USA Today's Pop Candy Blog had a link today to this great website where you can create your own superhero. Naturally, I couldn't resist. I'm pretty sure this is what I'd look like if I were a superhero. Or maybe just did some situps and got a dog and some guns. Either way, I'm quite a badass, and I wouldn't suggest messing with me or my dog.
It became official today that the new "soon-to-be-injured" NFL star gracing the cover of Madden 2008 is none other than the 2006 Offensive Rookie of the Year, your favorite and mine, Mr. Vincent Paul Young, Jr. Congratulations to Vince, and condolences to the Tennessee Titans. After losing Pacman Jones for the entirety of the 2007 season, the Titans must be wondering what they have done to have the future of their franchise put in this kind of jeopardy. I'm sure Clay Travis will have something to say about this in the next day or two, seeing as how he's got almost as big of a man-crush on VY as I do.
For those of you out there who might not be familiar with the "Madden Curse," (Mom, Dad, I'm talking to you), just about every single player who has been on the cover of this game has gone ahead and gotten himself injured in the very next season. Most notably, Daunte Culpepper and Donovan McNabb, and most recently, former league MVP Shaun Alexander. Even Indianapolis Tight End Dallas Clark, who was merely featured in a television commercial for the game, was injured in his very next game against Philadelphia, which, incidentally, was the team he was playing against in the commercial. Weird stuff, I'm telling you. Bad mojo. Mess you up, man.
I have to agree with my buddies over at 40 Acre Sports in that it would have been nice to see someone like T.O. slated for injury instead of VY, though. However, as Burnt Orange Nation pointed out this morning, VY knows a thing or two about breaking streaks. Just check last year's Rose Bowl, which ended USC's 34-game win streak.
That computer generated image looks pretty badass, I have to admit. It kind of looks like Vince is about to start breathing fire and shooting lasers out of his eyes. While running 90 yards for a touchdown. Which, if he did in real life, wouldn't really surprise me too much.
When I was in 7th grade, I bought a Nintendo Entertainment System. The original one, not the super one, or anything remotely advanced. That's the last game system I have ever owned, and until this morning, I hadn't given any thought whatsoever to buying a new one. Unfortunately, this being Tax Day and all, I'm still not. But maybe if I'm a good boy all year, Hannukah Harry might bring me an X-Box instead of the 8 pairs of socks I'm probably already on the list to receive.
April 18 Update: I'm a genius.
So I'm having a decent Friday morning, it's sunny out and I had a good cup of coffee, and as the day progresses, I decide I'm going to go pick up some crappy Chinese food from Panda Express for lunch. What the hell, I'll hit the gym this weekend. I get all the way through my meal and find this waiting for me in my fortune cookie:
If you can't read it in that picture, the fortune says, "A photo doesn't capture your charm."
Oh, yeah? Well, fuck you!
Seriously, that is the worst fortune I have ever seen in a fortune cookie. I don't need a "You will unexpectedly come into a great sum of money" every time I crack one open, but I certainly don't need this kind of abuse. I'm just glad I didn't catch a "Next time try a salad" or "The SAT was much easier when you took it than it is now" or some other uplifting mantra for me to dwell on all weekend. I've got something for the folks at Panda Express, and their fortune cookie department:
How's that for captured charm, you bastards?
Mac and Bryant and I went over to The Standard for some drinks after work yesterday. I'd been there a few times - expensive drinks, but a really cool decor. It's on the rooftop of the hotel, and Amanda once saw a couple having sex in one of the waterbed pods they have around the pool. Yes, they have a pool in the rooftop bar. Anyway, I'm not sure this picture came out so well, but we saw Josh Holloway (Sawyer from Lost) there having drinks with some folks. Maybe my last celebrity sighting? Amanda was upset she wasn't there. This makes 3 of the "castaways" I've seen out here, though the first I've been able to get a picture of. I saw Terry O'Quinn (Locke) driving a Lexus on Olympic Blvd, and I saw Naveen Andrews (Sayid) driving his sweet jet black Porsche in Beverly Hills. I'm still on the lookout for Jorge Garcia (Hurley), I figure he'd probably be pretty tough to miss.
I'm going back to find (going back to find) a simpler place and time.
Amanda and I are really excited about the fact that we're moving to Atlanta this summer. Our time in California is coming to a close in about 6 weeks. I'll have more on this later, but since it just became official yesterday, I wanted to go ahead and mention it (since nothing feels real to me until I post it on these here internets).
Anyway, I'm sure I'll have some "leaving LA" related posts in the coming weeks, maybe some sort of LA good/bad lists, etc., but since it's now official that we are leaving LA for Atlanta, here's a combo playlist of "Songs About Georgia and Songs About Leaving Los Angeles."
