my own list, like I did with the 80s countdown, nor will I make a case for their selection of the wrong song from most artists ("Dreams" instead of "Linger"... any Beastie Boys song other than "Sabotage"...). But in my humble opinion, I cannot believe that the following songs* (in no particular order) were omitted:

Guns N Roses - "November Rain"
Smashing Pumpkins - "Disarm"
Veruca Salt - "Volcano Girls"
Coolio - "Gangsta's Paradise"
Blur - "Song 2"
Nine Inch Nails - "Closer"
Duran Duran - "Ordinary World"
Garbage - "Only Happy When It Rains"
Matthew Sweet - "Girlfriend"
Soul Coughing - "Circles"
Sublime - "What I Got"
Temple of the Dog - "Hunger Strike"
The Verve - "Bittersweet Symphony"
Natalia Imbruglia - "Torn"
Outkast - "Rosa Parks"
Seal - "Crazy"
Boyz II Men - "Motownphilly"
Positive K - "I Got a Man"
Eels - "Novocaine for the Soul"
George Michael - "Freedom 90"
No Doubt - "Just a Girl"
Rage Against the Machine - "Bullet in the Head"
US3 - "Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)"
The Proclaimers - "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)"
Stone Temple Pilots - "Interstate Love Song"
Savage Garden - "I Want You"

* Note: there are many more that could be included, but I stuck to their concept of the songs having to be a hit (which excluded TONS of options) and only one song per artist. And yes, I realize that the inclusion of artists like Savage Garden make me look like a complete tool, but come on... you all love the Cherry Cola song too, you just can't admit it.

Once again I've fallen behind on my posting, so some of this will be seem dated. Here goes anyway...
- For all you Survivor fans who were dying to find out where Courtney works: it's Coffee Shop. Seems an appropriate fit, although she was building it up just a bit by saying it's one of NYC's best restaurants. And for those of you who'd like to see "more" of her, she's got a topless photo in her model portfolio.
- Speaking of topless, this website for a Shock Absorber Bra provides hours of fun. Just click on the breast side and level of activity and watch them hooters bounce. Hint: bigger = better. Probably best not to do this at work.
- I ran across the "Christmas Is a Time To Say I Love You" video on VH1 Classic the other day. Nothing against working for MTV now, but I'll bet it was an absolute blast to work there back in 1981. They would never do anything like this today.



- MTV doesn't even do things like this anymore. Advantage: Fuse.



- Despite an almost impossible rash of injuries this season, I made it to the finals of my fantasy football league, having to defeat the #1 team twice and the #3 team in the final month to do so (I was #4). Sadly, I've just officially lost a nailbiter. It's a respectable finish, but to come so close and not win hurts. I really wanted that damn Yahoo trophy. I'm co-managing one other team, and after entering the playoffs as the #8 seed, we've upset our way into the final. So maybe I'll end up with a trophy after all... or at least half of one.
- And finally, I'll carry on my annual tradition by posting lyrics to one of my favorite rock & roll Christmas songs. Happy holidays to all my readers.

Merry Christmas, I don't want to fight tonight
Merry Christmas, I don't want to fight tonight
Merry Christmas, I don't want to fight tonight with you

Where is Santa? At his sleigh?
Tell me why is it always this way?
Where is Rudolph? Where is Blitzen, baby?
Merry Christmas, merry merry merry Christmas

All the children are tucked in their beds
Sugar-plum fairies dancing in their heads
Snowball fighting, it's so exciting baby

I love you and you love me
And that's the way it's got to be
I loved you from the start
'Cause Christmas ain't the time for breaking each other's hearts

Where is Santa? At his sleigh?
Tell me why is it always this way?
Where is Rudolph? Where is Blitzen, baby?
Merry Christmas, merry merry merry Christmas

All the children are tucked in their beds
Sugar-plum fairies dancing in their heads
Snowball fighting, it's so exciting baby

Yeah, yeah, yeah

I love you and you love me
And that's the way it's got to be
I loved you from the start
'Cause Christmas ain't the time for breaking each other's hearts

Merry Christmas, I don't want to fight tonight
Merry Christmas, I don't want to fight tonight
Merry Christmas, I don't want to fight tonight with you

Blood on the Tracks
I've been debating whether or not to post about this, as it's a somewhat humiliating story. But what the hell, here goes...
On Thursday afternoon, at the uptown 1/2/3 platform in the Times Square subway station, I fell / got bumped onto the tracks.
It wasn't completely my fault, and it wasn't completely somebody else's fault. I had leaned over to look for an approaching train, and a group of people walking behind me accidentally brushed against me just hard enough to propel my momentum forward. I had about 2 seconds to unsuccessfully try to steady myself (probably with comical cartoon-like arm waving... I can't quite recall), and eventually my weight carried me over the platform.
I'd say it's about a 5-foot drop, which isn't that far, and fortunately I landed on my feet, but I landed hard on my right ankle. Also on my way down I attempted to catch myself and smashed my left palm against the platform edge.
My first thought as I hit the ground was: don't touch the rail (even though I was nowhere near the third, a.k.a. electric, one).
My second thought: this is so embarrassing (triggered by the collective gasp from the crowd above me).
I would have had no trouble hoisting myself back onto the platform (and yes, there was a train approaching, albeit about 60 seconds away), but an MTA worker happened to be standing right there, so he reached out his hand and helped me up. I thanked him, assured him I was okay, then scurried to the other end of the platform to distance myself from the witnesses.
When I got home a few minutes later, I checked my ankle and wrist for swelling and luckily found none. Both throbbed a bit, but there didn't seem to be any real damage. This all happened around 4:30pm. By 9pm, the ankle had stiffened up considerably. By 10pm, I couldn't put any weight on it, forcing me to make an early exit from the MTV holiday party (which I'd had to sneak into* after not getting an invitation despite consistent work in 2007... thank you very much, Viacom). Of course I couldn't find a cab, so I hobbled to the subway. Got home, downed a few ibuprofen pills, and went to bed (blatantly violating my sleep schedule) hoping that rest would heal the ankle.
As of yesterday morning, the ankle is significantly improved, but still tender. Stairs, and even curbs, are still a bitch, and I cannot move faster than a leisurely stroll. But I think I'll be able to avoid crutches or a visit to the doctor.
Feel free to laugh now.

* Note: for anyone who wants or needs to sneak into a future MTV holiday party, all you need is a red Sharpie. Every year the stamp to reenter from the smoking section is same. Just write PUFF on your hand, sneak inside the smoking barricade, and you're good to go.

Has LSTT been on a sympathy strike in support of the WGA? No.
Have I just been lazy? Yes.
I've also been busy at Cash Cab, where yesterday I wrote my 2,000th question. It'll be a long-shot to reach 2,500 by the end of this cycle, and I'm still barely halfway to the all-time question champ, but I'm leaving my mark.
But I finally have a few things that beg to be written about:
- My old high-school buddy Mary Carey is auctioning off her used implants to raise money for breast cancer research. When I first heard, I thought, "Great, she gave up her implants." But it turns out she upgraded to bigger ones. This is after she publicly swore that she was all-natural. There's a group of high school alumni that want to band together to bid on them, get them bronzed, and donate them to the school's science building. But as of this writing, they're at $6,600. Definitely too pricey for a prank.
- Tonight is the MTV holiday party. If you've been following Gawker's coverage of Viacom over the past 48 hours, it's possible there will be a full-scale riot.
- And I'm sure you've all seen this parody of The Hills with James Franco and Mila Kunis. If not, do it. Now!