1. Midnight Train to Georgia - Gladys Knight & the Pips
2. Not California - Hem
3. Georgia on My Mind - Ray Charles
4. Say Goodbye to Hollywood - Billy Joel
5. The Devil Went Down to Georgia - Charlie Daniels Band
6. Goodnight Hollywood Boulevard - Ryan Adams
7. The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia - Vicki Lawrence
8. 405 - Death Cab for Cutie
9. Going Back to Georgia - Nancy Griffith
10. Goodnight LA - Counting Crows
11. Sweet Georgia Brown - Brother Bones & His Shadows
12. California One/Youth & Beauty Brigade - The Decemberists
13. Macon, Georgia County Line - Whiskeytown
14. Pacific Ocean Blues - Dennis Wilson
15. Georgia Peaches - Lynyrd Skynyrd
16. California Dreamin' - The Mamas & The Papas
Good enough for now. Back with more later.
Look at this guy. There's no way he's the same age as other college freshmen; that is an assertion I cannot accept. Greg Oden is basically the equivalent of the real-life Thornton Mellon, though in infinitely better shape. Honestly, I think his kids might have grown up with my dad, but I can't be sure.
Anyway, in honor of Mr. Greg Oden and his evident defiance of the normal aging process, I present The Definitive Greg Oden iPod Playlist. Back in his day, iTunes downloads only cost a nickel!
I would like to wish Mr. Oden luck this weekend in the Final Four against Georgetown, and again (hopefully) on Monday in the NCAA Finals. I'd like to see him win a championship in his lifetime, and he sure ain't getting any younger (looking). I hope he plays two incredible games, Ohio State wins the whole thing, and people everywhere are in agreement that he will absolutely be the first pick in the NBA draft. Then maybe Kevin Durant will stay in school another year. We all have dreams.
The Definitive Greg Oden iPod Playlist
1. Neil Young, Old Man
2. The Beatles, When I'm Sixty-four
3. Frank Sinatra, The September of My Years
4. Garth Brooks, I'm Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old)
5. Jimi Hendrix, Mannish Boy
6. Wilco, When You Wake Up Feeling Old
7. Jimmy Buffett, A Pirate Looks at Forty
8. Jethro Tull, Too Old to Rock & Roll, Too Young to Die
9. Bon Jovi, Just Older
10. Elton John, Sixty Years On
11. Beastie Boys, Boomin' Granny
12. Of Montreal, I Was Never Young
The following was taken directly from an email I sent to a friend earlier today. The pictures were added here.
last night i got to watch a movie i've been really excited to see for a long time (sarcasm alert! sarcasm alert!), the notebook. wow. i'll be honest, it was a sweet story, it was a really sweet story. but not that great of a movie. have you seen this? the music alone is completely hilarious, like they thought to themselves "how can we make this sort of cheesy scene one million times cheesier, and also hilarious in the process?" they succeeded. but, it was a very nice story, though.
seriously, though, if this movie were made 10 years ago, it would have been reese witherspoon and ryan phillipe in the starring roles. instead we get rachel mcadams, who is the poor man's witherspoon (nothing beats a real southerner, especially when playing one in a movie) and ryan gosling, who in this movie bore a striking resemblance to "mac" the piano-playing moon from the old mcdonald's "it's mac tonight" commercials. he must have the longest face in hollywood. i mean physically long, not sad-looking.
and how about the guy who plays the guy who loses rachel mcadams back to her long lost love, the man in the moon? played by none other than what's his name, the same guy who played "guy who lois lane marries in the new superman even though she's really in love with superman", and you might also know him as "guy who famke janssen dates in x-men even though she really seems to like hugh jackman and his muttonchop sideburns much better." talk about typecasting. yikes.
but i think the funniest part was the handlebar mustache on rachel mcadams's dad. i kept waiting for him to put on a pinstriped vest and rejoin his barbershop quartet. (Sadly, I could not find a picture of this mustache.)
but let me reiterate. in all seriousness, the movie did have a very sweet story. and a great handlebar mustache.
Funny story before I get into the Longhorns' post-season and the Mountain Goats show I saw last night. My buddy Jeremy was in town this weekend from D.C., he works for Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, planning and arranging fundraising events. I call him Josh Lyman. Anyway, we went out Saturday night for dinner and drinks with some friends, and as he gets into the car he says to me, "How'd you like to be Charlie Young tomorrow?" Turns out he wanted to return the rental car early so he and the Senator wouldn't have to sit and wait for the shuttle, which would buy them a little more time in getting ready to leave LA. So, because I'm such a good friend, and because I've never had a United States Senator in my 626, I accepted his proposition.
Nice guy, that Senator Harkin. Seemed thoroughly confused when I told him I drafted him on my Fantasy Congress team, though he was concerned enough to ask who else was on the team and if there was anything he could do to help. I was excited to tell him that so far, he was the first member of my fantasy congress team who's ever been in my car. So far.
Now, on to more pressing issues. Texas has played some of the best (and worst) basketball I've seen over the past week and a half. It seems they can't put 2 halves of great basketball into the same game. In our last regular season game a week ago, we jumped out to an improbable 12 point lead over #3 Kansas at halftime, only to crap the bed and allow 22 points in the first 4 minutes of the second half and lose by 6. Then against Baylor, in our first Big 12 Tournament game, we were ice cold in the first half (even soon-to-be-player-of-the-year Kevin Durant only had 4 points), but overcame a 20 point deficit in the second half to win it, behind Durant's 24 second half points. I guess the Oklahoma State game the next day was somewhat complete, though it wasn't like we didn't try to throw it away once or twice. Luckily for us, we got to meet Kansas again in the conference finals (this time they were #2), and again, we jumped out to an amazing 21 point lead in the first half (KD started the game with our first 13 points, and he had over 20 in the first half, finishing with 37 for the game), but let them right back into it before halftime, and ultimately we just ran out of gas and lost in OT by 4 points. Durant had 0 points in the final minutes of the game, and 0 in OT. Inexcusable.
Anyway, we drew a 4 seed in the NCAA Tournament, which I think is robbery - there's no way Washington State is better than us from a mediocre Pac-10 conference (not even making the finals), and there's absolutely no way Pittsburgh is better than us coming off of a 30-plus point blowout loss to Georgetown over the weekend. Even Texas A&M got a 3 seed, and we beat them in double OT last week, and they didn't even make the SEMI-finals of the conference tournament, a tournament that I might have mentioned in the last paragraph that we only lost in our 3rd overtime game in our last 5 games. The only silver lining, for me at least, is that if all goes well, we will play USC in the second round, and you know how I love it when my Horns stick it to those Trojans. I'm picking us to win it all. What can I say, I'm a dreamer.
Jeremy (not the one who works for Harkin) and I went to see the Mountain Goats last night at the El Rey. They were awesome. I mean awesome. Neola saw them recently in Portland, and after reading her comments on the show, I was even more excited to see them. We were impressed. I need to get ahold of some of their earlier stuff, b/c they played a lot of it last night and I was a fan of it all. The opening band was this group of 4 girls from Montreal called Pony Up. I think they might have been 14 years old. Nothing on their Wikipedia page to confirm or disconfirm that. Either way, they were young, and sort of a junior version of Sleater-Kinney. They really had the crowd behind them from the get-go, and everybody seemed kind of sad when their set ended. Luckily they all came back out during a Mountain Goats encore to sing backup vocals on a cover of Thin Lizzy's "The Boys Are Back in Town." Aside from the dude standing in front of me who kept backing up slowly, like a glacier, until I was at least 2 feet away from where I started, who kept running his hands through his hair, scaring the crap out of me because I was convinced there was stuff falling all over me (this dude was too close), it was a great show and a great experience.
I didn't write down their setlist (sorry, Andy), mainly because I don't know enough of their songs to know what was being played all the time. If you're interested, I can tell you that "Dance Music," "This Year," "Lion's Teeth," and "Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod" were all played.
Neon Bible, the sophomore effort from Canadian indie-rockers The Arcade Fire, comes out next Tuesday (having absolutely nothing to do with this picture). A friend managed to somehow get an "advance" copy, and gave me a copy of it on Saturday afternoon. I didn't get around to listening to it until Sunday, and I've been freaking out ever since about how good it is. In fact, I actually haven't listened to anything else since yesterday morning. I have played it over and over, probably at least 15 or 20 times, and I'm showing no signs of any desire to listen to anything else. Not yet, at least. I don't know if I've been this taken with an album since Elliott Smith's posthumous release, From a Basement on a Hill, back in 2004. It should come as no surprise that Neon Bible puts forth almost as bleak an outlook, so maybe that's why I'm making that connection. I can't explain it, but I just LOVE depressing music. It makes me so happy.
Neon Bible starts off with my new favorite song (for the time being), "Black Mirror," but the true highlight of the album is the fourth track, "Intervention," which echoes the sounds of "We Shall Overcome," only with the exact opposite message. Instead of "We shall overcome someday," we're told "Every spark of friendship and love will die without a home." Ouch.
Throughout the album, lyrics like "Nothing lasts forever that's the way it's got to be," "Now who here among us still believes in choice, not I," "World War Three, when are you coming for me?" and "I don't want to work in a building downtown, no I don't want to see when the planes hit the ground," drive home the theme of hopelessness and discouragement, which, ironically, is much darker than their last album, Funeral.
Funeral was great, and I was excited for their Neon Bible release, but I was also kind of dreading it, because much-anticipated second albums usually fall flat. This one is an exception, like the Godfather Part 2 living up to, and, in many people's minds, exceeding its predecessor. I know it's early to say this, before we're even out of February, but Neon Bible is the current frontrunner for my favorite album of the year, though with expected releases from Bright Eyes, Interpol, Radiohead, and Wilco, it's going to be a fun race for me to judge.
So, we're on our way up to Universal for the concert last night, and I pull into the parking garage and fork over my $10, but I'm in one of the right-side lanes, and the entrance to the garage is on the left side, which means I have to quickly cross over about 3 lanes. As I do this, I accidentally cut off a guy driving a silver Prius. Amanda freaks out. "Ben, look, look, look, look who it is!!" I didn't see the guy driving the car, but evidently it was Adrian Grenier, better known as Vinnie Chase on Entourage. At the time, though, the only thing on my mind was fulfilling my intense need to pee, so we parked and immediately found a restroom.
As we're standing in line at Will Call to get our tickets, Amanda sees him again. Aquaman ends up standing two people behind us in the Will Call line. I took a breath, calmly turned around and said, "Hey, man, I think I cut you off in the parking lot. So, sorry about that." He goes, "That was you?" I said, "Yeah, it was me. Sorry." Then he said, "Aw, man! You're lucky this is LA." I'm still not sure what that meant. I was just glad I resisted the urge to say any of the following, potentially embarassing things:
"Let's hug it out, bitch."
"I am Queens Boulevard."
"Where's Turtle?"
"I thought you were great in 'The Devil Wears Prada'." (This would have been highly sarcastic.)
Anyway, after our brush with the B-list actor who plays an A-list actor, we headed inside, and not a moment too soon! We got to our seats just after the opening act, Native American poet John Trudell, began his, um, performance. It was mainly spoken word stuff, but he had a band who played over his poetry. It was a little weird, and kind of a downer. One of his songs was about killing children, I think. Or, probably, it was about the killing of children around the world, in war torn areas. At one point he mentioned Chechnya. Amanda wanted to make sure I wrote in my geeky little notebook that he used Chechnya in a song. We weren't huge fans.
We only had about a 15 minute or so wait until Jackson Browne took the stage. I was pretty damn excited. My only criticism is that I wish he had played for longer. Amanda wishes he would have played something she knew. I wish that, too, though I knew about half of what he played. But still, to be in the audience for a performance of someone like Jackson Browne, I was just happy to be there. And what he played sounded great.
Jackson Browne:
A Child in These Hills
Barricades of Heaven
Fountain of Sorrow
The Naked Ride Home
That Girl Could Sing
For a Dancer
Lives in the Balance
I Am a Patriot
After Jackson Browne, we had about 30 minutes before Willie came on. Amanda decided to take a nap. A woman after my own heart. The concert was actually a benefit for ovarian cancer research and awareness, which means that 100% of the net proceeds went to support the Cedars-Sinai Women's Cancer Research Institute at the Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute. That's a mouthful. (That's what she said. Sorry, had to.) That also meant that we got to watch a 15 minute infomercial about the Institute before Willie came on. Amanda slept through it. She didn't miss much. I sort of felt like I was going to be asked to buy a time-share or something. The best quote, from the president of the Institute, was "Tonight we are here to celebrate women! All women! And we have three great men here with us!" Um, I'm all for a Jackson Browne/Willie Nelson concert, but are you telling me they couldn't have put together, like, Emmylou Harris, Norah Jones, and Jewel, or something like that? Come on, people, a little planning!!
Anyway, Willie was awesome. It's always great to see a true legend, one of the last true country music legends still alive. I had the opportunity to see him once before, and I also had the opportunity to see James Brown a few times, and Ray Charles once. They were all at the tail end of their incredible careers, and they didn't really pack the same punch that they once did, but that doesn't really diminish the experience. That's how I feel about Willie now. He's not really what he used to be. He doesn't sing much, instead talking his way through most of the songs. He does still play a hell of a guitar though. From an observational standpoint, I was much more impressed with his guitar playing than with his singing. But he's Willie. And I'm a fan, not just an observer. And it was kick-ass. He played for what seemed like an hour, but it had to be more than that because he somehow managed to squeeze out 20 songs. I don't know if there's anything I was hoping to hear that didn't get played. When he opened with "Whiskey River," a huge (like, car-dealership huge) Texas flag unrolled behind him. I also liked that when he played "Good-Hearted Woman," he opened it with, "Let's sing one for Waylon."
Willie Nelson:
Whiskey River
Still Is Still Moving to Me
Ain't It Funny How Time Slips Away
Crazy
Nightlife
Workin Man's Blues (played and sung by guitarist Billy Payne)
Help Me Make It Through the Night
Me and Paul
Good-Hearted Woman
Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain
Blue Skies
Georgia on My Mind
All of Me
Memory of Love's Refrain
Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys
Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground
On the Road Again
Always on My Mind
Superman (new song)
You Don't Think I'm Funny Anymore (new song)